"Those who remember history are pleased to reenact it."
Hive Atalayan comprises half a dozen feuding city-states and dozens of smaller villages scattered along the Huachten Bay and the river valleys of old Atala. Each of the city-states, ruled by multiple queens, engages in subtle politics and blatant warfare - both intracity and intercity. It's important to note that the phrase 'Hive Atalayan' is appropriate only as a term of abuse for those other Ormigans over there, who are indistinguishable from the Ormigans on this side of the street but owe
fealty to a different Queen. Referring to present company as anything other than their Hive of origin is a grave, deliberate insult.
Geography
The narrow, curving Huachten Sea splits the continent nearly in half; great cities, once of the Atalayan Imperium, stand along its shores, or on the banks of the Chepec and Xotlec rivers that empty into it from opposing sides. The western shore, its six city-states, and inland along the Xotlec are claimed by the Hives called Atalayan.
Though blessed by a central location along ancient trade arteries, Hive Atalayan is cursed by typhoons and horrific flooding each year as the rivers swell and spill their banks; without knowledge of the old empire's secret weather magic, it's all anyone can do to keep their homes and livelihoods from washing away in the annual torrents.
Cities here of Ormigan architecture resemble a union of inverted funnels, imperceptibly subsiding into the matte fungus that serves as the agricultural substrate throughout the west equatorial region of the continent. It is difficult to say where any given city-state's farming exurbs blend into the trackless, uncultivated fungal tunnels.
Major Cities
Lahaun: Formerly a winter palace of the Atalayan Emperor, Lahaun has developed into an awkward and lovely blend of regal architectures. It's famed for its holographic art and uncommonly delicious rhizome crop.
Maohtecan: Northernmost of the city-states, teeming Maohtecan boasts an indigent population of over 100,000 - and some of the worst weather on the entire continent. Bring a spare umbrella.
Qatl: The only city in Hive Atalayan territory to have been successfully beseiged by the Hollow Pearl Emerates before the collapse of their armies, Qatl has never shed its human overlords. There is no noise in its streets, no internecine war among its Hives, and no respite from chilling police snitches.
Tlimch: The shifting course of the Xotlec left this ghost city dry and uninhabited a century ago. Currently, squatters and townies gone feral are gradually resettling, but the city itself is nearly a wilderness of overgrowth, crumbling walls, and reeking decay. No Queens inhabit Tlimch.
Wakptin: This southernmost of the city-states supports shipwrights who work the gnarled and sturdy matte fungus into the ships that sustain the remainder of the Hives.
Xotlec Estuary: Wealthiest and second largest of the city-states. Xotlec Estuary's foreign quarter occupies an entire island and has become a byword for wanton opulence and shady dealings.
Economics
Matte fungus dominates the ecology. Calcified hyphae extend below and above in formations like corridors; there's no identifiable ground level where the matte grows. Instead of cultivating on bare earth, lentils and tamarind are grown in the soil that accumulates atop the vaulted mass. Chaff and unharvested crops are consumed by the fungus's slow metabolism. The fungus itself produces truffles and a gummy nectar which does not spoil in the hot climate; these, along with surplus legumes, constitute most of Hive Atalaya's exports. Giant nectar lice are occasionally hunted in the fungal vaults for their flesh, but few animal products are produced - or wanted - in the city-states.
Other than hologram art and various silks, however, Hive Atalaya produces few crafted items. The land is extremely metal poor and few trees can grow in the matte; all of the cities depend on imports for the basic tools they need to survive.
Law and Order
While society within any given Hive resembles Ormigan norms, interhive laws model themselves instead on the most egregious excesses of the Atalayan Imperium: Kafkaesque, incomprehensible, and constantly fluxing. It is quite impossible to go through an entire day without infracting some statute or another; most "crimes" are never reported, nor prosecuted, nor even noticed. When punishment does take place it is always inflicted by summary judgment from a Worker magistrate. The most common punishment is exile, whether for a term of an hour or for life.
The port districts operate under a more relaxed legal system:
- Pay your tariffs.
- Surrender your iron.
- Do not speak the given name of any Rain King.
Iron is proscribed in all Hive Atalayan territory, the possession of iron weaponry an automatically capital crime. A specialized Drone caste whisks away worked iron that does appear, ritually defuses it, and offers it (along with bribes of food and goods) to traveling Scrappers.
Magical Traditions
The Stargazers of the Imperial Atalaya did not share knowledge. Ever. The mighty techniques whereby the tramp of armies raised tornados in their vanguard are unknown outside of Chuluan. What little weather magic Hive Atalayan has reconstructed is a feeble mimicry, barely able to mitigate the assault of hurricanes on cultivated land or drive a becalmed galley.
Instead, the Breathwrights of Hive Atalayan employ illusions. So commonplace is the creation of illusionary images that Hive Atalayan has no tradition of poetry or descriptive language: their pictures speak more than any amount of words. Whether bewildering wild giant nectar lice, rendering the Unseen Fleet invisible, plausibly sleazing a negotiation, or sharing senses across a breeze, Air magic is the foundation of the city-states' technology. Each caste and subcaste uses techniques of their own, usually incorporating smatterings of other traditions that have grown native through cultural diffusion.
Government
Every village harbors a Queen; Maohtecan has nearly one thousand. Despite being the monarch of her Hive, the social order of an city is self-sustaining and beyond any single Ormigan's control. No one is in charge in Hive Atalaya.
On midsummer's day, any juvenile Queens that have grown wings take flight from their mother's Hive and fan out, in search of another Hive to commandeer or a prime spot to found a new village. Most of these juvenile Queens perish in the process; regnant Queens in the city-states typically surivive only one year of adulthood before being slain by one of the many challengers. Thereafter, the interloper sheds her wings and takes the place of the old monarch.
Drones subdivide into a multilevel caste system consisting of diplomats, shock troops, ritualists, Breathwrights, and scribes (who keep holographic records of anything that bears remembering).
Workers, on the other hand, enjoy much social freedom: in order to be a caretaker, one simply has to tend larvae with jelly. In order to be a farmer, one need only gather crops; to be a magistrate, one has only to pass judgment. Collective experience, distributed by Air magic, allows workers to function capably as their whims and aptitudes dictate. Needless to say, only workers are encountered outside of a Hive's innermost chambers.
Friends and Neighbors
Atalaya: The Rain Kings of Chuluan do not suffer usurpers to mock their sky-dominion; any ship daring to sail too close under rudimentary weather magic risks the contemptuous attention of the Imperial Stargazers. Their attention always manifests in the same way: gale force mistral winds that can appear without warning in even the calmest of skies, strong enough to blast a ship to flinders. To Atalaya, reasserting the will of Heaven is both sport and honor.
Bitter experience has taught the navigators of Hive Atalayan never to sail beyond sight of land.
Hive Moskita: Hive Moskita and Hive Atalayan are enmeshed in a complex dance of wary trade, knifepoint diplomacy, and mutual piracy. Moskita scorns the city-states as gentrified, fractious prey; Hive Atalayan unseen frigates have standing directives to ambush and seize any Moskitian water craft that has engaged in raiding. Or seems like it might engage in raiding. Or hasn't paid sea toll. Or looks funny.
Hollowed Pearl Emirates: An uneasy truce mediates between Hive Atalaya and the kin of the Wingshadowed Throne. Over the Basalt Road, traders bring luxuries from more than a thousand kilometers west to the Huachten Sea, and return laden with goods from Hive territory. The exchange is simply too good to refuse - but no one has forgotten the monstrous cruelties committed by the Hollowed Pearl mandarinate in their failed bid for domination. The iron bound rulers of the now splintered Empire will never be welcome in Hive Atalaya.
Lolahshi: Fierce trade winds, sargasso doldrums, and the watchful paranoia of Atalaya permit no direct contact between the city-states and Lolahshi or Hive Chu'ritl; there simply are no safe routes over the ocean.
Redarkhan: As loci of maritime and terrestrial trade, the city-states of Hive Atalayan are primary, if distant, ports of call for Redarkhan skyships. Here, goods from the western half of the continent are conveniently arrayed for distribution to the eastern half. Redarkhan extends vast lines of credit: enough to keep the city states in debt, but not so much in debt as to impinge on the economy if a debtor Queen and her hive should be killed while her hive's debt outweighs the lien due to Redarkhan.
Though mutally beneficial, this arrangement contributes to the endemic poverty of Hive Atalayan, uncharacteristic for Hive territories. At least once, in the former city-state of Tlimch, crews have been assaulted and a skyship (briefly) stolen. The disasterous ensuing boycott of Tlimch greatly hastened that city's demise; skyship crews no longer leave the port districts while in dock.
The Scrap Pile: Hive Atalayan also has a great appetite for antiquities from the Atalayan Imperium; it is a poor Queen indeed without some memento of the glorious, misinterpreted days past. Scrappers are the best source of these knicknacks and are highly regarded throughout the city-states; blind eyes are turned to their iron prosthetics - as far as the laws of the city-states are concerned, that doesn't count.
As the nearest city of any nation to The Scrap Pile, Tlimch is osmotically adopting their customs and may join with them more formally in the near future.
