There's a bug somewhere with faction camp eating and drinking which was triggering an infinite loop for NPCs. This loop prevented NPCs from actually eating and drinking when it triggered, and if you were late enough in the game, they'd start starving to death. I'm still tracking the loop issue down, but for now I've decided to disable NPC needs for all NPCs who are not in the player's faction. This should handle any issues they were having. Your own people still need food and water.
I was working on cleaning some other stuff up, so in addition, diving beetles and armored/matriarch centipedes are now slightly smaller. Hooray for non sequitors!