English

Hello,

I want to utter some remarks and objections concerning an aspect of the ongoing event, namely the explanations Ardan Kaele (as an entomoligist) has given.

I am aware that Atys is an fictitious world not identical to Earth. Yet I think that everything with an equal name here and in RL should be generally the same, with differences explained.

As to our termites, Ardan gave an explanation about their lifecycle which may fit to flies, mosquitoes, or butterflies, but hardly to social insects such as ants, bees, or termites. And it seems wierd that such kind of insects should be able to form lairs at all.

All social insects (in RL biology) share the common attribute that their "state" is in fact rather a very large family. Some exceptional cases (such as an orphaned lair, egg abduction, and breeding parasitism) notwithstanding, all social animals are largely siblings stemming from the same mother, the insect "queen".

The reproduction of social insects has separate cycles for normal reproduction and procreation. The latter takes place in lots (indeed up to millions) of eggs being laid by the queen resulting in infertile builders, collectors, feeders, or soldiers keeping the lair running, the further in raising a few fertile specimens for creation of new colonies, or replacement of the existing population at the end of its lifecycle.

This is the case with ants and bees on the one side as well as with termites, but with a remarkable difference: While infertile bees and ants are all females, termites have both sex in their working and defending population. Moreover, while the queen of bees ant ants is mating once in her life, keeping the semen of the 5-7 drones she coupled with (with the drones expelled and killed afterwards), the termite queen mates with one male during the marriage flight, and creates the colony together with him, and coupling again for producing new offspring over their lifetime. Also, the infertile termites are of both sex.

In case the lair orphans by death of the queen (or the couple) the emergency response is different, too: ant or bee lairs may be overtaken by a neighbouring colony usually of same kinship (I read about ants which assault other lairs overtaking the population after killing the queen, but that case of parasitism is quite rare). With termites, some of the infertile - indeed rather lifelong immature - individuals may mature and replace the fallen parents.

Atys kitins are obviously modelled after social insects of the bee/ant type, with the difference that the drones, the kidinak, are not being driven out and killed, but staying close to the queen as husbands and personal guard. I am not sure about the kinreys, but found some indications of them being infertile males.

Back to our termites, I find it regrettable that their biology seems having been ignored in the plot (maybe that can still be corrected). A way to handle termites as dead wood devouring tool while preventing them to spread out too far might have been hindering new fertile specimens to develop. The lair would then exist normally - possibly sped up by the stimulation potions - and naturally die at the end of its lifecycle.

Thanks for these remarks.

About the ranger event, i still don't understand how these termites would help with the kitin tunnels. The bark is not a soil, it's solid vegetal fibers. I can't believe the bark will collapse to close the tunnels unless termites have eaten the entire bark itself above the tunnel, plus this collapse would be a big shock, leading to something similar as earthquake (barkquake ? :p)

I have written about the impact of termites on mining here:

http://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/index.php?page=post/view/111811

I have read this, i had before you remember it, but maybe the thing that I see the most unappropriate is in fact the use of the word "collapse". I see this as a brutal, fast destruction : the material above the hole suddenly falls, when actually it should be the bark healing, growing again to fill the hole, and thus must be a much slower process than that word commonly let think.

I have reread the text and searched it, but cannot find the word "collapse" at any place of it. Instead, the process of gradual rotting away and gentle resorption of the tunnels once ventilation and maintenance are gone is described in detail.

After thinking about long time, I assume you refer to what I said in the last Rangers' assembly, where I mentioned that after the collapse of ventilation, the tunnels would collapse, too. It would have been more appropriate to refer to that sentence with a quotation instead of letting me search.

Indeed, I expressed myself bit unclearly. Of course, ventilation will collapse, in the sense of being halted immediately. Once the mounds are gone, the bark sealed, and the tunnels slowly sinking down in the growing marrow of the living planet, liquid, plants, lichens, and small underground animals will invade the cavings, making the destructive work irreversible. This process is rather slow but powerful, and impossible to be halted or reversed by the builders of the tunnels.

One should imagine how the Kitins built the tunnels in the first place. The first step was that specialized quite small kipee and kiban workers drilled an extremly narrow ventilation tunnel fast, barely large enough to let some further workers and guards squeeze through to the surface to secure and extend the tunnel mound. Now, with ventilation working, the kitins had all time of the world to extend the tunnel to its huge size, large enough to let soldiers march through in parallel, great kipestas fly, and even giant Kitin Generals like that we fought against during the retreat of hominkind into exile passing through without major discomfort.

Once we have destroyed the mounds, the kitins cannot maintain the large tunnels anymore, as the maintenance effort surmounts their force, nor can they shrink them to the size of the ventilation tunnels they built in the beginning. We have to guard the surface for some cycles to prevent and if necessary destroy ventilation tunnels they will try to drill from the existing tunnels to stop rotting. That won't be hard as only small weak kitins can perform such task which may be killed easily by most homins on sight, we only have to stay vigilant for some time. We should always be, anyway.

Thus there will be no sudden collapse of tunnels , thus no quake or other destruction. In fact I see less concern of disruption here than in usage of such a powerful force as magnetism, which plays a role in keeping our planet spinning and may cause enormous disruptions, flashes, and fires, being able to rip and cut parts of continent cliffs. I would be more concerned when responsible for handling those forces which should remain in the hands of the higher powers rather than about some breeding of small packs of social insects.