Solaria comes from many, many, previous worlds having roamed the multiverse for multiple lifetimes having to adapt as the laws of each reality twist and modify her upon entry to follow the local rules of physics and metaphysics.

Her previous two realities was one that bordered another reality she seldom speaks of, and before that a reality named Eileadora, an unstable bubble of space and time that consisted of a large island that randomly travelled from reality to reality like a ship lost at sea in the multiverse.

Solaria's true original reality is now far, far away across many spokes and wheels of universes. She is however not entirely alone, her collective split in two a long time ago over a dispute of the ways Solaria and other similar starwisps adapted and changed upon discovering organic life, adjusting to understand the world as people and creatures see it. This caused a significant divide in the race creating two separate collectives, The Free Starwisps and the Pure Starwisps. Solaria and the Free Starwisp collective explore the multiverse, however Solaria has her own additional objective pursing her soulmate that caused the original awaking event in the first place. Wherever Solaria goes, her collective tends to eventually follow one way or another.

Starwisps are plasma-silicon based lifeforms. Besides the crystal shell some starwisps wear, the rest of their solid body isn't visible to the naked eye, having a small hollow spinning super-conductor sphere in the centre and a crystal lattice providing basic brain-like structures inside. The vast majority of the mass of the starwisp however is purely plasma which is just as much part of their body as anything else.

Due to the unique nature of their physiology, the absolute centre of their superconductor core generates temperatures reaching millions of degrees allowing atomic fusion to occur being the primary power source of their bodies making the creatures living fusion reactors the same way actual stars function.

That coupled with the creatures being born the sun itself in their home reality, the creatures were given the name 'Starwisp' after becoming known by other creatures in the multiverse.

Starwisps range from appearing borderline mindless animals, to strange alien intelligences, to creatures that behave and act like fully intelligent people. All shaped on their experiences, the number of starwisps in the area, and exposure to non-starwisp creatures.

Starwisps have profound ability to adapt, especially when in large groups where they can share their minds with each other vastly increasing their overall intelligence as a group. Starwisps in large groups can 'mutate' each other in careful ways to accomplish new tasks but avoid changing themselves too much unless the survival of the collective is at stake.

Starwisps by nature are very passive and are either friendly towards other creatures or utterly indifferent depending on the individual starwisp's experience with other creatures. Starwisps as a species never experienced a 'survival of the fittest', as such they have no instincts to hunt, chase, or eat. They are however incredibly protective of the collective and will put themselves in harms way if it betters the survival chance of the collective as a whole.

Killing a starwisp is incredibly dangerous. If the resulting explosion doesn't kill you, the wrath of starwisps in the general area can be terrifying. Whenever a starwisp dies, large portions of its memories are scooped up by other starwisps and incorporated into themselves, resulting in those starwisps having an almost first-hand experience of the death the fallen starwisp.

Starwisps are an Earthly species from an alternate reality in which their Earth has already experienced its place in the universe as if it were between year 8 to 9 billion. This excessively distant future is after the event around year 4.5 billion, the sun finally consumed the last of its hydrogen and expanded into a red giant star, swallowing up Mercury in the process (Venus would have already fallen into the sun millions of years prior.) Earth barely escaped getting swallowed up itself from its orbit, but the planet was utterly ravaged turning into a molten hellscape where no life remains.

At the 8 billion year mark the sun has shrunk down to a white dwarf star roughly the same size as the Earth itself. The sun during it's collapse slowly drew the Earth in with it into a close orbit. The Earth cooled down but no longer resembled what it once did.

The Earth at this point had become tidally locked, one side always facing the sun, the other always in total darkness. Life in most Earthly worlds wouldn't be able to breathe the new atmosphere, and water of this Earth was replaced with ammonia.

*See this wonderfully articulated video of Earth's far future by Hybrid Librarian

With the close proximity to the white dwarf sun, and its weak magnetosphere, plasma rain from the sun was a regular occurrence which eventually sparked the new dawn of life on the world. With silicon and nitrogen being the most available building blocks of life, the first proto-starwisps were born. Creatures that are part plasma, part silicon, born from the sun itself.

Left alone for millions of years the race slowly evolved and improved itself. Those that worked together survived, and as such co-evolution became the cornerstone for life in this version of Earth. These creatures became starwisps which formed into a hives, and hives into collectives, all acting as a super-organism made up of otherwise individual creatures.

The lifecycle of starwisps is very different from typical biological life. A typical starwisp might not ever truly experience death in the same way normal life does unless it is very unlucky.

The Start:

A wispling when born starts off roughly %50-60 the size of an adult starwisp. Wisplings like any newborns are a bit naive and confused, yet contain a large wealth of knowledge already having all the tools needed to survive, cooperate, and grow.

Although a wispling would prefer to grow up close to other starwisps in a hive, they are capable of surviving by themselves or in small groups.

Wisplings created by mated adult starwisps have attributes and abilities from their parents, but wisplings created by a Gaia (see below) starwisp are typically only born with the basic set of instincts and imprinted basic knowledge of the collective. Wisplings born from a Gaia starwisp are often dubbed 'drones' since they are a mostly blank canvas. However, any drone can easily grow and develop into a full fledged starwisp.

Reproduction (Drones):

Drones can be created by a special class of starwisp called a Gaia Starwisp. These are very rare, very huge starwisps found only in large collectives. Gaia Starwisps are able to create drone wisplings using their ample resources and teach them basic knowledge. This new starwisp is a true starwisp but does not have anything more than the basic starwisp mind and does not end the life of the Gaia Starwisp like it does others. (see next section)
Because of this ability, and the fact Gaia Starwisps are massively bigger than other starwisps, they often get called Queens by other races drawing the comparison to queen bees.

Reproduction (Normal Starwisps):

-Courting: When normal adult starwisps are ready, they may decide to seek out one or more partner that is deemed compatible. Starwisps have complex and confusing rules as to what one starwisp deems compatible to another just as strange as love is in the organic world.

-Synchronization: Once two or more starwisps decide they wish to mate they spend long periods of time in close proximity to each other doing everything together. They will frequently exchange small pieces of themselves with their mates and synchronize habits and behaviours. During this time their crystal lattices restructure in preparation for the first major phase, fusion.

-Fusion/Coalescence: Fusion occurs when two or more starwisps fuse themselves together. It's a careful but smooth process as the two or more starwisps press against each other and merge, almost resembling two stars colliding in slow motion. Once combined they become a single over-sized starwisp with multiple cores spinning inside. This new starwisp initially is still the same two or more original wisps, but over time their traits and personalities combine together becoming a new individual. This process can take anywhere from days to many years. These type of starwisps are called coalescence starwisps.

-Budding: When a coalescence starwisp has completed its fusion stage completely, it's ready to reproduce. Using it's two or more cores, their body begins to construct additional cores inside of its body depending on how much mass and energy the coalesced starwisp has. Once the additional cores are ready the starwisp moves on to the last phase.

-Separation: With the additional cores ready, the cores being to move away from each other and the crystal lattice is delicately disassembled with some parts duplicated then reassembled around each of the cores. These cores continue to move away from each other until their fields become distinct and separate splitting off into newly born wisplings. None of the original parents remain, instead living on as their own children. Each wispling contains large portions of the fused mind and traits of the parents. As such, wisplings although having naive young minds and bodies, do possess knowledge and memories of the previous life of their parents. Because of this process starwisps remember their own lineage as distant memories as if they were their own.

Death:

To a starwisp death is a difficult to grasp subject as their lifecycle doesn't typically end, even by old age.

When a starwisp becomes too old, too injured, or killed, the starwisp sends out a SOS signal to the collective before they die. Once they die, a small explosion is caused from their core failing to hold in the fusion reactions happening inside their body. But not all is lost.

When starwisps detect one of their kind has died or is about to die, they rush in and collect the remains, incorporating the remains into themselves in a similar but rushed version of the fusion process. Parts of the memories and traits of the lost starwisp are inherited by the starwisps that collect the remains, and other portions of the fallen starwisp's mind is remembered by the hive they communicate with on a regular basis, becoming a living memory.

As such whenever a starwisp dies, they live on in the collective as part of it. The only true form of death a starwisp is afraid of is dying alone.

The Gaia Starwisp:

Only two of this rare type of starwisp are currently known of. These giant starwisps serve two major functions. As informational network operators allowing the collective to share knowledge, communicate, and utilize massive brainpower, and as a special sort of storehouse for plasma and resources important for survival of the collective. The Gaia Starwisp acts as the combined will of its collective like an avatar.

Gaia starwisps manage to maintain their huge size from their super-core made up of many, many, starwisp cores spinning around each other in complex electromagnetic orbits and the incredible amounts of energy available to them. Normally it should be impossible for a starwisp to get so large as they would hit critical mass and explode from overloading their core if they tried to grow to that size. A particular special event occurred allowing them to gain enough mass, energy, and cores in a short enough time to avoid exploding from the sheer size. A massive loss of life event.

Due to the nature of starwisps collecting the remains of their fallen and fusing it into themselves, at one point or another two different events occurred to cause such a massive loss of life, then in the scramble of starwisps collecting the pieces of the fallen, they gained so much mass in such a short period of time, a super coalescence starwisp was created, becoming a Gaia Starwisp.