Thaan

Biography
The Thaan are highly intelligent insectoids. They are slightly smaller than humans, with compound eyes and brightly colored iridescent carapaces. Existence of hard work, strict caste lines, and indifference toward the outside universe. They Evolved on the desert world called Thaan-Thaar. They are the founders of the Thaan Hegemony and leader nation of the Thaan Hegemonic Dominion.

Culture
Thaan are superficially similar to Terran ants, they live and work in large cities. Thaan, however, share a semi-collective intelligence. Simple workers and peasants are part of a collective, they can think for themselves but have no own will and have to submit to an alpha. In fact, Thaan are very individualistic, but it depends on which caste they belong. They are very proud of their appearance, they are accomplished builders and engineers.

Cluster Hive
The large cities, are called cluster hive by them selfs, and look like beehives. Each cluster hive belongs to a cluster queen. The cluster queen selects the drones that may serve as alpha drones. Only the most efficient drones increase to alpha drones. An alpha drone has a free will and a greater individual driving force. But an Alpha drone remains loyal to the queen out of gratitude. A queen is the leader and mother of all drones in the cluster.

Alpha Drones and Caste system
Alpha drones are engineers, soldiers, leaders and scientists. This kind of work needs more indivduality. Alpha drones are extremely favorable candidates for reproduction. There are five castes in their society. The highest caste in the ranking are the leaders, followed by the officers and scientists, then the soldiers and engineers, and the lowest caste are workers and peasants, both together form the drone caste. The higher the caste, the more individuality and free will gets an alpha drone.

A queen can live at least for 150 years or more, They often live through three generations of their children.

Reproduction
A cluster queen lays several thousand eggs in the year after being fertilized. The drones are hermaphrodites but mostly infertile, unless they are alpha drones. In this case, the alphas get male hormones from the queen to fertilize the eggs. The queen pairs with several hundred alpha drones from other clusters to guarantee the genetic diversity. If there are no alphas available from other clusters, she always resorts to her own alpha drones from her own cluster. Not everybody can help with fertilization, the queen chooses certain alpha drones, which only serve the purpose of reproduction. These alpha drones know that they will die, but it is the greatest honor for an alpha drone to further propagate the genome of the cluster.

The Super Hive
All cluster queens are linked by the swarm spirit. But they all have an individual-will, and every queen acts freely. At their meetings, they vote democratically on political decisions.

Mother-Queen
The mother queen is the supreme queen, she leads the entire Thaan Hegemony. She makes important decisions herself, but most decisions are decided democratically by the superhive. She is elected to her office for life.

How do you recognize a queen, you have a very long pointed tail, and arms with claws in place where other insect wings have. In addition, queens are twice as big as drones.

Therminology
Singlular "Thaan", Plural "Thaan", Adjective "Thaan",

Thaan-Male "Alpha Drone", Thaan-Sterile-Female "Drone", Thaan-Female "Queen", 

Original-Homeworld "Thaan-Thaar", Original-Homesystem "Theenite",

History
Thaan Hegemony, the first thaan space nation was founded in 150 b.CT.