The Restrictors

The Restrictors are simulated personalities like those used in SLDs. They exist within a huge artificial body within the Syndicate's headquarters and, similar to Shinatama, fulfill the role of monitoring the Symbiotes. There are said to exist exactly 8 million Restrictors (a number taken from the number of Kami in Shinto), each being assigned to one Symbiote. In fact, there are only 3,000 simulated types of personalities, and eavery Restrictor beyond that number is simply a copy of one of the 3,000 individual types. Though serving basically the same purpose as Shinatama, the Restrictor's control over the Symbiotes has been greatly enhanced: They can "restrict" - hence the name - a Symbiote's latency, thus supressing the Symbiotes evolution to prevent him or her from becoming a threat to the Syndicate. As a last ditch measure, a Restrictor might also destroy a Symbiote by causing a neurological overload via a chip the Syndicate grafted into the brains of all Symbiotes. They can also use SLD bodies to fight on the "material plane". These SLDs have mature physiology rather than the infant bodies used by the SLD generation of Shinatama, and combat records indeed show that they can efficently combat Symbiotes in early to middle stages of their evolutionary process. All 8 million Restrictors were assigned to suppress the power of Zero when he awoke, but even they were unable to hold up to Zero's power, and were destroyed in the process.