Understanding the World

Though humans disappeared completely from the world, their things did not. Houses, roads, automobiles, tools, farms, these all exist, and though cars have essentially no use to bug-people, the rest of these things are pretty vital to bug civilizations.

Houses are the most prominent cases of this – each house for a human is massive enough and stocked full of resources that it becomes an urban center for bugs, resulting in what were residential streets for humans becoming whole blocks of cities, metropolitan areas housing thousands and thousands and thousands of bug-people. Additionally, the food and other things stocked within houses and left over from humans in general mean that scavenging is a highly profitable venture, even thirty years down the line, and is a major source of food for bug-people, since any piece of human food lasts bugs a long, long time and decay is much slower without, well, bugs in bug form left around. Wires and plastic and the like also become major sources of material for bugs.

Bug civilizations mostly survive off of scavenging, hunting of small organisms like worms (which aren’t transformed into bug-people!), and gathering of wild seed, berries, and small plants, as well as trading of the fruits of these labors. Agriculture and hunting of larger animals are both present in the known world as well, though the former is a technology and practice only discovered by some localized regions, and the latter is usually only practiced by particular polities, such as mosquito groups.

Additional facts based on size: What were ponds and creeks for humans have become lakes and rivers for bug-people, major terrain features. Things like dogs and birds are also MUCH more dangerous for bug-people, and so militaries often are used as much to fend them off as they are used to fight other bugs. Human roads have become large, hard, flat boundaries as much as roads for bug people, and the major highway at the east of the map is a difficult undertaking for bug people to cross, something most don’t attempt.