Vishnans

The Vishnans are a species featured in the first Blue Planet campaign, Age of Aquarius.

The nature of the Vishnans is not fully understood, but they appear to be 'Great Preservers', counterparts to the Shivans in their role as the Great Destroyers.

Age of Aquarius Techroom Entry

The Vishnans were named by Samuel Bei. They do not refer to themselves as Vishnans, nor to the Shivans as Shivans. They have the ability to scan, subvert, and manipulate human minds via the Nagari process, learning rapidly and comprehensively. This makes them incredibly dangerous.

The presence of a Knossos in the parallel N362 suggests the Ancients had contact with the Vishnans, yet the Vishnans did not save them from the Shivans. This suggests that Vishnan motives are not purely benevolent, and certainly not simply helpful 'Great Preservers'. Scans of N362 in our universe indicate that REDACTED.

Our tentative simulations suggest that the Vishnan 'Great Psyche' is a subspace stack entity, a sophisticated construct that exploits energy gradients in subspace to perform computation and cognition. Because subspace surrounds and connects universes, this entity exists outside time and space, and is capable of observing the entire space-time bulk. This grants it complete knowledge of all events past and future, although this knowledge may be hampered by quantum uncertainty. The origin of this entity is unknown, but we believe it may be artificial in nature.

The Vishnan ships present in the physical universe are agents of this entity. They may be constructed in subspace and delivered to target universes, or built on the scene. In any case, these individual aspects of the Great Psyche appear to be fragmented instances of the overall Vishnan entity charged with specific tasks and possessed of limited knowledge and agency. Loss of contact with the Great Psyche leads to inactivation and effective death.

The Vishnans in the parallel reality accessed by the 14th Battle Group were unaware of the particulars of human existence or of specific local events until Samuel Bei provided them with this information. However, the Vishnan Great Psyche as a whole appears to have instigated the 14th Battle Group's transit in an effort to accomplish a goal related to the GTD Sanctuary.

A more alarming possibility is that the Vishnans were, in fact, attempting to manipulate the officers of the 14th Battle Group into a mindset where they would be unable to accomplish their original missions.

In line with the multiple findings produced by REDACTED, the Security Council has agreed to proceed with contingency MORPHEUS.

Notes

Darius, the campaign creator, used reskinned and renamed Ancient shipmodels from Inferno: Release 1 to represent the Vishnans. Subsequent releases used higher-detail versions of the same models created by the Ancient-Shivan War project.