Art and Literature, Hiver
From SOTS
Due to the extremely strong emotional attachment that most Hivers have to their mothers, a great deal of their art, sculpture and literature is devoted to glorifying their mothers, extended families and ancestors (e.g. The Motherless Sons). A great deal of their engineering and architecture is also based upon the female form or on scenes vaguely remembered from the hatching period. Hivers find curvilinear shapes comforting and pleasing to the eye and often design storage compartments and living quarters which remind them of the geometric egg chambers they slept in as infants. Buildings and ships are sometimes highly suggestive of a female Hiver's body and may even be direct portraits of a given Princess.
Hivers enjoy music at all levels of their society. Their voices come in a variety of pitches, from the trilling song of the smallest workers to the organ-like notes of the great queens. Hivers are capable of forming most of the sounds of human speech simply with their mouthparts, although there are a few that are difficult because they do not have the same arrangement of tongue and teeth that we do.
Rhythm and percussion are central to all aspects of Hiver life—percussive sounds and clicks even feature prominently in their language. Warriors use their own armored chests as drums just as Humans have been known to beat their shields. The sounds made by wingcases are more like stringed instruments—violin, viola, cello, bass or lower. Hivers who can play their wing cases as instruments are highly prized and a Prince who can play his own wingcases as an instrument is a romantic figure to the Hivers. Even workers and warriors can play "wings" if the organs are well developed.
The warrior caste has its own musical tradition. Drills and marching parades are as common among Hivers as they are in other races with a strong military tradition, but Hivers are nearly miraculous in their ability to move in unison by the thousand.
Overall, the use of their own bodies extensively as instruments is the main difference between Hivers as musicians and the other non-aquatic races.
