Path of Biomancy

“Where did you hear that name boy?

Kchoat’lis? I’ve not heard that word since I were just a boy. My grandfather liked to scare us with silly stories.

Kchoat’lis was first named when the Old Dominion was young. A name, a word that has survived the ravages of time in stories used to terrify hardened soldiers about the camp fire.

Tales tell of the Kchoat’lis beetles. Predatory insects, the size of men that swarm and consume as locust! From the great Hive Spire.

Sure, there were truths to the tale. Half truths and exaggerations.

The Kchoat’lis Hive Spire stands high upon the mountains of the dying lands. No man alive claimed to have travelled there but it is clearly visible from the North Dominion. In the evenings twighlight, huge clouds of creatures… surely bats or swallows in migration, could be seen billowing like plumes of smoke in the far distance.

During The Fall, it was said that The Hive erupted like a Hornets nest kicked by a fool!

My old man swore that the tales were true. That our ancestors who crossed the wastelands not only fled the devastation but also from great swarm of Kchoat’lis. Some the size of men but others like towering monsters!

Hahahaha! Shit myself have you boyyo? Bwahahaha! The look in your eyes boy!”

The Spire Lords of Kchoat’lis are true indeed. As are the huge insect that inhabit the region but the size of a man, they are not. Maybe a small dog at the largest! Their citadel, seated high in the Dying Land’s mountains survived The Great Dragon War and lay dormant for millennia. For the mountains were rich in biomass. Thousands of tonnes of insect biomass. The stock was rich, strong and responsive to Phermonal command, leaving few reasons to meddle in the world of men that had developed around them.

Until the cataclysm. The realm of men had brought a destructive force upon Éä. The Hive responded just like the old tales tell… swarms of man size creatures. Man shaped insects with dagger like claws. Drones wrapped in chitinous armour with claw like blades, flooded the lands and defended The Hive with ravenous instincts.

Worse of all was that the aftermath of The Fall was suffered by the delicate balance of life around The Hive. A winter eternal. In just 5 spawning cycles, most of the insects of Kchoat’lis were all but extinct.

The realms of men, through their ignorance, through their arrogance, had cost the Kchoat’lis Lords greatly.

A price man would suffer as long as the world must suffer man!