Sohnen

The Sohnen are a secretive race whose homeworld is unknown. They have been spacefaring for longer than any of the Commonwealth races and have a higher base level of technology. The fact that their ships are capable of cloaking means that it is unknown how much the Sohnen interact with the Commonwealth. Only occasionally are their ships sighted in Commonwealth space, and on only one occasion has there been significant meddling in Commonwealth affairs.

The Sohnen are the executor race of the Ancients. Like the Xenon, they're mechanical beings.

Origins

As the Ancients virtualized themselves inside their Prescence Clouds, the necesity of influencing their surroundings became much less important. However, because the virtualization was used for practical reasons in order to enact their Great Plan and not to isolate themselves, they were forced to create a way to act outside of the clouds once all of them were in. At first, many different types of proxies were used. Five hundred million years ago, they developed a semi-mechanical lifeform, which was to take over all the physical tasks of the Ancients. The result of this development were the Sohnen, An enormously sophisticated form of artificial intelligence.

Tasks

The Sohnen were created by the Ancients to serve as their executor race. Among other things, they redirect the Jumpgates, and contact representatives of the network's peoples to provide them important information. They also fought against the Outsiders and their star system-sized ship, and convinced the Community of Planets to spare the Terraformer CPU #EFAA, the de facto leader of the Xenon.

In X3: Reunion

Main article: x3: Reunion#Plot

In X3: Reunion, Julian interacts with the Sohnen, in the form of Sargon, a rogue member of the race, who gave to the Goner Renegade Ion Battler the knowledge required to construct a Jump Gate and create a Jump Event. Throughout the game, Julian and Saya have multiple encounters with Sargon's ship, who spied on them, and they even compete to get one of the crystals needed for the jumpgate's seed. It is believed he tried to connect the X Universe network with the Won network, which would've lead to the death of everyone in both sides, and deceived Ion, making him believe the world in the hologram he gave to him was Earth.

It is hinted that the Sohnen are not the only ones with cloaking technology, as at one point the player has to deal with a Paranid station, similarly cloaked.