Little is known about The Chosen. None of their planets have ever been found, no space stations or outposts, nowhere anyone would call home. What has been found are giant, monolithic war machines that make The MaD's battle-striders look like little more than trench fillers. Titanic assault mechs, found half buried in the earth and covered in foliage, as old as the land they're embedded in... The times when these machines would have been active would have been times, nothing short of utter slaughter, mountains parting as the dreaded things hauled themselves from the ground and opened fire with an array of half-mile long cannons, raining car-sized artillery shells at unfathomable ranges, beam arrays fired in the hundreds that cut through the hulls of orbiting battleships as if they never existed in the first place, a hundred thousand tons of armour and shields vaporised in an instant.

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Yet, these machines are not defensive over the seemingly random planets they're stationed on. It takes a lot to rouse them, and not through ignorance either. They are acutely aware of everything happening around them, but Terra-corps have landed on and built settlements on planets stationed with Chosen guardians. Even more bizarrely, these machines have a keen intellect to them and will sometimes communicate with those around them. A Chosen “Chaos” mech contacted an Orion settlement built within a few miles of it to warn it of a rapidly approaching plasma storm; it saved the lives of quite a few people with its early warning as Orion's detection system was actually malfunctioning at the time. Since then, no further communications have been made and it does not respond to hails from Orion, or from anyone else...

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What is known, however, is the Chosen isn't staffed entirely by enormous death machines. They do have a cosmic navy and they do have human sized bots, clad in jet black armour with a single orange optic on the helm. Chosen agents sometimes appear out of thin air and complete seemingly random objectives, perhaps taking soil samples, sometimes removing something from the landscape or, more commonly, securing anomalous materials. Providing the drones are left alone, they will complete their objectives and promptly disappear. Those who attempt to stop them, will often find themselves staring down the barrels of several Demiicore rifles, the Chosen's home produced weapons. Those who don't stand down after that... Well, there is nothing that protects against Demiicore weapons.

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That being said, the agents aren't unkillable. There have been several records of factions managing to take-down Chosen drones. The drones move in a remarkably organic fashion but are lightening fast and are deadly accurate with their Demiicore weapons. Despite this, weapons of sufficient strength have been able to take them down, whether or not this is a good idea is another discussion entirly, however.

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One known, and much appreciated purpose of The Chosen is their ability to deal with out-of-control anomalous materials with the help of their closest allies, the Azuri. Despite their rarity, you can be sure that somewhere, something is going wrong and threatening the reality around it. A question that has long confused scientists was how anomalous materials hadn't destroyed everything whilst life was still developing, and the Chosen appear to be the answer to that; although their methods aren't understood, every time a Novarium reactor melts down and threatens to fry an entire solar system, the Chosen usually appear and clean the whole thing up, leaving no trace behind.

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Most are extremely grateful for this and the role of universal clean-up squad is absolutely appreciated, but it does beg the larger question of what exactly the Chosen are capable of, particularly when Enigma captured footage of the Chosen capturing (rather than destroying) a several billion degree Novarium comet and teleporting it somewhere. A faction that is able to freely grab that sort of threat from the sky and could have been doing so for an unknown amount of time might be sitting on a anomalous stockpile, that would sway the fate on the entire universe. And that begs an even bigger question - what could they need it for? Is it merely stockpiling for a sake of power and greed? Or is there an even bigger fish out there?

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Questions about The Chosen's shrouded strength and their hidden bases persist and worry those who think about them for too long, but the Chosen have yet another mystery that shows itself from time to time, further confounding people's understanding of them. Drifting through space, one can stumble upon a Chosen Black Star, a capsule containing a nebulous, starry fluid and a direct contact link to the Chosen, the finder being rewarded with a single wish. As ethereal as that sounds, it's absolutely true to the word and those who find a Black Star have been rewarded in various ways; sometimes it takes a little time, but almost every redeemed Black Star has done exactly what was requested of it.

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From near limitless wealth, to becoming a powerful director within a Terra-corp, to revitalising dying loved ones or accessing lost knowledge, the sheer power given with a Black Star makes them extraordinarily valuable, on par with the most useful anomalous materials, but just begs further questions about The Chosen and what exactly they're about. There are limits to the Black Stars of course; the Chosen did not fulfil a particular BDA recruit's desire to have “Orion fuck-blasted from reality, kill em all!” despite how well the request was worded. The currently understood limits seem to be along the lines of not taking or restoring more than one life directly, and there are scale limits too, such as not draining the entire wealth of an Empire, but you can certainly wish for a dent in their profits if you want.
 

You also cannot wish for any action against the Chosen themselves, obviously. Curiously, around about one-hundred years ago, an Enigma scientist found a Black Star and wished to see the Chosen home world. Typically, Black Star wishes do not have any sort of malicious side effect or something to watch out for, aside from the consequences of your request, but in this instance, the scientist was witnessed being taken by the Chosen. It should be noted, this wasn't an abduction - the scientist was seen going willingly, but has never been seen since.

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So what are the Chosen? Heroes? Genies? Universal janitors? Executors? AI Gods? Depends on who you are. They could bring back your lost loved one or give you the perfect body, or they could crush your Empire under the thunderous singing of a thousand Demiicore cannons and the bleaching screech of mass lasers that will turn you blind just for witnessing them. It can be difficult to know where to tread when it comes to them, so the advice is to tread lightly.