Editing Theoditic Nano-Swarm Atman (section)

===Belligerance & Opportunism===
The Atman have no use for personal property (a topic hotly debated) or self-defence, since they regard themselves as matter endowed with the Principle, and can easily reform themselves given time so long as a single nanobot remains and has an adequate supply of mass. At any rate, souls are immortal, and as such need no protection.

They have Belligerance 1 instead of 0 because they sometimes decide that your spaceship would look really nice if they converted the top inch of hull into a bas-relief depicting various saints and martyrs. This doesn't actually impair the hull, since most are more than an inch thick, but some people are annoyed to have their ships plastered with sacred grafitti.

You can usually spot a cruiser that's recently been in Atman space by the fact that its outer hull is covered in scenes from the Last Supper (as seen through a variery of angles and filters, including etchings for background radiation, thermal imaging and lists of chemical components for the bread and wine) or something else from any other religion.

Partially, this is because many Atman do not believe in the concept of personal property as applying beyond the things you ARE. They argue that one can only truly be said to own that matter which composes one's being. In the case of a biological entity, that means their body and any food they may have ingested. In the case of the Atman, they argue that since all matter can potentially be converted into more nano-swarms, then it really all sort of already belongs to them. 

Although, of course, since they're not actually USING any of it, you're welcome to help yourself. Heck, help yourself to some of the matter they ARE using, they can always get more.