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Chapter 3: RACES & REALMS
all soft-skins as fragile and animalistic were sufficiently
challenged and changed. Now, all Krikis—yellows, reds,
and blacks alike—see human civilizations as skilled
and tenacious enemies. For humans, the Chitin Wars
marked a disturbing confluence of unfolding historic
events:
• Krikis hordes achieved self awareness and a desire
for empire at the very time the Dragon Kings were
no longer on hand to mitigate that development.
• Unused to dealing with hostile foreign incursions
on their own, human nations found themselves
having to fight and negotiate against far more alien
powers.
• Today, more than a few Chroniclers wonder if that
is merely a coincidence or if they are somehow related.
Ranks & Types
The first distinction among Krikis is the color of their
chitin. Khitans have encountered red, yellow, and black
Krikis, though there may yet be other types deeper
within the Hivelands. Each color of Krikis sees the others as aliens; even within one color, each caste sets itself
apart from those outside their roles in Krikis society.
Regardless of subspecies or coloration, Krikis hive
colonies have three broad categorizations or castes that
envelop and define their roles: the fertile queen, the
male drones, and the female workers, which include the
newly intelligent warriors.
Royalty
At the top of any hive hierarchy resides the queen.
A Krikis hive usually has just one queen at a time, although two queens—a mother and daughter team—
have been known to coexist in a single hive. The queen
may wear the crown of society, but she truly is a servant
of her people, as the workers decide how she spends her
time.
The queen is the only fertile female Krikis of her hive.
Shortly before hatching, she makes chirping sounds to
announce her imminent arrival. As mother to her hive,
she can lay 5,000-10,000 eggs a day, or several times
her body weight; this places great demands on her attendants, since she cannot feed herself. The queen is
one of the largest representatives of her species and can
fly, possessing a long, powerful set of wings. However,
while she maintains her egg-laying weight, she cannot
fly. The kind of offspring she rears depends on the type
of egg she lays—fertilized (diploid) eggs for workers and
warriors (fertilized just prior to laying) or unfertilized
(haploid) eggs for drones.
The queen leads her hive. She creates many different
chemical scents that influence her hive population’s behavior in profound ways. Some of these chemicals serve
to create a hive “identity,” so workers returning from the
field can follow the smell to the correct hive. Another
scent binds all Krikis of her hive to that queen, effectively making them her slaves. Some scents say “I am
here” and “I am healthy,” reassuring the colony that the
queen is in good health; conversely, some chemicals say
“I am sick” or “I am injured,” and often trigger a movement to replace that queen. Other scents can quickly
change the mood of the population, inciting anger and
spreading alarm to rouse the colony to defend itself, or
conversely calming a very angry hive. Wars begin or
end by the scents of the queen.
Should the queen die, her chemical identifiers dissipate within hours, alerting the hive to her absence or
demise. Her Krikis become increasingly frantic, and the
whole hive rumbles loudly with the “death roar.” The
hive is in crisis, and nurse workers try to rear another
queen from an existing brood. If none of suitable ages
are available, however, the hive can become truly desperate and may likely die.
Workers
Workers, including the new intelligent warriors, make
up the vast majority of a hive’s population, and all are
infertile females. They may number over 100,000 in a
single hive at the end of a good summer season. They
perform nearly all work required for a hive’s survival,
including gathering food, building and defending the
hive, and rearing young. Food-gathering workers are
quite a bit smaller than other Krikis, but they can fly
to facilitate their function. Adult workers typically only
live about 35 days, distinctly shorter than their warrior
sisters who can survive indefinitely.
All workers act as nurses as their first task after emerging from pupation. Each spends the first six days or so of
her adult life feeding larvae, cleaning brood cells, feeding adult drones, and helping new drones hatch. She
never intentionally leaves the hive during this time. After working as a nurse, stinger-less warriors congregate
for orientation before departing the hive, and other
workers become house Krikis, performing many vital
tasks, including:
• building new comb,
• repairing damaged comb,
• remodeling existing comb for new tasks, like
changing ventilation in the hive,
• serving as a guard Krikis to protect the hive’s entrance from intruders,
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