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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 3751449" data-attributes="member: 10913">I just wanted to say I finally given the Formian entry a good reading, and I like them. The queen's ability to "communicate telepathically with any intelligent creature within 50 miles whose presence she is aware of" can be used to great effect even at low levels. The hive-mind qualities of the formians combined with only the queen and males (myrmarchs) being true individuals provides a very alien society and characters.I wonder how formian society would look like. Not so unlike a feudal one, I think, with hives being the equivalent of households and myrmarchs a mix of knights (the scheming war leaders) and daughters (married off to other queens and incosequential relative to them). Since a hive has somewhere between (about) 120 to 450 members yet the queen's reach is 50 miles, a central hive will probably dominate a "barony" of lesser, lower-class hives within the 50 miles radius, with taskmasters supervising the lesser hives. This allows the baroness direct control over her demense. Larger areas (kingdoms) would be controlled indirectly through (greater-teleporting) mymarch intermediates/embassadors.Real-world ants breed by combining the genes of a "princess" (combining the genes of the queen and her mate) with that of a male (containing the genes of another queen). In this way the genes of queen A will be combined (through the male carriny them) with the genes of queen B and her past mate (the princess) to form a new queen C (the ferilized princess). Formians, however, apparently lack princesses. This suggests a different breeding scheme entirely - the males (mymarchs) mate with foreign queens to affect the next generations of workers, taskmasters, myrmarchs, and very rarely queens. In this way mating of sons (mymarchs) will be a key consideration. A lesser house whose male mates with the baroness' queen, for example, would stand a great chance to spread its offsprings to other households through their sons. Real-world ants also take slaves from other ant colonies, larvae grown to be workers without the "expense" of making them and caring for them in their early stages. Would formian hives expect slaves like human feudal lords expected workers?Ant colonies can reach millions of individuals. A typical formian colony, by the SRD entry, would only reach as high as 450 or so - but do atypical massive colonies exist? If so, I'd suggest they would be very rare. A single super-large colony is too monotonic, and far less fun as a society to encounter.Ants also engage in farming, and the formians' taskmaster caste indicates that they administer herds of other monsters. I would expect formian societies to heavily engage in farming (most households/hives primarily engaged in it), with taskmasters controlling some large brutish monsters out of small herds to plow the land and do other difficult menial jobs.Overall, an interesting creature to contemplate.</blockquote>

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