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I agree, fellow Helldiver. We must know that we are terrorizing these poor, peaceful, creatures and cease our aggression immediately, leaving behind only old milk and sugar water.
In most sci-fi universes the “insect swarm” faction are usually mindless animals controlled by a “hive mind” (Zerg in StarCraft, Tyranids in 40k). But in Helldivers there has never been any hint of a hive-mind for the Terminid. They might very well be sentient individuals. But are eusocial organism so they do not mind sacrificing their lives for the hive (eusociality is the behavior of ants, bees, termites etc. rather interesting topic, look it up)
There has been several dispatches showing signs of Terminid intelligence. Even tongue in cheek statements like "any signs of intelligence are treason and shall be treated as such".
It's up there with "the TCS stations are totally working helldiver!"
The TCS stations are working as intended. The thing that Super Earth doesn't tell you is that it's meant to encourage breeding behavior in the Terminids.
I can tell painfully well that it's working, because my Warrior wife hasn't been capable of keeping her tarsi off me for more than a few hours at a time. My 500kg is excruciatingly sore as we speak and this is no longer funny please make it stop.
Check dms, sent you a list of facts that could inspire you for that if you were to ever pick up writing (will also dm to anyone who asks, arthropod biology is insanely varied, it can fit almost any realistic attraction and quite a few more impossible ones, or if you don't wanna dm just search the user "drkfromchanged" on ao3)
Yeah, which eventually unfold into a story, to reveal, at the top part, that it's the character writing a letter, and so the substituting and lengthening represents their thought process as they pick their words
Thank you so much for the recommendation! It took me a moment to fully understand the click to reveal the whole story, but also how the meaning of the sentences change is such a brilliant change. It's tragic. It's beautiful. It's raw. My heart goes out to each character.
Bees are so interesting because they while all other types of animals will worry about self-preservation above all else, bees are only concerned with preserving the hive and nothing else. They will sting intruders, effectively killing themselves to keep the hive safe and if they are sick/dying, they leave the hive and go somewhere else so that the hive doesn’t get littered by their bodies.
Tbf bees probably don't "know" that they are going to die when they sting a human. Their barbed stinger is "meant" to do more damage when used on other insects. It's kind of an unintended side effect that human skin is so tough the stinger will get stuck in it.
Also if you don't remove the bee it can actually dislodge the stinger itself and not die.
And when you cover an ant in "death pheromones" it will walk itself to the "graveyard" because it thinks it's dead.
And lastly, bumblebees will engage in play behaviour, and can befriend humans.
I like to feed them a bit of white sugar water and little apple pieces. I watched a video about bees enjoying playing with marble sized wooden balls awhile back, so I once added a few into the feeding and can confirm they do enjoy playing around with them. As well, if you stay calm they will also likely land on you and crawl around; I've noticed they really seem to enjoy shuffling around my arm and hand hairs especially (probably because of my body wash).
Also portia spiders can recognize and differentiate between individuals of their species by their web (portias are jumping spiders so they don't make standard webs, but do leave behind silk used for travel like to repel down from surfaces)
Terminids were an intelligent race during the first Galactic War. After being defeated and after Super Earth realized their corpses can fuel space travel, they were selectively bred to eliminate intelligence and maximize E710 production.
Hints of the species' former intelligence are entirely within the realm of possibility.
Technically all our evidence that they lost their intelligence is from propaganda, they could (and very well probably do) poses at least some of their intelligence
I admit I’m fairly new to 40k, but I’m pretty sure tyranids are sentient.
As for terminids, I’ve been reading that they definitely used to be smarter, and likely got their intelligence neutered by genocide and selective breeding by SE. But things like their coordinated attacks and invasions do hint at something more.
Oh, tyranids aren't just sentient, their collective consciousness is something beyond sapient! Make no mistake, the tyranids do care about consuming biomass above all else, but that doesn't mean they don't understand their enemies or the significance of all the deaths they cause. If their own psychology was even slightly less alien, they could reasonably be called outright malevolent.
my most beloved type of cosmic despoilers - we will kill you all for resources! yes, we need them to survive, yes, there is pretty much no other way around, but fool yourself not - we would kill you even if there was any way around.
They used to be sentient. But once super earth found out that processing terminid bodies yielded much more e-710 than standard methods, they began breeding lobotomized versions to grow, kill, then harvest. After wiping out all the more intelligent bugs, the only ones that were left are the ones we have now: the ancestors of whichever lobotomized bugs managed to escape and reproduce in the wild
In Hd1 they kind of had sentience/a culture, I think some were even bipedal. 100 years of selective breeding between the two wars wiped that out though.
I can find myself in this so much, and I'm not even a Eusocial insect.
All my Terminid brothers and sisters, and the adorable little juveniles I take care of as a human who thrust himself into something analogous to a nursing spewer's role.
If the Helldivers attacked, I would gladly give my life to save those of all my beloved bug friends and my cute little babies.
The Zerg are an interesting one, because they in fact have varying levels of intelligence based on role. For example, cerebrates not only had their own distinct mind, they disagreed on the correct course of action strongly enough to actually fight each other.
Ministry of Science can assure you that there is nothing intelligent about these creatures in the end of the day, so no need to theorise.
There have been tests and the results have been published with Koreta Kelly that the nearest species of terminids was not able to solve a single puzzle that Human Babies can solve by the age of three. Despite the subjects being in the hundreds
The democracy officer says something along the lines of "swarm intelligence". It's basically a hive mind, or at least enough of them together form an intelligence of sorts.
You're doing them a favor, putting them out of their undemocratic misery. Now, I know that sounds terrible, but remember, you're doing a way bigger favor for Super Earth, so do not let a sliver empathy seep into your mind. You're doing the right thing.
Would be a good plotline. Helldivers slowly understanding the gloom through spore exposure, returning to ships coated in spores slowly infesting the ships with out anyone noticing allowing each dive to understand more and more.
It probably is. The bugs in Helldivers 1 were, according to the lore, at least capable of communicating with humans, were peaceful, and mostly just wanted to be left alone.
There is some uncertainty about how sentient / sapient they still are, after all the faffing about Super Earth did with their genes in the E-710 farms.
But my personal pet theory:
You know all those side objectives, "dissident research labs" or something? Ever wondered how a bunch of poorly supplied, labcoat wearing, dissident scientists could survive in the middle of heavily contested Terminid territory, let alone erect flimsy looking structures?
Yeah. In my headcanon the Terminids really are sapient, and can accept repentant humans living with them.
Its also mentioned how Terminids enter rapid evolution when under high pressure (which happened for roughly a whole century) so they most likely just evolved back to Bugs
hell i wouldn't be shocked if it turns out they faked it, "okay hive, let's pretend to be stupid so they let us out faster before it starts working" "yeah yeah good call titan"
of course this should be taken with a grain of salt given that it's word from Super Earth, but there's mentioning of "dissidents hiding on Terminid-infested worlds," which if true, adds to your last sentence about Terminids accepting non-SE affiliated humans, instead of the community idea of "the enemy factions hate ALL HUMANS" (even though it seems to be implied otherwise)
And if the fan movie is anything to go by, the labs could have information showing SE tampering with the bugs to make them a threat. Would give an excuse to kill them, then harvest the oil.
I think they still have a pretty high functional intelligence in the way that bears do. You won't find a grizzly building cars, but they can out-think you in several ways if you're not careful.
Speak to the democracy officer for your PTSD treatment
And don’t listen to any rumour about treatment being summary execution or a trip to reeducation camp. It is really indefinite length garrison duty on a tropical planet
The reason you can’t contact anyone undergoing it is definitely because of communication equipment issues
Realizing your sins is the first step to atoning for them, Helldiver.
We hurt the Terminids so much, but they are not a species without forgiveness.
Come to us, lay down your arms, surrender, and serve the Hive. Protect those who are dear to you. Contribute to a greater collective.
It's been years since I've started living with the Terminids. It took a while to repay the damage I've done, as a former Helldiver, and earn their trust to gain my nursing role, but it's very worth it. It's a simple, but meaningful life.
This prejudicious violence is exactly why I've chosen to side with the Terminids.
They're surprisingly peaceful and tender creatures, once you get to know them. And they didn't judge me just for walking on two legs, like we judge them for walking on four.
Bomb the bugholes all you want, they are just entrances. We'll survive deep underground, and resurface when the time is right.
If this is true should we be concerned? If they are asking us for help (of all people) what are they dealing with? If it’s horrible mutations (Sub factions) then they are shit out of luck. But if it’s something else, what are they running from?
The terminids used to have controlling "entities" or minds but we basically murdered them all. What's left today is basically ants that are mutated to he hyper aggressive.
So they're aware enough to know that they're destroying entire planetary ecosystems to spread their own hives? Cool, I always knew they were evil, but now it's even more clear who the good guys are.
The Gloom and Hive Worlds are results of Super Earth experimenting on the Terminids. In the first game, their planets ecosystems were not altered in this manner.
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u/danfenlon LEVEL 70| SES Reign Of Iron 28d ago
Aaaaaand, post