The Corrosion
The Corrosion is a title bestowed by the Cold Orbiters for the species which almost destroyed the Empire of the Cold Orbit, roughly 34 million years BCE. No historical data survives from this ancient time and such limited myths and legends as have been passed down to the Contemporary Races by succeeding extinct species are of questionable value. Since the vast majority of this material is thought to come from sources within the Empire of the Cold Orbit it must also be suspected of bias and propoganda. At the least it tells us only one side of the story and we do not even have an idea of the name the Corrosion might have called themselves.
The first contact between the Corrosion and the Empire of the Cold Orbit was not initially recognised by the Empire for what it truly was; covert biological warfare manifesting itself as several species of fungal rot and coextensive viral infections. Thought merely to be a naturally arising, albeit serious, plague brought back from the Red Sun hinterlands, it took a long time for the Cold Orbiters to realise that an active intelligence, inimical to their populations was designing the infections to which they and their machinery fell prey. The guiding intelligences they called the Corrosion were ultimately exposed as a relatively small amphibious species with an armoured shell which naturally prefered the high pressure underwater habitats of ice moons and which maintained a collective racial consciousness mediated through something known as the Ritual. The Corrosion were masters of genetic engineering. An invasive species, their prefered method of spreading their influence was to co-opt and mould existing flora and fauna in the systems they settled and build an eco-system favourable to their own needs with themselves as the apex intelligence. Other intelligences would be subsumed by stealth, cunning, disease and mutation until they served the Corrosion.
The war between the Corrosion and the Empire of the Cold Orbit is the second of the great existential threats the Cold Orbiters faced and may have been the most serious before their final downfall. It is thought that the conflict peristed for more than ten thousand years and was carried out over a thousand systems. Eventually the Corrosion were undone by their own technology. Finding themselves pushed back they sought to craft a biological doomsday weapon from which they needed to immunise their own agents and allies. The immunisation went drastically wrong and they were brought to the brink of exinction.
Yet somewhere, some relic colonies survived, re-engaged by the Wardens of The Dark and playing a crucial role in the final revenge of the alliance of the Remorseless when the Cold Orbiters were finally defeated.
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