Week 3 Planetary Conquest - Only the Strong Survive on CV Beta 4

The fourth planet from the star Canis Veninati Beta was ripe for transformation. The TRILAT had claimed it from Iron Republic forces and have set it forth as a testing site for new lifeforms. This will be true test of the staying power of new engineered species. Its soil is rich, and its skies healthy and blue.
Open to MichaelHerbertGilmour, Oleifera, IllusiveMD, Lt. Ryuk, and ViggotheKasanthian on the TRILAT side.
Open to Mor'aye'ahn & Lil'aye'ahn and any players they invite to join.

The nearby wormhole is giving off temporal radiation resulting in rapid growth on the planet. A week corresponds to a year of growth elsewhere. A truly auspicious testing ground for new plant-based, fungus-based, or other slow-growth based species which can't just be rapidly cloned to the end age.

Describe the species you are depositing for dominance and explain how it will achieve that dominance. The grand prize for this mission will be control of CV Beta 4. There will be other rewards for unique new lifeforms.

The small pod was innocuous enough. Launched from a small Builder-crewed ship, it plummeted towards the main continent. Upon entering the lower atmosphere, it burst into hundred of tiny fragments. Each peanut-sized fragment was equppied with a feathery stele, catching the wind to ride a multitude of air currents. The cloud of particles slowly dispersed over the main continent, slowly coming to rest on the moist, rich soil. A few seconds passed as the capsules sucked in surrounding water, swelling until a tiny crack appeared in one end. A tiny radicle snaked forth, pushing aside soil particles as it extended deep into the ground. Peeping out from where the tiny root had emerged, a minuscule green shoot tasted the air. It slowly unfurled two tiny leaves, xylem and phloem slowly beginning to pulse. The shell of the capsule glowed slightly, and at the opposite end a small green light began to blink in time with the plantlet's sap beat. Far above the surface of the planet, a viewscreen aboard the ship began to fill with tiny blinking green dots.

"Success, friends. Someday, there shall be more. More to be nutured and taught." Oleifera watched a duplicate veiwscreen on Zahaz. It was pleased that over 70% of the seeds had implanted. Once they had reached a certain height, they would be visited, and begin the Opening - the rite of bringing-forth of conciousness, and then the teaching of choate creation. Oleifera was hopeful that the Builders would assist it in such an endeavor. For now, the seed shell would sustain the children with basic choates. Length of time to maturity was unknown - Oleifera hoped that the temporal radiation would reduce time to consciousness to a matter of weeks, instead of dozens of years. Sensitive recording devices would log the health and safety of the infant Oleifera-clones. Even though no breeding had yet taken place, the Oleifera had done its best to package a sampling of its own genetic material in each seed. Someday the plantlets would share information between each other during their journeying, as Oleifera had once done on its homeworld. It wasn't perfect... but it was a start.

As he rode the lift the comms went off just above the number pad "Commander Mor'aye'ahn sir he bridge is still awaiting orders."

With an annoyed sigh a lone finger pressed the button to respond "Alert the rest of our fleet, we head to CV Beta 4." He took his finger off of the button for a second and then a very important thought came about "Broadcast our intentions of being non-agressive, all channels.

"Aye sir!"

The silence of the comms said that for afew moments that his crew were working well enough without him, the remaining minute of the trip to the lower levels was uneventful. The walk from the lift doors to the research bay was also quiet as only scientists went down to these levels and even then they were all inside, where he intended to go. Once inside the white lights and the sounds of rattling cages greeted him first, followed by the synthesized voice of a small white-painted SUARM. "SIR" was the first words to be processed.

"Ziggiz how are our beauties coming along. I'm hoping that the genetic material has not decayed from the merger." His eyes were alight like an earther child during the winter holidays. One day he would actually have to sit down and ask someone the reason behind the fat man in the red suit.

"Oh yes the genetic samples show no signs of abnormal decay, they are indeed within optimal limits!" The sounds of excitement was easy to pick up from the artificial voice box.

"And how big have they grown?"

"Oh, well that is the problem I wished to discuss with you sir. There is no sign to show how big these plant-creatures will grow as once they reach the size of a t'soga the smaller ones gang up and try to eat the bigger ones. We have tried seperating them but it's hard without breeching containment!"

Problems were always that... problems. But this one was minor. "So the small ones are compelled to eat the big ones as opposed to eating the food?"

"No sir. It is just that food is in such short supply once they have reached stage 2. And with the reproductive rates even if we were to isolate a single life form the spores would germinate in the slough produced by the parent life form and then once they reached maturation they would begin eating anything that they can get their teeth into... There just isn't enough food for them in this contained state."

A smile went wide on Mor'aye'ahn's face. "So containment is the issue, very well. Will there be enough of this specices to transplant once we reach Canis Veninati Beta?"

Looking at the containment pens the robotic life form lifted up his arms and let them clang back to his sides "Sir, this species is the most adaptable and agressive species of plant, fungal, or animal life that our files have on record. Maybe because it has the genetic material of all three but that is neither here nor there." He looked back at the cages briefly "If a planet supports life then this species will thrive!"

---

The plant species described above is dubbed the Sporekint as it rolls off the tongue alot easier than Floral Faunal amalgamate life form species a70e6. Simply put they are eaters; grown from seeds the size of a robins egg they grow and emerge as mouse sized creatures that can consume more than twenty times their body weight in organic material every day. Given an ample supply of food their growth rates are extremely fast taking them from the size of a mouse to the size of a mastiff on steroids within the matter of five days. And still given enough food and area to roam they can grow even larger however the larger they grow the less aggressive they become. It can be surmised that given enough time a sporekint can grow 1-1/2 times the size of a bull elephant, however in captivity they never reach this size as the smaller generations eat them before reaching such an amazing mass.

The smaller a sporekint is the more numbers you will see as they will literally swarm a target. In it's second stage they act more like packs hunting for easy meals. And they will eat any organic material when needed but prefer the nutrients found in animal species, some SUARM scientists believe it is genetic memories of the animals used in this species creation.

A biproduct of this species as it ages is a natural molt that will fall off the body in a wet green mass. It is not dead just outgrown and often contains a few spores to be germinated. If no spores are present the sloughage will grow and spread like a mold or moss to be later consumed in times of food shortage.

Stage 1 Sporekint contain one spore at a time, stage 2 contains six to twelve and will drop them off regularly whilst new regrow, stage three could contain anywhere from three to five dozen but as stated above none have survived long enough to tell.

A sporekint is not above attacking inorganic prey but upon the first or second bite they will realize that it is not prey and typically move on until encountered later on and then the process will continue.

"Only a single species?" the scientist mused to himself, his vast mind thrumming with possibilities, "such a stifling condition." He would have much, much preferred a situation where only a certain amount of biomass could be brought to the planet, for that was where he excelled. Nothing could bring forth so much from so little as his creations, but it just wasn't to be. No matter; he could still make due.

One of the most wonderful advantages of his creations were both their efficiency in terms of time and their efficiency in terms of energy, two limitations that seemed to be meaningless on this particular world. For one who has spent most his time trying to bring life to words without even an atmosphere, with mostly silicon oxides as solid substrates, CV Beta 4 presented a rather odd situation to him. Instinctively, he decided to bring his world to his 'opponents;' the goal would be to exhaust or otherwise consume as many available nutrients as possible as quickly as possible. His working model would be the 'algal bloom,' a condition in which fast growth flooded the area with waste metabolites and toxins, as well as depriving it of vital nutrients. Such conditions would often occur in places of very high nutrient density, as he saw in this new world. Once nutrients got less dense, fast evolutionary processes would render his fungi resistant to being consumed, and should allow for slow-growth and complete takeover.

This would be a preliminary victory condition; remove all nutrients from the area and sequester them in unavailable biomass. As such, a fast-spreading monolayer would be the most volume-efficient manner of doing this, both covering the planet surface as well as anything growing on it. It could grow deep into the earth and metabolize as quickly as possible, generating fruiting bodies that would continue the process. This is when Michael's particular areas of expertise would begin.

His single species would contain several separate sets of genetic information, and over time some of them would be lost and others would be gained, distributing them stochasticly through the population. This process is found in many 'lower' organisms, simply due to that fact that they require a fair bit less genetic 'precision' than higher organisms. They have been designed so that the products of each combination of discrete sets of genetic material will be its own unique organism, well suited toward generating an ecosystem on CV Beta 4. The original fungus would have the vast majority of this information silenced, until conditions are right.

A quick overview of the three most important pieces of his design:

1) The initial colonization will be conducted by a mat-forming fungus. It will grow in long sheets, trying to cover as much surface area as possible. The purpose of this is to not only increase surface area for absorbing light, but also to smother other lifeforms, inoculating them from the outside conditions. This should lead to nutrient starvation and death. Small fruiting bodies are used to spread the fungus across the planet, but a large portion of its growth will be through hyphae. Because they are very, very simple, these mats tend to grow with extreme speed. Furthermore, they also grow /downward,/ making them very difficult to get rid of completely.

2) Once fungal biomass density has reached a certain level, genetic diversity programming will kick in and additional structures will be formed. Amongst the most important of these are very similar to those that form the networks found on Habitat Two. Thick, corded hyphae will consist of the bulk of its biomass, and the network itself will be spotted with large, tall structures. These structures are fruiting bodies, designed for high surface area in order to spread spores over a large area. They would look very much like sprays of flowers, though each 'flower' would be a series of feathery threads, each continuously making new spores. The purpose of the network is to not only make a structure significantly more resistant to transient stresses, but to also spur mutation in the surrounding fungi in the event of threats. Damage to the fungal biome releases stress signals from the towers, which induces the expression of small, randomly generated organic molecules. Such molecules are commonly used as defense mechanisms, and will quickly become potent toxins. Those fungi synthesizing compounds that successfully hold off threats are then induced to grow further, and their genetic information is spread through these large towers. In this way, a large portion of the network can then be inoculated against threats. Even as such threats are able to generate resistance, assuming that they can, the network will be able to quickly mutate those toxins into something useful once more. In time, even the air should be choked with dangerous spores and chemicals, making invasion difficult.

3) 'Housekeeping' fungi will be generated to integrate nonfunctioning or poorly functioning biomass into itself, which is then replenished into the network. These are some of the only mobile elements that will be integrated into this specific colonization attempt. Fungi that are unable to properly maintain themselves will be unable to hold off the housekeeping fungi, and as such will be consumed. Furthermore, invading species will not have the proper external protein coats, and will not be recognized as a healthy part of the network. As such, they will also be attacked and presumably integrated. This particular set of fungi are some of the most diverse, simply because they must be in order to properly perform all their tasks. They express a number of useful physiological features, though predominantly they use appressorium in order to deal with non-self organisms. The move much like slime-molds, slowly spreading across the fungal network and beyond. Generally speaking however, they tend to stick to the more humid and nutrient-rich fungal beds.

This explains the three general manifestations of this particular species, however Michael fully expects more to arise- indeed, the accelerated passage of time should allow for a dramatic increase in evolutionary rate. The high initial genetic diversity is coupled to a number of ways to increase the mutation rate, which should allow for diverse new structures to form. While the general organization should remain somewhat similar, in the sense that all the above roles will be filled, new manifestations of his designs are expected to bridge some of the gaps between each general niche. Indeed, having this planet as a test-bed for new genetic computing concepts is in the forefront of Michael's mind, which is why he's putting effort toward this project's success. Additionally, symbiotic interaction between each of these different species will also start to produce interesting and varied forms... but exploration of such events is an evolutionary process. Of course, Michael will be around to coax the most interesting of these designs into further prominence.

Depending on the 'rules' of this competition, Michael's initial colonization may take any one of several forms. Assuming only a somewhat 'small' amount of biomass is allowed, he will take one of the praetorian fighters under his command, fill it with spores, and fly it over the planet slowly releasing them to get optimal coverage. If larger quantities are allowed, he will simply use his teleportation relays to continually release spores throughout the planetary atmosphere for as long as he is allowed.

Michael's eventual plan for this planet is to use it to finally complete the Habitat project's major goal: complete terraforming of a single planetary body. At this point, in Michael's mind, 'complete terraforming' means integration of every last atom into the fungal network. With that complete, the planet will be able to start scavenging additional mass from surrounding asteroids, planets, and hopefully the star itself.

Viggo trying to provide safe passage and present a new hunting/breeding grounds for the kuliek nightmares, will load up a litter into the cargo hold of the the star frieghter, it should be a nice tranquil voyage into this new habitat.
A third of the apprentices are coming along this way as well. They have packed materials to build a subterranian keep and court yard. They have been working at the forges to prepare lock down systems and keep out invaders. A flesh worm moat with surround the keep, and keep out those that wish to enter this subterranian kingdom.

The harder part is where to decide to locate and how. Using 5 star fighters, with raw asteroid materials in tow the path will be made. In a nice part of the terraform, possibly in a mountainside, (even towards an enemy camp if it is the way of prime land) the start fighters will open up with their weapons. They will release the tow connectors, and ride the raw material as wll as their ships(4 of the 5) to create a massive crater to begin this society. The pilots will Shadow walk, into the 5th ship, and avoid harms way. THey will look to regroup and meet up with Viggo and the freighter upon arrival. The area will be fortified with Light warding, and looked at as a safe haven for nightmare kind.
Let the breeding continue!
(occ: think underground Isengard)