In the world of the Insect-kinden, all the kinden share a language (2). There is, however, a Reason for this. It's not just that I couldn't be bothered, honest. However, I'm feeling perverse enough not to simply explain, so I will content myself by pointing out that this remarkable commonality of language has not gone unnoticed by the clever men and women of the Great College. To give you an indication of their current thoughts on the subject, I have swiped an itinerary from one of their conferences, which I present for your delectation here.

For reference, this conference is taking place somewhere around the same time as book 5, which is actually important. The keen-eyed may wish to speculate on the import of some of the lesser items in the schedule too…

(1) The film The Thirteenth Warrior at least acknowledges this problem, with the arabic hero having to work hard to pick up the speech of the vikings he ends up accompanying, after an unpromising start where his servant manages very basic speech using mangled latin and greek. Whether you go for the linguistic montage the film lands us with, at least it admits to language as a barrier. (In Crichton's original book, Eaters of the Dead, the hero never really does learn the language, but gets by because one of the vikings speaks latin.)

(2) This isn't English, of course, but your humble author has kindly translated.

Aagen — Wasp artificer
ACHAEOS — Moth seer and raider, lover of Cheerwell Maker
Adax — Tarkesh Ant, duellist at the College
Adran — Wasp soldier, member of the Broken Sword
Adraxa — Ant, one of Scuto's agents in Helleron
Akalia — Vekken Ant Tactician, killed at the siege of Collegium
Akta Barik — Scorpion, gangster of the Halfway House
Alder — Wasp General of the 4th Army ("The Barbs")
ALVDAN II — third Emperor of the Wasp Empire
Ananus — Maynesh Ant officer, Auxillian Captain
Archedamae — Mantis, one of Scuto's agents in Helleron
ARIANNA — Spider student, Imperial agent in Collegium
Artelly Broadways — Beetle Smuggler out of Collegium
Atryssa — Spider, companion of Stenwold and lover of Tisamon
Axrad, Wasp pilot in Solarno

BALKUS — Sarnesh Ant, one of Scuto's agents in Helleron
Basila — Tarkesh Ant intelligencer, killed by Wasp forces
Berdic — Wasp Rekef Major assigned to Szar
Big Greyv, Mole Cricket artificer, apprentice of Drephos
Bolwyn — Beetle, Agent of Stenwold's in Helleron
Breaken — Beetle, Elias Monger's guard officer
Brodan, Wasp Lieutenant in the Rekef
Brugan, Wasp Rekef General
Brutan — Wasp slaver

Cabre — Fly artificer of Collegium
Carvoc — Wasp Colonel of the 4th Army
Cesta, Assassin Bug assassin in Solarno
CHEERWELL MAKER (CHE)- Beetle, Stenwold's niece, a College scholar
Chefre — Fly gangster accompanying Salma
Chudi, Thorn Bug barman at Aleth on the Exalsee
Chyses — Soldier Beetle, resistance fighter in Myna
Cosgren — Beetle thug
The Creeve, Soldier Beetle/Ant Pilot from Chasme
Cydrae, Mantis warleader at Sarn
Czerig — Bee artificer, Auxillian Captain

Daklan — Wasp Rekef Major in Vek, killed by Lorica
Dalre, Dragonfly servant of the Destiavel in Solarno
DARIANDREPHOS (Drephos) — Wasp/Moth halfbreed artificer, Auxillian Colonel
Dariaxes — Fire Ant officer at Collegium
DESTRACHIS — Spider gangster and doctor
Draywain — Imperial Beetle merchant
Drevane Sae, Dragonfly insect rider from Princep Exilla

Edric — Wasp Colonel of the 4th Army
Elias Monger — Beetle, Stenwold's cousin, a magnate of Helleron
Eriphinea (Phin) — Moth assassin, mercenary working for the Rekef

Falger Paldron — Beetle, duellist and student at the College, Inigo's nephew
FELISE MIENN — Dragonfly noble and duellist
Founder Bellowern, Imperial Beetle magnate and collector
Fragen — Wasp sergeant in Szar
Franeme, Soldier Beetle taverna owner in Myna
Freigen — Wasp factor for the Consortium of the Honest
Frezzo, Fly Messenger from Collegium

Gaff — Firefly gambler and Arcanum agent in Sarn
Gan, Wasp Governor of Szar
Gaved — Wasp hunter, mercenary working for the Rekef
Genissa of the Destiavel, Spider Domina of Solarno
Gjegevey — Woodlouse scholar, Imperial advisor in Capitas
Godran — Wasp agent in Collegium, later in Helleron, Major
Graden — Beetle artificer of the Great College
Gramo Galltree — Beetle "ambassador" to the Commonweal, based in Suon Ren
Graf — Wasp agent, Rekef Lieutenant in Collegium
Greenwise Artector — Beetle, one of the ruling council of Helleron
GRIEF IN CHAINS — Butterfly dancer, later called Aagen's Joy, later Prized
                                                of Dragons
Grigan — Wasp Major, engineers, 4th Army
Gryllis — Spider, business partner of Hokiak

Halewright, Beetle magnate, councillor of Helleron
Halrad — Wasp Captain
Haroc — Wasp Rekef Lieutenant in Vek
Havel, Wasp agent, Rekef Captain in Solarno
Hofi — Fly barber, Imperial agent in Collegium
HOKIAK — Scorpion black marketeer in Myna
Honory Bellowern — Beetle, Imperial agent of the Consortium of the Honest
Hornwhill — Beetle artificer at Collegium
Hreya — Wasp slave in Myna, freed by Thalric

Inaspe Raimm, Dragonfly Monarch of the Commonweal
Inigo Paldron — Beetle, magnate of Collegium

Jemeyn, Solarnese Soldier Beetle rebel
Jons Allanbridge, Beetle adventurer from Collegium
Joyless Greatly — Beetle artificer and aviator of Collegium

Kalder, Wasp Lieutenant, member of the Broken Sword
Kaszaat — Bee artificer, apprentice to Drephos, Auxillian sergeant
Khenice — Solder Beetle, resistance fighter in Myna
Kori — Fly quisitor, mercenary working for the Rekef
Krevus — Ant, slave of the Wasps
KYMENE (the Maid of Myna) — Soldier Beetle, resistance leader in Myna
Kymon — Kessen Ant, Master of Ceremonies at the Collegium duelling society

Laetrimae, Mantis ghost trapped in the Shadow Box
"Last Chance" Fraywell — Beetle gangster in Helleron
Latvoc — Wasp, Rekef Colonel
Lineo Thadspar — Beetle statesmen, Speaker of the Assembly of Collegium
Linewright — Beetle, Assembler of Collegium
Lorica — Ant/Wasp halfbreed, Rekef agent in Vek
Lyrus, Ant halfbreed agent in Sarn

Maan, Wasp Intelligence Major of the 4th army
Maczech, Bee Princess of Szar
Malia — Ant, gangster of the Halfway House in Helleron
Malkan, Wasp General of the 7th army
Marius — Sarnesh Ant, companion of Stenwold
Marre — Fly, agent of Scuto in Helleron
Mathonwy — Woodlouse doctor in Jerez
MAXIN — Wasp advisor, Rekef General in Capitas
Morleyr — Mole Cricket deserter in Salma's army

NERO — Fly, noted artist and companion of Stenwold
Niamedh, Solarnese Soldier Beetle pilot
Dr Nicrephos — Moth, doctor in Collegium
Nivit, Skater hunter in Jerez
Norsa — Wasp healer, Eldest Daughter of the Mercy's Daughters order

Odyssa — Spider, Rekef Lieutenant
Oltan, Wasp, quartermaster at Myna
Otran, Wasp, tax collector

Palearchos, Moth renegade Skryre
Pallus — Tarkesh Ant, gangster of the Halfway House in Helleron
Parops — Ant officer of Tark, Tower Commander
Pater Bradawl, Beetle, Founder Bellowern's guard captain
Phalmes — Soldier Beetle bandit leader, ex-Auxillian
Pinsar — Beetle, prize-winning poet
Pireaus — Mantis, duellist at Collegium
Plius — Tseni Ant merchant in Sarn
Praeter, Wasp General of the sixth army

Queen of Sarn, Ant ruler

Raeka, Wasp slave of Tegrec
Rakka — Scorpion, agent of Scuto in Helleron
Rauth — Wasp, intelligencer at Myna
Reiner — Wasp, Rekef General
Rowen Palasso, Beetle factor in Helleron, patron of Tisamon

SALMA (SALME DIEN) — Dragonfly nobleman and duellist
Saltwheel — Diving Beetle artificer from Scolaris in Lake Limnia
Scadran — Beetle/Wasp halfbreed, Imperial agent in Collegium
Scelae — Mantis agent of the Arcanum in Sarn
Scobraan, Solarnese Soldier Beetle pilot
Scordrey — Beetle magnate, councillor of Helleron
SCUTO — Thorn Bug, Stenwold's chief agent in Helleron
SCYLIS (SCYLA) — Spider, magician and spy
SEDA — Wasp Princess, sister to Alvdan II
Sef, Water Spider slave from Scolaris in Lake Limnia
Seladoris — Spider, duellist at Collegium
Sfayot — Roach traveller
Sinon Halfways — Ant/Moth halfbreed, chief of the Halfway House fief in
                                Helleron
Skrill — Skater/Soldier Beetle halfbreed, scout and agent
Skrit, Skater servant of Nivit in Jerez
Sperra — Fly, agent of Scuto in Helleron
STENWOLD MAKER — Beetle spymaster, College Master at Collegium
Sykore — Mosquito agent of Uctebri

te Berro — Fly, Rekef Lieutenant
te Frenna, Fly pilot of Solarno
TE SCHOLA TAKI-AMRE (TAKI), Fly aviatrix at Solarno
Tegrec, Wasp Major, Governor of Tharn
TEORNIS of the Aldanrael, Spider Lord Martial, Aristus of Seldis
THALRIC — Wasp, Rekef Major and spymaster
Thanred, Wasp Governor of Capitas, Colonel
TISAMON — Mantis weaponsmaster
Toran Awe — Grasshopper Auxillian militia in Myna
TOTHO — Beetle/Ant halfbreed, artificer
Tseitus — Ant artificer of the Great College
TYNISA — Mantis/Spider halfbreed, Stenwold’s ward, duellist

Uctebri the Sarcad — Mosquito mystic, prisoner at Capitas
Ult, Wasp gladiator trainer in Capitas
Ulther — Wasp Governor of Myna

Valdred, Wasp Lieutenant from Capitas

Waybright, Beetle merchant, Assembler of Collegium
"Wen", Solarnese Soldier Beetle rebel

Xaraea, Moth agent of the Arcanum at Tharn

The following is good for agriculture around Collegium, with notes on the Lowlands and sometimes elsewhere. Empire agriculture is not much different, although less mechanised and more primitive in many provinces.

The vegetable

The major field crops around Collegium are barley, olives, cotton, and vines, followed by durum (wheat). Collegium benefits from a good expanse of flat, rich land laid down as the river flooded and contracted over the centuries on its way to the bottleneck estuary between the cliffs. The broad expanses of farmland radiate from tributary villages that encircle the city, but Collegium also trades for a fair proportion of its food and the Assembly husbands large foodstocks, especially after the Vekken siege a generation ago showed how very vulnerable their farmland was to burning and pillage. Vegetables and herbs are grown on small plots within or immediately outside the villages. The former play a relatively small part in the Collegiate diet. The latter are mostly for medicinal purposes, for infusions in hot water or alcohol, or for pipe-smokers. Fruit orchards are the preserve of the most prosperous of farmers, or for the country residences of wealthy citizens. Collegium imports more fruit than it grows. One feature of Lowlands agriculture that is absent from the city and its holdings is the mushroom farming that Ant-kinden engage in. Domesticated ants are quite capable of sustaining a mushroom-farming operation with a minimal supervision, and the Ant-kinden have developed numerous strains, for flavour and texture. In an Ant city, most of what appears to be meat on first inspection is in reality fungus, and each city has its own varieties, which are a leading export.

The animal

Of course it’s not entirely true that it’s “insects all the way,” as mankind has preserved certain species of large vertebrate from the cull. Where the land is not favourable to crops one can find goat-herds and shepherds tending their flocks, or horses out to pasture. Alongside these are a number of beetle varieties, most notably longhorn beetles (favoured for their meat), chafer beetles (for their superior chitin) and load or draft beetles (as beasts of burden). More common than any of these is the apherder and his flock, however. The meat of aphids is sweeter and more tender, and of course there’s always the honeydew.

Most herdsmen keep on hand a couple of painted-lady beetles to keep their beasts in line, whichintelligent and loyal animals are also seen within the city as guard animals, although they are somewhat too forthright to make good pets. Instead, the wealthy in the city make do with diminutive jewel beetles, the breeding of which is a fiercely competitive sport amongst collectors, and the flying, furred animals known as felblings, which subsist on very small inscets and, if not kept lashed and usually inside, would swiftly become the repast of larger ones. Semi-feral ground beetles are also common in villages, and in warehouses in the city, and play a major role in keeping down vermin such as roaches and weevils. By far the most common pet, though, rich or poor, urban or rural, is the humble cricket. House-crickets are docile and affectionate, and their song is well known to bring calming sleep, Fighting crickets, on the other hand, are proud, fierce and a major source of gambling debts.

Good eating on one of those

Lowlands bread comes in three varieties. There is barley-bread for the poor, and wheat-bread for those that can afford it. Beyond this, there is Ant-bread, which is yeasty and extremely filling, good in that it can keep an Ant-kinden soldier marching all day, bad in that it gives rise to plenty of Beetle jokes about Ant flatulence. Dried fruit is a staple of Lowlander diet, far more so than fresh fruit which is strictly seasonal. Many of the Collegium vinyards are specifically for the provision of dried grapes, and the terroir of a raisin is debated by connoisseurs almost as much as that of a wine. Fresh fruit, as noted, is expensive and hard to come by.

Meat comes in four varieties. Smallmeats are concoctions, often pickled, candied or highly flavoured, of little insects, spiders or similar invertebrates. Like the fresh fruit these are fancy foods, served by the rich as appetisers, and greatly favoured by Spider-kinden. Softmeat refers to goat, sheep or horseflesh, which is more expensive and less efficient to rear that the alternative, but which is reckoned a finer delicacy. Hardmeat is beetle or aphid meat, so named because, although it is inferior fresh, it can be dried to a satisfactory jerky and so makes standard meat-rations for any soldier or traveller. Finally there is fish, which ought to be a staple part of the Collegiate diet given the city’s coastal aspect. Instead the Beetles are oddly snobby about fish, and despite the fact that Fly-kinden and Spider-kinden are very partial, they themselves disdain it, finding it fit only for the very poor (who catch their own) and for foreigners who don’t know any better. The root of this is that the Moth-kinden, who were once the masters in Collegium, have never had a taste for fish, reserving it only for their slaves. Once free, the Beetle-kinden have maintained a strong prejudice concerning the social implications of eating fish.

Honeydew, harvested from aphids, is the standard sweet, whether crystallised, used in cooking, or as a drink. Honey itself is less common, as Collegium’s apiarists are not overly skilled, but imported honey from the Spiderlands (and more recently from the Empire) is much prized.

There is a good quantity of milk and cheese, both almost uniformly from goats, and Collegium exports astonishing quantities of olive oil (and, indeed olives), which is nowhere made finer or purer. Finally, alongside the imported Ant mushrooms, there are a profusion of eggs in a variety of shapes, colours and sizes that any visitor from our world would find frankly disturbing. These are insect eggs, of course, and aside from their species of origin the kinden divide them into “new eggs” and “old eggs”. New eggs are freshly laid, the contents mostly liquid and ready to be eaten like a soup after the egg has been mildly heated and cracked open. Old eggs are harvested and cooked near to their time for hatching. Their contents are meaty, to say the least, and the eggshell itself is entirely edible, and very tasty too. Highly recommended.

And from the wine list

In Collegium they drink wine, vast quantities of it, and watered. Unwatered wine is for madmen and Mantis-kinden, who are half-mad to start with. The Beetles are very serious about their wine, so that one can’t throw an empty bottle without hitting at least one self-proclaimed expert ready to bore the shoes of everyone else at the dinner table over any vintage’s merits and heritage. Beer is not a Collegium drink, but Fly-kinden are extremely fond of it. Fly beer would, to our palates, taste extremely odd, and indeed the Lowlands and imperials together have a very sweet tooth when it comes to alcohol. Dry wine is more often found in the south, in the Spiderlands, or north in the Commonweal. Spirits are also common, and generally divided into three categories: grain spirits are harsh, tasteless and are either cheap and lethal or horribly expensive when the fashion sporadically sweeps the well-to-do. “Wine spirits”, fortified wines, are well-liked, and another of the city’s most noted exports, especially to the Ant-kinden who have no vineyards of their own worth mentioning. Herb-spirits is a catch-all term for grain alcohol mixed with fruits or herbs to flavour it, and there are hundreds of different varieties, probably as many as there are Beetle farmers who can construct a still. The serious and educated drinker, in search of variety and strength in perfect combination, is likely to be a devotee of herb spirits. Beyond this, of course, there is mead, which is not so popular amongst the Beetle-kinden as it is in the Empire, or amongst the Mantids. More common is dew-mead, from fermented honeydew, which is reckoned more pleasant and less potent, and is in any event more easily procured. Honeydew is also drunk unfermented, and the Beetles have known how to filter fresh water since before the revolution. Hot drinks include a plethora of herbal infusions, some of which claim medical benefits, although the College is ruthless in debunking “the remedies of the Inapt”. A recent luxury to reach the city is drinking chocolate, which is fantastically expensive, utterly elitist, and wholly mysterious in its origins, save that it comes from somewhere deep in the Spiderlands.

The Emperor’s new clothes

Collegium or Helleron cotton, machine woven to an exacting standard, is sought after everywhere, and the Beetles produce a number of other plant-based fabrics in heavier forms, up to the stout canvas used by artificers. Chitin can be worked and moulded into almost any form imaginable, although the boiling and treating process is more laborious than it is even for leather, and the end result must be taken care of to prevent it becoming brittle. Chitin, once common in armour or as a building material, is now rare in Collegium, but perversely their beetle herds produce the very best, and so despite its absence from the locals it remains a strong export. Leather is from horses (so-called “hard leather”) or goatskin (“soft-leather”). Sheepskin is not common, nor is mutton, for sheep are kept mostly for their wool.

Silk is a major import of Collegium, especially since the airship trade got, so to speak, off the ground. Whilst the grubs of some herd beetles do produce silk, it is a lamentable inferior material, and countless yards of silk are imported from the Spiderlands, where the best is to be had at a price. The Moth-kinden also produce silk of good quality, as well as fur and the iridescent, decorative scales from their beasts’ wings, but trade with the Moths is a tentative and unreliable business. Moth-fur is an expensive luxury for this reason and, despite the greater distances, it is easier to procure bee-fur from the Empire or the Spiderlands, or from the remote western coast.

Finally, although not exactly relating to clothes, Collegium is of course a great consumer of paper. When the Moths ruled this was a species of papyrus, made from interwoven reeds and then treated to grant it greater smoothness and longevity. As an alternative, sheepskin or goatskin vellum would be used for important documents. The Beetles themselves have had papermills for centuries, making good-quality paper from wood-pulp. However recently the paper markets have encountered a new supply of paper of a quality that rivals the milled kind, and is in very plentiful supply at its point of origin. The source? Why, where else does one go, for paper, but the Wasps? One of the benefits of an imperial occupation would therefore be an inexhaustible supply of good-quality, cheap paper, only you'd have to be very careful what you wrote on it.

Race and prejudice in the world of the insect-kinden? And the answer is Yes.

There are fantasy settings where everyone and everything is nice until the Dark Lord shows up. However, even in such settings you still tend to find plenty of social stratification and division of labour between classes, nations and races/species, but it passes without comment: the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and it’s all perfectly lovely until those darned orcs (3) showed up rocking the boat, taking our jobs, leering at our women and wanting to live somewhere there wasn't a volcano.

Inequality and injustice amongst the insect-kinden, then, and by the bucket-load. The Emperor of the Wasps may not be Mother Theresa (4) but neither is he the be-all and end-all of evil. There’s plenty of evil to go around, large and small, overt and covert.

With Empire and its sequels I want to dig deep into that particular vein. It’s a topic that fantasy fiction is particularly well-placed to examine, after all: invent the world and you invent the rules, and so you can explore real-world issues with greater freedom than a book set in the actual real world. Fantasy has always been one of the traditional refuges of satirists – Gulliver’s Travels, for example, or Erewhon.

Social injustice (see the Steampunk diatribe here) is one thing, and for that it doesn’t matter if your Empire is Wasp, Roman or British. The Beetle-kinden are arguably the most enlightened kinden by our standards – after all they have humanitarianism, democracy, scholarships for the poor – surely they’re the touchstone for virtue? But in the interactions between the Collegium masters and magnates, and much more so when you get to the grime of Helleron, it’s easy to see that the Beetle-kinden have a far from perfect society – their elected Assembly is crammed with merchants and the idle rich (5), and haven’t you noticed, in a world which is by no means male-dominated, how many of the leading Beetles seem to be men… Perhaps the best that can be said for Stenwold’s kin is that they’re working on it.

Beyond their ivory towers, plenty of the other races indulge in the most open form of social injustice, slavery. Because of the focus of Empire the Wasps are the most obvious offenders, with their subject nations drafted to serve their war effort. It’s plain, however, that their slaver society is not purely fuelled by foreign import, as the case of the unhappy Hreya shows, sold to pay her family's debts. Alongside that, there is sufficient mention of “good family” to show that the Empire, whilst young, is already developing the hereditary divisions between “those who rule” and “those who obey”.

And of course there are other slavers: most of the Ant-cities, and of course the Spider-kinden, and there are other divisions as well. In Dragonfly Falling a little more light is shed on the Spider-kinden, the enormous divide of wealth and power between their Aristoi and their Hoi Polloi. However…

The division of the kinden themselves cuts deeper lines into the landscape, and (as Nic points out) this is another kind of social divison – the kinden are all human, after all, (for a given value of human, as Pratchett might say). Their adherence to their various totems has drawn each kinden away from the others, until each is far more distinct from each other than neighbouring tribes, or even nations, but the differences in physiology are exaggerated, in their minds, by the perceived differences in culture and character. Each kinden stereotypes the others (6), and yet I’ve done my best to clutter the books with individuals who are clearly far from the supposed benchmark, and who suffer under the prejudice of those around them: everyone knows that Spiders are deceitful (7), that Wasps are aggressive, and that Flies are shiftless, larcenous cowards. Except that there are honest Spiders, kindly Wasps, courageous Flies even (8)(9). Except that the greatest divisions between the kinden, the ones wars are made of, are carried on now solely because they’re there, just like so many cultural divisions in the real world. The Ant-kinden city-states are enemies because, after so long being enemies, each cannot risk proffering the hand of friendship for fear of being taken advantage of, and so they live swords-drawn, skirmish after futile skirmish, because it’s easier than trusting. The Mantids hate the Spiders because… well, do they even know? Is there anywhere, outside of the oldest scrolls of the Moth-kinden, that records why they hate them so? And would it even matter? Even if the reason was a good one two thousand years ago, wouldn’t it be stale by now? And yet Tisamon’s people hate, and hate and hate, because to be seen to be not hating, to be (spirits forfend) fraternising, would be the great betrayal, attracting the loathing of your kin, exile from your home. And then there are the Beetle-kinden and the Moths, whose enmity doesn’t perhaps run quite to plan, because the Moths (of Tharn anyway) hate the Beetle-kinden for what was taken from them, their great dominion of the Days of Lore stripped from them like a robe. The Beetles, on the other hand (and with the exception of certain Helleron mine-owners), in spite of a millennium of slavery when the Moths were their overlords, view their former masters with a certain bemusement. If they would only come down from the mountains and just take part, then surely everyone would be happy, no?

But of course they can’t, and here we get onto what the posts identify. The Aptitude gap.

It’s not unique in fantasy to have races that can, and that can’t. Often there is a mystic race with a magic power that the plot focuses around, and the bulk of the book’s population will lack that power, and be hostile and unpleasant about it, despite the fact that the power is the only thing that can possible defeat the Bigbad. There will be a race that is the sole custodian of the Old Magic. Or maybe there will be a bloodline, royal or otherwise, that is the only heritage that can awaken the Runespork and defeat the DragonGripe Doomlord. Perhaps one individual prince has a destiny, and if he doesn’t do it, nobody can. Is it any less inequitable when it’s not a race but a family, a blue bloodline? I’d say the fascism, the chosen-race-ness of it all, is the same either way. Of course, as the prince/family/last scion of the elder race is usually the focus of the book, and a terribly decent chap/gal to boot, one never quite sees the inequality, because we’re on the inside looking out. What about all those poor bastards who did their level best to defeat the Gripelord of Wunderbrar, and had absolutely everything going for them except a Destiny? Why then it’s just like Young Siward bearding Macbeth on the battlefield, after all: “Are ye born of woman, laddie?” “Er, yes, why do you ask…?” HACK!

And so (by a rather circuitous route) to Aptitude, the Big Division. Because there are kinden that Can, and kinden that Can’t (and depending on what you’re taking about it will determine which kinden line up on the Can side of the barrier). The Apt kinden are on the up, the Inapt kinden are declining, but’s that’s okay, because they have their spirituality, so that’s all right then.

Except it’s not all right. Of course it isn’t. Even without the Empire it’s plain that at some point the mining barons of Helleron are going to decide that it’s more cost effective to deal with their Inapt neighbours by force, and at the rate the artificers are changing the face of warfare, how long before even the Mantis-kinden find that they’re set to go the way that the flower of chivalry of the Commonweal went, when the Wasps brought their flying machines and automotives against them.

So, is it down to this? Even though there are many kinden lined up at either end of the pitch, has it come down to “white men can’t jump?”

Now I’m going to answer this in two opposite ways, so witness the equivocational gymnastics carefully (10).

Firstly, and why not vive la difference? If tribes and nations cannot have distinct traits and capabilities in fantasy, then where? Fantasy fiction has giants and orcs and elves and dwarves and dragons, and surely they don’t have to all be the same under the skin? If that’s the criterion then I’m royally screwed already because the Flies fly and the Ants don’t. The kinden are divided and defined by their Art – but they’re all human nonetheless, no more or less human for their spines or their claws or their ability to manifest wings.

But that’s not (I hope that’s not) the point being made. Aptitude, as opposed to the variegations of the Art, is a mental division, and those are the harsh ones, because you can’t see the difference, or lack of same, and therefore it’s open to that eternal hobgoblin, interpretation. Lord knows there has been some extremely disreputable psychological research into the “intelligence” of real world ethnic groups. This is (as goes without saying, one hopes) not the sort of thing I'm trying to pull. I have no ethnic axe to grind.

But the Apt/Inapt division is there, and it's real, and it's a large part of what the book, and more particularly the wider series, is about. The broadest way to characterise it is to say that the world of the supernatural is closed to the Apt, whereas the world of the mechanical is unknowable to the Inapt, but there are dozens of other, less obvious ways in which the two sides of the insect soul fail to meet.

Therefore, emo ergo ego, the division is real, and where does that leave us?

Well, the series is called “Shadows of the Apt” for a reason. Aptitude is important, to the plot and to the world. It's a multi-faceted two-way mirror with hidden depths (11) and you can be sure I’ll take my own sweet time about explaining why.

So much for firstly, so, secondly:

Just how immutable is Aptitude? After all, all Moths are Inapt, yes? And every Beetle is Apt, and never the twain shall meet? And what about Fly-kinden, so often overlooked? Apt, or Inapt? Because matters are neither as simple or immutable as they might seem. How impossible is it for that comprehension to come, of gears or of geases?

So, to round off, and inspired by the Alexandrian review structure, some quotes. The first is from Empire in Black and Gold:

‘There were a few exceptions, as always… itinerant Beetle scholars going native deep in the forests of the Mantids, propitiating spirits and painting their faces, and fifty years ago there had even been a Moth artificer at Collegium, brilliant and half-mad.’

but for the second I’ll allow myself the smallest spoiler, because it’s important: a tiny excerpt from Dragonfly on the subject of Aptitude:

‘“Magic, Gjegevey?”

            “Ah, well, my own people have uncommon views,” he told her… “You did not know, I believe, that many of my kinden are Apt. We study mechanics and the physical principles of the world, although in truth we build little, and that must be from wood in the main, metal being hard to come by in our homeland.”

            “I did not know that,” she admitted. “And so, I would guess, that you cannot help me.”

            “Ah,” he said, pedantic as a librarian. “Ah, but yet many of my kinden are not Apt and have no gift for machines, and yet follow other paths, the physical principles of the world and so forth and so on, that some might call magic. And so you see, we are in something of a unique position, my kinden. For we are not surging forwards into the, progress of the world of artifice, nor are we clinging grimly to the darkness of the Days of Lore. We are… in balance, I suppose one might say. And these two halves of our culture, they are not two halves at all, for each tries to share its insights with the other, and just occasionally some gifted man or woman of our kind can understand the both…”’

(1)   Originally written “baggling”. I have no idea what “baggling” might be (2) but it must mean something.

(2)   Having never baggled.

(3)   I always wondered if the Oxbridge Mr T's root of ‘orc’ wasn’t ‘oik’…

(4)   Still the touchstone of virtue apparently, or at least the cliché I always seem to fall back on when needing to contrast with someone nasty. One of these days the nasty is going to be Mother Theresa, and then you’ll be sorry.

(5)   And Stenwold Maker himself seems to have a ready supply of money, does he not?

(6)   And stereotypes itself as well, of course. How else to impose internal conformity? Mantis-kinden are especially guilty of this.

(7)   And yet they’re so damned charming that you never think about it when they talk to you.

(8)   Achilles, if I remember this correctly, asked to be given the courage of a fly, on the basis, I think, that a fly (one assumes the biting variety) takes on an enemy vastly greater than itself without hesitation.

(9)   And the Wasps see things differently, of course. They have their own stereotypes, and it’s worth noting that there are only two other kinden in the Empire that have any kind of civic rights or prospects, and Flies are one. To the Lowlanders, Fly-kinden are an underclass, useful for cleaning chimneys or reaching into the grinding works of machinery. To the savage, oppressive Empire, they’re useful and productive members of society.

(10) Definitely should be the new Olympic sport in 2012. That or Olympic Stadium Finishing.

(11) And mixed metaphors. 

They have no gods. This is the first thing. To the certain knowledge of the Lowlanders there are no insect churchs, no spider-priestesses or weevil-popes. Oh, perhaps there are savage peoples at the very edge of civilisation, ekeing out a living in the harsh places that history has left to them, who cry out to the deaf ears of a non-existant divinity, but, say the Collegiate scholars, look where it got them. The very existance of such wretches, if it were proved, would surely substantiate the otherwise unanimously held belief that there are no gods worthy of the worship.

But the concept exists amongst them. The simple fact that a well-fed academic of the Great College can murmur, as he lights his pipe, "Well of course it's only the utmost savages that would bother with gods these days," demonstrates that such worship was once known. Where, then are the insect altars, the icons and effigies? One might wonder, at first, whether the old Inapt kinden, the Moths and the Mantids, were the last refuge of the ecclesiastical, but it is not so. Apt and Inapt viewpoints diverge a great deal, when the world of the invisible is spoken of, but neither finds room for anything as large as a god in their philosophy.

What definition of god is being used here, for certainly the Inapt peoples claim that the world is rife with intangible, supernatural entities? What makes a spirit into a god? In short, in the opinion of Collegiate scholars and Tharen sages alike, worship, reverence. The kinden's definition of a god is an entity that commands worship, and the kinden worship nothing.

Of course it's not that simple. Even aside from the possibility that there are, beyond the brief of Collegium scholars, priests and votaries bending and sacrificing at the sacred places of their unknown sects, there is a certain amount of the lives of the kinden that a observer from our more earthbound world might see at first as religion.

The Inapt are a case in point. The Moths, the greatest influence on Lowlands mythology, people the world with spirits, ghosts, natural forces that can be bargained with, appeased, commanded. Their relationship with the world of the invisible is an adversarial, masterly one. The most common explanation of the ways of the world, taught to Moth children and the occasional adventurous middle-aged Beetle scholar, is that the world is like woven cloth (2). Mind is like a snarl in the cloth, the pressure of each individual intelligence twisting the weave into a knot, and those skilled in magaic can tug upon the strings of the world around them. Mind is a knot that flies undone at the moment of the thinker's demise… or it does so most of the time. Sometimes the body dies, but the knot remains, held in place by guilt or hate or undone deeds, and thus the world has ghosts gibbering impotently at the edge of the Inapt eye. Sometimes great emotions, fearsome events, bloodshed and ritual, can create a knot where no mind ever was, and so a place, an object, can be invested with power, can become an entity in its own right. Sometimes this is a deliberate act, sometimes accidental, and sometimes arcane concordences decree the random creation of a spirit even without human intervention. Still, this world of spirits is, to the Moth-kinden magi, a resource of the world, as trees to a carpenter or animals to a trapper.

Those Inapt kinden who are less masters of their own fate perhaps have different understandings. The Mantis-kinden, brooding and sour-minded killers all, guard well their sacred places within their forest holds. There, it is said, they commune more closely than is healthy with their genius, the embodiment of all that is Mantis, and there they conduct murderous rites and rituals, and shed blood in celebration of the world's mortality (3). However, well-fed Beetle scholars are not invited to any such rites (4) and no account of them has reached the College, so perhaps the less said, the better.

But, to the notional real-world observer, what is this that they see so universally? Is this not surely some religion? Whyfor do the kinden meditate, religiously one might say, upon what must surely be some manner of civic or racial deity? What is it that reaches out and gifts them with flight, with killing spines, with fiery stings? What, in short, is the Art, if not the product of a worldwide polytheistic religion?

"It's no such thing," so says the Collegium scholar, and dismisses the anomalous visitor entirely from his mind. The Apt and the Inapt are close in their explanations of the Art, for all that neither is quite able to account for its effects and results. The meditation that all kinden engage in is a personal matter. It cannot be taught, exactly, although in many places there is a whole industry of tutors and facilitators, with tricks and gimmicks to assist their students in their own private contemplations. They share their success rate and professional integrity with consultants in many other industries and many other worlds. The consideration of the Art is an individual matter.

And yet hereditary, also. Although some Arts are universal within a kinden (a Fly's wings, an Ant's mindlink), careful research has shown that the Arts one's parents attain are those that the child is more likely to manifest, and recent research with halfbreeds seems to have shown this conclusively. But what is the Art, from where does it spring?

The insect-kinden believe, and the believe is astonishingly widespread and uniform, in Ideals. Platonic ideals, our notional observer might say, if blessed with sufficient education. As there are beetles, so there is Beetle, the perfect, the utmost of beetles, the definition and the exemplar from which all beetles are, in some way derived — the universe's template of beetleness, in essence. So it is that the Beetle-kinden meditate and, at last, find in their minds an understanding of the Beetle dream (5), and from this understanding, this grand comprehension, flows the Art.

Sometimes, in rare cases, this comprehension is felt. Beneficiaries have reported feeling an actual presence, of utter familial generosity, but scholars agree (more Apt than Inapt scholars agree, the Inapt are somewhat divided) that this is an artifact, a human hallucination born of incomplete understanding. Certainly a lot of Art manifests without any such conscious contact, which can lead to uncertainty about what Art a child has actually mastered, as much of it leaves no physical showing: the resilience of a Beetle-kinden, for example, is a difficult thing to test without risking a great deal if you're wrong.

So do these Ideals exist? Is there some offshoot dimension where they prey on one another, enacting out mindless myth cycles of birth and feeding and violent death? Most would dismiss the idea, although certain philosophies, sects and cults almost, within the Inapt kinden have explored such ideas in the past, and perhaps some still do.

And are their horse Ideals? Are their Ideal fish? Trees? "Of course not," grumbles the scholar, now thoroughly out of sorts with such foolish questions. "Who ever heard of a horse-kinden, after all?" And with that he turns the visitor out of doors, and goes to bed.

(1) Quoted from the culmination of "The Insect God", my favourite Edward Gorey story.

(2) Like all low-level academic explanations this one is useful, easy to grasp and essentially wrong.

(3) Not that I'm dancing around material from book 2 or anything…

(4) Or at least, none have yet found themselves able to file a paper on it.

(5) And when Gregor Samsa wakes up and finds that he's a beetle, his family and friends are over the moon about it.

The Inapt Model Army: the Warband and the Levy

The traditional Inapt or pre-revolutionary army, as might have been fielded by the Moth-kinden before they were cast down by their slaves, is one of inequality. A minority of the troops on the field were skilled warriors, of whom the bards sang and the poets spoke: their rivalries, duels and clashes were recorded in frankly interminable detail by the wordsmiths of the time, and, of the balance of the soldiers brought to battle, it was only said that these heroes slew their hundreds, and their tens of hundreds.

The chief warriors of the Moth armies were Mantis-kinden, and their way of making war has changed little over the centuries. They form their warbands, loose-knit mobs of however many warriors have the inclination. They move swiftly over the countryside, using all stealth despite their numbers, and they launch sudden ambushes or attacks against an unwary foe, or simply meet a wary one head on in the field. Each Mantis, with all the skill of his or her kind, fights alone: spear, claw, bow, rapier and the spines of their arms are their weapons. They carry the day by speed, ferocity and individual prowess. This is the old way, the way they would still practice, should anyone bring an army against them.

Whilst Mantids prefer to fight alone, in the old days their Moth masters often massively reinforced their (never great) numbers with slave levies: Ants and Beetles of the Lowlands were pressed into service and sent out to be butchered by the champions of the other side. The great hero-warriors were the deciding force in the battle, and the levy were merely used to slow them down.

Even before the revolution this was changing. Although Beetle-kinden were never destined to be great warriors, the Ants had a strong martial tradition, and they began to produce their own arms and armour in readiness for the wars their masters would commit them to: they developed tall shields and forged their own mail and practised their combat manoeuvres, honed to iron discipline by their mind-sharing Art. The reason the Moths prevailed so often against their Inapt rivals, back in the murky Dark Ages, was often that their levy was markedly superior to the rabble fielded by the other side. Although the Mantis-kinden remained unmatchable for individual skill, Moth strategists began to adapt their battle plans to take account of their slaves' greater efficiency. Ironically, of course, those same efficient slaves would soon after overthrow them and banish them to their high, dark places, spelling the end for their way of war.

The Dragonfly Commonweal

The Commonweal armies still fight in much the same way: they have a small core of Dragonfly and Mantis warriors who are warriors from birth, lethally skilled with sword and bow, and they have a mass of levy who, in peacetime, are farmers, artisans and craftsmen and seldom if ever take up a weapon. These levy, mostly Grasshopper and Dragonfly peasants, are generally armed with long spears, mobbed together in great rambling units, and sent towards the enemy, whilst the noble warriors run and fly amongst and over them. This style of war was what the Commonwealers brought to the Twelve-year War when the Wasps invaded their lands. The Commonweal armies fielded were vast, frequently outnumbering the attackers ten to one or more, and it was the sheer size of these forces that stretched the war out so long, rather than their effectiveness.

The Commonweal has one other noteworthy tradition: it is one of the only armies in the known world to make much use of land-based cavalry. Whilst most armies have a small mounted scout force, Dragonfly nobles often charge into combat ahorse, en mass, casting spears and loosing arrows as they go. After the initial contact the ;riders would take to the air (2), leaving their ;well-trained mounts to fight on their own behalf whilst they ;shot arrows from above. ;Against surprised or ill-disciplined forces, such as the bandit armies they were formerly used to combating, such a solid strike is often a swift battle-winner, but if the enemy holds then disciplined infantry and archers, such as the Wasps possess in abundance, will generally prevail. Although some ancient Dark Age armies also used cavalry, and even chariots, their modern use as a significant part of an army is limited to the Commonweal.

Spiderlands armies

Spider-kinden armies have developed in a very different direction, more varied and decidedly more haphazard. When a Spider-kinden Arista wishes to raise an army, she has at her own disposal those small forces, house guards and the like, that her family keeps on retainer. For substantial forces she must then ;turn to the various cities that her family has influence in, and to other families that owe her house favours or obligations. Raising an army is a matter of bitter argument, negotiation, promises and threats, and each city provides a different array of troops, depending on the kinden and the local speciality. A Spider-kinden host, therefore, is usually a patchwork affair, with a very broad variety of troop types, none of which are usually present in tactically useful quantities. Supplementing this the Spider Lady-Martial will raid the family coffers to hire mercenary bands, which are never in short supply in the Spiderlands. These can range from the dregs of banditry to highly-skilled elites.

As an example, a Spider-kinden host could see, side-by-side: Spider skirmishers with sword and bow, Scorpion line-breakers with two-handed swords and axes, Fire Ant engineers, Fly-kinden slingers, Ant mercenary heavy infantry, Dragonfly airborne archers, spider-mounted scout cavalry, dragonfly-mounted archers, Beetle-kinden mercenary artificers with armoured automotives and savage jungle Ant warriors along with several hundred of their insect friends.

Spider armies, although disorganised, slow to muster, slow to march, can grow to remarkable sizes, as once a war effort appears to be underway, formerly uncommited Aristoi houses will decide that they have no wish to be left out, and turn up with their own troops whether invited or not. Government and direction of these forces often devolves to a collection of equal-ranked representatives of the major houses present. Despite this picture of waste and inefficiency, Spiders are a clever people, and their history is replete with a number of ingenious strategists. Their ability to out-think and predict their opponents is notable.

The New Model Army: Ant-kinden after the revolution

Ant-kinden are arguably the best soldiers in the world, standing shoulder to shoulder. Their linked minds allow entire armies to react as one, and give commanders the ability to deal with battlefield developments as they happen, with no possibility of lost news, misunderstood commands or confusion. As against this, Ants have two major problems. Firstly, they are not great innovators. They have been masters of war in the Lowlands for long enough that they have settled into particular ways of doing things. As a kinden they lack the imagination and curiosity that marks out their Beetle neighbours. Secondly, their style of fighting has developed to deal with other Ants. Ants fight Ants. Their city-states have been in mutual opposition since anyone can remember, and their warfare is designed to deal with the strengths of their own kind.

The great bulk of any Ant army is heavy infantry: tall shields that interlock easily, reinforced chainmail, short swords. Every third man or so will carry a crossbow, and frequently there will be a rank of crossbowmen behind the shields in a battle-line, shooting bolts into the faces of the enemy shieldmen. The Ant heavy infantryman is a versatile, capable and undaunted soldier, and for five centuries the Ants have done little but tweak their soldiers' armour and weapons.

As well as these great blocks of infantry, the Ants field scouts, either horsemen, Fly-kinden or simply lightly-armoured infantry. As Ant scouts can report back to their officers instantly, their reconnaissance is usually extremely good. There are also units of specialists equipped with more powerful weapons, such as nailbows or repeating crossbows, who can be concentrated or spread throughout the army at need. There are also a few other specially-trained units, such as engineers, extra heavy 'sentinel' infantry and animal-handlers.

Ants are also skilled artillerists, although their actual machines, catapults, ballistae and trebuchet with a few more recent leadshotters, are often not of the most recent designs. The Sarnesh army, which owing to its ties to the Beetles of Collegium is somewhat more advanced in its technology, has begun to field armoured automotives in battle, using them as weapon-carrying battering rams to break enemy lines.

Most Ant armies will also have a limited airborne contingent, usually of armed orthopters or similar flying machines, but to date Ant wars are ground wars, and airpower has played at most a minor role.

The Black and Gold

Only a few Wasp-kinden manifest the mindlink that is universal amonst Ants, and so they have little of that iron and all-encompassing discipline. However, the Art gives Wasps two major advantages over their neighbours. Most of them can fly, and all of them can use the burning energy of their Sting, allowing them to strike at range. Wasp armies use very little heavy infantry, usually just a core of massively-armoured sentinels and some units of armoured spearmen that make up from a tenth to a fifth of the army proper (3). The vast majority of Wasp soldiers are the Light Airborne, warriors armed with sword, sting and sometimes spear, wearing a cuirass of banded mail, and fully capable of attacking from the air. The Wasp army is therefore extremely mobile, with large numbers of troops able to ignore enemy positions and fortifications and attack where they choose. This flexibility and speed is often sufficient in and of itself to defeat slower armies such as earthbound Ant-kinden and, although the Empire has sought out many more modern advantages, this remains their greatest strength.

The Wasps are also more versatile thinkers than Ant-kinden, and quick to make use of new tactics and toys. When they conquer a subject race they take anything of use and incorporate it, either as new technology for their artificers or as new auxillian troops for their armies. Wasps are very good at using the strengths of their slave races to their advantage, usually with very little care over those slaves’ longevity. From the efforts of their own artificers, and from the pillaged designs of their victims, they have also built up a respectable tally of artillery and a crude but efficient mechanised airforce of heliopters to supplement their Airborne and insect-riders.

As their Empire has developed, the Wasps have had to organise on a greater scale than the individual Ant city-state, and this has further strengthened their armies by allowing them to develop specialist corps that recruit and prosper independently of any given force: engineers, slavers, provisioners and merchants, all contribute to the war effort. Least spoken of, but perhaps most significant amongst these is the Rekef, the imperial secret service, whose outlander forces precede the army proper, weakening the enemy by sabotage, rumour-mongering, agitating and assassination.

(1) Their subsequent encounters with the Wasp Empire will put a fair-sized dent in this supremacy.

(2) No horsemen amongst the kinden have yet come up with the idea of stirrups. The Dragonflies use a "castled" saddle with high front and rear to absorb the shock of the charge, and stirrups would prevent them from taking to the air freely from horseback.

(3) Towards a fifth if the army is reinforced with auxillian heavies such as Ant or Bee-kinden warriors.

;

If only. The Lowlanders are not alone. Although the overthrow of the Moths at Pathis was the first spark, the wildfire scorched across the world, to places far beyond the knowledge of the Beetles of newly-named Collegium.

Ant– and Bee-kinden also profited from the unsurging of technological advancement that the Beetles had begun, but their use of it was far less innovative, more limited. The Ants were and are a militaristic breed, but their main adversaries have always been other Ant-kinden city-states. Rather than leading to an evolutionary spiralling of war-machinery, it has resulted in something of a stagnation. Ants prefer to rely on what they know, and most of all on their mind-linking Art, and what advances they make are specifically geared towards assisting, or defeating, the way in which they themselves fight. Bee-kinden, of whom there are few in the Lowlands, are an industrious but retiring people, fond of making things simply but well, hard-working, and without that great drive that has thrown the Beetles into the forefront of history. The one Bee-kinden at greatness came a little over a century ago with the Vesseret protectorates, to the north and east of the Lowlands. However, before Vesseret could quite establish itself as the enlightened and powerful state it had the potential to be, it met another emergent kinden: the Wasps.

At the time of the revolution the Wasp-kinden lived as a collection of feuding tribes, each with its little hill fort and its list of grievances, brawling and stealing each others’ women. Their lands had been ungoverned for a long time, since their original, bloody-minded masters had been smashed by the Moth-kinden, and they had little to offer outsiders. Any visitor there, in the first few centuries after the Beetle uprising, would have found little potential in them.

However, the Wasps were Apt, and slowly they began adopting and adapting such pieces of the new engineering that came their way, and thinking about the wider world, until there came a man amongst them who decided to do something about it. This man was Alvric, and he spent his life making war on his own kind. Through brutal war, worse diplomacy, and strategic genius, and through his peddling of a grand vision for his people, before his death he was an Emperor with almost the entire Wasp nation beneath his banner, and that banner was black and gold. About then the Wasp-kinden met the emerging state of Vesseret and its protectorates, and the last years of Alvric’s reign were spent in bitter war with this, their first great enemy. Alvric lived to see the Bee-kinden of Vesseret brought down, their royal family butchered, their cities enslaved. He died a happy man.

His son was Alvdan, and he continued the good work. The Bees of Vesseret had been skilled artificers. The Wasps learned many things from them. Their conquests came rapidly, individual cities falling to them one by one, taken by military force or surrendering at the very threat. It was Alvdan who brought the Wasp armies to the very doorstep of the Lowlands, and who turned aside to inflict war of a scale never before seen on the Commonweal, a war that he saw six years of before he died, apparently of natural causes. His son, of the same name, is cut from the same cloth, and it is his writ that musters the immense armies of the Empire to march on the divided and unsuspecting Lowlands.

The threat posed by the Empire, the reason the Empire is a greater power than any seen before, is a composite of many things. First, they are Apt, and able to organise themselves to a greater degree than any of the old powers, such as their victims of the Commonweal. This also gives them an advantage of materiel: the army that invaded the lands of the Dragonflies had automotives, siege engines and even flying machines, and if these were crude by Collegium standards, they showed a rate of learning and progression from the Wasps’ barbaric beginnings that puts the Lowlanders to shame. Secondly, the Wasps can fly, and fly well, both in machines, on their beasts and by their Art. Their armies can move far more swiftly than the creeping Ants, and are vastly more mobile on the field. Finally, they have a ferocious drive and belief in their own destiny, their superiority to other kinden, that means that they are unlikely to ever say, ‘enough.

The Empire is founded on that racial bigotry. Wasp men are warriors, all of them. Every one of them has a military rank and training, even the artificers, the merchants of their Consortium, the slavers and the spies. The menial work, not fit for warriors, is done by slaves. The Empire is a voracious consumer of slaves of all kinden.

  The hierarchy of the Empire is still developing. The Emperor’s authority is absolute, and he keeps a council of advisors, both Wasps and educated slaves, whose identity changes frequently. There is no obvious next step, and the swift progress of the Wasp state is leading to a byzantine political structure. In absolute truth the three generals of the Rekef, the Wasp secret service, are effectively next in authority, but their power is shadowy and only semi-official. Below them is a scrum composed of: Army generals, magnates of the Consortium and the heads of major families (1) (). These individuals jostle for the Emperor's attention, although not too much of it, as the summary execution of anyone save perhaps a Rekef general is always a possibility. Just below this level come the local governors, whose status varies with their city, and who are almost always colonels in the army, usually seconded out after a victorious military history.

  Below this untidiness there is the rigid order of the army, rank by rank down to the least soldiers. Even the most wretched Wasp, the most wretched Wasp freeman, can hold his head high, however, for below them come the lesser kinden. Because of the manner of their joining the Empire, and their particular usefulness, Beetle and Fly-kinden are allowed a begrudged kind of second-class citizenship, just below a true Wasp and just above an Auxillian. Auxillians are conscript soldiers from the subject kinden, with ranks of their own. They pad out the Imperial armies, providing specialist troops or simple expendable footsoldiers.

   After this there are slaves. Most are of the subject-kinden, but there are many Wasp-kinden slaves, mostly women but some men. Some are criminals, other debtors. Most slaves, however, are from the subject peoples. A subject kinden living in his or her own city is not quite a slave, merely a subject of the Empire. Beyond their cities, unless they have papers and are on proper Imperial business (or at least have a Wasp to speak for them), they are either slaves, or fair game for slavers. About half the foreign slaves in the Empire are taken from the subject cities, either criminals or simply to full quota. The other half are prisoners of war. Slaves are property without rights.

Wasp debt laws are very strict, and can result in an insolvent debtor ending up in slavery along with his family. Some debtors have been known to sell their own wives and children to settle their debts.

   A Beetle scholar in Helleron once remarked that the Wasps were an unnatural kinden who could not last: the example of their beasts was that the women were superior, and yet Wasp-kinden women are without rights, nothing more than the property of their menfolk. He died, that scholar, quite soon afterwards, and the Wasps have outlived him despite his predictions. (2)

   Wasp men are expected to have families. A household will generally consist of a wife, whatever children she has borne, servants if the family is at least moderately well off, and slaves. Even poor Wasp families have enough slaves to do the menial work. More affluent families will have slave entertainers, tutors, clerks and the like. In many families the man of the house is away for the majority of the time, coming home only to look over his estate and impregnate his wife. Wasp men are frequently philanderers, and sleeping with slave girls is acceptable behaviour (although another man's wife is not). Women are expected to be faithful, of course. Women in the Empire are not slaves, but are considered the wards of either their father or their husband, own no property and have no say. However there are various ways in which a Wasp woman can be something more than just property.

   Firstly, many women run their husband's estates while he is away, if there is no male Wasp available to do it (such as a brother or uncle of the absentee). As stewards they can effectively manage the finances and business of the property, and given that the man may be off for years at a time on campaign this allows a considerable degree of freedom.

   Secondly, it sometimes happens that a woman is widowed without any man being in an obvious position to step in to take over her late husband's affairs. Usually her husband's family will do this, but if he has none then she remains holding the property in trust, until her (male) children are grown or until another suitor comes calling. Wasp law holds that no woman has a right to refuse a suit that her guardian accepts, but a propertied widow without a guardian is a difficult point in law. Usually it is the local governor that has final say, and if there are multiple suitors then a clever woman can wield considerable power backed by the inheritance that she controls.

   Thirdly, there is the rare Wasp who recognises kindred qualities in his mate. Some women act as their husband's agent in a kind of equal partnership, travelling, trading and acting as emissary on his behalf. This is rare, but represents the best chance a woman has to wield genuine influence. People will court her because of her husband's power.

  Finally, of course, there is simple unofficial influence. However patriarchal the society, men will not get it all their own way, and women will still have some sway over the men in their lives, whether their husbands or lovers. Women with powerful husbands become important figures simply because they have their husbands' ears, and so they can hold a kind of unofficial court, and receive all manner of gifts and favours. The women in the highest level of society are looking enviously at the Spiderlands, now, seeing how their counterparts live there, and a tradition of female intrigue is slowly arising within high-born Wasp culture.

(1)   not a nobility, as such — well-bred Wasps are referred to as being of "good family" and this manifests in power, wealth, property and influence. In another six or seven generations it will be an aristocracy, no doubt.

(2)   Beetle-kinden tend to operate a slightly patriarchal bias: women must generally work harder to get as far as a man on the same footing. The scholar would have pointed out, had he lived long enough, that of their insects it is the male who tends to be larger and more prominent.

To the Spiders themselves these cities are very much the provinces, the shallow end of the rich tapestry that is their domain. These cities exist to reap the trade of the silk road that runs north to them along them between the edge of the Dryclaw desert and the sea. The bulk of the Spiderlands is on that sea’s far shore, and the bulk of the inhabitants are not Spider-kinden at all.

A word here should be said about the state of ocean navigation. The Lowlanders are in the main not natural seagoers, and a direct passage across to the ports of the Spiderlands is made prohibitively difficult by a lack of skill, inadequate tools of navigation and the savage storms that sweep the sea’s interior (known to mariners as “the Lash”). Whilst the Spiderlands sailors are happier on the water they have more difficulty with storms, having few engined craft to assist them, and their navigational equipment is even more primitive. Shipping in these waters almost always stays within sight of the coast to keep its course and avoid the worst weather. So it is that the avenue of trade and communication between the Lowlands and their southern neighbours shrinks to the Silk Road, and the sea lane that mirrors it.

Lowlanders have traditionally made little headway into the Spiderlands. It is more usual for Spider traders to travel north than for Beetles to sail south. The Spiderlands are extremely complex, and putting a foot wrong could lead to the foreigner falling foul of the savage politics of the Spider families, and so those who are too intrepid in their explorations seldom return to give much account of themselves.

The Spiderlands proper are composed of a large number of semi-independent city-states, referred to as satrapies, some of which are primarily populated by Spiders, but the majority of which are of other kinden governed by a Spider overclass. Spider-kinden have a tendency, when they assume the governance of a place, to make the existing inhabitants, be they never so grand, realise that they have been at best middle-class all these years, and that the true ruling class has simply been biding its time before moving into residence. Spiders are so practiced at giving off an air of superiority that, after only a generation or two, an entire city population will find itself unthinkingly accepting their newly subordinate position, and the families and institutions that were once pre-eminent when the city was free now fight each other for the privilege of fawning to the Aristoi.

The Aristoi are the great Spider families, the ruling class. There are plenty of Spiders who are no better off, or often considerably worse off, than the average Satrapy citizen, but when most people think of Spider-kinden it is the Aristoi they see in their minds’ eye. Unlike the Commonweal the Spiderlands has no central authority, indeed it is arguable that there is no actual political entity that the label “Spiderlands” could be pinned on (1). Whether a family is Aristoi or not is a matter of degree rather than bloodline, and the boundaries shift continually. A family is Aristoi if it can maintain its power and wealth and social position in the face of the other Aristoi. It is quite possible for a more lowly family to gain some advantage in trade or diplomacy and become one of the elite, and in that case they would have earned the title (2). Similarly there is a gradient of power and influence within the Aristoi social class, from the truly great families that have major holdings in a dozen cities to clans that might have a solid presence in only one. It is always possible for a family to lose Aristoi status, and in the vicious political games that Spiders are so partial to this is not an uncommon event at all.

The structure of an Aristoi house descends from its highest-ranking female member, usually the eldest, although infighting for control of a family’s destiny is not unknown or even unusual. Spiders are strongly matriarchal, however, and although their menfolk can serve their families in many ways, leadership is not one of them. Below the matriarch there is a complex, and fluid, hierarchy of other family members, with thinkers and manipulators generally outranking those with a preference for action. All family members of any real standing will maintain a cadre, a small band of reasonably loyal and skilled henchmen to take care of family and personal business, and the family as a whole will have retainers such as entertainers, servants, a house guard, craftsmen and the like. Beyond this there will be agents, in their home cities, in other cities, in the world at large, and there will be occasional hirelings, guest artists or novelties, honoured guests (3), ambassadors and so forth. A good-sized Aristoi household is a populous and lively place to visit.

From a certain point of view the satrapies themselves, with their dozens of different kinden, are unaffected by their Spider overlords. The Spiders do not impose their culture upon their subjects (4), interfere with their trades or customs or rule them directly in any way. Instead the families’ main contact is with whatever individual, bloodline or group ruled the city prior to the Spiders’ arrival. Although some satrapy cities have been taken by armed conquest, Spiders usually arrange matters so that they are called on for aid, invited in to stop civil strife, or similarly peaceably allowed to assume the reins of power with a minimum of disruption. Once they are installed the former rulers of the city find that they are at the whim of mercurial and divided overlords. The hegemony of most satrapies, therefore, forms a curious bottleneck where the original structure converges on what is now the governor or satrap, and then expands into a loose coterie of representatives (5) from every Aristoi house that has an interest in the city. The demands that the coterie makes of the governor are specific and relatively few, mostly for taxes, and occasionally for a levy of fighting men. The governor therefore becomes extremely unpopular with the people, whereas on balance the people at large tend to be obscurely proud of their Aristoi. It is also worth noting that, in a satrapy city, no merchant, artist or artisan is ever likely to improve his lot beyond a certain point without Spider patronage, either from the Aristoi or from some well-placed local family. It is not a concerted campaign to maintain control, simply that once the Spider-kinden are in place, their opinions, fashions and favour tend to cloak the city in an invisible but irresistible aura of patronage, nepotism, favouritism and bribery.

The only part of Spider culture that they cannot help imposing on their subjects is slavery. No other kinden, not even the Wasps, is so habitually reliant on slaves. Slavery as a custom is not uncommon in any event, but those few satrapies that formerly shunned it found the tradition imposed on them quite forcefully, and those that spoke out against it generally relegated to the status of property, rather than person. To a Spider, especially an Aristoi, slaves are part of the proper lifestyle, and Spiders without slaves are pitied and looked down on. Paid servants are all very well, but ownership and control are important components of Spider-kinden social currency. Those who abhor slavery, such as the Beetles of Collegium, are often dismayed to find that a slave of the Aristoi generally lives a happier and more comfortable life than a freeman anywhere else. Indeed, as the appearance of servitors reflects on the affluence of masters, it is generally impossible to tell, by dress or manner, whether a Spider’s followers are slaves or free. To further complicate matters, there are often senior figures in Aristoi and other Spider households who take a positive pride in their chains, as it makes them closer to the family than mere hirelings.

The principle occupation for Spiders of any station is plotting the downfall of other Spiders. Amongst the Aristoi and those families a new notches below this is known as the Dance, and forms a central tenet of Spider culture. There are no rules to the Dance. At the same time there are an inordinate number of unwritten customs and expectations, and clumsy dancers are apt to fall. The Dance allows Aristoi families to jostle for power and wealth, but similarly, power and wealth are simply the means by which the Dance is furthered, ways of keeping score. It is at once ritualised, sophisticated, deadly and highly serious. The Dance has started wars between satrapies, cast families down, ennobled paupers, furthered art and burned palaces.

Those families that lose out in the Dance, whether they are Aristoi participants, or simply those luckless enough to be used and discarded in a greater scheme, are likely to find themselves in dire straits. For a Spider it is a bitter thing to be impoverished and helpless, and yet every satrapy city has its population of the fallen: beggars, whores, con artists and petty criminals, always scheming and swindling for a chance to get back what they have lost, or what they imagine they once had. They jockey for place amongst the city’s native poor, its gangs and its criminals, always hoping that someone of note will see them and pick them out as being useful. Patronage is the only way out of the mire, but Spiders have long memories and tend to keep an eye on any old enemy yet living, be they never so ruined and wretched.

With this salutary lesson it is not surprising that many individuals and whole families find that they would rather relocate to less trying regions than risk penury and destruction. The cities of Seldis and Siennis (6) await, as a reasonably comfortable waypoint on the road to oblivion, and afford the inhabitants to chance to laugh at the quaint Lowlanders and their foolish ways. If it becomes too hot in these most northern reaches of the Spiderlands then there are always the Lowlander cities themselves, where any two-coin Spider conwoman can remake herself as a princess, or perhaps the lakeside city of Solarno, virtually a retirement home for Aristoi where the same old games can be played on a tiny provincial scale before the warm waters of the Exalsee. It is small wonder that every Lowlands city has a population of Spiders, and that Spider-kinden exiles can even be found in the Commonweal or the Empire. They are their own worst enemies.

A final word is required on the Spider attitude to Aptitude. Spiders are universally Inapt. Machinery, all the trappings of the new technology, baffle them as much as they do the Moth-kinden mystics. However, many of the satrapy kinden are Apt, and there are always those funny Lowlanders. Unlike Moths, Spiders have no particular aversion to machines. Machines make life easier, after all, and they’re all for that. An artificer may find himself as feted and celebrated as a new musician or artist (7), touring the Aristoi parties to demonstrate his inventions to a wondering audience, just as a stage magician might tour the parlours of politely disbelieving Beetle magnates in Helleron. Also unlike the Moths, the Spiders were never heavily reliant on magical power for their dominance, preferring the more subtle, but as it turns out more durable, reins of social control, at which they have always excelled. Spider magic has slowly waned, in the centuries since the Collegium revolution, and they have steadily become more reliant on the users of machines, but as they have always been a culture built on controlling and manipulating the lower orders, this has made no real difference to the way that the Spiders live their lives.

(1)   And yet, under threat, the various Aristoi families can achieve a remarkable unity of purpose. The unifying principle of the Spiderlands is, honestly, the elitism of its ruling class, that closes ranks brutally to brush off the ambitions both of lesser kinden, and of lesser Spiders.

(2)   Especially so, as the genuine Aristoi would have tried to keep them down at every turn. If they can survive that, then the newcomers truly deserve the appellation.

(3)   Members of other Aristoi houses who are not quite being held hostage

(4)   With one exception, see below

(5)   Almost all male, because female Spiders have better things to do with their lives. For a Spider-kinden woman to be deputised to a coterie is a grievous mark of shame.

(6)   Everis, or Everis-on-the-Isle, is a different story, and a unique Spider accomplishment, being a walled and highly defensible naval fortress. It serves to protect Spider shipping from the Ant galleys out of Kes, or from Mantis longships.

(7)   Until they start to grow wearisome, of course.

The Lowlands is sandwiched between two traditional neighbours, and a third has recently turned up. This last is the most significant outside force, the titular Empire in Black and Gold, and will get its own section, but the elder cultures to the north and south deserve some explanation, as they will also have their part to play. In contrast, the city-states of the Atoll Coast to the west, and the nomads of the Dryclaw desert to the east have little to say for themselves. The Atoll Coast is far, and the cities there small, clinging to the coast and looking to each other and the sea. The presence of the Ant city-state of Tsen there discourages military exploration, and there is little trade or diplomatic contact. The recent innovation of flying machines has not yet quickened dialogue between the Lowlands and its eastern neighbours, although this must happen eventually. The Scorpions of the Dryclaw are by now an entirely derivative culture, in contrast. Continued raiding and trading with Helleron, Tark and the Spiderlands has tamed them, although they would never admit it. They have lost the independence and ferocity of their own eastern neighbours, and are instead a mere adjunct to the slave trade these days.

To the north of the Lowlands is the Dragonfly Commonweal, the largest single state known to exist, and the oldest. The Commonweal is more northerly and at a higher altitude than the Lowlands, and its climate is less temperate. The winters frequently bring snow, and the northern reaches are bracing even in the summer. During the Days of Lore there was frequent diplomatic traffic between the Moth-kinden and the Dragonflies, and a careful understanding of borders and the balance of power. However, even then, the Commonweal operated an isolationist foreign policy. When the Moths went to war with other powers of the Dark Ages, it was without aid from their neighbours, although perhaps such aid was never asked, the Moths being a proud people.

Since the revolution the Dragonflies have snubbed their southern neighbours, finding little in the technological uprising to interest them. As a people whose closely-held traditions are dominated and dictated by a faith in magic, the former slaves now dominating the Lowlands had nothing to offer save offensive ideas. Initially, at least, the Lowlanders were also unable to take to the air much, and the great Barrier Ridge, that relic of an age-old geological catastrophe, served to grant the Commonweal its desired security. Those Beetle-kinden merchants who did struggle their trading stock around the Ridge have found themselves politely turned around. The Commonweal has no interest in anything the Lowlands can produce, even less interest in the thought and society that produces it, values its own wares too highly to place them in the hands of barbarians, and in any event does not practice a cash economy. The peasantry deals entirely in barter, whilst the nobility deals in a kind of refined barter by promissory note, a currency that the Lowlanders are simply not good for.

The elegant Dragonfly-kinden form about half the citizens of the Commonweal, and all of its aristocracy, with the balance being mostly filled by Grasshopper-kinden peasantry. There are also substantial colonies of Mantis-kinden, whose outlook differs from the brooding, vengeful Lowlander breed to the extent that they have not had their age-old power and supremacy shattered by upstart slaves. A scattering of other kinden make up the mix, many of them not seen in more southern climes. The distant borders of the Commonweal are mostly the province of barbarians, at least as the Commonwealers tell it: to the north are the steppes, with nomadic tribes of various kinden, especially the Locusts who occasionally embark on one of their pointless rampages against their neighbours. To the east are various squabbling hill tribes, or so it was until very recently. The advent of the Empire has had a dramatic impact on the Commonweal’s decline.

The Commonweal is, and has been since records began, a feudal autocracy organised into numerous principalities. The sole and absolute ruler of this vast state (1) is the Monarch. Although the nobility as a whole is hereditary, the office of the Monarch is not. It is in fact not uncommon for a royal child to succeed a parent, but bloodline is not at least the ostensible reason for this. Succession is determined by a counsel of seers who select from the available children of nobility, offspring of the Monarch and of the various Princes Major. Whether this is a valid or incorruptible way of choosing an absolute ruler depends, of course, on what you think of the validity of magical divination.

The Monarch is the soul of the Commonweal. The Monarch’s word is absolute and binding, and when the Throne makes a promise, that promise must be kept no matter what. This has been a founding principle of the Commonweal and, when the winds of fate have inexplicable chosen a rash or foolish Monarch, it has contributed to the state’s gradual decline. It is not that the Monarch is infallible, merely that he or she must strive to be so. In the old days this apparently worked.

Beneath the Monarch there are the Princes Major, each with a principality to govern, and beneath them there are the Princes Minor, the lesser nobility, who in turn hold court for the headmen of the villages within their domains. This feudal system has lasted for centuries, and even though the cracks are now beginning to gape, something should be said for the philosophy that has allowed it to endure even this long. The Dragonfly ideology is not based on a divine right to rule (2) but on responsibility. A village headman is responsible for the welfare of a village: if things go wrong then he or she is, in essence, to blame. A Prince Minor is responsible for those headmen, the Prince Major to his subordinate princes, and the Monarch for the whole deal. Those in authority are entitled to respect, to tithes, to levy armies even, but only because they are supposed to use the power they wield solely for the good of those that grant it them. Dragonfly nobility lives simply and frugally by the standards of, say, the Spiderlands Aristoi, or even of a Helleron merchant-lord. When a prince or even a Monarch fails, especially if they are unable to make good on a public promice made, it is not unusual for suicide to be the result. (3)

In order to foster such cross-class bonds of mutual responsibility, the Dragonflies practice a curious system of “kin-obligates”. Children are fostered with other families, frequently of a different trade, social class and even in a different principality. The prince learns to live like a pauper, the herdsman knows the burdens of government. This tradition has allowed what is overall a cumbersome and fallible system to persist for many centuries without revolution or upheaval.

Of course, all social systems are at the mercy of human nature, and the Commonweal has not functioned as intended for centuries. Its decline has been almost too slow to recognise at the time, and by the time it was evident even to the Monarch the difficulties plaguing the great state were in all likelihood irreversible. There have been bad Monarchs, negligent Monarchs, Monarchs obsessed with their private interests. Princes must shift for themselves in such times, and some go astray. Princes who might have toed the line under a firm hand may indulge their bad natures or plot against their neighbours. Old injuries rise to the fore. Perhaps a prince dies without issue, a domain goes ungoverned. Banditry, always a festering problem in the Commonweal’s great and often wild spaces, rises up. Bandit lords set themselves up in the seats of princes, or princes descend to brigandage. All gradual, all over many years, but for a long time the Monarchs have been unable to regain ground lost to the ravages of entropy, and by now there are whole principalities where the servants of the throne are not safe, and only warlords rule. The Commonweal is slowly settling into the ashes of history.

It might seem that, given the great state’s geographical isolation and cultural stagnation, it would have little relevance to the Lowlanders, or any story involving them. The Empire has changed all that. After subduing the cities of Myna, Szar and Maynes, the Imperial armies faced a choice: go south, and invade the Lowlands, or go north and invade the Commonweal. On such questions, the future course of history hangs.

Of the Lowlands, the Empire knew only that the inhabitants were keen traders, and the city of Helleron was proving a good source of raw materials, finished goods and mechanical expertise. The Commonweal treated the Empire’s ambassadors with the same lofty disdain as it had always used to rebuff the Lowlander merchants. The Emperor of the time, Alvdan the First, made the logical choice, and the Imperial armies moved to the Commonweal’s borders.

It is possible that both sides engaged in serious underestimation before the conflict began. The Commonweal had no understanding of the Empire’s engineering expertise, and the Empire surely did not appreciate just how big the Commonweal was. The resulting war would last twelve years. The course of the war is best described as a single long, drawn-out retreat by Commonweal forces. The Monarch raised armies of thousands upon thousands of levies, bolstered by the well-trained retinues of princes and the Monarch’s own elite agents, known as the Mercers. The Imperial forces were outnumbered from the start, but incomparably better equipped, more uniformly well-trained and certainly more motivated. Despite a few notable Commonwealer successes, namely a number of high-profile assassinations and the almost total destruction of the Sixth Army by a Commonwealer surprise attack, the Commonweal forces were smashed at almost every turn. All they accomplished was, by sheer numbers and force of will, to slow the Empire’s advance to a gruelling crawl, year after year, making the invaders dread the start of each harsh Commonweal winter.

In the end, after twelve years of blood, a rebellion in the subject city of Maynes made it temporarily inconvenient for the Empire to continue its advance. In order to stabilise its gains the Empire offered terms to the Monarch, which the Dragonflies were in no position to refuse. Three entire principalities were signed over to the Empire in the Treaty of Pearl, an area comprising almost twenty percent of the Commonweal, and providing the Wasps with a perfect platform for further expansion.

Once the Maynes rebels had been put down, of course, the question of where to send the Imperials armies next was put to the Emperor, now Alvdan Second of that name. As the Wasp-kinden were possessed of considerable airpower, both mechanically and by their Art, it was proposed that the Barrier Ridge would be no impediment to a northward strike against the Commonweal, in which they would not even have to violate the borders drawn by the Treaty of Pearl. Of course, in order to put themselves in such a position they would have to secure the land south of the Commonweal, lands that the Imperial spies, the dreaded Rekef, had by now thoroughly itemised and infiltrated. It was mooted to Alvdan the Second that, before a second expedition against the Commonweal, the Lowlands were by now ripe to be brought into the Imperial fold. At the same time, and in the absence of any coherent response from the Monarch, the more forward-thinking Princes Major began to send agents south for the first time in centuries, in search of potential allies…

(1)   Sole and absolute in theory, at least.

(2)   As of course they have no belief in a divine, although their concept of a preordained fate comes close.

(3) What a thought — that one's politicians are expected to pay a price for uncovered dishonesty! What strange, barbaric customs these insect-people have.