Denazra

Summary
Many different individuals from dozens of different species have theorized about something like the denazra. They appear to be a “race” of machines that travel at sub-light speeds throughout the galaxy, consuming and reproducing. The exact origins of the denazra are mysterious, although they are believed to have originated somewhere along the Centaurus Arm. The number of systems that have been conquered by the denazra armadas is unknown, but at least 17 garden worlds that Coalition analysts have confirmed as formerly life-bearing have been occupied since the tlecians first began tracking their advance.

Whether the denazra are entirely automated or if there is an unmet organic species directing their movements is a matter of debate. The denazra appear to be converting the habitable worlds they capture to an ammonia based ecosystem. This enormous undertaking has never been fully analyzed, as Coalition forces have to retreat and disable a system’s gate before the denazra have finished off the system’s native species. Long range observation has limited usefulness, especially considering that the data retrieved in such a manner is decades out of date due to the vast distances between stars. It is established fact, however, that the denazra begin releasing terraforming agents as soon as they enter a targeted world’s atmosphere. While no organic creature has ever been observed in the company of the denazra, the machines expend a massive amount of resources and time converting every world they capture; it is unclear what benefit they might draw from this work themselves.

The denazra appear to travel at sub-light speeds across the interstellar gulf. As the Coalition has grown and spread the word about the threat, more and more systems have begun using long range observation equipment to try and gain some warning of the denazra’s movements. While restricting the search to the localized area of the galaxy in which the denazra are known to operate has helped improve the odds, it is still a mammoth undertaking and prone to failure. The denazra also approached the last two Coalition worlds they invaded from an altered trajectory, indicating that they may be trying to make early warning efforts even more difficult. Even when the denazra are spotted, the amount of time it takes visual information to travel through the vastness of space coupled with the near light speed velocities reached by an invasion fleet means that a world rarely has more than a few years of warning.

When the denazra do arrive, they bring overwhelming force to bear. Massive dreadnought-style ships disgorge fleets of support vessels and combat troops which systematically set about harvesting a system’s natural resources, including organic life. The denazra appear to have some interest in processing a certain percentage of a system’s native life for their unknown purposes. There is no evidence, however, that the denazra preserve any specimens over the long term.

The denazra are, technologically speaking, at least an order of magnitude beyond any Coalition species and they are increasingly advanced every time they are encountered. The denazra also appear to adapt their tactics from one encounter to the next, regardless of how many light years might lie between their different armadas. The method by which they accomplish this is, as of yet, unknown. In addition, the denazra have proven to be incredibly adept at manipulating any computer system with an externally accessible network. Practically, this means that Coalition ships must be designed in an often primitive fashion, isolating communications and sensors from ship computers and shutting down all wireless systems before an engagement. The denazra can even infiltrate an individual’s remotely accessible cybernetic enhancements, making many forms of neural augmentation extremely dangerous.

Their greatest strength, however, may lie in their astounding manufacturing capacity. When supplied with sufficient raw materials, a denazra dreadnought can manufacture an entire fleet in the time it takes for a Coalition armada to bisect a solar system and intercept it. Without any apparent need for training, recreation, or rest, a full denazra invasion fleet has never been defeated by Coalition forces.

Biology
Unknown. No organic life form has ever been observed in the company of the denazra fleets. It is believed, at this time, that the denazra are artificially created and entirely automated machines.

Individual denazra vessels and ground units all appear to be unmanned but react creatively and in real time to threats regardless of their distance from other denazra forces. This implies individual intelligence or incredibly sophisticated programming.

The appearances of denazra vary widely. It is believed that the massive denazra ships manufacture units during their long interstellar flight, and later during the ensuing conflict, that match the observed capabilities of their target. As such, the denazra have deployed air units, underwater diving units, ground armor, and even light infantry during the more than a dozen xenocides that the Coalition has been able to confirm. Units are always resilient, heavily armored, and invariably equipped with a variety of lethal and non-lethal weapons.

Denazra do share some traits. All units seem to share a capacity for self-repair. While not instantaneous, superficial damage can be repaired easily and even very serious repairs can be completed within hours or days. They uniformly self-destruct when their capture appears imminent. Even ships operating hundreds of light years away appear to learn from new tactics attempted by organic resistance.

The denazra replicate quickly and efficiently. A horde of mobile factories make up a large portion of any denazra invasion fleet. The denazra begin harvesting raw materials as soon as they arrive in a system and appear to process them either on the spot or back onboard the larger denazra ships. The denazra appear capable of producing new units almost instantaneously, so long as the factory has sufficient raw materials to work with. In engagements with the denazra, the Coalition has repeatedly noted that the dreadnoughts release a cloud of support vessels that seem significantly larger than the interior dimensions of the ship would allow. Given the observable manufacturing speed of the denazra’s smaller mobile factories, it is believed that the second wave of denazra ships released during the opening days of the invasion may actually be constructed by the larger ships in real time as soon as space becomes available.

History
These self-replicating machines travel in large fleets of automated factories, moving from world to world and consuming all intelligent life forms they encounter. While little is known about the final stages of a denazra attack, due to the necessity of cutting off the gate link with any occupied system, distant observation of systems long occupied (as well as a handful of daring scouting expeditions well behind the lines) has revealed some important hints. To begin with, the machines appear to be engaged in a program of violent terraforming, probably originating from a star system out along the Centaurus Arm of the galaxy. While all species commit a certain amount of xenocide by introducing native species and converting a planet for their use during colonization, the machines appear to be mass converting every viable planet they encounter into a consistent and very specific type of habitat (ammonia based is the currently accepted hypothesis) that is largely uninhabitable to Coalition species. The denazra have shown little interest in sparing any of the few species that would be able to settle on these worlds, but it is at least hypothetically possible that some could have adapted to survive on one of the numerous terraformed planets left behind in the denazra’s wake. However, no one has found any evidence of intelligent, communicative life on any of these occupied planets. The denazra have proven unwilling to negotiate or share relevant information with the Coalition and even communicating with them is widely regarded as an invitation for a powerful computer virus. While some of these worlds, stretching out far away from the galactic core, are incredibly distant from the current front lines, the denazra are believed to maintain at least a basic level of monitoring in each of these systems and have responded violently to the handful of scouting expeditions launched by Coalition members.

Denied the use of the gate network by the Coalition’s security measures, the machines largely move through real space (at least, this is the prevailing theory). Thus, a target of a denazra attack may- if lucky and possessing a wide array of deep space observation equipment- be able to spot the incoming fleet while they are still several years away at near light speed. This has, in recent years, allowed targeted Coalition species the chance to preserve their genetic heritage by evacuating a certain number of their citizens to colony worlds further away from denazra space. An unlucky or undeveloped species may be caught off guard, with the first warning of the attack being the rapidly approaching dreadnoughts crossing the interstellar gulf and entering their system. Larger denazra vessels are painted flat black and have exceptionally low levels of infrared and radio frequency emissions. Coupled with their practice of using extremely gradual acceleration from what Coalition scientists believe to be advanced ion drives, the denazra are very difficult to track at long distances.

A denazra attack follows a somewhat predictable routine. At least one (and often three to four) of their massive dreadnoughts will accelerate straight towards a world and then split off towards various strategic targets. This would seem to indicate that the machines either have excellent pre-invasion intelligence or highly advanced sensory equipment. The dreadnoughts are huge and conical, with a massive opening (often called the “maw”) that leads to a cavernous interior chamber of some kind. While the dreadnoughts vary in size, there is usually one ship that is much larger than the others (presumably acting as a command ship). As they decelerate and enter a system, the dreadnoughts will begin releasing a swarm of smaller support vessels. These vessels will immediately engage any nearby space vessels or orbital defenses while the dreadnoughts lurk in the outskirts of the system. In a handful of instances, Coalition observers have recorded data that seems to show that the mass of ships emerging from within a dreadnought appears to exceed the dimensions of the containing ship. The implications of this level of manufacturing output are staggering.

In past encounters, the denazra would also attempt to seize control of the nearby gate, but the Coalition was repeatedly able to launch costly ambushes and lay traps before disabling the link behind them. After it became apparent that the Coalition fleets would not travel too far away from their only escape route, the denazra began to ignore non-native ships that did not actively interfere in their operation. While combat is ongoing, the machines will dispatch smaller mobile factory ships to begin harvesting any asteroids or other easily mineable locations in local space. These resources are converted with startling speed into reinforcements, which then replace any damaged or destroyed units lost in the first steps of the invasion.

Once orbital dominance is achieved (and it always is), the denazra will typically offer the defenders a chance to surrender peacefully. As it is now common knowledge that surrender still dooms a planet’s population to processing and destruction, this offer is rarely accepted. The machines will then proceed to escalate from generally non-lethal methods (such as EMP saturation or genetically engineered viruses) to more direct methods (land invasions and orbital bombardments) in their effort to subdue the planet. The machines show a clear preference for capturing large segments of the population alive, although they appear to eventually reach a predetermined limit and will then exterminate the remainder. The machines also appear to prefer avoiding direct damage to a habitable planet’s biosphere, although they will begin to release gases and other terraforming agents onto a planet almost as soon as they have begun the invasion.

In a handful of instances, a coordinated effort or innovative new strategy has resulted in the destruction of one of the smaller denazra dreadnoughts. The denazra always learn from these instances, however, and never seem to struggle with obsolescence; every fleet, even light years away from one another, appears to advance and modify itself at a very similar rate. For instance, the denazra dreadnoughts used to approach a target planet directly until one sadly extinct species (the yithil) was able to destroy one of the massive vessels using a series of concealed ground-to-space defense batteries. Now, the denazra dreadnoughts across the galaxy typically wait in the outskirts of a system and use attrition to overwhelm defenders. Given the limitations on faster than light communication, this level of coordination would seem impossible.

As the denazra crush resistance, they proceed to convert more and more of the planet, with notably increased levels of ammonia introduced into the atmosphere. Captured individuals are herded into factory ships which periodically take off and land again, never actually rendezvousing with any other machine ship. It is believed that the machines have adopted this strategy as a means of assuring a targeted populace that they will be taken as prisoners somewhere else as opposed to killed on site. What exactly happens inside one of these factory ships is unknown, as the same ship has been recorded making at least a dozen different landings without ever releasing a waste product or returning to one of the dreadnoughts.

While all natural life is being exterminated on the planet and the terraforming takes hold, the machines will begin to focus their efforts on harvesting valuable materials from the planet’s surface and from harder to reach areas within the local solar system. Notably, they refrain from stripping these terraformed planets bare of all their natural minerals and resources and seem to leave much of them untouched. At this point Coalition intelligence is spotty, but it is believed that the machines will harvest enough resources to reconstitute a full fleet (or maybe build more fleets, if a system is particularly rich) and then choose a new target before launching a new, sub-light invasion. The machines, presumably in response to the Coalition’s attempts to coordinate a defense against them, do not always head towards the nearest occupied system and often will use an indirect trajectory. These journeys take decades at best and hundreds of years in extreme cases, but the machines have spread unchecked using this method across a significant swath of the galaxy.

On very rare occasions, a machine support vessel has been spotted in systems without the presence of a nearby dreadnought- or, at least, a known one- presumably conducting a scouting mission or a similar task. The efficacy of such a mission would seem to be limited, as it would take so many years to return to a machine system with any information that it would already be vastly out of date. However, even the machine’s smallest support vessels are capable of self-repair and even replication, making attacking one an extremely dangerous task.

Engaging the denazra with certain kinds of cybernetics or advanced computers is considered to be highly dangerous; they are able to remotely access most advanced, networked computer systems (including wireless implants) and sabotage them with relative ease. As a result, this has led to the Coalition sharply limiting the use of artificial intelligences and neutral augmentation (with the exception of the already invested tlecians) in order to maximize the Coalition’s ability to engage the denazra militarily.

The denazra have assumed a somewhat mythical air, with adventurers and other explorers often concocting improbable stories about them and their capabilities and conspiracy theorists spreading wild rumors from one end of the galaxy to the other. Some claim that the machines have discovered FTL travel, others that they have infiltrated one or more galactic governments with disguised machine proxies (the most popular theory claims that the tlecians are secretly in league with the denazra and are feeding other species to them one by one), or that even larger ships than the mammoth denazra dreadnoughts lurk out in deep space. Separating fact from fiction is difficult, which has led to the rise of several cults across the galaxy, either prophesying the end of days or demanding the worship of the machines (and sometimes the conversion of planets to ammonia based environments as a gift) as the only hope of organic life’s salvation.

Religion
It is doubtful that the denazra have any organized belief system beyond their primary programmed objectives. If there are any higher controllers of the denazra, organic or otherwise, their motivations are unknown beyond the denazra’s observable behavior. They clearly share little concern for peaceful coexistence and appear to value garden worlds with ammonia based atmospheres.

Economy
The denazra’s factories and resource harvesting methods are second to none in terms of brutal efficiency. There is no evidence, however, that the denazra ever operate in anything less than perfect harmony with one another. Trade is unnecessary and business irrelevant.

Their production speeds are legendary. Even if an organic force manages to fight the denazara’s first wave to a bloody standstill, the assembly lines will have already produced modified reinforcements and dispatched them before the first battle is even over. These new units, adjusted to account for organic tactics and strengths, will then engage the defenders. While many Coalition species have vast manufacturing complexes capable of creating huge arrays of weaponry or equipment very quickly, the miniaturized nature of the denazra’s production apparatus and its ability to swiftly and efficiently process vast quantities of varied materials for thousands of different purposes (including new soldiers) mean that the denazra always triumph in battles of attrition.

Language
The original language of the denazra is unknown. It is probable that they would at least be able to recognize and potentially communicate through any of several different forms of mathematics. That being said, the denazra do occasionally communicate with organic cultures conventionally. At the beginning of every invasion, the denazra fleet broadcasts a blanket communication to the native civilization. Taking the form of hundreds of different messages, each with a visual representation of a native from different parts of the planet and with an appropriate language or dialect, these messages are broad beamed into all of the accessible communication devices on the planet. The denazra always offer leniency to a target species if they surrender peacefully. The tlecians say that these virtual ambassadors can apparently hold detailed conversations with those who wish to negotiate. However, in every historical instance that the tlecians have recorded, the denazra have processed the population, terraformed the planet, and killed every living creature in the system anyway. As a result, attempts to communicate with the denazra are regarded as futile. When the denazra communicate, it is only to use it as another weapon to undermine their target’s defenses.

Military
While the denazra have employed a variety of tactics against the Coalition, they primarily rely on very basic strategies. They fight conservatively, deploying overwhelming force against their opponent's weakest point, and use attrition to reduce their enemy's capacity to fight. Typically, the denazra will manufacture specialized units to counter the strategies and capabilities of their opponents. Their remarkable production capacity allows them to construct entire fleets mid-campaign, meaning that any Coalition victory requires the complete elimination of every denazra unit anywhere in the solar system or near space.

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Notable Planets
The denazra occupy at least 17 systems with former garden worlds in them. This number may be significantly higher, but the tlecians have refused to make an estimate without firm evidence.