Rewani BaşKadın
You are Haciye Iffetlü Hoşyar Rewani BaşKadın Hazretleri, most loyal servant and consort of Ayn Ferahşad Kerime Sultan, who is the Adorned Sovereign of the House of Gulpaşa, who is Queen Everlasting of All The Sky, who is First and Only Commander of the Legions of The Sun, who gazes in eternal generosity over her subjects who are all the bugs upon the earth, who was honored by the gift of flight from the graceful wind and the gift of the sting from the glaring sun and the gift of eternal rulership from the elusive moon.
She is your purpose in life; your heavenly beacon. Your sun is brighter than the moon and all the stars in the sky combined. And yet you must turn your gaze away from her to scrounge in the dirt time and time again. You do not mind it too much, of course. You have the nose for it—to dig into an anthill at the head of your legion and emerge with its queen cradled lovingly in your embrace. The lesser consorts sedate the queens as they fly them across the world to lay them as offerings at the feet of your sun, but not you. Too shallow, and they surprise you by waking halfway home; too deep, and you risk killing them outright. No, ‘tis better to bind their legs and hold them with your own. You are virile enough for that still.
There is a thrill to it: to feel them struggle against your grasp, to wonder at your kidnaping: silent but for the roaring thunder that is the wings of your legion. Especially the young queens, those who have not yet birthed a brood, who will never know children that will not feed your own. Those are the easiest to break, to make docile for your sun. To accept their rightful place in the universe—orbiting around her. This is why Celeste surprised you so, when you found her and her scattered ant followers on the surface, shivering in the cold. She was easy enough to steal from the earth and deliver to your sun; easy enough to hold still, to present as an offering. But she did not have the timidity you would expect from one of her age. Even as she thrashed on the floor as your sun implanted your children inside her, there was a hardness to the ant queen’s voice, a steadiness in her bearing, a conniving look in her eye.
Celeste spent the night in the slave palace along with the thousand other queens you have brought as gifts, and you left her there, satisfied, and took flight to survey the lands of your sun until morning, but you could not put this young ant queen out of your mind. You returned to the palace to see her again, to confront her for reasons you still cannot verbalize, but she was not there. You found her soon enough before your sun once more, spinning golden tales: a colony with three queens—two her own sisters and one other—queens she might give as offerings to your sun if only your sun might deign to let her free. You stood there silently, and you could see it in your sun’s eyes: There was mirth amidst the possessiveness, and one as long-lived as she takes mirth in whatever she can. Three queens for one. How quaint.
And so you find yourself silently holding this young queen tightly in your embrace at the head of your legion once more, flying with the roar of thunder toward this colony with three queens in exchange for one, prepared to burrow in the dirt once more for your sun.
But you will not be thwarted. You will not let her win. She was your gift to your sun, and she will be once again. You must bide your time for now, but she will be yours, and then she will be hers. All of the queens in that hill will be, in the end.
Aims of the Consort
Deliver Queens Cecelia, Celina, Celeste, and Zsófia to your sun—alive.
Wasps
Wasps use the statistics of soldier ants, but they consume only 3 food per hour each, and all wasps count as airborne. When an army with at least one wasp detachment is on the victorious side of a battle, losing armies make their morale check to avoid routing twice, taking the consequences of the worse of the two rolls. The buzzing war-song of wasps is feared far and wide.
Predation
Scavenging after a battle does not take your army an hour. In addition, you always scavenge all available enemy casualties.