ChevalierMalFet

I'm working my way through all of this, and I'll try to have some things up tonight because I'm leaving on a trip tomorrow, but I can say that while there's no theoretical reason to bar it, it's generally possible to distinguish between Ka and Za at a glance (especially to other Vaurca), so infiltrating as a Za would be very difficult. If you're coming in guns blazing, though, I don't see why not.

As a Vaurca, you run on your internal phoron tank in order to live. You can recharge it by eating kois, but you'll run out of air faster than you'll get hungry. The best thing to do is to cajole the Chemist into making you a 10u or 15u phoron pill; that should last you an entire round, especially if you're eating normally. On the old map, you can get 3 kois-spores from each seed vender, and each spore (has to be grown in a tray, like a seed) will give you three bulbs. Each bulb can be planted, and moreover can be planted on any tile. Do [i[not[/i] just plant that shit everywhere, it's a low-level carcinogen. Plant it in the garden, or get permission to grow it in some out-of-the-way place. If you have to undergo surgery, stop them from anesthetizing you with the gas; it will kill you. Just take the pain, or demand a soporific. One vending machine kois-bar is the equivalent of a lot of fresh kois, but it's very expensive. You /can/ be cloned, but your internal phoron tank is irreplaceable and you'll have to spend the rest of the round hooked up to an actual phoron tank. Being borgified is easier; the Hive can transfer you out of the MMI when you get home.

I've had several productive conversations with the other loredevs, and I do genuinely mean 'productive' in that we came up with good ideas and a spirit of happiness prevailed throughout. Now I am thinking about Broods. My initial idea about Broods was that I wanted to cover bases for modes of play. Without getting into any kind of mess about 'dramatic frontage,' my goal was that I wanted to preserve modes of play - the actual business of doing things and reacting to events around you, the 'meat and potatoes' of RP - that had been present in V2 and V2.5. (Those being Fowl's and Jackboot's stewardships, respectively.) In terms of what your character actually did or what they were like, I wanted to preserve a framework that would let them stay that way. Part of the reason I trailed away from Vaurca during V2 is because of how restrictive the new setting seemed to be with regards to character personalities and motivations, and I have it as a real goal that most personality types are available somewhere in the new lore. The absolute last thing I want to do is creep up on someone's shoulder and say 'your character is a good one, but not as a Vaurca - behave differently.' Hence the Broods, of which we have five. I was very careful that they all started with different sounds, so that we didn't have to worry as much about spelling them correctly. Broods Y and (t)L epitomize my ideas for V3, and L especially hearkens back to the Dialogues and to the system of noyaus and boards. (t)Z and K, however, I feel hearken back to v2. Z especially so - I wanted characters who really went helter-skelter with the 'loyal worker toiling to serve the hive' mindset to have a home there. As for K, I made them exempt from the Procedure system by giving them a genuine autocracy; their Conductor, Tlakoxaya, fills the same role as the Lesser Queens used to for those who need a strong, dictatorial personality. Between the two of them, my hope is that all the old bases get covered. So my question is, what modes of play, present in the old system, are unavailable in the new ones? And if there are some missing, how can I add them in?

All this is very pleasing to me. Accepted.

Everything is grand! I would still say that you generally don't get 'blindsided' by the black number - everyone eligible gets gathered together and they have an opportunity to plead why they should be exempt - but that's ultimately small potatoes. You have the feel and the tone, and that's what matters most. +1 and ACCEPTED, pending me figuring out how to actually give you the thing. Please stand by. EDIT: I figured out how to do all the things! Now you are truly accepted. Go forth, my child, in the name of Consensus, and Procedure, and Discipline.

That's a very good attitude, and I appreciate it. Drop a reply in this thread when you're ready for me to take another look, but provided you keep the tone you have so far, I foresee no problems.

Hah! My very first whitelist app! This is a very solid application, and I'd accept you qua yourself without a problem. But now that I've become Vaurcaboss, there are a few lore changes in terms of how they get jobs and how they live inside the Virtual that I feel are worth examining. - They no longer get 'dropped' out of the Virtual in order to work; they either volunteer to go or they're put in a labor lottery. In either case, they're sent off with great fanfare. - The Virtual is not solitary by default; unless your character deliberately shunned the company of others, she could have piped it up with other like-minded pipefans. - They have the ability to return to the Virtual for weekends, and in fact are expected to do so every other month. - If they're going to 'find' work, it means they've gone voluntarily; if she were being press-ganged through the Black Numbers then there'd be a job waiting for her. - New Gibson is Kte'kzil territory, which means it's kind of an autocracy for Vaurca - they have a single, visible, powerful leader who is stripping away Procedure. Understand that most of these contingencies literally did not exist when you submitted the application, so no prejudice is held. If you can re-write it to incorporate these facts, then I will accept you. You may want to wait until tomorrow or the next day, when the wiki will be fully updated.

In this thread, I'm going to document all the changes that I make to the Vaurca and answer any queries that you have about them. For the time being, my go-to source is my Google doc, but this is all still first-draft stuff and some details might change. I will attack the Wiki over the next few days, section-by-section. As of this moment, the most important stuff: - Everybody keeps their whitelist. - Job restrictions stay. - Everybody keeps their AoR if they have one. I should clarify that the AoR is one bug - one job. - Characters do not have to pick a brood for naming purposes; you can stay Zo'Ra if you want. - The broad outlines of the Vaurca metaplot - Hive Ship Titan Prime, the ghettos of New Gibson, the Elyra business, &c - all stay. If you are a Vaurca, you are a second-class citizen, you are stuck in a ghetto, you are getting hit by the Black Numbers, and you are currently going hungry due to the blockade. So my to-do list is as follows: - Process any whitelist apps that come up. - Start culling the wiki and replacing it with my new material. - Put together an all-Vaurca newsthread. - Answer burning questions! 6PM Edit, 6/13: Busy bees today. Most of the Vaurca wiki (sans history, which is a whole other can of worms) is now looking more-or-less the way I want it; for player use, the most important thing is that the Broods are now up. Next up is history! 3PM Edit, 6/15: The history section is now fixed, and with that, the wiki - at least, that page of the wiki - is now basically complete. 3PM Edit, 6/17: I'm keeping the 'read at your peril' warning on the main Vaurca page for the time being because I'm still tinkering with the tone; in particular, I'm fine-tuning the history to bring the themes of hubris and nemesis into finer focus. I also wanted to focus on the elements of isolation, and how their civilization keeps splitting and fragmenting, and especially on the fact that "our" Hive-ship line has no idea what happened to any of the others. In addition, I've also drafted up a few (secret) documents on places their metaplot can go, along with more explicit statements about their narrative placement.

I figured that the IPC would slot a paper into itself, and it'd come out completed. (Would essentially be like using a pen on it, but you would hold it inside your body until it's done, and you dont need a pen in hand. Still can't move though) I mean, don't get me wrong; I'm sure that such technology would exist, in theory. But how much utility would you, as a flesh-and-blood person, get out of strapping a printer to your back and walking around with it everywhere?

Why would an IPC carry around a ream of paper and an ink cartridge when there's loose paper and pens everywhere?

It's been two days since anything's had anything to say. I've been busy bees on the G-doc, so if you haven't seen it yet or haven't seen it in a while, I invite you to look at it. Questions, comments, praise, and abuse are all welcome. You can see it here.

I'm glad you like it. And certainly I would create a cheat-sheet, but for me the most important part of this version is that it's liberating: there are very few restrictions on what an Unbound can think, how it can act, what it's feelings will be, and the like. Other than having a wrong backstory (Ka'Akaix'Sue Zo'Ra was the youngest and most beloved daughter of the Queen...), there would be very few wrong ways to make one.

To me, the "Hive Mind" is entirely a function of Virtual technology and a side-effect of their constant communication. The Hive Mind within the Virtual is a very different beast from the Hive Mind out in the Material. In the Virtual... well, the best way I can describe it is to imagine that you're in a room, by yourself. You have a terminal that you can use to send messages, instantly, to anyone else who's connected - which is thousands and thousands of people; it's the whole Hive*. You can compose these messages as fast as you can think about them, and they're not just text. They're anything you can image; an image, a sound, a movie, even an interactive experience. In fact, a lot of them have no earthly human or Material parallel; they're "noetic" phenomenon, they're pure ideas without any reference to the sense of sight, sound, or the like. You are constantly getting bombarded with these messages as well, but it's okay - you can interpret them all as fast as they come in. And it's not just new messages that people are writing to you; it's collections of old messages, encyclopedias of old messages, some of which are hundreds or thousands of years old - entire libraries getting dropped into your lap, every second of every day, forever. Every so often, somebody will bring up a problem or concern or situation involving the outside world. Should we construct a new hatchery? Do we need more females? More Unbounds? Should we re-pave the roads? Should we send a message to Tli'yez? Should we try to kill all the humans? The possibilities are endless. Everybody who gets the message starts to think about it, and people who have strong feelings about it will send out messages with their plans - yes; we should construct a new hatchery to these specifications, no; we do not need more Unbounds, yes, we should send a circular to Tli'yez; no, we should not kill any humans. If it's a complicated question, then people start to workshop their plans with one another, make proposals to the whole group, entertain counter-proposals, and keep winnowing down different possibilities until there's a consensus - until all interested parties agree on or are acquiescent to a course of action. If the Hive* is strong in Procedure, then everybody is supposed to be an interested party. The Unbound collectively are the single giant brain of the community, and every objection has to be ironed out. People bring their concerns to the group's attention - yes we should kill all the humans because they smell bad - and they argue and argue until every point is fairly contested and everyone agrees. Agreement is possible, usually, because it's rare for anyone to have a personal stake in the outcome - good Unbound don't own any personal property or have any independent existence outside the Virtual, so in theory everyone will be affected by any decision in the same way as everyone else will. Also, because the Virtual has such a high bandwidth, they can go for thousands of rounds of discussion, each round involving hundreds of thousands of participants, in only a few minutes - and once the minutes turn to hours, it's very likely that every single Unbound will agree; they will achieve real consensus. Most Hives* are not so strong in Procedure; the Unbound have gotten into the bad habit of disinterest. Individuals are only interested in particular fields, particular areas of study, and they don't think about other fields more than they absolutely have to. (After all, they have cultural memories of a time when everyone was Unbound and they lived exclusively in the Material; Mutuality and Consensus are the outcome of social evolution and not biological evolution. They're taking to this about as well as humans would with the same technology.) In such cases, Unbound will habitually recuse themselves from conversations and discussions where they have no interest, and in some places they won't even be invited to the discussion unless they're already in good standing with the people having it, or they will have to 'apprentice' their way into the field. It's kinda like Facebook, really, if Facebook were the entire world. In the Material, this is no longer possible. The bandwidth of the Hivenet isn't one-ten-thousandth of what you get in the Material. They still yammer away and chat with each other, out of habit, but they're no longer able to share vast reams of information any more. The 'Hive Mind' becomes a little voice, or series of voices, chatting away in the back of your mind while you're going about your day, voices that you can alternately ignore or respond to - and if you do, they respond back. The Vaurca always need more volunteers to go into the Material, and some of them go just to get away from the constant bombard of information - they want space to become their own individual and cultivate their own personal self-actualization. *I'm using the word 'Hive,' but it isn't quite accurate in this case vis-a-vis my working version. The correct term here would be brood; a Hive is a greater nationality. The Zo'ra hive still exists, but not all Zo'ra attend the same Virtual. The boundaries of a single Virtual are contained within a single brood, which will belong to a larger Hive by means of heredity.

I also approve.

1) Sedantis is their version of the Garden of Eden, it plays a major part in their mythopoetic history. The loss of Sedantis, and the passage from the innocence of childhood to the moral responsibilities of adulthood, is extremely important to their self-image. 2) I see Queens as an impediment to creating a really interesting alien society and sociology. Besides, we already have a monarchical clan society, in the form of the Unathi. I mean, counter-argument - in the very original draft of the Vaurca, the Queens were the bodies in which the Virtual resided; they didn't give orders or assert themselves as individual personalities. What do you think was gained by adding them? 3) Yes. The Vaurca are in Tau Ceti because long-range imaging said that it was a system with at least one life-bearing planet for them to live on; they left for Tau Ceti before humans did but they were much farther away. The story will conclude depending on the outcome of player decisions and competitions, but I'm guessing that some will leave and some will stay behind to try and integrate. And in response to the edit: I played the Vaurca extensively back during their very first incarnation; I improvised in play a lot of the elements that others picked up. I don't generally play them now because I don't generally like their current characterization; one of the reasons I'm going for this position is so that I can change them back into something I'd like.

Oh, my. I'm very grateful for that endorsement. I'll keep working on my draft and make sure to address those specific topics.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ImFPuK8uXDtHeEiXdauczXnIjF8_pq5kpwijosfaLbU/edit?usp=sharing Please enjoy. Comments and criticism welcome.

I see no clean, rational path that starts with 'UB-B Bounds are objects to be used for the betterment of others' and yet ends in 'compassion and mercy are traits worth having,' and I, personally, would not consider a species or play-option that doesn't at least theoretically permit the latter position to be a worthy addition to our roster. Somebody could write an interesting and nuanced portrayal of really brutal fascist ants - T. H. White already did - but that doesn't seem like an addition to our roster that would create good scenes and good times. As for the edit, I don't think it applies at all. We're creating fictional universes here; we can make it as bright or as dark as we please. One could go through our lore and make it much darker; I mean, as an obvious first step, we could go back to the timeline and say that Hitler won the war. The desire for a lighter canonicity is just as valid as the desire for a heavier one.

Very glad to be here. I'll answer your questions to the best of my ability. In terms of difficulty of transference - in terms of taking people's existing character concepts and mapping them onto my new framework - I don't see this as being particularly difficult. Unbound who acted out of adoration for their own lesser queen could transfer that adoration onto the divine Holy Mother Goddess, who I'd keep as a figure of religious veneration. As for individualism, my framework would not diminish it but rather amplify it - without the obligation to adore the queen, with the new-found freedom of being stakeholders and parliamentarians in their own right, the Unbound would have the room to develop stronger personalities and individual preferences. I think the major change, when going from the revealed dictations of the Lesser Queen to the negotiated consensus of the Synedrion, would be in writing their newsposts; instead of continuous sovereigns giving interviews, we'd have rotating plenipotentiaries. But Hives are large; even the smallest independent outpost of them (I call them cantons) will have hundred-thousands or millions of Unbound members; even the most thorough of democracies doesn't protect the individual from getting outvoted and marginalized. It's still plausible, as a dramatic element, that a given Unbound would take the attitude that "the people that make decisions don't listen to me or have my personal best interests in mind." In my draft design document, which I will format onto Google Documents and post for examination, there is a concept among the Unbound called 'Procedure;' it is so important that it gets a capital letter and no context and everyone still understands what it means. The gist of Procedure is that everyone has a say on everything and that everyone has a responsibility to have useful opinions on everything. This is noble in concept but extremely hard to do, and each canton - each physically-independent Virtual space and its attendant material property - has its own position on the sliding scale of adherence to Procedure. Some are strong in Procedure, and everyone does everything; others are weak and factor out the different portfolios. If people really like the idea of queens and want to keep queens, then I can workshop a few different ways to do that. The Queen-Soul might be truly immortal, or live much longer than individual Unbound, and persist in the Virtual as a kind of special elder. The Queen might be the gestalt consciousness, with all Unbound actually living inside it. We might even go back to the body of the Queen being the host for the Virtual itself, which I believe was present from the very first framework. But I want to avoid the notion of Queens as meta-narrative protagonists, which they are presently and would be under most frameworks. Functional immortality was a feature of the original framework - or rather, my interpretation of the original framework - but I think that'd be too much, going forward. I like the idea that they live until entropy and sluggishness kills them, but I'd move the time-table up on that - I'd consider 120 to 150 years to be their proper 'lifespan,' with most Unbound player characters being low-ranking 'journeymen' aging from 25 to 40. Because, frankly, the UB-B plan - born Unbound, made into Bound - is really dark. I make no bones that my version is lighter and brighter than that of my counterparts', but I wrote it that way because I think it's a good thing. I think that the mass lobotomization - essentially the murder - of millions of Vaurca, and billions more beyond the stars, is much heavier than it looks, much heavier than we give it credit for. Now, you know me - you know I spend a lot of time thinking about the implications of our taste in fiction, and you'd be right to think that I could write more about things like 'normalization' and 'the Overton window.' But that's not my main concern; my concern in this specific incidence is that it's distracting. UB-B means that every Vaurca is essentially a participant in genocide, and for them to be thinking people means that they would have to have some kind of answer to this, some kind of rationalization - some mental real estate dedicated to justifying this. And if their justification is 'the Queens command and we obey,' then that makes them citizens of the most awful sort of tyranny, meaning that any Vaurca with a conscience - and I, for one, would like to play as a Vaurca with a conscience, with avenues for charity and compassion - would have to have some kind of spiritual or mental resistance to their society as it exists. Let me put it in another way - whoever ends up Loremaster of the Vaurca will have to make a decision: are the Vaurca in fact an existential threat to the human communities beside which they live? Were I Loremaster of the Vaurca, my answer would be - no, they are not. The dramatic arc of the whole species would be about two very different peoples struggling to understand one another, to live alongside one another, to put aside their differences and find common ground or fail to find common ground. But Vaurca who are capable of UB-B, who are capable of that kind of genocide, would in fact be an existential threat to humanity, in theory at least, and for the reasons I've delineated above that doesn't interest me. Thank you for your questions; I'd be happy to answer any others that you had.

Ahh, this is the endorsement I was waiting for. Thank you, Nanako; your approval means a great deal to me.

I would like to take this opportunity to pre-emptively answer a few questions that have been answered elsewhere. "What is the Virtual?" In my conception, the Virtual is two things. In the first place, it's the gargantuan organic/mechanic computers in which the consciousness of the Unbound resides. Each Virtual, along with its attendant Bounds and the grounds that house it, are a canton; each Hive can have multiple cantons. (In my current draft document, the Zo'Ra Hive has five cantons in Tau Ceti.) The Virtual is also the hypothetical digital space that the Unbound occupy. From their perspective, it doesn't look like anything; the Unbond do not perceive it through our five senses. It is thus a realm of cognition, of pure thought-forms. Unbound who have lived on the outside and in the Material might add those forms to it - they might use the Virtual the way we humans might use Second Life or some other 3D environment, to create digital spaces with grand, swooping architecture for them to inhabit - but otherwise, it's purely cognitive. If you read the Vaurca Dialogues, you'd remember I made a lot of hay about something called a 'noyau,' a group of Unbound who shared the job of thinking about particular topics. I've stepped away from that concept a little bit - there's still room for it but it's not explicit - but my idea about what happens in the Virtual is still basically the same. Unbound spend their days applying their reason against scientific, philosophical, and artistic topics, and sharing their conclusions with one another in order to form policy for the Virtual as a whole. My key ideas for the Vaurca rests around the potential of the Virtual. Because it arises entirely out of thought, it's trivial for the Unbound within it to 'send' their thoughts to any other Unbound in the Virtual or every other Unbound in the Virtual, and this creates an atmosphere of democracy and equality - every Unbound has the power and the right to propose an idea for what they should do and how they should manage their community property (read: all their property, all their Bounds and the environment they inhabit) and the whole community can seamlessly and instantly comment on it and reach a consensus on it. "How do I play one of Chev's Vaurca?" Bound still play the same. I have a few small, cute ideas for them - like the idea that Unbound can "beam" skillsets directly into their brains - but for the most part, they're still the bug-bots we know and love. Unbound, on the other hand, are very different. While it's important to me that they remain individuals and can have unique individual motivations, 'my' Vaurca have a few obvious default mindsets that proceed naturally from my lore. They are, to whit: - Oh, dang, I can't believe I drew the Black Number. Now I'm (working on the asteroid mines/pushing a broom/shoveling cargo/working a wrench). This is beneath my dignity; don't they know that my (collection of moon poetry/treatise on the categorical imperative/work with number theory) is famous all across the Hive? Unlettered savages. - Oh, dang, I can't believe I drew the Black Number. I was so happy working on (phoron dynamics/microbiology/high-energy physics/computer science) back in the Virtual, and now I have to share my work with these chimpanzees? Garbage. - Man, it sure does suck that we're stuck here and the humans are calling the shots, but somebody's gotta go out and toil in the trenches. This could be a good opportunity to broaden my personal horizons. - Man, it sure does such that we're stuck here and the humans are calling the shots. My canton-mates are out here working their pincers down to nubs; I should come out and support them. We're all in this together! - I'm excited to have this opportunity. All our greatest people proved themselves by going down into the Material and laboring in the trenches; if I make good in trying times like this, then pretty soon, everyone will listen to me. My star's going to rise... - I'm excited to have this opportunity. Simulations can only teach us so much; I'm finally getting the chance to put my theories to the test and do real work. Pretty soon, everyone's going to know my name and listen to me! - Oh, wow, there's so much cool stuff out here! All these new sensations - beauty of sight, beauty of sound, beauty of taste and smell... I never imagined it! The human world is so diverse, and I just want to explore all of it! - Oh wow, life on the outside is so refreshing! It's heavy with meaning and consequence; it's so much better than the teacup-plots and lit-crit turf-wars of the Virtual. I could really get to like it out here. - Oh wow, there's a lot going on out here! Maybe we could make good on this opportunity to finally reverse our fortunes; maybe it's time for those arrogant Zo'ra lotus-eaters to be on the beating end of the stick and maybe K'lax will be the ones in charge... I will say, though, in general, that my conception of the Vaurca is a lot... brighter, and more airy, and maybe even funnier than other people's. "Where do Unbound come from?" The 'default' birthing strategy is that Bounds give birth to Bounds, and all 'breeders' are Bound. It requires dedicated hormone treatments (administered artificially by Unbound doctors) to force an embryonic egg to develop a nice big brain, and thus grow up into a proto-Unbound. Thus, rather than using medicine to 'cut down' Unbound into Bound, they use it to 'upgrade' baby Bounds into Unbounds. Once their brains are large enough, Unbound are destructively uploaded (brains get sliced into cell-thick layers and computer-analysed) into the Virtual. In order for an Unbound to descend into a Viax, the Viax must be genetically- or surgically-altered to have a brain that can accommodate it. An "altered" Bound can still function as one, but an unaltered Bound - one who has never felt the bite of the scalpel - cannot accept a Bound or be confused as anything but.

A very good question. In my version, there are a number of ways this would play out. - Unbound X is going into the trenches to establish itself for promotion and the respect of its peers, which all ambitious Unbound must do as part of the course of honors. In this case, the body would be suited for mining, to a degree - but Unbound's major job, at least traditionally, would be to supervise the Bound workers who are actually handling drills and picks. - - Unbound X could also be volunteering to descend to the Material and work in mining because volunteering to go is quite heroic, and will earn it esteem in the eyes of its peers. - Unbound X is not volunteering; NanoTrasen or Biesel or whoever said, 'give us 500 Unbound miners' and Unbound X drew the Black Number. - Unbound X is a vagabond - a deviant Unbound that is deliberately exploring life in the Material for its own satisfaction. In this case, its body would probably not be designed from the first for mining - but the basic body will be more-or-less suited to any job a human can do. In general, since an Unbound would (generally) descend to do a specific job, they would have a body prepared for them related to the kind of work that they're doing. A miner is a miner because it mines, because it presently engages in mining and because it frequently engages in mining; Unbound don't have predestination, any more than humans do.

Correct me if I'm wrong because I barely know diddly squat about Vaurca, but wouldn't all of these fall under the 'rewrite' category? Vaurca have queens, cannot currently do any body-swapping and certain individuals (the queens) do know that home exists and its state. So you would be enacting changes on the already existing lore. Yes, that's correct. I will be enacting those changes, but I want to note that these changes deal primarily with what and how the Vaurca are among themselves. I would not change the status of the Vaurca vis-a-vis the rest of the sapient universe; they will still appear much the same from the outside.

Hah! Thanks.

Ckey/BYOND Username: ChevalierMalFet Position Being Applied For Vaurca Loredev Past Experiences/Knowledge: I have a Bachelor's in the Science of Management from a good college, I received the HSK-3 with 93% from Donghua University, and I was Executive Director of Marketing (fancy title - crappy job) for a now-defunct firm based in Shanghai, China focused on manufacturing counterfeit ACT tests. I also wrote the Vaurca Dialogues. I am currently self-employed and have lots of time to devote to this project. Do you play Vaurca extensively? Why? Yes. I love bugs and I love transhumanism, and the Vaurca hit those notes really well. If you were chosen for Lore Developer, what would your plans be for Vaurca? I would develop the Vaurca to be dramatically unique, both when compared to the other SS13 races and to our stereotypical image of arthropod beings. I would stick to the tone and feel of my Vaurca Dialogues, but without some of the more screwball elements - like the shuttles to Sedantis and the thousand-year lifespans - that were an artifact from v1. In general, these would be my principals: - Unbound can body-swap. - Hivemind means collective thought - no ruling Queens. - Vaurca as philosophers and warrior-poets. - Home is far away, if it exists at all; the Hive-ship is all that generations have known. Would you embark on major or minor rewrites of Vaurca lore? If yes, why is your rewrite worth it? I would not change their current situation, vis-a-vis the Republic of Biesel and humanity and all that. Vaurca would still be living in ghettos, they'd still be here against their will, and they'd still be stuck trying to do their best with a bad situation. But I would be changing their internal nature a great deal.