📗Compendium | 2: Lotus Wasp Worker

by Acclaimed Interstellar Survival-Exploration Entrepreneur and Nature Documentarian Sir Davis Astenbarrow

👨‍🚀 HAPPY SCI-FRIDAY! 👩‍🚀

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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

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Lotus Wasp Worker

Explorer’s Guide Contribution Written By Acclaimed Interstellar Survival-Exploration Entrepreneur and Nature Documentarian Sir Davis Astenbarrow

The first brood of Lotus Wasp Workers construct additional hive material by using their strong pincer-like mandibles to chew steeloak wood into a paper-like pulp. This is used to build walls around the initial structure and create additional hexagonal hive cells for the queen to lay eggs in.

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Lotus Wasp Workers are the critical foundation of all hives. When a queen lays her first clutch of eggs in new territory, it is these loyal creatures who will take over the manual burden of labor so that she can dedicate her time to continuously laying new eggs.

With each generation, their numbers grow as the Workers feed the young, gather and process steeloak wood pulp for building, and perform many crucial logistical tasks to move resources where required.

Unlike the more delicate and expressive four-mandibled jaws of the Queen and Warrior, the Worker has developed saw-like pincers with incredible crush strength! While the Queen must work quite hard to create her small hive for the first wave of Worker eggs, they quickly prove their worth—with just a whiff of the Queen’s communication pheromones, they begin their toils immediately after birth.

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A lone traveler must always take care in the wilds of Surface, but these studious bugs pose little threat—unless carelessly blundered upon! They often establish hives near the ground, so tread carefully out there and stock up on Astenbarrow Safety Beacons™ for a quick rescue in a pinch.

Remember: where there’s a hive, there’s a Queen!

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Captured from the internal monologue of Harvester Wes Jackson:

My helmet lights reflected oddly off their skin, casting an iridescent glow on the silver steeloak wood all around.

Looking closer, I realized that although they basically looked like pigeon-sized versions of wasps from Earth, their bodies were covered in thousands of tiny, interlocking scales. And where I expected to see the bulging, featureless eyes of Earthly insects, instead the lotus wasps had violet pupils with black vertical slit irises, looking almost reptilian.

Strange Harvest | Part 6: Lotus

📗Compendium — 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

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