Hulking, Savage and Interesting - The Dung Beetle Knight: Part 1 (Patreon)

When I checked on Monday to start work on this, the Dung Beetle Knight just about won out over my personal favourite, so that's the next deep dive subject. Now first of all we'll explore the inspirations for the Dung Beetle Knight's design and the lore/folklore surrounding the creature in game. We're very fortunate because like the Sunstalker, Gorm, Spidicules and Dragon King we have a pretty complete picture of the monster's lifecycle. However, we also have more information than any of the other entries above because we also have the folklore about how this monster came into being, an understanding of their sentience and multiple examples of interaction with other monsters in the world. In short, the Dung Beetle Knight has one of the most integrated existences in the game's setting – we know where they come from, what they do, what they're like to fight, what their physiology mostly is, an idea about their lifespans and even what the end state for them can be. So there's a lot to dive into here.

There's a lot to take in here, so before we dissect all of the in game lore, lets go into the real world inspirations and dig through some of those.

The Real World Portion

Rainbow Scarab Beetle

The largest portion of the real world influence for the Dung Beetle Knight (DBK) comes from the  American Rainbow Scarab Beetle. We know that it's this particular scarab beetle that drives the concept because of multiple references on the expansion's cards to rainbow portions. A more traditional scarab beetle, such as the ones which influenced the Egyptian sun god Khepri's design like Scarabaeus sacer are missing many of the features that the Dung Beetle Knight shares with the Phanaeus vindex (The Rainbow Scarab Beetle). Here's a picture of the lass for reference.

So much of the DBK's design and background comes from this fascinating creature, not just its dung ball, but also its long horn, yellow antenna, colouration and underground gardening behaviours are all part of the suite of this fascinating little creature.

Dung Beetles are one of the unsung heroes of the natural world, because they reduce disease in the animal populations of the area because they collect up faeces and move it below ground for their young to gestate in and consume. It's pretty disgusting from a human perspective, but many animals are capable of coprophagia – famously rabbits engage in this, but also rats, guinea pigs, butterflies, hippos, koalas, pandas and even dogs perform this behaviour for various benefits.

When I was younger I had an internship in the National Museum of Wales for a summer science placement and I was placed in the Entomology department and I got to see many different scarab beetles in the museum's collection (back in all the secret passageways that run through the walls of the museum, trust me, if you can ever get a tour of the working area of a museum, it's fascinating) and heck, it is incredible how large Scarab Beetles can get, you can read that the Hercules Beetle reaches the size of 17 cm (6.7 inches) but without seeing one you can't really comprehend how big that actually is. Just for the record, the rainbow scarab beetle isn't one of the big ones, it only reaches 2.2 cm.

Now before we move onto the pop culture references it's worth just making a quick note in relation to this size. Because insects and bugs tend to use an exoskeleton for their structure/protection. They're very limited in the size they can grow to, this is because as they get bigger they need a thicker and thicker exoskeleton in order to support their size. Underwater there's more tolerances for growth, which is why Lobsters and Crabs can be so much larger than any land exoskeleton based creatures, but it all comes down to how limited muscle structure can be when attached to an external skeleton rather than an internal one. Internal skeletons allow for large sizes such as dinosaurs and hippos, external ones provide additional protection, but don't have that ability to grow huge. So, this indicates that the Dung Beetle Knight either has a new form of limb propulsion rather than muscles, is able to move around due to 'magic' or has an internal skeleton in addition to and exoskeleton. We see no evidence of the first or last option in the resources, so we'll just have to consider them magical in some form.

Super Sentai

Kurasuniigo of 5000°C

A major influence on the DBK's design is the Super Sentai genre of shows, of which Adam is the age to have grown up with them being shown on American TV. This is a massive Japanese superhero franchise that not only has its own huge history but also famously provided the combat footage for the Power Rangers. I'll leave you with the Super Sentai wiki page so you can see just how many shows and episodes there are in this series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sentai).

The DBK design very much echoes this, and it could easily be seen to be 'a man in a rubber suit' – one day if the KDM fandom becomes large enough to support a lot of cosplayers, we'll probably see this look recreated in a costume. Considering that there are already quite a few celebrities who have expressed a love for the game (such as Brad Arnold and 3 Doors Down who says that the song “When I'm Gone” is a reference to Kingdom Death) and the Kingdom Death Monsters have appeared in some Critical Role episodes, it seems just inevitable that it'll break into a more mainstream form of consciousness with time.  Links for your reading on this are at the bottom of this article. I would thoroughly recommend you watch the episode for Travis and Ashley's reaction to The Gorm in particular.

Basketball, Pinball/Bowling and other sports

One couldn't be an American Scarab Beetle without partaking in an American sport, because scarab beetles push a roundish dung ball with their rear legs and feet, this means that the obvious choice would be Association Football (soccer for those of you who are not enlightened). But that's not really a thing in the US, so instead we have heavy basketball references, with the DBK performing many basketball related moves such as moving the ball around itself in a circle and even slam dunking survivors with its trap.

It also demonstrates a bit of ten pin bowling and pinball mechanics with its ball (plus the old classic 'giant ball trap' trope. So its very much a hodgepodge of American past times – you can even see Dodge Ball in the way that it hurls its ball at a survivor when it has the opportunity. I'm no expert on ball based sports as my preference has always been towards martial ones (fencing, kung fu etc) and dance (I love pinball though, one of my old housemates in the UK owned a Creature from the Black Lagoon pinball table) – so I won't dive into this in massive detail here, but I'm sure that you can find a lot of different sports referenced.

I do however lament there isn't a version of the DBK which performs soccer moves with a burning sun/fireball. It is however a complicated monster to program, it's very easy to see why there are no variant versions of it – because most conceivable designs involving a ball tends to converge around what the DBK already does (or end up with it endlessly chasing the ball, or kicking it once and then ignoring it). I do have ideas, but I'm not making custom content for KDM until we at least get the Gambler's Chest out – I refuse to be the life support for this game's content right now, that's Adam's job.

Knights

This is actually a lore reference, so we'll deal with that there, because the while the DBKs do have the Knight title and they take on the appearance of an armored warrior with a sword, this is because of their relationship with the Abyssal Woods elemental protectors, the Flower Knights. 

The Lore Portion

The folklore of the Dung Beetle Knight's origin is a rather sweet and satisfying tale:

“There once was a lowly beetle that was hopelessly attracted to Phoenix droppings. Their strange qualities evolved the beetle rapidly. One day, the Phoenix migrated to a sacred grove and the beetle's food came under the fierce protection of a Flower Knight. The beetle emulated the knight in order to reach its meals without incurring the guardian's wrath.”

The alternative text from the resin version of the model is:

“Once, a species of beetle became intoxicated by the rare enzymes found in Phoenix droppings. This delicacy was impossible to reach because the Phoenix's domain was fiercely guarded by the Flower Knight and the beetles presented a threat to the natural balance the Flower Knight protects. Over countless generations, the insects evolved into the likeness of a hulking knight to avoid the Flower Knight which sees no threat from feeble humans. Clever and hungry, it savagely hunts for nourishment to fill its massive ball, which also serves as a repulsive weapon.

Resourceful and hungry, this cunning species has evolved a knight's shape to fool both predators and prey. It rolls a massive resin ball formed from spit used to collect rare faeces for its meals.”

This is a very consistent and likely true piece of folklore because it matches a bunch of other things we also know about the DBK. It builds tunnels underneath its territory for growing a garden, they universally engrave their resin balls with the face of the Phoenix and one survivor in the Flower Knight's opening story even tells of how a DBK rolled her all the way to a Flower Knight's realm.

There, of course, a few places where things have some discrepancies, the concept that the DBK turning into a 'human' shape because the Flower Knights see no threat from them doesn't really line up with how the flower knights behave – but this is consistent for the unreliable narrator thread that runs through all of the folk lore stories in the game.

That said, this is a relatively consistent concept for how the DBKs ended up growing into the shape they have, accelerated by time warping properties that the phoenix's physiology infuses into its effluence, they have experienced a rapid evolution that has pushed them not so much towards a human form, but the form that resembles what has been referred to as 'Elemental Knights' (Gold Smoke Knight, Flower Knight). That's all very consistent and hand waving on the time properties aside, it has a logic you can follow.

Behaviours

As one can see from the lore text in the previous section, the main goal of the DBK is in line with that of its inspiration, it seeks waste matter, which it will store in its ball before taking that back to its lair for consumption. We don't have a clear idea what DBK lairs look like in full, but we do know that they are underground as they can be explored during the 'spelunking of death' showdown aftermath event. The artwork in this event shows more information than the event itself dows, we see plants growing (specifically Vampiric Artichokes) and bodies of other survivors, we also know that older balls will be abandoned down here. Given that the DBKs are invertebrates they will grow by shedding their outer shell layer when it gets too small for them – so logically they would also have older resin balls they've made and abandoned when they can use larger ones. This is one of two reasons why the resin balls are found empty and abandoned in non-DBK showdowns (the other being the death of its owner).

It's not really clear what the secret entrance is, it seems that there is a fairly significant chance of finding this secret entrance after every DBK showdown (40% survivor per DBK fight), so it's a very common thing, which leads to the idea that the DBKs themselves build these in order to protect their treasure, but the treasure itself is the Hidden Crimson Jewel (a reference to King Crimson from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure both in name and ability) or an experience where you gain up to 3 fighting arts of your choice for the survivor who makes both trials. It's still a bit of a mystery if all of this is specific to DBKs, their martial prowess and ability to craft or if it's part of the older civilisations that are now buried like Old New York is under New New York.

From other pieces of lore, we do know that the DBKs are sentient and capable of language, but they have not formed a civilisation because of their lone nature. The interior of the DBK balls is filled with art, runes and scripture, we see this both in the art for the Flower Knight introduction and in this currently unusued piece of art by the wonderful KDM contract artist Lorinda Tomko (https://ensoul.artstation.com/projects/QER4l). It's Lorinda's wonderful work which graces the gear cards a lot of the time. You'll see a few pieces in the link above that show more of the Abyssal Woods, it's her art that got me to back the second campaign – I want to see more of how she portrays the Abyssal Woods and its denizens.

One can only hope that given the DBK's involvement with the Abyssal Woods campaign, that we learn more about one of KDM's most interesting and inspiring creatures when that finally comes out. I hope we get to learn more about the flat, red faced animals that tend to be around the DBK's art.

We also know from various pieces of lore and mechanics the following things about the DBKs. They are extraordinarily long lived, with a lifespan of hundreds of lantern years (Century Carapace) and as they get older, they continue to grow.

We also know from the Secret Meeting story event in the DBK expansion that not only are DBKs capable of communicating with each other, but they can learn other languages, such as the tongue spoken by Lantern Survivors (learned from Watchers), Dragon Survivors (learned from the Tyrant) and Sun Survivors (learned from the Sun). It's an unusual story in that it has actual dialogue between the two individuals (the young boy and The Old Master – TOM).

It's also a rather wonderful story, an absolutely ancient DBK sparks up a friendship with a young survivor from your settlement because playing with the youth reminds them of good times in the past of their their own long, long life. It also calls the rainbow poop from the Phoenix as 'sacred to my kind'. It also shows that DBKs may suffer from mental degradation when they reach a significant age, as something akin to Alzheimer's or dementia takes TOM's sentience from them and leaves just the husk of the creature behind, standing, waiting on the edge of the settlement for a final warrior's death.

I'd speculate that TOM is the Beetle Baron in the upcoming People of the Ball campaign we're getting in Campaigns of Death. The model is based on the artwork from the Secret Meeting event and a DBK that can speak in the same tongue as survivors would suggest that it's one who has had contact with survivors in the past. So, I'd like to speculate that TOMs are Beetle Barons who have wiped out their own survivors due to the final confrontation between them and their people, and are now lost, seeking to remember the good times before their instincts took over and they slew those dearest to them. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out when we get to see Campaigns of Death. Gosh there's so many things I'm excited about that are all located after the Gambler's Chest release.

Next time we're going to dive into the rewards for the DBK, because it's always best to understand why you'd fight this powerful, awesome monster before learning about how to do so.

Links:

3 Doors Down: https://www.boardgameauthority.com/confirmed-3-doors-down-loves-kingdom-death/

When I'm Gone: https://youtu.be/pFq1eT9tMJ4

Critical Role: https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/1334762581576142848

Matthew Mercer's pieces: https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/1337902684033019905

The episode where the Gorm is described (timestamped): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcwtwrI1-dc&t=16115s

The episode where the Gorm fight happens: https://youtu.be/xAQy-ompDc4

If you're ever curious what I think a DBK talking sounds like, this is what fits for me: https://smite.fandom.com/wiki/Khepri_voicelines 

Note: The Gorm represents a different creature in the episode, and interestingly enough Matt mentions that the Gorm is one of the reasons he bought into the game. Same here, in fact I got my Gorm before any other part of the game arrived!