In the BeetlePunk universe, humans are tiny and have domesticated a wide menagerie of beetles and other invertebrates: Beetles are the most common mounts, carrying on their backs everything from wagons and carriages to construction cranes and whole markets.  Ants can serve as mounts for individual riders, or swarms of pack animals carrying many times their weight. Bees and wasps produce staples like honey, wax, and pollen, while serving as flying mounts and pollinators of a city’s gardens. Isopods carry riders on long treks through the leaf litter of the forest floor.

Most major human cities are tree-trunk cities built vertically along trees to offer protection from wild insects and bands of raiders along the forest floor. Shelf fungi are grown as foundations on tree trunks, with homes and shops built on top of the fungi. Pheromoneries are where artificial pheromones are produced, and are some of the most important buildings in each tree-city-without these pheromones, control over domesticated insects would fade.  Beetleries are stables where beetles and other insects are trained and equipped with wagons or saddles. Between cities, the forest floor is a wide wilderness full of isolated settlements, dangerous wild insects, and untold mysteries.