Thalia may appear to be a cosmetically-altered human, but that's only so she can blend in. She's actually a tightly clustered collective of trillions of microscopic hive-minded aliens called Aurad. Aurad can take whatever shape they desire - provided the transformation follows the Law of Conservation of Mass - and can change colors to a certain extent, and they can even split into pieces harmlessly. Although an Aurad may choose to appear as either gender, they are all genetically female (to prevent certain sex-linked traits such as colorblindness from occurring) and do not reproduce sexually. Instead, their bodies enter a state of rapid mitosis once every 7 years and they clone themselves. A newborn clone gains a portion of her parent's memories when her brain is formed, and typically lives the first six-to-twelve months of her life as a second copy of her parent before establishing a new identity and changing her name. And when the effects of age or terminal sickness begin to set in, two Aurad with different genes can fuse together to form a new younger "individual," leaving the excess - the weakest members of their hives - to die. As a result of this strange life cycle of division and fusion, every Aurad is considered an adult, and an "individual" Aurad can have memories dating back over several centuries, placing them among the wisest and most experienced people in the galaxy.