"Low intellect, no tech aptitude" -- that was the Om's initial assessment of the Bohecs. Then the Bohecs disassembled their survey ship in under four minutes and started reading the hard drives. First contact went downhill from there.
The Om had landed on K'hett expecting to study oversized insects. What they found was a species that had been waging a ground war against the Zod -- a hive-like mutational scavenger species whose Queens could breed tactical variations on demand -- for five years straight, without technology, without tools, and without losing. The Bohecs fought with mandibles, mass, and a coordination so precise it looked choreographed. Because it was. Every Bohec in the hive was thinking the same thought at the same time, and the thought was usually "kill that one next."
Individual Bohec intelligence is... modest. A lone Bohec can follow instructions, operate equipment, and hold a conversation, but abstract reasoning and creative problem-solving are not its strong suit. Put two together and you get marginal improvement. Put a hundred together and you get a tactical operations centre. Put a thousand together and you get an organic supercomputer that can outthink a NERD research team while simultaneously coordinating a tunnel excavation three kilometres underground. The bigger the hive, the smarter they are. This is why Bohecs get anxious when they're alone -- it's not loneliness, it's stupidity, and they can feel it.
After the Om stopped being horrified and started communicating, an alliance formed. Om technology and Bohec muscle turned the Zod war around in a century. The Om also gifted the Bohecs translator headbands -- devices that serve double duty. First, they house an improved Babelator for cross-species communication. Second, they generate a low-level telemagnetic field across the Bohec's outer carapace, allowing them to manipulate objects they're touching without needing opposable thumbs. The field is weak -- Strength 1 -- but it's enough to grip, rotate, and position objects so a Bohec can apply its considerable physical strength. It also means they don't need to directly grasp an object with their limbs to use it. Watch a Bohec Soldier reload a back-mounted Shipunov minigun without taking his eyes off you and you'll understand why the headbands made everyone else nervous. They would still have problems with jam jars though, if it wasn't for the mandables.
K'hett (pronounced "Click-hett") -- a desert world honeycombed with underground tunnel cities that extend kilometres beneath the surface. Surface temperature averages 60 degrees Celsius during the day cycle, which the Bohecs consider brisk. Above ground is for warfare and expansion. Below ground is for living. The hive structures are architectural marvels -- secreted resin mixed with mineral compounds, shaped into load-bearing geometries that would make a Breacher weep. The tunnels are warm, dark, and precisely engineered. Bohecs do not have doors. They have tunnels that go where they need to go, and the tunnels are exactly the right size.
Click-speech for the audible layer, high-pitched mandible clicks that encode vocabulary and grammar. Fast, percussive, and deeply unpleasant to Human ears. But the real language runs on a second channel: Bohec antennae generate low-power biological radio across a spread-spectrum band that shifts frequency thousands of times per second. NERD spent six years trying to decode it. They mapped the carrier signal, identified modulation patterns, even built a receiver sensitive enough to detect a single Bohec transmission across a room. What they couldn't crack was the encoding, because there isn't one. The antenna signal isn't data. It's raw neural state, broadcast and received directly into the hive-mind mesh. There's no protocol to decode because there's no abstraction layer. It's thought, transmitted as electromagnetic radiation, received as thought. Trying to translate it is like trying to translate the smell of copper into a spreadsheet.
Standard Babelators handle the click-speech component adequately. The antenna channel remains completely opaque. This is why Bohecs in mixed-species conversations always seem slightly frustrated; their antennae twitching while the translator outputs polite, grammatically correct sentences that convey about a third of what was actually communicated. The other two-thirds was tactical context, emotional state, threat assessment, and hive-level situational awareness that has no equivalent in any spoken language. When a Bohec waves its antennae at you during a conversation, it's not a gesture. It's them shouting into a frequency you can't hear, at a species that isn't there.
Named for function, material, or action; sharp, percussive syllables that click well in mandible-speech: Mandix, Carver, Forge, Resinax, Chiton, Thrall, Skarn, Drillbit, Grub, Carapax
| Name | Bohec |
|---|---|
| Sight | Good |
| Hearing | Excellent |
| Touch | Excellent |
| Smell | Good |
| Taste | Minimal |
| Special | EM Sensitivity; antennae detect electromagnetic radiation across a wide spectrum. Useful for sensing active electronics, powered equipment, and broadcast signals. Wifi gives them headaches. When you have a half-ton ant with mandibles that can crush steel on your long-haul freighter, you plug in. Everyone plugs in. |
Every ship with a Bohec crew member runs hardwired connections. Not because of policy. Because of mandibles.
Mindshard Partially Compatible. Individual consciousness can be captured, but restoration outside a hive produces a disoriented, low-function individual. Independent Bohecs restore cleanly. See Mindshard for details.
Worker and engineer caste. Smaller than Soldiers, better with tools, and capable of secreting structural resin that hardens into load-bearing material within seconds. Hivers are the backbone of every hive -- the ones who dig the tunnels, build the walls, and maintain the infrastructure that keeps a million Bohecs alive underground.
Hivers are collaborative by nature. Two Hivers working together are more than twice as effective as one -- their subsonic communication allows them to coordinate movements with a precision that makes assembly-line robots look clumsy. A construction crew of six Hivers can erect a reinforced shelter in the time it takes a Human squad to argue about where to put it.
Outside the hive, Hivers adapt surprisingly well. Their instinct to build, repair, and improve means they gravitate toward engineering roles. Every ship that's ever had a Hiver crew member has reported a net improvement in hull integrity, usually because the Hiver spent their off-hours quietly patching micro-fractures nobody asked them to fix.
Warrior caste. Larger, heavier, and encased in a carapace that can stop small-arms fire. Soldiers are built for defence and siege warfare -- holding ground, absorbing punishment, and making the other side reconsider their life choices. Their mandibles are functional weapons, their mass is a tactical asset, and their tolerance for pain is the kind of thing that makes field medics uncomfortable.
Soldiers are not stupid -- they benefit from hive intelligence just like Hivers -- but their instincts are tuned for threat assessment and violence rather than construction. A Soldier in a crowd of Bohecs is calm, precise, and terrifyingly efficient. A Soldier alone is still dangerous, just less creative about it.
The Zod war shaped Soldier-caste culture permanently. Every Soldier carries an inherited memory of holding tunnels against creatures that bred faster than they could be killed. This manifests as an absolute refusal to give ground. Retreating is not cowardice to a Bohec Soldier -- it is a concept that does not fully compile.
Requires: Any Bohec.
Effect: Through selective breeding and a diet of highly nutritious toxins, your carapace has developed resistance to certain damage types. Select one damage type -- you gain Resistance to that damage type. You can take this feat more than once, each time selecting a different damage type. Like other natural and worn armour, your carapace degrades when struck -- it fully regrows during a Lockdown as you eat, rest, and the chitin re-knits.
Requires: Resistant Carapace in the selected damage type.
Effect: Through vigorous training and selective chemical plating, your carapace is Hardened to certain damage types. Select one damage type -- you gain Hardened to that damage type. You can take this feat more than once, each time selecting a different damage type provided you have Resistance in that type. Hardened carapace also degrades when struck and regrows fully during a Lockdown.
Requires: Any Bohec.
Effect: Your mandibles are natural weapons (Weapons Melee Unarmed). As a melee attack (1 Action), they deal 3 Hits (Pierce). On a hit, the target gains Off Guard(1) -- most species are not prepared for something that bites them in half and keeps walking.
Requires: Hiver.
Effect: You can secrete structural resin that hardens in seconds. As a 2-Action Manoeuvre, create a barrier (1 square, DR 2, 4 HITS). The resin can also be used to seal hull breaches or bond materials together. Resin production is limited to 3 uses per Lockdown -- your glands need time to replenish.
Requires: Any Bohec.
Effect: Your antenna broadcast is stronger than average. You can communicate with any Bohec within 100m via biological radio; through walls, hull plating, and solid rock. Messages are simple (danger, direction, quantity) but instantaneous and undetectable by species without a compatible receiver. Strong magnetic fields or EM shielding can disrupt the signal. In vacuum the signal carries further (500m) due to reduced interference.
Requires: Soldier.
Effect: Brace against the ground and become immovable. Your Mass is doubled for the purposes of resisting knockback, grapple, and forced movement. You gain Boon(1) to AF while braced. You cannot move while in Siege Posture. Entering or exiting Siege Posture costs 1 Action. Named after Mandix, who apparently never learned to exit it.
Requires: Any Bohec with Resistant Carapace.
Effect: Your chitin re-knits faster than a normal Bohec's. During a Stim Break, you can regenerate 1 point of carapace DR of a type you have Resistance to -- you don't have to wait for a full Lockdown to start patching up. Requires consuming mineral-rich materials -- rocks, metal scraps, or anything your mandibles can chew through, which is most things. Pairs well with a long fight and a quiet corner.
Requires: Soldier.
Effect: Emit a chemical command signal that Bohec allies within Short range automatically detect. All Bohec allies who receive the signal gain Boon(1) to their next action. Costs 1 Action. Non-Bohec species cannot detect or benefit from this signal -- to them, you just smell slightly worse than usual for a moment.
Requires: Any Bohec.
Effect: The hive-mind signal that connects all Bohecs is, for you, noise. Where others find collective clarity, you find distraction; subsonic static that clouds your individual reasoning. Away from the hive, the interference fades. Your thoughts sharpen. You hear yourself for the first time.
While no other Bohec is within Hive Signal range (30m), you gain a RankedBoon to all Intellect-based skill checks. Your Skill Point (SP) calculation uses Intellect 2 (instead of your base 0); the silence gives you room to think.
The hive considers you defective. You consider yourself awake.