Quora and The Colony of the Chunk

Species: Quora (singular. Quorum), Vashta contramachinas

Description: The Quora are a race of aquatic and parasitic microorganisms that exist on various habitable and colonized worlds. They are noted for their high adaptability and for their incredible intelligence when in large swarms.

Comparisons with other species of genus Vashta: Quora are typically found in still water and like their airborne cousins, Vasta nerada, will readily consume any organic tissue within reach if their colony is large enough to engulf it. Likewise when under duress or when reproducing, Quora and V. nerada will form endospores which can protect them from temperature, pressure, and chemical extremes. However, unlike V. nerada which only possess mild intelligence in swarms containing billions of individuals, the Quora are unique in possessing insect level intelligence in small cell clusters of as small as three to five individuals and potentially much greater in larger colonies (individual cells are not considered intelligent, but possess basic sentience, i.e., the ability to process and interpret sensory data). Additionally, Quora differ from V. nerada in that if given a piece of living tissue, the Quora will assimilate into the tissue rather than eat it.

Parasitism: Quora are known on many worlds as a plague species due to their propensity to assimilate into living beings. When assimilating into tissues, the cells will hunt down and consume neural and immune cells, leaving other tissue types untouched. This process is very painful for those infected due to the damage to nerve tissue and may also leave them vulnerable to infection by normally benign microorganisms. However, the Quora do not simply kill off these tissues, rather as they consume the nervous and immune tissues, they replace them (hence the term assimilation for a Quorum infection). As a result, infected individuals will suffer brain death a few weeks after infection if not treated, but will revive a few days after their death.

	The term “zombie” is often used to refer to these formerly deceased beings (in reference to various elements of fantastic Terran mythology), but this is a largely imprecise term to use as it only conveys that the victim was dead and was revived. The victims will retain all memories from before their death, but will usually exhibit personality shifts; the victim's memory is retained only because the Quora will preserve the memories from their host's brain as a means to quickly expand the colony's knowledge. Anecdotal accounts also note that infected persons are much more "clever" or "cunning" than prior to their infection.

Genesis: The Quora are not a naturally occurring species, they were created by genetic modification of the universally-endemic V. nerada in order to produce a powerful biological weapon. The modifications made to the stock form of V. nerada gave the Quora their famed intelligence, their specificity (initially only to the neural tissue that had extensive cybernetic augmentation), and their need to live in water (a trait introduced in order to make them more easily controlled).

	There is no single group responsible for their creation, the Quora were a tool of necessity devised through the collaboration of numerous races in an attempt to halt the expansion of the Cyberiad across the Universe. Small unmanned crafts capable of travelling at FTL loaded with water bearing loyal Quora were sent to planets with existing Cyberiad colonies and those that were suspected of being targeted by the Cyberiad and detonated in the upper atmosphere. This would cause the cells to disperse in the clouds and come down with the rain. The Quora would infect the organic brains of the Cybermen and use their host body to serve as an initial infantry before full forces could be deployed. The plan worked well enough to be used against the Cyberiad for centuries without issue until finally the enemy forces retreated and ended their expansion.

	It was hoped that the remaining Quora on these planets would die off without their intended food source, but small lucky mutations appeared in the surviving populations which allowed them to assimilate into other types of neural tissue. Initially, the Quora would be killed off by the host’s immune system, but that too became a non-problem when the Quora began eating the immune cells of their host. The sudden loss of control of the Quora sent their creators into a panic, causing many of the planets they had worked hard to preserve to be abandoned, or worse, detonated in order to eliminate their mistake.

	The detonation of Quora infested worlds was intended to be the solution to ending the Quora problem, but debris from these explosions often carried the durable spores of the Quora to other planets. This would often cause minor infestations at most of they landed on any other planet, but the creators of the Quora feared worse and halted their reckless destruction of these planets. Afterwards, the quarantines were introduced as a temporary solution, but the short-term replacement soon became a long-term mainstay.

Behavior and culture: Quora initially did not possess a culture of their own, but on the few remaining Quora worlds, they have built their own unique civilizations from the remainders of their predecessors.  These worlds often possess characteristics of the original inhabitant’s cultures mixed with the class-less authoritarian system of the Cyberiad.

	Often however, populations of non-infected people exist on these worlds, living in small and scattered communities. Some of these people have taken up worship of the Quora and will sacrifice members of their community to their “gods” to serve as host bodies, while others live isolated and paranoid existences in remote villages in fear of the infected and the sympathetic. The Quora themselves do prefer organic bodies, but will readily take non-organic ones like those from the Cybermen.

	The Quora worlds do not possess FTL space flight or transmat technologies, but do have basic interstellar communications systems which allow them to communicate with each other. Even though their creators feared that they would spread from their planets to others, the Quora have no interest in space-travel or interaction with other worlds.

Notes: One piece of planetary ejecta bearing spores from one of the detonated Quora worlds managed to fly far from the quarantine zone and land on a distant ocean world, a junkyard planet where freighters could dispose of damaged ships, broken machines, and other things befitting of the term “junk” into the sea without getting fined or taxed. Without interaction with other Quora to teach them or guide them, the spores grew without knowledge of what they were or where they came from. These Quora came to call themselves the Colony of the Chunk after the chunk of meteor they originated from.

	Despite being called a junkyard world, the planet was home to a fairly active human colony.  The Colony silently observed them from the sea and learned from them. At some point in time, the Colony formed a mutualistic symbiosis with a local man suffering from a bone marrow cancer, infecting him, but only assimilating into his marrow and immune system. In this symbiosis, the man and the Colony shared thoughts, dreams and passions. The man wished to see the universe beyond the junk-filled sea, and the Colony wanted to learn more about its past. Eventually, they built a robotic suit together for the inevitable future when the man died so that hopefully at least one of their wishes could come to pass. When the man passed away, the Colony moved into the suit and took the man’s neural relay for itself so that the memory of the man would travel with it through the universe.