The Mantids
Aggressive mantis race that speaks openly of exterminating tenodera, and whose colony system is destroyed in the epilogue.
Story so far
The mantids are the larger, more aggressive cousins of the tenodera. They hate York's race: the two are similar and can crossbreed, and most mantids speak openly of exterminating tenodera out of fear of what would happen if the two mixed en masse. York is much smaller, flightless, and nothing like as violent.
In the epilogue the news is dominated by the fact that a mantis system has simply gone boom - the destruction of Hive Re-Population Center 51, not the original mantis system but the least populated and newest of several colonies. York re-watches the footage and mutters that it is what they deserved, trying the words out even though he cannot feel them, and takes a strange, empty satisfaction from it. Across the galaxy the reaction is fear rather than grief: stars do not usually go nova without warning, and people are starting to panic.
Appearance
Large, aggressive praying-mantis-like aliens, bigger and more violent than their flightless tenodera cousins.
Role
A hostile mantis power whose colony system is annihilated as the galaxy destabilizes.
Relationships
Sources — 12 recorded facts, by chapter
- Insectoid manufacturers of the crawl's macro AI systems, whose Frankenstein builds cannot feed themselves.
- Common mantis species associated with running the crawl, distinct from this season's unusual mantis crawlers.
- Galactic power whose regime Mordecai uses as one half of his analogy for naga government.
- The thousands of sward mantis crawlers in the dungeon, whose repeated offers of alliance Everly always refused.
- Faction Stockade names among those whose ineptitude let the crawl become a real fight for survival.
- Mantis scientists who cracked how to build controllable AI systems, upending the residuals' timeline.
- The faction widely credited as the masters of strategy, a reputation Drakea's cookbook note explicitly disputes.
- Insectile faction that fled the Faction Wars around the sixth floor, an act Rishi reads as terror at something coming.
- A past crawl team whose roughly 200 mercenaries were the victims of War Crime's only prior casting.
- Cited by the AI as the fresh example of what happens to those who irritate it.
- Reportedly half of Maestro's holdings, raised by Victory in the argument over his claimed crown.
- Aggressive mantis race that speaks openly of exterminating tenodera, and whose colony system is destroyed in the epilogue.