5th Turn
Events
Strength Dice: 98
Temperament Dice: 2
The snow falls upon the lake, for the first time in its history. Plate tectonics have been pushing the entire continent the mountain range is on further and further north.
You now experience winters. And without any protection against the cold, the freezings at the lake is taking its toll on your populations. Along with that, the stream that feeds the lake is pretty much less reliable, since rains too are less common. The lake is gradually shrinking back to its original size. Magma Island is expanding.
It's no longer all that warm. The surface of the lake actually freezes at least once in the winter. These colder climate has benefitted some. Not you though.
Team Chaos
Knightwing64: Better muscles: 1+1=2
Undulating Turnip
Despite the changes around it, the Turnips are still alive.
The Undulating Turnip is not a replacement for the Flatlander Turnip. It is instead an indistinct subspecies that coexist along with it. They compete for the same source of food, but each sides advantages block the others.
The Undulating Turnip has developed a more pronounced muscle structure, one that forms chain-like formation upon itself. This allows it to wiggle and undulate. Now, this may not be all that important, and it really isn't. But this undulation allows the Undulating Turnip to generate a small amount of heat, increasing its survival chances in the winters, while its ancestral cousins may freeze to death in higher numbers.
But there is a catch. They still undulate when young and without a host, and that burns through their reserves faster before they can locate a host to attach. As a result, there are fewer adult undulators than flatlanders.
The cold has affected both their hosts and them. Their populations are not than before, though, for there are more hosts now.
Status: VU
Description: A small proto-animal. It is a parasite, it attaches itself to faunal hosts and feeds off of them with a set of long, branching tendrils that grow when attached to suitable surfaces. It's tissues have the ability to flex; undulate to generate heat, and move around. It has specialised cells all around its body that control its movement towards higher ambient vibrations. It reproduces asexually by occasionally budding.
Habitat: The pebbly mountain lake floor, attached to other peas.
Team Divergent
Mercur: Reproduction via free floating gametes produced in gonads: 3
Gametetrail Puffer
The puffer linegae has developed sexual reproduction. At the back of their bodies, where they once budded, a darker and blistery spot has formed. This spot constantly dispenses microscopic spores. Puffers constantly move around, and so these gamates form a trail, which is then carried by the currents to everywhere in the lake.
But this form of reproduction, however less demanding, is not much of an improvement. You see, most gamates just die without even touching eachother, the now sparse population density doesn't helps either. And embyros have a hard time growing still, being extremely tiny and fragile, nowhere near the impressive size of their adult counterparts.
But in the end, it is balanced. The young do manage to replace the old, sick and frozen. The puffers now have the SS modifier!
Status: VU
Description: A rotund proto-animal around 9-10 centimeters in diameter. It aimlessly crawls on the lake floor with 10 pairs of tentacles and digests any organic debris it can catch with its gaping maw, using six shovelling appendages that line it to shove the food into it. It passively respirates through its short coat of hair-like tendrils that cover its body. On the space between its outer surface and stomach, an isolated internal sack shaped like a vase acts as one large blood vessel and heart, shaking the liquid insde up so that the. This sack also envelopes the stomach to get the nutrients inside. It reproduces sexually, by periodically releasing gamates into the water and leaving the rest at pure chance.
Habitat: The pebbly mountain lake floor.
Team Sol
TricMagic: Air-breathing petals: 2
Scribers Lily
The clade that was hit the worst by the change of climate was of course the surface dwellers. Neither having the grace of underwater, or the insulative ability of being able to form mats, the violet plants are now suffering greatly. They are now sparse along the lakes surface.
They reproduce alot in the summers, using the warmer air and absorbing the aerial oxygen with their skyward petals to continue growing day and night, reaching high numbers, but never getting close to the their previous abundance. Then the freeze resets it all back, and a few intact adults and bits and pieces is all thats left to start over.
Their populations experience dramatic fluctuations, and petals, being soft and spongy to take in air, is hit the hardest, doing absolutely nothing to protect against the cold.
Status: EN
Description: A violet protoplant that resembles a sterotypical lily pad 6 centimeters in diameter. It is very efficent at what in its way of life. Besides from its very edges, the entirety of the plant is reinforced by a network of hexagonal cell walls. From its center, three sets of thin, soft petals grow up like flower, their function being absorbing oxygen. It reproduces asexually by rapidly shedding its softer outer edges, which grow independantly.
Habitat: The waters of the mountain lake, particularly at the surface.
Team Tetramylsis
flazeo25: Branches: 4+1=5
Cant read the sign: Supporting flazeo25
Chorus Kiteflower
Kiteflowers are most likely the least affected by the catasthropy. Shortly before the climate shift, they evolved stalk-like branches form a freak mutation where soft tendrils grew from one individuals topside. And this was their saving grace.
The chorus kiteflower no longer forms mats, but instead form chaotic, dense growths that float along the lakes surface. Each of the eight spiraling vines that protrude from the plants upside have internal canals that carry food and water along their length. They grow up, branching into glueing tendrils and surprisingly, miniature kiteflowers as the grow.
This vertical structural support allows them to form much more elaborate groupings, more like miniature forests. Choruses. These choruses form their own small heat bubbles that are just a bit warmer than the surrounding space, collectively increasing their chances at survival, with the benefits increasing the further inside the colony one plant is. They use their waste gasses to create the bubble.
As a bonus, they now reproduce via these vines; the sprouted kiteflowers act as leaves for their parent plant during their childhood, and split away as adults once they are big enough. No more small pieces from the central vacuole.
The cold still takes its toll. The newborn kiteflowers still solidifying their outer shells frequently freeze. Sometimes even the adult plants on the outer edges of a chorus can't survive the yearly freeze and shatter.
The kiteflower is now complex enough. It is a full plant now.
Status: NT
Description: A purple plant shaped like geometrically shaped flower. It's three centimeters in diameter. It is flat for the most part, except for the storage vacuole on its center, which is usually filled with nutrient rich water or waste gasses. This vacuole is connected to the outside by a short tube that itself branches into rigid, porous protrusions that line the plants outer edges. It is capable of secreting a sticky substance from a ring of vacuoles that is carried over onto their protrusions by the smaller tubes. It's inner and outer surfaces are almost entirely covered by a cellulose exoskeleton that gives it its rigid shape, save for the internal surfaces of the vacuoles. The mucus allows it to form mats on the water surface by sticking to eachother. From the center of the plant, on top of the central bump, eight twisting vines grow into the open sky, sprouting more sticky tendrils and small leaves. It reproduces asexually by their unusual leaves. These leaves, being miniature kiteflowers, fall away when heavy enough, then grow into adult Kiteflowers independantly.
Habitat: The waters of the mountain lake. Particularly at the surface in the form of interconnected choruses.
Team Pizza
Leonardo8: A circulatory/respiratory system that takes in water and moves it around: 3
Gulpy Corndog
The corndog has another mouth, one that is just below the digestive tract. this second mouth open into a net of small canals that span the animals entire body, going around the numerous exits of the digestive tract. The carry water all around the water, and with it, oxygen.
This allows the corndog to breathe, and get a higher amount of oxygen from the water with less effort. But the presence of the these water canals also handicaps the flowing structure of the animals tissues, which decreases its slithering speed. It has no real muscles.
In the end, there is no speed increase. But the upside is that the reproduction is faster overral. Average corndog now reproduce 5 to 6 times during their lifetime. Their size has also increased, just a centimeter more on average.
They are by far the least affected of the animals by this current catasthropy. They are already pretty small, and their shield has some insulative qualities.
Status: NT
Description: A tubular proto-animal 3 centimeters in lenght. It slides along the lake floor and eats any organic debris it can detect with its ability to detect specific chemicals in the water using its circular mouth and yellow lips, with digestion done in the tube shaped cavity that is lined with absorbant tissue. It lacks an anus, and instead has many small exits that mix the dirt a mucus that solidifies on the creatures sides and back to form a segmented dirt armor. Just under its mouth is an another cavity that opens into a network of thin canals all over the animals body. This second mouth sucks in water which then travels across these canals and supplies oxygen. It reproduces asexually by laying floating eggs, in rather long cycles.
Habitat: The pebbly mountain lake floor.
Environmental And Ecological Report
The dice screwed y'all up this time. I did say this game was going to be crueler.
The Aegla are have spread further along the lake floor, and now form vast growths. The growths of the Magma Island have merged with this universal one as well. You all eat some from them, since you digest all organic tissue without discriminating, and the vermiform endemic to the Magma Island is now everywhere as well.
The Central Puffs have further adapted to their sedentary lifestyle, by refining their reproduction. The now all reproduce only in the summers, stocking up on the vent scum food in the winter. Their young are also pretty small and are only capable of moving and rooting.
Giant Peas now scour the Aegla fields. They only digest these plants and nothing more, leaving a carved line on the violet greenery. They have descended from the eusocial pea, and have abandoned their eusociality in favor of the plant fields. Countless Turnips decorate their bodies, and their babies frolick the fields.
More players are very much appreciated. Don't be shy.
Oh, and the time is up...
Author
Topic: Competive Evolution: Season 2, Turn 8 (7/20) (Looking for players) (Read 8897 times)