So here is an incredibly rough and poorly drawn map of what you're dealing with.
How exactly would a creature get to dry land from the Deep Sea without swimming?
So you'd have to go to the edge of the deep ocean, find a way to climb the undersea cliff and then cross the shallow ocean to get to dry land. There are several subsystems involved as well. There are reef systems (which most of the creatures living in the shallow sea live near), the sea cliff is its own subsystem, there are hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, and a cold seep in the ocean trench area. Theoretically land has subsystems like rivers and lakes, but its all abstract until someone goes up there.
What would the cost be for cross-species parasitism for the chitters? Basically I want the offspring to have the ability to tunnel into other larger plants/animals like a worm and live safely inside their flesh whilst eating them from the inside out. (potentially I'd want to start off or upgrade it later on to allow for carrier style parasite-ism, the same way they inhabit their mothers where they leech off of the organisms food supply without harming it(much) or killing it. My plan would be to eventually get to the point where young chitters can hide inside the bodies of large plant-life, reproducing inside of it and leaving as they begin to take too much of a toll on the plant. Effectively turning large plants/coral reefs/ eventually trees/maybe even whales and such ect into living hives.)
edit:Also coming to realize that we have very few producers who are above the microbial level. What would the cost be about to go from cross-species parasitism to a few 'trait' steals. Like for example in the real world the mitochondria in human cells are believed to have been a different form of single celled life, the same is for chloroplasts in plants (if I am remembering highschool correctly). So I was thinking that the chitter could infest a plant life-form, steal it's chloroplast containing cells and get a sort of photo-synthetic ability for themselves. Not necessarily something that would give enough food to grow and reproduce but maybe enough to enter a low-metabolism slower state without starving.
For you to get started, it would probably cost you 2 points to get into the parasitism game (because your slightly parasitic). Right now there's only one parasite and it doesn't really do much. So i'll have to figure out food points for parasitism. As far as trait stealing goes, that's probably not something I'm going to allow. True, on the bellow microscopic level, like cell organ level, it can happen. But once you are large enough to be measured in millimeters, that sort of thing is impossible. Parasitism = total go. Cell organelle thievery = nope.