The Hive City

Over the weekend I worked on one of the Tor labyrinths. Unlike a maze, which has many dead ends, a labyrinth is really a single path with many twists and turns. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking of three different labyrinths for the Tor capital. Each one leads deeper below the Rochan surface, eventually leading to the Council of Elders. This first labyrinth is a series of attached rooms winding its way to the exit. The characters will need to traverse these rooms one by one, dealing with whatever obstacles they find within.

In my last post I talked about the Klixian capital city. After doing some research, I decided to call the city Tholos, because of the beehive-shaped domes that make up the structure. Here’s the overhead view:

The city's buildings come in three sizes: large, medium, and small. The four medium domes are home to the four castes that make up Klixian society: workers, soldiers, priests, and nobility (including the Queen). Obviously these are based on insect society, especially bees and ants, but I came up with a twist on how a new queen is selected. Basically, the Queen has several daughters and when their mother dies, each one takes a special pill. One of the pills is harmless while the others are poisoned. Whoever survives the ritual becomes the next queen, while the rest perish. This “poison pill” ritual insures that the daughters don’t try to kill the Queen prematurely since the chance of dying during the succession ritual is pretty high.