The Matriarch

The Matriarch was the first skat'ra and became the progenitor of all the skat'ra. In her earliest life, she was only a termite queen. During the Rending, like many other individuals, she started to change.

Her changes were both physical and mental. She grew to an enormous size, dwarfing everything around her. Her egg-laying capacity increased both in the size of the eggs and the frequency she could lay them. Her mental capabilities improved also. She became more intelligent and started to realize her newly found telepathic abilities. These changes didn't stop with her. Her offspring became bigger, stronger, and brighter than typical termites, and through her telepathy, she created a hive mind among them. They are now rivaling long-standing species like orcs and hobgoblins.

While she was laying the foundation of the skat'ra nation and her workers built the first skat'ra hill, she continued to grow in size. Soon, her workers could not keep up with her size changes to continuously rebuild her hill. Therefore her workers, based on her instructions, started to dig deeper and deeper into the ground while the extracted earth was used up as layers upon layers on her hill, making it the most secure skat'ra hill.

Soon after her princesses founded their hills and became queens, she realized they retained her telepathic and hive-mind abilities. As more and more hills were established, there was a moment when the Matriarch's and her queens' telepathic ability reached a point when they stepped up to a new level. After that, they were able to communicate with each other without leaving their hives. The focal point of this communication is the Matriarch. Everything goes through her, but she is unaware of the content of the telepathic messages one queen sends to another. She can only hear what is sent directly to her.

The Matriarch still lives under her fortified hill, which her workers transformed into a temple dedicated to her.

Without the Matriarch, we will not exist

— The Queens' Assembly