The Hive

A setting for a race that peacefully made a transition to a hive mind state, through a combination of bioengineering and cybernetics.   The Hive is arranged into local nodes of closely bonded individual "instances" of their species, which specialize both physically and mentally. The Hive contains the sum of all their knowledge, but no one instance or node can hold all of it at once, and still must train their bodies and minds to acquire new skills and comprehend new concepts.   While they are capable of adding outsiders to their collective, the Hive makes value judgements based on collective comfort, and thus will not force others to join them. Too many minds assimilated at once could lead to internal conflict and great distress.   While they retain a written and spoken language, it has adapted to the needs of their culture, where no one thinks entirely in the singular. Thus they struggle to make themselves understood to outsiders, who are equally confusing to them.   This world and its home system were designed as a Wild Space planet in the Star Wars galaxy. I found myself disappointed that Killik Joiner characters seemed to struggle within the constraints of English plural pronouns, and the aggressive nature of the Killik's Joining was disappointingly stereotypical. Thus, a new race and a new conlang.