Homebrew Hive Queen Species Details

“The lovely flowers embarrass me,

They make me regret I am not a bee"

– Emily Dickinson

When a queen bee becomes sapient, be it through exposure to awakening magic, wild magic, or something else, a Hive Queen is the result. Perhaps you were the first of your lineage of Queens, or perhaps your hive has been around for a long time. The magic which imbues you gives you mental command over your workers, and animates your hive into a humanoid body. The body of the Hive Queen is made of wax, but they can feel pain. Their mind is fundamentally built from the alien brain of a bee, but they can still feel emotion. Now something more than a cog in nature's vast machine, they now feel called to find a purpose beyond subsistence. A Hive Queen can be a steadfast ally, a cold-hearted killer, or a visionary in search of meaning.

Living Honey and Wax

Hive Queens are formed from a blend of organic and inorganic materials. An ever-flowing system infused with enchanted honey serves as their muscles and circulatory system, wrapped around a lattice of hexagonally ordered wax. Armored plates of chitin or wax form a protective outer shell and reinforce joints. A Hive Queen determines their own appearance, commanding their workers to build them the body they desire.

Although they are magical constructs, the bodies of Hive Queens are living humanoids. Resting, healing magic, and the Medicine skill all provide the same benefits to Hive Queens that they do to other humanoids.

Hive Queen Personality

A Hive Queen may still cling to vestiges of natural instinct. For most of their existence, bees have had a clearly defined function and were programmed by their biology to focus purely on that role. Magic gave them freedom, but many still struggle both to find a place in the strange world of consciousness and to relate to the creatures they meet who are so very different to them.

The typical Queen shows little emotion. Expressing emotion can be a challenge for them, it does not come naturally to new Hive Queens. Many Hive Queens embrace a concrete purpose — such as protecting allies, completing a contract, or exploring a land — and embrace this task in their hunt for meaning. However, there are Queens who delight in exploring their feelings, their freedom, and their relationships with others, flitting from pursuit to pursuit like they might in a field of flowers. Most Hive Queens have no interest in religion, but some embrace faith and the druidic circles, seeking higher purpose and deeper meaning.

The typical Hive Queen has a sexless body shape. Some Hive Queens ignore the concept of gender entirely, while others adopt a gender identity, typically female.

The more a Hive Queen develops their individuality, typically over the course of several generations, the more likely they are to modify their body, customizing the look of their face, limbs, and plating.

Quirks

Hive Queens often display an odd personality trait or two, given how alien their insectoid mind can be without generations of exposure to other ways of thinking. The Hive Queen Quirks table contains example quirks.

Hive Queen Quirks

Hive Queen Names

Most Hive Queens use the name they inherited from the previous Queen of the hive they lead. Many of them adopted nicknames, often given to them by their comrades. As independent individuals, some have chosen new names as a way to express their path in life. A few take on human names, often the name of a fallen friend or mentor.

Hive Queen Names: Berry, Buzz, Clover, Goldenrod, Honey, Hornet, Hum, Mead, Mondara, Poppy, Quiz, Snapdragon, Sticky, Sting, Tulip, Wisteria

Hive Queen Traits

Your Hive Queen character has the following traits.

Ability Score Increase

Your Constitution score increases by 2, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1.

Age

Your lifespan is only five years at most, and when you grow old, a new queen will kill you and take your place. The experiences and knowledge of the old queen are imbued into the magic animating the hive itself, and can be freely accessed by future generations of queens, granting a degree of continuity of consciousness. Succession may be accompanied by a personality shift. Despite being led by different individuals over time, Hive Queens typically retain their name- names are a concept somewhat alien to bees, and so a Hive Queen will typically accept whatever name they inherit. A hive, properly maintained, will show no signs of deterioration due to age, and could endure for centuries. You are immune to magical aging effects.

Alignment

You are royalty, and most Hive Queens naturally value order and discipline, tending toward law and neutrality. But some have, over many generations, learned to see the value of other ways of beeing.

Size

Your size is Medium. You choose your height and build, and your workers will construct the body you desire:

Height Range: 5-7 ft.

Weight Range: 270-320 lbs.

You can change your height and build over a week of downtime, if you can access flowers.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet. If your hive is destroyed, you have a flying speed of 20 feet.

Hive Form

Your body is a magical construct built by your workers from wax, represented by the following effects:

• You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison damage.
• Beeswax is an excellent electrical insulator, giving you resistance to lightning damage.
• Beeswax is very flammable. You are vulnerable to fire damage.
• If you are flooded with smoke, make a DC10 Constitution saving throw each round. On a failure, you become stunned for the round.
• If your body is destroyed (killed), you may be able to escape and rebuild. Without your body, you have the statistics of a Swarm of Insects (Wasps) with 2 hit points, and a reduced flying speed of 20 ft.

Workers’ Rest

When you take a long rest, you must spend at least six hours in an inactive, motionless state, rather than sleeping. In this state, you appear inert, but it doesn’t render you unconscious, and you can see and hear as normal.

Integrated Protection

Your body has built-in defensive layers, which can be enhanced with armor:

• You gain a +1 bonus to Armor Class.
• You can don only armor with which you have proficiency. To don armor other than a shield, you must incorporate it into your body over the course of 1 hour, during which you remain in contact with the armor. To doff armor, you must spend 1 hour removing it. You can rest while donning or doffing armor in this way.
• While you live, the armor incorporated into your body can’t be removed against your will.

Specialized Brood

You can train a subset of your freshly hatched workers in a particular skill.

You gain one skill proficiency and one tool proficiency of your choice.

Over a week of downtime, you can change one of these proficiencies to another of your choice.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.