Arachnids (Starship Troopers)

The Arachnids are an insectoid alien race that features in Starship Troopers.

History

The Arachnids were an extraterrestrial insectoid race that were native to the hostile world of Klendathu.

The on-going conflict with humanity led to the establishment of the Arachnid Quarantine Zone that was a region of space controlled by the Bugs.

As part of their offensive, the Bugs were responsible for sending a giant meteor towards Earth where it passed through its defensive systems and fell on Buenos Aires. After the destruction of Buenos Aires, Sky Marshal Dienes announced a new offensive against Klendathu as part of a retaliation effort for the attack.

Overview

In appearance, the Arachnids came in a wide variety of shapes and forms with this being determined by the breed of the creature.

Basic Arachnid warriors were noted for having minimal IQ but were armored and completely lethal. The destruction of a limb meant that 86% of the Bug was still combat effective. However, shooting the nerve stem was noted for being a more efficient means of eliminating the creature.

There were a number of Arachnid breeds that included:

• Warrior Bugs :
• Tanker Bugs :
• Plasma Bugs :
• Brain Bugs : a leadership caste among the Arachnids responsible for directing their operations and managing their strategy. These big fat bugs were largely defenceless and possessed vestigial legs where they were carried by Chariot Bugs. They were able to release a stinger from their mouths that could pierce the skull of a human and drain it dry whereupon the Brain Bug learnt everything their prey did which proved a highly useful intelligence gathering tool.
• Queen Bug :
• God Bug : colossal entity is firmly entrenched within the planet upon which it is deployed, equipped with multiple appendages extending beneath the surface, facilitating the capture and demise of its prey. The crevices it generates have the capacity to ensnare beings across the entire planet, with the bug preying upon any unfortunate individuals that descend into them. They also had the ability to communicate through other organisms, manipulating their lifeless remains like macabre marionettes. The God Bug could extend its head from beneath the ground where its expansive mouth harbors numerous tentacles, facilitating the absorption of memories from other organisms.

It was noted that they were a highly organized and highly evolved insect society. Individually, the Bugs were relatively stupid by human standards with workers having an IQ of 12 whilst warriors were around 35. Despite this, they had managed to colonise other planets via hurling their spores through biological means across space. Arachnid colonies were said to require a certain size before they could produce a Brain Bug with it believed that it took around 300 generations.

They were known to redirect meteors and send them as projectiles that were launched against other worlds. This was achieved through a kind of plasma burst that was used to divert meteors and send at a target.

The homeworld of the species was Klendathu that orbited a twin star system whose brutal gravitational forces produced an endless supply of meteorites.

Members

• Behemecoatyl :

Notes

• In the novel, the Bugs were somewhat different compared to their film incarnation.

In other media

Television

• In Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, the Arachnids appeared as the primary antagonists in the setting of the CGI animated television series. They were first shown having appeared on Pluto where they came to attack humans leading to a war against SICON. At first, mankind believed the creatures to be native to Pluto but later discovered that the Arachnids were an interstellar civilisation who were waging a war against Earth. It was shown that the species arrived on other worlds where they used the genetic material of other races to produce specific castes of bugs allowing them to be better adapted on those worlds as well as being used as specialist troops against enemies..

Video games

• In Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy, the Arachnids appeared in the setting of the video game. Set in 2369, the Arachnids were involved in intense fighting with the Federation with the Mobile Infantry deployed to Klendathu. Fighting continued in the Arachnid Quarantine Zone with battles being waged on Planet P culminating in the capture of a Brain Bug. Five months have passed since the capture of the Brain Bug, and Arachnid Egg Fall Clusters had been attacking various planets in Terran-controlled space.
• In Starship Troopers: Terran Command, the Arachnids appeared in the setting of the real-time strategy video game. After the Battle of Klendathu, the mining colony of Kwalasha comes under attack by Arachnid forces. Due to its status as a mining world, The Federation devotes significant resources to its defence. During what appears to be a routine operation to rescue stranded miners, the Mobile Infantry discovers that the bugs have used large portions of the Kwalashan mines to augment their own tunnels and have rooted themselves deep into the surface. Retreating from the mines after finding no survivors, the Mobile Infantry are pushed all the way back to Federatsiyagrad, the capital city of Kwalasha. The DLC "Raising Hell", an Arachnid colony came to settle on the world of Gehenna that was being managed by the Hephaestar Corporation who maintained fuel extractors to mine the world of resources. Initially a mercenary unit was used to fight off and capture sedated specimens of Arachnids. However, as several important facilities fell to the Bugs a detachment of Mobile Infantry was sent to assist, eventually defeating the Arachnid threat.
• In Starship Troopers: Extermination, the Arachnids appeared in the setting of the FPS video game. Bug breeds included the Drone, Warrior Bug, Gunner Bug, Plasma Grenadier, and Tiger Elite. The Arachnids came to battle the United Citizen Federation's Mobile Infantry's elite Deep Space Vanguard for various planets including Valaka, Agni Prime, X-11, and Boreas.

Other

• In Mongoose Publishing, the company had created a Starship Troopers game that included an RPG and miniature games line with the bugs being referred to as the Arachnid Empire.

Appearances

• Starship Troopers:

External Links

• Starship Troopers Wiki Entry

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