[Ixe]

This was all my personal leanings anyway and you provide some compelling motivations. To be clear, the hivelords only heal when cracking open a specific unit (and even then only their own) and not when they eat any old thing.

I don't think Life Drain type powers should be purely in the purview of vampires (I have a unit in SoV right now who has a life draining sword). I do think that there needs to be some exceptional circumstances beyond just normal biological function. Shelob didn't Life Drain Frodo. It's not like her wounds were magically healing while sucked away at him. This could be a magic spider that does that sort of thing but then I thought it felt a little weird for Aquilla (though who knows what sipping from a Wellspring will do to one of them).