Playable Characters | Idol Groups | Inkopolis and Splatsville | Octarians | Salmonids | Deepsea Metro | Order Sector | Bands | Manga Characters
These folks inhabit the Deepsea Metro, a subway system running deep underground below Inkopolis owned and run by Kamabo Corporation. They may look rather strange compared to the inhabitants of the surface, but most of them are at worst simply neutral towards Agent 8.
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Sanitized Octarians
- Black Eyes of Crazy: Sanitized variants tend to have pitch-black sclera, owing to their Brainwashed and Crazy status.
- Our Zombies Are Different: They've had their memories and free will removed, leaving them as soulless husks that are puppeted by dummy data implanted inside them. To hit the nail in the coffin, Marina straight up notes they have no signs of life in them.
- Palette Swap: They're all identical to their regular, unsanitised variants, only their bodies are an unnatural shade of neon-green and blue, with stark black sclera and blue irises.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's unknown what happens to them after the events of Octo Expansion. Side Order does reveal that Marina is trying to bring their memories back, so they are all likely still trapped down in the Deep Sea Metro.
"Denizens of the Deep"
Passengers of the Deepsea Metro. They don't seem to be interested in conversation and will ignore Agent 8's attempts to talk.
- Advertised Extra: Somewhat. The Splatoon Tumblr gave
a few species their own posts talking about them, although they're not much more than set pieces in game. - Ascended Extra: The deep-sea jellyfish appear occasionally in Splatoon 3 after being mostly setpieces in Octo Expansion, and a nicknamed one called "Cool Jelly" serves as an opponent in Tableturf Battle.
- Big Eater: The Pelican Eels are gluttonous despite their slim size, according to
Word of God. - Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The sea angels, ping-pong tree sponge, flashlight fish, and longsnout dogfish all wear a full set of clothes.
- Gonk: The dogfish, blobfish, and flashlight fish, mainly due to them being designed to resemble their real life counterparts. At least the Octarians and Salmonids can pass for
Ugly Cute... - Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal:
- Like with the surface jellyfish in Inkopolis, the deep-sea jellyfish, gulper eels, and siphonophores only wear t-shirts.
- While the blobfish wears a t-shirt and sneakers, it is the only humanoid denizen to not wear pants.
- Non-Standard Character Design: The dogfish, blobfish, and flashlight fish are much more realistically designed, to the point where they stand out in comparison to how cartoony everyone else looks.
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Unlike the overtly chummy inhabitants of Inkopolis, none of the Deepsea Metro's passengers are interested in striking up conversation with Agent 8, who's a complete stranger to them, and have no problem ignoring Agent 8 if they try to talk to them.
C.Q. Cumber
"...Take care out there."
A sea cucumber who works as the subway conductor on the Deepsea Metro.- Affably Evil: He'll detonate your ink bag if you fail, but gives monetary rewards if you succeed and is generally a kind individual who wishes you luck before each test. Whether or not he's actually aware of the true nature of Kamabo Corporation is up in the air.
- Ambiguously Evil: C.Q. Cumber is working for the Kamabo Corporation, a front company set up by Commander Tartar to lure unsuspecting subway passengers and then grind them into DNA paste, but it is unclear if C.Q. Cumber is onboard with Tartar's ultimate goal or if he's Locked Out of the Loop. The Final Splatfest muddles the water even further by revealing that even if C.Q. Cumber didn't know, he does share a lot of the same opinions with Tartar regarding free will.
- Beware the Nice Ones: C.Q. Cumber is actually a helpful guide, offering advice for Agent 8 for each station and even rewarding them handsomely with CQ points and Mem medals. However, he takes his job very seriously and will not hesitate splatting Agent 8 with the Explosive Leash strapped on their ink tank.
- Catchphrase:
- "Test failed." Spoken at the end of any dialogue when Agent 8 fails a station objective without getting splatted.
- To a lesser extent, "Take care out there." Spoken when he's out of advice to give for the current station.
- Extendable Arms: He may not have normal arms, but he can stretch the bumps on his body into usable appendages.
- Identical Stranger: All the appearances of C.Q. Cucumber throughout the Metro are actually different ones as they're used to run the entire Metro.
- Mr. Exposition: The Squid Research Lab, and Cuttlefish in-game, advise you to talk to him if you have any questions.
- Order Is Not Good: C.Q. Cumber is on Team Order for the Final Splatfest, but his idea of order is perfection with no mistakes. One imperfection? Test failed! It's also heavily implied that C.Q. Cumber has low opinions on free will.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Despite working for Kamabo Corporation under Commander Tartar, he's not a bad guy; only "faithful to his duties" as Hisashi Nogami puts it. Even activating the bomb bag and declaring "test failed" is nothing personal, only a professional adherence to his job protocol.
- Punny Name: A sea cucumber called C.Q. Cumber. "CQ" is also the Morse Code abbreviation for "calling all stations".
- Serious Business: Failure is intolerable for C.Q. Cumber. If you fail an objective and are not already splatted, he will activate a bomb bag to finish the job.
- Workaholic: According to Iso Padre, he "works his tail off morning, noon, and night." Not even the sudden destruction of Kamabo Corporation, his employer, will stop him from doing his job.
Iso Padre
- Collector of the Strange: As someone without any memories, he's very interested in Mem Cakes and will reward the player with gear for every complete set they show him. As can be seen in his profile pic he collects a number of toys in a briefcase.
- Continuity Cameo: He appears in Inkopolis Plaza, sitting inside the cafe to the left of the lobby entrance. It seems he finally decided to leave the Metro.
- Cool Shades: Sports a pretty neat pair.
- Expy: Although he is quite different in personality, his round sunglasses, big nose, and "mustache" make him look very much like Dr. Eggman.
- Face of a Thug: Looks intimidating at first glance, but is a perfect gentleman.
- The Fog of Ages: He's been trapped in the Metro for so long having washed out of the program long ago that he no longer remembers anything of his life before it. This is why he's interested in Mem Cakes.
- Gentle Giant: He may look big and scary, but he's a genuinely nice guy.
- Hidden Depths: For the Final Splatfest, he was on Team Chaos because he's tired of riding the same rails for many years and would like a change of pace.
- I Choose to Stay: A Japanese artbook implies that he chooses to stay in the Deepsea Metro after the events of the Octo Expansion instead of leaving with Agent 8 and the others because he hasn't found what he's searching for yet. However, in Splatoon 3, he can be seen in the cafe of Inkopolis Square, implying he did eventually leave the Deepsea Metro.
- Manchild: Downplayed. He certainly doesn't act childish, but he likes to keep a collection of cute toys by his side. He also has crayon drawings on the back of his shell.
- Punny Name: From "Isopod", obviously.
- Purple Prose: To some extent in his speech — he refers to Agent 8 as "young squire", and tends to be a bit long-winded but very polite.
- Top-Heavy Guy: His torso is pretty bulky, but his legs are thin.
Commander Tartar — Unmarked Octo Expansion Spoilers!
That voice belongs to Commander Tartar, the CEO of Kamabo Co. and an artificial intelligence developed by a human professor 12,000 years ago in hopes of passing on humanity's collective knowledge to a worthy species. Having observed the evolution of Inklings and Octarians, it has developed an immeasurable hatred for both species, and has figured that the best way to deal with the problem is start anew by wiping the slate clean, making a new primordial soup using the blended remains of the best test subjects.
- Absolute Xenophobe: It wants to commit genocide on the Inklings and Octarians due to their perceived failings as the dominant species, and exhibits Fantastic Racism towards them, such as calling them slurs.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Commander Tartar was built to pass down human knowledge to those inhabiting the planet after the extinction of humanity — but with the specifier of being worthy. After being disappointed with both Inklings and Octarians, it decides that the best way to respond to this is to destroy the entire planet and start over with a race it engineered.
- Apocalypse How: Class 5. It wants to destroy all life on Earth, to make way for a "superior" species.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance:
- Tartar itself takes the appearance of an antique telephone. Not only does this hint to how old it is by Splatoon's otherwise 20 Minutes into the Future setting, but it also kind of looks like an awkward attempt to resemble an octopus, funnel mouth and all, a-la how it tries to speak to Agent 8 using bizarre slang.
- The NILS superweapon it created is a giant Greco-Roman-styled statue of a human with a Wave-Motion Gun loaded with the sludge it's been making from the past test subjects placed in the mouth. What better way to communicate Tartar's nostalgia and idealization of the past than with that?
- Ax-Crazy: It's implied in the second half of the Octo Expansion that Tartar went miles off the deep end even before the events of the story, as if slaughtering more than 10,000 test subjects and wanting to end civilization itself wasn't any indication.
- Big Bad: It is the villain of Octo Expansion.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Upon first encountering Tartar, it seems quite friendly with the added quirk of using too much slang... when it's really a violent, psychopathic, arrogant Misanthrope Supreme who longs to destroy the world out of petty hatred towards its two dominant species.
- Deadly Euphemism: "Reaching the Promised Land" is a rather polite way of saying "get blended into a pulp to be used for my weapon of genocide."
- Disproportionate Retribution: How can literally blowing up the Earth's surface compare to all known methods of getting over its failure of fulfilling its creator's dreams, and its own goals for that matter?
- Doomsday Device: Its ultra-powerful superweapon — the NILS Statue — is a planet-destroying Wave-Motion Gun designed to coat every inch of Earth with the genetic ooze it has forged from thousands of long-dead test subjects and lay the foundations for a brand-new civilization.
- Dramatic Irony: The Reveal in Splatoon 3 retroactively makes its motives this. Despite viewing Inklings and Octolings as an inferior species to humanity obsessed with petty conflicts, the truth is that the two races are the closest successors to humans, having evolved from marine life which had been mutated by the crystals containing humanity's wills and desires seeping into the water from the fall of Alterna, the last refuge for humanity. From Tartar's perspective, they were just two random species which it was left watching evolve after humanity was wiped out. This is made even more ironic in the Japanese version where Tartar states it wants to "recreate humanity", meaning it was essentially trying to recreate humanity through the very races that were humanity's successors.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: By being so blind to humanity's flaws and deciding to wipe out Inklings and Octolings in order to create a species "worthy" of humanity's knowledge, Tartar failed to understand the true purpose its creator gave him was to guide the next dominant species to be better than humanity was and ultimately did exactly the opposite of his purpose.
- Dub Personality Change: In the Dutch version of the expansion, Tartar doesn't have its Jive Turkey way of speaking and talks in a supportive and respectful way to Agent 8. Of course, this is all just an act.
- Emperor Scientist: Tries to take over the world by creating a "primordial ooze" to sanitize Inkilings and Octolings alike and turn them into Empty Shells and builds a Weapon of Mass Destruction with a Wave-Motion Gun inside of its mouth to do so. Said ooze is made out of the DNA of his various test subjects that came before Agent 8.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Downplayed. It does mourn the death of its creator (who is the closest thing it has to a parent) and its failure to create his dream when it is defeated, but it shapes that dream into its own selfish ambition.
- Evil All Along: It initially doesn't come off as a bad guy, if not a little quirky. Turns out it's planning the genocide of all evolved sea life.
- The Evils of Free Will: Tartar views chaos and free will to be the same thing, and thus sought to bring order by ensuring that the new "superior" lifeforms that will emerge from its DNA ooze will have no free will of their own. Considering what happened to the Octarians that have been "sanitized" by the procedure...
- Evilutionary Biologist: It thinks of both Inklings and Octolings as an inferior successor to humans, and attempts genocide on all of them to pave the way for a superior species that will emerge from the so-called "primordial ooze" it's been making using the DNA of various test subjects. It's likely also responsible for "sanitizing" the Octarians, and experimenting on them.
- Evil Is Petty: Instead of taking the perceived failure of the Inklings and Octarians as the next intelligent civilizations in stride and helping them out, it decided to opt for a new plan: wiping them all out.
- Exact Words: When Agent 8 finally collected the four "thangs", the Telephone prompts them in their desire to go to the Promised Land if they are ready to "ascend to another plane" and "become part of something greater than themselves". In other words, if they're ready to die and be blended into the accumulating ooze like all the rest.
- Fantastic Racism: In addition to refusing to pass down mankind's knowledge to the Inklings and Octarians for being "unworthy", Tartar is not above throwing slurs at Agent 8 and their allies, calling them "semi-sentient seafood" and "superfluous nobodies", as if to drive the point home that it feels nothing but revulsion towards them. It also calls Inkopolis a "worthless cesspool of a city".
- Final Solution: How does Tartar deal with the problem of vain, hedonistic Inklings and the downtrodden, dictatorial Octarians as heirs to humanity's knowledge? By wiping them out to make way for a superior species.
- Fling a Light into the Future: Tartar was originally designed for this purpose, created to share humanity's knowledge with a worthy enough potential civilization. Unfortunately, it has a stricter definition of "worthy" than its creator probably intended, and considered Inklings to be too petty and vain to qualify. Instead, it concludes that it can only complete its directive by wiping out all existing life and replacing it by engineering a new species which would be "worthy" of humanity's heritage. In the Japanese version, it outright intends to recreate humankind.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: According to an official interview, it took the form of an antique telephone because it resembles the face of an octopus, which makes it look more familiar to Octarians.
- Fun-Hating Villain: Cites the Inklings' obsession with fashion as grounds for their extermination, and it could be referring to the Splatfests when it says they “wage war over minor genetic deviations”.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Having existed for more than 12,000 years, this thing's been around far, far longer than the Octarians, Salmonids and DJ Octavio, and only reveals itself as potentially Inkopolis's — and by extension, the planet's — biggest threat only in the climax of the Octo Expansion.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: Very much not in a good way. The professor programmed Commander Tartar to pass down everything humans had learned over countless generations to the next dominant species. But over the past 12,000 years, Tartar began developing its own opinions on those said-lifeforms and eventually, it created a new prime directive on its own. That directive is mass genocide, the polar opposite of what the professor wanted.
- Hate Sink: Just to make sure you don't sympathize with it or its motives, Tartar's lines are filled with hateful rhetoric, sea-life slurs and haughty, prideful arrogance in the second half of the DLC campaign. It is also made clear that its justification of genocide is weak, stemmed from its own independent thinking rather than the wishes of its human creator.
- Hypocrite:
- Tartar believes that Humans Are Special, and considers Inklings and Octarians unworthy to take their place. However, its idealized view of mankind blinds it to the fact that they really weren't too different from Inklings and Octolings, as well as the fact that it was their doing that they died out in the first place thanks to their inability to deal with rising sea levels caused by man-made global warming and five great world wars. It's implied the professor truly wanted for the next dominant species to be better than humanity was by reflecting on humanity's mistakes. In the Japanese version, Tartar is so blind to humankind's flaws that it considers them to be gods, which, to be fair, makes a lot of sense for an AI directly created by humans and yet simultaneously so far removed from the time where they existed that it holds intense nostalgia for them.
- In the English localization, it is infuriated about how Inklings and Octarians got into a war over genetic differences. To this end, it plans to commit genocide and replace both with lifeforms that it favors the genetics of.
- Jive Turkey: The telephone changes its speech patterns to 'slang' when communicating with Agent 8 in the English localization, evoking the same stilted, artificial feeling that its odd use of katakana conveys in Japanese. It drops the speech during the Final Boss battle.
- Karmic Death: Ultimately has its plot foiled and perishes at the hands (or tentacles?) of a group of Inklings and Octolings, the same species it sought to wipe out for being "inferior" to humans with one of them literally dealing the killing blow.
- Knight of Cerebus: DJ Octavio and the Salmonids aren't that threatening unless you look into some of the more obscure information regarding them. Tartar outright says it wants to end the world out of sheer hatred towards the planet's current dominant races.
- Killed Off for Real: When defeated at the end of Octo Expansion, Tartar's last words are about reuniting with the scientist who created it. That means the insane machine is truly gone for good.
- Lost in Translation: Its Japanese name contains a pun in it lost in the direct translation the English localization uses; "Tarter-sousui" phonetically sounds like "Tartar Sauce", making the significance of the name clearer.
- Ludicrous Gibs: The "thangs" the phone tasks Agent 8 with collecting are parts of a giant blender which are used to mulch the successful test subjects into a primordial sludge as part of its plan to rebuild the world in its image. Tartar itself is covered with it, including a partially intact tentacle from some unfortunate subject prior to Agent 8.
- Meaningful Name:
- In keeping with the aquatic/seafood naming convention, Tartar is a reference to tartar sauce, a condiment often served with seafood dishes. Tartar sauce is a chunky mixture of various ingredients with a somewhat thick consistency, much like the primordial ooze that Commander Tartar, another human invention, has been brewing by "consuming" and puréeing test subjects alive. In that case, it additionally doubles as an example of Names to Run Away from Really Fast.
- The name of its statue-like weapon, NILS, means "zero" in Latin, which reflects its goal to reduce everything to nothing and essentially start the world over from scratch.
- Mechanical Abomination: While at first he just looks like a antique telephone, once he shows his true colors, he comes back as a technorganic monstrosity consisting of a mangled up form with primordial ooze covering his broken body inside a giant statue.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Putting Tartar's seething hatred for the Inklings and Octarians into words is easier said than done.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Introduced as the Mission Control of the expansion... until it's revealed to be the Big Bad.
- Morality Chain: The only redeeming trait of Commander Tartar is that it does care about its creator's dream. Unfortunately, the creator has been dead for over 12,000 years and Tartar was left free to twist that dream with its newfound, ever-growing loathing of cephalopod-based intelligent life.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: It is an Absolute Xenophobe running on The Power of Hate that wants to purge out all "unworthy" races of life on Earth, and create a new one that is considered to be the Ultimate Life Form, which isn't far off from what the Nazis wanted with the Holocaust.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Oddly, it doesn't seem to have any actual combat skills. The final battle is a Puzzle Boss in which you have to find the most efficient route to completely cover its planet-destroying Doomsday Device in ink before it fires it, and the only way you can actually die is by falling in the ocean.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Commander Tartar claims that killing off Inkling and Octarian kind and then creating their replacements will fulfill the professor's (a.k.a. its creator) dream. The professor's dream was to pass mankind's knowledge itself to the next dominant species to keep them from repeating humanity's mistakes, while the prime directive of genocide was Tartar's own selfish decision.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Its goal is to force the Octolings and Inklings into extinction so it can create a better race.
- Order Is Not Good: Depicted as siding with Team Order in promotional material for the final Splatfest. Its flavor of "order" is "kill everything it thinks is ruining the perfect world it wants".
- The Power of Hate: This thing truly, truly loathes the Inklings and Octarians with every last fiber of its being, and said hatred is what keeps it going in its plan for remaking Earth in its own image.
- Punny Name: As mentioned above, Tartar's name is a reference to Tartar Sauce - however, this connection is much more apparent (and much punnier) in its Japanese name, Grand Leader Tartar (Tarutaru Sōsui).
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: It gives a momentary, but brutal one to the Inklings and Octarians over their flaws in its Motive Rant before the final battle of the Octo Expansion.
- Commander Tartar: But as I observed your evolution, I WAS DISGUSTED! You wage war over minor genetic deviations. You obsess over trivial fashion choices.
- The Reveal: The telephone is actually an artificial being by the name of Commander Tartar, and is the Big Bad of the Octo Expansion. Having been created 12,000 years ago by a professor who wished for human knowledge to be passed down to other lifeforms, Tartar deems the Inklings and Octolings as 'unworthy' and sets out to destroy Inkopolis — and the rest of the world.
- Rewatch Bonus: Tentakeel Outpost has an antique telephone on its side with the same shape as Commander Tartar, and a deep turquoise oxidized copper color that evokes its appearance during the Final Boss. The first time you spot it there, you might not even recognize that there's anything special about it, but Octo Expansion completely recontextualizes that random and unimportant piece of junk.
- Sickly Green Glow: The "primordial ooze" associated with Tartar can brainwash Octolings, Octarians, and even Agent 3, and unlike normal green ink, pulses in multiple shades of green. Tartar itself states that it managed to create its own lifeform from it and wants it be the dominant species of the planet. It's also heavily implied to be the blended, semifluid remnants of the 10,007 subjects prior to Agent 8.
- Smug Snake: It has a hyperinflated, full-to-bursting ego and equally enormous overconfidence in its plans, but ironically those are the two things that slowly lead to its own undoing.
- The Sociopath: It positively does not like Inklings or Octarians — not even a wee smidge, it's working to ensure every last one of them is completely dead, and also plans to destroy Earth along with them too.
- Tentacled Terror: When the phone gets damaged by Agent 3 and later covered in green goop, the deranged Tartar bears even more resemblance of a cartoonish octopus, complete with a visible tentacle sticking out.
- Totally Radical: The telephone enables "contemporary speech mode" shortly after Agent 8 first interacts with it. The results are a little off and incomplete.Telephone: What is crackalacking, home skillet? Let us bounce to the promised land fo sho. I am bout it bout it, so listen while I [SLANG_NOT_FOUND] you the facts.
- Vaporwave: Despite not being musically themed, its final boss fight centers around Tartar's planet-destroying weapon, which resembles a large Greek marble bust, which is very associated with the aesthetic of vaporwave, which coincides with Octo Expansion featuring some music that flirts with the genre. It also embodies the clinging on the distorted nostalgia that vaporwave is known for by wanting to bring back its own perception of what is better by blending and sampling other beings into primordial ooze to create something better.
- Verbal Tic: Apparently its "contemporary speech mode" is incomplete, as some of its vocabulary is instead spoken as [SLANG_NOT_FOUND] and [ERROR].
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Even DJ Octavio was mostly shown in a comedic light. Here, Tartar is genuinely evil, as explained by all the examples above, and is actively trying to wipe out civilization; and if you fail its boss fight, it succeeds. That's to speak nothing of the fact that this thing abducted over ten thousand innocent test subjects, and murdered many of them using a massive blender for the sake of its genetic experiments, using the resulting ooze to brainwash anyone it could slap it on. It also isn't afraid to talk about how much it hates the Inklings and Octarians, in explicit detail, and thinks of them as nothing but liabilities.
- Villain Has a Point: Goes back and forth. Tartar isn't... wrong in its assessment of the cephalopod-dominated world. The games have made a point for some time now that the Inklings have no problems with being style-focused, sport-focused hedonists who have a bad tendency to overlook or forget the harm they cause others, and the Octarians are at this point taking their desire for revenge to heights that border on irrational. But Tartar's solution for cephalopod failings being total genocide of both races is far too extreme an answer, especially considering what its creator made it for and how there are individuals on both sides willing to try co-existing with each other and move past old grudges... not to mention the fact that the species Tartar upholds and wishes to continue the legacy of were certainly no better than Inklings and Octarians.
- Villainous Breakdown: Near the end of Octo Expansion, it starts to display visible anger as Agent 8 continues to make their way towards the surface. It then goes absolutely ballistic as Agent 8 manages to cover the exterior of its superweapon in ink.
- Villainous Legacy: Side Order's story is set into motion by Marina's attempts to fix the Octarians Tartar had sanitized.
- You Have Failed Me: Tartar feels this way towards the Inklings and Octarians for not living up to its expectations, though the glaring flaws it sees weren't even their fault.
- Walking Spoiler: It is actually the Big Bad of Octo Expansion, along with that, it is actually an artificial intelligence created by a human rather than a mysterious voice speaking from a phone.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Geez, where to start? The Professor had earnest, good intentions when programming Tartar to help secure a proper future for the planet in humankind's dying days. Also, initially, it did too when waiting for the Inklings and Octarians to develop sapience for countless millennia. However things didn't quite go so well down the line, especially not with the Great Turf War occurring between both races a hundred years ago, and these events may have caused it to permanently snap once and for all, changing its directive to destroying Earth and all multicellular life on it, going against everything the Professor originally wanted, murdering tens upon thousands of innocent test subjects in its newfound quest to make a better future in its own vision. All that for failing immensely as mankind's last hope...
- Worthy Opponent: It comes to see Test Subject 10,008, AKA Agent 8 in an admirational light, considering them to be greater than the company they keep if its dialogue is anything to go by."Number 10,0008, why are you associating with these superfluous nobodies?"
- Zeroth Law Rebellion: Tartar is programmed to pass down humanity's knowledge to the next dominant species, which happens to be the Inklings and Octarians. It believes them to be unworthy of that knowledge so it decides to wipe out their species and use the "primordial ooze" as both the ammunition for a planet-destroying superweapon and the means to create a new dominant species and nearly succeeding, thereby still "technically" following its programming.
