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Misguided Kerbal

By Misguided Kerbal
in Forum Games!

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Starhelperdude

Starhelperdude

Posted
Posted
Just now, Admiral Fluffy said:

Lol

absolutely totally serious

-----------------------------------------

Spoiler

this is that qjwudhuofihaiepipij it's late in the night pls help so much drink but no food pls help my cat is sleeping soon the blackbirds will sing so loud that I can't slwewpp ijsijijoijf

 

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Admiral Fluffy

Admiral Fluffy

Posted
Posted

Wut.
Also,

Spoiler

  • Lizard Fashion

  • Wealthy, urban lizards like wearing fancy clothing. Embroidery and metallic trim are common, as well as those weird floppy hat things. There’s a certain style of “over the shoulder” bags that’s really popular- while it may be stylish, it also restricts arm movement somewhat.

  • Furthermore, urban lizards often practice tail-binding. It’s a form of undergarment that involves wrapping cloth strips around their tail and lower body. Although it’s more modest than other kinds of clothes, it’s also a little uncomfortable, and time consuming to put on.

  • “Normal”

  • Many lizards don’t care about fashion, but still make an effort to look presentable and moderately stylish.

  • Most lizards wear an insulating shirt/undergarment to retain body heat, but "normal” lizards often incorporate this into their outfit (it’s the grey thing with the cuffs).

  • Plain

  • Some lizards don’t care about fashion. Farmers, laborers, or wealthy lizards who can’t be bothered.

  • They often wear a simple shirt, with a basic insulating undergarment underneath. Cheap clothing is usually one color, with very little embellishment.

  • They carry a lot of big, practical bags around their waist. Good for carrying pretty much anything, and very durable.

  • This lizard is wearing a variety of segmented skirt that is very popular among lizards. It’s comfortable, easy to put on (unlike a lot of lizard clothing) and doesn’t restrict their freedom of movement.

  • Lizards working in a foundry.

  • Steel is used in everything from airship engines to medical equipment, and is an important part of the lizard economy.

  • Working in steel foundries is a dangerous, but it pays well! These two lizards really like their jobs. Singed tails aside, it’s good work. Actually, the company gave them tail protectors a while ago, but nobody likes to wear them. They’re bulky, uncomfortable, and impair lizards’ very important sense of balance.

  • Lizards have exceptionally good balance due to their long, flexible tails. For this reason, lizard buildings usually don’t have handrails. Working (or even walking through) a lizard factory can be a hair-raising experience.

  • Echo tries to beat the rain.

  • The air is thick and warm. Many creatures would find the heat unpleasant, but Echo feels energetic. He’s trying to beat the rain, but it’s a losing battle. Last time he got caught in a storm, he got a fungal infection on his toes. That was really unpleasant, he’d rather it not happen again.

  • The air tastes acrid, and smells like ozone. Echo’s crest always feels tight and hot around ancient ruins, but the lightning makes it worse. He’s very tense- while these ruins should be safe, there’s no way to be certain. All the energy in the air makes it hard to focus. He hopes there’s nothing stalking him.

  • He was looking for an entrance to the tunnel network under the plains. He didn’t find it, and spent way too much time looking. He should have left hours ago, and now he’s going to pay the price (by getting soaked). At least he brought his rain jacket

  • A sentry turret controlled by a sentient slug.

  • How do you make a sentry turret without advanced computers? It’s simple- you train sentient slugs to do it!

  • Slugs love to work! Despite their… unassuming appearance, they’re actually fairly intelligent. Very similar to a dog, in a lot of ways. 

  • When on duty, the slug slides out of its container, and into a little harness that tracks its body movement. To fire, All the slug need to do is point at the target (his body movement controls the direction of the gun), and tap the glass to fire. 

  • The slugs identify their targets visually (enemy uniforms) and by smell/pheremone. In most use cases, the slugs will have their target confirmed by a handler before being permitted to open fire. There have been accidents, but these are becoming less and less common as the training regimen improves. 

  • Slugs have countless other roles, from law enforcement to support for the disabled. Their agreeable temperament makes them a really good pet, and they can be found all across the lizard peninsula and beyond. 

  • a research mission to the stone forest!

  • Taetal is an ecologist studying the unique ecosystem that springs up around ancient ruins. She’s taking a minute away from her coworkers to relax and enjoy the scenery. sure it’s dangerous, but lizards have exceptionally good balance! She’ll be fine. probably. 

  • (this isn’t really 100% done but i overwrote the source file. whoops)

  • Lizard farmers and their farm.

  • In lizard society, farms are often owned and operated by a single family. Although smaller than their urban counterparts, rural families are huge and insular. All family members are expected to work on the farm, but individuals who want to do something else can be married off or adopted out.

  • BOATS

  • First of all: oceangoing vessels are rare. If you say ‘ship’ the average lizard is gonna assume you’re talking about an airship. 

  • Their airships have several distinctive qualities.

  • Wide, stubby guns are typical. High explosive shells are the most useful when other airships don’t have a lot of armor, and armor-piercing is almost useless against ancient ceramics. 

  • Planes are fairly uncommon, so they don’t have a lot of anti-aircraft batteries. Machine guns and anti-aircraft canons are typically designed to be portable and can be moved around the ship as needed.

  • ‘Unique’ components come in two flavors: ancient ceramic plating, and artifact engines. 

  • Ancient ceramic is widely available, but not very useful as armor. It’s actually pretty heavy. And can’t be shaped.

  • “Artifact Engines” are not ancient engines at all, but a heat-producing artifact at the center of a modern, lizard-built steam turbine engine. Their advantages are immense power and not needing any fuel. Their disadvantages are having a nasty tenancy to fry or explode their operators.. and being ludicrously expensive. High grade heat-producing artifacts are expensive enough even before you have to build a custom engine around them. 

  • ANCIENT TECH+STUFF

  • Hey! So sorry for the (extremely) late response. 

  •  

  • The Shell and everything in it: artifacts, ruins, ancient tech, lizards, etc… Was shaped by an older civilization.

  • Calling it a “civilization” is actually a little misleading, because there were only a few dozen ‘individuals’ in total. Each one was a massive, sentient, colony of fungus. They experienced the world in a fundamentally alien way. They had no ears, eyes, or fingers, and communicated mostly through direct contact and chemical exchange. That’s why most ancient technology is so incomprehensible.

  • They’ve since left the Shell. Whether or not they’re totally extinct is unclear, but Lizards have never seen one. 

  • Old Fungus

  • The Shell’s previous inhabitants were slime mold. Slime mold can move under its own power. Look up slime mold moving… it’s really creepy. You don’t need to rub off on other people when you can just. flow over there. 

  • Lifespan

  • Lizards experience health, mobility, and mental acuity until their late 70s, and then they drop dead. Their bodies are tuned to shut down the minute they lose their usefulness.

  • Because “elderly” lizards don’t really exist, it’s hard to pin down illnesses that are common in “old age.” But cancer, fungal infection, and inflammation of the channeling organs are common throughout lizards’ lives. If your channeling tissue is inflamed or blocked up, you have a small chance of exploding if you try and channel! fun.

  • The Outsider

  • There are rumors of pale, nameless lizards wandering in from the fringes of The Shell. This hearsay is unsubtantiated, and most people think these “outsiders” are imaginary, a tale spun up by bored artificers. But if they’re imaginary, it’s odd that the govt. will pay good money to hear the rumors

  • Outsiders is an older name for “ghost” lizards– I just answered an ask about them if you want more information! 

  •  

  • Food

  • Lizard families are enormous, but food brings them together. Dinner is a chance for the administrators to mingle with the rank and file, a place to complain, flirt, catch up with friends, and engage in political intrigue. The kitchen and its intrepid staff makes this possible.

  • Structures

  • A lizard family resupplies its artificing expedition in the stone forest. The stone forest is (shockingly) made out of stone, unlike most ancient structures, which are made from ceramics. This softer material makes it an appealing place for artificers, who can cut and probe deep into the structures.

  • Girl+bois

  • Gender means very little in Family culture, so, no. 

  • Males and females are almost identical and mostly indistinguishable from the outside. Males tend to be a little shorter and to have bigger heads, but the differences are subtle, and not every lizard’s gender aligns with the sexual characteristics they were born with; If you want to know someone’s gender, you really have to ask. Gender has little to no bearing on status, power, or your role in society, and definitely no bearing on where you bathe :p

  • Lizzer Creation

  • > Were the lizards uplifted and genetically engineered by the fungus, using the organic tech to experiment on them?

  • Yup.

  • >  If the the lizards’ bodies are tuned to shut down after they aren’t useful any longer that kind of sounds like they would have been used as intelligent tools.

  • Yeah! Their first purpose to to grow channeling tissue, which is removed and grafted onto other kinds of Custodians (organic and robotic workers). Doing work is their secondary purpose. They have the highest flesh to machinery ratio of any Custodian, which makes them expendable. 

  • >  It would seem like they were refining their tools from unwieldy biotech to fully sapient conduits.

  • The ancient fungus was able to create sapience exactly once, and that process takes a kilometers-large facility. Every other bit of sapient biotech they use is crudel

  • Racism

  • (this answer is specific to Family Culture)

  •  

  • Family culture relies on mutual trust and social support. Being distrustful or hateful towards people who look different would hurt their society, and it’s generally taboo

  • Custodians

  • Custodian suits

  • The Lizards being controlled by management engines are forced to wear these suits

  • Management engines can no longer breed more lizards. Losing this ability was a serious blow– lizards were a source of specialized labor, donor tissue, and companionship. 

  •  

  • Even though most management engines genuinely care about lizards, they are suffering and even dying without their labor. The opportunity to capture a lizard–replenish some of that labor capacity, use the lizard’s body parts to keep their other custodians running– is occasionally too compelling to pass up. Being killed and broken down for parts is the likeliest outcome, because captured lizards make poor custodians, but crueler (or lonelier) management engines might attempt the custodian-making process anyways. 

  •  

  • Any custodian could try and break free. Those born and raised by management engines, however, have very little concept of “freedom” in relation to their current state, and therefore rarely consider “escape.” 

  •  

  • “Captured” lizards, themselves very rare, would be more likely to try escaping, but then again, management engines would turn their cognitive controls up to 11, at least in situations where escape might be feasible, and would be unlikely to put a ‘captured” lizard in any situation where escape is possible at all. 

  •  

  • Custodians of any stripe can’t communicate freely, so they don’t really have cultures. Their attitudes are directly informed by what management engines teach, and condition into them, rather than by cultural osmosis. 

  •  

  • Custodians can generally be freed if they have both the will to do so, and freedom from management engine control. Sounds obvious, but the coincidence of those things is pretty rare. Shoot a custodian, disable its equipment and offer to “rescue it,” and it might opt to die instead, or be remotely terminated, having no desire to be “saved” or even a clear idea what that means. Similarly, if a custodian spontaneously develops the desire to be free, while still under Management Engine supervision, the management engine is likely to notice and “correct” the issue.

  •  

  • i.e. custodians end up free when they develop the desire to be free in a situation where they’re out of management engine supervision, very often when their equipment is damaged in remote circumstances, or when they’re injured and captured by “free” lizards. 

  •  

  • The result is a traumatized, strangely socialized lizard with modifications and clearances that let them interface with the shell in a uniquely powerful way, provided you can get through to them and give them a reason to cooperate with you. 

  • Nameless

  • Lizards’ Family name goes first, so lizards without a Family also don’t have a first name– they’re Nameless.

  • Moths

  • Yeah! Originally, they were a kind of foil to the lizards. Lizards are artificial custodians, they’re equipped to build and repair things. With that in mind, insects were going to be artificial artisans and diplomats.

  • Unfortunately, moths have been left by the wayside as the project developed. I haven’t drawn or thought about them in almost 2 years, and it shows. I’m still deciding how they fit into the world, or if they even have a place in The Shell anymore.

  • Airship Fines

  • the fine is *not cheap* and captain dipexcrements here isn’t looking forward to explaining that to the Family admin 

  • Moar Food

  • Lizards are omnivores, although their diet is biased towards plants. Modern lizards cultivate starchy tubers, “grains,” and seed-bearing orchids for calories, and supplement that with fungi, fish, and bug protein. I’ve done a picture of Family Culture street food, which gives a good idea of lizard food (https://caba-111.tumblr.com/post/186122180539/tasty-but-unhealthy)

  • Worms are filter feeders– in fact, they’re “shellfish’ that have been “shucked” and stuffed in their suits. While their favorite snack is plankton, algae, and other microorganisms present in water, a good substitute is sugar water. They can actually eat a variety of things, provided they’re blended and diluted with lots of water. Food generally has to be poured down a special port on the suit somewhere. 

  • Management Engines are extremely weird fungus, and therefore don’t “eat” at all. An engineered nutrient slurry is mixed into the neural soup, which is absorbed and metabolized by their entire mass at once. The computer part of them is… computers… and therefore doesn’t need to eat. 

  • Language

  • No idea! I’m not really sure what lizards sound like, nor have I worked out the finer points of their language!

  • But it’s definitely cute… 

  • Money

  • Lizard currency looks like buttons that can be sewn onto strips of fabric.

  • However, family culture doesn’t use money a lot. The Family Culture economy functions on networks of debts, favors, and reciprocal exchanges. Families generally trade goods and services directly. A family will specialize in something that there’s a need for in their community, and then offer their services to other Families in exchange for those families’ goods and services.

  • When money is used, it’s usually for big inter-family trades and wealth transfer. Often, when one Familiy doesn’t need what the other Family is offering, when they don’t have an existing relationship to each other, or when a Family entity is negotiation with a non-Family one.

  • In big wealth transfers, these strips of coins get heavy pretty quickly, so they’re folded into chests or wound into big spools.

  • Sounds bulky, right? Well, the average lizard doesn’t really have to deal with it. Most individual Families are insular and provide for all your basic needs, so hard currency is only useful for luxury goods, or the odd thing your Family can’t or won’t procure for you. Most Family lizards aren’t paid with it at all, only rewarded a little bit for luxury spending. When lizards are “paid,” it’s most often with labor notes for intra-Family use.

  • The Shell

  • Megastructure

  • Power

  • I love uh, nonstandard combinations of technology. The Shell, in terms of the technology lizards make, is inspired by the 1940s. Electricity is very common, but still not in every “household.” Culture and vast distances means there isn’t much of a scientific community– progress is halting and regional. One point of clarification, lizards don’t exactly fight with spears and shields– at least not in the traditional sense. The only spears lizards wield are tipped with an explosive charge, more of a tank-grenade-on-a-stick than a melee weapon. To be completely honest, it’s an excuse to draw something that *looks* like a spear, because I think spears are rad. 

  • Solar System

  • The pillar-shaped objects are command centers, usually containing a management engine, communications equipment, and weapons. From there, they command other orbital equipment, including energy projectors, sensors, manufacturing equipment (some industrial processes work better in 0g). 

  • It’s a research facility. The visitor is an extrasolar asteroid, and the ring was built to learn more about it. As they learned more about the visitor, however, the research facility expanded to include other topics, eventually became a system-wide center for research and technological development.

  • Sek Tan Tet’s atmosphere is getting drawn off into an orbital crucible where ancient generators are forged. More or less portable holes in reality in a casing.

  • The atmosphere of sek tan tet is being drawn into an orbital crucible. It’s basically a normal gas giant that’s getting sucked up into an artificial satellite. 

  • Not every planet is inhabited, but Ao, Haulai, The Shell, some moons of Sek Tan Tet, and Archipelago all are. 

  • Spycraft+Suits

  • There are a variety of lizard states and cultures. They fight for the same variety of reasons humans do. Resources, beliefs, land, influence, honor, etc. Lizards in the heartland do a lot of low intensity posturing and ritual fighting. 

  • The spyship you’re talking about is built by the Federal Government, which claims dominion over most of The Shell. Spyships are sometimes used to get a bird’s-eye view on a battle, but in peacetime, they’re used for surveillance and intimidation. A lizard Family might be less likely to do subversive things with a Federal spyship hovering ominously on the horizon. It’s cameras /probably/ aren’t pointed at you but… who can say. 

  • Lizards were *created* as partly artificial maintenance equipment. Custodian suits were a vital piece of gear, part tool and part cognitive control system. They both let lizards do their job more effectively, and allowed management engines to control their thoughts and behavior. Basically, all lizards are “supposed” to be in custodian suits– only, some escaped, reproduced, and eventually forgot what they were intended for. 

  • Plants+Outside

  • Foliage

  • The Outside of The Shell is an artificial garden. Rivers, mountains, seas, forests, all arranged to be pleasing and comfortable for the fungus that (briefly) inhabited them. The Atmosphere is incredibly thick, warm, and humid with fertilizer and terraforming chemicals. Technically breathable, but you’d want to wear a respirator if you value your health.

  • Accessibility

  • Lizards get blown up if they try to leave the maintenance layer. They’ve tried. Approaching the “ceiling” from underneath gets you destroyed by weapons built into the underside. Trying to fly through the “hole” attracts flying Custodians and eventually orbital weapons. While there is still the odd attempt, it’s accepted as a fact of life that you stay away from the edge of the sky. 

  • Humans

  • We’re lanky, our skin is weird and oily, we’re missing the tail and our body shape is subtly OFF. We smell alien and our flat faces are difficult to read. And we’re big, at least twice as tall as lizards, making these differences even more frightening. 

  • Babies+Old

  • Lizards have an extended childhood. Babies grow slowly, and cannot do things on their own until five or six. Adolescence is similar to humans, although mental maturity develops a bit faster. Lizards are mostly done growing, physically and mentally, by age 18-20. Family culture generally recognizes you as an adult at 20. 

  • While lizards may show some superficial signs of age, their body stays strong and capable into their 70s, at which point they’ll start to drop dead. Physical decline means you’re on death’s doorstep. 

  • Shell, Custioands, lizzers

  • Lizards are fully “organic.” Engineered tissue grows naturally within their bodies, worming between their other organs as they develop. 

  •  

  • Custodians are creatures– organic and robotic, or both– that are part of the “maintience ecosystem,” helping to repair and maintain The Shell long after its creators disappeared.  

  •  

  • And its creators were sentient fungus, building a prison and a paradise for themselves. 

  • The Shell+Moar

  • >  Is the shell an artificial planet megastructure, it is it a normal planet with an artificial shell cover?

  •  

  • Yeah! It’s a terrestrial planet that’s been roofed over. The planet surface is polluted and absolutely COVERED in factories and industrial infrastructure. Lizards live in a “skylight,” where the ceiling has fallen in, crushing a bunch of the machinery and seeding the ground with animal and plant life.

  •  

  • >  Are the ancient AIs in the ruins of the shell based off of them?

  •  

  • Yup! Management engines have some ancient-fungus genetic material in them– their organic components are generally fungus-based. They’re sort of almost fungus cyborgs. 

  •  

  • >  Could they somehow have downloaded their consciousness into the machines to become AI?

  •  

  • The fungus was almost like a hive mind– consciousness arising from countless tiny cells. So they think using their entire mass, which isn’t really possible to upload into a machine.

  • Outside

  • While individual weapons can be destroyed, The Shell’s defenses aren’t automated. They’re controlled by thinking creatures, compelled by genetic programming and ancient instructions. In order to eliminate the Shell’s weapons systems, you’d need to kill many  management engines and destroy their equipment. Or you’d need to find a way around the programming that makes them aggressive. 

  •  

  • But lizards have no idea how to do that. This leaves them with  two ways to resist. They can fight– while ancient weapons are overwhelming, a concerted effort can leave a small mark… And they can try and find holes in the programing and sensor coverage. 

  •  

  • And yup, said weapons systems are actually MORE worried about things coming in than things coming out. The Shell isn’t supposed to be a prison… It’s really just a closed system, and you can’t leave a closed system… especially not when you’re malfunctioning equipment yourself. 

  • Lizzers power

  • Lizards, slugs, and worms are all modified with genetic material from a common source. This helps them interface with ancient technology, and makes them easier to manipulate. 

  •  

  • The source of this material is a carefully guarded secret, and the fungus brought it to their grave. 

  • Slugs+Worms

  • Slugs and worms are naturally unrelated, but they’ve been modified with genetic material from a common source. 

  •  

  • Worms (at least, the creature they were molded from) are native to The Shell, but Lizards and Slugs aren’t. 

  •  

  • Worms’ ancestors actually survived The Shell’s industrialization, and can still be found in cool coastal waters. 

  • Custodian Species

  • While there is some commonality between Custodian species, each received different modifications to suit their role.

  •  

  • Worms are long, flexible manipulator arms, with simple metabolic needs. They are creative thinkers and easy to manipulate. They cannot naturally channel. They are designed to pilot ancient machinery.  

  •  

  • Lizards are hardy. Their robust bodies act as a growth medium for useful tissues. They can be “used” as-is, or these tissues can be harvested and installed on other custodians. They are designed to work independently.  

  •  

  • Slugs are designed to be “programmable” problem solvers. Unlike Worms and Lizards, they’re not sapient, and do not act independently. They are embedded in machinery, helping to process data where organic thinking power is needed but sapience is unnecessary. 

  •  

  • The Ancients

  • The fungus evolved on The Shell long before it was industrialized and roofed over. 

  •  

  • For a long time they were simple, unthinking fungi, but consciousness arose spontaneously when the largest fungal colonies hit critical mass. 

  •  

  • When the fungus thinks, each cell acts as a neuron and a tiny voice in a cognitive collective. Thinking means gaining “consensus,” a process that makes them slow but extraordinarily potent thinkers. 

  •  

  • Even as more advanced and esoteric technology was developed, The Shell was built using “conventional” means– very large spacecraft and construction equipment. It is not a wholly artificial structure. It’s basically a “façade,” erected over the original surface of the planet, which houses all of the industrial infrastructure. 

  •  

  • while fungal colonies rarely left The Shell, they very much did exploit the solar system for resources… traces of ancient technology can be found all over the star system, from mines on Haulai to the massive orbital crucible on Sek Tan Tet. 

  • Although they weren’t, actually, slime molds, they looked a lot like them. Globs of vividly colored organic material, that can ripple and writhe and “flow” around. After they achieved sentience, colonies would differentiate themselves with characteristic shapes or colors.

  • Magic

  • Magic in The Shell comes from friction between realities. Ancient generators are… pinprick holes in wall of reality, where this energy, that would normally be trapped in the liminal space, can pour out and be used in the physical world. 

  •  

  • They’re kind of like portals, but even if you could fit through one, you wouldn’t go anywhere. You would be instantly denatured as your body enters a space where reality… isn’t, where the fabric of YOU is twisted and pulled in 7 different directions.

  • Stuff Again

  • Yeah! There are a few, very rare “artifacts” that, unlike everything else, aren’t bits of ancient Shell machinery, but are actually parts of spacecraft that were shot down by the Shell’s orbital defenses. 

  •  

  • Whether anything has… “settled” on The Shell, either by chance or because their spacecraft was shot down, s a really interesting question. Not gonna give a conclusive answer on that RN. 

  •  

  • *Most* management engines don’t reclaim Lizards because they think that’s abhorrent. But as their fleet of custodians dwindle, as equipment keeps faltering and breaking down, some of them get desperate… 

  •  

  • People go missing in the ruins sometimes. 

  •  

  • Moar Stuff

  • Ahhh thank you! 

  •  

  • The ancient fungus creatures are still around, sub-sapient, munching on leaf litter and eating each other on the surface of the planet. 

  •  

  • Elsewhere in the solar system, you still find lizards, management engines, and other custodians, but there are less of them. The Shell was the undisputed heart of the fungus’s territory, and while they operated outposts elsewhere in the solar system, these took less sapient bodies to operate. 

  •  

  • There are other, non-Shell creatures too. The whole system was inhabited with a variety of species– seal people, squid, etc. That said, the whole solar system as a kind of post-apocalyptic bent to it. At the height of their power (and sapience) the fungus sold food and medicine to pretty much everyone else in the solar system. And when they turned inwards and collapsed, huge swaths of the solar system starved or descended into infighting themselves. It’s been thousands of years since then and there are definitely healthy, vibrant states and people living life outside of The Shell, but you can find ruins and broken remains of old cultures almost everywhere.  

  • Worms

  • Worms (like lizards, and every other Modified creature) aren’t completely artificial. They’re an existing species that was crudely manipulated and conditioned to serve a role in the maintience ecosystem. 

  •  

  • Worms are actually weird shellfish that have been “shucked” and stuffed in robotic suits. 

  •  

  • While their suits don’t age, the worm bodies do, and they need to be replaced every century or two. There are ancient facilities dedicated to making more worms.

  •  

  •  However, unlike lizards, worms can’t reproduce on their own. They’re essentially shellfish, designed to scatter genetic material into the tides. As a shell-less amalgam in a robot suit, they’re totally unable to do this, which why there are lizard states and cultures, but only the occasional “free” worm. 

  •  

  • Fungus

  • Each shade of the fungus wanted one thing– to be the strongest, most powerful, SINGULAR fungus around. 

  •  

  • The different colonies tapped the shell system to get an advantage over their opponents. After merging, the fungus barely maintained this network, which began to fall apart even before they splintered. 

  •  

  • Something?

  • Two ecologists tag and photograph a huge adult dagger fly while it remains grounded to feed. A few of its offspring hover nearby, eager to scavenge on the adult’s kill. These magnificent beats never land except to impale their prey, for they are defenseless while grounded. The lizards are careful not to get too close, for stressing it could cause it to waste valuable energy attempting to prematurely take off again. This rugged landscape was formed when a section of the ancient superstructure of the Shell collapsed a few tens of thousands of years ago, creating a unique environment of deep ravines and high, thin soiled plateaus. Landscapes like these are of special interest to ecologists of the shell researching the process of primary succession in their strange, artificial world....

  • Loggers

  • Mushroom lumber is a valuable commodity in The Shell! Cheaper and lighter than hardwood, it’s the material of choice for construction on a budget

  • Mushroom trees are the above-ground part of a giant underground organism. As a result, lumberjacks don’t have to worry about cutting down too many of them! In fact, it’s almost impossible to stop them from growing. Unless the mycelium is painstakingly dug up and killed, the mushroom trees will keep coming back, year after year.

  • Harvesting mushroom trees is also relatively easy. Their flesh is soft and spongey, easier to cut through than wood, and in a convenient shape for milling. Although still heavy enough to crush, these lizards don’t like wearing their helmets.

  • In order to be used as a building material, mushroom lumber has to be baked in a kiln. The firing process takes weeks to do correctly, but produces a material that’s light and strong. Only the core is hard enough to use in structural applications, but the outer layers of the mushroom tree can be used to make shingles, siding, fences, sculptures, etc.

  • These loggers really wish it wasn’t pouring. It seems the rain snuck up on them. They want to finish their work quickly so they can escape somewhere cozy and dry.

  • Airships

  • Courier is a mail smuggler; an illegal mailman. The federal government has a monopoly on interstate communication and mail delivery, from the ships to the telephone lines. But there are plenty of people who don’t want the govt. peering into their affairs. This is where Courier comes in. He transports loads of letters, packages, and illicit trade goods between city-states. There’s a lot of money to be made in this business, enough to afford cutting-edge jet engines and their expensive fuel. He doesn’t care who hears him or sees him if nobody can catch up.

  • Fleet Captain Lai is the captain of a small, unremarkable fleet. Stationed on the Western bounds of the federation, her job is to protect merchant ships and deter pirates. Her cutter– Small, fast(ish), and lightly armed– is nonetheless intimidating to the generally smaller and more lightly armed pirates. For months, she’s been trying to catch Courier, with little success. The federal interceptors she requested haven’t arrived and none of her ships are fast enough to compete.

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This Is a google doc i have

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