Ambrosia: A Hive Perspective

Discussion and testimony about being an insectoid under the rythym of a hive instead of bestowed with free will.

Up, up, up, up. 'till you see the sun again.

Step, step, step, step. Searching for the food again.

Hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt. Hungry mouths to feed again.

Cut, cut, cut, cut. Enemies must bleed again

Down, down, down, down. Back and to the Queen again....

Hive is home. Home is hive. Hive is all. All is hive....

A short folk song written and performed by insectoids in southern Yorn

---

Some liberated insectoids after their kind began to break from hives in 3500 BDR have tried to describe what being part of a hive is like. Some describe it as a gut feeling, a strange sensation of euphoria and unease that sets in only as their actions either fall in line or detract from their role.

Some still try and explain it as feeling thoughts that aren't yours, reminders of ambitions that you did not hold, but feel compelled to complete.

But more often than not, many have characterized it as something of a noise. A hummed song that you've known for as long as you can remember and one that you can't help but hum along to yourself as you go about your day. A song that, as it rings in your head, you do moving, building, eating, fighting, whatever the melody evokes inside you. Imagining yourself being forced to obey the tempo of a song without delay is eerie to most folks. The uncanniness of the insectoid condition comes from the fact that it's few insectoids can admit to feeling very oppressed during the time.

A lot of insect folk are asked, hounded, and berated about how they could spend their lives under such strict and oppressive regimes. How they can look back at lives of near mindless subservience and potentially even the murder of unknown amounts of people in the name of a ruler, they may have never even seen in person. For the most part, the answer received details that there was no difference, that when part of the hive, you aren't an individual, neither do you feel like one.

You are an extension of a great system, of a massive machine, a single great wave that flows as it may and in no other direction. And more integral to that, you are not an important piece, nobody is. Insectoids exist more as a drop of water amidst a sizeable pool than they are a colorful stroke as part of a portrait. The idea of the self, of having a sense of identity, of having personal accountability for one's actions, or a way to express the thoughts of yourself apart from the will of another are all foreign concepts that the earliest freed insectoids had to learn from scratch.

Even today, many insectoid villagers throughout Yorn and other place engage in large efforts to interact ith and engage new freed members of their kind when they stumble upon them, trying to help them adjust.