Stormers
Belligerence: 4 Opportunism: 1 Reason: 0 Spirituality: 5
Stormers
hs'hs'ss (closest verbal approximation of their name, more commonly known at Stormers): Once again proving that the definition of life may best be described as "We'll know it when we see it", Stormers originated in a stellar nebula as a form of self-perpetuating plasma. Initially disregarded as simply an unusually energetic nebula, a now-extinct race had tried to harness the power flowing in the nebula to create several new worlds at a highly accelerated speed, incidentally killing many Stormers in the process. Quite suddenly introduced to the concepts of death, war, and material value, the Stormers adopted the first completely, became masterful at the second, and remembered the third in passing as they incinerated the worlds of the now-extinct race.
Now, Stormers roam the galaxy at large, attacking most anyone who appears to resemble the original now-extinct race. Given that they, as gigantic plasma storms, view nearly all other life as being similar to the dead race, problems occurred. While a few Stormers have mellowed, most still seek out and strike with all the fury attributable to a force of nature, slaughtering entire races and burning worlds to ash. Were it not for a complete lack of technological ability (and the inability to travel at speeds even close to 0.05c), they might have burned the entire known universe to cinders in their crusade. While they do seem to be realizing that not all other life needs to be cleansed, a change of 'mind' can take centuries to complete given the sheer scale.
The truly outstanding feature of the Stormers is that races that employ at least partly electromagnetic-based neural systems do not appear to 'die' when subsumed by a Stormer's attacks. Instead, the personality and some strong memories remain as secondary fluxes within the Stormer itself. Over time, the basic ideas and concepts that defined that race in question affect the overall nature of the Stormer itself. The Stormer has some of the racial knowledge and wills of a subsumed race overlaid upon its own. Thus, some Stormers have actually gained the status of being 'The Afterlife' in the spiritual beliefs of some races. If the Stormer happened to have a leaning towards one set of beliefs from prior subsumptions that reasonably matched a nearby races' beliefs, they were viewed as a good afterlife and a kind god, gathering up His followers. If they did not match, the Stormer was a Dark God coming to inflict divine punishment upon the race. Some races, even when informed about the true physical nature of the Stormers, simply packed up and moved to be close to one they viewed as being a Good God, regularly sending ships to 'deposit' the dying into the Stormer so that they might join with those still patterned in the plasma eddies- or, in extreme cases, flying their entire race into the Stormer "to become One".
A final determination on whether or not those that die within a Stormer actually do attain a state of life after death, cannot be adequately determined through scientific means. It is... a matter of faith.