The beta for the Hivemind Wasps is out!
Hivemind Wasps are a new race made for Masterwork 34.11
The Hivemind Wasps are a race of sentient wasps. As their name suggests, they share a hive mind, but each one of them also has a distinct personality, like every other race. What's unlike other races in their mentality, is their inability to communicate with other races, or even regard them as sentient. That means a hive will have few to no allies.
Hivemind Wasps are mostly genderless, with the exception of the Queen, which is female and the Drones, which are male. The Queen does not need Drones to reproduce, but unless the eggs have been fertilized by a Drone, the larvae coming out of them will only give birth to more Drones. Queens are also extremely territorial and if they sense the presence of another Queen, the two will start fighting for supremacy.
The first stage of a Wasp's life is that of a larva. In order for a larva to become a Wasp, it must first infect a humanoid or a large animal. A hive does it either in specially made "larvae pits" or through an Infectory for a more controlled operation. Once a larva infects a creature, it feeds on it for a few months, and then it emerges from it as a fully fledged Wasp. The process is obviously fatal for the infected creature.
Hives are usually made out of a material called Paper Cement, essentially a mixture of wood and waspen saliva. Wasps can produce this material in great quantities and even make objects out of it, or mix it with metal. It light, practical and easy to produce, but also flammable and cheap.
Wasps use all sorts of insects as livestock and war animals: From tiny silk producing spiders to enormous worms, if there's a job wasps have an animal to help them.
Waspen armies are very versatile. A typical waspen army will be composed of units of soldier caste shock troopers, followed by worker and drone archers and supported by mounted troops riding giant worms, giant scorpions and other creatures. They also make use of mutated wasps called Praetorians and Aberrants, and sometimes slaves as cannon fodder.
Their religion looks a bit like the elven religion, since they don't follow specific gods. Where it differs, however, is that instead of worshiping nature, wasps worship ancient creatures living in dark caverns. A large enough hive will usually have a Shrine for them and may try to draw their attention through sacrifices. If a "god" is loyal to the hive, Wasps could not have hoped for a more powerful ally. However, many hives have fallen to violent attacks from the "gods" they were trying to summon.
In recent years, Wasps have perfected the art of grafting organs or limbs into creatures and using warpstone to mutate the hapless lab rat. Although some Wasps scorn the practice, more and more hives show up with acid spitting soldiers and gargantuan praetorians.
Think of a mix between elves (lots of war creatures, extra uses for wood and generally nature themed) and kobolds (90% of the hive will be weak and frail, potentially very fast breeding, meat and leather are very important, play with poison) with some elements from warlocks (tinker with living creatures, give strange interactions to your guys) and succubi (exploit prisoners to grow your hive). Then add various forms of biological and chemical warfare and some themes from Alien, Skaven and the Tyranids.
They are aligned with the Savage faction (centaurs, kobolds, naga, werewolves)
-Unique weapons including various slings, compound bow and two iron fists
-Make sling bullets out of stone and clay
-Produce great quantities of paper cement blocks through the wood pulper
-Many unique pets
-You are the weapon:alter the stats of your soldier castes and animals, give them special interactions (acid spitting, web throwing, fiery breath and temporary/great boosts to strength or toughness to name a few) or coat your soldiers' stings with metal
-Grow your own organic weapons and armor without using metal
-Sacrifice unnecessary or troublesome wasps and use their brain and their meat as a resource
-Coat your weapons with venom or enchant them using waspen brain essences
-Infect your prisoners with larvae
-Summon random insects through the Hive Caller, or really big insects through the Shrine To The Depths. Beware, because the latter are risky
There may be a few bugs lying around, but the most important ones have been fixed.
ManualHow To InstallJust Drag and drop in Masterwork/Dwarf Fortress and overwrite wherever it's required
Recommended Settings-Workshops:Slaughterhouse, Herbalist, Potter, Furniture Shop, Brewery, Archeologist, Chandler (rendermax)
-Furnaces: Metallurgist, Kiln, Brazier(rendermax), Candlelabra,(rendermax),Fireplace(rendermax), Torchbearer(rendermax), Gem Of Light(rendermax)
-Harder Mining enabled
-extra reactions for vanilla workshops enabled
This mod is proudly brought to you by:
Insanegame27 (owner)
than402 (co-owner)
Heydude6 (co-owner)
damnthedog
Meph
and the others in
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=141987.0 and
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=143774.0Special thanks to Boltgun for letting us use his script, Vitellozzo for his invaluable feedback and everyone that has contributed by posting an idea, feedback or helped in any other way.
We're currently working on updating it to 40.xx. We are pretty close to updating our raw files, but we have to wait until the spawn unit script is bug free and the add minion/mount/pet/pull/pack to civ scripts have been updated.
