When encountering a creature, the fae sprite would sink into it, taking over its mind and acting as a puppeteer. Individually, the drones themselves weren’t intelligent, or even self-aware. I later discovered that they took on the properties of their host’s mind. A sprite controlling a badger would have the awareness and intelligence of a badger. However, as we tragically discovered later, a sprite possessing a pony would be capable of both speech and deadly reasoning. In addition, with or without a host, their queens were viciously cunning, though not nearly as intelligent as the average pony. 