I’ve wanted to make a sort of “FFAK SPECIES CHART” for a long time but i always kind of struggled to find a way to present it in a simple format.. as in the FFAK world-- many of the species share traits or are connected/made from another species. With so much crossover, it kind of makes it confusing and circular to describe.

However, we’ve now hit a point in the story where most of the plot/worldbuilding elements have been established or at least mentioned!!! Yipee! So i gave it another shot and i think it was actually much easier than i thought it would be. There’s a few minor things that we still haven’t gotten to-- but basically the range has already been set in stone. There will never be another “species” brought in that is not in SOME way connected to the ones already presented. The most confusing aspect will be, i suppose, more new mysterious Created species-- or freaky confusing hybrids* like Crimson and Canary that pose a sort of ‘next generation’ evolution. But that is still connected to this base system. I like to think of it as being just.. three major categories that everything else draws from: Humans, Worms, and Aliens.

Even tho hekatons are very influential and are still classified as their own species, separate from worms, they still wouldn’t exist without being made from hydragora king seeds. So in a way, they’re like an evolution from worms. I like to think of Worms/Humans/Aliens as the “primary colors” that everything else draws from!! as they are the start of these species groups. The root of all this variety that have general connected themes that branch out and mesh together.

So If ffak’s species ever feels too vast to comprehend, just know that everything stems from one of these three categories. And in the end, almost all FFAK species still sort of follow the same kind of traits tbh, just with slightly different cosmetic aesthetics or slightly different rules. I generally write them all with very similar kinds of patterns so they all feel like part of the same universe/setting lol.

Canary’s King worm parent was an ambitious, cunning and intelligent worm. all odd qualities for a king worm. But he also was very greedy, which was basically his downfall. He was working on a plan to eventually harvest Canary’s 10 seeds for himself (after he fully recovered from making the hekatons) and eventually create a sort of system of infinitely spawning king seeds. I suppose its really a good thing he was killed, that probably would have been terrible for everyone if he actually got things moving.

But as far as raising canary went umm. Canary was p much just locked in their bedroom and totally emotionally neglected. EM herself wasn’t really allowed to interact with canary much. The king worm was still pretty suspicious of EM’s help and didn’t really want her interfering with raising their hybrid kid who could potentially be stronger than he was. So he generally kept Canary was weak as possible, but gave him a pet (Aeschylus) to keep him ‘entertained.’ Whenever Em DID sneak off to try to .. sort of.. bond with the kid, Canary was incredibly annoying, cruel, and showed little empathy for others. Canary also didnt respond well to EM attempting to discipline the brat, which always made it difficult for EM to return with visits b/c canary would tattle tale and exaggerate everything to make EM look as bad as possible. So this was pretty frustrating to deal with. Canary was kinda too far gone by the time EM tried to do anything about it, i suppose.  (EM also wanted to discover if the kid had any mandragora qualities, it was pretty difficult to determine from her short visits.)

I guess even in her total-emotional-breakdown mode, EM actually was giving.. somewhat of an attempt..? She sort of was juggling with limitations... and I can’t rly give her too much credit cuz she’s the one who started the mess lmfao.  I think deep down she actually kinda cared about canary in a weird way(As apposed to Canary’s dad who was like, 100% just saw canary as a tool to exploit for his own selfish gain) and felt ashamed at the circumstances of their birth. Which is prob what resulted her reaching out to leadman and being like “Babe........ I fucking hate you rn but pls help get me out of this goddamn mess before its too late.” and leadman was like sigh. ok. 

How many knights do kings usually have?Usually just one or two. And typically one (or both) will end up as their mates, but not always. More successful king worms will have 3-5, 5 being the maximum amount. Odd numbers work better since they can have one knight be sort of the ‘leader’ Knights. (This is also usually the first worm that was chosen to be a knight.) Usually a Knight will be in charge of 2-3 regular worms. So as you can see a King worm can actually pull in a pretty substantial group to protect them. With human influence, king worms definitely feel more of a need to get as many followers as possible-- but physically it would be pretty difficult for them to make more than 5 knights. (As knights generally reflect double the amount of seeds the worm carries. The process of making a worm your knight does not specifically involve seeds, however.)

As far as I can tell, kings and queens can both have baby wormies, but only ever with "regular" worms. do queen/queen or king/king hookups ever happen?Queen/Queen and King/King hookups can happen, but it would be pretty rare especially in the cases of two kings. Queen/Queen is much more common as queens usually get along with eachother, even if one queen is substantially stronger than the other one. They just generally respect their fellow queen worm a lot! Kings would naturally be very umm, competitive with the other king, as well as their followers. They want to be the most dominant, and would probably also be threatened by the idea of any of their worm followers to go join the other king instead. Very loyal worm followers might also threaten to kill the other king to prove their loyalty/love. So as you can imagine, lil worm turf war battles are kind of common. Queens absolutely love this cuz they can just kick back and laugh at the kings/followers all killing eachother w/o her having to even lift one of her wormy fingers.

Is it possible for them to recognize their kids after they've wiggled off and grown up?Yup. Its pretty easy for them to tell by smell. Unlike Hekatons, they generally stay far away from direct relatives. Baby worms usually will try to wiggle off as far as they can manage as part of their first instincts, so they can explore a new environment and have better chances of running into prey their parents havent eaten, ect, as well as potentially be more interesting to another worm for whatever features they have that are considered unusual.

I guess it would be possible for a worm to end up serving the same king that made it. Unless king worms only ever make more king worms? It is possible, but unlikely as they would not be naturally inclined to do so. Worms are generally pretty ruled by their strong instincts, so if they ended up doing this it would be because of their own decision, or perhaps, they are stuck in a situation where they have no other choice. Or possibly some other circumstance. In any case it isnt typical.King worms are more likely to produce more king worms,but usually their offspring will just be more regular wormies. Same with queens. But Kings/Queens and even regular worms are all able to make kings/queens/regular worms! Even if two regular worms mate they might get lucky to make a king! Which is probably the only time when the worm parents might actually try to stick around and protect their kid for a while. If a queen worm makes a king, its probably not going to survive as she’ll kill it herself pretty quick. King Worms that produce king worm offspring will usually be smug and somewhat protective but then eventually begin to threaten the little king worm to gtfo before they/their followers kill it. (lovingly threaten, of course.)