Editing The Cycle (section)

===Middle===
The cast-off Shards connect to hosts, raining down steadily over the course of three hundred years. When hosts die, they reconnect to a new host. In addition, once they have accumulated enough information, they fragment and send off the bud to connect to a new host.

Each host the Shards connect to is granted powers, a small fraction of the Shard's true potential. Some Shards are specifically targeted to individuals who will cause conflict or prop up a collapsing host species if need be. Other possible hosts are noticed by shard which alerts the larger [[shard network]] of their 'finds'.

All the various powers interacting with each other is meant to be a managed, though not outright controlled, chaos.<ref name="Reddit experiment">This isn't a controlled, everything-in-isolation 'fair' experiment. This is very much a hot mess, everything-playing-off-of-everything type experiment. They're looking for interplay, interactions, invention in response to specific stimuli, and to pit unreasonable forces against others. If you have something as important as executive function and communication, or your best version of invincibility, or a '[[perfect]]' set of powers that should be unbeatable? You can throw it out there into the wild, with a species given strong incentive to hack, test, or break your best, and find the holes that need to be patched (or the tools/combination of factors that can unravel something you thought was decided/perfect). Push comes to shove, you've got a Scholar and a Warrior ready to step in to fine-tune or wipe the slate clean, so to speak.<br><br>So it's fine to have a Jack out there, as a chaotic pollutant, especially when his cape kill count isn't ''that'' high, all considered. - Wildbow on Reddit, [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/72724278 archived on Spacebattles]</ref>

The avatars watch over the cycle, posing as particularly powerful hosts and intervening in society to prevent events that could disrupt the cycle. They act to shape the host society to maximize the information gathered. Events they act to prevent include:
* Mass emigration into space.
* Large-scale loss of life.
* Realization of the Entities' role in things.

On at least one occasion, the Entities intended to prevent long-distance communication on the target planet, divide them into factions engaged in endless war, and place powerful "superweapons" in key locations.

If the hosts end up wiping out all life on their planet, the Entities move on to another reality.<ref name="Echidna Vision">Some of the others departed early. Others were readied to depart soon after arrival. Still others, this one included, were to wait.<br><br>They were one, they were all. A collective, a single entity, a trillion times a trillion entities. Each with a function in the whole, each with a role in the cycles, each with an individual identity.<br><br>As one, they traveled. The distance was immeasurable, the passage of time impossible to convey. There was no standard, for there were realms they had traveled where time and space operated on different levels.<br><br>For all, their own kind was the only standard, the only thing that remained relatively static through the cycles. When they met their own kind they shared with each other. When a new cycle was carried out, everything of the parent was borne by their spawn.<br><br>And the collective moved toward their destination. They operated as a whole to decipher it, to pick apart the permutations, [[List of Possible Futures|see the futures and the possibilities]].<br><br>But for this one entity, which existed as part of the whole, there was a target within that destination. When it came time for this one to depart, it would seek out a particular individual, and it would bond with that individual. This one would fragment itself if others met the criteria; if there was time and opportunity enough then it would move to better candidates, younger or more able ones with a greater ability to affect the cycle. This one would wait until the time was right, and then it would activate, come into the identity and role that had been ingrained into its being.<br><br>All to serve this cycle.<br><br>With the help of [[Shardspace|the collective]], this one could see its objective. A single living being. This one encoded that being, the time and place in its very makeup. It would be ready. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/interlude-18/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 18]]</ref> In fact the Entities themselves might do so if things become too unruly.<ref name="Reddit experiment"/>