Yesterday I read this from the Alchemist's formulary:


Now, if you take a look at the magical properties of the ingredients "Large Kwama Egg' and "Small Kwama Egg" in the game "TES3 Morrowind", you'll see that the large kwama egg has more magical effects than the small one:

Large Kwama Egg


Small Kwama Egg


Am I getting something wrong?
Which info is lore correct, after all?

Gameplay mechanic? A mistake the Devs made? The author is just high on moon sugar?

Not sure, to be honest with you. I enjoy roasting a slaughterfish over an open fire, myself.

EDIT: To be more direct, I don't think there IS an answer for this one. Just one of those things that the devs overlooked and didn't feel they needed to explain. Or something like that.

The answer is..

Small Kwama Eggs = tasty

Large Kwama Eggs = not as tasty

Maybe Kwama Eggs shrink over time? It could make sense, as the mostly liquid resources are slowly used by the kwama fetus to build itself up, so matter becomes more dense and thus smaller while retaining the same mass.

(Of course, one then points out that large kwama eggs actually have four times the mass of small kwama eggs, mercilessly slaughtering this clumsy theory before it was fully hatched.)

there is little about the kwama that makes sense....What do the workers eat? what is the purpose of the scrib in a kwama colony? how come kwama workers can suddenly stand on two legs and cast spells when a kwama forager merges with it?

Disturbingly, if you look closely at a Kwama Warrior, you'd see that its backside is its former head (you can see the eyes and antennae), and visa versa. It's even stranger when you consider that they're standing on their "front" legs.

For the other questions, workers are brought food by the Foragers, and scribs are the late larval form of the scrib. They're baby kwamas.

Thats what I thought when I read the first post. Beat me to it

Edit: Lol, just noticed the necromancy

I love how Bethesda created a fully believable new species of creatures. Well, believable? At least more credible than most other fantasy creatures people think of.

Eat, don't ask.

Even stranger, the kwama's magical ability actually decreases when merged into a warrior, they have just enough enough to cast their poison spellat you one time. Therefor, I declare their magic-using to be game mechanics: They are actually "spitting" (or throwing it at you by other, non-magical means) the poison. This uses up their poison supply, and it must then be restored over time.

This would also explain why their "spell points" increases with more than 100% when their blighted: the poison production center is going crazy, resulting in a brimful (possibly leaking) poison vesicle.

Dead god, I love fanon. :clap:



'Nuff said.

It's the only proper way to deal with gameplay mechanics really, figure out what they were originally intended to portray.

What's the purpose of the scrib? To look absolutely cute sitting there thumping it's tail until it's time to be made into a delicious jerky.

One would assume their main purpose would be to eat and grow.
Though then it would make no sense for them to be walking outside, where they could easily be eaten.

Does gestation have to mean before birth, or was the author trying to refer to later stages of the metamorphosis?

How about this: The small eggs hatch into Scribs. They eat, grow and then pupate themselves into the big eggs, where they turn into foragers.
Possible?

Scribs are said to be larvae. Granted, it seems a little odd to have legged larvae while the next "stage" (the forager) has no legs at all. Perhaps the scrib is actually only the larva to the worker variety, whereas the forager is born as-is. The difference scrib/forager could maybe correspond to the small/large eggs.

Edit: Come to think of it (and this is completely off the cuff), perhaps these two different classes actually correspond to sixes? I just realized that a fertile Kwama queen technically consists of both a worker and a forager. If that makes any sense to begin with, I wouldn't know which one would be the male and which the female, though.

We don't study game bugs. However, due to good gamplay, I would guess the devs would put in this initial rule: The heavier, the better. This makes balanced gameplay. Which, of course, has to come before lore

:rofl:

I suspect a certain cartoon series named ?Voltron? may have something to do with that.

In real-life insects of this type (order hymanoptera), it is the females that carry the poison. The reason for this is that the poison production/delivery system is a modified ovapositor. Most insects use this for depositing eggs wherever they deposit their eggs. Wasps continue to do it that way, depositing both eggs and a toxin into soft-bodied prey, which is then deposited in a safe place, generally a nest of some sort. The larva hatches, lives off the insect until it pupates right there, emerging in advlt form. The males never eat insects again after this point; they live primarily off nectar after that. Actually, that's a common theme in the insect world: it is only the female that needs protein in its advlt stage, for egg production.

However, for communal hymanopterans, like ants and bees, the ovapositor has evolved beyond this use. Only the queen actually lays eggs among ants and bees, while all the rest use it for combat purposes only. This, by the way, is why all the workers of these species are females: males simply do not have the hardware. Interestingly enough, this device evolved out of existence entirely among certain species. Single node ants have no stinger!

As for kwama, scribs must be female, foragers male. Scribs are the only single that carry a toxin (paralysis), which must come from their modified ovapositor. Males, on the other hand, have more conventional weapons, as well as an aggressiveness that serves the forager's predatory purpose. Warriors are a compound creature, combining the toxin producing ability of the female with the aggression of the male. Queens are also a compound creature, though in this, the male is subordinate to the female, acting purely for fertilization purposes. It is unknown whether a queen keeps a single mate for her entire lifetime, or if males periodically die and are replaced.

Of course, there is another possible theory, in which the toxic attack form is best explained by a real-world anology to order hymanoptera, but is rather somehow related to Muatra.

I was thinking along those lines first, but upon closer examination, it looks like it is obviously the forager part of a Kwama queen that is swollen, which to me suggests that is the actual part holding the eggs.

But Scribs are the larval form; they wouldn't have any ovapositor until they'd undergo metamorphosis. And termite workers and soldiers could be either male or female.

Termites are not of order hymanoptera!

But http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurMonstersAreDifferent

But neither are Kwamas