Khitona: the world, the planet, the home — named for the myth of a great tunic worn by the dead and rotting primordial worm, upon whom all bugs feast and burrow. The Grand Arena: the largest continent of the world, named for the constant wars and struggles as bugs vied to claim rule. The Queenlands: a continent far to the west, homeland of the euvespids, and still ruled by ancient dynasties of hive queens. Heartlands: a subcontinent of the Grand Arena, encompassing everything south of the realm of quiet frost, north of the ambrosia quarantine, and east of the veinlands. This is the territory of the Pantheca. Outlands: a designation for everything on the Grand Arena not in the heartlands. - The Realm of Quiet Frost: an icy wasteland, twisted and warped to unlivable hostility by flows of black nerve. - The Ambrosia Quarantine: an expanse of rain forests and jungles on the southern tip of the Grand Arena, left to be tended by the ambrosia weevils. - The Veinlands: the ruins of the greatest cities of the myriad kingdoms, now roamed by feral ichorbats and the warped spawn of their blood. - The Great Rot: in the east of the outlands lies a once urban expanse, now reclaimed by fungus eating the almost unending swaths of wood. Crumbling weevil galleries the size of metropoli can still be faintly resolved. - Hraal’s Gallows: Dominating the Great Rot is felled monolith of the weevil’s world-tree. Named for the hanging of Hraal, the lord-borer, decay consumes the weevil’s ambition; this titantic tree has been rotting for centuries.
Kinds, or noubugs, or (informally) just bugs: the terminology for the sapient races of the heartlands. The Pantheca recognizes nine kinds of bugs as intelligent and deserving of equivalent moral weight: - Noble roaches: Brightly colored, gregarious bugs, roaches are native to the arena and remain its most populous kind. They speak by singing through the throads lining their abdomen, and consider physical touch vital for communication. Usually about 60 cm long and 9 kg heavy. - Diamantids: - Spinner ants - Euvespids: - Therids: cobweb spiders, communal web builders. Unlike lesser spiders, they bait their prey with a sweet, sewy secretion produced by a symbiotic algae. The algae grows in “greenweb” velaria nets woven by the spiders, and their creations represent an ecologically important pseudoarboreal in the wake of weevil extermination. - Reaver Ants: nomadic hunters who scour the countryside for prey, foraging like an army forever on campaign. Many reavers exist in violent opposition to the Pantheca, but a view have made treaties of peace. - Gestalt Bees - Ambrosia Weevils - Tenebra Moths Special note is to be made of two kinds believed to be extinct: - Vesperbats: though of identical lineage ichorbats, in the past bats were bestowed wisdom by the vespers. Since the second covenant, however, the honor of hosting the vespers has transferred to diamantids, and no intelligent bat has flown in the skies of khitona for certains. - Termites: through poorly understood and irreplicable technology, termites built vast arcology and seem to have colonized every continent of khitona before their mysterious and sudden disappearance. Though a fraction of their constructs still function, the pale, elongated beings the earliest mantids painted on the cave walls have never again been sighted.