Amoeboids

Amoeboids

Amorphous, bizarre, and remarkably advanced, Amoeboids are the very definition of alien. Encountering them is practically dizzying for first-time visitors to a maw: their eerily transparent bodies flash with dim organic lights, shapeshifting into vague forms and imperfect copies of various creatures, all accompanied by a strange hum of blurbles and tones. Though the universe excels in producing creatures of diverse shapes and sizes,the Amoeboids are something truly unique.
Moreover, Amoeboids are gifted with exceptional intelligence, and many possess a natural talent with machines. They were among the first space-bound races (the first, if one considers their origin), and remain pioneers in Dark Matter technology. Most Amoeboids place tremendous faith in scientific reasoning, to the extent that a sound statistical model will often be more convincing than reported events. This, of course, extends to magical research, and Amoeboid technology rests at the cutting edge intersection of science and arcana.
Such unique humanoids ought to come from an equally unique homeworld, but this is not the case; Amoeboids were simply discovered on the maws. Some speculate that the Amoeboids evolved there among the advanced technology, but just as many support the theory that Amoeboids were designed and purposefully placed on the maws.

The Grand Mystery

The universe has no shortage of mysteries and enigmas, but scholars have long agreed that the origin of the maws, and how the Amoeboids came to inhabit them, is the Grand Mystery. After all, nothing so fantastic could be a mere coincidence; the maws are a ready-made transit network, connecting the far reaches of the galaxy, complete with a resident race of shapeshifters intelligent enough to understand them and skilled enough to maintain them. Indeed, most races would likely have never discovered Dark Matter technology without observing the maw stations firsthand. Every technological discovery is built on the shoulders of giants, but in this case, the giants have gone mysteriously absent
More perplexing is that the maws are not merely technological in nature; they are constructed atop colossal skeletons of long-dead creatures. The bones themselves seem critically important, for it is impossible to create a stable maw portal without them, but what role they play is completely baffling to researchers. Moreover, it’s unclear what type of creature left the bones, for nothing alive today even remotely resembles them. Are these creatures extinct, or simply yet undiscovered? Do they originate from inside the galaxy, or even from within our universe?
For their part, the Amoeboids have few answers to the Grand Mystery; their origins are as inscrutable to them as anyone else. The earliest amoeboid records date to the first instances of Amoeboids learning how to interface with maw terminals and record data, perhaps a century after the supposed “zero” generation. Before that is a short but impenetrable dark age stretching back to the activation of the maws and obscuring their origin.
It is in their nature to search for answers from a scientific frame of reference, but real evidence has been elusive so far. Speculation points to Old Un being involved in the Mystery, but what role he played is unclear. Perhaps the Grand Mystery has been intentionally obscured by a powerful creator or creators, or perhaps all involved are missing some critical piece, some insight that links the Amoeboids, the maws, and their enigmatic creation.

Expanding the Compendium

Before most races mastered spaceflight and journeyed to the stars, the only records of Amoeboids were of bug-eyed visitors from another world, arriving by night in strange saucers to abduct livestock and flash otherworldly lights. Amoeboids were among the first to travel the stars (their ships derived from technology found on the maws), and they did so with purely scientific intentions: every alien planet, star, nebula, and creature they discover is studied, categorized, and detailed in a vast database of arcane terminals called the Compendium. This single database, a collection of nearly everything known to them, is a scientific marvel, a monument to all Amoeboid achievement.
To this day, Amoeboids are the only race that maintains a non-involvement policy in their visits to other worlds, keeping their distance, observing remotely when possible, and experimenting only when disturbance can be minimized. The sole exception to non-involvement is with spacefaring races that have journeyed to the maws themselves; the Amoeboids greet such groups as equals, and welcome them with access to the galactic community