Winx Club Rewrite - Trogs, Downland, and Princess Amentia
Biology
Trogs are a sentient species of magic users who are humanoids with characteristics of amphibians and arthropods. They have soft, flexible exoskeletons which are made of chitin and collagen which are able to expand with internal changes such as pregnancy or weight gain without forcing them to molt. Most Trogs have insect like wings and a plethora of various arthropod features which can include bioluminescence (like fireflies), different wing types, stingers, fangs, stronger plates, segmentation/body build differences, pinchers, extra eyes, extra limbs, etc.
Trogs begin their life cycle as eggs, then hatch into soft shelled larvae before slowly growing limbs like tadpoles. They then molt for the first time into their child forms, molt once more in their teens, and a final time when they are a fully grown adult. This is their last molt generally speaking. Trogs are able to breathe both through lungs and through cutaneous respiration through their skin and have to stay in moist, cool environments to stay healthy, especially as larvae when they are extremely sensitive to dehydration.
Trogs function much like bee hives. They are not a hive mind, however they live in a hive structured society. Trogs are individuals with personal ambitions and lives despite the hive social hierarchy. They are made up of sterile worker females, male drones, and queens. Virgin queens are referred to as princesses and make up the smallest part of the population. The queen can reproduce with drones and in rare cases, other females, but those unions only produce sterile female offspring. The queen of the hive lays all the eggs, who are then distributed throughout the hive to be raised by the other adults. The queen only raises princesses generally but may choose to raise the other larvae from her husband’s clutches. Generally the father of the clutch is given first pick on the eggs and will take some of them to raise. Trog eggs and larvae have a very high mortality rate, meaning many eggs in a given clutch are unviable and fragile larvae die easily. It’s a numbers game for Trogs and this has led to some disturbing solutions.
Abductions
To prevent inbreeding, Trogs trade drones with other hives but they also have found that abducting human males from the surface has increased genetic diversity. This has led to generations of Trogs abducting and imprisoning humans, which in Downland specifically, usually means male students from one of the three schools. The prisoners are allowed to leave after ten years, but by that point have lost all contact with the outside world, have Trog children that can’t survive on the surface yet, and have endured abuse long enough for it to be normalized. Many end up staying in Downland, living with other civilians and raising their children. This horrific practice is practiced by the queens and their guards, but is not indicative of the average Trog, who does not have any power to stop this from happening.
Culture
Culturally Trogs do not conceptualize family as genetically based, though fathers often raise some but not all of their own larvae. Because everyone is descended from the queen and raised by adoptive parents, family ties are chosen. Family units are formed primarily through caring for larvae and business partnerships. While marriage does occur, this is purely a social arrangement and almost all couples are unable to produce offspring. For the Queen, marriage is more about her personal nest. The Queen chooses her husband to be her primary partner socially and will generally raise any children produced from that union, but will have many other sexual partners for the sake of hive diversity.
The Queen has complete control over who she marries, who she mates with, and how eggs are distributed. Because the Queen’s premature death can lead to population collapse if she does not have a successor, queens have immense social and political power within their hive, which can allow them to act tyrannically with little consequence (cough Amentia cough).
Some hives have multiple active queens while others only have one. Downland has two during the events of the main series.
Trogs are avid brewers and have a strong cultural importance on the process of making alcohol. Their drink of choice is a combination of mead made from their own honey and wine made from subterranean berries. Their cuisine includes a lot of moss, bats, cave fish, aquatic arthropods like crayfish, mushrooms, unviable eggs, and subterranean plants that photosynthesize using the light from the local crystals. And lots of booze. Booze for days. You would also drink if you lived in Downland.
Princess Amentia
Amentia is the only surviving princess of the current Queen of Downland. Unless her mother is able to produce another viable princess, Amentia is the only future Downland has, which has allowed her to act cruel towards her workers without consequence. This only exacerbated the entitlement she was already brought up to have. In my rewrite, Amentia is… not defeated with the power of love. She’s defeated with the power of Stella hyped up on vitamin D gummies beating her with her scepter. Brandon ran back into the palace to help free the other prisoners, starting a riot with the aid of Stella, Bloom, Aisha, Sky, Riven, and Diaspro. The humans escaped and the students fled by ship, leaving Downland behind but Brandon was never the same afterwards.
Amentia is left publicly humiliated by being beaten to a pulp at her own wedding, having her chosen drone rescued, and the other humans escaping. The only person she felt secure around while healing from her injuries was Sponsus, who she married. Amentia’s ego was deeply bruised by this incident, her carapace permanently dented. She vows one day, somehow she will get her revenge of Brandon and Stella… and in next gen she will.