The Myrmidons are an ancient race of hive-minded invertebrates. All of them worship and serve Nethys, the macabre entity known to humans as the goddess of curses and diseases. Myrmidons live to infect and feed off other creatures, thus propagating and accruing power for the parasitic fungus or "yellow mold" living inside them (which some say is Nethys in her physical form). Myrmidon society is secretive and defensive. Hives are especially aggressive towards trespassers, whom they will attack, abduct, and infect with the yellow mold. Offensive actions, such as full-scale invasions of human settlements, are very rare but not unheard of.
While in vicinity, Myrmidons can communicate telepathically with other hosts of the yellow mold. This allows each tight-knit hive to form a shared consciousness—a hive mind—each exchanging thoughts instantly and instinctively. The hive mind helps each member react quickly to outside threats and work together at incredible efficiency. Each hive is ruled by the egg-laying queen, and consists of workers, soldiers, and gatherers. The hive will act immediately against any perceived threat, deploying dozens of soldiers to engage and destroy outsiders to protect the queen and her clutch.
Myrmidons can be described as oddly intelligent, viciously defensive, never disloyal to their own kind, and deferential to the will of their queen.
Appearances
Myrmidons come in a huge variety of invertebrate forms, primarily insects, but also worms, arachnids, crustaceans, and so forth. They vary greatly in size, from naturally tiny to the acreage of whales, depending on the amount of nourishment granted to the fungus inside them. Myrmidon queens can lay thousands of eggs, but such fragile things can only survive in the humid tropics or in warm caves, thus limiting the range of hive colonization.
Myrmidon hive structures delve deep beneath wherever they lay claim to, linking thousands of damp caverns. They can also build high, creating towering mounds accessible only from the trypophobic holes boring into their hollow interiors.