Brood Sovereign

These rare, titanic slug-like creatures dwell amid coral reefs of polar oceans, such as the core of icy Nisis in The Diaspora. Nibbling on the reef ridges with their rasping footpads and conifer-like sensory appendages, brood sovereigns consume silicon‑laced corallites, and their bodies process the element into defensive dermal nodules and pseudo‑circuitry within their brains. Over millennia, this augmented brainpower has endowed brood sovereigns with true, but malign, intelligence.
The brood sovereigns of Nisis believe themselves the world’s true rulers, so they’ve begun to psychically direct other sea life to drive off the intelligent species that they view as interlopers.