A to Z Challenge: Invid

Invid Regent

The Invid are the main bad guys in the third Robotech series.  In the books at least they're mentioned before that but not seen until the Sentinels series.

In a way the Invid are similar to the Borg of Star Trek in that there's a hive mind controlled by a queen--and her consort.  Though instead of cyborgs, the Invid are more like slugs.  They come from the planet Optera and at the beginning they were just harmless beings content to feed on the Flower of Life that grew so readily on their planet.

Invid Regess 

It all changed when Zor showed up.  He soon realized the Flowers of Life could be harnassed into a powerful matrix, creating a substance called Protoculture.  To learn these secrets and to harvest flowers, Zor cozied up with Invid queen, who adopted a more human-like shape to impress him.

Invid Scientists

But eventually he spurned her and thus began the war between the Invid and the Robotech Masters.  To compete with the Zentraedi war machine, the Invid Regess and regent created machines or mecha of their own.

There's sort of a hierarchy of mecha that's seen in the third series.  The smallest and lightest are the Scouts.

Then there are the more heavily armed and armored Troopers.

Upgraded troopers are the Shock Troopers.

The Enforcers are like the boss shock troopers introduced midway into the third series.  They're pretty badass.

But the ultimate badasses are the elite mecha the Regess made for her human-ish children.

Invid mecha shoot energy bolts called annihilation discs and they have the wicked pincers that can crush a hapless Zentraedi or human.

You get to fight all those Invid mecha in the Invasion video game on the PS2/XBox with your Cyclone.  Since the Cyclone is a lot smaller, it's usually best to dance around the Invid, especially to avoid those claws. 

Ultimately as I've mentioned before, the Invid Regess is convinced to leave Earth.  She turns into a huge phoenix of energy along with the rest of the Invid on Earth and they all disappear.  She takes them to a new dimension called "newspace" but the Regess isn't happy there.  After a confrontation with Haydon she ultimately goes back to Optera in her original form to start over again.  Maybe this time she'll get it right.