The Swarms

Short description:

Empire Name: The Swarm
Empire Adjective: Swarm
Species Name: Swarmling
Species Adjective: Swarmling
Government: Despotic Empire
Current Overlord/Ruler: Greater Hive Queen
Ethos: militarist, fanatical collectivist
FTL: Warp
Weapons: kinetik
Homeworld: Alfa Home, Jungle
System: Alfa Star

Species description: Each individual swarmling has next to no value to a greater hive, only the queens are protected for pragmatic reasons as there is only one per hive and they are the ones who give birth to new swarmlings. The Queens lay eggs possessing the DNA of the ones who fertilised her, only having enough impact upon the hatchlings to mark them as belonging to her hive. Due to this the hatclings can look markedly different depending on wjose DNA was used, an art the Overseers, the ones responsible for determening which specimen should be used for this purpose, have truly perfected. Because of this the different castes of the hive are very dissimilar, having become their own subspecies. A few things that are common for the species as a whole however: Resilient, there is no concept of "civilian" and if a hive is under attack all members are expected to contribute to it's defense, adaptive, the species is fully capable of surviving most foreign enviroments for long enough that the overseers can find the right genetic strain to thrive in it, slow learners, the species has a diffulty grasping new concepts when presented to it.



The major subspecies:

The Hive Queen, the mother of the hive as it is she who gives birth to all of it's members. The Queen is technically a hemaphrodite as to create a new queen the old one is fertilised with either her own DNA, creating a clone, or that of another Queen, if the overseers want to experiment with some new DNA or if the hives want to foster closer relations. While the Hive Queens are the closest thing that the species has to a head of state they do not rule very much for themselves, instead delegating those things to others. Traits: fast breeder, obviously as one individual Queen can give birth to millions of swarmlings during her lifetime, venerable, the Queens are very long lived and rarely replaced, sedementary, the Queen almost never leaves the hive, requiring the entire structure, to be moved if it is necessary.

The Overseers, the closest thing the Hive has to both beurocrats and scientists the Overseers, of whom there are ususally around 40, are the ones who determine what DNA the Queen shall be fertilised with, having to make sure that there are enough of each caste and to "perfect" their biology through a combination of eugenics, choosing the most succesful caste members most of the time, and experimentation, making their own artificial changes of the DNA. Traits: Intelligent, while they still share the narrowmindedness of their species for anything outside of their area of expertise the overseers are the most intelligent members, as befitting such a task, natural sociologists, their task is to perfect the genetics of their species and they do so admirably.

The Hunters, part time warriors the Hunters are the ones tasked with bringing food for the hive, or more specifically to kill it. They are large, strong and venomous, the apex predators of almost any planet they encounter. Surprisingly silent as well the Hunter Caste preferred method is to sneak up on the enemy and when close enough overwelm it with enough force to stop it from havin any chance to retaliate. When fighting against another Hive (or, as time may prove, sapient species) the Hunters are the forefront warriorsand the heralds of an invasion. Traits: very strong, they are capable of tremedous feats of strength and capable of defeating most enemies through brute force of strength.

The Workers, responsible for all the construction in the hive (which they built) as well as bringing home food (like whatever the hunters have catched). They are the most numerous members of it and in times of war produce further numbers to supplement the hunter caste when subtlety is gone for the wind.  Traits: strong, while not able to match the hunter class in it's fighting prowess the Workers are still very strong, as required by work that they are doing, industrious, constantly building and burrowing the Workers are a most energetic caste.

There are smaller and less notworthy castes, like the Venoms, a caste based solely on the giant venom glands they have, from which the others can extract acid to use on their weapons. Another is the Extractors, the "farmer caste" which grow and collect from different kinds of plants or creatures, like the aforemented Venom caste. However these four are the main ones.

Empire description: The swarm society is centered around Hives, gigantic structures that also go deep underground and function as their cities. Each individual Hive can hold a few million swarmlings and in the heart of it there is the Queen and all members are fully dedicated to defending her. The individual hives are, even when technically united under a higher Hive, fairly autonomous and can even go to war against one another, making governing over a cluster of them a difficult task.

It's history: having evolved on the world simply known as Alpha Home the swarmlings spread out and covered it very quickly. Facing extreme overpopulation the hives that now covered it often went to war with one another in search of food, usually the other side as they are not particularly picky about it and can quite easily resort to cannibalism. With the discovery of spacecraft the first Hiveships were constructed. These massive spacecrafts functioned as one mobile hive and were each sent out to find a new home for their hive, being able to support themselves for hundreds of years. Most of these Hiveships never found anything worth living on and either died out in the blackness of space or still travel through the galaxy in seach of a home but three of them found a place to live on: Beta, Gamma and Delta Home.

Beta Home (continental): a lush home not too unlike the one from which they originated Beta Home is nevertheless both dryer and cooler than their home. It's population, while not having reached the levels of Alpha Home is still the largest of the colonies. It is also the one with the least different swarm from Alpha Home.  A large planet with a high gravity Beta Home orbits a class O star (yellow). Population: 15 billions.

Gamma Home (tomb): Originally having belonged to some ancient spacefaring empire and seemingly having been a research center and a rather large one at that Gamma home is now an irradiated wasteland with the institute, along with most of the ecosystem, having been destroyed. Therefore most of the creatures that now populate the world came along in the Hiveship and existance is grinding making this the least populated of the homes. However, the research institute, onto which the hive was built, has proven to hold many valuable technologies. No new hives have been built although the first one is truly massive and covers the enitre old research base. It is a moon orbiting around a gas giant which on turn orbits an F-class White star. Population: 2 billions.

Delta Home (arctic): Entirely covered in ice Delta Home doesn't look like much but under it the planets thermal heat has created a thriving ecosystem. Unlike the other ones no part of the hives of Delta Home reach the surface but are all entirely submerged. It is a planet orbiting a M-class star, a brown dwarf. Population: 5 billions.

As for Alpha Home itself it is enitirely overpopulated and both due to this and because the hives lack as much in common (the colony hives can after all feel close kinship with one another as they originate from one in fairly recent history) they are far less cooperative and frequently go to war with one another, despite having been conquered and made to serve under one swarm, making it the planet united in name only. It too is a planet orbiting an O star. Population: 30 billions.

Recent history: Recently the Gamma Hive uncovered a warp drive on an old ship and through them the Discovery has spread to the other hives. They have now all, driven by their instinct to unite under one Swarm, started to carry out an unification war.

Stats:

Military: 4
Naval: 2 while they have not seen the need for an extensive amount of spaceships until recently all four of the Swarms have put much effort into rectifying that and are currently building enormous fleets, although most of them are not yet ready.
Land: 5 Capable of mobilizing as many forces as can be transported the swarmling are also physically imposing and can take down most enemies through this combination.

Economy: 4
Industry: 5 while they are in some aspects pre-industrial revolution the sheer energy of their swarmlings more than make up for it in terms of production.
Tertiary: 1 there is no real "service" industry as the individual swarmling are expendable anyway.

Technology 4
Researched: 3 While the Swarm has truly mastered biology most other fields of research are very much lagging behind, not hhaving many dedicated researchers. After all when a human performs suboptimally at a task they seek to improve the tecnique, if a swarmling performs suboptimally at a task they seek to improve the swarmling.
Scavenged: 3 While lower for the Swarms are lagging behind Delta Swarm has become the most technologically advanced of them simply because of the ancient technology that they have uncovered.

Diplomacy 1
Understanding: 3 The Swarm lacks any real way of understanding intelligent alien lifeforms, they are not swarmlings as they lack a hive and they are not like normal food as they can build things like the Swarm.
Espionage: 3 Again a completely foreign concept which has never had any use, considering how they can determine the hive on the smell on the swarmlings.

Culture 2
Internal stability: 5 While the hives themselves are fairly autonomous the swarmlings inside them never act outside the will of the hive.
Marketability: 1 As they do not construct anything other than for practical purposes there is nothing like "art" inside the Swarm.

Quirk: Scent, while they can use their mandibles to communicate to some extent they mainly transfer information by smelling at one another.

Quirk: Ornivores, can eat most things that they come across, including people which should be taken into acount.

Quirk_ Natural biologists, the species has become masters of biology and genetics and uses it on themselves to a great extent.

They are four fledgling empires.

EDIT: Forgot but they could also be considered communal and conformist, as well as extremely adaptive.

Really interesting! I'm glad to see that you've put in as much detail as you have. The only gripe I have is in the point distribution as a 3 on Understanding and a 3 on Espionage effectively mean the same thing as what you already have. A Diplomacy of 1 is enough to show that they're completely inept in either field. The points are more like a ratio than actual rankings (Even though 3:3 reduces down to 1:1, I think). You can put the extra point into Industry if you want and likewise max out Internal Stability since Culture is so low, though reduce Land down to 4 or Naval to 1, you've got 7 points there.

Theclans wrote:Really interesting! I'm glad to see that you've put in as much detail as you have. The only gripe I have is in the point distribution as a 3 on Understanding and a 3 on Espionage effectively mean the same thing as what you already have. A Diplomacy of 1 is enough to show that they're completely inept in either field. The points are more like a ratio than actual rankings (Even though 3:3 reduces down to 1:1, I think). You can put the extra point into Industry if you want and likewise max out Internal Stability since Culture is so low, though reduce Land down to 4 or Naval to 1, you've got 7 points there.

Oh, I thought that it was more like they both contribute to the overall ranking rather than being percentages, will do. I will also add the quirk that they are expert biologists as you requested.