¶ The Thozoa Reef
The planet of Thozoa. It is covered entirely by an ocean of hydrogen peroxide, dominated by a single organism known as the Thozoa Reef. It is the most intelligent organism in the Covenant; when we first witnessed it, it was beginning to reach into the stars. Thin, wispy filaments extending into orbit in an attempt to stretch its intellect. The Covenant gave the Reef technology, data portals to expand its intellect to outside bodies. In return, it provides incredible science value in its efforts to learn and catalog. There are many who believe its expansive intellect to be a threat. I, for one, see it as an opportunity.
❖The Thozoa Reef is a massive, planetary coral reef that has acquired sapience from its brain-like coral structure stretching across the entirety of its planet. The Thozoa Reef is a megaorganism species known commonly as 'neurocoral', an invasive species of coral that has come to dominate its oceanic planet. Neurocoral is a spongy, cyan-violet coral with a calcified exterior and a spongy interior. It can only live in hydrogen peroxide and in large enough masses is known to develop sapience.
The Thozoa Reef, after coming to dominate its planet, began to develop biotechnology. Its mastery was the ability to tame and integrate lesser ocean organisms into itself and eventually even genetic engineering, using this biotechnology to make the planet its own.
The Thozoa Reef participates in the greater hypergalactic community using technology provided by the Golden Dawn Covenant which it is a part of. Masses of neurocoral are grown in tanks filled with peroxide, and connected to the main Thozoa Reef via small portals connecting microfilaments that act as synapses. These tanks are often placed into cybernetic bodies that the Thozoa Reef can control, such as thaumic constructs or Visitant bodies. It is a recent phenomenon with these bodies that extant personalities began to cultivate within them, creating partially new minds from the Thozoa Reef that inhabit these tanks. Though they still rely on a neural connection to the main Thozoa Reef, these extant personalities seem capable of individual thought with influence from the collective. It is believed that extants develop due to the fact that data portals have a low bandwidth, forcing the neurocoral mass to adapt into its own mind piggybacking off of the main reef's intellect. Thozoa Reef extants are also capable of awakening psionic abilities.
The Thozoa Reef's speciality seems to be in genetic engineering, and most recently has been working with Visitant scientists in learning how to genemod certain hyperspace species into being able to survive in realspace, including neurocoral.