User:Bill/Abeil Invasion

Summary

The abeil, see Monster Manual II for D&D 3.5, are a humanoid insect race similar to bees and elves. They are roughly described as a lawful and expansionist race dedicated solely to creating new abeil colonies, making them an excellent non-evil antagonist race. The background presented in MMII is very limited; describing the abeil as a hive mind dominated by a queen that is not interested in morality or worldly pleasures, but rather as a somewhat mindless machine that expands In all directions until confronted by sufficient resistance. This, in my opinion offers a lot of opportunity for stories. And not just for D&D. To further complicate matters, the abeil are not actually mindless. They, like bees, are divided into a rigid caste system of workers/drones, warriors, and queens. The queens especially are interesting because they are powerful spellcasters as well as supreme and undisputed rulers of their societies.

After some significant investigation, I discovered that it is within the power of these abeil queens to wrest their hive cities from the ground. They are actually capable, in canon, of creating a flying city. I doubt that the original authors thought this idea through, but I think it makes for a wonderful opportunity to have a very powerful, temporary, menace in any D&D campaign. And potentially for multiple conflicts to ensue if more than one floating abeil colony appears at a time.

Other Notes

The queen needs to gain one level of druid to qualify as a 17th level caster, which is required to craft a flying structure (see Stronghold Builder's Guide). Abeil queens are by default able to cast druid spells as a 16th level caster, automatically enabling them to cast Reverse Gravity. As ECL 21 characters, queens have plenty of feats to burn and easily qualify for Craft Wondrous Item.

The only thing that needs to be hand-waved to make the abiel the ultimate threat from the skies is the actual costs of launching an entire city into the air. According to the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook each area has a price of 15000GP per 20x20x10 for flight, by the 3.5 rules a caster can pay half the price if they do the magic themselves. If the rules for crafting magical items holds at this scale, each area will also cost 600XP. It's an outdated sourcebook, but we're talking millions of gold pieces and tens of thousands of experience to get the city off the ground. I'll justify it by saying that the queen is the undisputed leader of her city with a dominant psychic link to her people. Her will is theirs, and if she says, "pony up the cash and experience points necessary to get this hive off the ground," they'll jump to it.

A couple areas that will need to be fleshed out if I use this idea for more than a few sessions would be how the flying cities relate to each other, what the normal altitude for each city is, and how do ground-dwellers react when one of these cities appear. D&D has many other flying monsters, and some powerful enough to present a threat to a flying city, so it may be beneficial to consider how they would react to the existence of the abeil.

Other Systems

While these notes are primarily of use for D&D 3.5, I can see the value of an alien race like the abeil in many other settings. It shouldn't be too challenging to reskin the idea for another game. In Exalted, for example, abeil could be a breed of beastmen created by a Lunar in a bid to create a floating defense line against the Wyld. Or they could be a peculiar breed of hobgoblin and the queen a Raksha. Or they could be a stable, or semi-stable, form of wyld mutant. Any of these options could make for interesting story lines. If I use them in Exalted, I'll probably not disclose which background is accurate.