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[Aseaheru]

heres a idea: eventually make it so that you can absorb o2 from water thru your skin. so find a fish and get gills.

[Jetman123]

Again, we would not survive the metamorphosis process. Get back to land first. It's useless to talk about mutations that will help us in this particular situation. We need to evolve before we get into trouble and not during it.

[Imp]

If the centipede can't swim, the adventure is already over.

Not necessarily right.  If we cannot swim and do not float, we should be perfectly fine.  We sink to the bottom and run along that bottom to the water edge.  There's various creatures and armadillos which can swim, but also often choose to walk along the bottom, and some aquatic creatures like older hippos and almost every type of ocean crab which cannot swim but very much can walk and run along the bottom.

If we cannot swim and do float, we may need to think much harder to find a way back to shore.  The most urgent issue is just breathing, and as long as we are floating we can breathe.

You've already put yourselves in an extremely dangerous situation by attacking the Welif and not simply letting it carry you to new sources of food. With luck, you haven't killed yourselves already - get out of there.

Our ride started to submerge as it left shore, so simply riding it to whereever its next destination was does not gaurentee any form of safety for us.  Additionally, it itself is a hair triggered ambush predator, and there's no gaurentee that we could have safely left the creature by simply moving away - a danger that we considered when we decided to stay longer and feed, attempting to cause the creature maximal damage in minimal time.

We do need to get back to the surface.  We were not necessarily stupid to submerge, with or without spiracles - http://thedragonflywoman.com/2012/05/21/breathing-underwater/.  Insects can and do survive submersion for time periods.

Also, your number one evolutionary priority should be to get a dedicated stomach, mouth and digestive tract. That's why your "metabolic efficiency" is still low - you're digesting inefficiently through the skin on your underside..

We already have that, and personally I think it is a bit redundant.  It was one of the first things we evolved, and we've carried it with us, mostly unused, ever since.

Current Organs
Omnivorous Digestive Tract (Sewer Mouse): Simple digestive system with an interestingly large-for-an-omnivore caecum and several organs for increased digestion of food matter..

After that, you need tougher skin. A single scratch to your vulnerable underside will kill you - you won't survive contact with a rat that knows you're there. You cannot hunt while in that vulnerable condition.

Debatable - our ability to digest through our skin is a very powerful tool, and weapon.  We've already improved our ability to digest through our skin once, and it's clear it will take a lot of evolution points - but it's possible.  Extremely rapid digestion is a VERY effective defense.

We can and have been hunting despite being vulnerable.

Our very early evolution of hair was an attempt to toughen our skin.

Now that we have the welif, more toughening may be possible - but I lean very strongly on the 'preserve our digestive skin' value.  I agree totally with stronger digestive skin and think most will agree that's logical - but it may be VERY far down our list of priorities.

We have to consider each need of the moment, and what good options we have.  If we have a poor defensive choice and a good something else choice, why pick the bad defense?  Later we'll have a better defensive choice, we'll waste the time and evo to rechange, and we still wouldn't have the good something else choice.  Better to do what we must then do what we can do well, while working towards having more great choices.

Once you have a mouth, you can make it an appendage that can cause damage. Then we can actually fight.

We've already got a mouth, it's a 'grinder', and it's on an extension of our body most recently refered to as our 'tail'.  We don't really have a head, and our grinder happened not to fit into the welif's opening that we used.  Our grinder happened to be useless against the welif's superior hide, something the creature is renown for being extremely good at - having a very strong hide.  That doesn't mean that our grinder is useless overall, or that we no longer need our digestive skin.  We can already fight and have.


As for your hopes for the future, Jetman, I urge us to keep our non-immediate future open.  We don't know what is about to occur that will force us to drop our future plans - however I especially disagree with our need for 'reproductive organs'.  We have no reason to believe we could control our 'children' if we can in fact produce any.  We are of a species that appears capable of 'eating everything organic' - There is no reason to believe we are innately cooperative or even possess a means to communicate with other members of our own species in any way prior to a long period of having successfully consumed the right things and a lot of additional organics to be able to evolve those methods.  Everything our young eat we cannot eat - and our kid(s) may well try to eat us.

As to our lack of specialized organs and our need for those.... that's actually an assumption.  We handled the 'nasty chemicals' from our Fermroot meal just fine.  We actually do not know much about our circulation, how we break down molecules we are digesting or which could harm us - we may already have perfectly good means of doing many of these things.

I hope we do take our sewer mouse's sense of smell one day.

[Aseaheru]

Again, we would not survive the metamorphosis process. Get back to land first. It's useless to talk about mutations that will help us in this particular situation. We need to evolve before we get into trouble and not during it.

i did say eventually.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hm, think there's any chance of the GM giving us hints on our biology?

[Jetman123]

I was simply making suggestions for a long-term plan, or at least things we need to think about for a long-term plan. I'm not saying I'm right. Saying "you should do this and this alone" defeats the purpose of a forum game. I assumed that was a given - perhaps I was wrong. I'm sorry if that was the case.

The skin is directly mentioned as being metabolically inefficient. While we are digesting we are incapable of fighting other creatures. Much like a grappling man, once you commit to wrestling with someone you give up your ability to defend against other targets. This could land us in serious trouble. Likewise, the grinder takes time. We need something that can cause damage.

We have an oxygen meter of 2/3. We may not survive if it takes too long to get out of the water. We need to book it right now. Though you're right that the lack of swimming is a problem, this is still extremely dangerous.

Reproductive futures are the entire point of existing. Even if it doesn't benefit us directly, if we reproduce, our genes continue onwards even if we die. Whether this is handled as an "extra life" or not depends on how the GM handles it, but I feel that it's a good goal for an evolution-based forum game. It is not an immediate need, however, but should be one of our eventual goals, which is why I listed it as a part of my tentative long-term suggested mutations.

Aseaheru, perhaps I should have quoted it, as I wasn't actually directing my last post at you, but rather at Origami_Psycho. Though it was meant in a more general fashion, too. Perhaps I am being too forceful. Again, I apologize. It would be hypocritical of me to say you're wrong to discuss future mutations when I myself did the exact same thing in my first post. I simply wanted to state that thinking of mutations that allow us to survive our current situation will not save us from death - we should not base our plans off this one incident, either. Blood-breathing would be only marginally useful, and gills will only prevent us from death in the water - they won't give us the ability to _maneuver_ in the water, and there are all sorts of nasty things (such as our "log") that would easily kill us.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Reproduction is important, but not a high priority. That's about all I have to say.

[Aseaheru]

budding? that -may- work for repoduction, and as for everything else, howbout some harder skin?

but yes, GTFO of there.



why is our grinder in our tail?

[Imp]

budding? that -may- work for repoduction, and as for everything else, howbout some harder skin?

Now that we've gained ourself the welif's DNA, we have an awesome carapace choice, if we can find wood (the welif did somehow) and are willing to sacrifice food for carapace... I sure hope we can continue to digest through our skin though if we do that.  As of our last chance to evolve, we really didn't have that much choice in the 'tougher skin' side of things.

why is our grinder in our tail?

I do not believe our grinder's really on 'our tail', I dont think we have a head or a tail.

Just like the welif isn't a log, but was called one because it appeared to be, when we wormed our way into the welif's body, part of ourselves was left sticking out - that part was refered to as a tail.

[10ebbor10]

Seems interesting.

Can I get a quick synopsis of the recent events.

[Aseaheru]

why did we not go grinder first?

[Imp]

why did we not go grinder first?

we didn't even know we had a grinder until it was mentioned by our host, after we had already found and entered an oriface with the grinder outside still.  I assume the grinder didn't fit, or our not-very-intelligent critter made that bad choice, since we'd not said go in grinder first (not that we knew we had a grinder, but eh, it's the story and it's an engaging one).  We DID do a good bit of damage.  Before we stopped, we'd enlarged that opening tremendously - it went from being so small and narrow that most of our 30 cm long body couldn't fit inside to almost all of our body fitting inside, with enough space around us for us to be surrounded by its blood (, tamponading can and does happen when wounds are filled completely, so the wound's bigger than us by at least a little).

Can I get a quick synopsis of the recent events.

I'd 'tell' you, but chances are my perceptions and priorities would bias my version of events    Here's links to all the story updates from our OP.  The 'chapter' names are my own, so consider them biased.


In the beginning
Slow start
Our first meal - sewer mouse
Our first mutation - fur
Our first drink
Looking around/Failing to mutate
We can eat lichen
Mutation-mouse digestive system
Femroot!  Our favorite
Mutation - improved metabolism/We find an ecosystem
So much food we "overeat"
Mutation - adipose tissue for food storage
We learn the mice are organized and disciplined strategic masterminds
We board the log/It's not a log
We fail to eat through the "log's" skin
Into an oriface/Our first taste of welif
High risk/High reward/How do I get off again?

I recommend skimming the various posts after the most recent update to see what people are suggesting we do and how voting is going.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Pretty sure this:

...[Your body] seems to end in a large orfice, inside of which are several small jagged bones. You are able to move these bones at will, adjusting their positioning. It might be possible to detach these bones...

is the grinder.

[micelus]

Being a parasite was interesting and quite fulfilling, but if you don't leave now, you will very soon become a coprse. You quickly pull yourself out of the now bloodied orfice (not at all easier with all the blood oozing out) and enter the sewer water. Luckily, it seems your body can swim to a degree, if poorly. Your spiracles can't however and staying here for much longer will not be in anyway be good for your health. You swim for the nearest object, not noticing the gathering organisms, alerted by the blood and noise. It turns out to be a little 'debrisbank' with several plants weeds growing, femroot included.

Your current location is connected to the other side of the sewer ,that you had seemingly been heading to before submerging, by a path of rocks, and not the inlaid rocks this environment seems to be built on, but uncut and differently sized rocks.

You can see the mouse herd still gathered around the lichen, although they seem to have switched their attention to the frantic movements of the welif, which doesn't seem to have noticed your departure. You can see several small fins emerge out of the water for a few seconds, before submerging again. The welif is still bleeding heavily. If you could see in colour, you would have noticed that the whole of the water surface seems to have gone a brownish-red.

Basic Status:
Health: 2/2
Hunger: 6/7
Oxygen: 3/3
Thirsty?: Nope
Evolution Points: 5
Current Thought: Air!.

Spoiler: Current Body Status (click to show/hide)

Description: Centipede-like creature with an opening at the end.

Brain: Poor. Cannot conceptualize beyond sight and a few scant thoughts that occasionally come up in its head.
Senses: No sense of taste, smell or hearing. Vision is relatively excellent.
Movement: Slow but may make short leaps.
Metabolism: Somewhat inefficient metabolism. Less food is acquired from organisms.
Special: None
Size: 30 cm

Current Organs

Legs: Multiple thin legs capable of limited movement and small leaps. Cannot make continuous fast movement.
Eyes: Two advanced eyes that see in varying spectrum of black-to-white in a 180º radius.
Grinder: An orifice capable of cutting up tissue for digestion.
Omnivorous Digestive Tract (Sewer Mouse): Simple digestive system with an interestingly large-for-an-omnivore caecum and several organs for increased digestion of food matter.
Skin: Weak and defenseless. Covered in fur.Can digest organic matter that is in contact. Somewhat inefficient.

Genetic Material Available:

Sewer Mouse
Ruthenian Cave Lichen
Fermroot
Welif

Spoiler: Past Evolutions (click to show/hide)

Fur: Hair covering our whole body except for our underside.
Omnivorous digestive tract: Simple digestive system that allowed us to eat plants, animals and the odd fungi. Evo is much easier to acquire from organisms native to <starting area>
Increased Metabolism I: Food now fills up hunger quicker.
Energy Stores II: More energy can be stored. +2 maximum Hunger.

[weenog]

Instinctively move away from that thrashing in the water before we get squished, then use mouse DNA to evolve better brain. Invest 5 EP.  Try to get a better idea of what the hell is going on.  Then eat femroot or welif chunks, whichever seems to offer the best risk/reward balance to our newly improved brain.