Turn 3 Results
As ever, the first priority of the Swarm is to gather the biomass they need. Stockpiles have run low as their numbers grow, and more effort will be required to fill them. But the Queen has made her desires clear, and her loyal children obey with great enthusiasm. They will gather those fruits that hover so high above the ground, taunting them with the delicious scents they emit...
The first attempts don't work. The workers attempt to leap up. Their muscles are powerful for their size, dense with stored energy, but they cannot jump high enough. One worker, inspired by elements of the Song it can only dimly recall, grabs a rock in between one of its forelimbs and tries to throw it up, but it only succeeds in mildly injuring one of its siblings and making the monkeys above screech in shock. (One that falls is absently impaled by a forelimb of another worker.)
Finally, they resort to standing atop each other. The first leans itself against a tree, the second lifts it up, and they continue this process until they can reach high enough to touch the branches. From there, the unsteady tower totters back and forth, the uppermost worker sweeping fruits down with abandon.
Soon enough they fall, but the team of workers has knocked dozens of fruits down, which they bring back to the Nest in a triumphant parade.
Meanwhile, other workers are focused on simpler methods, continuing to tear up the soil for grasses and insects or hunting larger animals. Large areas around the Nest have been utterly denuded by the rapacious hunger of the Swarm, leaving bare earth and silent fields behind. But the Swarm is fed, and so this is deemed an acceptable cost.
These bare patches of soil are the first priority for the construction of farms. The dirt is raked systematically, rocks and clumps are broken up and removed, and large quantities of certain waste products are distributed across the fields to introduce vital elements. The soil is turned over again and again, and it is found to be somewhat dry, although not unacceptably so.
With the farms prepared, the Queen takes her part in it. She crawls out of the nest, escorted by the watchful eyes of her Children, and she goes up to the fields. Then, she vomits, her neck and mouth distending as immense quantities of liquid pour forth, far more than it seems like could fit within her.
In this liquid, parasitic organisms find themselves rooted in soil rich with nutrients and important chemical compounds, and they begin to grow, sprouting fibrous roots, spreading waxy leaves to absorb sunlight, and preparing spore pods so that they may reproduce and expand.
And the Workers walk amongst these new plants, removing sections and storing them for consumption, they also watch with satisfaction as native parasites that attempt to eat them die and nourish the soil.
The Swarm also continues their determined construction efforts. A single Worker keeps digging down as fast as it can, blunting its mandibles and cracking its exoskeleton in frantic, futile efforts to break the increasingly frequent rocky barriers it encounters. Better tools or stronger bodies will be required for the tunnel to go deeper...
Meanwhile, more tunnels are dug in the direction of distant hills.
And every bit of used dirt is dragged up to the surface, past crumbling tunnels as determined workers seek to make the entrance to the Nest even more fortified.
After the Queen's exertions, she is led back into the nest, offered meals of delicious fruits and freshly grown plants.
The Lesser Singer sits in a chamber it scratched out for itself just above the Queen's. It is not quite suitable, but it will do.
The Queen Sings, and it Sings back. They make a perfect harmony, and the Queen's mind expands. She sees further, she hears more, she understands deeper. Instinctively, she knows she will gain greater insights as her Swarm expands in numbers and variety, but she knows something else.
She was sent here, by a Swarm incomprehensibly larger than this. And it was destroyed.
Even as the Queen mediates on this terrible realization, workers Sing of tools they can use, understanding how to find wood to stone and so gain better ways to use the world around them.