Termites, Gardener, various

Gardener Termites, Various

The cave gardens provide exotic environments in the underworld, pockets of copious fodder in the sometimes desolate subterranean depths. When something, whether critter or Folk, heads along a passageway leading to one of the termites' fungus garden caves, the wee workers run up and scurry about them, sampling the air. If the termites detect no scent of the trespassers being fungus-eaters (i.e., have not eaten fungus in the last week), they have no problem letting them pass. Those who do smell of fungus eating will be turned back. Warriors will be summoned, the intruders warned and then, if they do not retreat, attacked. The warriors are willing to let those retreating escape - usually.

Creatures or travelers passing through a fungus garden area will be monitored. The warriors will offer no harm unless harm is done to a termite, to their fungus, or to some particular structure they have built or value, or some other offence is committed.

The gardening termites start with natural caves, but are great excavators; the walls of their gardens are built of excavated material cemented with special termite secretions. They also keep caverns in good repair, and not just their own; they maintain surprisingly wide-spread networks of caves, tunnels, and shafts to keep the drafts and ventilation and water supplies just right for their gardens caves.

In the perfectible, easily regulated environment of their caves, the termites cultivate weird plants and fungi, species they have selectively bred for so many aeons that they bear little resemblance to any free-living plant or fungi. Other caverns may be like bell jars in which the ants have preserved ancient, prehistoric plants or fungi.

The regulation systems maintained by the termites often include complete waterworks, with holding ponds and canals. Water is circulated, and even lifted hundreds of feet by specialized pumper beasts, which may be termites or other cultivated species such as pumper worms or snails. These pumper beasts spend their entire lives working wherever they are placed, drinking from a pond or canal and excreting the water in to the amber-waterproofed pipe to which it is affixed. The pumpers rely upon the termites to feed, clean, guard, and otherwise care for them.

A wide range of other creatures may also live symbiotically with the termites in a relationship, working in the fungus gardens or being used as living tools.

Walled Gardens Termites

Inside these walled gardens, gardener-workers tend a wide range of plants. The bulk of this is harvested either for direct use or for composing in huge subterranean "rotteries." The compost is then used to fertilized the walled gardens and to enrich the vast fugal forests (and other fungus gardens) they tend in the cavers below. (The termites also siphon the methane produced to some convenient outlet.)

The walled gardens may form a formidable barrier to Folk traveling across the land; the termites do not take kindly to having their gardens disturbed! Climbing in to one garden (or breaking through the cement-hard walls) leads only to another; the cluster of gardens form an irregular honeycomb across their territory. While they generally prefer to build each new garden against the previous, the cluster building ever outward, they could easily have multiple, smaller clusters scattered through a larger area. From the outside, the gardens look just look like big, barren sandstone outcroppings or massifs.

In desert areas, the termites will excavate hundreds of feet if necessary to reach water. They then build a series of holding ponds, each linked to the one above by pipes sealed with epoxy-like secretions. The pumper-beasts the termites cultivate keep their holding ponds and surface waterworks brimming, even in the most arid desert.

In both desert and arctic climes, the pocket-garden cells are rooved over with crystalline canopies of "ant-epoxy," or rib-vaulted greenhouse rooves of "ant-amber."

Hanging Gardens Termites

In jungle areas, the termites maintain a clearing around their tower, so sun can reach the base, and then build high above the treetops. The towers often have flying-buttress supports. There may be several towers in an area, either linked to the same subterranean nest below ground by tunnels (or above ground by high-marching viaducts) or belonging to rival nests.

Commensul predatory avians (eagles, pterosaurs, etc.) may be lured to nest upon the tower, as these will eat any termite-eating animals that might approach; these guard beasts may well consider Adventurers a hazard to be repelled - or eaten.

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Last update Apr 4, 2006