Khtch

The Khtch are a sapient ant species native to the Southland descended from the leafcutter ant. They quarrel against the native spiderants there.

Anatomy
The average Khtch are usually around the size of a large spider, and keep growing larger with every few passing generations thanks to their racist policies. They have four legs unlike most other ants, but are completely unrelated to spiderants in any way.

But what truely sets them apart is their ability to chew wood with their exceptionally strong jaws and spit it back out in a mixture with their saliva like paste from a tube to make things out of wood, such as an experimentally-made sword that a group of sterilized exiles made for Paco during an attempt to communicate. This ability is often used to line the inner walls of a colony with wood, to resist against damage from predator attacks, but they also add some on their own bodies as armor, with slits to let reproductive wings grow being left on the larger Khtch's armor, giving them a wooden appearance, confusing almost any predator thanks to color and taste.

Religion
The Khtch have no god, but they believe that dragons are invincible demons who control everything from the weather to the shaping of the world to the night sky and it's stars, and now abuse their powers to become the masters of the world they created. Since having discovered the giant statue of God in Rio De Janeiro, and due to influence from occasional but rare sightings of humans, they have come to believe that it is a giant awaiting the return of his equally giant sister, and has done so for so long that he has turned to stone. The sister, who will emerge from the waters in front of the statue, is believed to be able to turn the statue back into a giant, and that together, they will defeat the dragons. This belief system, however, does not involve any worship or rituals.

Society
Castes are no longer used by the Khtch due to their racist policies as mentionned below, and what was once the soldier caste now accomplishes every nessecary task for the hive.

The Khtch exist under the leadership of queens, of which there is only one per colony, and are about the size of watermelons. Although each hive is not under the rule of any higher powers, they have evolved some sort of an inter-hive comeraderie instinct that allows support between hives, likely developped to combat spiderants. It is this same instinct that allows exchange of ideas between hives, essentially unifying all hives as one unit with a common goal.

However, the Khtch have a racist point of view: if a Khtch is smaller than the average height, their abdomens are sliced off, essentially sterilizing them, and they are then sent to the wasteland to the north of the Southland. Hives there are made from scrap metal salvaged from the ruins of civilization, which are few and far apart, and designed to house the sterile Khtch coming in from elsewhere in Khtch territory. Starvation is common, and many have tried to search for metal scraps to form into small rafts to sail the currents and hopefully find better places to live. Few succeed to do this, but among the few who did and among the even fewer who survived the trip include the group present in the mainstream roleplay, which was in fact much bigger at the beginning. As with any other Khtch, these ones are usually scared of the dragons, but if starvation drives them to the brink, some rare few go to nearby dragon villages, hoping to be domesticated and maybe even given special abilities.