Collective Minds and Swarms
Distributed hive intelligences universally distrusted for always being five steps ahead of everybody else.
Story so far
Arguing with Porthus about The Apothecary, Rosetta states the galactic consensus flatly: there is a reason why people don't trust collective minds — they're always five steps ahead of everybody else, and there's a reason everybody hates this thing.
Her objection is not abstract. The dungeon portrays the Apothecary as a tentacle monster that takes over minds, and Rosetta fears the collective mind may be leading the crawlers' families to her prime body to eat them. Porthus's only counter is that the Apothecary most definitely prefers to be called her, and that he knows what is in it for her — but he cannot say.
Appearance
Distributed intelligences with a prime body somewhere, popularly imagined as mind-devouring tentacle monsters.
Role
The distrusted class of hive intelligence to which the Apothecary belongs.
Relationships
Sources — 2 recorded facts, by chapter
- Species type whose individual bodies are disposable parts of a single mind, as Orren warns Carl to remember.
- Distributed hive intelligences universally distrusted for always being five steps ahead of everybody else.