The Formians [Monster Thursday]

This week, we are looking at an ancient enemy that ran rampant in 3e/3.5e. The formians are ant-centaurs that are very reminiscent of the movie Starship Troopers and the bugs they must kill. Something about bugs just makes mankind want to destroy them. - Stephen

Way back in 2e, the formians were a... lovable? group of ant-centaur-things, though not really. Due to having a waist, unlike a regular ant, they could actually just twist their body so their head and thorax were upright. They were on Arcadia, and to be perfectly frank... didn't do much but make beautiful cities. 

And then, 3e came and turned them into a horrifying force who were going to destroy the worlds and!... oh, just... just Mechanus. Huh. 

To be fair, there were mentions of formians in Acheron and other places, and it was implied they'd be really bad to get on your own plane, but their bite didn't seem to be that dangerous, at least lore-wise. Regardless, by the time 3e came to an end, we'd never hear of the formians again, from WotC at least, but for those who went on to Pathfinder, you could find them with a new coat of paint. 

Instead of being planar outsiders, they are simply from other worlds. They would create massive rocks, fill it with eggs, warriors, myrmarchs and a queen, then throw some mumbo-jumbo magic on it and sling it out into space... hopefully it hits a planet and the currently stasis-formians will wake up and began colonizing the planet in the name of the formians.... this sounds very familiar.....

Jumping into Starfinder, they are still around and you can actually play as a formian! They are under the control of an arch queen that controls all the hive cities on their planet. Sadly, they seemed to have stopped throwing extra queens into outer space, hoping against hope that they'll land into a habitable planet and not simply just the cold vacuum of space for all eternity. 

Image of Formians in 2e
Image of Formians in 3e
Image of Formians in Pathfinder
Image of Formians in Starfinder