For 1000s of years, humans have been enslaved by a race of giant, insect-like creatures called BoneTalkers. BoneTalkers are a race of sentient, 10’ tall insects that resemble praying mantis. Their name comes from the fact that they communicate via clacking their exoskeleton chiton. To communicate with humans, they wear magical pendants that translate the clacking into human speech. Though humans have lived with Bone Talkers for millenia, they have yet to crack the code to this language. Some humans theorize that the Bone Talkers may vocalize in ranges inaudible to humans.

Bone Talkers are extremely powerful, nigh invulnerable, and fast. They are broken into a number of different casts. Some of whom are drones, warriors (with flight ability), engineers, harvesters, etc. The Royalty cast (if there is one) has never been witnessed.

Most humans live in the forest and farmlands north, west and south of the great HiveCity. These humans have been bred by the Bone Talkers into over a dozen distinct racial groups, some of whom are Miners, Bulls, Terriers, Mics, Meat, Standards, etc. Each of these races was bred for specific physical abilities to better server the Bone Talkers in various functions. Examples are:

Miners–small of stature, strong, robust, resistant to Miner’s Disease. They are shipped off to work the mines east of the Hive, only returning to breed or die from the wasting Miner’s Diseasae.

Bulls–Very large, strong, robust, but slow and with poor manual dexterity. Bred for heavy lifting, forestry, fighting in the arenas.

Terriers–Slight, not very strong, very agile, swift and dexterous. Bred as hunting beasts to track and retrieve prey from small burrows, perform acrobatics, etc.

Mics–Microcephalic house servants. The ONLY humans allowed into the Hive tunnels, allegedly because of their limited faculties they are unable to report on what they see.

Meat–Bred for food.

Standards–no specific breeding. Generalists. Used for farming, light portage, etc. From Standards comes the ranks of the Touched (more further).

Humans live in primitive conditions, akin to medieval life. Farming is manual (using pack beasts), fuel is wood, animal dung, coal, etc. Humans live in stone walled, thatched cottages among platypus, wallabee, cats, pack beetles, etc. Clothing is homespun and implements are wood, stone, bone, and copper. Bone Talkers limit human technology to only the most basic forging techniques, no wind or water power, etc.

However, being born with a Touch can be a sentence of death. For the Bone Talkers slay all humans born with this gift. Bone Talkers collect all human children at one year of age and test them for Touch, and if they show signs of a Touch, the children are slain. Sometimes, however, the Touch is recognized before the Test, and the child secreted away in a location safe from the Bone Talkers.

Humans have a legend that across the Great Sea, which is east through the Pass of HiveCity, is another continent where humans live free.

In every generation, a party of the Touched, Bulls, Miners, and Terriers are raised together in a cloistered location, where they are prepared to quest for a route to this continent. In the hundreds of years that parties have quested for this route, none have returned.