Wimax: Logical and intelligent, curious but also fragile, Wimax is always trying to find out how things work – and then improve on those things. She hates a mess and prefers to have everything nicely ordered. Sometimes she is frustrated by her friends, who do not always understand the benefits of logic and order. Wimax likes to think she prefers sitting quietly in her room inventing new things, but her curiosity often gets her involved in adventures. She lives with Leodie and their caretaker Lenpou in a quiet neighbourhood in the immense hive.
Leodie: Brave to the point of recklessness, Leodie is never sitting still, but always looking for new experiences. She lives for adventure and feeling the world opening up to her. She is always the first to climb the hill to see what is on the other side, to jump before thinking too much about what might happen when she lands. She gets into trouble a lot, often dragging her not entirely unwilling friend Wimax with her. Lives with her and their caretaker Lenpou.
Danax: Level-headed but with a glint in her eyes, Danax attends the same school as Wimax and Leodie, and she is one of their friends.
Anian: Dramatic and mercurial, Anian likes putting on a show. In the school she goes to with Leodie, Wimax and Danax, she founded the drama club.
Lenpou: Always wise and calm, Lenpou has an iron core that helps her guide her two curious young charges. While most caretakers raise one child at a time, Lenpou chose to adopt both Wimax and Leodie.
Graviton: Always boundlessly energetic, Graviton is an aphid that likes nothing more than running around with Leodie and Wimax on new adventures. Has a keen sense of smell, and an enormous, green tongue that he likes to wrap around anything that smells interesting – including his owners.
Uncle Satomi: Brilliant, inventive, distracted but with a kind heart, Satomi is a drone – one of the rare males of the hive – who has lived a life very different from what he was supposed to. He manages the observatory, where he keeps weather records and makes inventions that can be equal parts revolutionary, silly and dangerous. Adopted Uncle of Leodie and Wimax, who shares his boundless curiosity.
Lady Talox: Old, thin, stern and highly intelligent, Lady Talox is the leader of the queen’s court. The court makes the rules and runs the hive. Lady Talox leads the court with ruthless efficiency from her enormous office in the middle of the hive. She likes things to be just the way they have always been.
Queen Sarthe: As queen, Sarthe is the ruler of the hive city. Like all the queens before her, she gave up her humanity to be embedded in an immense, ancient machine body, which allows her to live for tens of thousands of years and lay thousands of eggs every day. This keeps her busy, and she leaves the day-to-day ruling of the hive to her court. More than 3000 years old, she has gotten somewhat cranky with age. Does not like interruptions.
Captain Patches: Getting a bit grey in the fur but still very cheeky, the captain is the leader of the wolf spider raiders. He has experienced more adventures than ten normal spiders and has no intention of settling down any time soon.
Brood mother Saurfang: Unofficial matriarch of the wolf spiders that live deep in the forest, her focus is on protecting the spider tribe, guiding the raiders and managing the unceasing shenanigans that the several hundred spiderlings in the blood fang village get up to.
Boomer, Zag: Wolf spiderlings and part of the airborne division of the raiders.
Clanks: Built sometime before recorded memory, the clanks are sentient machines. While clanks come in different shapes and sizes, most are vaguely built like giant ants with six legs and antennae they use to sense their environment. Despite their immense power, clanks are generally peaceful and coexist with the humans in the hive. Guardian clanks are notably powerful, and typically serve as part of the military forces of the hive city together with the human soldiers.
Drones: The drones are the only males in the hive city, and they only live for a short while. Every year, Queen Sarthe lays a small number of special eggs. From these, light-green larvae spawn, which unlike regular larvae turn into adult males when they hatch from their pupae. These males are embedded into graceful, winged, mechanical bodies which allow them to survive – for a while – in the jungle-forest outside the hive. They leave the hive city with a princess – a specially chosen female embedded in a queen body just the Sarthe.
Dragoons: Mechanical monstrosities even larger than guardian clanks, dragoons are replacement bodies for elite soldiers who were either mortally wounded, or simply gave up their human bodies, to become forever entombed inside an eight-legged combat tank.
Kratharsus Rex: If mountains could walk, had giant pincers and a tail tipped by a stinger dripping poison, they would still not be as impressive as Kratharsus Rex. Very proud of himself, and a bit of a show-off (well, a lot). As a battle scorpion, Kratharsus is bred and built for fighting, and he has done so with great delight throughout most of his life.
Antwork 