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Description

The facts are below represent the knowledge that the protagonist of this short story managed to learn during his journey, but weren’t mentioned in the text proper for pacing reasons. In order to properly understand what the hell all of this means, it is strongly advised to first read the story itself, as well as this introductory text to the Nest and nestlings.

* * *

While most of the Nest's "cooperatives" work locally, maintaining specific shops, factories, farms and other facilities, a few conduct their services across the city in its entirety, or large sections of it. In terms of functions, they can be compared to various ministries, departments and courts (judicial ones, not to confuse with regal courts), and together form the unofficial Nest Government.
Most of the Nest is fairly decentralized and self-governed, however, so this Government only intervenes when necessity arises.
There is no unified law or legislature: each of the governing cooperatives has its own set of laws, which they can occasionally update with some sort of voting process. There is a legal system that allows them to veto each other's changes, but it's very murky and poorly understood even by nestlings themselves.
*

Regal courts, aside from their primary function of producing and distributing eggs, are also responsible for maintaining historical records and sacred texts (the line between the two is very blurry), as well as conducting a range of religious ceremonies, including sermons. Both jobs are done mainly by "maidens" – non-queen members of the gyne caste, which double as both scribes and priestesses. More straightforward manual work of maintaining the courts’ "palaces" is done by worker caste instead.
*

Speaking of religion, it can be described as vaguely pantheistic: the world itself is believed to have a Will and be capable of moving and changings according to the whims of said Will. This mostly applies to the mysterious "Outside World" however, layout and structure of which is constantly changing due to its anomalous properties. The stable pocket of space where Nest proper is located is perceived as one of the "Safe Havens" created by this divine Will, so there is a certain degree of physical separation between everyday world and divine.
The Will is belied to be neutral by default, capable of creating both boons and adversities for the nestlings – and so it has to be regularly appeased with a variety of rituals. Most of them are conducted by maidens of the regal courts and kept hidden from the laity. Among those known the most notable (and bizarre) are the biofuel libations and sending prayer audiosignals to the sky via radiotowers.
Cooperatives do have their own rites too, related to their specialties – but these are fairly simple and are more akin to charms and prayers than full-on rituals.
There is no centralized church, and individual courts can deviate in the way they perform their ceremonies.
Egg dispensations, despite their fairly mundane purpose, are considered a religious ritual as well.
Radio sermons are a thing too.
*

Since Nest as a physical place had emerged from the Outside World – which is believed to be divine in nature – all the buildings and infrastructure are considered to be direct creations of god. Thus, while maintaining, fixing, repurposing or changing them is permitted, building something completely from scratch is regarded as blasphemous and strictly prohibited! Certain folks managed to work around it by building new houses right next to existing ones and convincing authorities that these are mere extensions, rather than brand new things.
*

There is a belief in supernatural entities – "spirits" or "demons" of sorts, likely inspired by a variety of "aberrant lifeforms" that are known to inhabit the Outside World. Some of them are believed to be nightmares conjured by the Will of the world, while others are said to be formers nestlings that had been reborn as horrific monsters due to their vile ways.
*

The belief in afterlife is very ambiguous and doesn’t seem to by a central focus of the Nest’s religion. Aside from the aforementioned monstrous reincarnation, dead nestlings are believed to go somewhere beyond the Outside World – but the exact nature of this place is not elaborated, leading to different people holding vastly different opinions of what exactly would happen to them after they die.

There is a minority of believers in a more traditional form of reincarnation, however, with one’s "karma" dictating which Nest one would born in in their next life.
*

On the topic of death, mortuary rituals are surprisingly complex.
Nestlings’ tissues have a nasty property of turning into gelatinous sludge quickly after death, which has a drastic impact on their funerary practices, the important part of which involves the separation of solid and liquid remains. Ideally, the procedure has to be done in the special funeral homes.
It involves placing the body on a "cleansing altar" – a lattice table with the drain grates beneath – and making a number in incisions on the carapace to allow the sludge to pour down through the drain and into the sewer system. After all flesh and blood had leaked out, the body – which at this point consists only of chitinous shell and cartilaginous skeleton inside – would be cleaned via faucet above the altar, moved to a different room, dried and wrapped in the silk cloth. The members of the deceased one’s cooperative – or morticians’ cooperative in case of cooperativeless "pariahs" – would then inscribe an epitaph on the wrappings and deliver the remains to their burial well of choice, where it would be casted down.
The process, while borrowing some aspects from the practices of previous Nests, is mostly invented by Founding Queens.
*

Some wells that are not used as burial sites are instead used to house the "Deep Shrines".
These are small and ornate concrete structures maintained by particularly influential regal courts, and are pretty much the only buildings that were actually built by nestlings.
These shrines are used to house graven tablets with inscriptions of some particularly significant legends and tales, recounted by the Nest’s Founding Queens and even passed down from the previous Nests. Unlike most other inscriptions across the Nest, these are written entirely in "old alphabet". Old alphabet was the writing of the Founding Queens, while new alphabet is writing system they created based on written symbols they found across the Nest. The symbols in question are actually slightly altered Cyrillic letters – but the way they were mapped to the sounds of the language is completely different from how it works in any human languages that uses them.
*

Nestlings’ strangely human names come from a standardized list, which is said to be created by the Founding Queens. The fact that they are all borrowed from human languages implies that they learned it from somewhere rather then came up with it themselves – but the details are still unknown.
*

Gender in the human sense isn’t really a thing in the Nest, with elaborate caste system taking a similar role. The main ternary system of workers, gynes and drones in largely biological in nature – but each of these tree main divisions has numerous subdivisions, which are purely social. But since the type of labor that a nestling engages in throughout their maturation has some tangible impacts on their adult form, certain sub-castes can be distinguished from others by their appearance, if you have a keen enough eye.
*

While regal courts – who, once again, work with historical records – know quite a lot about other Nests, commoners have their knowledge limited to only occasional tales shared by royals during their sermons. It doesn’t stop them from speculating, though, and even coming up with their own stories of what might have happened in the Nests beyond their own.
*

A one regal court in particular holds a special role as a "Migration Council", whose main job is to periodically gather young gynes from across the Nest and raise them as new generation of the Founding Queens, before sending them to the Outside World. The process, much like other ritualized practices of courts, is highly secretive – so not much is known about it. One of the few things known is that the night right before the departure involve the so-called "mass wedding", which seems to be a fancy name for a kind of orgy process and is meant to impregnate Queens so that they can actually birth a new generation of nestlings in the new Nest.

Description

The facts are below represent the knowledge that the protagonist of this short story managed to learn during his journey, but weren’t mentioned in the text proper for pacing reasons. In order to properly understand what the hell all of this means, it is strongly advised to first read the story itself, as well as this introductory text to the Nest and nestlings.

* * *

While most of the Nest's "cooperatives" work locally, maintaining specific shops, factories, farms and other facilities, a few conduct their services across the city in its entirety, or large sections of it. In terms of functions, they can be compared to various ministries, departments and courts (judicial ones, not to confuse with regal courts), and together form the unofficial Nest Government.
Most of the Nest is fairly decentralized and self-governed, however, so this Government only intervenes when necessity arises.
There is no unified law or legislature: each of the governing cooperatives has its own set of laws, which they can occasionally update with some sort of voting process. There is a legal system that allows them to veto each other's changes, but it's very murky and poorly understood even by nestlings themselves.
*

Regal courts, aside from their primary function of producing and distributing eggs, are also responsible for maintaining historical records and sacred texts (the line between the two is very blurry), as well as conducting a range of religious ceremonies, including sermons. Both jobs are done mainly by "maidens" – non-queen members of the gyne caste, which double as both scribes and priestesses. More straightforward manual work of maintaining the courts’ "palaces" is done by worker caste instead.
*

Speaking of religion, it can be described as vaguely pantheistic: the world itself is believed to have a Will and be capable of moving and changings according to the whims of said Will. This mostly applies to the mysterious "Outside World" however, layout and structure of which is constantly changing due to its anomalous properties. The stable pocket of space where Nest proper is located is perceived as one of the "Safe Havens" created by this divine Will, so there is a certain degree of physical separation between everyday world and divine.
The Will is belied to be neutral by default, capable of creating both boons and adversities for the nestlings – and so it has to be regularly appeased with a variety of rituals. Most of them are conducted by maidens of the regal courts and kept hidden from the laity. Among those known the most notable (and bizarre) are the biofuel libations and sending prayer audiosignals to the sky via radiotowers.
Cooperatives do have their own rites too, related to their specialties – but these are fairly simple and are more akin to charms and prayers than full-on rituals.
There is no centralized church, and individual courts can deviate in the way they perform their ceremonies.
Egg dispensations, despite their fairly mundane purpose, are considered a religious ritual as well.
Radio sermons are a thing too.
*

Since Nest as a physical place had emerged from the Outside World – which is believed to be divine in nature – all the buildings and infrastructure are considered to be direct creations of god. Thus, while maintaining, fixing, repurposing or changing them is permitted, building something completely from scratch is regarded as blasphemous and strictly prohibited! Certain folks managed to work around it by building new houses right next to existing ones and convincing authorities that these are mere extensions, rather than brand new things.
*

There is a belief in supernatural entities – "spirits" or "demons" of sorts, likely inspired by a variety of "aberrant lifeforms" that are known to inhabit the Outside World. Some of them are believed to be nightmares conjured by the Will of the world, while others are said to be formers nestlings that had been reborn as horrific monsters due to their vile ways.
*

The belief in afterlife is very ambiguous and doesn’t seem to by a central focus of the Nest’s religion. Aside from the aforementioned monstrous reincarnation, dead nestlings are believed to go somewhere beyond the Outside World – but the exact nature of this place is not elaborated, leading to different people holding vastly different opinions of what exactly would happen to them after they die.

There is a minority of believers in a more traditional form of reincarnation, however, with one’s "karma" dictating which Nest one would born in in their next life.
*

On the topic of death, mortuary rituals are surprisingly complex.
Nestlings’ tissues have a nasty property of turning into gelatinous sludge quickly after death, which has a drastic impact on their funerary practices, the important part of which involves the separation of solid and liquid remains. Ideally, the procedure has to be done in the special funeral homes.
It involves placing the body on a "cleansing altar" – a lattice table with the drain grates beneath – and making a number in incisions on the carapace to allow the sludge to pour down through the drain and into the sewer system. After all flesh and blood had leaked out, the body – which at this point consists only of chitinous shell and cartilaginous skeleton inside – would be cleaned via faucet above the altar, moved to a different room, dried and wrapped in the silk cloth. The members of the deceased one’s cooperative – or morticians’ cooperative in case of cooperativeless "pariahs" – would then inscribe an epitaph on the wrappings and deliver the remains to their burial well of choice, where it would be casted down.
The process, while borrowing some aspects from the practices of previous Nests, is mostly invented by Founding Queens.
*

Some wells that are not used as burial sites are instead used to house the "Deep Shrines".
These are small and ornate concrete structures maintained by particularly influential regal courts, and are pretty much the only buildings that were actually built by nestlings.
These shrines are used to house graven tablets with inscriptions of some particularly significant legends and tales, recounted by the Nest’s Founding Queens and even passed down from the previous Nests. Unlike most other inscriptions across the Nest, these are written entirely in "old alphabet". Old alphabet was the writing of the Founding Queens, while new alphabet is writing system they created based on written symbols they found across the Nest. The symbols in question are actually slightly altered Cyrillic letters – but the way they were mapped to the sounds of the language is completely different from how it works in any human languages that uses them.
*

Nestlings’ strangely human names come from a standardized list, which is said to be created by the Founding Queens. The fact that they are all borrowed from human languages implies that they learned it from somewhere rather then came up with it themselves – but the details are still unknown.
*

Gender in the human sense isn’t really a thing in the Nest, with elaborate caste system taking a similar role. The main ternary system of workers, gynes and drones in largely biological in nature – but each of these tree main divisions has numerous subdivisions, which are purely social. But since the type of labor that a nestling engages in throughout their maturation has some tangible impacts on their adult form, certain sub-castes can be distinguished from others by their appearance, if you have a keen enough eye.
*

While regal courts – who, once again, work with historical records – know quite a lot about other Nests, commoners have their knowledge limited to only occasional tales shared by royals during their sermons. It doesn’t stop them from speculating, though, and even coming up with their own stories of what might have happened in the Nests beyond their own.
*

A one regal court in particular holds a special role as a "Migration Council", whose main job is to periodically gather young gynes from across the Nest and raise them as new generation of the Founding Queens, before sending them to the Outside World. The process, much like other ritualized practices of courts, is highly secretive – so not much is known about it. One of the few things known is that the night right before the departure involve the so-called "mass wedding", which seems to be a fancy name for a kind of orgy process and is meant to impregnate Queens so that they can actually birth a new generation of nestlings in the new Nest.