### Roach Queens

Roach Queens give birth to roaches, fulfilling much the same role as queen bees. Unlike bees, however, all roaches that are born are considered workers - the roach queen usually carries around most, if not all, of the ingredients required to make roach eggs and is usually fed by her worker children during quiet, safe moments (and occasionally feeds on her worker children, usually when she is low on a few key roach-baby ingredients). Roach queens can be identified amongst their children by their enlarged abdomen, their glossy, silver wings (although they never fly), and, most tellingly, the fact that all the roaches are usually attacking any threat and the roach queen isn't.

When threatened, the roach queen will attempt to scurry as far away from the threat as possible, occasionally stopping to lay eggs in promising-looking areas. As these are roaches, this is almost anywhere. The larvae will hatch into mostly-developed roaches in a matter of seconds. Roach queens lay eggs at a much faster rate when they are running away from a threat in this manner, relying on their children for defense. This rate is predictable, and the alert smitemaster can count precisely how long it will be until the roach queen lays more eggs. Some roach queens are used in the roachmeat industries, but it turns out to be far more cost effective to hire smitemasters to clean out infestations and haul the carcasses back up than to breed roaches in captivity (which is costly, as the problems when a roach gets loose are much greater than with other, more docile meats.)

Monster Reference
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