The Tiger Cooperative
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The Origins of the Cooperative
Originally starting as a grassroots movement to stop the destruction of the ecological wonders of the paradise planet Invidia-III, which was unique in the way that all life on the planet was a unique form of fauna, with no flora at all evolved. The Invidia Cooperative took to the stars like wildfire after their leader, a masked figure known only as New Darwin managed to completely oust the Terra Union and UCSH factions from Invidia-III in 2531 through usage of bio-engineered xenofauna that resembled Earth's Bengal Tiger. A symbol that the movement itself would rally around and rename themselves to, becoming the Tiger Cooperative. As the movement moved away from and matured from their modest roots, the Cooperative started to care less about its original goals of preserving natural life, and started to market the planets occupied by the Cooperative as resort worlds, and began to build increasingly unsustainable centers for worship.
The Renewal
In 2624, New Darwin was dying due to toxicity in Invidia-III's entire ecological chain as a result of extreme over-development, and as a result of the Cooperative's conflicts with all major corporations, none were willing to assist them. However, as a central figure for a religious movement that spans a hundred worlds and billions of believers, death would have to fight for its prize. New Darwin ordered all believers of the Tiger Cooperative to take to the stars and bring back a life-form that could extend their life indefinitely. This hunt yielded extremely poor results for the Cooperative, whittling down the population of xenofauna in the Cooperative's territories to nearly nothing while providing nothing of value for New Darwin. That was, until 2629, when an unnamed transport shuttle brought back a frozen specimen that closely resembled a slug (later identified as a Changeling headslug by Nanotrasen scientists). Despite being in deep space for approximately 10 years according to the ice dating, the slug miraculously returned to life in front of New Darwin's deathbed, and the religious leader immediately ordered everyone away so that they could examine the creature in private. Reports of the event remember hearing a crashing sound, and when the guards returned to the room, the slug was gone, and New Darwin was standing for the first time in a century coated in a strange blue liquid. When asked about their renewal, the masked figure only had a single statement to give. "The only truth of the galaxy is evolution!"
The Modern Cooperative
The modern Tiger Cooperative is completely alien to its original purpose. It no longer has any pretense of preserving the galaxy's nature through its actions, focusing entirely on preservation of xenofauna with unique DNA enzymes, showcasing the shift of mentality from purely ecological to a mindset more focused on constant evolution. The upper echelons of the Cooperative are all heavily altered mutants that look like mounds of shambling bone and muscle, humanoid in name alone, and never remain the same on a year-to-year basis. Conversely, New Darwin alone retains a humanoid shape, and has been at the head of the Cooperative ever since their renewal. Invidia-III itself has completely abandoned its surface, the planet that once teemed with life gone completely dead. However, the Cooperative bases are constantly expanding under the surface of the planet, forming interconnected biotech hive cities, completely hollowing out the corpse of the paradise world that it once was.
The Open Secret of the Galaxy
There isn't a single mega-corporation that doesn't know about the Tiger Cooperative's true face, but all of them have tacitly agreed that the Cooperative itself is too entrenched into the galaxy to remove without serious damage to their interests. However, their knowledge of Changelings are limited to superficial details,