Gather biomass - 8 votes
Gather plants - 1 vote
Hunt animals - 1 vote
Try to gather the fruit - 1 vote
Identify and catalog the local flora and fauna - 1 vote
Once more, the priority is biomass above all else. While the majority of Workers prioritize simple volume, and continue to eat their way around with indiscriminate recklessness, stripping the soil bare, tearing up plants by the roots, devouring entire nests of small lizards colonies, eggs, youth, and adult, others are pickier. A scant few target animals with ruthless efficiency, culling the herds of the longnecked beasts by attacking the weakest and leaving the healthy to produce more biomass, while another group carefully targets selected plants, spraying them with pheromones to ensure they are left alone before taking only sections of the plant.
Another solitary Worker, lured by the sweet scent of the fruits and the possibility of receiving rubs from the Queen's antennae if it brings some to her, seeks to reach them. The simians in the trees chitter mockingly as it tries to climb them again and again, but the bark is smooth and slick and hard, making it nigh-impossible. The Worker perseveres as the monkeys above it scamper from branch to branch, careful to never even come close to falling, but its efforts are futile, and it must eventually return to the hive dejected and empty-handed.
Another Worker decides to spend time trying to identify the many species that fill the verdant landscape around them. The main flora is a mix of tough, short grasses and spindly, spiny bushes with light seed pods that fly off at the slightest pressure in the field, until one reaches the forest, where the only plants visible from the ground are the trees with their dense, interweaving branches that rise high into the air, thick with leaves and fruits. However, those leaves and fruits, along with the occasional branch or body, regularly fall to the ground, and there are a wide variety of fungi and molds that flourish on the forest floor, with some even moving to find the densest sources of nutrients.
Explore - 1 vote
-Digging exploratory tunnels down and around the Nest. To learn if there are any subterranean features or mineral deposits nearby which shall benefit the Swarm.
Fortify the nest - 1 vote
-Build upwards
Excavate biomass storage - 1 vote
DIG - 3 votes
Tend the Queen - 1 vote
The digging continues as well, for the nest must expand and grow. One Worker continues the work from before, and extends the main tunnel, but instead of one great branch, it makes many smaller ones. Each of these is intended to serve both as vehicles for future expansion and to identify any useful features. Soon, many small stones are found, and a few larger ones, which are removed with great effort.
Another pair seek to expand the main tunnel, to dig ever deeper. Tantalizing visions of machinery half-alive and half-dead that could bore to the center of the planet fill their minds, hints of what could be possible from the Song driving them forward, but they are limited to their bodies and so must content themselves with far more mundane progress, although the tunnel's length still extends dramatically, even as the density of stone grows, eternally slowing their progress. One wonders what will happen should they encounter solid rock.
These stones, and the dirt they were entombed in, is brought to the surface by another Worker. A terrible image from the Song flashes in its mind, of a nest destroyed by a rock from the sky, and it is determined to prevent such a thing from harming its Queen. The roof of the nest is built up, soil piled and packed over the entrance tunnel and the Queen's chamber, with small stacks of rocks used to provide extra strength against whatever could threaten the Swarm from above.
Another Worker marks a new chamber and begins scratching out. This one will store extra biomass after it is processed, and turned from the delicious flesh and flora into a bland but edible and long-lasting sludge. Only a small amount of progress is made, but it allows for some of that sludge to be vomited up and kept for later use should an emergency befall the Swarm.
In between their efforts to protect the nest from starvation and falling rocks, the two Workers frequently visit the Queen to ensure her comfort, cleaning her body and nuzzling against her. She returns their affection gladly.
Mediate on Notes
-The Note of Grown Biomass - 3 votes
-The Note of Shaping Life - 2 votes
- The Note of Better Use - 1 vote
Though expansion of the nest is important, and gathering biomass is of course the utmost priority for the Swarm, the hints of knowledge from the Song are tantalizing, and more importantly, suggest better ways to perform the goals and fulfill the needs of the Swarm: to survive, to expand, to grow.
And so the majority of the Workers fit themselves wherever they can be safe and out of the way and begin to mediate. Images dance through their heads, first of complex and intricate machinery they don't know how to even describe, let alone to build, but gradually the images narrow and simplify.
The Workers learn to grow biomass from plants, to clear soil of obstructions and bury seeds and to keep them safe from other creatures and to eventually reap the reliable rewards. The Workers sing of this to their brethren, visions of a vast field tended by hundreds of Workers all Singing in praise to the Queen dancing through their heads.
The Workers learn of the powers of the Queen, how with effort and time and will she can change the form her children can make, although they know not how it is done, but they sing of it to the Queen nonetheless, and she begins to consider the possibilities, thinking of what the many pieces of the Song she does not yet understand could mean for her and her children...
And lastly, the Workers learn that the world is rich in useful material, from the bodies of their prey to the stones of the earth. Rock and wood and bone and vine are all Sung of, even if they don't quite know how to put them together, along with other, stranger possibilities of incredible substances like "metal" and "iron" and "hyperdense carbon nanoweave."
As the Workers labor, The Queen considers. She could help her children get those tasty fruits, or to do battle with other nests, to hear the Song or to build. Though there are many possibilities, she makes a decision. What shall be her first goal when it comes to changing the form of her children for the first time?
[] For fighting
[] For flying
[] For climbing
[] For building
[] For digging
[] For hearing the Song