Primordial Evolution Game/Stusval

A minor tribe of Plusmal with painful origins.

There was a change in the Old Queen's temperament. She had become aggressive and pushy, making the pusmal dig and dig regardless of the integrity of the hive. She drove them to great depths and dangerous earth. This inevitably brought about The Collapse. The great Pluigal Matriarchy that had survived for so many generations died in only a short few minutes of rock-fall and lava plumes. But there was hope. A sub queen, still nameless, had been hatched recently in one of the few upper chambers that had been spared. Though weak and unused to command she made the most out of scavenging and what few workers she had left. She knew that the old hive was massive, but now crumbled and without true strength. So she took the few usable remains of what was left of Gullshik or The Pit, as is now known, and fled from her predecessors shame. South, under the great desert, to fresh lands. These were fertile parts, near the sea, but already filled with the indigenous. She could hear them, could feel them, when underground, and her workers brought back stories of tribes of fire and stone back from the surface. The Under was littered with spear tips and pottery, charcoal and worked stone. These lands were full, and no place for a fledgling queen and her few escorts. She needed freedom and security. She needed isolation. But there would be a cost for such needs, The Starving. The Bay of Guraticx was unknown to the queen, but she would be forever changed by it. Constantly assailed by the noise of tribes on the surface she kept going south. And there she met a barrier totally unknown to her. She knew that she could not survive with the tribes on the surface, and so she decided to go onwards. Deep, cold and deep. She and her workers subsisted on the basest of lifeforms, rock lice and chemical bacteria and the occasional fungus patch. And thus her workers become smaller and dumber and they expressed the bio luminescence that was present in the fungus, known as Diamond Dust by some. But there was an end to this hardship. A blessing in disguise. The starving queen noticed the rumblings too late to do anything but fear. Fear that she was doomed after all her hardship. But it was not so. Before she could tell the worker at the front to stop, it struck the wall with its mandible. Cracks, small at first appeared on the wall, growing down to the floor which suddenly collapsed. The queen and her workers fell down through the floor onto a sloped cavern leading to a dank pit. Though she tried to gain purchase with her stubby legs she slipped on the damp floor. Though the workers grabbed onto the walls they let go at their queens passing slavish in their servitude. As the queen slipped into the pit she believed everything was over and let out a wailing screech that her drones echoed. But it was overshadowed by a thundering from the deep. A great river of water came shooting up from the pit. Warm with heat from beneath the earth, and filled with minerals. The pit was a part of an underground river, turned vertical by volcanic upwelling and a layer of hard granite. It was also salvation. It brought the queen and her escort up and up and up to the surface of what is now known as Thousand Cuts Isle on the mainland. After awakening to a sore head and a handful of workers she hunkered down to the ground and listened. Though her delicate hide was being burnt from the fierce tropical sun, and her body ached with bruises from her long journey she released pheromones of relaxation from her glands and let out a long sighing 'huff'. Peace, at last.

The path that the queen took that eventually led to the southern isles.

The Symbol of the Stusval.