Locusts

The Locust are wiry, insectoid beings standing roughly four feet tall, their bodies echoing the form of wingless grasshoppers with jointed limbs, chitinous plates, and an ever-present, twitching alertness. Their language is a dense thicket of clicks, vibrations, and pheromonal cues, so intricate that most other species find it effectively untranslatable. Frustrated and perhaps a bit unkind, humans settled on the blunt moniker “Locust”.

Their reputation across known space is… complicated. Many civilizations regard them with a mix of irritation and unease, not only because of a pungent odor they naturally emit, but also due to a reproductive practice that borders on socially incendiary. Locust travelers will often lay their eggs opportunistically in whatever environment they happen to be visiting, departing soon after and leaving the young to hatch under the care, willing or otherwise, of the local inhabitants. This would be catastrophic for most species, but the Locust possess a remarkable adaptation: their offspring inherit a reservoir of genetic memory, emerging into the world with instinct, knowledge, and cultural imprint already intact. To the Locust, this is simply continuity. To everyone else, its a bit like being volunteered into parenthood by a passing stranger with too many limbs.