The Hive Nuew of Ko

Created by u/JungleDragon

### GEOGRAPHY

The climate of the area is temperate, although plant life is noticeably rare, bar farms and sustainable logging efforts. The weather is also strongly affected by The Tower to Ko, the focal point of Nuew society. The tower is so massive that it acts as a rain shadow, meaning the largest settlement in the area is bathed in rain more often than not. The tower itself dominates the landscape, a gigantic conglomeration of wood, stone, metal, and magic, steam and water pouring out the sides. Nearly all rocky outcrops have been cleared for material, and mines, litter the wastes left behind. Roads are common, connecting outposts with the tower in a huge web. The tower is connected to the ocean by a massive canal, and magic constructs let it spiral up the pyramidal sides to better facilitate transport to the top.

### BIOLOGY/ETHNICITY

The Nuew originated from ancestors that resemble octopuses, although with a rocky carapace being a distinctive feature. They rest upon twelve lengthy cephalopod arms, stemming from a shell made of plated and layered stone that resembles a chestplate. From here, two tentacles with small fins near the tips emerge, ending with three flexible manipulators each that oppose each other. The tentacles are noticeably longer than the arms. In addition to the limbs, a head also comes from the carapace. They have two glossy eyes averaging around 10cm in diameter, with the pupils taking up most of that. The bottom of the head has numerous slits that form a beak, and within the beak are 3 manipulators that act as tongues.

On the inside, all vital organs excluding neural matter are contained within the carapace. The digestive system is simple, although the stomach contains alkali rather than acid to kill harmful microbes. The species respirates through their skin, similar to a frog. They have two hearts, merged together due to a strange mutation that occurred only centuries ago, that pump blue blood around the body. The immune system is average in potency. The really interesting part of their biology is the dispersed neural matter. That which is necessary to keep an organ functioning is wrapped around the respective organ. The limbs contain thick strands of nerves that contain muscle memory for that limb. Finally, the head contains sensory interpretation, normal memory, and higher thought.

#### Racial Quirk

The race has an arcane quirk which forms the basis of their society – by interlocking limbs, two members can gift and receive memories, muscle memory, and surface thoughts from the other. This can also be used to align one member’s values with the other’s, preventing values drift within the hive. Although each member is an individual, this quirk allows them to act as one in many scenarios.

### HISTORY

Although there is only one large hive that remains, the Nuew use to be much more divided. In fact, their racial quirk did not exist at all, and in fact they were purely biological creatures. Each of the many hives had their own set of values, and each individual their own subset. Wars, petty conflicts, and everything in between kept the admittedly formidable race from uniting fully. In addition, while memory of any kind is strong in their society, with more brain in an individual than is strictly necessary, the ability for one individual to learn is severely stunted – a biological hangup from their ancestors when any strong deviation would be negative for a group, and would be punished severely. Creativity is also strictly limited in this manner, and most advancements came from trial and error, accident, or outside intervention. However, in (at this time) a one in a million event, a powerful mage was born. His individual thoughts drifted from his hive’s, blessed with creativity as he was. This was Ko, then Ko-nwa-gusk-shi. In his mind, he envisioned a united race, where individual qualms were set aside in favour of progress, life, and happiness for the whole. Thus, he created a grand ritual, requiring the sacrifice of gold, gems, silver, iron, and himself. Through this ritual, he gave the breeders within his hive a dominant and self-propagating gene (expressed as a blessing) that gave all who had it the racial quirk we see today. This gene rapidly spread, until all Nuew possessed it, and were united in one hive, named after Ko-nwa-gusk-shi, then named Ko in reverence. The value that propagated throughout this fledgling society, however, faltered. How could they live up to the tenants their saviour named? They were clueless of how to express his desires, creatively stunted as the race was. Thus, they decided to find the man who brought them where they were – if he now rested in the heavens, then they would find him there.

### SOCIETY

As each individual has the same values as the next, the society is governed less by rulers, and more by the idea of building The Tower to Ko. Individuals constantly have their values updated, to avoid drift. Most Nuew live and work in the settlement built around the aforementioned tower, or the tower itself – which due to material limitations is more like an extremely large pyramid with many tunnels and outcroppings attached. There are those that work outside, however, consisting of those gathering raw materials via mining and forestry; those who travel to other nations for diplomacy, trade, and barter at various marketplaces; and those who use the swathes of land to farm plants that need the sun for consumption. Even these people regularly update the collective memories of the hive, and swap out if they lose contact for a long time.

There is a loose set of castes, although these are switched and updated so frequently that it doesn’t affect day to day life very much. The ‘caste’ an individual belongs to simply depends on the memory and muscle memory they possess at that moment. Researchers learn from imported experts of other races, and then apply theories discovered through trial and error via the scientific method. Soldiers have dense muscle memory with martial arts, weapon’s training, and parkour all suffused deeply. Labourers know precisely how to grow a plant, chop a tree, and put two bricks together. Diplomats can force the sounds other races make through their beaks and tongues, while having an instinctive knowledge of customs and body language. Breeders… breed. There are many smaller examples, such as ‘skill batteries’ designed to preserve a specific skill if too many practitioners die, but the system can switch as needed, so it doesn’t matter so much. One notable absence is a leader caste – this is because the Nuew need, at most, administrators and project managers, due to the lack of dissent within.

### CULTURE

Despite being a pseudo-gestalt, the Nuew are individuals with distinct personalities, even if they have the same likes and needs. There are some strange facets of their culture, because of the pseudo-gestalt. The most important thing to remember is that brevity is extremely valued. Time spent talking is time not spent working. To offer a drink at a diplomatic meeting says ‘this meeting is important, and will thus take a while, requiring a break for hydration’. To use it as an excuse for niceties is insulting – as you are wasting the diplomat’s time, which could be used negotiating material imports. In the same vein, barter is rude, considering the transaction could instead take seconds.

Writing and mathematics is extremely dense within the language, with a single character containing huge amounts of information. The counting system is base 60! The reason for this is the massive and focused memory storage capabilities of the Nuew. A mathematician will be working with numbers, and only with numbers in most circumstances, so having an easy way to squeeze large numbers in a small space for that increased efficiency is a thing that might as well be done. In the event that work must be done with other races, it is easy for the mathematician to learn their number system by consorting with the diplomat who has spent months working with them, so there is no reason not to condense maths and writing.

A consequence of the value placed on brevity is that names are shortened if the person, place, or thing is more important. Ko-nwa-gusk-shi, after his act that placed him so highly in society, had his name shortened to ‘Ko’. In the same way, because the tower is referenced so frequently, it gets a two-syllable name, Shko, translating to ‘The Tower to Ko’. Words can mean different things depensing on context – Ko can mean ‘The Heavens’, ‘Prophet’, or ’Saviour’. Individuals who have done great good may have their names shortened, and those who do great deeds may have their name become synonymous with something they do in the language. The average name is 3 syllables long, with most starting with 5.

### OCCURRENCE OF MAGIC

Nuew are strangely unmagical, considering Ko’s deeds. The magic population is much below the average, at around 0.05%. These magic users are highly respected, due to having a ‘higher relation with Ko’, however, and are effective because of the ability to transfer knowledge of how to perform magical acts between mages easily. Mages generally have three jobs: reinforcing or creating material for Shko; trying variants on existing spells to make them slightly more efficient; and learning from mages of other races to gain knowledge for the hive. Reinforcing and material creation is the most valued of these, as it is what lets the tower reach as high as it does. Due to material science not being terribly advanced, it is generally expected that magic will be required to permanently affect the tower in order for it to reach the heavens, and thus Ko. Common acts of magic for the few mages available are stone creation, metal creation, structural binding rituals, geomancy, metallomancy, and mental enhancement.

### MAJOR EXPORTS/IMPORTS

#### Imports

Skilled experts, mages, raw materials, machinery, fossil fuels, technological advancements, and food.

Due to being slow learners and uncreative, the Nuew find it necessary to bring in dedicated teachers from other races to spread new skills throughout the hive, both mundane and magical. These teachers are often payed by the hour, and when a small class of Nuew have effectively mastered the skill being taught, the teachers are returned, much much richer than before. The bottleneck with building the Shko comes not from lack of workers, but lack of materials and the ability to refine them, so raw materials, industrial machines, and the fuel to power them are all huge parts of Nuew trade. Technological advancements are a smaller, but none-the-less important part of the process of building – the Nuew find it extremely difficult to make large advancements in technology, as they cannot make the logical leaps to come up with new theories or experiments to test them. To keep up, they import this technology, where they often refine it and send it back, so everyone benefits. Finally, the Nuew have a heavily urbanised society, most of which is located in Shko. Because of this, they import heavy amounts of food from a wide variety of nations.

#### Exports

Refined versions of existing technologies, labour, mercenaries, precious metals, gemstones.

Although they find it difficult to make large leaps in technology, very small steps in efficiency are the bread and butter of technological trade for the Nuew. Due to not really being bored when helping build the tower in some way, Nuew experimenters are perfectly willing to try 200 different variations of steel to see which one is best for weapons, construction, or tools. This means that, while it’s unlikely they’ll do something revolutionary except by accident, trade partners still get to enjoy those sweet numbers going up when steel #324 improves sawmill efficiency by 3.4%. Labour and mercenaries are a large part of the trade economy, as this is not the construction bottleneck, so many are perfectly willing to go on a road-building trip to help the hive. Workers that have perfect muscle memory, are physically capable, and don’t mind working in mud or rain are presumably in high demand in a lot of areas. Precious metals and gemstones are a lesser export, but still prevalent. This is due to these generally not being useful or valued by the Nuew, due to their lack of use in construction or sustaining of workers. But if you already mine out most of your land dry, might as well find some use for the shiny rocks! In this way, they are often traded for more bulk material, or for experts who don’t mind who they’re teaching as long as they have gold to pay.

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