Tharnex

The Tharnex call themselves the Xynari, and other races call them Insectoids or the Hiveborn. They are an insectoid people who evolved from humans in northern Fodon’s deserts during the Crimson Convergence. They stand five to six feet tall, with segmented bodies covered in a chitin exoskeleton that they grow as natural armor, and they have multiple eyes and venom sacs. A Tharnex lives about thirty years and molts five times in that span, roughly once every six years. Their society is a matriarchal caste system. Queens rule at the top, followed by the winged Sentinels. The Drones, who have no wings, form the middle and largest caste. At the bottom are the Brood-Lurks, a rank every young Tharnex leaves after its first molt. Each molt is marked by a molting feast, where the Tharnex invites its whole family to eat dishes made from its shed skin as a symbol of moving up in life. The Tharnex worship X’zel, the Hive Divinity of Memory, and believe that all life is memory and all death is transfer; their sacred symbol is the Eight-Legged Spiral. When a Tharnex dies, many others gather to perform funerary echo chants, which other Tharnex are said to hear thousands of miles away. They speak Tharnexi, a language of clicks and pulses, and write it in spiral glyphs etched into carapace plates with their claws. They also use echo-sense, a form of echolocation that lets them talk to one another without other races hearing and sense the instant something is near. Because of their genetics, for reasons no one fully understands, they are immune to mind control, and they graft living technology onto their chitin. In battle, they are silent ambushers who fight in groups, striking with bursts of venom. Most Tharnex lived in the Bug District of Fodon, the kingdom’s capital, ruled by their Queen, Vorvax. During the War of Fodon (820–847 ACC), a civil war between the city’s four districts, other races came to see them as vermin because even a single Tharnex was very strong. Magic users also resented them because they could not be mind-controlled. Many Tharnex blew up their own bodies to kill fighters from rival districts, spraying acidic blood that burned people’s skin off and ate through metal and stone. Vorvax was killed in the war, and afterward the race began to die out. Frada, Ipadora, and Goldhelm made exterminating the Tharnex state policy. Even so, the Tharnex of Fodon held on fairly well until about 900 ACC, when a criminal from Ipadora territory killed a Bug District Tharnex, and Fodon went to war with Ipadora in what became the Ipadora Land War. Today the race is critically endangered and has no strongholds left. Across the continent, children’s stories and myths portray the Tharnex as evil terrorists who killed many people for no reason. The Arashi, a criminal organization, are rumored to capture and sell them, though no proof exists. The last living Tharnex is Vorryn, a Sentinel who was always at Vorvax’s side. After her death, he ate her molt to gain her power, and he now wears living armor like hers that senses movement from a distance and can destroy itself and regrow. Vorryn believes other Tharnex fled across the sea. He learned this from an ancient story passed down through generations of Tharnex, which says the Tharnex of long ago heard funerary echo chants from across the water. His mission is to find them, and he will kill anyone in his way.