Mak'ti
The mak'ti are a large megarthropod species inhabiting the vast system of limestone caverns that are suspected to stretch the length and breadth of Kemesh. Mak'ti are somewhat ant-like in appearance and range from two to eight feet in length. Their bodies are tri-segmented with six legs. mak'ti normally use all six legs for locomotion, but are also able to rotate their thorax and head vertically into a centaur-like formation and use their front pair of limbs as manipulators. Their front limbs possess six claws that are jointed.
They they possess large compound eyes, though they are very nearsighted. They also have a patch of pits on their faces that allows them to detect and locate heat. They smell and taste with four head antennae and detect vibrations and air currents with long stiff hairs growing from their head, back and back four limbs. Their large outer mandibles have saw toothed ridges and their inner mandibles are smaller and more dextrous.
The mak’ti individually are no more intelligent than dogs, yet as a colony they are intelligent and civilized. This was a fact recognized only recently, since their culture and way of viewing the world is alien to most other races. To an outsider, it would appear that the mak’ti society had no communication or social interaction aside from touching attenae, yet they are somehow highly organized.
In fact, the mak'ti form of communication consists mainly of vibration aided by smell at short distances. The bottom of their four hind limbs have small, percussive digits that tap the ground in rapid fire bursts. Through this complex tapping and the echoes and vibrations they create through the caverns, mak'ti stay in constant communication with each other, even using each other as nodes to communicate to others through miles of caverns at the speed of sound.
This persistent web of communication forms a super-consciousness within a mak’ti colony. This consciousness, which metanatural philosophers name a colony spirit, possesses a powerful intelligence and orders life in the colony. Though this intelligence is limited by the simple goals of raising young, growing food, expanding territory and defending the colony from intruders, it performs these task with the mind of super-genius, through commands to the mak'ti soldiers and workers.
Mak’ti emerge onto the surface only at night. Their main aim is to harvest jungle tree saplings, which the harvester mak’ti saw down with their massive mandibles. These trees brought into the hive where they are cut into smaller pieces and masticated by farmer mak'ti to create food for the nutritious fungi that are their staple food. The function a mak'ti has within the colony can be determined by their size. Nursery workers, who also perform medical care and grooming, are a meter long. Farmers, who tend the fungi groves, as well as expanding cavern space, are one to two meters. Harvesters, which harvest the fungi food stock, are 2 to 2.5 meters and soldiers, who guard the colony and harvesters are 3 to 3.5 meters. All mak'ti are very strong, able to easily carry ten times their own weight back to their colony.
Colony spirits are not aggressive to outsiders who explore their colonies, largely ignoring them unless they destroy hive structures, seriously disrupt workflow or kill mak’ti. Unless they present a real danger, intruders who prove a nuisance are mere shoved out of the way by soldiers or workers. They are however highly aggressive towards intruders from other mak’ti colonies or those who smell like foreign mak’ti and will lethally attack them without hesitation.
Mak’ti in or near their colony are relentless and fearless opponents when provoked. Their tactics become more sophisticated and aggressive with the number of mak’ti present and closeness to the colony. They can detect vibrations of movement of creatures as well as smell them. Mak’ti attack with their mandibles, sawing through flesh with quick lateral shifts of their jaw muscles. They also grab and pierce with their front limb claws. Workers will also fight with jets of acid they expel from glands near their mouth that they use to soften and dissolve limestone for cavern expansion.
Mak'ti intelligence increases somewhat with size of the individual, but this variability is greatly overshadowed by proximity to the colony or the number of mak'ti in a harvesting group that are able to communicate effectively. The greater concentration of mak'ti, the greater their individual intelligence. A lone mak'ti stranded and lost on the surface has no more intelligence than a clever animal and will always choose to run away if threatened.
The varhani respect the mak'ti and only come into conflict with them when a colony's harvesters take vegetation too close to their territories. The mak'ti are susceptible to the venoms varhani use on their darts and spears, and varhani hunters are experts at finding the vulnerable spots in mak'ti chitin plates. This skill does not usually need practicing however, since the colony spirits are aware of the varhani and avoid conflict whenever possible.
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