#that and i needed some way for aggregor to sneak in and yank the bitch because damn son he gonna fuck with a colony otherwise

[whatudottu]

I love having a job that doesn’t require thought, it let’s me think about aliens as I go about cleaning other people’s messes (and getting a good grade in floor cleaning that is both normal and possible to achieve)-

On tonight’s agenda, let’s talk talpeadans and Poiana Lüncas, this time a little bit on worldbuilding and sociology!

I’ve been here screaming at the top of my hill that among the obvious reference to armadillos and pangolin that talpeadans would take after (and the somewhat excuse of techno organic construction lads), I have made myself clear that I like my aliens weird and given some ant bullshit to work with. Originally the whole idea of talpaedans with ant biology was to source in extra different construction machine types and spread them all out in one megacity of a union, literally a colony of workers all under the family name.

What I kind of forgot after making those ideas is the evolutionary reason for it in ants both socially and biologically... and given how real world ants are territorial and absolutely vitriolic towards another colony...

Hmm, I shan’t say it, but I did not like the implications.

But, this was not a dead end; let’s work on the overall culture of Poiana Lüncas before moving into the why because that will set the context for my idea.

Poiana Lüncas, a planet of deserts, rocky plains and a terrible terrible problem with tectonic activity, houses the many families of talpaedans, who live in united megacity sized colonies named after their matriarch/boss/leader. When young talpaedans are given their name, they are also given the name of their city - of their people’s queen - as their family name. And with that family name came with it a deep ingrained sense of ‘us vs them’ amongst the colonies where loyalties lie only in the blood of another’s veins. With cities expanding across larger and larger regions, there was eventually no more room to simply ignore the other colonies and their queens buried deep within, stepping on other’s toes became inevitable.

Taken from how ants hate the utter fucking shit out of each other, I think that a full colony of ant armadillos with built in mechanics would absolutely go apeshit with an almost literal arms race of (what was at first) construction technology to full blown ‘i can no longer stand the sight of you’ weapons technology (and testing) warfare. Perhaps indeed to the point where some aspects of the land have forever been changed (big fucking trench equivalents for a burrowing species, war scarred plains now turned artificial desert) which leads to this;

i’ll get to that when i get to that, but galapagus saying ‘by addwaitya’ means something and i have thoughts

But eventually, wars do end- even if the tensions on Poiana Lüncas are so fucking thick it serves as bullet proof glass. And with that ending of at least one major fucking war between the family colonies (even humans couldn’t stick to one world war, let alone the many had before and after), arrangements had to be made to keep the peace.

Let’s bring in the biology, boys; this is where I add lions to my talpaedan headcanons.

Because of the haplodiploidy of ants being built to increase genetic diversity (and operate on the point that they will not be seen with another colony alive), there is a little bit of built in self sustaining in colonies, because lads born and assigned males do not have any genetic sons nor fathers due to being born without fertilsation. Since ladies are born through a mother and father, where guys still have genetic connection with their mother even if they have half the DNA the ladies get, there’s bound to be something happening that can be interesting for an alien but also I don’t particularly want to think about- I’ve come too far to take back my ant headcanons though so-

What if because of that already baseline male/female unrelatedness of 50%, the major trade off for times of peace - no matter how temporary or tense the peace may be - would be to further increase that diversity by sending off their youngest but otherwise mature generation of sons off to another colony and then getting some new lads of their own. It’s a little less than a natural social behaviour that lions would follow - given that they’re regular mammals who don’t do it like colony insects and have a very clear relation to mother and father - perhaps it’s also a little sleazy too. But, much like ants, female talpaedans were already predisposed to do tons of work for the queen and the colony, to the point to being built to do those jobs the best (perhaps more construction vehicle mechanics rather than tools like jackhammers), while males were left to do other stuff more routed in the city.

With the trade of fresh blood with new little quirks that the colony didn’t have before, newly mature talpaedan blokes are sent to rough and tumble it across the quite literal dead man zones between the megacities, traveling together as a group to cover their bases. Originally, all talpaedans followed the tradition of [given name] [family name], but it was with these new trade trails that a new one had come into development. The queens of each colony named the city and named all those that are born under or even by her, but talpaedans assigned female at birth retained the same [given name] [family name] tradition, and for those assigned male at birth would instead have a trio of names; [given name] [family name] and now [trade name], where they upon arrival to their new colony are given their last name to now swear allegiance to.

And with these headcanons, I believe I have found a very ample opening for Aggregor to snipe out a talpaedan sample for his little treasure hunt. Instead of going toe to toe with a megacity of family members - those who are staunchly against outsiders of other talpaedans let alone a full on alien - and coming away successful with a lad to absorb, a very convenient troop of young men on a trade trail, across lands scarred with warfare and full of creatures predator or prey, surely no one truly expects every tradesman to make home safely to their new home.

I mean, if the deal is already sealed, why doesn’t Andreas have his third name?