The Horde
The Horde is the catch-all term for the material culmination of over a hundred thousand genetic strains cultivated by the Beast. Acting as the central nervous system for the entire system, the Beast is a massive, self-conscious brain capable of willful control over its own bodily functions down to the blood vessel. It is consciously capable of analyzing and remembering entire genomic patterns, effectively granting the Beast the ability to transform any organic matter into something else through cell manipulation. With the Horde's presence on Earth, it has taken prioritized genomic data of several hundred plant and animal species, broken down their material, and refined into chimeric organisms part of a hivemind governed by the Beast. Since 1985, the Horde has effectively made Earth its new home, with the Beast's brain remaining encased in its shell in close stable Earth orbit. Human life has become a particular interest to the Beast, witnessing a collective organizational capacity previously unknown to exist outside of itself. Although nuclear war and general environmental destruction has created an extremely unstable biosphere for the planet, the Horde keeps its tenuous grasp over the remnants of human society as it colonizes the rest of Earth's biosphere with its own. This is the longest amount of time the Horde has stayed on one planet before immolating it and moving on, prompting serious questions about its motivations with its continued observations of humanity in their walled reservations.
History
The history of the Horde is often spotty in many parts, as the vast majority of it has never been recorded by any conscious beings outside of the Beast. This history is a general recounting of events prior to the Horde's discovery of Earth, and a much more detailed recounting of its time on Earth since 1985. Primarily included in this history in its later sections are mostly human actions, from which they believe that they are acting on the behalf of the Horde.
Prehistory (~7,500 BCE - 1985 CE)
It is entirely unknown when exactly the Beast began its life. Theories speculate that the Beast became a singular organism over a long, gradual period, rather than it being born outright nearly ten thousand years ago. Environmental conditions on the Beast's home planet were such that the usage of complex thought became highly valued by the species that likely preceded the Beast. These creatures were likely boneless, wading through swampy areas with tentacled limbs which could harden into finger-like appendages. They were an intelligent species, evolving into individualistic rather than social roles where information was transferred impersonally through drawn signs within warrens and hiding holes. This was done to avoid and hide from dangerous predators, but some dramatic environmental shift would lead to the demise of these predators. Individualistic and living on their own prior to the decline of their predators, this species was highly unfamiliar with a non-hostile social environment. Through an unconscious process, these creatures somehow would fuse their bodies together over the course of thousands of years, leading to the gradual formation of the Beast as it is known today.
The Beast became aware of its own existence as an individual entity around 9,500 years ago.