shares a mind-link with the entire Brood hive, although she cannot completely control the actions of her subordinates. When individual Brood rebel, she cannot telepathically force them to assimilate. In these scenarios, she has the renegade offspring destroyed with the help of her assassins/personal guard, the Firstborn. The Empress was one of the casualties of the Annihilation Wave which left the Brood's on the brink of extinction and with her death one of the survivor Brood Queens was selected to take her place among the hierarchy as a Brood Queen is seen among the Galactic Council, where she represents the entire Brood race and even goes by the name of Queen of the Brood. Firstborn - Considered themselves as the "pure" Brood, they are the most trusted agents of the Empress, existing solely to attack and destroy. The Empress births them herself and dispatches them to quell rebellious Brood Queens and other conflicts that require only fighters. Because they are not born of hosts, they do not possess the Warrior-Prime ability to conceal their appearance by shifting into their host-forms. For this reason, they are used not to subvert and infect, but merely to destroy. The transportation they use to travel to other planets dissolves upon reaching its destination, but this poses no problem, as the Firstborn are ordered to execute themselves upon completing their missions. The Firstborn are larger than common Brood Warriors-Prime, and green instead of brown. They have six limbs: two sets of arms and one set of legs. They have a spear-tipped, prehensile tail, but unlike their Warrior-Prime sisters, they have no tentacles. They also have durable, spiked armor plating on their shoulders, fingertips, tails, elbows, forearms, knees, and, most prominently, on the crowns of their heads. They are extremely durable, disproportionately agile, and immensely strong. Unlike the Warriors-Prime, they do not have wings. However, through some other means, possibly technological, the Firstborn have the ability to teleport. Their teleportation abilities are likely restricted to relatively short distances, as the Firstborn travel over interstellar distances using other methods. Brood Queens - Also known as Great Mothers, Mother-Queens and Brood Imperiatrix, the Queens fulfill the mental command of the Empress, a unique alien who houses the hive mind. Queens can communicate with their spawn by telepathy, even across interstellar distances. They look like the Broodlings but slightly larger. Their heads and thoraxes are relatively the same size,