The town of Westerville is just outside the Everglade forest and a small mountain range to the other side. It is located right next to a river, which starts in the mountains and continues into the forest. Westerville is a small town but has a variety of goods that it provides. Many adventurers like to go monster hunting in the Everglade forest, which is famous for the many different kinds of creatures inside. The adventurer guild has four floors and is the tallest building in town. It is located right in the center, next to the church and the townhouse of the mayor. The town has many different shops and some inns for the steady stream of people coming and going. Westerville is a very lively town.

For protection against the creatures of the forest nearby, the town is surrounded by a two-meter tall stone wall with four small guard towers, which are located in each of the cardinal directions. There are two gates to pass the wall. One facing the forest and the other facing the mountains on the other side. The third method to access the town is presented by a stone bridge crossing the river, which flows past the town. Right outside the walls is some farmland with different crops planted to feed the inhabitants of Westerville.

Elise arrived at lunchtime and passes through the gate facing the Everglade forest. The big wooden gate is already opened and people are moving in and out of the town. At the gate are two armed guards, verifying the identity of incoming persons and the reason for visiting. The first place Elise visits is the adventurer guild to check new assignments and to look for new information regarding her new fosterling. She hands in an assignment she got from her last visit and takes two new assignments for the Everglade forest. On the other hand, she has no luck finding more information about the Sylv race, but she heard that a Sylv Hive Complex was spotted in the forest some time ago and should be annihilated by now by the expeditionary forces of the kingdom. Elise suspects that Sylvia may be a survivor of this colony, but she can’t be sure. She dislikes the aggressive stance of the kingdom, which is one of the reasons why she has built her home together with Mark in the forest instead of the town. After she is finished with her business at the adventurer guild she proceeds to eat lunch at one of the inns. With a full stomach, she starts shopping for the new items she needs.

Sylvia in the meantime is quickly bored by the toys Erik presents. At the start, she held some interest until she found out that they are not edible. In addition, there did not seem to be any practical benefit in using them. When it is time for lunch, the Sylv Queen is fed by Mark this time. After lunch, the young queen starts to explore her new lair by crawling gracefully around the floor. Erik follows her for a while until he loses interest, while the father takes care of the dishes. The queen is alone again for a while, but she is in an safe environment, where she gets fed enough biomass. With a satisfied expression, she chooses a dark corner behind some furniture and follows her instincts, which give her some new signals after lunch has finished. Some seconds later she lays her first Sylv egg and then emerges again. As a queen, she can only produce worker drone eggs, which are about 10cm tall. She knows that these drones can feed her, gather resources in the environment like plants to eat, build structures like the Hive Complex and can morph into living Sylv structures. As the hive queen, Sylvia is the intelligent leader of the swarm and is able to evolve the swarm, adding new Strains with unique traits to the genetic pool of her colony.

The Sylv race is divided into different kinds of creatures like the Hive Queen or the worker drone. Each kind of creature can be modified with a Strain, which must be created by the Hive Queen. New Strains are created by the Hive Queen, by extracting traits by consuming non Sylv creatures. An example would be a cloaking Strain after consuming a full chameleon. The drone she just created is the basic model, without any modifications. She does not have enough genetic information right now to create a meaningful new Strain. The next step for establishing a new hive, after getting some basic workers to feed the queen would be to order a worker to morph into a Spawning Grounds living structure, which can produce small Sylv creatures if provided enough nutrients. A second drone must morph at the same time into a Digestion Pool, which can digest biomass for other Sylv structures and transfer the nutrients to them.

Sylvia plans to create at least six drones, before morphing two of them into the living structures. She can’t produce several eggs at the same time for now. She still hasn’t finished maturing and she also needs to consume enough biomass to create an egg. The new drones that come out of them also need to be fed and mature for at least four days before they are fully functional. The drones grow extremely fast to a size of up to 40cm in length. For now, Sylvia can lay one egg per day and each egg needs three days before it hatches. It takes at least a week from creating the egg to arrive at a fully matured drone. More advanced Sylv creatures like an Hive Commander need even more time to develop all their abilities.

After Mark finished cleaning the dishes he comes back over to the kids and sees nothing unusual. He decides that he would clean the interior of the house for a bit while keeping watch on the children. After cleaning the house for some time, he makes quite an unusual find in a dark corner behind some furniture. A small purple-colored egg was sitting there in the corner. When he grabs the egg to take a closer look, the Hive Queen notices that something is amiss and quickly crawls over to Mark, who is holding the new drone egg. “Hissssssss, Hisssssssss”, the displeasure of the Hive Queen is transmitted to Mark's ears, who turns around to see Sylvia looking at the little egg in his right hand. He concludes that the egg, which has the same purple color as the chitinous armor of Sylvia, could be related to one another. He slowly places the egg back on the floor and Sylvia immediately stops her hissing. Just for testing purposes, he touches the egg again, which triggers a small hiss. This makes the situation quite clear for him.

Mark decides to let the egg rest where it is right now and wait for his wife to decide together how they should handle the situation. His concern clearly shows and some minutes later he searches for the bestiary, which he normally ignores. After some searching, he finds the bookmarked article about the Sylv, which his wife had read earlier. “That explains some things”, says Mark, while reading the text. He agrees with Elises opinion and does not think much of the aggressive recommendations at the end of the text. After he is done reading he looks over to Sylvia, who has placed herself in front of the egg and tries to move it back into the corner. Mark doesn’t stop her and just watches for a bit. It is quite clear that Sylvia is struggling, so Mark decides to act and help her move the egg back to its former place. Sylvia is fine with Mark helping her and lets herself be picked up again afterward. Mark is a bit surprised that Sylvia interprets his actions right but on the other hand there were already enough surprises surrounding her, so he doesn’t mind.

In the later afternoon, Elise arrives back home and is greeted by her husband at the door, “Welcome home Elise. Some interesting things happened, while you were gone”. Elise is a bit surprised and asks, “Did Sylvia do something strange?”

“While I was cleaning the house, I found a small purple-colored egg, which Sylvia is really fond of. I suspect that she is somehow responsible.”, explains Mark in a calm voice and continues, “I wanted to wait for you before deciding. What do you think?”

Elise wants to see the situation herself and suggests afterward, “We should let her keep the egg. We don’t know if it is even fertilized or if there is even a need for it. I suggest that we stay put and keep observing. We can still make a final decision later.” Mark looks concerned again but agrees in the end with his wife. He doesn’t like at all, where this is going …