Lexicon:Modern/Ryda

Ryda
Stage	Modern CLT
Pronunciation	/ˈɾɪ.da/
Part of speech	Noun
Etymology	from Middle Ridē, from Proto rid
Related words	Naevla, Chirska, Graen

Ryda — the swarming crop pest. Strips a standing field in a day.

Notes

Arrives without warning in numbers nothing can eat through, takes everything green, and moves on. A field caught by a Ryda swarm is not damaged; it is gone.

Nothing kills them at that scale and nothing ever has. What works is Naevla, planted in strips through every field in the Known World, which they will not touch and will not cross. A field in strips loses the strips’ width of ground and keeps the rest, and every farmer plants that way because every farmer’s father did.

Engineered pre-Fall to destroy an enemy’s standing crop, as the Chirska was made to destroy their stores.