NESLife VI

Organism: Protlaepish
Description: A motile predator with dense musculature and hooked fins for crawling, swimming and leaping, primitive eyes and a stinging tentacle.
Niche: Stinging swimming floating island-based visual predator of Zeppus and Polypus.

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Organism: Ith
Ancestor: Protlaepish (Arisian)
Selective Pressure: Other Predators Stealing Food Once Downed
Mutation: School mentality. While the other predators individually are bigger and stronger, many Ith working together are capable of driving away the competition by sheer weight of numbers. This isn't a fully fledged nervous system yet (even a primitive one), so much as a simple Good/Bad animal Identification.

Also, good work Masada. Your 5-barreled name just earned Lambda a fun-sized new mantle plume.

Starting update now.

Organism: Orator
Description: An armoured motile, predatory organism with 10 spines for locomotion and defense and two primitive stalked eyes.
Niche: Visual armoured, crawling omnivorous generalist.

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Organism: Demagogue (Sejassian)
Ancestor: Orator
Selective Pressure: Better defended specialists (Goliath and Spiker), Predation by Thresher
Mutation: Suction-based mouth and gill system

The Orator is a generalist in a sea of specialists. Both the Goliath (predator) and the Spike (herbivore) are more specialized and better defended than the humble Orator trying to see a new path under the spreading darkness of the Floater Islands.

However, what is even worse than predation is the fact that their very foods are taken from them. Both the Goliath and the Spike have a mouth of some kind. Even if the Orator has made a kill, one of their larger cousins can amble over, squeeze them out, and swallow their kill whole. Meanwhile, a Spike can come in and force an orator away from a half-digested Sunfeeder.

At first, Orators merely developed a pit-like mouth to engulf food. Slowly, though, they developed a series of "pumping valves" to suck food in rapidly. With a single slurp, smaller organisms and sun feeders find themselves trapped in a semi-armored gut of digestive fluids. Tougher enemies are sprayed with digestive fluid and then have their melting sucked in by the ravenous proto-Demagogue.

What truly made the demagogue unique from merely Orators with a depressed mouth and some reverse-action glands was the development of continuous pumping-sucking movement. By developing a "gill" system they can both expel waste water while retaining acidity, as well as trap needed dissolved gases for their metabolic processes. And so the development between an Orator and a Demagogue has completed.

The Demagogue has a pit-mouth. On its "lips" are remnants of its old digestion-acid-spraying glands. The mouth itself is partially an extension of its' armored skin into a recess in its head. A series of glands keep a negative water pressure, creating a constant flow of ammonia into it's gut and through the gills which maintains the acidity of the digestive acid inside the gut and increases the metabolic rate of the Demagogue. When it is eating, it "pauses" while preparing its glands and sprays their prey or sunfeeder with a preliminary dose of acid, then sucks in quickly. They can also suck in rapidly in the case of attack, using the extra gas to superpower their metabolic rate into running away instead of into increasing digestive fluid in their guts.

Sounds like an inflated orator balloon for short Just one quick *pop* is all that is needed.

Lord_Iggy said:

Also, good work Masada. Your 5-barreled name just earned Lambda a fun-sized new mantle plume.

Starting update now.

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....Ok...this is going to be interesting

Lord_Herobrine said:

Sounds like an inflated orator balloon for short Just one quick *pop* is all that is needed.

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It's armored. :3

Sharp jaws

Epoch V: The Masada, You Asked For It Epoch



Pew! Pew pew! Pew!

That was a great update!

...and so is the end of life on Lambda

RIP Masada

May the Force Go With You

Lightning bolts everywhere. Have I mentioned that the crystals in Indigestibles conduct electricity?

So... we done?

Quisani said:

So... we done?

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I was actually wondering that as well.

Lord_Iggy said:

Lightning bolts everywhere. Have I mentioned that the crystals in Indigestibles conduct electricity?

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Masada...why???????

Lord_Herobrine said:

One question, Iggy. Does Lambda have precipitation, such as ammonia rain?

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Not any more

Thlayli said:

Hopefully this doesn't inspire a generation of vitrivores.

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It sounds lke we are going to need them

I'm doing the drawings now.

Lord_Iggy said:

Epoch V: The Masada, You Asked For It Epoch



Pew! Pew pew! Pew!

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Best. Update. Ever!

Epoch V: The Graderian Epoch

Outwards it surged, a great molten bolus rearing its way up and out of the superheated core. It slid through the mantle like a hot knife through butter, melting the semi-solid rock as it did rose. The surface was so very, very close.

It emerged in a rifting zone on the northern margin of Graderia, close to the equatorial coastline. Great seams burst in Lambda’s crust, and vast flows of lava spewed forth. Great black clouds of volcanic dust, gaseous ammonia and other debris were thrown high into the air, where the jet stream helped to spread the thick, black cloud around the world. Lambda, being a relatively young rocky moon, frequently wracked by the tidal forces of the blue Jovian world of Thor, was by no means a stranger to volcanism. However, eruptions of this scale had not taken place for an eon, not since back in the days when Lambda was an incandescent caustic ball, with vast open oceans of lava spurting through the black, cracked surface. In this Epoch, a tiny vestige of that Hadean age erupted forth to the moon’s surface, facing complex life with its deadliest gauntlet since its appearance a little over fifty million years prior.

Life in the oceans felt only a faint rumbling at first. But it was persistent. The Graderian supervolcanoes continued to spew into the atmosphere, with new vents opening up constantly. Animals would have noticed little at first- the few with visual adaptations may have sensed only a gradual dimming, like a premature night. The plants, however, felt the shift much more harshly. Starved for light by the thick, particulate-laden clouds, the plants first began to struggle, and then began to perish outright. So too did the great clouds of single-celled algae which almost singlehandedly supported the entire floating island ecosystem. Within a few years, large-scale die-offs were taking place across Lambda, and many of its most complex ecosystems were stressed to their limits.

The eruptions would continue for another several million years.

So began the Graderian Mass Extinction, and so ended the first Period of the Era of multicellular life. It was nice while it lasted.



Sejessian Ocean

Plants of the Indigestible lineage, who had survived through so much predation and triggered minor extinction waves in their own right, quickly proved to be terribly vulnerable to resource starvation. With no long-term energy storage mechanisms, and resource-intensive glass-based defenses to grow and maintain, Indigestibles had significantly higher light requirements than their relatives. With incoming light reduced to a minimum by the black clouds, the powerful defenses of the Indigestibles proved to be their undoing- no amount of glass crystals will ward off starvation. Emergers were one such lineage to suffer such a fate, which in their specific case was compounded by the fact that their home environments, the floating islands, were wiped out when the phytoplankton which supported the whole ecosystem underwent a population crash, due to a lack of incoming sunlight. The Grandee also failed for similar reasons of energy shortage, as did a whole host of some of the most complex Indigestibles in existence.

Floating plants, however, with their lesser energy requirements (hydrogen being nothing but a waste gas produced by photosynthesis) and better position for gathering limited sunlight, managed to thrive- at least, relative to other plants- in this epoch.

The Rangipus, (and the Shellipus, widely-considered to be a consistuent of the Rangipu family), with larger size and greater ammonia retention than any of their ancestors, was uniquely able to soar high into the atmosphere, past much of the debris produced by the eruptions, to photosynthesize in the relatively richer light available at great heights. The most successful of these organisms developed a pattern, wherein they rose high into the sky during the day, and gently descended back to sea level at night, to refresh themselves and avoid desiccation. The dispersal ability of these organisms has even managed to carry them across the continental gap between the Sejessian and Arisian Oceans, the first contact between the two ecosystems since their division some twenty million years prior.

Their close relatives, the Manipus, did not rise to such heights, but they did find a niche for themselves by producing new organisms as direct attachments onto the primary gas sac, rather than relying on growing a juvenile stage in the oceans, where they would suffer from significant predation risks.



Trawlers, descended from the Hitchers, were some of the most specialized organisms to live in the floating islands of the Sejessian Ocean. With long, dangling extensions, these organisms filtered particulate matter out of the oceans beneath their floating homes. Highly successful in their time, they met with extinction along with nearly every other species involved in the floating island ecosystems, as the photosynthetic algae who fed the varied Hitchers and their relatives suffered a disastrous population collapse.

Scenters, descended from the highly-successful Popper family, played host to a rich community of cooperating species. However, the entirety lineage of filter-feeding spires was wiped out in this event. These organisms predominated in the traditionally richer shallows, and with the demise of the life-giving photosynthetic algae that fed them, they plummeted into extinction, taking the beautiful, complex ecological communities that had grown up around them along for the ride.

In deeper reaches of the ocean, however, microscopic life which derived its energy from sources other than the sun was able to survive. This, in turn, fed a few species of filter feeders.

The Galasvi, and its ancestor, the Svi, both managed to barely make it through the Epoch alive, subsisting on chemosynthetic microorganisms until the world had recovered, and the oceans replenished. The Galasvi, despite being larger and more complex in form and reproduction than its ancestor, has very similar survivability due to its increased food uptake through its curving radial cavities. Similarly, Sinkers survived, albeit only at the lower ends of their range, in twilit realms which the sun never touched.

Reachers were less successful. Adapting some of their current-generating wings into microscopic stingers, Reachers were able to thrive for a time, but their toxicity generally served to prevent potential prey items from approaching. When the Graderian Eruptions began, increasingly desperate species, such as Hobos and Curatols, did begin to approach Reachers. The latter, with their shells, were largely immune, the former possessed thick slimy coats which the stinging tentacles could not penetrate. Even in the rare events where they caught prey, they were rather poorly adapted to actually digest macroscopic organisms, and frequently had their catches stolen by opportunistic Hobos. Reachers were ultimately unable to meet their energy demands, and disappeared from the face of Lambda forever.



Gorgers, a group of Slimmers adapted for life on the surfaces of the floating islands, found themselves desperately short on food and short on habitat during the extinction event. With the demise of the floating island ecosystem, there remained no place where they could thrive, and the Gorgers, like their Slimmer ancestors, fell into extinction.



Watchers, descended from Spikes, possessed uniquely-developed photosensitive strips along the upper surfaces of their carapaces. Unfortunately, Watchers, along with Spikes and Digestors, were all driven to extinction by the demise of the Sunshields and Sunseekers, upon which they were heavily specialized.

The similarly-named Wardens, on the other hand, were descended from the scavenging Curatols, and possessed broad, fused armour plating on their back. Using this for both defense and for camouflage, the Wardens possessed a significant advantage over the Curatols in the earlier years of the Graderian Epoch. However, as the mass extinction began, predator populations died off en masse, while scavengers of all sorts thrived, and the Curatols made a comeback over the unwieldy and comparatively energy-inefficient Wardens. Even as the extreme volcanism began to lessen, Wardens remained alive. However the predators who had once formed the selective pressure for the Wardens’ armour were no more, and the nimbler Curatols came to outcompete their relatives, ultimately driving the Wardens to extinction.



Arisian Ocean

Growers, who dedicated next to no energy to defenses and possessed dedicate energy storage systems (by containing reservoirs of simple sugars within themselves), were the sole benthic photosynthesizers to survive the epoch. As the Graderian Supervolcanoes finally ceased their eruptions, after several million years of intense, but punctuated, activity, these organisms rapidly began to repopulate, and by now have spread across the shallow seafloors of the Arisian Ocean.

On the shore, Shooteroids are among the survivors. With roots extending deep into coastal soils to gather both ammonia and nutrients, and safe access to one of the brightest areas remaining on Lambda throughout the Graderian Eruptions, the Shooteroids managed to slip through this harrowing epoch with nary a mark on them.



Belayers were one of many species with special adaptations to thrive in the burgeoning new floating island habitats. The ability to pull themselves around the floating islands was a small survival advantage, but all of the survival advantages in the world become meaningless when there’s nothing to eat.

Sthavi had the misfortune of evolving defensive traits just before a time when energy efficiency became vastly more important than the ability to withstand predation. Even without a conical shell, these mildly toxic filter feeders had no major predators. With shells, these organisms had multiple redundant layers of defense, which left them heavily disadvantaged in competition against their more primitive relatives, the Svi. Needless to say, the Sthavi were close to extinction before the Graderian Mass Extinction even began.



Friendlies are physically quite similar to the Stabby, but behaviourally they are quite social. In resource-starved environments, this social behaviour proved useful for locating and monopolizing sources of food, and the generalist tendencies of the Friendlies rendered them able to survive in almost all environments. However, social behaviour could be a burden as well- a large social group requires more sustenance than a lone roaming individual. By the era’s end, both Friendlies and their Stabby relatives survive in roughly equal numbers in the Arisian Ocean.

Ith closely resemble a social variety of Protlaepish. By attacking floating Zeppus and Zeppu-derivatives in numbers, they are able to easily bring down some of the largest and most buoyant variants, and defend their kills from other opportunists. Though the floating islands are no more, Ith and Protlaepish are both able to survive in coastal shallows, where they remain to this day.



Arigogues were the first animals to reach out of the sea, to feed upon the Tiders and Shooteroids. Possessing ammonia-tight carapaces and eyes with minor dessication resistance, these amphibious creatures managed to survive reasonably comfortably on a diet of coastal plants and flotsam washed up by the tides.

The Os-Puer was most distinctive for its unique mating system. With a form of sexual reproduction, Os-Puers were able to reshuffle their genetics at a much faster rate than their predecessors. Sadly, they were one of many unique organisms driven to extinction when their food source, the Indigestibles, were extirpated from the Arisian Ocean.



As a new period lies ahead, the world is dramatically changed. The great benthic spire forests are forever gone, consigned to the fossil record with no remaining survivors. The Indigestibles are reduced from one of the most diverse groups of plants, to a single lineage. Only two thick feasters remain, and only two of the once diverse lineages of swimmers remain. The once-complex benthic flora of each ocean is now dominated by a single major group in each. However, life has held its ground, on land and in the air. The Zeppus are exploding with diversity, algae are repopulating the seas, and life in general appears to be on a massive rebound. The great eruptions of the Graderian Traps are over, and the mantle plume has cooled. With a bit of luck, it should be a long, long time before life is pushed to such limits again.



Notes: If two organisms are so similar that they fill the exact same role, have the same ancestor, and the same basic mechanisms, I’ll group the latter in with the first one to be posted. That’s what happened with Grandkhan’s Shellipu, which is so similar to momo1000’s Rangipu (and only 3 posts beneath it to boot).

Terrance, I did a writeup for your first organism before I saw your post to ‘ignore it’. As I’d already written it up, I kept the Grower as your evolution- you can probably recreate the Demagogue next update, if you’d like. In the future, I’d like to ask you to erase your old evolution (before I start working on the update) if you decide to switch. Although... in this particular case, I think things worked in your favour, as the Grower did quite well.