Hive Queen Quest 54.2

We had to get it out of our system sooner or later user, it's been months since we had an honest free for all over whether we should have daughters or not.

Man it feels good to have this back, I missed you autismos.

Eh the daughter thing been a cause of shitstorms in the players everything since the start

That tends to happen when people turn off the logical part of their brain when confronted with any concept of adorable/cute
They should be considered when necessary, not for amusement(yet)

I don't mind daughterus but I want them when we have an actual empire going, not 3 worlds, two of which aren't even half developed.

I WONDER WHAT THE SCOUTING PODS ARE DOING

Daughters were valid as a contentious issue until Quest Drone literally came out and told us that they would be obedient, and some minor sibling rivalry is the worst we can expect.

FUCK YOUR PODS

WHEN THE FUCK IS THE SPACEWAR STARTING!!

Raligha isn't for a reason, but yeah. We need more worlds.

Your ships orbit the mysterious jungle covered planet as your drones continue to comb the surface. Debris from the Obsidian Queen's Hive ship has been mostly recovered, although portions of the hull had already begun to melt into her signature hive creep, consuming the surrounding life with surprising speed. What parts were found in time were recovered, while larger sections that had begun to spread were quickly expunged with fire by your drones before the contamination spreads too far.

The main hull of the massive craft was found shattered into segments and scattered over a river valley. The river had almost instantly been contaminated by the sleek, oily spores of the ship's hull, with thick inky ooze growing over the flora downstream. After a survey of the valley, your drones were forced to glass nearly fifty miles of jungle to prevent the spread of infection, while more surgical strikes are still underway, burning out the smaller of the hull pieces where smaller craft had crashed, some even spewing forth surviving crew, mad drones with only the agonized rage of a thinker separated from its mother to guide them. Control of space and air is yours, and your fighters and low flying corvettes make quick work of them, hunting down the survivors with unrelenting vigor.

The jungle burns through the night, turning the sky a deep orange as smoke fills the air for miles, casting a thick haze over the continent. As the day comes, and the sun rises, there is hardly any difference in light as the glow of fire is replaced with the haze of the local star smothered by the dense clouds and smoke.

Containment has been achieved. What remains of the wreckage is dead, and your drones split their attention between salvage and searching the surface for the source of that mental signal. You know you felt it, a sudden ping in your mind, a distant call like an echo of a voice shouted from over a hill reduced to an almost inaudible scream. Only for a moment.

cont.

The problem was never loyalty it's the fact it takes a year for a queen to mature we need to protect them as they grow and they need thier own space all things we can't give them

It's not a year, more like a couple of months. But thats still months that a planet is nonproductive. And we don't really have all that many planets of our own to begin with.

Clearly the answer is to conquer the Union.

>The Commonwealth agrees to be the little spoon if we thrash the Union for them.
heh

"Yes, Sure, We will deal with this union for you, but only if you let us put these little things on your spines"

I guess it all depends on what "sibling rivalry" actually entails. Among a lot of eusocial insects "sibling rivalry" can entail one sister enslaving or killing her weaker rivals to attain dominance.

Welp given what OB did to mom and gardener then we know how bad it can get

The planet is host to strange life, as a clearly geological planet has given rise to an unusual assortment of sharp, jagged spires of rock stabbing up from the ground like the protruding bones of a great corpse, slicing at the sky like knives. Beyond the torched and obliterated wastes left by the crash sites of your rival queen's ships, there is not much in the way of solid, flat terrain.

There is an odd sensation as you search the planet, as if you are being watched. The sensation is not often felt, but you know it with certainty. A psionic mind has it's attention turned to your activities here, but its signal is far from strong, hardly more than a ripple through the static of the universe. It feels like it builds up for some time, as if gathering strength, until there is a sharp burst. A distant cry that can hardly be understood. A desperate whisper as if spoken from a death bed.

"Ẃ̡́҉͘h̵̢̨̀o͢͏̀ ̨̕͜͜͠á҉̧ŗ̷̛͘e͘ ̧̛͡͏͞y͝ǫ̸̵͡͡u̶͟?̴̢̢́̕"

>Call back to the voice (write in)
>Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location
>Other (write in)

But first we must give second heart! We improve yes!

>Call back to the voice (Yes we hear pain child, Tell us who and where you are!)
>Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location

>Call back to the voice
Not OB

They don't need space while maturing, the main character queen woke up for the first time already able to do everything she's able to do right now.

>"Ẃ̡́҉͘h̵̢̨̀o͢͏̀ ̨̕͜͜͠á҉̧ŗ̷̛͘e͘ ̧̛͡͏͞y͝ǫ̸̵͡͡u̶͟?̴̢̢́̕"
creepy.
>>Call back to the voice (write in)
>We are your enemies enemy

Just another whisper on the wind.
>>Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location

>Call back to the voice (write in)
Friends to the enemies of the dark queen and her brood.

No, not even that much was left to interpretation. It was stated that they would be obedient towards mom, but might have some border skirmishes between themselves. If you're afraid that one of them would try to eat another, then we could easily tell them to stop it before it got to that. We are dealing with intelligent people here, not mindless insects.

Supporting this >Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location

>Call back to the voice (who are you?)

>>Call back to the voice (write in)
The Red Queen, daughter of the White Queen and enemy of the Obsidian Queen.

>>Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location
If we're goin to say anything back it should just be "My mother's daughter."

But I say don't respond yet. Just zoom in for now.

Space to mature thier hive user you know thier own family and children

>Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location.
>Ensure that our non-aggressiveness is known by constantly replaying our hate for the Obsidian Queen, and worry about her children infecting the planet.

>Call back to the voice
>We are red queen.

>Attempt to have your drones zero in.
Let's attempt to determine what we're actually dealing with here before calling back.
Granted, although it would be preferable if internal power struggles weren't an issue period. It would probably be prudent to establish some hierarchy for future daughterus, perhaps based on planetary productivity. At least then any competition will always result in a positive for the hive as a whole.

They don't need a hive bigger than what we had in the first few days. They also don't need to hatch their own drones to control them, as for example our first thinker was one of our mother's drones, technically our brother, and he's still with us and doing fine.

"Daughter of White, Queen of Red, Enemy of Kinslayer."

>They don't need a hive bigger than what we had in the first few days.
That assumes that they don't want their hives to grow. Like we do.

>They also don't need to hatch their own drone
Then why are we even making daughters in the first place?

And you in turn are assuming that they're impossible to reason with AND that they wouldn't find having large chunks of our existing drones to manage for themselves acceptable.

In essence you think that the only way they would be happy is if they are allowed to do what we were forced to do when born: go out alone into the wilderness and build a hive from scratch.

This goes against the information we have that they would be happy as our effective vassals, and that closely related queens can use each others drones.

>Attempt to have your drones zero in on the location
While this is going on

>Call back to the voice (write in)
We are a friend. A young queen. What happened here?

Because we currently only have a single intelligent entity in charge of micromanaging an entire interstellar empire. The humans and such which are plugged into our hive can't give orders directly to our drones, they have to route it through us.

You forget that even if the Drone works for us he still lief and withheld information from us at or mothers orders no queen will trust another's drones that's why we start with the starter drones because it's what's natural for us.

This isn't a problem.
You're assuming there are bandwidth/processing limitations on the Hive's interactions with human beings. There aren't, the only limit is what we the quest players can deal with.
As far as you need to be concerned, Queenie has unlimited ability to deal with things. Unlike us.
Plus, we can delegate to Thinkers.

user. Thats not a problem. At all. We do not have any problem juggling all of those orders at once. We could talk to a thousand or a million different humans at once with no latency. The only bottleneck in terms of orders, actions or communication is in Quest Drone's ability to write and explain it to us. A daughter does nothing to change that.

Yes but you don't understand. Our daughters our Queens. They have the imperative to grow just like us. Would you be content with just being given one planet and be told to only have that unless your mother decides to give you more? If we make one now, I can bet she'll do everything in her power to expand without directly going against our orders. That can cause some problems.

>Because we currently only have a single intelligent entity in charge of micromanaging an entire interstellar empire.
Yes thats what being a Queen is all about. It is not required that our humans directly give orders to drones. Elizabeth seems to be doing fine and we only had to order the thinkers to work with her once. Also I don't see how this has anything to do with making daughters.

Rogue daughters would only happen if they got corrupted by the crystals or something like that. Except maybe if we abused them terribly, but Mother would never do that.

That's not the issue, the issue is that we have only one egg in one basket.

>They have the imperative to grow just like us.
Not really. If daughters normally behave as vassals, as QD told us, then obviously our species evolved to be capable of cooperating with limited space available. Otherwise such dynamics wouldn't be natural to us.

For the love of fuck, can we just call this argument a stalemate and drop it? We're going to hit the bump limit again in an hour at this pace.

You try to call back, sending your mental voice across the continent. You send images of battle with the Obsidian Queen, glimpses of your motherly splendor in a mental greeting, and memories of the attack over this world, just enough to get the image across, hardly much in the way of details.

The whispering curiosity fades as you speak your name across the region, and there is only static once more. Too much static. In a very specific place. Your drones begin to focus on the area.

Something flashes from the forest, and one of your wasps is tackled from its flight over the canopy. It's image is blurry, as if attacked by a shadow, out of focus like looking through a muddy lense. The wasp is pinned to a tree, something held fast around its neck as it flails to get free. A creature, its head a vibrant, shimmering blue mixed with metallic greens and hues of purple looks down on your drone, its face clearing into a crisp image. It has four eyes, all four positioned forward in a clearly predatory trait. They look at your drone with purpose, with intelligence behind them.

The creature's head is sleek and streamlined, its face clearly aerodynamic with a short, sharp nose covered in slits that widen and narrow as it breathes rhythmically. Its mouth is a tightly woven bundle of mandibles held together into a solid jaw, splitting momentarily to let out a grumbling, gurgling screech and then bundling it up again into a solid lower jaw held tight against a set of long, serrated, bright red teeth lining the single upper jaw. The teeth are carved, chiseled with strange, swirling insignias.

cont.

see what I meant about the logic thing?

Fucking awesome, more sentient life!

Tell QD to make a vote and then whatever wins will get bragging rights.

>then obviously our species evolved to be capable of cooperating with limited space available
All those scenes of various queens killing each other's drones for new real estate during the flashback tells otherwise.

>tell them we're a queen
>no guarantee it was one of our species we were dealing with despite every other one of us being dead for 70000 years or so
>no way this could backfire

>one egg in one basket.
Is better than many eggs in one basket.
I agree, we really need to end this damn topic with a vote.

This aint a queen?

So OB was doing was cleaning up a sci capable species for the void then?

Hey we beat up the OQ's ships. That has to count for something.

>Call a vote
niggers fucking drop it for now until a more pressing matter comes up. Jesus Christ. There is no fucking reason for bragging rights or anything.

Our... natural predatory ?

>All those scenes of various queens killing each other's drones for new real estate during the flashback tells otherwise.
And QD told you otherwise in the previous thread. Obviously those were wars between more distantly related queens.

Holy shit, is that another remnant Skyll, or a new species!?

Our mother was alive less than a year ago. Others may have survived as well.

But I think you're right. We were over-eager to meet another queen/hive like life and let too much info slip to an unknown intelligence.

>Is better than many eggs in one basket.
No, it would be equal. Luckily we can make many baskets with one egg in it each by having daughters.

Mabe it's a hybrid? It dose have mandibles

It's still one basket. All our world's are within reach of the OQ.

I think the Nomad might still be out there. We know for a fact the Builder survived for a while, it's Emissary drone self-destructed when the OQ enacted her coup

Oh ho hello there new friend
Do those runes make any sense to us at all or are they something our hive has never seen?
Iwish they could, but autism knows no bounds.
Heres hoping!

No, each daughter would be separately vulnerable both to physical and to psionic attack. Thus if we hide our daughters in different places we have separate baskets. Even if one attack succeeds, the entirety of our drone mass and most of our queens are still fine.

>Luckily we can make many baskets with one egg in it each by having daughters.
The baskets are planets user, we need more planets for us to consider having daughters.

The creature holds a spear-like weapon against your wasp, the end forked as if made to pin without harming the target unintentionally. It grasps it firmly with a pair of two, short but lean and muscular legs that hang from its short body, and it props itself up at a surprising height on a set of incredibly long arms, gripping the branch it is on with long, hook-like fingers as a cape of skin folds cleanly along the forearm and up to its body like a wing suit. The flap of skin is covered in a shimmering display of feather-like scales, sliding over one another with the slightest of a jingling rustle with each movement.

The distant voice returns, weak but desperate, and the creature looks away for a moment before turning back to your drone with notable suspicion. It plucks the spear from the tree and quickly backtracks to the far edge of the branch, gripping its weapon in its nimble feet as its clawed hands tear at the branch with its graceful stride. It seems to wait for a moment, watching your drone, before it stands up to its full height, at least two meters, over half of which given by its incredibly long arms, and it lets out a belching cry, inflating its neck as its voice echoes over the jungle.

It dives off. Falling some distance before its arms unfurl into a vast sail of a wingspan glittering like a rainbow with its myriad of shimmering feathered scales, and it arcs back up into the air, circling your drone at some distance, and then veering off, its flight slow and deliberate as it occasionally flips around to see your drone again.

It seems obvious enough of a sign.

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone
>Send all the local drones to converge on the location
>Other (write in)

This whole "one egg" metaphor is so retarded. If anything gets to the point where our queen is in danger of dying then everything is going to be in ruins since our home planet is by far the best defended.

I wish a daughterufag would at least come up with some sort of compelling reason to actually have daughters at this time.

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone

>>Have the wasp follow the creature alone
>>Deploy a couple dozen flies to assist in the search

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone
So some sort of psionic intelligence that can talk to primitive Skyl? It might still be another Queen.

I wish an anti-daughtfag would at least come up with some sort of compelling reason not to actually have daughters at this time.

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone
>Deploy a couple dozen flies to assist in the search

>>Have the wasp follow the creature alone

No, the baskets are viable hiding places.

Planets are irrelevant. We could decide to create a space-based kingdom without a single planet if we wanted to.

Supporting
>Deploy a couple dozen flies to assist in the search

Holy shit you have broken the Guinness world record for retardation.
OQ doesn't even have advanced psionics and the crystal god hasn't made his move yet.

>Other (write in)

Send a group of forces to follow the creature, but not nearly all the thousands of drones we have on the planet. It could be a trap, an ambush, or a trick trying to lure us away from the voice. Sending a group of drones gives us flexibility both if it is a trap and if more than one drone may be needed at the distressed location.

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone
>Other (are you skyll?)

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone.
But also have local drones ready to converge if the wasp shows any sign of distress.

>>Have the wasp follow the creature alone

Pretty sure that's how the Nomad Queen operated

>have three wasp follow the creature, send a warrior if it is leading us to the signal.

Both of you stow it. You've let out your pent up autism now so can we please go back to investigating shit?

>Have the wasp follow the creature alone

>>Have the wasp follow the creature alone
This should be treated as diplomacy.

>>Have the wasp follow the creature alone

Hey remember the color coded fake factions idea

What if we modeled all the colors after our dead aunts? That way we get to be cheeky and we can have them as a sort of memorial to our dead kin

I'm done, QD has invented PSY fucntional frog-dragonois-orangutan/gibbon-tree dwelling gliders.

I could kiss him, these aliens are so rad

Please no more arguments.