[https://i.imgur.com/VTWZd5z.png]
Q: With her Bee boxes, could she RTS her hive and send drones on delivery/resource collection? Kidding
A: Kidding? KIDDING? OF COURSE she can RTS the drones.
Q: Could she make a Jarvas (Jarvis?) to help her, so Queen doesn’t endanger herself? The more minds in one head, the BEEter
A: Is it possible? I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. But we already have a jarvis-type character in Beatrice. I mean, putting Beatrice into their head would just be ridiculous.
[https://i.imgur.com/8cgBXUs.png]
Q: What makes a mind able to be absorbed by the multi mind skill?
A: I’ll assume you’re asking about the [Combined Minds] ability that our protagonist(s) possesses. Until the Vulch was defeated, Combined Minds was just a throwaway ability Enno obtained that allowed two living Minds to exist in one body. Of course, it turned out to do a bit more than that. It's because of this Ability that Enno and Queen were able to ‘absorb’ the Vulch’s Mind, or at least get some benefit from it. At that time, they were able to do it by grabbing Vulch’s Mind, which they were inside of, and dragging it to their own body, simple as that. It was sort of a perfect storm of circumstances, in that case. There’s a few things: Vulch’s Mind doesn’t seem to be perfectly ‘absorbed’ (he isn’t talking. Is he grumpy?), and Enno would probably need to want more Minds to focus on developing a method of stealing Minds. The obvious benefit is increased Mind efficiency, and the downside is having some wacko in your head
[https://i.imgur.com/pXwEyiA.png]
Q1: Yippee!!!
A1: Yippee!!!
Q2: Will we get human POV chapters soon?
A2: I’d like to! There’s so much to show! Chapters focusing solely on the human characters is something I’ve been a little hesitant to do (partly because many people Do. NOT. Like them.), but I LOVE alternate POVs! That’s why they sometimes appear within chapters. Nice for people who like alternate POVs and nice for those who like to stay with the og viewpoint character(s). Another reason is that, until recently, humans weren’t present in the story, so I wanted a really neat moment for a full POV chapter (of which there have been some moments, so some missed opportunities maybe).
TLDR most likely, but I want to wait for a neat moment
Q3: Does the Forest have a name? (worldbuilding is awesome)
A3: Absolutely! It is called the ‘Vultuous Forest’ as seen in the first Interlude, from the Mercborn POV. I wonder why it would be named that?
Also, I LOVE world-building. Maybe a little too much. There’s a ton of stuff I want to do with this world. Mainly I want to make this world weird. I wish more fantasy or alternative worlds were weird. I already have so much laid out, some of which has been teased or mentioned, and some of which is still lurking in secret.
Q4: Could you recap the plot so far?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
A4: I’ll put this in a spoiler because it might be kinda long
Our story begins with a snarky loner called Enno working his regular electrical engineering job and being lonely. While walking home with his co-workers he almost gets hit by a car, diving out of the way at the last second. Then he gets electrocuted by a power pole.
After dying he sees strange things until waking up in the dying body of a queen bee. The queen bee (Queen) is still there though. Turns out the bee has psychic powers and they work together to survive, with Enno in control of the body and Mind.
They kill a squirrel and make an egg, an egg that is born into the bee Beatrice, who is named that because it is funny. After some experiments, Beatrice is able to turn into a new Subtype Aide.
Enno sees a flashback about humans and realizes this world has fucking guns.
Five more children are born, called Ben, Bess, Bella, Belle, and Beck.
The newbees learn about themselves until some vultures appear which are destroyed by Enno. Some more vultures show up later, and since theyre too much for the weaker newbees to handle, Enno declares war on them, beginning the Scavenger War. To prepare, Enno makes another egg with a super powerful warrior inside.
Ben is sent to scout the forest, and while out he is seen by the white eyed vulture, meaning the vultures are now aware of the hive. So, the hive decides to strike first in an ambush. The ambush works, so they do it some more and reduce the vultures’ numbers. Then the hive ambushed.
Enno meets the Vulch in his Mind and they start a rivalry before Enno and Queen gtfo. When they get out, they see that the vultures have already attacked the hive, destroyed the tree trunk that was their base, injuring the bees that had stayed, and scarring the egg of the warrior.
Enno is sad, but then he gets a hug from the bees and is pretty glad. Trapped in the invincible dirt ball, they plan a way to win. They make weapons and plan, but then the egg starts hatching which freaks everyone out, so they leave the dirt ball.
The hive fights defensively to stall for the egg, which eventually hatches into Sir Bedivere, an insanely powerful bee who is able to hold the vultures back for enno to assault the Vulch.
Enno, Queen, and the Vulch have a mindscape battle which ends in Queen and Enno overwhleming the Vulch and beating him, spelling the end of the war.
In peacetime, the hive is focused on expansion. Enno is also focused on other stuff, like becoming more powerful and knowledgeable. Turns out, rather than destroying the Vulch’s Mind the pair had somehow enslaved it in their own Mind, where it lies dormant.
To expand, a ton more bee eggs are laid. When they hatch, things are good except for Enno’s mental state. Later, expansion is going well except it sort of isnt. Especially when Bedivere kinda sorta does a little beetrayal. He used a strange new ability on four strong warrior eggs to turn them into supersoldiers, and Enno was not happy about it.
When punishment is doled out, Enno needs some time alone so he experiments with Mind some more, especially Compartmentalization. The experimentation results in (the ability) being changed into B-boxes, and getting attention from some gods.
Enno decides to play with the boxes that got godly attention and ends up going inside of one, causing his and Queen’s body to go still. Queen was still conscious though. And her efforts result in Bedivere, the only one who knew Queen existed, to figure out something was wrong and enlist Beck’s help.
Enno has some shit to work through, so its up to Beck, Bedivere and Beatrice (?!) to help him escape so the hive can function. Just as Enno gets out, the four bees Bedivere altered hatch, revelaing the Valkybees, an elite team of four warriors named after beemons.
The hive creates better emergency plans and continues living in relative peace, until humans show up. A team of mercenaries inclusing the leader, Yelah, a big guy called Grehn, money-hungry Rette, and Vlugh. As well as Yelah’s best buddy Dip, a giant emperor penguin.
After a skirmish, the bees imprison the humans and are on the clock to figure out a way to deal with them. Or else more humans will show up. So they risk it all on a new bee subtype, the Linker Bee. When the Linkers are attached, they force the Kin Link onto whatever they’re attached to, allowing Enno to become a Mind enslaving psychic bee.
A game plan is made for the infiltration of the human city, Yiwi. The humans are also eager to return, because Rette and Vlugh had gotten badly injured in the original scuffle. However, on the way, they encounter another team of mercenaries led by a more experienced merc called Toh.
Yelah does some trickery to convince Toh to abandon the mission, which works, except it doesnt, so Toh and couple other guys are sent to check out the hive. The Toh gets whacked by Beelzebub, a Valkybee, and subsequently assimilated.
We learn more about mercenary companies, about Toh, and about motivation for writing a webserial before coming to the current day. We have a better plan for conquering Yiwi, some more advanced B-boxing (ooh a good title!), and now we’re sick?!
I may need to get better at TLDRing
Q5: Who’s your personal favorite character right now? I like Ben, he’s silly.
A5: I don’t know! I’m terrible at picking favorites in pretty much anything. If I had to choose, I might say Queen. For other bees, I might say Beatrice. Or Bedivere. Or maybe Beelzebub? She’s funny. Oh but Ben is silly too. Maybe Bess. Or maybe-
Well, I can’t really choose.
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Thank you so much for the questions!
Now I’m gonna turn things around. I have some questions for you all. First off, I was wondering about doing Q and A’s more often. I like doing them, but I’m not sure if people would want to ask questions all the time. But I like answering questions! Another thing is making a community. Authors here often have Discords, but I haven’t really thought about doing anything like that. If I were to make one, would people join? I’ll make a poll for these too.