>open_log.data:The Corruption
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[success]
>log.data_begin
The Corruption
The Corruption is a collective of related alien species first discovered by the outer edges of the Milky Way. Flight recorder records collected from boarded ships seem to indicate that the early beginnings of the collective remained hidden in the outskirts of human controlled space, but the particular planet of origin and what would be the "heart" of the collective has yet to be found.
The Corruption gained it's name due to many of it's habits and practices. These practices and habits include taking whatever humans throw at them and either destroying it or using it for their own benefit. Lose a gun fight? They've got guns. Lose a ground war? They've got military grade gear. Lose a naval battle? They've got a fleet.
It's most notorious and wicked crimes are what happens to people who survive their slaughters. They don't kill those they can capture, but what they do is much worse.
Early in the war a protocol was written which stated that any and all people designated as missing for over 48 hours, would be killed on sight.
People could go missing in a battle, and the next time they would be seen they could be responsible for putting bullets between eyes of their best friends. Standing right alongside those chitinous freaks.
Autopsies on people who had been "corrupted" by those things show no physical change in their bodies. Whatever drove them to forget everything they knew and fight against their own brothers and sisters ran deeper than that. Researchers have never seen anyone become corrupted, no one has. At least not anyone who wasn't also corrupted. No one is sure how exactly the corruption does it, all we know is that 48 hours seems to be roughly the minimum amount of time it takes for the process to occur.
As of writing, the collective consists of 5 distinct alien species (Soldiers, Nymphs, Mantids, Blood-Wings, and Ravagers) and any humans it's managed to take for itself.
They waited.
It was only a matter of time before people decided that some strange acting crew on some ships roaming the outer edges warranted some looking into.
Of course, that also meant it was only a matter of time before proper contact with the corruption.
What most likely happened throughout the beginning, before we understood what we were dealing with, would've almost certainly come down to seemingly innocent boarding requests turning into violent scuffles for control of another vessel.
It would also become apparent that the corruption also had their hands on some type of signal jamming equipment, whatever it was, and was capable of jamming warp communication.
Those clever bastards silently won their battles, built themselves up off of our blood, grew in strength and capability. People began to realize something was deeply wrong, given all the people and ships that had disappeared. Unfortunately it wouldn't be too long until we found out exactly what was wrong, and so would begin an ongoing, bloody conflict.