Royals

Royals are a varied type of avian fauna that inhabits the Salty Red Continent. They were submitted by braininaplate. They live in large colonies where they work as a hive mind, communicating with each other using strong pheromones produced after eating the spicy flowers of the Blood Shrub. Because of their reliance on this plant, they stick around mountains. These colonies compete against each other for food and resources, and go into all out war once the Mother Queen dies.

## **Hierarchy**

A Royal's appearance and behavior depends on their place in the hierarchy.

### **Queen**

Queens have a dozen eyes on each side of their heads: 9 on top in a cluster and 3 separated ones on the bottom, the ones on top best operate on dark environments and the ones on bottom have a full view during flight. Their beaks are on the bottom of their heads, which looks like a weird chin. They have bone-like structures around their faces. Their feathers are blue with golden details and are the biggest fully aerial creatures, about half the size of a Worm Dragon. Queens are omnivorous, eating anything their subjects bring to them.

Queens are birthed by the Mother Queen in a giant palace-like structure that lies at the very top of the Continent's tallest mountain. During their pupal stage they are called Princesses, and they are born in a large nest hidden somewhere on the side of the palace. The food being brought to them is only enough to satiate one Princess, so they must fight to see which one will get to eat. As the others start dying out, the strongest Princess will eventually reach maturity and fly to the Kings' nest. There she will pick the ones that are still alive and fly away to form a colony someplace else, called a Court. A Court is made up of Kings, Counts, Knights and Priests, all birthed by the Queen. Colonies will fight each other all the time for resources and some may eventually get wiped out.

If the Mother Queens dies, every single Court on the Continent will declare war on each other until only one remains. During war time, Queens will try to mate with their Kings in order to birth powerful offspring with mutations that will aid them in winning the war. The winning Queen will take all the Kings with her to the Main Palace, where she will eat the corpse of the previous Mother Queen and become the new Mother Queen. The Cycle will then repeat when she dies.

### **Kings**

Kings are much alike Queens but with beaks in a pick-axe shape in the middle of their faces. They have dark blue feathers with black details, with only the cluster of 9 eyes. They are about 1/3 of a Worm Dragon ranking as the second biggest fully aerial creature.

Kings are also birthed by the Mother Queen in a separate nest to the Princess' one. The Princes' nest and Princess' nest are separated by a big gap which means that a Princess must learn how to fly if she wants to reach the Prince' nest. Princes are given slightly more food than the Princesses, so that when one becomes a Queen and reaches their nest, there will be more than one alive. The Princes will follow the Queen until she finds a good place to create a colony, at which point they will protect her until she has birthed enough subjects. The Princes will slowly mature into Kings and will live with the Queen for their entire live while not doing much. Kings are made so that when a Queen mates with them, the offspring will have random mutations that can turn them into deadly weapons during wartime. This means that when war breaks out, Queens all over the continent will try to have as many Kings in Court as possible. When their Queen is killed, they will quickly pledge their alliance to the Queen that killed her. If the Queen dies for any other reason, they will migrate in search of another Court to join.

### **Counts**

Counts are the smallest, with full light blue feathers with 32 eyes all around their head working to most effectively locate the ones they are delivering orders to. They work as messengers and explorers, gathering information and sharing it with the hive mind using their strong pheromones. They usually don't sleep inside the palace, preferring to create small nests on trees where they eat fruits and small animals to sustain themselves. They give all the food they find during to the Queen, only eating the bare minimum to stay alive.

### **Knights**

Knights resemble Kings but much slightly smaller and with enormous claws. They have light blue feathers and white details. They have only two eyes on each side of their head. They are exclusively carnivorous. They protect the Palace from attackers and hunt large prey for the Queen and themselves. During Wartime, they will abandon their hunting duties and perform as soldiers and guards exclusively, meaning that the Queen's diet will switch to plant-based food.

### **Priests**

A Priest's appearance is varied, altough they are usually quite small. Their entire body is capable of changing color, their beak in particular is capable of flashing rapibly to stun their victims, much like a Honkbird. Their role is to hypnotise other species using their pheromones to work for the Court, ether by killing themselves to serve as food or to work as carpenters or soldiers. Most Priests have specialized to convert only Irakai, as they are extremely versatile and are capable to fill every of the Colony's needs. Priests will usually kidnap stage one Irakai and bring them to their colony, forcing them to watch stage two Irakai do a certain task over and over. They will then force the Stage one Irakai to merge with each other, creating Stage two Irakai perfectly adapted to doing a certain task.

## **Subspecies**

Honkbirds descend from Priests that managed to escape after having their court wiped out. They share extremely similar characteristics. When war breaks out, Honkbirds will be the first to gather and eat the corpses of dead Knights that litter the ground.