Ignore the guy with the long name They are essentially ships They started off as the precursor peoples ships to explore and do everything having all kinds of uses from terraforming to exploring (cant be bothered to find the logs explaining the jobs of some of them i think its the raid books or some book eido found) Eventually after the Witness was formed they were remade with darkness (keep in mind the witness was so powerful they could do ALOT of stuff) they eventually remade the ships with these abilities in mind. So you could call them paracasual entities but they are more or less “drones” that can be controlled by the witness or disciple that inhabits them and those who control that vessel control it 100% even the interrior like Rhulk vs Nezerecs ships design they may be similar but structurally internally they are quite different. Or we can look at what i called a “drone” being the Europa pyramid where its just abunch of moving parts and is the only one that reacts to us. (Nezerec was technically still alive for his and Rhulk controlled his)