Watroachs: A dying breed. - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Jan 26, 2007 20:35:33	I remember how cool I thought the picture of the Watroach was when it appeared in some old Dragon issue back in the day. The idea of hollowing out a beetle the size of a van and using it as a walking undead tank has ever since had a sort of sleek and morbid appeal to me. So I tried looking it up in that nigh exhaustive tome Terrors of Athas and there were the stats and description I remember. But reading the description again reminded me of something that had always bugged me about it (no pun intended). Specifically, to quote: The thorax is a storehouse of digested foods and liquids for the adult watroach, and is connected to the central hive chamber where millions of infant, drone watroaches, each less than one-inch long serve the gestating protoadult at the center of the hive. -snip- The adult watroach lives only to feed, so that the hive chamber is fruitful when it dies. The drones bath, feed, and otherwise maintain the proto-adult until the adult gets too old to move. Once this happens the proto-adult grows rapidly to full size, which takes about three days. When doing this it ingests the remaining nutrients of its parent’s thorax and most of the hive material, literally eating its way out of the hive chamber.
#2 zombiegleemax Jan 30, 2007 7:35:11	I like and will use all three options. And I think thri-trin ought to be the basis for the "spontaneous genesis" option; trin strike me as a criminally-underused semi-sentient race, and this gives them more flavor. --I like this! NB
#3 dirk00001 Jan 30, 2007 10:02:34	Of the three, I think the "metamorphic drones" idea is the best - we've got ants as a prime example of how feeding and other environmental factors can cause a species to develop (or be developed into) several "variants," so I think it's a great idea here. It could be something as simple as a phereomone/hormone given off whenever the "watroach colony" is fed to the point where they are bringing in more food than is necessary for the upkeep of the colony - at that point a genetic switch in one of the drones switches on, it gorges itself on extra foodstuffs, and it and some of the other drones leave the hive. This new breeding watroach hunkers down somewhere with its drones continuing to provide it additional food (perhaps even serving as food themselves) while the original goes through a huge growth spurt, basically acting as if it were a proto-adult making the final metamorphosis save that it's food source comes from outside sources rather than the body of an older adult.
#4 zombiegleemax Jan 31, 2007 7:30:34	Don't get me wrong, I think the metamorphic drone idea is probably for the best....but wouldn't it be cool if trin were a bio-engineered race by the zik-chil to form a harvestable meat animal when certain environmental pressures're applied? It would explain why the trin aren't really full sentient....they're kept as a potential food-source! --I like the idea of watroaches being herd animals in the Kreen Empire NB
#5 dirk00001 Jan 31, 2007 10:08:48	No arguing with the coolness factor, but since I have no plans on incorporating the kreen empire or even the trin into my campaign for a long, long time (if ever) I prefer the simpler/more straight-forward explaination. ;)

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

zombiegleemax

Jan 26, 2007 20:35:33

I remember how cool I thought the picture of the Watroach was when it appeared in some old Dragon issue back in the day. The idea of hollowing out a beetle the size of a van and using it as a walking undead tank has ever since had a sort of sleek and morbid appeal to me.

So I tried looking it up in that nigh exhaustive tome Terrors of Athas and there were the stats and description I remember.

But reading the description again reminded me of something that had always bugged me about it (no pun intended). Specifically, to quote:

The thorax is a storehouse of digested foods and liquids for the adult watroach, and is connected to the central hive chamber where millions of infant, drone watroaches, each less than one-inch long serve the gestating protoadult at the center of the hive.

-snip-

The adult watroach lives only to feed, so that the hive
chamber is fruitful when it dies. The drones bath, feed,
and otherwise maintain the proto-adult until the adult gets
too old to move. Once this happens the proto-adult grows
rapidly to full size, which takes about three days. When
doing this it ingests the remaining nutrients of its parent’s
thorax and most of the hive material, literally eating its
way out of the hive chamber.

zombiegleemax

Jan 30, 2007 7:35:11

I like and will use all three options. And I think thri-trin ought to be the basis for the "spontaneous genesis" option; trin strike me as a criminally-underused semi-sentient race, and this gives them more flavor.

--I like this! NB

dirk00001

Jan 30, 2007 10:02:34

Of the three, I think the "metamorphic drones" idea is the best - we've got ants as a prime example of how feeding and other environmental factors can cause a species to develop (or be developed into) several "variants," so I think it's a great idea here. It could be something as simple as a phereomone/hormone given off whenever the "watroach colony" is fed to the point where they are bringing in more food than is necessary for the upkeep of the colony - at that point a genetic switch in one of the drones switches on, it gorges itself on extra foodstuffs, and it and some of the other drones leave the hive. This new breeding watroach hunkers down somewhere with its drones continuing to provide it additional food (perhaps even serving as food themselves) while the original goes through a huge growth spurt, basically acting as if it were a proto-adult making the final metamorphosis save that it's food source comes from outside sources rather than the body of an older adult.

zombiegleemax

Jan 31, 2007 7:30:34

Don't get me wrong, I think the metamorphic drone idea is probably for the best....but wouldn't it be cool if trin were a bio-engineered race by the zik-chil to form a harvestable meat animal when certain environmental pressures're applied? It would explain why the trin aren't really full sentient....they're kept as a potential food-source!

--I like the idea of watroaches being herd animals in the Kreen Empire NB

dirk00001

Jan 31, 2007 10:08:48

No arguing with the coolness factor, but since I have no plans on incorporating the kreen empire or even the trin into my campaign for a long, long time (if ever) I prefer the simpler/more straight-forward explaination. ;)