Much ink has been spilled over the ethics of killing orc babies. I have a solution.
Pig-men just aren't viscerally disgusting enough anymore. Man has never met a mammal so horrible that he wouldn't rub its belly if he thought he could get away with it. Make mammal-beastmen neutral; they're self-interested and short-sighted but at the end of the day we can come to understandings with them.
Bug-men though. Fuck 'em. If you've ever woken up with termites on your face, or felt despair after months of failing to get rid of the moths in your pantry, you'll get it. How can such tiny, stupid, horrible things best us? Imagine if they were 100 kilos and clever enough to use equipment, but just as totally food-and-reproduction focused and utterly ambivalent about inflicting suffering. Locust-men carpeting the plains in a crawling horde once every hundred years, leaving a barren wasteland. Towering termite-man cities of baked mud, ancient when man had yet to discover fire, filled with a million pale blind crawling things, stripping forests bare and then burrowing beneath human cities to steal the wood. Wasp-men with paralytic venom, ovipositors, and a -4 penalty to reaction rolls. Flea-men leap from ambush to drain your henchmen dry, and take mammals as livestock for blood, not distinguishing between sentient and animal. The ant-men are more discerning in their slavery, subjugating farmers as they once did aphids, and eating those who fail to produce enough. The mosquito-man shamans work plague magic. The bee queens allow passage through their acres of flower fields, but kill any who try to enter their hives. Beetle-ogres strong enough to lift elephants wander the countryside eating cattle and peasants alike. Roach-goblins come out of the sewers at night to steal and eat grain, pets, and infants.
Bugs are super cthonic. They burrow in the earth and live in the darkness and shun the light. If bugs had gods, what sort of gods would they be? Deified queens for the communal insects, perhaps.
And then the question of orc babies becomes more like "If you're playing an Alien RPG and you find alien eggs, do you burn them? If you're fighting the zerg, do you kill the larvae?" Of course you do. If they got their mandibles on a daycare, they sure wouldn't hesitate.
Hahaha, I see the point. But who knows. I love bees. And wasps. And ants. And small furry spiders. Hermit crabs. So... I don’t know. Humans are capable of a lot of strange empathy.
ReplyDeletePretty compelling vision to me. Now you've got me imagining the Warhammer Skaven as an under-city empire of wriggling roach/termite things that feed on the human wretches who worship their egg-lords, and it's...a pretty awful vision. :-)
ReplyDeleteI think you make a good point about insects as alien and inimical enough to treat as "monsters" even when they possess human-level intelligence.
ReplyDeleteYour proposed cultures are suitably creepy too.
Look to Shadowrun for inspiration for insect-hominids and their extra-dimensional overlords.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting in the approach to subterranean lairs, as well, since swarming insects often keep their larvae safe in passages dug into the ground. The pupae after hatching would hide snug and safe in the walls coming out to eat the collected refuse the parents brought through... or the bodies of dead and wounded adventurers.
ReplyDeleteShadowrun, bug city, nuke it all from the neighboring city, its the only way to be sure.
ReplyDeleteEver read Arneson's Garbage Pits of Despair? It's got Maggotmen and Zombie Maggotmen. There is also a Carcus Critter...
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