Matriarch-Justice of the Ironroot Tribunal
Loxodonta is the Mandate's memory. The law of Myrmecopolis is not written; the Ironroot Tribunal holds it, and the Tribunal is, in practice, her: two hundred and twelve years of judgments carried in t...
Symbiotician of the Arsenal
Mandelbrot should be dead. He was born a male, and male ants live a few weeks: they fly once, mate once and die. Instead a mycelium grew into his wings and his gut during his nuptial flight and kept h...
Siege Bull of the Resin Guard
Elephas is one of the walls of Myrmecopolis that walk. He is a bull of twenty-four in the Resin Guard, armoured in honeycomb resin from the Carapace Foundry, and he wears the Bridle: a harness that dr...
Tactile Topographer of the Resin Guard
Myrmidon maps Myrmecopolis by touch. As Tactile Topographer of the Resin Guard he certifies every bridge, ramp and vault the elephants walk on, and he does it the old way: he lays his legs and antenna...
Pheromone Cartographer of the Compact
Ocellus is called the All-Seeing, and he is half-blind. The ant nurse who named him in the Cloisters chose the word for an insect's simple eye because he was born with one eye clouded; the city made i...
Armour-Mistress of the Carapace Foundry
Scarabaeus designs the armour the elephants wear to war. As Armour-Mistress of the Carapace Foundry she builds the resin plate of the Resin Guard's bulls – honeycomb cast in amber, laid over bamboo, b...
Keeper of the Bone Road
Mammuthea keeps the Bone Road – the long dry path west to the edge of the Weeping Groves where the elephants of Myrmecopolis go to die – and no ivory leaves it without her consent. Under Article III o...
First Composer of the Choir
Chrysanthe is the most famous voice in Myrmecopolis, and she has never once spoken above a hum. She composes for the Mycelium Choir in stridulation, the chirp an ant makes by drawing one segment of he...
Spore Cryptographer of the Vanguard
Vesparion is two bodies sewn along a single seam. They are a gynandromorph: the left half of them is a worker, rust-brown, wingless, with a small sharp eye; the right half is a male, glossy black, wit...
Signal Interceptor of the Vanguard
Formicastra does not speak. Not in trail, not in tread, not in stridulation. She communicates only through small tablets of resin into which she carves glyphs with her mandibles and then lays a single...
Thread-Keeper of the Synod
Aranea keeps the Thread – the silk network that carries the Ground Speech through every district – and she listens to it the way other people listen to weather. She was born a weaver ant with eight li...