The Great Swarm
- Thread starter notbirdofprey
- Start date
- Original
-
- Tags
- sci-fi open voting
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Farm Biomass
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Irrigate Farm
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
[X] Find the largest fellow worker and SPAR!
[X] Experiment with tools
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Construct Gladiatorial Arena (For Natural Selection)
My idea is that we can look for useful mutations - if that is a thing - and accelerate the process of natural selection by creating a prolonged conflict. Like how technology develops faster in a war, because there is incentive to develop
My idea is that we can look for useful mutations - if that is a thing - and accelerate the process of natural selection by creating a prolonged conflict. Like how technology develops faster in a war, because there is incentive to develop
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[X] Expand Farms
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Mediate on the Song
- Location
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Farm Biomass
- Location
- Fort Worth, TX
[X] Experiment with tools
[X] Construct farms
[x] dig out proper living chambers for swarm
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[X] Expand Farms
This quest isn't dead yet. I'm hoping to write an update tomorrow.
Vote closed
Turn 4 Results
While the farms provide extensive reserves of biomass, simply harvesting what they grow is deemed insufficient. Several workers patrol around the farms, tearing up the soil and devouring all the plant life they can find, or else slaughtering animal after animal. Even the fruits and the monkeys that live in their midst are not spared, as workers pile up to reach into the tops of the trees. Only a lack of useful cutting instruments spares the trees themselves.
In the freshly denuded soil, obstructions are removed and fresh specimens from the Queen's reserves are planted, rapidly growing and spreading, ensuring no native life can return. Channels are dug into the soil among the fresh-grown forests of spikey, alien life to ensure that rain will be channeled to the species most-favored by the Swarm.
All nature will be bent to the Swarm's will.
Stones and bones and fallen branches are gathered for use in construction and experimentation both as the workers answer to the demands of the Queen.
Outside the nest, a single worker draws a circle in the dirt and challenges others to spar with it. A few with no other tasks oblige, finding great entertainment as they grapple with claws and mandibles and push each other back and forth.
In addition, tunnels are expanded as workers quest for useful stones beneath the ground, and a rudimentary sleeping chamber is scratched out, although it is small and cramped.
As much as expanding the Nest is important, the workers are driven by a combination of their own wishes to burrow deeper and the Queen's request they experiment with tools. Although the Song suggests many basic designs, the workers make a conscious effort to ignore its suggestions.
It is difficult, like learning to write with your feet, but they scrape together designs nonetheless, cunningly working some of the stone axe or knife heads with sockets to help them stay onto the wooden hafts and lining a long wooden staff with razor-sharp fragments of a black stone.
However, while these tools will not serve to break the rocks that impede the way down very well, another avenue is proposed within the song...
As the Queen and her Singer child contemplate the vast music that contains all the history and knowledge of their species, the Queen begins to better understand how to shape and modify her children, but they also begin to uncover another weapon, useful for shaping material and for driving away dangerous animals from a young nest.
Fire.
Fire? I feel like next turn we're going to burn the entire forest down.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That just gives us more farmland
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Not exactly sure what I was thinking when I decided to spar, but I kinda want to continue down that road. Mayhap create the equivalent of a militia or something. Or just a really swole Worker. I dunno.