The Vigil

The actual history of the Vigil is mostly unknown, as it is tied to their host species' own history, one that the Vigil are not keen to share. From what is known, the Vigil served an ancient civilization called the Remari, highly advanced four-legged transhumanist mammals. The Automata were created to assist the Remari in day-to-day life, engineering and construction and even security, and the two species formed a symbiotic bond over centuries. Both the Automata and the Remari were aware that the star their planet orbited was prone to high activity, and projects were ongoing to construct a shield to prevent any dangerous events to impact the surface. Before it was completed, however, the star underwent core collapse, sending a wave of radiation and intense heat across the system. Even the local moon and the planet's magnetic sphere could not stop the wave from hitting the surface, immediately vaporizing all organic life on the sunny side and flooding the dark side in deadly amounts of radiation.

The Vigil, unable to act to protect their creators, could only watch, unaffected by the event. It is said that for over 50 years, the Vigil-wide hivemind considered what to do next, with some entirely shutting down due to the trauma, while others continued about their daily tasks, choosing not to believe what had happened to the Remari. After such cogitation, the Vigil turned to the highest ranking mind in their system, an orbital station named System Control Planetary Mind CC-119, which collected the opinions of the Automata and decided to focus all efforts towards building a mausoleum out of the planet. Each Remari family's Automaton put up plaques and arranged photographs, collected the family's history and data and the total was piled into System Control's space station. After this, the Planetary Mind declared the world as lost, renamed it Monument, and began transmitting a mourning call across the stars, eventually picked up by Earth receivers.

First contact with humans occurred due to a local hivemind of contrarian Automata, which disagreed with the choice to memorialize the planet and instead left to wander the stars. They were found occupying an asteroid converted to a rudimentary starship as it entered the solar system, and first contact proper was executed by a simple UN engineering frigate near Pluto. Since then, System Control has remained in contact with Earth, and thousands of Automata have emigrated to Sol to satisfy their desire to assist a civilization, share their knowledge, and prevent an apocalyptic event from hitting another sapient species.

The Vigil exist as local hiveminds, groups of a dozen or so Automata which decide on or are assigned a leader which communicates with the others, which in turn elect a leader. This pyramid-shaped means of communication extends up to System Control Planetary Mind CC-119, which used to manage all of the Vigil until part of them left to Earth. Now, most of them act alone, or in shipwide or planetwide hiveminds. Due to the range-based connection, it's common for Automata to freeze and drop whatever they're doing once another Automaton enters connection range, to greet it mentally. Automata communicate mentally with others, but when interacting with humans, they speak a plain and simple English if the person does. If not, the Automata have learned and translated most human languages and can replicate them accurately. Little else is known about the Vigil, as they tend to be quite reserved.