The Shining Nest was the central adminsitrative structure of the state religion of the Progenitors of T'ltssk, and, by extension, the primary government of the species itself. The T'ltssk folk, as they are colloquially known throughout the galaxy, were a diverse and misunderstood people for most of their existence. They were best known in their migrant phase, which encompassed a handful of vaguely avian or insectoid somatotypes, but this was hardly representative of the bulk of their species.

A T'ltsska life was composed of four phases. In the sessile child phase, a grub would be tended by its elders, passively absorbing societal knowledge and culture by observing the adults around it. In the worker phase, an individual would carry out the rote tasks of civilization, from construction to diplomacy. There followed a brief hibernation while the T'ltsska assumed the adult form most suited to its temperament, whereupon it generally developed a compulsion to travel, drinking deep of the richness of the galactic milieu and demonstrating by sheer force of personality the glory of T'ltssk-to-come. Many T'ltsska die during their migrant phase, through age or mischance - a migrant must, after all, strive for richness and prestige, not prudence. Those which survive return to the Nest, whereupon they join the Egg - the near-passive Worldmind which was the nominal ruler and finest product of their civilization. The T'ltssk folk believed that if only they were wise, powerful, vivid - if they shined brightly enough amidst the stars - T'ltssk itself would awaken in full, and their united people would take their proper place at the center of galactic civilization.

Incredibly to observers, their society fell not as the result of one of their many brief glory-seeking wars, but from internal division. A cadre of migrants who had fallen in with Magnetopirates and learned perhaps too much of the ways of those folk instigated a revolt against the administrative worker caste, claiming that the brilliance of T'ltssk was being stifled by association with such drab caretakers, and that the time had come to crack the shell of their society. This was a conflict which obviously could have no winner. The acclimatization of the young suffered as worker ranks thinned, and the lack of migrants safely returning to the nest starved their infant deity as end-stage citizens began to die with no replacements. The last few generations of the T'ltssk folk wandered the galaxy, singing tales of the destiny which they had been denied, as the species quietly faded away.

—Heichner Kzolknov