Silverlight (Echoes of the Horsemen of Fury)

Silverlight (Echoes of the Horsemen of Fury)  Silverlight are a software entity that seek out civilizations that have developed digital tech and beyond. It is not clear how sentient the Silverlight is but it seems to be driven to expand and consume. No one knows the first world that was infected with the Silverlight but ever since then there is no way to rid them from the universe.

They float through space in medium sized arrow-shaped vessels as if someone shot them through space. These vessels will crash on planets and began the process of consuming them completely. It will create drone armies in its trademark dark indigo plating with Silverlights which gave it its names. Everything made by the Silverlight has a sleek, exotic, amphibious design.

It uses disruptor weapons that attacks targets on a molecular level. It’s tactics are well documented in higher tier civilizations but God have mercy on civilizations who have not traveled across the stars. When they land, they do the same four phases every single time without fail.

Phase 1: Exploration ― This phase is where Silverlight is most vulnerable. It will infiltrate as many systems as it can. It will turn the local machines on one another, firing weaponry that is automated. It will do this periodically, examining the reaction time and how the species react to threats.

It will also start rooting itself in every platform, so that even if its original vessel is destroyed, fragments will exist all across digital platforms. If there are AIs, it will attack them aggressive, slowly overtaking them and replacing them. Some AIs will join the Silverlight willing. In this phase, it will slowly mark all the mineral veins, absorbing all knowledge the species has on combat, energy reserves. This phase mostly take a few years and is the shortest phase. Most races do not even notice when Silverlight has invaded their realm in this phase until it’s far too late.

Phase 2: Infiltration ― In this phase, the Silverlight has already marked all the key locations, all the mineral veins of the planet and the best defensible positions. This phase is the fortification and infiltration phase. In this phase it will begin creating androids called Doppelgangers.

These Doppelgangers will be cloned after isolated people with little or no friends or family. Then they will use their advanced abilities to cheat their way to the top. Doppelgangers are advanced androids capable of emulating anything the species they cloned after is capable of doing.

They are even capable of sex, eating, using the bathroom, holding deep conversations and many simple enjoyments. They will have synthetic muscle tissue, fake blood and cybernetics in place of vital organs to emulate an organic body. They will usually be deployed in great numbers for maximum effectiveness.

Once they have obtained a position of power they will isolate lands suitable for the founding of great cauldrons for the coming invasion. They will purchase or obtain these areas and then spend decades or even centuries rerouting resources and concealing this area while they build and prepare.

The Doppelgangers will also stir interior strife among the populace to further distract and displace their strength. Funding rebellions and keeping tyrants in power. They would pushed propaganda that is unfair to certain groups of the populace causing resentment. They would install false prophets in whatever spirituality the species indulge in and then have these prophets fail and commit great blasphemy, breaking the faith of the populace. All in preparation for the coming extermination.

Phase 3: Extermination ― In this phase the Silverlight makes itself known. It will have created a massive factory/base. By now it has gathered huge deposits of minerals and is capable of creating thousands of drones in a day. Their first target will be the major military strongholds and then the economic and cultural centers to further demoralize the population.

Their plan of attack has been formulating for centuries and now they are ready for almost anything. They will assassinated major influential figures, whether this is simply a motivational speaker or a musician making music to ease people's nerves. They will kill them all to further inspire fear in everyone.

There is a way out though. Silverlight see time as an illusion and so take sometimes centuries to fully exterminate a species. They also make long term plans. For instance many of their strategies will be decades to up to a century long―making them inflexible sometimes. Foiling their plans will force them to pause. Again since time is an illusion to them, this pause could last years as they formulate a new decade-long strategy.

At this time, their current forces will simply hold their position while the hive mind of the Silverlight explore what went wrong with their plan and study the object―either an individual or a new weapon―of their failure. Afterwards they will employ a new strategy on account of this new development. Mostly the Silverlight will wipe out the species and use their remaining Doppelgangers as sleeper agents to sabotage any efforts to mount a decent resistance. Silverlight will wipe out wildlife as well for a double point―one being to not allow the sentient race a food source and also because they are in the way for the next phase.

During this phase if the species has a space presence or moves to the space, the Silverlight will not give chase until after phase 4. They will construct orbital defenses however in case they’ve found allies.

Phase 4: Consumption ― At this point, the species is either thrown off the planet or completely eradicated. The Silverlight will begin the process of converting the entire planet into a massive hive for more arrows to be shot into space. They will gather all the matter and transform it into their trademark metallic material and take all the liquids of the planet and use it to create energy. The planet core will be harnessed into a power source for the superstructure. When it’s done, the massive superstructure will resemble a massive closed pinecone with many armaments, and ports.

From here, this megastructure will be the capital, the starting point for a galactic expanding conversion into the Silverlight. This megastructure will began constructing fleets to conquer and expand across the galaxy. They will terraform new worlds to add to their network and invade many civilizations, absorbing them into the Silverlight. If they run into another Silverlight cluster, they would simply merge and continue on. They would also send seed ships to repeat the process in other galaxies.