Consort Hofmann
You are Consort Hofmann, and you knew from a young age that something was wrong with the world. In what reasonable system of government would the greatest mind of antkind be consigned to siring children? No, you have worked harder than perhaps any ant before you, and you and your ilk are deserving of all the fruits of royalty.
The late Queen Celia may have scorned your bold new ideas, but your fellows in the factories called you genius, visionary! Taking the growing industry away from the direct management of some queen who has never entered a slaughterhouse in her life, you doubled the profits of the nectar gardens and began the export of iron and steel to neighboring kingdoms—Her Imperial Majesty the Tsarina Maria Andreyevna is quite the flatterer.
Now, Queen Celia has produced three royal heirs and cast the colony into disarray. Worker turns against worker and one daughter is already slain in the confusion. But while the steadily crumbling pillars of tradition rotted like an ancient tree, you have been building something that can stand the test of time. The queenling Celina may not understand your vision, but she needs your help to recapture the royal nursery. Hopefully, she will realize her precarious position only when she wakes up in an empire of steel.
The ironworks churn eagerly for you, Consort Hofmann, and the countless legs of the millipedes thunder through the tunnels in your honor. It is the song of the future, and all those who sing it know that the time of queens is over.
Aims of the Consort
- Institute wage labor and individual property rights in the colony.
- Secure control of the royal nursery and place a queen there who is amenable to your demands.
- Control the production and export of every extraction and factory.
Industrialist
Thanks to your loyal allies among the foremen and engineers, you receive double the output from any production run you order at a factory (additively multiplied with extraction boni).
Elder Millipede Gustav
You have outfitted a brave millipede—a leader amongst his people—with the newest in defensive technology. Elder Gustav functions as a normal millipede, with the following changes:
- The armored millipede is immune to all attempts at theft and sabotage and can enter and exit even besieged strongholds.
- Any army attempting to degrade a railway when the millipede passes by takes 50% casualties and its attempt is foiled.
- An army may engage in battle while riding the millipede. If it does so, it is not out of formation, it takes 5% fewer casualties, and it deals 10% more casualties to armies without rifles or bombardiers.
The Spiders
In the first chaotic days of the war, you were approached by three worker ants. You received them willingly, as among those few sister-workers who share your vision, but as they approached you counted their limbs—not six, but eight. They were not ants but spiders, bred for the purpose of serving the old queen. Mistreated by the old order and looking to sell their services in the new. They see you as the best option for a changed colony—a colony where they could reap the rewards of their endeavors, instead of blindly serving a queen—and would aid you in seeing it come to reality, for now Queen Celia is dead and the knowledge of the spiders died with her. They were always a small group, hard to breed en masse, and in the initial spasms of the civil war many spiders were slain. But not all of them. This is what they said to you that day.
You have the services of three mercenary spiders (loyal so long as you pay), irreplaceable in their infiltration and surveillance abilities and willing to do whatever you ask them to. You can always send workers or soldiers to perform operations like normal, but as for professionals, you have three.
A spider-led operation costs nectar like normal and involves a spider being sent to a location or attaching itself to an army camp to begin working towards its goal. Spiders travel as skirmishers. A spider operation is resolved with a 2d6 roll like normal, but with the following modifiers:
- The spider gets +1 for another spider’s aid.
- It gets +1 if its goal is easy, like spreading rumors or keeping an ear out.
- It gets -3 or more for a hard goal like assassination (which it only attempts against a character if there's a special opening).
The Pheromone Net
The colony is laced in layer after layer of pheromones; it is the primary mode of communication between the queen and her subjects, however distant. All ants can near-instantly communicate with all other ants in the colony through pheromone trails relayed by ant after ant, though traditionally it is only the queen who possesses the religious right to broadcast. But the old order must make way for the new, even if gradually and with careful, careful precision. Every ant’s voice must be heard, even if best filtered through wise representatives such as yourself. You must speak for those who are too timid, too uncertain, to speak for themselves.
The Others
- Queen Cecelia. The real Queen Celia, or an impostor? In truth it does not matter, for the time of queens and of souls will soon be over. She nurtures her brood in the royal nursery where you spent far too much of your life, hidden away with those brothers of yours who have not the ability to dream of a better life for themselves than the queen will offer them, protected by the royal guard, those ancient giants whose shield-heads are large enough to block whole tunnels. Ha! They are ancient, indeed. Let us see how they fare against fresh-forged steel.
- Queen Celina. You have swayed many males to your side, but the majority of the colony yet blindly follows a queen. Celina has agreed to many of your demands in the hopes that you would supply her troops with arms and armor, but you do not miss the disgust in her voice and the hatred in her eyes when she beholds you. Queens are not used to the necessity of stooping to deception. She will no doubt. Do not weaken yourself by throwing your weight behind Celina, when her sister may still prove a more-useful figurehead for the parliament the colony so desperately needs. The identity of the queen is unimportant, but there must be a queen.
- Chancellor Karolina. An upstart aphid who, likely inspired by your own grand vision, is confused as to her place. Does she not understand how different are ants and aphids? Does she not understand how vital they are in launching the colony into the future? You do not have time for her quibbles of equal rights and equal pay. She and her fellows have grown spikes, entrenched themselves in the aphid gardens, and are trying to limit the colony by preventing access to their nectar. Perhaps she is worth considering as a member of the coalition, but she must be a member thoroughly tamed. It is worth bringing her to the table, at least.
- Queen Zsófia. A queen with a grudge, dependent on Celia’s colony for generations due to her ancestors’ conquest by Celia’s own ancestors. She seems to think her colony’s weakness comes not from her outdated political structure but from the fact she is not entirely in charge. If she remains at the hour of your victory, her daughters will work the factories for a fair wage. If she regains her independence, her colony will be left in the dust where it belongs. You certainly prefer the former to the latter.
- Melchiorre. An animal unchained. He and his fellows rampage throughout the colony, screaming their desires for all to hear. Their greatest demand: the utter destruction of all you have built. They are few in number, but each of his locusts is gigantic, larger than the royal guard and rivalling the millipedes. You have heard rumors that he has scavenged armor—armor your factories produced. You must hope he has not gotten a taste for the stuff.