This is a master-blog for all things Bug Fables: Amped, my primary AU of Bug Fables. While I do have other AUs, this blog is just Amped since it has the most worldbuilding, and that worldbuilding also forms the background world for my other AUs.
This blog is, of course, run by @SpectralGecko (just to avoid any confusion).
What's the AU?
Amped a mix of my interpretations of canon, headcanons of various proximity to source, and an overall different spin on canon. Naturally, it includes, of course, all of my much less canon extrapolations, expansions, and extra ideas.
I've been calling it "Amped" since it takes the general idea of Bug Fables and ramps up the stakes, mood, and overall worldbuilding. Think of it like a slightly grittier, vaguely fantasy camera-lens filter over Bug Fables itself. It's not a full blown AU in the same way a Swap AU or a crossover might be, but I do take Significant Artistic Liberties™.
Asks are always welcome if you have questions!
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• Includes Lore Book tags and blog navigation tags, all with links
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Blog Tags:
#Bug Fables Amped AU (Note: Most of this is tagged on my main blog under "BF: Amped AU". I'm tagging it differently here so it doesn't show up redundantly on a normal search.)
#BF Amped Art - All the art shenanigans
#BF Amped Character Lore - Contains character lore specifically.
#BF Amped World Lore - General AU information, and plot-relevant portrayals of events.
#BF Amped References - Character references specifically
#BF Amped Writing - Fics and such
#BF Amped Shenanigans - Miscellaneous, silly, or memeish posts. Anything from miscellaneous silly head canons to characters doing memey things.
#Association Mailbox - The Askbox tag
#Lore Book: [_____] - Topic tags for posts and asks all on the same subject, if it's not covered by the above categories.
#Behind the Bug Scenes - Important stuff, non-amped posting when it happens.
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How is music like, and how is it treated? To add to this, there are physical ways of storing music yet(e.g., vinyls/records, CDs, tapes)
That is an exceedingly broad question that I can't get super in depth on BUT
I think in general the buggos would favor string and percussion for instrumentation, simply because it's a little easier to mess around with. Wind instruments are popular enough, especially flute-adjacent things, but they do require a lot more air control and don't always work with mandibles.
There are, of course, also natural song-making implements, like cricket chirping and such. And regular singing, as we see in Mothiva.
Music is a popular social pass-time, source of levity, entertainment, as one might expect. Singing tends to be the "oo ah fancy" thing because it's tricky to get buggy voices to sing in a way that's enjoyable en masse and not more of a family-specific thing. Instruments are probably the more popular form.
Naturally there are going to be some divisions of "upper class" versus "common class" style preferences, but... probably not a huge range? You'd likely notice it most in the Termite Kingdom. The main "division" (neutrally connoted) is between cultural styles. Ants veer one way, Bees another, etc. Some people will be snobs, others are just here for the joy of music.
There are ways of storing music, yes! Crystals can store such information, but the Termites have developed other technology, and I suspect someone in the Bee kingdom has been trying to develop something that doesn't rely on crystals. Crystals are the most "pure" storage, the option with least corruption or data degradation, while other options are more reasonable for day-to-day but will degrade over time.
They probably have something on the order of a record player as the more accessible option. Music boxes also, though those aren't your typical "song storage" as we think of it. They might figure out something akin to CDs, but I think they might also go a different route with their technology altogether. Brain is a little too soupy rn to figure out what though, lol.
Have you thought about if there are any "invasive bugs"and how they would affect the societies around them? Or cause of the awakening, invasive populations just don't get out of hand?
I think it would mostly not be an issue, largely because "talking about it" is now on the table.
There are definitely cases where it could be a problem, especially if they decide they don't really want to talk it out or agree to chill, but such cases are comparatively rare and food production is stable enough to not be a huge issue per se. Some folks would still bump elbows, and you might get the sort of culture clashes or economic fluctuations that happen when a bunch of people move from one location to another and the like, but nothing catastrophic.
To some degree, a lot of bugs just don't like being in overcrowded areas post awakening - it gets hard to live.
There are less tame territories on the outskirts where an invasive population could be a much bigger problem, but for Bugaria proper it's not an issue really, both because of their stability and because they have the security infrastructure to deal with it if things were to get out of hand.
Idk if I missed it, or if it hasn’t been answered yet, but were blue crystals always been a thing, or would have grown during the awakening? To add to that, are they mineable or growable?(idk why, but the crystals needing to grow in near perfect conditions feel like it could work.)
I don't think I've addressed this in particular, nope!
The crystals are part of what causes the awakening, so they do have to pre-date it in some capacity.
I'm gonna say they grew and existed before the initial cataclysm that wrecked much of the world, and were either scattered across the land sometime prior, or grew across the land spurred by some other pre-cataclysmic condition (perhaps they were a prelude indicator to the cataclysm itself.
When the cataclysm hit, the crystals created bubbles of preservation and life, but something further about the event triggered a resonance that soon brought forth the awakening itself.
As per the base game, they are mineable, though it's unwise to mine out a given deposit too far. You want to leave the root crystal alone - it's not going to regrow if you damage it.
H.B. is likely working towards growing them, but she's noticed that synthetic proxies tend to be weaker and don't have the same sort of power. They've got some power, sure - enough to generate decent amounts of electricity and such, so that's nothing to sneeze at. But they don't have whatever power is tied to awakening and awareness.
Excluding hive/colony roles, is there any sort of class hierarchy?
Depends on where you're looking, but not so much.
If there's a monarchy of some kind, there's going to be some measure of hierarchy, but even then if they aren't eusocial it's not going to veer in the same direction.
I reckon many kingdoms will settle into some kind of class structure just because subgroupings of society are relatively natural. How much those structures mean in terms of "social standing" is another question.
E.g. in the Northern Kingdoms, you'll often find profession-related "classes" - more like guilds, really. Certain classes specialize differently, and there will be a hierarchy in terms of, say, problem solving - who do you ask for help for what, and when? What order of operations are you funneled through? stuff like that.
Not something I've spend much time worrying about though lol
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Any changes and/or additions to the recipes/foods?
Additions, mostly!
I uh. have an entire obsidian file with stuff in it, Imma just. paste that here XD
Long, long post ahead:
Kingdom Cuisine
The expansion pack lol
Wasp Kingdom
Wild Chomper and Spider curry - Note: Wild Chompers, while plants, also sort of work like animals. They're easier to digest than regular plants. Often seasoned with spicy sauces
Spider Jerky - Dried spider meat.
Spider Fry - A staple of the cadet barracks. Ground up spider meat (or another meat, really). Add in some herbs, small onions, and spicy berries. Make sure to add some good oil, or those plants will give you indigestion. Add your sauces and eat up!
Cubed Spider - Mushrooms and leaves optional for non-wasps. Often sauteed or marinated in something.
Hot paste - Use oil from the local plant seeds, the small onions of the grasslands, some sugar or flowerling syrup, water, some hard seeds, garlic, and a bunch of spicy berries. A staple in cooking.
Hot sauce - Similar to the chili paste but more liquid. Can be balanced sweeter with more flowerling syrup, or given a bit more zing with some neutralized venom from underlings.
Flowerling-flour noodles - Friendlier on the system than regular plant-flour. Mixed with spider eggs.
Sauteed Flowerling over noodles
Sauce fry - Meat, chomper "meat", flowerling, all over flowerling-noodles, local nuts, and a generously fatty oil to break down the plantstuff. Add hot paste with a thick, creamy sauce for a different, spicier curry. ("Cream" in this case comes from alternative milk from hard seeds. Believe me, they'd rather use Aphid cream, but unless trade routes are booming, that ain't happening.)
Sliced fish - Served raw (it's basically sashimi). A favorite among the youth. Soft enough that adults can eat it too. Also a bit of a delicacy during harder times, given that it has to be fished rather than hunted.
Leafbugs
Spring rolls - Wrapped in rice paper. Rice is quite plentiful as a cultivatable crop in the swamp.
Rice noodles - Add the vegetables you desire and some beans and sprouts. Get a good vegetable broth in there too if you so desire.
Add in a sauce as well - made with oils from plant seeds and some flowerling syrups, plus juice from spicy berries and/or burly berries
Tofu - They've got a decent bean crop going, and have made bean curd with it. Tofu followed shortly as a great nutritional option.
Rice wine!
And also swampweed for added fiber in things.
Termite Kingdom
Mothfly stew - These little guys are pretty fatty, so they're better boiled down for stock and lard, but what meat you can get from 'em makes a decent stew. The ants had a variation of this as well while traveling through.
There is, of course, Dinemite
However, mites can be used for a lot of other stuff (and become a main export)
Ground mite works great for things like goulash or homemade smash patties. Add some roasted, salted squash and/or make some squash-bread buns and you've got some tasty food.
A lot of their more cultural food is woodier stuff, entirely inedible to tourists. Straight up wood shavings, ice cream flavored with woods, ice cream with very fine wood chunks mixed in, soups with would shavings as a main ingredient, stuff like that.
Ant Kingdom
Eggs are their main meat/protein source, from local farms, or sometimes imported. They can import nutritional yeast from the golden settlement. They tend to lean vegetarian. These particular ants are leafcutter ants, so fungus is a staple of their diet.
They've got pasta down though - Egg noodles served with aphid eggs and mushrooms, or just a cream of mushroom soup.
Shakshuka (idk how to rename this one man. They have a version)
Poached aphid eggs with outskirts onions, tomatoes from the farms, garlic, spicy berries, and other seasonings. Add nutritional yeast if so desired. Pretty easy, always tasty.
Everything leafy - salads with vinaigrettes, mushrooms and dressing, or eggs.
They know how to make a solid leaf wrap.
Roasted, baked, or fried potatoes are a staple. All things potatoes. Spruce it up with aphid butter and some sauteed mushrooms and roasted ground seeds.
Aphidherd's pie - a bit of a "what's on hand" recipe, but usually includes nutritional yeast, some aphid cream, aphid eggs, yam, and some crumbled seeds.
Mushrooms and Mash - They don't really have much for meat, in case you haven't noticed, but they have mushrooms "sausages" from foraged mushrooms. When correctly seasoned, the taste so good and pairs well with the mashed yams.
Fish and bits - Sometimes their foragers manage to haul in fish from the river. One of the favorite preparations of this is fried or baked fish (sometimes coated with a layer of ground hard-seed batter), and little bits of yam chopped or sliced to the shape and size of your preference, then fried crispy. This one is a favorite of Fry's.
Mushroom wraps - any variety of mushrooms prepared to your liking (fried, roasted, plain, etc.) in a leaf wrap. Add what toppings and seasonings you so desire. Can also be sealed at the top into a little round sandwich of sorts.
Leaves can also be used for flour, and then bread.
In general, their main ingredients are usually yams, hard seeds, mushrooms, and sometimes aphid eggs.
You can make a few soups and stews by mixing and matching as well. Popular come winter.
Bee Kingdom
Bees are mostly nectar feeders, they don't really eat meat, so....
They have things like pies and such with leaves and mushrooms, but they favor liquids and sweet things.
Honey, of course, is used for a great deal. Honey crystals, syrups, thin leaf pastry soaked in honey, the list goes on.
However, they expanded the theme to other syrups too. Flower petal syrups, fruit syrups, even some more savory syrups.
They've gotten very good at making extracts from different berries and mushrooms, and will blend them to make some excellent spiced drinks.
Mix the above with shaved ice for a slushy, pour over ice cubes for a sweet chilled drink, carbonate for a soda, add to tea or coffee, mix with cold aphid cream until you get ice cream.... so many possibilities.
Their candy-making is on point too. One of their major exports comes from the pastry chefs, with their delightful, charming sweets and candies. The visual arts meet candy making and it's wonderful. Hard candy, chewy candy, jellies, whatever you can think of.
Golden Settlement
Pancakes and Waffles
Casseroles - Very much the farm style "whatever's around" dish. Often includes ground weevil or numbnail meat, mushrooms, and nutritional yeast or dew cheese.
Creamy mushroom stew - Aphid dew turned to a milk or a cream, add mushrooms and some meat or yams and herbs of your choice.
Milky and cheesy things - Milk and cheese from aphid dew. Nutritional yeast too. Also butter! They’ve figured out how to make “butter”. They also make lard from weevil fat
Weevil steaks - Add honey barbecue sauce and it's the best.
The Sands
Psicorp gyros – fried Psicorp meat in some flatbread (or with the bread to one side). Add what fillings you can and some cactus dip, and you've got some tasty food.
Also Psicorp or Arrowworm meatballs - often served with either a sweet or savory sauce
Fried Psicorp strips
Cactuses and their fruit are great for lots - cactus dip, cactus flower syrup for a sweet sauce, sliced cactus fruit, cactus flower cordial, cactus fruit syrup, or jam, cactus oil for cooking, etc.
Everything succulent berries - Syrup, jam, cordial, bread, muffins.... (Well, whatever will make it keep the longest, typically, but there are options should they find themselves with extra.)
Roasted or fried cactus pads
Roasted Arrowworm
Shrubflour flatbread
"Baklava" - made with either honey or succulent berry syrup. The pastry is the hard part, only in getting it thin. Then it's just that and cactus oil and a few other things. Add roasted cactus seeds if desired.
Cactus oil and pad dip - mixed with aphid dew if available, or a syrup if not. Great on flatbread.
Stuffed mini-flatbread - stuff a small round of flatbread with the meat or fruit of your choice. Tasty and self-contained!
"Queen's Mistake" – A special of Astotheles's making. Looks a little revolting, but it's a tasty, homestyle soup of whatever's around. Add in your meat and a good sauce for flavor, and get a good psicorp or cactus broth going. Get some cactus oil in there too so you can break those plants down (we’ve got some non-herbivores in here after all). Salt generously, chop some cactus pads, and toss in some chomper leaves. Best served with flatbread on the side, topped in a generous slathering of flower-butter made from arrowworm fat and whipped with cactus flower syrup.
Everything on this list is on a firm “as available” list – the bandits favor options that let them store food for a long time, and will divide any food they scavenge into a “preserve for later” group and a “use now” group.
The North
And this is about where my steam ran out on the document, it looks like. This one isn’t so elaborate. Just kind of a food pile. I think I was pulling from Slavic cuisine a good bit.
Chicken Adobo and Rice
Crepes
Sirniki - small cottage cheese crapes, serve with fruit.
Kasha/poridge - boiled oats with milk
Dumplings - Meat and fish, cheese, potato, egg, even fruit
Pirog - pie stuffed with fruit, mushrooms, meat, or fish.
Borscht - beetroot and tomato soup
Olivier salad (obviously would have a different name) - boiled potato, peas, meat, pickled cucumbers, eggs, onions, and carrots.
Beef broth or fish soup, with the leftover meat scraps from things. add potatoes, onions, and serve. Salt, please.
Fruit pudding - flour, dried fruit, bread crumbs, seeds, sugar, spices, milk. Serve warm with custard.
The bodies of water they get their fish from also have some dense kelp, which they've made use of. Dried, powdered, just in a salad, it'll do.
Paskha – they’ve got a variant of it. Kabbu has never been a fan, but Bit was.
I don't know that this covers everything, but it's certainly enough to be going on with XD
Thinking about them a lot. I want to make it. So. ANSKDJAELKHLIEHFLKAN!!! I am exploding them in my mind. What if. Consider: I made them the most tragic ever :)
Thank you @that-writing-protatogen for playing toys with me :)
Couple deadland questions that are kinda connected.
Is the dead lands restricted, as in are guards making sure nobody gets in(at least in Bugarias Side)? Cause I feel like even despite the dangers, there are valuable resources within(maybe restricted items). If you think there are valuable resources, what do you think they could get?
To be frank, no one really wants to get it - it doesn't need much guarding, and the areas leading up to the access points are already hazardous enough to deter most of the foolhardy who might wish to try their luck.
Not sure on valuable resources though. The main thing would just be crystals and giant technology, but the dead lands themselves are uh. well, dead. there's not a lot to be scraped together in there, nor much reason to risk oneself.
The main "value" they have is that some areas which cut kingdoms off from each other could be advantageous to make a crossing in, but whether or not that's worth the casualties is another question entirely.
The other proposed value is pure curiosity - learning about the creatures therein and trying to figure out why they are like they are, what's causing the dead lands as a phenomenon, and if there's anything to be worried about. If there were ever something that could pose a serious threat to civilization as a whole, the dead lands would be its spawning ground.
I might keep that a little open handed. I don't have a specific "use" in mind for the dead lands, currently, so for now they're just plain no-man's-land.
Something I've been wondering for awhile now, has crystal technology like those of Doctor H.B in the hive been spreading to the Ant kingdom as well?
How is the Ant Kingdom adapting to the changes if so? And has Doctor H.B's technology continued to have malfunctions like those with the Heavy Drone and the mender bots? Have they spread?
If we're talking post-story, probably some. Depends a bit on the nature of the technology, but I'd guess that yes, there's some influx of crystal tech where there's use for it.
Not sure about specific adaptations. I reckon there's the usual controversies - will this remove jobs? will it help? is it actually good for us? and such. But just by dint of how ants work, I doubt they're too keen on replacing their essential and instinctual labor with technology that could break down.
There are probably still malfunctions, but they don't "spread" - it's a malfunction, not a virus. I don't know that the ants would have much interest in the bots though. They might leave that to the hive, where the person who designed them is. Smaller automation would probably be their preference.
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As in preserving it from decay? Thankfully not something he has to actively worry about.
I'm handwaving that with crystals lol. Between ice magic and crystal magic, his body is just kinda... in limbo as far as falling apart or not falling apart.
It's kinda crazy that it would take 1-3 months for Team Snakemouth to get all the artifacts and find the everlasting sapling. It makes me wonder how Elizant II felt that the goal her mother spent her entire(a lot of) life to achieve and years(maybe) of her own life to find the sapling, just for all of the artifacts to be found within a few months.
That's also very much a rough estimate, and again, recalled from some notes I can't find. Iirc the timeline I landed on was closer to just a month, but that's assuming we don't give them any downtime between stuff.
Realistically, they need more rest than we give them in normal play, and if you actually counted every time you rested at an inn or elsewhere to heal yourself, the days would rack up pretty quick. That's also factoring in travel time, as realistically things probably aren't nearly so close together as the are for gameplay purposes (otherwise the sands really wouldn't be so scary as they're described, nor would the swamps or grasslands).
I've also got a little bit of a pause between... I think chapters three and four? for them to just take care of business.
Oh also there's sidequests. Amped assumes all sidequests. So add a couple days or more for each round of those, plus time for Leif's request and some buffer time for Vi's, plus time to explore thoroughly, plus travel time, plus actual resting time because they do need to sleep and eat, plus "meeting time" because they probably spend more time planning than is spelled out, plus the actual events, and... well. You've got quite an add up. A month isn't as long in practice as it seems like on paper.
So that... racks up to quite a bit of time, but then also to do justice to Elizant's perspective, it was very much a snowball effect. It took tripping off that first artifact for much to even become available, and if we're being honest the stars aligned pretty impeccably for research on Neo's end, as well as other convenient bits of info.
If you wanted to pad out the time, you could probably insert pauses here and there while Neo has to take care of stuff. But I wanted to at least kind of hold to canon timeline, so if we assume there's no massive hiatuses for research, then yeah - it feels shockingly short. Stroke of luck, really. But also, perhaps, finally a team that can get down to business (and one relatively undeterred by threats - they're not nearly so gunshy as the other teams, it seems, except perhaps Team Maki).
But such is the way of many things, really. You spend tons of time working towards a goal, and when the right piece clicks the whole thing snowballs and is over weirdly fast. Such is life right at the climax of a long story.
More of a joke ask, I always felt it took bout 2-4 months as well if we were being realistic, but I always joke with my friends it’s all happened over one week or 2 days, with all of chapter 2 to 7 happening over the course of one day.
HA XD
Tbh I can kinda see it though, they're very rapid-fire in terms of content XD I need to find whatever bit of paper I was sketching out the timeline on, cuz I remember making a note of some kind that the later chapters especially felt very close together.
Absolutely hilarious to imagine the utter time crunch rush of chapter 2 all the way to 7 happening in one day XD
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i wanna know more about Fuff x Vanessa relationship in this AU.. as im not the only one who ships them and im so happy its canon in your AU aaargh
Hehehehe, Fuff and Vanessa my beloved.
It's been long enough that I've fully forgotten what I've said and not said here, so apologies if some of this is repeated information.
Some context to start: Vanessa II is a hybrid between a hornet (Vespa velutina) and a yellowjacket (Vespinae), with more resemblance to her father than her mother (her mother being the yellowjacket). Fuff, meanwhile, is an Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia).
Fuff showed up at the hive after leaving his own (amicably), and meshed surprisingly well with the hive overall. Vanessa I was quick to recognize the young hornet's affinity for strategy, and it didn't take long for him to climb the military ranks both because of his sheer strength compared to the yellowjackets, and because he had the brains to back it up.
Vanessa II and Fuff more or less grew up alongside each other - they aren't far apart in age, and Fuff is the older of the two.
It took time for Vanessa II to grow fond of him, though - at first her impression was that he was as militaristically inclined as her mother and the hive itself. However, as she ended up around him more often, she noticed he had a more reserved side to him. This she appreciated, and eventually decided to get to know him properly.
Fuff likewise found himself charmed by Vanessa II's calmer, more peaceful propensities, and much preferred her vision for diplomacy and cooperation than her mother's. Fuff's own hive, though militaristic, still placed a high value on negotiation where possible, and that preference carried over here.
For a good while, Fuff assumed he wasn't an option for her consortes, simply because he was a hornet (issues of compatibility, consortes expectations, and also a "total stranger"), but Vanessa II didn't especially care about any of those, and at any rate she loved him, so she asked anyway. Fuff was, consequently, the first member of said consortes. He was surprised, but nonetheless delighted.
Vanessa II also finds him amusing. His little idiosyncrasies and subtleties charm her.
He's fiercely protective as well (and has the intimidation factor to boot), something that served them both very well during both the power shift from Vanessa I to Vanessa II, and in the reconstruction efforts after the Wasp King.
There's a great deal of healing to do after that. Fuff feels horrible, but his priority is also on making sure Vanessa feels safe again before he worries about his own guilt.
Vanessa is definitely the more even-keel of the two, and less easily flustered. Fuff, meanwhile, dearly loves his queen and boy howdy is he head over heels. Your honor they are precious.
Cuddles are a very big thing with them. Fuff makes an excellent big spoon. Vanessa also likes it when he decides to be a weighted blanket XD
Also, for all the intimidation factor of Large Hornet that Fuff has, he really is sweet and incredibly gentle when he wants to be.
He can and will carry Vanessa around places at her request just for grins.
I'm sure there's more I could say, but my brain is a scrambled egg right now XD Clarifying questions are always welcome, so if there was something you were curious about here that I didn't touch on, feel free to ask!
