Cerati males are diminutive and biologically incomplete, lacking the capacity for independent feeding or long-term survival. Shortly after emergence, a male must permanently attach himself to a Cerati female. Through a process of tissue fusion and parabiosis, the male becomes an irreversible biological outgrowth of the female’s body, sustained via a shared circulatory system.
This fusion initiates full sexual maturation in the female and is a prerequisite for her ability to access The Way. Intelligence reports confirm that without male integration, this capability never manifests.
During integration, most male sensory organs—including ocular and olfactory systems—atrophy and degenerate. The brain and gonadal tissue are retained and integrated into the female’s physiology. Neural persistence enables a form of cognitive absorption: the female gains access to the male’s unrealized cognitive trajectories—memories, instincts, and hypothetical skill-sets that the male might have developed had he matured independently. This has given rise to the rumor that Cerati females can “borrow lives that never happened,” pulling expertise from futures that were biologically denied.
Field observations and recovered Guild medical data indicate a direct correlation between the number of males a Cerati female has incorporated and her lifespan. Each additional male slows senescence, increases cellular resilience, and mitigates the neurological degradation associated with repeated Way exposure. Xenomedical consensus holds that retained male neural tissue functions as a distributed cognitive and metabolic buffer, allowing biological stress to be shared across multiple neural centers. Cerati females with high male accretion have been documented surviving centuries beyond baseline sapient lifespans, often exhibiting near-mythic durability. The number of males a single female can successfully incorporate remains unknown; suppressed Guild autopsies and unsealed smuggler logs suggest the true number is significantly higher than publicly acknowledged.
The Cerati are listed as a critically endangered species under Hegemony Conservation Statutes. In practice, this designation has done little to protect them. Cult factions pursue them as living reliquaries of The Way, while several Guilds have attempted—often disastrously—to regulate or forcibly harvest male incorporation in order to engineer extended-life operatives and navigators. Increasingly, rival Noble Houses have also entered the field. These Houses seek to acquire Cerati biological data, living specimens, or direct allegiance as a means of securing decisive advantages over competing Houses—and, in some cases, to undermine or ultimately de-seat the Hegemony itself. Control of Way-access, extended lifespans, or prescient navigation would radically destabilize the existing power structure.
In response, the Cerati Matriarch Council authorized a covert dispersal survival initiative. Multiple mature females were covertly relocated to fringe and non-jurisdictional systems. Each individual was assigned full discretionary authority to pursue species preservation objectives, including reproduction, socio-political infiltration, and armed action. Subsequent intelligence suggests many now operate outside recognized authority structures, frequently identified as independent pilots, Way practitioners, criminal syndicate leaders, or persistent anomalies associated with deprecated jump routes.
Encounter of a Cerati female in active field conditions is statistically infrequent. Hostile engagement without comprehensive assessment of internal accretion history and temporal survivorship parameters carries a high fatality probability. Accordingly, Hegemony Interdiction Units designate Cerati females exhibiting elevated male accretion as Class-Theta anomalies, subject to authorized apprehension, indefinite containment, or termination as dictated by prevailing strategic and political considerations.