[hider=A Foot note on Swarm Sentience]

Space Wikipedia entry: Swarm Sentience 
[quote]
While most species have tales of space travel capable hordes of mindless locusts moving from world to world in bioships driven by an insatiable hunger such things have not been known to exist in nature, such monstrosities are always the creation of some mad scientist for this or that warlord. They are all inevitably destroyed by their inbuilt self destruct system is activated by some valiant hero and as such generally are brief localized tragedies on the galactic stage. Naturally evolved swarm species inevitably find a niche in their ecosystem (earth’s tiny ants are an example) even those that become their planet's dominant species lack ambition and as a result they never reach space travel. Such species are most dangerous only as invasive species accidentally introduced by foolish Solo species (ants are, once again, an example, they can be found throughout much of the galaxy, ruining picnics and infesting homes.)

These facts where the case up until one particular artificial swarm attacked Pet-Rarthian, a planet home to a psychically linked pacifists who thought it would be an excellent Idea to try and give the Mindless hordes a centralized physic presence that they could communicate with it to try and negotiate a peace. Unsurprisingly a mindless weapon of war given sentience had very little of interest to say and the standard means of dealing with such creatures was used, namely a group of space friends lead by Cassius Mellivora (a specialist in the field whose species had been described as Honey Badgers on steroids, who eventually became the hero of the galaxy and scourge of the Awakened Minds. His descendants make up the bulk of the leaders of the Mellivora Capensis anti-swarm lobbying group) found and killed the swarms queens. 

The psychic ritual that the Pet-Rarthians had enacted had an unforeseen consequence in that it was contagious, capable of giving any other swarm species that came into contact with a member of the original swarm the same kind of consciousness. As the surviving elements of the swarm scattered across the galaxy they inadvertently infected many previously passive swarm species with the gift of reason. This caused many of them the curiosity and ambition to take to the stars though fortunately for the galaxy the long period needed to develop space travel meant the species mostly developed minds that could be communicated with by Solos. (ants are one of the worst transmitters of this and are very annoying, giving of a constant irritating sound as their Mind’s only vocalizations) See the Dawn of the Awakened Minds for details on this period. 
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It was in this manner that eons ago a single drone of that swarm crashed on the home-world of a species of tiny flying monkeys and the Mind was formed. While the galaxy was locked in war and diplomatic intrigue it guided it’s tiny charges as they evolved into something that looked more like bee fairies from a children's story book and eventually dominated their planetoid, before being rescued by the crew of the Quest for Flavor from their worlds imminent destruction.
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