The Impover still has an action, and currently is ahead on the bidding to Compete for the Lightseen Caves. If you're passing the rest of your action, however, it just remains to be seen whether the Mother will make a counter-bid or not.
The skies above Nursery are shot through with colour, and not just from sunlight at dawn and dusk. High above the primarily blue sky, a fine layer of dust turns the upper atmosphere a striking crimson, sometimes showing through the azure sky to the ground as a sky of blue shot through with veins of red. Drifting between the white and grey cloud banks, swarms of tiny atmotes give the appearance of ribbon-like silvery clouds from below. Colonies of atmotes persist even in the higher atmosphere, but closer to ground flocks of four-winged blue birdlike creatures with an abundance of eyes glide effortlessly through the sky, sifting hungrily through the silvery swarms. Some go days without ever touching solid ground, their plumage concealing them against the open blue sky.
Beneath the variegated sky, a churning vortex of sea dominates the centre of a world filled with rolling hills and stormswept plains. Water from the sea is distributed across the land in the form of raging storms, thick with lightning, and the water nourishes the great oak in the Oaken Glade. Surrounding the great oak are broad if patchy fields of sharp green grass that extend into the shallows of the sea. The grass fixes the soil against the storms, claiming desert from the Glade, although the high hills are still swept with sand. Here and there, where the soil is stable enough to support their roots, colonies of lime stalks climb various distances up towards the sky, crowned with brilliant red fruits. Where the plants' runners cannot reach solid enough ground, their toppling fruits can roll to stable patches. Some of the seeds within those fruits are spread by huge, dog-sized red-furred insects. Their sharp and poisonous stings are used mostly in dominance contests within themselves, and these haze bees nest together in large hives of twenty to thirty, mashing up runner stalks with their mandibles and forming them into walls against the winds and occasional sand. For now, these haze bees dominate the Glade.
In the depths of the sea, hardy aquatic varieties of blade grass dot the ocean floor, swaying softly with the currents and almost black with chlorophyll to extract the meagre light that reaches them. Fist sized creatures with bodies of rock and spider-like legs scuttle across the sea bed, upon which intricate, breathtaking nests of blade grass are woven, stones impregnated with their crystal seed laid within. In time these stones germinate into new weavers, scuttling free and living short, beautiful lives of craft before reverting to simple stones.
Beneath those plains, lightless caverns riddle the surface of the earth, festooned with brilliant unseen jewels. Tiny gem-like mites scuttle across the hidden beauties of the caverns, clustering over beautiful geodes and gemstones. Swarms of these mites can pass over astonishing gems, leaving only dull grey rocks in their wake. Tiny, inch-long blind four-legged lizards slowly ponder their way across the lightless caverns, licking swathes of iridescent mites from gemstones with their long, sticky tongues. Broad patches of brownish mould cover the shifting iridescent masses, infecting gem mites as carriers, but limited hosts for transmission have forced them to infect gem lickers to spread. The lickers in turn have been reacting violently against the chief threat to their food source. Meanwhile a second type of fungus has begun forming a symbiotic relationship with the uninfected gem lickers, supplanting and replacing their useless eyes to aid adaptation in their lightless world. Small purple bats fly through the caves, navigating by echolocation. They prey primarily upon eyeshroom-infected lickers, pulling out their 'eyes' with sharp claws and taking them back to their roosts to devour.
A second, smaller world orbits the planet, appearing a fiery orange disc in the night sky. This Infernal Realm is dominated by a single mountain of fire, erupting constantly with inner heat, leaking mana down into a seemingly endless abyss. Swarms of tiny orange sparks cluster around the edges of the magma flows, feeding off the intense heat released by the volcano. Six legged crab-like creatures scuttle across the flows with surprising speed, snapping up the little sparks for food, while slower but stronger lizards with scales of steel and bones of stone snap up the crabs as they pass and devour them. For now, these gleaming creatures rule the infernal slopes.
The Gem Mite (Crystal, Pioneer) - A tiny crystalline being. It resembles a small fleck of a gem with tiny legs and mandibles. Created by a god that loves beauty, they consume not food or energy, but rather beauty itself. They prey on the gems in the walls of the caverns. Attaching themselves to the gems, they extract the shine, luster, and color of the gem. The mites body takes on the aspect of the gem that was just consumed, and can grow larger if the gem was of high enough equality and size itself (relative to the number of mites that were feeding on it of course). When the mite becomes large enough it splits in two down one of it's fracture lines, becoming two new mites, who then go off to consume more beauty. This unnatural consumption of a gem leaves it as a small grey stone, as it's beauty is sucked away. However a gem will eventually recover from this, although it can take years or decades. Only the beauty of the stone was sucked away, with the cause of the beauty, that being the composition of the gem, still intact eventually the beauty will grow back, shining out from the gem and returning color and shine to it.
The Weaver (Crystal, Tier 1) - A small spider like creature, with a rocky hard body and flexible legs, it lives on the ocean floor among patches of Blade Grass. It constructs structures made of blade grass, using it's rock hard body to avoid being cut. The structures it creates are large weaving, complex three dimensional patterns, at key points in the weave it attaches small rocks from the sea floor, and when the structures are finally finished being created the stones entwined within absorb the blade grass that they are attached too and are born as new weavers. The weavers otherwise take no substance, and survive purely on the energy raised by their birthing ritual, and thus lead quite short lives before they eventually deanimate into simply a rock and a few rotting stands of grass. In places where bladegrass is rare weavers are solitary creatures and will defend their patches from one another, but in places where it is abundant they will gather together in colonies and work together to create truly grand weaving, sometimes ones that take multiple generations to make.
The Gem Licker (Animal, Tier 1) - Small, four legged lizard-like creatures with long, thin tongues that dwell in the dark. They are blind, born without eyes and prey on the Gem Mites, catching them on their sticky tongue and gobbling them up. Their skin is dull, the colour of bare rock.
Haze Bees (Animal, Tier 2) - A dog-sized bees of red hue, these insects chew on Archen Runners, using them for both food and nest material. Their sting, used in defense of the hive, has a hallucinogenic effect on their attacker. Some unfortunate attackers are so badly affected by the venom they sit in a haze while the bees continue their assault, eventually being killed by venom overload.
Purple Bat (Animal, Tier 3) - These fly capable mammals navigate the darkness by ultrasound. Their sharp claws will dig in to the place that Beneficial Eyeshrooms have taken root and pull them out before taking it back to their nest and eating it. The brutal removal of the eyeshroom tend to leave the former host dazed and confused, but no deaths from the action has been recorded aside from ones with other factors compounded on.
Sparkings (Fire, Pioneer) - Tiny wisps and sparks of animate flame. These pseudo creatures feed off the ambient heat in their terrain, splitting into fresh sparks when they are sufficiently fed.
Magma Crabs (Fire, Tier 1) - Only vaguely resembling a crab, these six legged creatures have thick shells of rock taken from their volcanic surroundings. They feed off the concentrated heat of sparkings, which nourish their innards of liquid fire.
Dragon (Fire, Tier 2) - Two of the six legs of the magma crab have mutated into wing-like appendages, and these dog-sized creatures have pointed snouts that make them resemble lizards. Their skin is covered in steel scales from the iron in the surrounding environment, and their flesh is now primarily stone, with veins and organs of liquid flame, as well as a pouch in their belly from which they can eject fire from their mouths while hunting. They feed primarily on magma crabs, sustaining their inner fire from their tasty liquid innards.
Nomadic Moulds (Fungi, Tier 1) - Sedentary and asexual in its mature form, the spores of the Nomadic Mould only germinate when it lands upon a non-fungal organism. Upon doing so, mycorrhiza sprout into the creature's skin, allowing the mould the ability to colonise areas farther away than its parent. The mould derives nutrients from the creature until it reaches maturity, at which the it detaches itself from the host and plops itself into the ground, beginning the life cycle anew.
Beneficial Eyeshroom (Fungi, Tier 2) - The spores of the eyeshroom germinate under two conditions: landing on a gem or landing on an organism. Landing on a gem produces a short-lived fungi that releases more spores before expiring. If it lands on an organism however, the fungi quickly moves through the organism's body and latches onto the eyes (if present. If not, it simply infests and kills the host before releasing spores). It then consumes the eyes. using anesthetic so the host is usually not aware due to the lack of pain and lack of much light in the caverns. The empty eye holes are then grown into, sprouting wide-capped but short-stalked mushrooms that neatly fits into the hole. They glow an iridescent colour and can be used by the host as eyes. In short, the Eyeshroom replaces the host's eyes with eyes capable of vision within the darkness of the caverns at the cost of nutrients being siphoned by the fungi.
Blade Grass (Plant, Pioneer) - Blade Grass grows on most types of terrain, being a hardy, resilient plant, useful for seeding plant life. it has incredibly sharp blades, and cuts those that stray to near towards it. There is an aquatic variant that grows in the shallows, where light from above is plentiful.
Archen Runners (Plant, Tier 1) - A plant that uses runners to reproduce. It has bright red but highly toxic fruit, which also hold the fruit inside, killing creatures that would dare to intrude on the privacy of their territories. It has a light lime stalk, and grows to about 3 meters on height, morphing into a tree like shape by the end of it's lifespan, which is about 90 years.
Atmotes (Sky, Pioneer) - Tiny organic baloons, clusters of Atmotes drift the atmosphere. A single eye adorns their top. They try to protect themselves from predators by pressuring themselves they explode harmfully if punctured.
Blue-callers (Sky, Tier 1) - Resembling four winged, four legged birds, they drift in the air currents. Their heads are coated with eyes, looking in a ll directions. On their body, they have a fanged mouth.
Variants: Red-callers; a species with red plumage that prefers higher altitudes.
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Topic: Eras: A God Game [A Dark, Cold Ending] (Read 34846 times)