The Great Swarm

notbirdofprey · Jan 3, 2022

The Swarm was in danger. The Not-Swarm in their myriad, incomprehensible forms crept every closer. Gravity spikes were deployed to pull their fleets from warp, and still they came. Life-forged ships as large as moons swept through the formations, plasma spewing from thousands of orifices in all-destroying waves, and still they came. The Song of the High Queens shattered material and turned the Not-Swarm into prophets of the glory of the Swarm, and still they came.

A desperate scheme was hatched. A single Queen, shorn of all that could be shorn, and a stealthy droneship was sent forth to the uncharted depths of space.

The ship crashes on a vibrant world, rich in biomass and minerals. A cloud of dust is thrown into the air, and flocks of winged reptiles startle and squawk. The ship itself burrows into the earth and then comes to a stop, and the queen awakens.

She Sings, and nothing responds. She is alone. But that is not the way of the Swarm, and instincts drive her to action. She eats at the inside of the ship, carving out a more comfortable chamber and filling her reserves with biomass.

Intricate organs within her shape it, and then her belly splits open. A dozen round balls coated in glistening fluids fall out. The queen lies on top of them, chirruping to them in rhythm and carefully maintaining the correct temperature. After a time, they split open, and out crawl her first workers. She Sings to them, and they respond in Chorus.

She chirrups happily and tells them of what she needs. They respond, eager and obedient, giving praise to the Queen, praise she returns with enthusiasm. Though bound to her will, they are intelligent creatures in their own right, communicating through Song and scent, creating their own plans and schemes to better fulfill the Queen's goals. But she is content to sit back and brood as she waits for enough biomass to create more workers. The Swarm grows once more, safe from all who wish it harm.

Welcome to the Swarm Quest! Inspired by @ScottishMongol wonderful Ant Quest, this is a riot quest where you play a hive of alien creatures. The various workers and other possible forms will seek to improve the hive, directed by you in the form of a riot quest - the more votes a particular action gets, the higher the proportion of Hive Power gets spent on it.

Turn 1
Hive Power: 6
Biomass Reserves: Critical
Mineral Reserves: None
Known Forms: Worker

[] Gather biomass
[] Explore
-[] Direction
[] Excavate chamber
-[] Purpose and direction
[] Mediate on the Song
[] Tend the Queen

notbirdofprey · Jan 4, 2022

Gather biomass - 10 votes
Explore around nest - 3 votes

The majority of the Swarm's attention is on gathering further biomass A full two-thirds of the workers devote their every waking hour to feeding the Queen and their broodmates. They burst from the nest in an explosion of limbs and antenna and begin scouring the area for matter that can be used for meals. Plants are ripped up and stored in sacks for digestion and processing, the soil is filtered for small creatures who are liquefied in the worker's guts, and two pairs, working in tandem, chase down a small herd of hexapodal, brown creatures that browse on the foliage of tall, twisting trees. They are slain and dragged back to the hive, their meat and organs food for the queen, their bones cast aside at the edge of the nest out of some unknowable instinct.

Poisons developed to ward away curious herbivores are no match for the potent digestion of the Swarm, and the liquefied, processed plants and animals are spread out across each worker and the queen, who rewards the workers who bring her food with gentle brushes of her antenna against theirs. They chirrup in praise of their mother and go to seek out more food.

While the majority of their attention was on gathering food, they did pay attention to their surroundings. The nest is in the midst of a long furrow, clear of any obstructions. Debris litters both sides of the furrows: shattered branches, crushed undergrowth, and more. Beyond it are interlocking trees, their trunks slim and straight but their branches winding. Fruits that smell strongly of sugar hang from the tops, beyond the reach of the workers, and grey-skinned simians cavort among the branches, hooting at the newcomers. In the far east, a wall of grey can be seen. The air from that direction feels wet on the worker's antennae.

Dig - 2 votes
Excavate Nursery/Spawning Chamber/Queen's Refuge - 4 votes
Excavate Biomass Farming Chamber - 1 vote
Fortify - 1 vote

Most of the rest of the Swarm seeks to expand their nest. One worker, immediately seized by instinct, begins to burrow down, heaving great piles of dirt out from the back of the queen's chamber and tunneling a hole that leads nearly straight down. Two more follow after, pressing the walls of the tunnel firm, and then finding two suitable spots. They work in careful unison, one hauling dirt away as the other digs out a comfortable chamber sized for the queen, ensuring she has ample room to turn around and roll over, with a small, personal store of biomass secured for her in the back of the chamber should the worst come to worst.

After the Queen is carried down by the two workers, they mark out a second spot, spraying it instinctively with pheromones indicating the purpose it will have: to store their waste and encourage the growth of fungi that can be harvested for more biomass. They know their are better ways to farm, an instinct just beyond their reach...

The spoil from the digging is automatically piled up around the nest entrance, lifting it off the ground to make a hill that can be better defended. Marks and pheromone sprays are made, indicating future plans of greater grandeur, but that is all that can be done for now.

Tend the Queen - 2 votes
Meditate on the Song - 4 votes

The workers also take time to ensure the comfort of the Queen, carefully rubbing her body clean of any filth, driving away any insects or burrowing creatures that dare to discomfit her, and otherwise giving her attention. As they do, they hear her Song and listen instinctively...much of it is strange to the minds of the Queen and the workers both, full of contextless images and nonsense sounds, but gradually some order is drawn from it.

The workers rest, but even as they rest they hear the Song, and the difficulties they encountered are Sung of. Answers are sought by the Queen, acting on the same instinct that causes the workers to gaze at that distant eastern wall. The workers desired food that was too high for them to grasp. The workers desired a better way to grow food. The workers desired to know just why they discarded those bones...and the Queen found hints of answers in her Song.

She Sung those hints to the workers and encouraged them. The Swarm would grow. There would be more answers in the Song.

notbirdofprey · Jan 4, 2022

The Queen felt another egg slipping from her belly as she ate from the bounty of meat offered by one of her children. All seemed well, even as she heard the workers grumble to each other about the delicious-smelling fruit they could not reach. She studied the embryonic form of the worker growing within the eggs, and wondered if it could have its legs reshaped, to have hooked claws to bite into the trunks.

A worker carried a load of dirt and dumped it at the base of the nest, before raising one limb and studying the flat extension at the end of it, split into six clumsy digits. It studies a broad bone that lay off to one side, and then tried to graso for it.

Turn 2
Hive Power: 8
Biomass Reserves: Low
Mineral Reserves: None
Known Forms: Worker

[] Gather biomass
[] Hunt animals
[] Gather plants
[] Try to gather the fruits
[] Explore
-[] Direction
[] Excavate chamber
-[] Purpose and direction
[] Fortify the nest
[] Mediate on the Song
[] Tend the Queen
[] Mediate on Notes
-[] The Note of Grown Biomass
-[] The Note of Shaping Life
-[] The Note of Better Use

(Notes are fragments of knowledge gained from the Song. Meditating on them can gain further information about what they mean, and unlock new abilities or forms)

notbirdofprey · Jan 7, 2022

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

notbirdofprey · Jan 10, 2022

The Queen envisioned the form her newest child would take. It would have a bulbous mind and a series of spines to better hear and understand the Song. Her head rose and fell in a steady rhythm as she Sang to it, and strange organs within her began to stir, crackling with strange energies, the mind and will of the Swarm providing them with unnatural energies they used to reshape flesh and rewrite genes.

Even as she learned to change her children to better serve the Swarm, the existing workers labored, with many ambitions for the Hive, from filled biomass reserves to vast farms to mighty fortifications to simple things like a more comfortable chamber for the Queen or some delicious fruits for them all to share.

Turn 3
Hive Power: 12
Biomass Reserves: Low
Mineral Reserves: None
Known Forms: Worker

[] Gather biomass
[] Hunt animals
[] Gather plants
[] Try to gather the fruits
[] Explore
-[] Direction
[] Excavate chamber
-[] Purpose and direction
[] Fortify the nest
[] Mediate on the Song
[] Tend the Queen
[] Mediate on Notes
-[] The Note of Better Use
[] Construct farms
[] Experiment with tools

notbirdofprey · Jan 14, 2022

Try to gather the fruits - 5 votes
Hunt animals - 2 votes
Gather biomass - 2 votes

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.

Construct farms - 4 votes

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.

Dig down - 2 votes
Dig exploratory tunnels - 1 vote
Fortify upwards - 1 vote

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.

Tend the Queen - 1 vote

After the Queen's exertions, she is led back into the nest, offered meals of delicious fruits and freshly grown plants.

Mediate on the Song -2 votes
Meditate on the Note of Better use - 1 vote

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.

notbirdofprey · Jan 14, 2022

As the Swarm labored around her, the Queen thought. She did not Sing, but kept her thoughts close to herself. The Swarms she had seen had been incomprehensibly vast and mighty. The Queens had impossible intelligence, and created enormous swarms of lethal warforms. They wielded mighty technologies and turn the Song itself into a weapon. And it had availed them not.

The conclusion she came to made her hearts tremble and ache, for it seemed a heresy against her very instincts, but she knew she could not depend wholly on what the Song told her. For others far greater and more skilled in it had used the Song's knowledge...and it had not been enough.

She would have to find a different path.

As she thought of this, the plants she had introduce for her children began to farm slowly spread across the fields, choking out the native grasses as the workers consumed them for more biomass.

Turn 4
Hive Power: 12
Biomass Reserves: Low
Mineral Reserves: None
Infrastructure: Basic Farms (small)
Technology: Primitive tools
Known Forms: Worker, Basic Listener

[] Gather biomass
[] Hunt animals
[] Gather plants
[] Try to gather the fruits
[] Explore
-[] Direction
[] Excavate chamber
-[] Purpose and direction
[] Fortify the nest
[] Mediate on the Song
[] Tend the Queen
[] Construct farms
[] Experiment with tools
[] Make tools
[] Irrigate farms
[] Repair then Nest

notbirdofprey · Jan 22, 2022

Gather biomass - 3 votes
Expand the farms - 2 votes
Irrigate farms - 1 vote

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.

Gather materials - 1 vote
Construct gladiatorial arena - 1 vote
Spar - 1 vote
Dig exploratory tunnels - 1 vote
Dig living chambers - 1 vote

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.

Experiment with tools - 5 votes
Contemplate better down - 2 votes

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...

Meditate on the Song - 2 votes

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.

notbirdofprey · Jan 25, 2022

The Swarm rests. They are weary from their labors and their fighting. Their bellies are full of biomass from farming, their minds are restful in the knowledge that their Queen is safe.

Outside, the farms grow ever so slightly, the aggressive species that serve the Swarm exterminating other life and using it to fuel their own growth so they can better feed the Swarm.

Meanwhile, the roof of the tunnels tremble just slightly, as trickles of dirt begin to fall...

Turn 5
Hive Power: 14
Biomass Reserves: Sufficient
Mineral Reserves: None
Infrastructure: Basic Farms (medium)
Technology: Simple tools
Known Forms: Worker, Basic Listener

[] Gather biomass
[] Hunt animals
[] Gather plants
[] Try to gather the fruits
[] Explore
-[] Direction
[] Excavate chamber
-[] Purpose and direction
[] Fortify the nest
[] Mediate on the Song
[] Tend the Queen
[] Construct farms
[] Experiment with tools
[] Make tools
[] Irrigate farms
[] Repair then Nest

The Great Swarm

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