Queen Zsófia
You are Queen Zsófia, and your children are your own.
Your colony has existed as a dependency under the rule of Queen Celia’s colony for many generations now, o'ertaken by her force of arms and numbers. She wanted one thing from your colony: its children. Eighty percent of every brood of workers delivered to her nursery to learn her scent and be indoctrinated into following her commands—to mistake her for their mother. Abhorrent. But your grandmother's grandmother accepted the golden fetters to protect your culture from utter annihilation. It was the best option among terrible ones; it was all she could do.
But now it is your chance. Queen Celia laid three royal daughters instead of one, and her colony turned to infighting. Her males, her workers, her aphids, her livestock—they all revolt against her rule, and the colony has broken down. It is your chance for freedom, for independence, for your children to be your own. You made the decision not to send your most recent brood to Celia's nursery, and are raising them as they should be raised—as your own.
Two of Celia's daughters remain, and one of them will regain control of their mother's colony—they must, lest the whole world is turned upside down. You will accept the friendship of whichever queen proves ensouled, if it is offered, but it must be friendship on equal grounds. You must remind them you, too, are a queen.
Aims of the Queen
- Maintain your dignity and independence. Never again will you bow and scrape before another queen.
- Protect your daughters and ensure they safely mature to accept your scent.
- Eliminate the locusts and bring the liberals to heel. They are threats to all royal rule, not just Celia’s.
The Brood
At 1800 hours, your 36,000 daughters will mature. Weeks ago you were impregnated with a dozen, two dozen, three dozen breed-males’ seed and spent many long hours laying many thousands of eggs in the stone coffers of the walls of the nursery from which the colony is ruled. Your daughters have grown mightily in their eggs, and they now crawl around you as larvae, their exoskeletons slowly hardening, their voices slowly coming to them, their noses becoming accustomed to your scent.
They will mature into workers: a noble calling. But it is a time of war—you can feed one drop of nectar to each of your larvae to induce them to mature into soldiers instead.
The Spiders
In the first chaotic days of the war, you were approached by three worker ants who smelled of Queen Celia. As they approached you counted their limbs, and as they bowed before you you saw there were 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 for a new queen—a new mother. They see you as the best option for freedom from Celia’s hegemonic rule and would aid you in seeing your freedom secured, 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 loyal spiders, 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 you and your 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 it is only the queen who possesses the force of will and religious right to broadcast.
The Others
- Queen Cecelia. Daughter of Celia who has cloistered herself in the Celian nursery with a brood of larvae. She is protected by her royal guard—a luxury you do not have, your own colony’s royal guard long-ago killed by Queen Celia. Here is what you remember of their breed: ancient giants, all, whose heads are formed in the shape of great shields. If they position themselves correctly, they can block whole tunnels with their heads; but behind the shield, each is spindly and delicate. Queen Celina. Daughter of Celia who has brought the majority of the workers and soldiers under her control, having fallen in with that upstart breed-male Hofmann. A dangerous duo. Surely she has not truly fallen for his liberal lies? Does she not know she is a queen?
- Consort Hofmann. A breed-male who has entranced a good number of his fellow males, as well as some workers whom he has fooled into thinking they might be deserving of royalty themselves—abhorrent. He and his coalition have taken control of much of the industry in the colony; he has great influence with the factory overseers and engineers, and even the millipedes have taken a liking to him, for he has bewitched them all with promises of parliament and liberal economy. Export the colony’s goods? Ship away the fruits of one’s labor to foreign lands? That is all needed here, in the colony stockpiles. You cannot eat shares or steel.
- Chancellor Karolina. An upstart aphid who has forgotten her place in the colony. Does she not understand how good the aphids have it? Does she not understand how vital they are in the colony? She and her fellows have grown spikes, entrenched themselves in the aphid gardens, and are trying to force your hand by preventing your access to their nectar. They have not fully succeeded; you still rule over a small herd of aphids. Perhaps, misunderstanding yourselves as comrades, Karolina will seek your assent in their liberation? Foolishness, if so, and she will pay the cost of the mistake. Socialism. An ugly word. They cannot get a further taste of independence.
- Melchiorre. An animal unchained. He and his fellows rampage throughout the colony, screaming their desires for all to hear. Their greatest demand: your death, and the death of your children. They are few in number, but each of his locusts is gigantic, larger than the royal guard and rivalling the millipedes. With any luck, Melchiorre and Celia’s children will kill each other, and you can find freedom in their deaths.