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Description
This design comes from the oceanic world of Shiva-10-c, better known among humans as Pannesia. Its vast shallow ocean, dotted with few volcanic islands, is home to a race of giant mollusc-like creatures adapted for life on the water surface, whose form, with its hydrodynamic hull and membranous sails, converged on that of Earth's old sailing ships. With such unusual anatomy, their interpretation of passing human explorers happened to be equally strange.

Being themselves boat-shaped, they naturaly fixated on explorers' seacrafts, mistaking those for the actual alien beings - "the sailless folk", as they dubbed them. Robotically cold, invariably motor-propelled, and lacking many external organs, these "creatures" gave them an impression of incredible techological advancement, if with a creepy lack of humanity - not unlike Greys of Earth's folklore. Actual humans swarming on their decks, when they were noticed, reminded them most of passenger-crabs - a kind of commensalist species that climbed to galionids' decks to spread with their voyages. Some variations mentioned them encased in a kind of metal lattice (powered exoskeletons that helped explorers withstand Pannesia's double-Earth gravity), but witnesses rarely approached human vessels close enough for these details.

Because of their anatomy, as well as the gravity, this race never came to the idea of flying transport or space travel, so the aerial phenomena around the "sailless folk's" activity weren't conceptualized as spaceships. The visitors were said to either teleport or be some kind of projections from another world, which meant another dimension just as often as another planet. Still, the obviously technological nature of many of their features, like motors, made them easier to explain in terms of science and science fiction rather than magical mythology.

As in other cases, once the stories began to attract mass attention, Federation retreated from this world; but there was no undoing the damage. The rumours spread, and it was safer to let them brew, mutate, and eventually self-dicredit, than to expose humanity even more to this species by trying to actively supress them. Quite soon hoaxes and speculation did their job.

The "folk's" lack of sails was often explained by their reliance on motor engines resulting in this organ diminishing and disappearing. The same went for other missing extremities - they allegedly were so intellectually advanced as to superceed the need for all organic systems except the brain.

For humans, there were two natural theories: either they were some kind of parasite that hijacked and controlled this race, or vice versa - robotic or bioengineered servant creatures used by the ascended telepathic boats as remote hand and eye extentions to do field work.

Some good lore came out of the first interpretation - like how encounters where passengers weren't noticed were considered visitations of the "free" sailless' faction, struggling against the parasite empire's secret expansion. But the second version ultimately won the public - it was simply more exciting to a race with such limiting, biome-confining physiology. Many hoax stories involved aliens giving control of a few servants to the contactee, and the latter partaking in an exhilarating exploration of places normally inaccessible to galionids, like sea depths or island jungles, discovering whatever wonders the hoaxer's imagination would conjure. In many ways it was like the dream of flying.

As expected, the craze eventually died down, leaving Pannesia with several hundred permutations of the "sailless folk" image, mostly uncreative. But the "remote hand" idea endured as an influential sci-fi trope, explored in pieces of media often independent of ufology.

One hard sci-fi horror story in particular, made by an author critical of his society, subverted it by combining it with the second, parasitic interpretation of the encounters. It was written in the age of overpopulation, when the race was forced to build new dock-cities outside of convenient shallows, and a project to train real radio-controlled sea animals to raise their support legs was being carried out. The latter made rounds in Panneasian "transhumanist" circles as the first step towards realizing the "remote hand" dream, which greatly concerned and disgusted this galionid, causing him to write his novella as a warning to the world.

The story follows a group of government agents sent to a remote island triangle to investigate an alleged "unauthorized radio station", that's seen several police groups sent to it disappear. Instead of suspected cult shenanigans, they find a deepsea platform with a small extraterrestrial colony, swarming with creatures that use disturbingly galionid-like cattle as organic transport, sending signals to their home planet.

They end up captured, but the narrator and a couple others break free and sneak around inside the hive, searching for exit. In the course of their escape they learn of the aliens' history, which serves as the author's critique of his civilization's course.

The boat-like Nests started the same as galionids - a free extraterrestrial species - but, sharing the same transhumanist sentiment, went all in on biotech and engineered these craved "remote hands". Due to a combination of technological limitations and most Nests' mental laziness, however, the creatures they actually bred were autonomous, not extentions of their body - they obeyed mental commands but figured out the exact motions themselves. Competition for buyers led to breeds capable of performing progressively more complex actions with progressively less guidance; until, after centuries, Eloi-like Nests commanded a practically independent and intelligent servant race, with its own collective consciousness. As even breeding of new servants was relegated to themselves, small flaws in genetic design compounded, until new generations aquired a will of their own and turned against their creators.

The latter could do nothing and were mostly exterminated. Only a small population was kept alive, selectively twisted into mere another biotool in their former technosphere: a living seacraft.

Their intelligence was stunted. Their bodies were expanded and made stronger, but their nervous systems were infested with a kind of neural interface slime mold, making them responsive to control input at the level of reflexes. Feeding was replaced by administering nutrients directly into bloodstream, their digestive organs now serving as cavities for cargo or crawling masses of passengers, fed during voyages by repurposed secretion glands. Eyes were removed completely; so were reproductive organs (along with any sexual dimorphism) and "useless" social sections of the carapace.

The Rider-Nest colony on Pannesia was grown from "seed-cells" by a small probe, launched from their home planet through interstellar space by an enormous railgun. Once it became clear this planet was already inhabited by an interconnected civilization, they hid themselves and tried to call back home for reinforcements - which was the unauthorized signal the local police picked up.

Eventually the narrator escapes, and the colony is burned to the ground by the military (along with local cultists, for cover-up). The story ends with him realizing that more Riders will come - the signal was sent, and there isn't enough habitable planets in the galaxy for these creatures to let Pannesia go after one try.

The story was later adapted into a film, featuring the design shown in the picture. It's not completely true to the book, as the latter had Nests slightly more different from galionids, and also clearly mentioned sails; the director probably intended to sell a more "helpless and tortured" look, despite the cliché and it not making much sense for the Nests' supposed function. The Riders were also redesigned to appear more like a certain Pannesian parasite, to increase the gross factor.

These changes were eclipsed by bigger problems though - the acting was bad (judging from reviews), a useless romantic subplot was added that took away from the ending's darkness, and generally the ending realization turned from a depressing conclusion into a blockbustery sequel bait.

Description
This design comes from the oceanic world of Shiva-10-c, better known among humans as Pannesia. Its vast shallow ocean, dotted with few volcanic islands, is home to a race of giant mollusc-like creatures adapted for life on the water surface, whose form, with its hydrodynamic hull and membranous sails, converged on that of Earth's old sailing ships. With such unusual anatomy, their interpretation of passing human explorers happened to be equally strange.

Being themselves boat-shaped, they naturaly fixated on explorers' seacrafts, mistaking those for the actual alien beings - "the sailless folk", as they dubbed them. Robotically cold, invariably motor-propelled, and lacking many external organs, these "creatures" gave them an impression of incredible techological advancement, if with a creepy lack of humanity - not unlike Greys of Earth's folklore. Actual humans swarming on their decks, when they were noticed, reminded them most of passenger-crabs - a kind of commensalist species that climbed to galionids' decks to spread with their voyages. Some variations mentioned them encased in a kind of metal lattice (powered exoskeletons that helped explorers withstand Pannesia's double-Earth gravity), but witnesses rarely approached human vessels close enough for these details.

Because of their anatomy, as well as the gravity, this race never came to the idea of flying transport or space travel, so the aerial phenomena around the "sailless folk's" activity weren't conceptualized as spaceships. The visitors were said to either teleport or be some kind of projections from another world, which meant another dimension just as often as another planet. Still, the obviously technological nature of many of their features, like motors, made them easier to explain in terms of science and science fiction rather than magical mythology.

As in other cases, once the stories began to attract mass attention, Federation retreated from this world; but there was no undoing the damage. The rumours spread, and it was safer to let them brew, mutate, and eventually self-dicredit, than to expose humanity even more to this species by trying to actively supress them. Quite soon hoaxes and speculation did their job.

The "folk's" lack of sails was often explained by their reliance on motor engines resulting in this organ diminishing and disappearing. The same went for other missing extremities - they allegedly were so intellectually advanced as to superceed the need for all organic systems except the brain.

For humans, there were two natural theories: either they were some kind of parasite that hijacked and controlled this race, or vice versa - robotic or bioengineered servant creatures used by the ascended telepathic boats as remote hand and eye extentions to do field work.

Some good lore came out of the first interpretation - like how encounters where passengers weren't noticed were considered visitations of the "free" sailless' faction, struggling against the parasite empire's secret expansion. But the second version ultimately won the public - it was simply more exciting to a race with such limiting, biome-confining physiology. Many hoax stories involved aliens giving control of a few servants to the contactee, and the latter partaking in an exhilarating exploration of places normally inaccessible to galionids, like sea depths or island jungles, discovering whatever wonders the hoaxer's imagination would conjure. In many ways it was like the dream of flying.

As expected, the craze eventually died down, leaving Pannesia with several hundred permutations of the "sailless folk" image, mostly uncreative. But the "remote hand" idea endured as an influential sci-fi trope, explored in pieces of media often independent of ufology.

One hard sci-fi horror story in particular, made by an author critical of his society, subverted it by combining it with the second, parasitic interpretation of the encounters. It was written in the age of overpopulation, when the race was forced to build new dock-cities outside of convenient shallows, and a project to train real radio-controlled sea animals to raise their support legs was being carried out. The latter made rounds in Panneasian "transhumanist" circles as the first step towards realizing the "remote hand" dream, which greatly concerned and disgusted this galionid, causing him to write his novella as a warning to the world.

The story follows a group of government agents sent to a remote island triangle to investigate an alleged "unauthorized radio station", that's seen several police groups sent to it disappear. Instead of suspected cult shenanigans, they find a deepsea platform with a small extraterrestrial colony, swarming with creatures that use disturbingly galionid-like cattle as organic transport, sending signals to their home planet.

They end up captured, but the narrator and a couple others break free and sneak around inside the hive, searching for exit. In the course of their escape they learn of the aliens' history, which serves as the author's critique of his civilization's course.

The boat-like Nests started the same as galionids - a free extraterrestrial species - but, sharing the same transhumanist sentiment, went all in on biotech and engineered these craved "remote hands". Due to a combination of technological limitations and most Nests' mental laziness, however, the creatures they actually bred were autonomous, not extentions of their body - they obeyed mental commands but figured out the exact motions themselves. Competition for buyers led to breeds capable of performing progressively more complex actions with progressively less guidance; until, after centuries, Eloi-like Nests commanded a practically independent and intelligent servant race, with its own collective consciousness. As even breeding of new servants was relegated to themselves, small flaws in genetic design compounded, until new generations aquired a will of their own and turned against their creators.

The latter could do nothing and were mostly exterminated. Only a small population was kept alive, selectively twisted into mere another biotool in their former technosphere: a living seacraft.

Their intelligence was stunted. Their bodies were expanded and made stronger, but their nervous systems were infested with a kind of neural interface slime mold, making them responsive to control input at the level of reflexes. Feeding was replaced by administering nutrients directly into bloodstream, their digestive organs now serving as cavities for cargo or crawling masses of passengers, fed during voyages by repurposed secretion glands. Eyes were removed completely; so were reproductive organs (along with any sexual dimorphism) and "useless" social sections of the carapace.

The Rider-Nest colony on Pannesia was grown from "seed-cells" by a small probe, launched from their home planet through interstellar space by an enormous railgun. Once it became clear this planet was already inhabited by an interconnected civilization, they hid themselves and tried to call back home for reinforcements - which was the unauthorized signal the local police picked up.

Eventually the narrator escapes, and the colony is burned to the ground by the military (along with local cultists, for cover-up). The story ends with him realizing that more Riders will come - the signal was sent, and there isn't enough habitable planets in the galaxy for these creatures to let Pannesia go after one try.

The story was later adapted into a film, featuring the design shown in the picture. It's not completely true to the book, as the latter had Nests slightly more different from galionids, and also clearly mentioned sails; the director probably intended to sell a more "helpless and tortured" look, despite the cliché and it not making much sense for the Nests' supposed function. The Riders were also redesigned to appear more like a certain Pannesian parasite, to increase the gross factor.

These changes were eclipsed by bigger problems though - the acting was bad (judging from reviews), a useless romantic subplot was added that took away from the ending's darkness, and generally the ending realization turned from a depressing conclusion into a blockbustery sequel bait.