To centralize this a bit and asure it doesn't go lost that fast.
1) Arachnid History (including original bug and queen discussion)
I have read through the Arachnid Army Book and I am sure more than ever that Breeders are the original Arachnid species - but they are not he only one.
Breeders lay eggs, Nursers fertilize them. According to the Army Book the eggs MUST be fertilized - so we just found the arachnid sexual males.
It's the Nursers.
Why then do Arachnid have more female egg-layers then male egg-fertilizers? Well that's a bit complicated.
Typically you need less males because males have much greater reproduction potential than females.
Well, but the Arachnids are not organized in a typical male-female-pair pattern.
It seems like in the distant past those bug colonies have proven best that reduced their percentage of males (means breeding less nursers and more breeders).
Actually having more males then you need is a waste of resources especially when a part of them is not capable of doing something useful for the colony.
So it seems like in the past the females defended the colonies and the males got engaged with caring for the brood in where they (through the millennia) specialised to such a degree that they even got incapable of defending themselves.
Of course it's a dumb idea to have the reproducing bugs fighting for the colony. So this lead to an arise of a new sort of genetic strain - either a male or female phenotype incapable of reproducing itself, leaving it up to the solely purpose of defending the colony.
(Funnily in Arachnid History the selection pressures must have pressed seriously stronger on the COLONIES, rather than individual beings.)
This single Arachnid colony now equipped with dedicated fighters expanded and - during centuries or millennia - conquered their whole homeworld.
Where the other colonies lost egg-laying females in every battle the new Bugs lost nothing but cheap cannon food.
It can be assumed that they had reached some form of higher intelligence while they conquered the entire planet. Probably they even had developed a primitive strain of brain bugs and certainly more strains of different fighters.
All Bug colonies where connected to each other, like the so called "traveller ants" (e.g. pharao ants) we no from earth.
So the bugs sat there and asked themselves what they could do next, driven by the urgent need to expand further.
Then they looked up to those distant lights covering the dark skies during night.
And then they understood. They knew where they had to go.
There hasn't been said anything about HOW bugs got into space, but in the end they did.
Maybe they evolved species being able to fly to the edge of the atmosphere and study the conditions there.
Maybe then they constructed their first plasma bugs and shoot spores of their first 'astronautic bugs' up to the moons, creating first outposts in space.
Maybe they created giant biological spacecraft-arcs to found their first space colonies on their moons or drifting in high orbit.
Whatever they did, once they got the jump into space-born life the rest was quite easy. Only one more problem appeared for the creation an Arachnid Empire. Fast interstellar travel.
But even that one was solved by biological engineering. They got it even better than the humans with all their technology.
Then they colonized space. They conquered many worlds and eradicated entire races.
Probably at this point they evolved queens as factory bugs, quickly producing an army of Soldiers smashing away any defence with their pure numbers and colonising a whole world. And at the same time the queens administrated all the colonies of those new Bug planets.
Already battle-hardened and with one single opinion what to do with any alien species they met the skinnies as the first interstellar race.
They almost eradicated the skinnies and then turned to the humans.
Their next target for invasion.
These are my thoughts to Arachnid history.
1) Arachnid History (including original bug and queen discussion)
I have read through the Arachnid Army Book and I am sure more than ever that Breeders are the original Arachnid species - but they are not he only one.
Breeders lay eggs, Nursers fertilize them. According to the Army Book the eggs MUST be fertilized - so we just found the arachnid sexual males.
It's the Nursers.
Why then do Arachnid have more female egg-layers then male egg-fertilizers? Well that's a bit complicated.
Typically you need less males because males have much greater reproduction potential than females.
Well, but the Arachnids are not organized in a typical male-female-pair pattern.
It seems like in the distant past those bug colonies have proven best that reduced their percentage of males (means breeding less nursers and more breeders).
Actually having more males then you need is a waste of resources especially when a part of them is not capable of doing something useful for the colony.
So it seems like in the past the females defended the colonies and the males got engaged with caring for the brood in where they (through the millennia) specialised to such a degree that they even got incapable of defending themselves.
Of course it's a dumb idea to have the reproducing bugs fighting for the colony. So this lead to an arise of a new sort of genetic strain - either a male or female phenotype incapable of reproducing itself, leaving it up to the solely purpose of defending the colony.
(Funnily in Arachnid History the selection pressures must have pressed seriously stronger on the COLONIES, rather than individual beings.)
This single Arachnid colony now equipped with dedicated fighters expanded and - during centuries or millennia - conquered their whole homeworld.
Where the other colonies lost egg-laying females in every battle the new Bugs lost nothing but cheap cannon food.
It can be assumed that they had reached some form of higher intelligence while they conquered the entire planet. Probably they even had developed a primitive strain of brain bugs and certainly more strains of different fighters.
All Bug colonies where connected to each other, like the so called "traveller ants" (e.g. pharao ants) we no from earth.
So the bugs sat there and asked themselves what they could do next, driven by the urgent need to expand further.
Then they looked up to those distant lights covering the dark skies during night.
And then they understood. They knew where they had to go.
There hasn't been said anything about HOW bugs got into space, but in the end they did.
Maybe they evolved species being able to fly to the edge of the atmosphere and study the conditions there.
Maybe then they constructed their first plasma bugs and shoot spores of their first 'astronautic bugs' up to the moons, creating first outposts in space.
Maybe they created giant biological spacecraft-arcs to found their first space colonies on their moons or drifting in high orbit.
Whatever they did, once they got the jump into space-born life the rest was quite easy. Only one more problem appeared for the creation an Arachnid Empire. Fast interstellar travel.
But even that one was solved by biological engineering. They got it even better than the humans with all their technology.
Then they colonized space. They conquered many worlds and eradicated entire races.
Probably at this point they evolved queens as factory bugs, quickly producing an army of Soldiers smashing away any defence with their pure numbers and colonising a whole world. And at the same time the queens administrated all the colonies of those new Bug planets.
Already battle-hardened and with one single opinion what to do with any alien species they met the skinnies as the first interstellar race.
They almost eradicated the skinnies and then turned to the humans.
Their next target for invasion.
These are my thoughts to Arachnid history.
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