What's in a Formian hive?

[Kazyan]

I'm designing a secondary Formian hive (still connected to the main hive with the queen via telepathy radius) as a dungeon for my PCs, and am running out of things to put in it. There's a central heating system based on thoqquas + a lodestone marauder + molten iron + tunnels, some storage rooms, rooms for the slaves--dominated and otherwise--and an armory, so far.

But what does "the hive" actually do with itself? They're Outsiders, so they don't need to sleep and only need to feed their slaves. There's not a lot for them to do besides dig more tunnels and spawn more of themselves, but a dungeon with every room consisting of "you see X number of Y type of Formian; roll initiative" is boring. So...what do I put in this dungeon? It's big--forty 30'x30' rooms in a grid-like structure, as befitting of lawful outsiders. I don't need RAW or Planescape answers--just ideas as to what would make sense to put in there.

[Blackhawk748]

Well lots of Slaves, some of which are mind controlled, so you can get a lot of different classes in there. Also, they could have enslaved....... well anything not immune to mind control honestly. I recommend lots of different types of humanoids, Gnolls, Goblins, Ogres, Trolls etc.

[Illogictree]

Thinking of real ant colonies here, some features you might want to include are egg and nursery chambers. Probably heavily defended, and the grubs themselves might pose a hazard if they're hungry enough.

Lots of species of ants also cultivate fungus in underground farms. I know Formians don't eat, but they might have some reason to grow fungi or other things in their hive.

I used Formians in a Dungeon World game once, and even though the group didn't get into the hive proper, I tried to emphasize their otherworldlyness and ant-like qualities by having them working to seal a breach in space-time. They did this by literally carving hexagonal chunks of chaos out of reality and replacing them with identically-shaped chunks of order. Just some food for thought, I suppose.

[Lightlawbliss]

Why are the PCs at all interested in this hive? Is it just an xp source? Grab the macguffin? Free an NPC? Destroy macguffin? Other?

xp source: Players aren't going to care why it's there

Grab the macguffin: may be it exists as a safe.

Free an NPC: Slave camp

Destroy macguffin: may be it exists because of the macguffin.

[Urpriest]

They're quite militant, I'd probably expect training grounds, smithies/workshops, various sorts of mining setups to get raw materials...basically, design the place like a medieval fortress with an expansionist mood.

[Red Fel]

Has nobody called Afro yet?

Right, then. *lights candles* Afro, Afro, Afro.

There. Question should be answered shortly. Also, we may need a small goat, for completely unrelated reasons.

[questionmark693]

If youve ever played neverwinter nights, the instruction manual has a brief description of them that I think doesn't conflict with the DND one.

If you haven't played neverwinter nights, its an older pc game that runs off the 3.0 ruleset. Anyways, it talks about this weird racing game they play that nobody knows the rules to, and is really harsh and violent. So you could work with that and include a room for it, give your players a chance to look at some culture if you wanted.

[afroakuma]

Has nobody called Afro yet?

Right, then. *lights candles* Afro, Afro, Afro.

WHO SUMMONS FRO?

Ah. You summon Fro. I dunno, I feel like there should be more goat here...

Anyway. Onto your question:

Formian hives extend above and below ground. Above, they look a great deal like humanoid cities externally, though on the inside the structures are based on cones, cylinders and hemispheres with entrances at the top or upper sections (so if you can't fly or climb there are lots of places to get trapped). Ramps and shafts lead down from the upper "city" portions to the labyrinth of tunnels and chambers underground, which is typically about three times the size of the aboveground hive.

Eggs and formian larvae are kept in chambers near the underground royal chamber, where the queen resides. Major areas of the hive are watched over by myrmarchs, with 2-5 male gymarchs (treat as myrmarchs with 1d3 fighter levels) guarding the royal complex.

Workers are obviously the most common encounter, and the majority are going to ignore or flee from anything they run into. They will engage if ordered to by a superior. The real threat of workers is that the formian hive-mind will allow them to instantly alert the rest of the hive.

In the upper city, observersFF will be scouting constantly for intruders. Much as with workers, they will alert the hive, but observers pose a special danger as they will evaluate you on behalf of the hive, resulting in combat bonuses for every other formian that comes upon you. The upper city has truncated conical chambers which play host to winged warriorsFF, who will throw down spikes as they advance.

Within the hive interior, soldiers as well as taskmasters and their peons will be the major hurdles. At least two chambers will each hold an armadonFF, a powerful warrior caste, and its elite minders. Taskmasters will typically have 1-3 minor magic items at their disposal or 1 medium item (popular choices include a bead of force for trapping, a circlet of persuasion, lens of detection or dusky rose ioun stone, while possible medium items include an amulet of natural armor +2 or a dark blue ioun stone). Myrmarchs have 1-4 minor magic items or a medium item, and may have a magic returning javelin to throw. Most castes do not possess any kind of treasure; the coinage and gems collected by myrmarchs and taskmasters will typically be stored in a small number of collection chambers and left there.

It goes without saying that many of the more obnoxious obstacles will be the spells of the formian queen. A wall of force will block the royal chambers when intruders are near, with a prismatic wall likely shielding the queen's chamber itself. Waves of exhaustion will emanate to weaken intruders, and repulsion will make it a struggle to advance. The queen and her elite guards will be protected by a shield of law and capable of true seeing. Secondary hives might have an immature queen in residence; treat her as a 10 HD advanced taskmaster with a move speed of 10 ft., +4 Intelligence and the spellcasting abilities of an 8th-level sorcerer.

Formian hives, in addition to needing to expand and build, have slave stables for the non-dominated pets of the hive taskmasters, reserve chambers for armadons, open-air silos for winged warriors, and a few devoted to unusual tasks including the battle planning chamber (where myrmarchs and observers work out plans to advance on new territories), the evaluation chamber (where captured local species are researched and interrogated by observers and taskmasters), recovery chambers (where workers swarm to heal any injured formians) and the private cells of the myrmarchs, who have individual personalities and goals which occasionally put them at odds with one another over what is best for the hive.

[Blackhawk748]

*Great and powerful knowledge*

Well i think that covers.........well everything actually.

Personally i think it would be fun to have the PCs find the slaves and start a slave revolt. Formians cant dominate all of their slaves and im sure that you could find a few that are fairly pissed off and willing to fight. Could be a lot of fun.

[Yahzi]

I wrote up a rather different approach to Formians: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/64426/Hives-of-Formia

When my players went through it, by the time they got to the Queen they were so impressed with the lethality of it all that they negotiated a settlement instead of fighting (the Queen was willing to pay them off because they had proven quite dangerous too).

[Phelix-Mu]

Part of the coolness of formians is that they basically can be jammed into just about any setting. Their expansionist tendencies and vast numbers on their home planes mean that, should an opportunity or motive to expand to just about anywhere crop up, some queen will be equal to the challenge.

In my games, I run them much like super-intelligent ants that have magic and a certain myopically simple, lawful view of all of reality. They spread quickly, set up residence quickly, multiply quickly, and generally are hard to get rid of once they are settled. While formians are certainly intelligent enough to collectively conceive of the idea that other beings have a place in the universe, many of them also espouse a philosophy that dictates that, one day, this will not be so.

Their early incursions look much like giant ant hives, being mostly underground and largely constructed by brute force and a bit of magic. As time goes on, they refine their architecture to be more aesthetically pleasing (they like order and structure, but it's all secondary to utility). The hive is a machine, and it's purpose is singular. Many queens will drive their hives ruthlessly in the pursuit of a chosen goal, but others may be more open to adapting and surviving, seeing their expansion as more of a long-game goal, with compromise being possible in the meantime.

@afro: Some deep wisdom and insight. Props to a sound and inspiring summary of one of the more fascinating races of the Great Wheel.