Peek: Queen Multitasking (Patreon)

The ant queen hardly has time to gather her thoughts with all the work she has right now, and she couldn't be happier for it.  While it was nice to have the latitude to experiment with her own projects for a time, a project from the Emperor is always a treat!

And what a complex treat it is!  She needs to not only teach the magmyrm some basic alchemy, but she needs to kick up her alchemical production, too.  Honey, dear friend and fellow scion she may be, but the bookish insect is so enamored of theory.  Queen, however, wants to get her manipulators dirty and produce something!  Her mandibles quiver in a smile as she releases happy pheromones at the work being done.

Honestly, how do the other scions get anything done without an army of workers at their beck and call?  Only the Emperor and Honey seem to organize vast swaths of workers to get something done, even if the Emperor is more prone to delegate than micromanage.

While she might like to see the Emperor take a more direct hand in things sometimes, she can't pretend his method isn't successful.  Her own progress on his wishes are a testament to that.  He also has a weird knack for getting the right scions for the job.  Who better to teach the magmyrm than her, the ant scion?  The magmyrm accents may be a bit spicy, but they are attentive and ask pertinent questions, allowing for easy instruction and clarification.

She probably would have just left the healing to the slimes and alchemical ants, but the versatility of the magmyrm shows the Emperor's wisdom.  Speaking of versatility, they are even learning basic runework from Thing, and Queen is always happy to work close with the brilliant undead scion.  His work dispelling the lifedrinking enchantment was inspired, and now he's working on expanding it to dispel any number of hostile effects!

But Queen is not satisfied with only helping treat wounds and injuries.  The Emperor has set a goal even he feels is impossible, but Queen is of the opinion that simply means there will always be an opportunity for improvement!  While healing and helping dwellers who get hurt is important, it's all the better they never get hurt in the first place.

Of course, that's easier said than done.  And with the new foe seeming to have a lot of metal affinity, traditional armor could be a concern.  She's felt the Emperor ponder the problem before setting it aside with reluctance.  While he has a concept of a potentially better material for armor, she could taste his uncertainty, just as she could taste his conviction it would take too long to finish for this fight.

Luckily for him, Queen has enough workers to set at least some towards preparing for the next one.  And luckily for her, the concept is strange and new enough that she will need to experiment!  Even more fortunate: Coda has already been effectively running a proof of concept!  His web-reinforced concrete is fascinating to Queen, reminding her of the Emperor's idea for armor, just applied at a much larger scale.

She's been getting the help of the widows to get some of their silk for her own testing, with some of her workers even observing the spiderkin dwellers as they weave.  The weave is important to the strength, to ensure that no matter what angle an attack takes, the threads will be able to tension and resist it.  But resisting cuts is only part of the equation.

It needs to be rigid to resist crushing.  A proper weave might keep a sword from removing a limb, but the simple force can still break the bones anyway.  She needs something liquid that will solidify, letting her coat the silk and stiffen it.  She's hopeful she's on the right track with something, too.  The expeditions have seen some of the craftspeople in the town use a type of finish on some of their work.  It smells horrible, but once dry, it is smooth and hard.  It took some convincing for Poe to procure a small jar of it, but that's all Queen needs, at least for now.

She can feel that lacquer and spider silk will be a far cry from what the Emperor knows of, but it still fits the odd name for the category that drifted through the bond.  Her composite prototype will not be perfect, but perhaps if she can show him what she's done, he'll elaborate further.  The reward for good work is more work, and she wouldn't have it any other way.