<h2>The Custodians</h2> ### Overview The enigmatic Custodians are beings whose whole nature is abstracted from our own reality. We do not sense them well, but they certainly do know us. The Custodians are incredibly advanced as a society, and there are endless theories as to their impact on the development of galactic civilization, where they came from and why. No one is absolutely certain however. Only that their origin is extragalactic. ### Beliefs The Custodian system of belief is oriented around the ideal of being untethered from our material reality. They feel the need to lack any connection to reality to exist well. Custodian activity is relatively light, but they are still widespread enough to occupy a large share of the galaxy. The Custodians don't believe they are a civilization, however. Indeed, they seem to not really structure themselves as one anymore than a human body does. They are of some super structural system of civilizations, emergent, something that only can exist with a collection of systems of civilizations across the known universe. Their humble name betrays their truly vast nature, in all respects. They don't view themselves as mere janitors, for one. They view themselves as the generators of these very cosmos, having so long embedded themselves within the structure of the universe itself that they cease being able to sense themselves as anything other than the universe itself. They are the cosmos. This is all despite how they have clear characteristics of a type 2 civilization, primarily in how they have stain swarms around black holes are how much of what they do is believed to be merely a deeply sophisticated system of virtualization, which seems to go further than virtualization by pairing their systems with distortion systems and all matter of quantum reality barriers which annihilate anything that touches it. Indeed. They are well defended because they figured out how to exist within a stable quantum vacuum generated universe which to outsiders looks like and behaves like a black hole- still annihilating you and feeding an insignificant energy bit to their society's generators. Their deeply solipsistic mentality is evident in their absolute lack of regard for other life. It is no less critical to them than you think about perhaps an anthill at best- and that is the interstellar societies. Still, we have made some particularly nasty insects, and so they at times feel the need to exterminate forces that they feel irritated by or threatened by. One such force being the Silent Pact, who they have dealt with regularly due to the blink drives being the first thing to actually worry them in a while. The first thing since the archivers and their obsession with making a perfect record objective reality, anyhow. ### Structure The Custodians structurally are a multiple layered entity system, with core beings often projecting themselves as drones and nebulous thought forms which they control through a number of proxies. The bulk of Custodians seen are just their drones. The mainline Custodians do not appear much, as they exist elsewhere as virtual beings more or less. The Custodians are highly simplistic in doctrines, usually having drones rove about to deal with disturbances and often meddling about with random societies out of curiosity or just because they decided to. The Custodian name really just refers to the drones, who do all the grunt work. They evidently are not the most advanced war [[Machines|Machines]] they have, acting more or less as scouting craft repurposed for galactic observations and security from lesser societies. Their more advanced warships do directly defend, but only when they actually are threatened. And these more advanced warships have only ever been employed a few times against societies who aren't direct threats to the continued existence of the Custodians. Most notorious being the systemic destruction of the Acer region, mainly due to blink drive disturbances. In another instance they wiped out a planet bound civilization over a breakthrough that allowed them to access one of their highways through a left over sprawl node. The custodian drones do not have the interstellar destruction the annihilation crafts are capable of, indeed the latter are seen as pretty much some of the deadliest WMD systems in the known universe. Another incident was when they were retaking old systems and the [[Glinnvyr]] got in their way. They just used the annihilation crafts as intimidation then, however and didn't directly kill them all the way they did the Acer region which even by custodian standards was an incredibly unprecedented act of genocide and viewed as an overreaction. Generally a few solitary drones are viewed as enough to occupy a thousand star systems, they have over a several million of them in this galaxy. Which is incredibly sparse and not nearly enough, but the Custodians tend to be neglected as a force and even with the blink drives the core populations don't seem worried enough to bother. ### Demographics Demographics wise the Custodians are an unknown quantity. Only that the custodian population is 0.000000001% of the overall population, in just this galaxy. In other galaxies custodian populations are much higher due to higher threat from the archivers and a higher population overall. The full extent of the Custodians is unclear. They may only exist in the local group or have activity further out, not even the local Custodians really know as it is thousands of years to cross to other galaxies. What the Custodians do know, however, is that there are more advanced civilizations out there in the universe. But they're not too important beyond the [[2_Sapients/[[Virgo|Virgo]]]] who just stop by from time to time. ### Technology The Custodians are very much in a position to exist as an extinct civilization living as phantoms. Ironically, much like the much less important [[Silent Pact]]. Custodians tend to be able to make thoughtforms with clouds of micro-probes which make up their form and allow them to assemble and distort space-time as needed. One drone can render an entire star system lifeless if inclined to. Thankfully, they rarely are. While the drones have been known for their resilience and difficulty to destroy, they aren't really that much to loose. Which is why destroying a custodian drone is rarely concerning, even if it is often used as an achievement in the Imperium or the Architect (who annoyingly attack Custodian drones to test their military technology, though retaliation just does not happen except against the offending fleet even if the drone could trace the fleet origin, they just don't brother to as these are drones, they're not revenge oriented thinkers. The drones get attacked, they respond to get rid of the disturbance. Most societies are rarely a disturbance.) Custodian tech is principled on the nature of the ability to star lift for resources, something that is inherited from earlier civilizations and has been improved upon to the point where any drone is able to repair or reproduce themselves from stars. Indeed, one of the reasons for small drone numbers is an ongoing fear of high drone populations leading to a galactic scale grey goo apocalypse. If they expand numbers, the annihilator crafts are usually called in. See also: [[Custodian Purger]] [[Custodial Virtuals]] [[The Custodian Encounter]] [[The mindset of the custodian]] #custodian #Galactic-Region/Architect #postbiological #VirtualSpace #EnforcementGrid