Nimbus
Belligerence: 1 Opportunism: 5 Reason: 1 Spirituality: 3
Nimbus Preferring to call themselves the "Nimbus", these beings are actually condensations of sentient thought, looking like incorporeal mist to most eyes.
They congregate around uninhabited planets, mentally terraforming them into ever-shifting planetscapes for the duration of their stay. While doing so, any valuable minerals that are brought to the surface during this shifting are collected by these beings, storing them in pocket dimensions. Many of these planets are remain intact. Some even become habitable as minerals inimical to life are often siphoned away as well, but a few planets eventually disintegrate, either because the terraforming destabilizes the planetary integrity or because a large majority of the planet is composed of the minerals that are harvested by the Nimbus.
The Nimbus believe that they were are brought into existence to bring contentment to the universe by the Empty Smile, and to do that, they explore the universe, finding civilizations to trade with. Masters of trade - their ability to read the moods of their customers being one of the benefits of being creatures of pure thought - they have amassed a great amount of wealth. For what purpose they intend to use the rest of their wealth is a mystery, as their technology is limited to that which allows them to communicate with their customers.
Normally peaceful beings, the Nimbus has a reputation of exacting terrible punishments on traders who have cheated them. The trader may be sitting in his trade ship, gloating at the surplus his dishonesty has earned him, when a strange mist begins enveloping his ship. He has a moment to realize the error of cheating a Nimbus before the mist erupts into a horrible conflagration of black and white, tearing apart the ship in a storm of pure unbridled rage, before the mist begins absorbing the ship and its contents, to become new commodity for some spacefaring trader.
