📗Compendium | 4: Lotus Wasp Sentinel
by Acclaimed Interstellar Survival-Exploration Entrepreneur and Nature Documentarian Sir Davis Astenbarrow
🚀 Happy Sci-Friday! 🚀
Next entry in the Compendium: Fri 2/16
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📗A Compendium of Beasts, Bugs, and Botany
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
📗A Compendium of Beasts, Bugs, and Botany
The Explorer’s Guide to Surface Life
Lotus Wasp Sentinel
Explorer’s Guide Contribution Written By Acclaimed Interstellar Survival-Exploration Entrepreneur and Nature Documentarian Sir Davis Astenbarrow
Lotus Wasps serve specialized roles within their hives, and in the broader community of hives each caste has its own purpose as well. Once multiple hives have been established within a territory, Lotus Wasp Sentinels serve as a communication network between the Queens. Using a mixture of vocalizations, touch, and pheromone signals, each Queen can pass messages to Sentinels which are able to deliver incredibly complex, scent-laden messages to other Queens.
Within the dense, seemingly endless temperate jungles and forests on the riverlands around Overlook City—our shimmering crown jewel, the immaculate refuge—there are intricate ecosystems we may never fully understand. These Lotus Wasps are one such mystery. This variety has evolved in such a way that its fate is intertwined with the availability of the intoxicating avocado-like fruit we call “lotus.”
This delicious vice has become a local favorite! Asten-Mart™ chooses only the most eco-conscious partners to supply our goods, which is why we trust small, mom-and-pop businesses like Royal Lotus Company to provide us with the freshest locally-sourced lotus. They keep a close eye on maintaining a balanced ecosystem while also providing our citizens with healthy year-round harvests!
The seldom-seen Lotus Wasp Sentinels are an integral part of the honey-producing cycle—as are each of the specialized castes, with each serving its purpose. While the Workers toil, the Warriors fight, and the Queens reproduce, the Sentinels rejuvenate. Their various pheromones, musical trills, and medicinal secretions can provide great benefit to each of the other castes.
But most importantly, Sentinels tend to the young. The Queen’s focus is on the future, laying new eggs, planning ahead, choosing when is the right time for each caste to wake. Anticipation is key to their survival long-term, ensuring that they neither overproduce nor underproduce. Sentinels serve as stewards of the moment: fostering new grubs that may be underdeveloped or malnourished, teaching younger Sentinels lessons learned through experience, and healing the wounded.
Dear readers, it is with a heavy heart that I must interrupt our publication’s regular content to implore you to join our campaign to accelerate the transfer of new colonists from Earth out to the wider starscape. What was once a key priority for our generation has languished in the austere halls of bureaucracy! I had such hope to see exponentially-increasing waves of eager colonists, but those dreams were clawed back by the clutching grasp of Earth. Petty squabbles and territorial wars have crippled colonization flow—and soon might escalate to a global nuclear conflict which severs Surface from Earth!
Call your representatives today, join our Subscriber list, and donate to the cause below!
Before it’s too late…
— Sir Davis Astenbarrow —
Captured from the internal monologue of Harvester Wes Jackson:
Relief washed over me instantly, instinctively, as I looked into her glimmering violet eyes. She was larger than the others, with a hard exoskeleton like the queen’s; although sterile, sentinels are devoted solely to tending to the grubs. Soft blue light shone from bioluminescent spots dotted along her antennae. The deep thrumming noise was coming from within her, I realized, and as she moved closer I felt my pain wash away.
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