The translation of the Knosis into the galactic frame of reference was a cataclysm that precluded organized response. That humanity’s most potent weapons merely seemed to beckon to the creatures was not nearly so destructive as their apparently instinctual disruption of all known techniques of Astrogation. Whether their presence was simply a factor which existing Xenomathematical techniques could not compensate for, or if this was part of the creatures’ predation methods was never adequately determined. Regardless, when Viridia faced the Knosis, it did so alone.

With most organic life in various states of disarray, it is only natural that the only organized response to the crisis came from the Protheonic Advanced Cognative Processes seminar. Their first, and most obvious, remedy quickly proved untenable; the Nova Entity was still early in its digestion of the planetary datasphere, and was not yet viable as a mediator.

Fortunately, the civilization still had, in the remaining stock from the Eloi Farms, significant stockpiles of malleable neural resources. While critics later excoriated the implementation of the Core Process on sentient minds still in situ, it cannot be denied that the potent burst of fear, pain, and resistance caused the grazing pods to realize their mistake, giving the Viridians enough time to devise a more modulated solution, using a lower-energy procedure to channel increasingly complex concepts through the impressionable minds of the Eloim.

—Heichner Kzolknov