gathering site, where she mates with as many as fifty of them to begin a new hive population Drones sacrifice themselves for the honor and the pleasure Newly fertile, the young queen then returns to her hive, or seeks out an entirely new location for a hive, to begin laying eggs In the meantime, the workers open up the brood chamber again, emptying the cells of food so the new queen can lay eggs to replace the missing population Thus the Krikis expand across the face of Khitus Krikis occasionally overthrow a reigning queen when something goes wrong, such as when the queen suffers an injury, becomes ill, or grows too old to lay healthy eggs House workers guide the queen into laying eggs in cells that they secretly remodel into queen cells Guard Krikis on hand closely watch this conspiracy and the other workers only proceed with their approval The workers then keep the queen away from those cells while the new queens mature When the first one hatches, the house krikis simply hope for this younger and presumably stronger queen to attack and kill the old one in battle, after which she takes nominal control of the hive Warriors, in addition to patrolling the environs around a hive, spend some time each year scouting out new locations for hives before the next swarming When a scout warrior finds a cavern, it explores to measure the dimensions of the cavity and its relative humidity for suitability as a hive location Ideally, a site has only one main entrance, which limits the amount of guard Krikis needed when it becomes a hive Intraspecies Warfare & Krikis Rivalry Krikis only breed in communal societies, and aside from the intelligent warriors, live out their lives within those societies Krikis of the three major colors (black, red, & yellow) hate each other intensely and battle over resources constantly However rare, single hives can also erupt in massive civil wars, often but not exclusively instigated by a new queen’s failure to depose an older, established hive queen Krikis wage war in search of food, to defend territory, to obtain slaves, and for other reasons It is a misconception that warriors conduct all the fighting In fact, workers and drones are more often in the thick of hive-focused battles, driven by instinctual impulses or chemical triggers from a queen Such combatants often give way to allow warriors better access to the enemy when they arrive on the scene Krikis behavior is driven by smells The lack of food smell drives them to gather more The smell of an ailing queen drives workers to aid her or make arrangements for her demise The smell of enemies—or specifically non-members of one’s hive—drives them to battle 50 They recognize members of the same hive via special password scents that nurse workers provide when pupae first mature into adults If enemies gain a password scent, that Krikis hive could not defend effectively against them, even if such were hated other-colored Krikis Scents or chemical triggers matter more than the color of one’s chitin in a pinch Some Krikis hives are slavers, attacking other hives, and the hives of other large insects or insectoids They carry off immature larvae that then hatch among the enslaving hive The young mature believing they always belonged with the slavers Krikis slaver hives have only queen and warrior castes, while all other hive members are slaves captured from other species These rare but powerful hives strike fear throughout the Hivelands The Megha Stone The reputed solitary source of ‘bright lode,’ the necessary component for the creation of black steel alloy ganshyer, is the Megha Stone which lies in a remote valley deep the Krikis Hivelands Ganshyer is immune to the Iron Virus that is slowly denuding the world of steel, making it extremely valuable Krikis warriors who carry bright lode with them beyond their borders find a ready market for it Few Krikis know the Megha Stone’s exact location, though it is thought to be somewhere near the Rift Racially, it is not terribly important to any one hive’s survival, so it is largely ignored Any expedition into the Hivelands without considerable Krikis assistance would be doomed to fail Rumors & Whispers While there are more lies than truths about Krikis afloat among the human tribes, few rumors surprise or shock humans after hearing of the cruelties from the Chitin Wars For the most part, rumor is all most folk hear about any Krikis, save for those near Gathush who bought such knowledge at the price of hard experience and warfare Even so, few “sages” or knowledgeable folk like the Gare Attessa choose to confess to knowing nothing, so they spread vicious lies rather than admit ignorance Some of the more popular current lies on the winds recently include: • Warrior Krikis are exiles and wander farther from their hives because the “bugs” resent their growing intellects • Warrior Krikis seek better human-made weapons to return to the Hivelands to overthrow some hated queens Trading in bright lode is one accepted method to get more such weapons in the Hivelands