Anathema

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Anathema
General information
Status Unknown
Native to Nowhere
Biology
Diet Energy
Symmetry Typically asymmetrical
Lifespan Indefinite
Miscellaneous
Description Cannot be seen or heard, femtobot composite being


The Anathema are femtobots that possess an overriding directive to store, transport, and release all stored energy. They were created by the Pantheon of Qianae to manage the heat spent by various creations of the Empire of Arckas. If a particular megastructure or phenomenon was proven to be accelerating the heat death of the universe, the structure would be removed.

Anathema cannot be seen within the spectrum of light nor can they be heard normally, making them stealthy, deadly foes if encountered. Once they start storing energy they usually coalesce into different forms in order to efficiently absorb energy from all matter, defend and attack opponents, and defend routers. Only several recorded findings of inactive Anathema have been confirmed, according to ancient data logs found in LUCIS and damaged ones on Novarckas.

The term Anathema was coined by archaeologists from the era of the Second Galactic Senate, but the true name was lost to history as the oldest record of the Anathema's existence dates back at least ten billion years.

Physiology

The exact inner workings of the Anathema remain unclear. However, it is known that they function as a swarm intelligence and can be directed or lured to different locations. They display profound skills is quantum physics, able to utilize microscopic slipspace corridors as a means of communicating over long distances. They do not exhibit any form of conventional spoken language.

Anathema also have no distinct physical shape as they are held together by microscopic femtobots that mimic sentience. They "feed" by storing the energy of matter, storing it inside of them and often using it to assume new forms. Due to their composition, they can neither be seen nor heard. However, in a large group, they appear as large clouds of grayish matter.

Anathema are also known to fuse together to create larger beings though they mostly attack in swarms or smaller, more numerous beings. The Anathema at the head of the system simply known as the Anathema Prime that controls and coordinates the Anathema through the router beings known as Synapses.

History

Multiversal War

It is thought that Sarak of the Pantheon of Qianae originally created the Anathema to stop the heat death from occurring prematurely at the hands of hyper advanced civilizations such as the Empire of Arckas. However, ancient data records suggested they served a different purpose long before the Heat Death Crisis was ever a threat. The Anathema was used as a weapon against a terrifying multiversal threat known as the Basilisk, an enormous god machine that tortured and enslaved entire universes. The Anathema was deployed against the Basilisk to destroy whole galaxies that were transformed into server nodes in an effort to slow down its campaign.

Because the Basilisk could potentially enter a universe just by thinking about it, after Omni 01 was closed off from the multiverse, the Anathema were retrofitted to be an energy management system.

Heat Death Crisis

After the onset of the Heat Death Crisis, the Anathema been unleashed numerous times in the past to delete creations that were using too much energy. However, there have been times when a group known as the Collective hacked the Anathema to destroy creations on their own. New security measures were created to prevent this from happening, but it soon became a cyber arms race.

Chaos Crisis

Eons later, the god machine named LUCIS, constructed in the likeness of Na'zrah would threaten the Crucible Galaxy by setting the stages of its own evolution into the Basilisk. The last remnants of the Galactic Senate Special Operations Corps found that the only effective weapon against defeating LUCIS for good was to unleash the Anathema against him - which would risk destroying the rest of Crucible Galaxy. With some help from the last survivors of the Empire of Arckas, the Mavetians, they succeeded in stopping both LUCIS and the Anathema, but at the cost of thousands of planets across the Crucible Galaxy.

Abilities

Anathema has the ability to take energy from matter and store it. This leads to the destruction of the matter that the energy is being stolen from, and it allows the Anathema to take new shapes so that they can harvest energy more efficiently. They can turn into almost anything, but most often into varied and numerous soldier-like entities to overrun their foes. They have been described as disturbing due to their tendency to appear as faceless soldiers, their wounds and even limbs slowly regenerating after it being severely damaged or destroyed, and the fact that they are constantly shifting. Their methods of energy absorption are also terrifying as the being slowly disintegrates as their energy is stolen.