This is a race idea that has been sitting with me for awhile. With the game released and the programmers running around, this is the time to slip this idea into the designers’ suggestion box, and this is the venue I feel most comfortable doing so.
There have already been some suggestions on the Feedback Wiki, namely Mist’ken and Lyrens, and lengthy discussions on Guru concerning the idea of new races. In the Guru thread I had a moment of cascading inspiration about an insectoid race.
What follows is only re-presentation of that idea.
Premise
I draw attention to Istan and the Scarab Plague. The Scarab Plague was a part Elonian History that native player characters explored in a quest line started by Scholar Chago in the Astralarium. Quick spoiler summary for those who need it; the plague was the parasitic larva of the native super insects that had laid their eggs on the local grain. People died and then scarabs ate their way out of their corpses.
Now, the Scarab Plague happened once, and there is a general fear that it could happen again. Add onto that the fact that Palawa Joko currently rules Elona and you get a disturbing question: what is Joko’s knee jerk reaction to a large quantity of his living peons keeling over? Then ask the question what could possibly go wrong when using necromantic magic on a corpse with large host of living larva inside it.
cough
Now, one of the potential results is you’re left with a humanoid form constructed from multiple insect bodies. The person’s original human spirit might linger as a dominant intelligence amongst the juvenile insect minds that compose the new body, but either way we now have new life.
Hivemind of One
The racial origins have the species coming into existence as a collection of insects in one body. The first generation may have lingering human spirits giving them direction, but future generations will need to develop a level of internal harmony in order to function. This would be another in a long line of unique hive minds in Guild Wars 2, this time being as described: hiveminds of one.
Society of the Hive or Anarchy of the Swarm
Every player character race in Guild Wars 2 has an antagonistic foil that comes from within their own society. When you ask how a species with insectoid instincts and drives might structure a society you two direction: the hive and the swarm.
The hive is the natural player character society; an instinctual bureaucracy formed around whatever starting culture their first generation were raised into. Larvae raised in isolated combs to avoid using another’s skeleton as scaffolding would be a minimum, but also working castes.
In contrast to the hive is the swarm. The swarm live in the same manner as the scarabs that spawned them. Feasting without cultivation, infecting the food supplies of others for reproduction, and otherwise being something no player character would have any remorse killing.
Body Horror
Born from plague and necromancy, we can’t avoid the topic of body horror. In general insect behavior is disgusting to humans, so the topic is unavoidable even without the origin story presented. To put all minds at ease, Arena Net has a history of not avoiding body horror but instead handle it tactfully in a correct manner and we the player trust them to do so in the future.
With a meshwork body there will be some vestigial parts. Vestigial limbs are an unquestionable part of body horror, but an insectoid exoskeleton mutes it slightly. The hive would mute it further with sanitation and clothing, possibly raising it to a strange alien beauty. In contrast the swarm would play this angle straight up, sometimes wearing the corpses they were born from.
The Question of Palawa Joko
How this insectoid race treats its father is the most important question for developers to answer and least important for players to provide. That’s because the answer relies heavily on how Palawa Joko will be treated in the rest of the content: antivillain or straight up villain. The answer is important since their starting point is a human culture as it stod under Palawa Joko’s rule.
Cannibalization
No, not physical act. This is more of a design fallback. Under circumstances that this race is unsuitable, there are plenty of details that can be salvaged for other uses. At the very least it’s origin story is a situation begging to happen. Just lose the hive aspect of the species and make them the swarm that Palawa Joko released on himself in his hubris.