Comorro was among the oldest of her kind.
She had roamed the stars as a mere bud of a creature with her family's small pod of Yaralu when the Kamir were still hopping around in the misty jungles of Aukam, hunched over with their bulbous foreheads and glowing eyes, banging rocks with sticks and fending off wild slahr dog attacks.
Six miles long, containing the husks of all that she had ever been within the shiniest, newest skin and chambers, Comorro had taken a keen interest in the universe that wasn't shared with the same intensity by her kin.
She had observed as organisms gained sentience. She watched them evolve to travel in packs. She saw the packs build into full-fledged societies, with deep cultures and traditions. She watched the cultures subdivide peacefully or fragment violently. She witnessed wars of conquest, fought for the acquisition of territory and resources, and wars of intolerance, fought in the name of ideologies and propaganda. She saw them take to the stars, where the cycle repeated itself anew. The names and the philosophies changed, but the results remained the same: The powerful crushed the weak, more often than not.
Eons ago, the Kamir rose from their savagery on Aukam, aspiring to be the scientific, technological, and philosophical giants of the universe. Comorro had watched their arrogant efforts to raise species too soon to sentience and civilization. She had seen first-hand the destructive outcome of these thoughtless exercises. Eventually, the time came when Comorro could no longer merely observe events as they transpired. She was called upon by the B'hiri to join the effort to eradicate the Il'ri Kamm Hive Mind.
At first, she had refused this call.
"They are not of my creation," she had told Dowelaritch, the B'hiri emissary, during their first meeting. "The Kamir created them. Let the Kamir end them."
She had resolved long ago to remain neutral in matters of interstellar politics and evolution. While many cultures might look upon a being capable of living millions of years as nothing short of god-like, Comorro did not wish to present a false image of herself as a powerful immortal of any kind. She was a Yaralu, one of many, and she found pleasure in the acquisition of new knowledge and wondrous unexpected discoveries. Her kin had encouraged this humble approach. She saw no reason to put it aside.
So, Dowelaritch had departed, disappointed but respectful of the Yaralu's choice to maintain a comfortable distance from Kamir internal affairs.
Her observations continued. Then, some months after the first meeting, Dowelaritch returned with dire news that the Hivers, under the command of Il'ri Kamm, had begun the systematic annihilation of all Kamir on Aukam and throughout the universe.
"It is not a problem that I caused," the Yaralu had replied, yielding no surprise on the part of the B'hiri. "Why should it become imperative that I clean up the mess of another?"
This time, it seemed, the emissary came prepared with an answer.
"If you choose to do nothing, as is your right and the right of all sentient creatures with the power of choice," Dowelaritch replied, "then the Kamir will be lost. One might think on this with some measure of ironic relish. Think further, though. When the Kamir are gone, when those we blame for the problem have been eradicated, will the Il'ri Kamm Hive Mind simply cease to be our concern? Will the Hivers be satisfied? I would respectfully suggest that once the Hivers creators are eradicated, it will only be a matter of time before they target other psionic creatures: B'hiri, Lyiri, Yaralu - all will face the possibility of annihilation."
The great living ship considered the weighty words of the B'hiri. "You ask that I participate in a pre-emptive war against a species that has never directly attacked or so much as threatened the Yaralu? I cannot do this, Dowelaritch."
Disappointed, to be sure, but at least satisfied that the argument had been heard and considered, Dowelaritch had departed Comorro for the second time.
Days later, their third meeting occurred. The B'hiri arrived with an Opodian who carried a sack full of Kamir artifacts.
"Honored Comorro," Dowelaritch had begun. "I do not ask that you take active part in an offensive against the Il'ri Kamm Hive Mind. Instead, with great respect, I ask that you participate in a rescue effort to save the last of the Kamir so that she may do as you have suggested: See to it that the Kamir resolve the problem created by the Kamir."
This request caused no small amount of consternation for the Yaralu, because although it was true enough that it did not require her to directly violate her vow of neutrality through violence, it most definitely forced her to slip out of the neutral position long enough to interfere with events by helping Dowelaritch and Taya Opo'te snatch Opodi Talhem from certain death in the Bright Temple on Aukam.
When the Hivers learned that Comorro had helped in this regard, they immediately added Yaralu to the list of enemies in the coming interstellar war that they were gearing up to fight. Once that happened, all of her arguments in favor of neutrality began to dissolve. In the face of possible eradication, self-preservation necessarily took hold. The slippery slope of "mostly neutral except for this one thing" led inevitably to Comorro agreeing to active participation in the great war.
The dying embers of that war still smoldered, with the Hivers isolated aboard a fearsome and terrible ghost ship that traveled the stars and the B'hiri verging ever closer to extinction on their little icy world.
Her participation in the war had flagged in recent years, as it had become more apparent that the B'hiri could not suffer a conflict of attrition much longer. She wondered if it were somehow wrong to have resumed her philosophy of neutrality after so long spent on the offensive. Did she imagine that the Hivers would forget about her when the last of the B'hiri fell?
Somehow, Comorro doubted it very much.