Aww that's right!
If there's contact between the races, than things just got a lot more interesting as that could mean cultural exchanges that may lead to Urashi presence outside the Uarash continent. I don't think they'd have as many conflicts as another species like Dacyirii would due to different preferences in habitat, but they probably still don't like each other much, being likely indifferent on the whole and probably have gotten into some pretty big historical wars. There is however potential good trade due to the Urashi access to metals and the Dacyirii's domesticates.
..Which is good thing, seeing the common enemy and affiliation. Both species affiliate them selves to the planet, and hate these sky demons. They just have different ways of expressing it.
I imagine humans are going to be pissed at my species for they like being around the shiny resources and earth earth materials. It's like crack to them.\
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Faction NameThe Uarsh
"The earth shook. They came pouring through."
-unknown
Faction TypeNative
AffiliationDarcyia, where else?
Leader(s)The Gip-uiam [TRANSLATION: Deep Ones], most notably the silent watcher of the devourers, Idi-Jasiuia [The divine Bastard] who despises the devourers and their rape of the world. And has called upon the deep ones from the northern swamps to the southern wastes to cease the struggles of time and spirit.
While those calls went unheard in the south, yet in the north they were heard. And with that Idi-Jasiuia unanimously became the divine bastard, for she was the bastard that opened awareness to the hive-states and made what for so long was paranoid fear reality: There is a new force on the planet, that force will stop at nothing to devour each and every one of them, and it is on their door step.
For once again in the endless canon of Uarash existence there proved to be a need of the divine bastard. As there had been in great attrition of the hills, as there was in the southern crusade, or the western plight, as there needed to be in retaliation of the Dacyirii menace when they commenced the rape of Musiko...
The great uniter of the hive states! The savior of life! The redeemer, the wise. It is time.
Commanding from the depths the vast armies of the united hive states, the northern hives will have their crusade and their redemption. The other hives be damned to agony under the boot of the devourers for their ignorance.
Persons of Importance: There is no most important, and while there is figures like the mother Sconam who ensured the loyalty of the northern hives, there are the countless workers in the caves who spend their passions on the great ambition that is working for the effort against the devourers, and the guided warriors from the violent eastern shelf- the Thinking Dead, who will strike the concept of fear into the minds of the devourers, lest they don’t.
While the northern hives united, only some in the East joined the effort while those in the south and west chose to remain ignorant, unable to get past old prejudices and hatreds. But those hives still hold relevant in their own way... Just not the good sort.
Military/Civilian Castes Here's some examples castes often seen in hives.
CivilianSwarm Castes
Swarm castes tend to not have much movement, if only due to the short life time of the typical Uarsh regardless of their caste.
Diggers- They dig the tunnels and maintain them.
Cultivators- The cultivators keep the farms cultivated and running, as well they make sure the fungi grows and make sure the suppliers keep to their quotas.
Suppliers- Supply and distribute food, resources and other goods to the rest of the hive.
Gatherers- Go to the surface to gather food.
Retrievers- Retrieves the cobalt. This caste is notorious for sometimes when no one is looking, trying to infuse itself with cobalt. Making this caste often watched by members of the military caste when they retrieve the cobalt.
Talkers- Sent out diplomatically to fertilize another hive's deep ones. Sorta like their version of a princess.
Cobalt- Rare swarmer that is given free will through a cobalt infusion. It's not known why some mothers do this, but it is known that mothers have no control of a cobalt infused uarshi, not even the thinking dead can influence them. Often cobalts are the result of a retriever infusing themselves- which often leads to them being pariahs.
Mother Castes
Mother castes are more fluid than they look, as the mothers can pick which caste they want to be with the exception of the deep ones who pick who they want in their elite club.
Rider- Mothers that ride the giant bird. Quite rare, and a very recent phenomenon used by mothers trying to find new places to make a hive on the planet.
Manager- Keeps the hive in order using their presence.
Theocrat- Ensures the faith, records the history using glyphs etched in the walls. Reminds the swarm of the warmth of the core and the coldness of the sky, and how ineffective workers go to the sky to get eaten by the giant birds.
Deep One- The highest authorities are deep ones. They manage the managers, so to speak and work internally to plan out the hive as a whole and deal with political problems the rest of the hive generally cares nothing of since there's no real impact of wars other than more military opportunities. Tend to be infused with Cobalt in the ritual to become a deep one.
MilitarySwarm Castes
Swarmer- Most common, they're just diggers with even sharper claws intended to dig through flesh.
Basher- Swarmers given small club-like weapons to smash through the hide of a enemy mother.
Stabber- Swarmers given pick-like devices to cut through flesh faster.
Ranger- Uses ranged weapons like atlatls.
Dagger- Uses daggers traded with the Dacyirii.
Suicide- Rushes into the enemy to try to jam formations through their dead corpse.
Guide- Specialist swarmer designed to track pheromone trails for the swarm armies to follow. They are given exceptionally long pheromone baths before being sent out.
Mother Castes
Commander- Commands the armies, but from a distance and generally thinks in strategy. Makes pheromone trails for their armies to follow as well, abeilt the bigger ones as they have the guide swarmers go first.
Combat- Fights in direct combat with its swarmers, often making use of a cleaver-like weapon based of Dacyirii designs or a large spear. Also are known to throw their swarmers at enemy combat mothers.
Thinking Dead- Direct combat mothers who are enhanced with cobalt to take control of the swarmers of a enemy army. Considered very dangerous.
Brief HistoryThe history of the Uarshi is long and ancient, and effectively consists of perpetual competition of the hives for cobalt. They are possessed by their obsession with it, the deep ones in power willing to expend almost half their hive to secure one good deposit. It is their faith. It is their giver is life. It is something they will fight to the death for from the divine bastard to the lowliest of the swarm caste. They aren't a very technological society, far from it- their innovation came in making bigger mounds, maker deeper hives and having vast populations kept fed through a elaborate tunnel system to cultivate vast amounts of food underground. Yet they still use stone age technologies beyond what they've adapted slowly from the other sapients on the planet.
Their politics are very feudal in their nature, and while the pacing is as fast any other society, the actual actions tend to be astoundingly slow in pacing as a war can easily go on for a century in their turf as the wars are fought in attrition in a tug of war-type conflict as opposed to using force to coerce submission of the enemy. However, from time to time a hive does get clever and experiment. After thousands of years of experimentation along with trial and error there is a multitude of bizarre tricks the Urashi are known to do to gain the edge in their plight for the cobalt. An unfortunate result of this would be that the divine bastard wasn't able to unite much more than the northern hives and a few of the eastern ones, and due to the breakneck rate the devourers move intends to begin the crusade at what many deep ones deem "way too premature"- all in all despite it being clear that if they wiat another ten years that there probably won't be a Uarsh left.
There is a legendary hive that is once said to have existed that ruled the whole continent, and attributed the cobalt fairly among all. Many hives seek to achieve this goal through both force and diplomacy, but have have ever totally succeeded due to the clan-based culture in the south and their nomadic ways. What the Deep Ones spent tons of time [like, thousands of years] doing would be making artificial mountain-like mounds that contained vast, tight networks of tunnels where cobalt would be stashed in the belief that no one would go into the air. But not everyone is Urashi.
Around a few thousand years before contact with humans, there was a Dacyirii invasion that resulted in the biggest mound the Uruashi made ["Musiko"] getting destroyed from large stones dropped on it, causing it to collapse internally leading to lots of death for many on the ground due to the landslides. After that event further cultural exchange happened, even if the foreign race kept the Uarshi on its toes more than the times before they made their accidental incursions which resulted in the Urashi getting out their swarms. But things got more peaceful due to the lack of competition between the species due to taking different ecological niches.
For the most part, the hives and their mothers kept to themselves in their corner of the world as did the giants [presumably]. A long period of peace begun, despite the slow erosion of the deep one's power from the cobalt infused swarmers that started running amok in the southern wastes anarchically like the giants do.
But than came the devourers and the world would never be the same again.
Other
Devourer is their term for human, mainly since they associate humans more with the machines. They made a similar conception with the Dacyirii, thinking that the birds they rode were the masters. However here, with humans being recent and in equipment very alien to their understanding they’ve made that same assumption again. The Uarsh think humans are slaves to their machines, and the machines are some sort of demonic force that runs off of souls.
Deep Ones rule from the bottom of the hive instead of the top, and are a oligarchy of the most powerful mothers.
The mothers are basically female Uarsh, and the Uarsh are a vehemently matriarchal society in a sense because anything not a bother is of the many castes that exist, of which are countless due to all the different caste ideas different hives have in mind.
Notable castes being the talker caste which is a cast where a fertile male is sent to do diplomacy with a rival hive [kinda like a princess], the thinking dead who are a specialized cast of combat mothers whose chemical-based control of the swarm bypasses the normal barriers due to overdosing of cobalt, the guided caste which are used to scout and leaves pheromone tracks in the case the leading mother on the field dies... List goes on.
Their superstition believes in a co-existing realm of life that is the after life, that exists in the core of the planet where it is most warm. Hell to them is the sky- the cold, bleak sky and the flying monsters that come down from it. While they finally conquered their fear of flying beasts cycles ago, the fact humans come down in spaceships does not bode well at all to the Uarsh.
There's a lot to the Uarsh I haven't acutely described yet I should warn. It's just that i'm still trying to figure out 100% what they should look like as well as thinking a bit of what the ecosystem's like. Any help with the ecosystem would be nice. For one they have some level of individual thought, but not when in the presence of the mothers.
For the time being i’m going to torture people in trying to imagine their appearance until I can finalize the design I intended through drawing. I’ll just say they’re not bug or squid-like.
Advancement wise they're not that advanced, they have okay metallurgy, but their strong point is in their underground networks built over tens of thousands of years and man power. They lack the individual strength of a Dacyirii, as well they lack the beast affinity Dacyirii have. As a result they're not dominant except on their continent.
The glorious stones are meant to be cobalt and gold by the way, which happens to be in large concentrations on the Uarsh continent.
Despite the biases of the text, they really are just a pseudo hive-mind that consists of a bunch of drug addicts going to extremes in order so secure their drugs.
[But alas, a human faction still could base themselves there as there are still many untapped resources awaiting to be mined using vastly more advanced technology].
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App is a WIP, i’ll finish it later and with input from newsun on how interactions could go with contact. I want the rape of Musiko to still exist as a ancient event, however. Also waiting for a human faction to colonize a part of the area for profit.
Also, who wanna put a human colony on the Uarsh continent? They got rare earth materials. Shoot them and take their stuff!
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