The God of Chaos has just won a divine poker game against all the other gods. This allows him to exact one greater favor from all of them. Greater favors can start or end wars, and so many at once could very well destroy the world. So what does he want?
Bee girls.
A number of giant bee hives across the world suddenly evolve into the new apis race, which (due to the gender imbalance of bees) results in a race of lithe, beautiful bee girls, plus some bee boys. This happens at the worst possible time for the elven mage Cora, who had been seconds away from finishing a raid on a giant bee hive. Confused and disoriented by the change going on around them, the party is quickly killed by the new apis, and Cora resurrects in the nearby shrine.
Meanwhile, a nameless worker was out harvesting pollen when the change took place. One difference between giant bees and apis is that the apis only have wings if they are above level 10. Meaning that she is suddenly stranded at the top of a very tall giant rose with no way to get down.
Several days later, Cora and her new party are wandering the forest of giant flowers when they hear singing. They rescue the apis worker and name her Joy, and discover that her race's abilities make them invaluable when recovering materials from monsters.
So begins the tale of Joy, random bee worker turned apis worker turned adventurer.
The series so far consists of three books:
- Sting and Song (released November 2019)
- Webs and Wards (released April 2020)
- Hives and Heroism (released December 2020)
This series provides examples of:
- 20 Bear Asses: Gathering quests are annoying because you need rare abilities to even have a chance at collecting the materials, and the only ones that combat jobs have access to have abysmal success rates. Joy's innate Advanced Harvesting quickly makes her extremely valuable; with her help, Cora's party finishes a series of quests that were expected to take a week in an hour.
- Alliterative Title: Used for Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Sting and Song, Webs and Wards, Hives and Heroism.
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant:
- The apis still act much like bees; they will ignore anything that is not a threat, but will immediately destroy anything that is a threat. A Skyfisher captain captures an apis worker and tries to torture her for information (unaware that she would have happily given him what he wanted freely if he had just asked), which turns the local hive against him. The apis fight absolutely fearlessly, diving headfirst into battle against enemies that most hardened knights would retreat from. Hives also vary from about fifteen thousand to as high as sixty thousand, and nearly all of them are active combatants.
- In book 3, the Duchy is outnumbered two to one by the Skyfishers, and wonder if they should try to get the help of the nearby apis hive. When the apis do arrive, they outnumber both armies combined two to one. The local noble begins to wonder if she should be more worried about this giant hive on her doorstep more than the Apocalypse Spider.
- Balance Between Good and Evil:
- Justified due to the RPG Mechanics 'Verse. If one side gets too powerful and makes a real push to conquer the other, then that results in more difficulties for the defending country (meaning they level faster) and easier lives for the attacking country (meaning they level slower). A generation later, the country that had been the defender now has a much more powerful populace, and can strike back far harder.
- In book 2, the gods mention that they deliberately designed things this way because if one side actually wins, the world will be destroyed. Alethus plans to become the new Dark Lord a generation earlier than expected, which might tip the balance of power too far in his favor, meaning the gods on both sides are rather worried about what he's doing.
- Bee People: The apis are essentially little more than attractive humanoids with antennae and form-fitting black carapace armor. The God of Chaos went to a lot of trouble creating them for absolutely no reason than he found the world boring. Psychologically, they remain closer to bees than humans, being fanatically loyal to their hive and wanting nothing more than to work and serve. According to Joy, the worst thing she can think of is having no work to do."The world's gotten too boring, so I want a new species. Nothing that will break the balance that you so desperately adore, but something interesting," the deity said, grinning broadly. "What I want is—"
"Bee-girls?" Demask demanded, his deep voice filled with shock. - Benevolent Boss: Alethus, the incubus baron angling to become the new Dark Lord, is surprisingly paternal to his troops. He is careful not to spend their lives unnecessarily, makes sure that they know how much he appreciates them, and encourages them to go after their own interests. His enemies note that this is part of the problem; he'd be a much smaller threat if he was like a lot of demons, who are quick to slaughter their own people over perceived mistakes.
- Boring, but Practical: There are a number of non-combat abilities, such as Salvaging, that adventurers prize highly. Salvaging is one of the only ways to collect valuable body parts from monsters, and even then it's not very efficient (Minor Salvaging has a ten percent success rate, and even Advanced Salvaging only has a fifty percent success rate). Furthermore, most of the time the only way to get the really good abilities is to have the appropriate Job. Non-combat abilities only come with a non-combat job, which is not suited for adventuring, and if you stop training the non-combat job you lose access to the abilities—so you can't take a couple levels of the Farmer Job for the perks and then dive into a dungeon as a Mage. The series starts with the introduction of the apis demihuman race, who have Advanced Harvesting as an innate racial ability. Not only is Harvesting better than Salvaging, since it's racial it is not dependent on Job. The apis immediately become very valuable party members, since all those 20 Bear Asses quests are much, much easier with one of them on your side.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- When Joy first obtains the Pure Royal Jelly, we see the full tooltip. This only becomes relevant at the end of the first novel, when Cora is afflicted with a high-level poison that the jelly can cure. Joy uses it without a second thought.
- In the first book Joy kills a powerful elemental by using Advanced Harvesting to collect its core, killing it instantly and leaving her with a rare light-elemental core that she doesn't know what to do with. In the third book, it turns out that a powerful light-elemental artifact is half of what is needed to renew the seal on the Apocalypse Spider.
- Continuing is Painful: Being resurrected immediately deducts a hundred coins per level. Furthermore, resurrection is never guaranteed, and up to the whims of the gods. Dying within a month of a previous resurrection is basically a guaranteed Killed Off for Real.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Everyone who hears Cora's story lampshades the absolutely terrible luck of having the giant bees evolve into a new demihuman race, something that hasn't happened in three thousand years, right in the middle of a raid.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Joy sacrifices her Pure Royal Jelly, which she needs to evolve into a queen, to save Cora from poisoning. Her companions only find out later that if she doesn't evolve into a queen, she has roughly six months to live, and quest to buy her a new vial of the jelly.
- In book 3, Joy willingly sacrifices herself to renew the seal on the Apocalypse Spider, despite knowing that there will be no hope of resurrection.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The monster sealed under the Duchy is called an Apocalypse Spider. The Shimmerwood queen notes that she doesn't want anything to do with a monster with "apocalypse" in its name, and they're not too fond of the spider part either.
- No Need for Names: The giant bees had no names since they were non-sapient. When Cora encounters an apis worker, it takes a moment for her to even consider the idea that she might want a name; she just shrugs and says they can call her whatever they want. They go with Joy.
- The Pollyanna: Joy is first encountered singing a song she made up about being a bee, after three days of being stuck alone on a flower with nothing to do (which she describes as the worst thing she can think of). Cora comes up with the name Joy for her because, well, what else are you supposed to name someone like that?
- Punny Name: Brianna tries to name the apis worker (who used to be a giant bee) various names that start with "b," or rhyme with "bee," or are related to bees (like Honey). Cora shoots them all down.
- Really Was Born Yesterday: While the apis remember their lives as giant bees, they were non-sapient, so after their evolution they act very much like children. Cora grudgingly admits she can't blame them for killing her, since she had invaded their hive.
- Reincarnation: In book 3, after Joy's Heroic Sacrifice, she refuses to choose an afterlife until her friends arrive and she can go with them. The God of Death, extremely annoyed that she's hanging around his antechamber, talks to the other gods and they all agree to give her the option to reincarnate. She agrees, and then it's mentioned that she won't retain her memories and might not even be an apis. The elven gods (to the surprise of the others) promise her that they both blessed her; she will be an apis, and she'll still have her memories. She hatches, introduces herself to the hatchery worker as Joy, and wonders why her class is "Apis Gilded Champion."
- RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Monsters and humanoid races alike have levels, though humanoids have a more advanced job system. It comes off very much as like living in an MMO, complete with only being able to have ten "active" abilities at once, even if you technically know more (you can change your active abilities with meditation).
- Taking the Bullet: In battle, an apis will happily jump in front of an attack and die in order to give one of her sisters an opening for a lethal strike. It is one of several reasons that fighting a full swarm is absolutely terrifying.
- We Have Reserves: As far as the apis are concerned, every single apis is perfectly replaceable—especially workers. This is seen on a small scale whenever anyone enters a hive; a worker will come over to talk to them, and another worker will pick up what they were doing without missing a beat. At one point Joy tells her friends that they can just get a new apis worker if she dies, a concept that horrifies them. Even the queens are considered replaceable, though the process is more difficult; once a new queen is old enough, the old queen will simply leave to wander the world until she dies, her purpose fulfilled.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Apis workers, like the giant bees they evolved from, only live about two and a half years. Joy starts the series at just over two years old, and most of the people she meets are horrified that this bright, friendly woman is just going to drop dead in less than six months. Cora, Brianna, and Stella quest to get her some more Pure Royal Jelly so that she can evolve into a queen and have an expanded lifespan.
