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Water worlds

Blue Ghost

Blue Ghost

SOC-14 5K
Knight
So I went to the California Academy of Sciences a few weeks back, and was really astounded by the new Steinhart aquarium. Really a remarkable piece of museum engineering; all kinds of fish in crystal clear water swiming in environments that are very much dupllicates of coral reefs. Incredible stuff.

A thought occured to me, "fish" as we know them, would probably not be the only kingdom of life, nor even perhaps the dominant form, living under the waves.

Any speculation as to what might be down there?

I ask for some brawinstorming because I'm brewing up a Sternmetal Mining adventure that deals with scraping precious metals from the sea floor, their interaction with the biosphere and so forth.
 
Blue Ghost said:
Any speculation as to what might be down there?
Click to expand...
Not a species per se, but an idea for a kingdom/class.
Evolution took a different step, and underwater life is gill-less. The creatures developed an internal electrolysis system to crack water into hydrogen (for floatation) and oxygen (for respiration).
Further thought (which might have some bearing on your adventure) - perhaps this internal electric system also has some 'anodizing' effect on the creatures skin / shell. If you're looking for gold, you want the 'space lobsters', 'space tuna' gets you more platinum.
 
DeltaX15 said:
Not a species per se, but an idea for a kingdom/class.
Evolution took a different step, and underwater life is gill-less. The creatures developed an internal electrolysis system to crack water into hydrogen (for floatation) and oxygen (for respiration).
Further thought (which might have some bearing on your adventure) - perhaps this internal electric system also has some 'anodizing' effect on the creatures skin / shell. If you're looking for gold, you want the 'space lobsters', 'space tuna' gets you more platinum.
Click to expand...

Wow, that gives bloating or having a gas a whole new look (danger).

Don't eat that or it will give you gas and then you will float away into the empty bluiness of space. (from the view of the animals that is. :) )

Dave Chase
 
We already have a highly-evolved form of non-fish life right here... cephalopods (octopii, squids, etc).

Then there are the less-evolved forms... jellyfish, etc.
 
Coral 'reefs' that are actually the shell of some large creature.

Island scale algae like animals - float on the surface, but with huge nutrient/fauna gathering fronds.

Giant, gas filled 'avians' that flatten when underwater and expand (outer edges in) to rapidly surface and then take flight (a use for the hydrogen side of the DeltaX15's electrolysis organisms...). Pretty interesting if one is over one when it decides to lift...
 
The Galapagos Shark expels its stomach inside out through its mouth to get rid of something it may have eaten but can't digest - then "swallows" its stomach back into its proper place.

If you startle one, a sea cucumber will rip a hole in its body and expel a webbed mass of tissue that is part of its digestive and respiratory system. Or it does the same thing (depending on species) by squirting it out its anus. The mass envelops the predator and allows the sea cucumber to escape. It regrows the lost organs. Some will also explode a special organ at the same time that fills the water around the sticky webbed mass of guts with a venom so toxic it will kill everything within approx 60cm of the animal. And once again, the sea cucumber gets away. Some of them also eat by expelling out their stomach over their prey and then pulling the rest of their body back over the stomach.

So i can see some interesting encounters with larger versions of those two on some water world. In the first some poor diver might get swallowed and then spit out after his armored deep-diving suit wouldn't digest enough - but maybe enough to give the diver some fits while trying to figure out how to get out of a giant shark-thing's gut.

In the second some poor guy might poke the wrong critter and then have it explode it's sticky guts all over him - and then maybe decide to start dragging him off to eat later. Like a trapper strategy combined with a defensive one....hmmmmmm......I should write that one up......
 
How about something like a brittle starfish? Those are actually quite mobile and clever. Make one that is well camoflauged and has a cleptomanic streak for shiny things.....
 
FreeTrav said:
Ooo! Another most-likely-well-thought-out-and-plausible beastie for Less Dangerous Game... and are there any more Scott-n-Sarah pairings in the offing?
Click to expand...

Yes....but I can only break down one wall at a time, and the biggest one of all will be my divorce and custody hearing on the 29th. It weighs heavily on mine and my girls' minds, and makes it very hard to concentrate on creative, fun things. Plus classes, the ever-diminishing hope of employment, and my deteriorating health related to old injuries. But the divorce is the big one.

Once past that we'll start finishing things we started last summer over the course of this one: a new scoutship type (with plans) and it's eccentric crew of 3, the glider-wolves, grass mantas and Tick-Tocks of the planet (IMTU) Victoria, finish a major alien race, Sarah has some new beastie she's been drawing lately, finish my epic labor-of-love battle dress and drop troop mega article that's a supplement all its own......and now this critter will be added to the pile. Not to mention the expanding adventures of Scout Victoria Challenger. All hammering at that wall to get out.

So since this is the first time in nearly a year that I've contributed anything I'll have plenty after the end of the month, I promise. Me and Sarah both. Just gotta get past next Friday with good news.
 
Enoki said:
How about something like a brittle starfish? Those are actually quite mobile and clever. Make one that is well camoflauged and has a cleptomanic streak for shiny things.....
Click to expand...

Hey! That sounds like a plausible ancestor for the Hivers! Maybe a primitive off-shoot that could spawn an adventure seed that explodes into a campaign when the Hivers find out some lost tribe escaped some genocidal effort in the past.
 
How about some creature on the very, very bottom of a deep, deep sea that floats tentacles hundreds of feet up to grab submersables and drag them down past crush depth?
 
How about a creature like a primitive jellyfish. It has tendrils that it used to stun food with bioelectricity. Then as it evolved it used these tendrils as primitive sensors and later for a sort of communication. Later these creatures evolved into a hive mind sort of thing with a lot of ever-changing connections so that all the oceans of the world are one huge hive-mind.

Normally this mind is fairly small composed of a nucleous of slowly changing creatures. The mind thinks slowly in this state and it isn't vey bright. However when danger comes to it, the central mind releases a pheromone into the water attracting more creatures, and with each new creature becomes more intelligent, though still fairly slow by normal standards. The Mind has survived several ice ages, a few natural global warming cycles, a solare flare, and a few evolved preditor attacks. It learned during the first ice age that it needed a more constant memory, so it forced the evolution of a deep-sea mollusk into sort of an organic flash drive. This way even is most of the components of the mind die off or disperse the mind regains continuity once enough of it comes together to attract the very long lived mollusks.

Basically the Mind fully comes together when something happens to effect its survival, such as an undersea mining operation. It can react with a large number of options including a large psionic blast, by effecting weather, or by creating a pathenogen against the intruder. Remember, the more the Mind feels threatened, the larger and smarter it gets, though it still will think more slowly than a human mind, it will survive almost any attack and learn from its defeat.
 
DangerousThing said:
How about a creature like a primitive jellyfish. It has tendrils that it used to stun food with bioelectricity. Then as it evolved it used these tendrils as primitive sensors and later for a sort of communication. Later these creatures evolved into a hive mind sort of thing with a lot of ever-changing connections so that all the oceans of the world are one huge hive-mind.

Normally this mind is fairly small composed of a nucleous of slowly changing creatures. The mind thinks slowly in this state and it isn't vey bright. However when danger comes to it, the central mind releases a pheromone into the water attracting more creatures, and with each new creature becomes more intelligent, though still fairly slow by normal standards. The Mind has survived several ice ages, a few natural global warming cycles, a solare flare, and a few evolved preditor attacks. It learned during the first ice age that it needed a more constant memory, so it forced the evolution of a deep-sea mollusk into sort of an organic flash drive. This way even is most of the components of the mind die off or disperse the mind regains continuity once enough of it comes together to attract the very long lived mollusks.

Basically the Mind fully comes together when something happens to effect its survival, such as an undersea mining operation. It can react with a large number of options including a large psionic blast, by effecting weather, or by creating a pathenogen against the intruder. Remember, the more the Mind feels threatened, the larger and smarter it gets, though it still will think more slowly than a human mind, it will survive almost any attack and learn from its defeat.
Click to expand...

Flumphs in Traveller?
:D

{edit: left out the "h"}
 
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Typing....typing...typing.......sketch...sketch...typing...typing....argue with 12 year old about color of fur.....typing......
 
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