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sometimes I wonder out of all of the tribes that do not have a higher being, only the mantises managed to not get infected.
The bees make sense why they succumbed, vespa was dead so they latched onto the next best thing. The mushrooms are a similar case.
But deepnest?
I feel deepnest also has a warrior culture and I feel that Herrah is a strong enough leader and has people who respect her enough that she could have pulled off a quarantine like the mantises- though I can see why a larger territory would become an issue
My only explanation is thar while deepnest valued strenght it also valued the arts, what with the weavers and whatnot. And with the arts and dreams being interlinked it made them rather susceptible to the infection.
What do you think?
I think that the reason why Deepnest fell is not because Herrah and her kin weren't strong enough, but because the Radiance specifically targeted them after Herrah chose to become a Dreamer. I think there's some dialogue in game hinting to it, iirc? But I could be misremembering, so don't take my word for it. Either way though, Herrah was essential to the plan that sealed away the Radiance, and so the Radiance retaliated as such. In terms of being involved in the war, they were pretty damn involved, and, well...that damned them
The mantises, on the other hand, stayed neutral during the entire fight. Sure, they might have had a treaty with Hallownest, but they were no means friendly with the residents. And given the fact that the Traitor Lord and his followers willingly took the Radiance's infection into themselves, its likely that Radi knew they were sympathetic to her cause/easy to manipulate and simply chose to bide her time so that she could maximize the amount of followers she got out of it. Better to have half of them come to her than to force compliance and lose the whole tribe