The Tlakeli mutated from the Tlaka. Collectively the Tlaka and their variants are called the Tlak.
Appearance
A Tlakeli worker is about a meter in length and vaguely ant-shaped. Most workers are completely indistinguishable; the queens can be three to five meters in length. Individuals live for only a few years, but hives exist for centuries.
A worker’s front two limbs are fully prehensile, and their middle limbs are clumsy but can be used to grasp. Tlakeli usually walk on the back four limbs, but can stand upright and walk on the back two at a slower pace. Their chitin serves as light armor. Workers have been known to use weapons, although not with great skill; they can also bite with powerful jaws, and claw with one arm at a time.
A few hives have “warriors”: man-sized, stronger, with larger mouthparts and deadly claws. They seem to be semi-autonomous, but not too bright … more like expendable hands than parts of the Tlakeli brain.
Hives have one or two “drones”, males who mate with new queens. Queens are human-sized but otherwise similar to drones.
Special Abilities
Tlakeli from the same hive share a single hive mind. Its intelligence and personality derives from the collective mind and behavior of individuals. The hive will readily expend workers … up until a point, since hive intelligence is proportional to hive size. While a few members are specially adapted for certain tasks, most notably the queens, no worker is strictly necessary. The only way to kill a hive is to kill more than half of the workers, although natural disasters or strong magics can permanently destroy worker intercommunication and destroy the collective mind.
Tactics
Tlakeli will attack if threatened, especially if one threatens the hive. They will attack without mercy, sacrificing wave upon wave of workers and warriors, until either the attacker is slain or the hive loses more than half of its workers. Note that the death of the queen dooms the hive to extinction within a few years, but the hive will want to take its killer down before then.
Ecology
Tlakeli thrive wherever (giant) ants can live, which is virtually anywhere with soil soft enough to dig, temperatures above freezing and below half the boiling point, and at least traces of food and water.
Tlakeli hives have little in common with “individuals”, but it may exploit other species for its needs … or its amusement.
TLAKELI (Nomad)
A full Hive can contain:
- 1 Queen
- 0 or 1 Kings
- 2D × 100 Larvae
- 1D-1 × 100 Warriors
- 2D × 1000 Workers
Scavenging parties generally consist of 2D Workers and 0 or 1 Warriors.
| Caste | Size | Stamina | Armor | Damage | C | P | St | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Larva | Tiny | 6 | 0 | jaws 1D-2D | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Drone | Small | 14 | 6 | claws 1D+1D | 2 | 2 | 1 | |
| Queen | Medium | 23 | 6 | claws 1D+1D | 2 | 3 | 0 | |
| Queen, Gravid | Giant | 33 | 6 | claws 1D+1D | 2 | 3 | 0 | |
| Warrior | Medium | 23 | 4 | claws 1D+1D | 1 | 3 | 2 | |
| Worker | Small | 14 | 4 | claws 1D | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Talents/Abilities/Inabilities
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Crude Hands: Tlakeli can operate simple mechanisms but lack the fine manipulation anatomy and skills for true tool use.
-
Hive Mind: See below.
TLAKELI, Hive Mind (Nomad)
All members of a hive are part of a single distributed psionic Hive Mind. Generate a particular Hive Mind’s skills as follows:
- Combat, Physical, and Stealth come from the Workers acting as the hive’s “hands”, “eyes”, and “legs”.
- Knowledge 1D-1D-11
- Social 1D-2D-12
- Technology 1D-2D-12
- Vehicles 0
Hives have no Talents or Archetypes.
Hives with a Social of 0 have no language comprehensible to non-Tlak. For each point of Social, the Hive has learned one local written language, which it uses its members to write out and read.