View source for Q'sn

"The alien explained that they do not make things. They are fed by destruction. Having met them, I feel it. They thrive on hate. [...] Not even the most hate-crazed Chatcaavan male could approach the magnitude of what I felt in transit. We might feel hate, but they ''are'' Hate."<ref name=":0">''[[FireBorn's Legacy (Fiction)|FireBorn's Legacy]]'', Chapter 21</ref>

== History ==
[[Taylitha Basil|Taylitha]]'s comment: "These people, whoever they are... they've been out there a long while, visiting worlds like [[Birdsong]] and raping them. Long enough that the planets can grow up again, the way Birdsong did... because if the natives are right, their world was wiped to bedrock at least once before. Maybe the people who did it are in some more distant part of the galaxy we haven't penetrated yet, and they haven't cared enough to come our way."<ref name=":1">''[[In Good Company (Fiction)|In Good Company]]'', Chapter 17</ref> [[Daqan]] confirms this: "This has been done to many planets, aletsen. Some your people know of. Many they do not, because they lie farther afield than you have ever gone. Like this world [Quzen], which is far beyond the borders of your Alliance, and your Empire."<ref>''[[FireBorn's Legacy (Fiction)|FireBorn's Legacy]]'', Chapter 18</ref>

Daqan: "The unmakers despise our fire."<ref>''[[FireBorn's Legacy (Fiction)|FireBorn's Legacy]]'', Chapter 17</ref>

Also according to Daqan, both [[Zafiil Paidiiza Qodii|Zafiil]] and [[Faullaizaf]] knew about the haters; the exodus from Quzen, led by the latter, utilized one of the slides on the journey to [[Qufiil]].<ref>''[[FireBorn's Legacy (Fiction)|FireBorn's Legacy]]'', Chapter 18</ref>

=== Modern ===
The [[Birdsong Natives]] know these aliens as the destroyers, and have some of their technology embedded in their underground caverns: a pedestal, like a control console, rising from a sunken pit, suggesting individuals ten or eleven feet high, with a yellowish glow.<ref>''[[In Good Company (Fiction)|In Good Company]]'', Chapter 13</ref>

== Biology ==
to be revealed

== Technology ==

=== Slides ===
"When you use the void bridge, they can attack you, the way nightmares might attack a dreaming mind. It cannot be fought in any normal way. [...] When we used the transit, two of my companions were trapped in an evil reverie. We were able to free them, but they were unsettled by the experience."<ref name=":0" />

Daqan: To call them the builders of the bridge is wrong. Even naming it a ‘bridge’ is false. These names reflect our natures: we see something and assume it was made because our nature is to build, to make, to grow. But it would be more accurate to say that this phenomenon is not the result of a making, but an unmaking. They destroy, and the destruction makes holes—destroys space—and then they use those holes for their purpose. To unmake more things ."<ref name=":1" />

=== Client Races ===
The Q'sn use mutated lifeforms to further their aims in areas of the galaxy with sapients. New species are seeded using stolen biological material; these new species, known as epigones, can be used either as fuel or food; or they can be upgraded into vectors, the more effective and complete client races designed to oppose other, naturally-occurring sapient species. Vectors have two aims: to corrupt naturally occurring species into new vectors, or to gather material to create epigones. They are occasionally used to commit genocide, but it is easier to destroy sapients from within, via corruption. Potential corruptible species are known as hosts. They remain hosts until they are fully integrated with the Q'sn, at which point they become vectors themselves.

Vectors, in general, are far rarer than epigones; the Q'sn are more likely to use epigones as fuel or food, and upgrade them only when they identify new opposition sapients. That identification spurs the development of vectors, either via upgraded epigone, or corrupted hosts. The first wave of vectors are extractors, specialists that gather biological materials for future epigones. The next wave are the much rarer infiltrators. Infiltrators often capitalize on the material stolen by extractors to approximate their targets' biology, which allows them close enough to the species to corrupt them. But they are also more likely to go rogue.

The rarest of vectors are carriers - opposition species that have been contaminated by the Q'sn through contact with a vector, a slide, or one of the Q'sn themselves. Sufficient contact causes metastasis. If that process reaches its natural end, the person becomes a vector, wholly corrupted/subsumed.

If an opposition species is small enough in population, it can be corrupted by force, by being overrun by vectors. Larger populations, especially those spread across multiple planets, require infiltration.

The Q'sn have experimented with other styles of vector, such as brood parasites, in the past, but the existing system works best and costs the least. Epigones usually survive long enough to be consumed as food or fuel. Vectors burn out quickly, and typically exist only long enough to handle the opposition species that prompted their creation (and sometimes not even that; some opposition species have required multiple attempts at vectors). None of the client races are self-sustaining; often they evince problems in basic homeostatic processes, like eating or reproducing. They are copies of the concept of species, rather than fully functioning ones. Where the Q'sn's created races begin to succeed at those processes, usually by exposure to functional living creatures, they increase their chances of going rogue in a sort of reverse corruption. The Q'sn curse this particular process as evidence of divinity.

==== Known Client Races ====

====== Epigones ======

* [[Birdsong Natives]]
* [[Kodo]]

====== Vectors ======


==References==
<references />

[[Category:True Aliens]]