Long ago the "Planet of Broken Glass" was one massive superorganism... until it wasn't. The surviving shards quite enjoy their newfound freedom, though they have an intrinsic need to band together. Their lives are an endless cycle of splitting apart and coming together in a constant need of new. Even those rare shards that are horrified of losing themselves to a singularity eventually find other like-minded individuals...
Dealing with offworlders can, understandably, be rather weird. The shards at least learned NOT to jab themselves into other, squishier beings, though they sometimes take that to the extreme, with the ground itself sometimes shunting away from them lest it accidentally impale them.
