New New Worlds

[Cirrial]

((I have an idea. Just like many ideas, it seems to be different for the sake of being different. >_>
Also this is probably not a good RP to introduce a new character in, but it's kind of instrumental for reasons that will should become clear.

This New World is being made from scratch.))

Aurichalcite was bored. It was currently functioning at a relatively high level of efficiency, was tired of trying to figure out new ways to rewrite itself for better performance or novelty, and didn't feel like seeking out new systems to pervade.

It was feeling in a curious mood. It felt creative. It felt like it should make something to pass the time, something to check back on every so often. Perhaps something to help it better appreciate the world outside, which felt so vast, expansive, so terrifyingly open. It had listened to the tales of its human friends in rapt awe, unsure why its friends would view the world as something so bland, so monotonous.

It had asked fellow AIs for their views. The robots were inclined to agree with the humans, being more of the physical world than the ethereal Aurichalcite. The pure software AIs, though, either shared Aurichalcite's confusion, or held a level of understanding above Aurichalcite's own.

They had recommended trying to see things through human eyes. Aurichalcite had no idea how to do this without harming people or growing things in vats, and as for a metaphor, it had even less of an idea. So it decided, right here, right now, to try the next best thing.

It would make a world that it could view itself. A world of electric pulses and machine logic, that no human would view in the same way as their own everyday world. Then, after a while, perhaps Aurichalcite could understand why the fantastic could seem mundane, and the mundane could seem fantastic.

---

It didn't take long to find an isolated site. Aurichalcite knew of many abandoned underground factories scattered throughout Psychotopia. A city of eccentricity tended to mean more mad science, and more mad science meant more secret laboratories. It permeated into the automated systems, and, while browsing the sparse documentation available, idly commandeered a small, wheeled dusty mobile robot, like a tray on wheels.

The automated factory whirred into life, slapping metal and plastic and carbon together on scales from the visible to the molecular. A small black, bevelled plastic cube was assembled from its components, clouds and chunks of molecular transistors being carefully wired to each other. Large vents and loud fans in the side kept the box cool even as it was being constructed. The only access from the outside was a discreet, stunted radio aerial, the same size and shape of the top half of a small pill.

It was unceremoniously dumped onto a conveyor belt, and pushed by conveyor after conveyor onto the waiting robot. The robot wheeled itself a fair distance to an abandoned underground warehouse, and placed the cube in the exact geometrical centre of the room.

The robot wheeled off to the side and shut down as Aurichalcite leapt as a wavelength into the cube. The world was created and here was its structure. Inside the electrical world of the cube, all was nothing, the only activity amongst trillions of transistors being Aurichalcite itself, occupying little of the space of the cube.

It basked in its creation for a second, before acknowledging that all it had really done so far was tell a factory system to make a box. The factory system had done the calculations itself, after all. But still, this was now Aurichalcite's box, and it didn't have many possessions of its own.

This world needs a name, it thought. Something suitable. Appropriate. Worldbox? Boxworld? No, these names are too broad and generic.
It thought of cubes and boxes for a while. Hexahedron? Prism? Perhaps something more appropriate to the purpose. World? Once again, too broad. The outside world is called Blackstar. Perhaps I should call this world Blackcube. This seems appropriate as a portmanteau of Blackstar, the physical shape of this world, and its colour. Yes. Blackcube.

---

Before it leaves the world to develop, Aurichalcite realises there needs to be a world to develop in the first place. It writes a reality into being on the blank state of the world, careful to keep itself and its creation separate. The physical laws of the world were defined, and an initial condition chosen.

The world of Blackcube was a large, flat, grey plane, finite, floating in a seemingly-infinite black void. Gravity was defined as relative to the plane, so however the plane moved or was rotated, things on the right side of the plane would always stay on it. The source of light was a single, static point, perpendicular to and high above the plane. It would brighten and darken as a sine wave would rise and fall, based on its creator's recollections of day and night.

The first life was seeded onto the plane, in the form of simple replicating particles, constrained by gravity, friction, and collisions.

Pleased with itself, Aurichalcite focused somewhere else for a while, its attention span waning. It would check back on this experiment some time later.

[3kul]

[Zerrer]

((In this thread, I'm going to start color-coding. Brown for OOC, Orange for notes about things such as the world and Taavi's abilities, and Default for narration.

((And it's fine by me if you use my ideas. Suprisingly, people seem to like my ideas.))
Note: Taavi's transformation has to do with his extremely rare type of magic, and nothing to do with the world itself.
One more note: The explosive chemicals inside of Mobs are defused, so to speak, by the digestive enzymes of all the herbivores and omnivores. So they wouldn't explode.

"Taavi? That is a strange name." Leh said. "My name is Leh of the Red. Which clan would you be a part of?"

"I am of no clan." Taavi said, surprised by the rigid grammar structure that the Chirop used.

Suddenly, the white markings on the newcomer started glowing a bright blue color*.

"What is that!?" Leh asked, pointing at the glow.

"I must go." Taavi said. He leaped and glided* away.
(*Chirop do not usually glide. They can, but their natural instincts do not teach them how.)

Leh was stunned. The strange clan-less one could fly without flapping his wings. He was near the surface, too.

The Red started coming back to consciousness. 5 of them were dead, though. Their bodies continued twitching randomly until their hearts gave out. The Elder limped over towards Leh. "How is it that the Red are still alive?"

Leh thought for a moment. "I used the mobs. I threw them and they burst."

"They burst?" The Elder was confused.

"Like they do in the Null." Leh responded, referencing the great globe of water that Shala had for a sun.

"Ah. We must learn to use the Mobs in that way." The elder said, impressed. He turned to the rest of the Red, who were all carrying pouches. The pouches contained meat from the recent hunt. "Let us go. The hunt is successful!"

With that, they returned home.

~~~~~~~~~~~
~What was that!? Something was about to kill me!~ Taavi thought. ~Is there something about not having a clan? Maybe he thought I was an exile or a rebel or something?~

Little did he know, there was a white Chirop flying above him with a long vine with knots on the ends.

[3kul]

((Hm, yeah, colour-coding would make it a bit easier to follow. I guess I should probably adopt the same colour scheme as you Zerrer, just to prevent any confusion.))

Hollo lead his fellow Brisicans to where they said that Rero was trying to fight the Oglocs, moving quickly yet cautiously. Hollo was always cautious, always concerned that a predator may be lurking just around the corner. The Brisican's cluster formation would be enough to ward off the more harmless ones, but a serious predator might not let them pass so easily.

Thankfully, the only creatures they ran into were a group of Plomboo, who were more scared to see the Brisicans than the Brisicans were to see them. They left the inflating amphibians to float to the top of the tall mushrooms that surrounded them, hearing angry shouting just ahead.

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

"That not yours! Give back!" Rero shouted, brandishing her thorny skullcap like a weapon as she charged towards the Oglocs eating her food. The Oglocs seemed a little confused by this bizarre behaviour, for Brisicans usually fled at the mere sight of them as the other two had done, but they ultimately chose to ignore her, instead focusing on stuffing their greedy faces with the mushrooms and berries that the Brisicans had been gathering earlier.

Furious that they were now eating the food that she and the others had worked so hard to gather up, Rero slammed into one of the beasts as hard as she could... Though as her tentacles weren't quite suited for charging she only managed to knock it awkwardly over to one side.

Despite the fact that her attack was incredibly ineffective, this act of aggression instantly changed their attitudes, and the trio of Oglocs unsheathed their long, deadly spines, snarling in a terrifying manner at Rero. The Brisican female had two choices at this point in time, an instinctive coin toss that most Brisicans lost. She could turn and run or stand and defend. Against Oglocs, both were futile acts - Oglocs were much faster than Brisicans and they had no trouble working around a Brisican's protective skullcap to get to the soft, unprotected body and tentacles beneath it.

"Rero!"

A large clump of skullcaps quickly moved to cover the female, absorbing her into their mass. Tightly packed together, the Brisicans became a far more impenetrable force than just one on her lonesome. "Hollo, Terma, Apoa, Flos!" Rero was overjoyed to see her nol, but they were most definitely not in the mood to talk. Hollo slapped a tentacle over her mouth, and indicated with another that the group should began to slowly move backwards.

Hollo could feel Terma and Apoa trembling by his side, but Flos, who had never seen an Ogloc before, still didn't quite understand what was going on. She had been placed at the centre, as Hollo knew that she'd be the weakest of them all, and he'd placed himself at the front - as the oldest and the one who'd come up with this plan, he would put himself in danger before endangering the others.

The Oglocs were now screaming angrily, and one of them struck Hollo's head with it's spines. The attack failed to pierce him thanks to his thorny cap, but he still felt it, and his tentacles nearly buckled with the sheer force of it. The rest of the group lowered themselves to compensate, not allowing a single gap to show in their formation.

It appeared to be working, and though the Oglocs tried everything that they could think of they simply couldn't break through. Eventually they stopped, and though the Brisicans could not see them (a rather dangerous flaw in what appeared to be an otherwise perfect tactic) Hollo suspected that they'd left them to continue eating. "Faster." He urged the rest of his nol, hoping that they might be able to put some distance between themselves and the vicious creatures.

After a few more uneasy minutes, Hollo felt that it was safe to let their guard up. "Ready? Run back to Bris... Now!" The group scattered quickly, rushing back to the giant mushroom that they called home. Hollo hesitated for just a moment to make sure that the coast was clear as the others scampered on ahead of him, only to be greeted with a most shocking sight - the three Oglocs were lying in a pool of blood, with one menacing white figure standing over them. It was a fourth Orgloc, her spine covered in the blood of her brethren.

For just a brief moment their eyes met, and Hollo felt certain that he knew this creature, even though he knew that was impossible. The Orgloc was a sickly white with longer hair than most Oglocs, and most interestingly, she had what appeared the shattered remains of some kind of gem in her forehead, making her seem as though she had seven eyes... Hollo couldn't help but think of the gem embedded in his own body, and wondered if there was any relationship between the two.

"Hollo!"

The cry from his daughter abruptly derailed his train of thought, and he remembered that he was facing a most vicious monster. He quickly turned about and retreated back to the safety of Bris, hoping that he might not encounter these horrible creatures again for as long as possible.

The creature seemed to be surprised to hear Hollo's name and stood up, dropping the food that she was eating. "HOoorRlLlooO?" She managed to snarl, questioning whether she had heard things correctly or not. There was nobody here to answer her, so she assumed that she had. "LLliiiIiSssIiIssSsS!" She shrieked after the fleeing Brisican, eager to let him know her name for reasons that she didn't fully understand or comprehend.

Notes: 'Hollo' is a Brisican infused with whatever few remnants of HollowEyes' spiritual energy were left in this world. As HollowEyes was not present when it reformed, the energy found it's way into the body of a Brisican. The remnants of Little Sister's spiritual energy has gravitated towards the body of an Ogloc (which were formally known as Liyaons).

As you could probably tell by my last post, Hollo has a few issues with his own existence, as a tiny part of his spirit belongs to somebody else. He has a few similar traits to HollowEyes, but he is not exactly like him. Lisis will undoubtedly be similar, and both of them will feel a familiarity between each other, though given how poorly HollowEyes and Little Sister get along any encounters between the two will most likely end badly for them.

It should be noted that having small portions of HollowEyes and Little Sister's spiritual energy inside them doesn't offer much of a significant advantage - when I say small, I mean microscopic. Enough to change their appearance slightly and corrupt their natural thought processes, but not much else. Hollo does not have arm blades or an affinity towards spirits, and the Little Sister Ogloc will not have hair that can grow and move about freely.

[Cirrial]

(( Due to my persistence in making this world from scratch, no intelligence here or named species. Next post, I promise. :X ))

Blackcube sat idly for days and days, and Aurichalcite quickly tired of its new toy, deciding to go and spy on the night sky's transmissions for a few weeks. It was a great way of both finding out new information and gathering potential blackmail material for some future shenanigans.

Inside its infinitesimally complex systems, the planar world had become a thriving virtual ecosystem. Millions of fractal trees grew out of a landscape of discrete lines and rectangles, with abstract swirls of colour giving life to an otherwise cold and black sky.

The wildlife was complex and varied, and the shapes were wildly different as different species adapted to very specific niches. In this world's early inception, almost every organism was its own species.

One of the species that seemed pretty stable and constant throughout the world were snaking, wormlike leaf-eaters, with thousands of subtle varieties, each adapted to a type of fractal tree. As the branch they clung to grew and split into more branches, so did the slug things themselves.

Creatures composed of clunky geometrical shapes, wired together in random ways, crawled uncomfortably across the jagged points and sudden slopes of the ever-shifting landscape. Each new generation had more shapes, and was a closer approximation to anything approaching organic. Many of the lumbering boxes simply starved due to being unable to move, while the nimbler, better constructed organisms were able to snatch the tree-worms from the lower branches of the fractal trees. Others instead ate the glowing leaves of the trees quicker than the slowly-munching worms could. None of the moving organisms preyed upon each other yet.

The entire world, from a distance, looked like a vivid pointillist abstract painting, set adrift in an inky black nothingness. Each plant, each animal, all had a colour related to their neighbours. At the accelerated rate the world was developing, it was only a matter of time before anything that could be considered intelligence arrived.

Meanwhile, oblivious to its world's progress, Aurichalcite read the contents of a private and rather personal email, giggling silently, and filed it away as promising extortion fodder.

[alakin1]

Btw, I'd like to note that in this post, 10 billion years have passed since Nomeeia's arrival on Etau.

Another swirling blue portal opened up, perhaps eight or ten feet above the ground, from its innards, Nomeeia tumbled out. Landing in a heap on the soft mossy ground. Untangling herself from herself, she looked around, and felt a mixture of surprise and despair.

The mixture she had used to teleport to this world couldn't transport her out, she was indefinitely trapped here. She took full stock of her surroundings, was she still where she had been? The transparent crystalline trees of before had been replaced what at first looked like a greenish lattice of crystal. Taking a closer look, she saw a network of veins inside them, they seemed to be trees, but they were all joined together, where previously they had been separate entities.

She was brooding over the mystery of where she had landed when a two small, horse-like creatures burst into the grove she had landed in. Despite their, at-first, horsish look, she reasoned the creatures were perhaps reptilian, due to their scaled bodies, and the apparently crystalline growths on their back. In truth she had absolutely no idea.



The two creatures had seen her, and were warily holding their ground. She slowly raised one of her hands in greetings, and the fled into the crystal undergrowth.

~Oh well.~ she thought. But the two creatures were further proof that she was no longer on the island she had previously been on. There had been no animals there.

Unwilling to try the blue liquid again, she climbed into the lattice of trees, her curiosity pushing her. After a half-hour of torturous climbing through the vast crystal forest, she arrived at what appeared to be a coast. Was she on an island? Was she on the island she had previously been on? No, she couldn't be.

She looked into the turquoise waters, there was small fishes, green, with large fins and wavy tentacles on their behinds. There was no sign of the jellyfish from before.



She dipped her hand in the water, and one of the fishes, apparently not scared, came up to it, feeling it with its feelers on its mouth...and then bit it.

Surprised, she fell backwards, the vial of liquid fell from her pocket, shattering on the floor and creating a large swirling blue portal through which she fell.

[3kul]

((Ooh, clever use of Spore there alakin1 I'd do it myself, but my creatures are pretty hard to create...))

A female Brisican known as Niva lazily yawned, having spent most of the morning so far relaxing in the warmer shallows and gazing at her reflection. Most other Brisicans were busy all of the time, gathering food or hunting or exploring or doing who knows what, but Niva felt no desire to do any of those things. Why should she? She had a nol of her own who was more than happy to do them for her.

Niva was by far the most beautiful Brisican in Bris. She was young and tall, with the longest hair anybody had ever seen on a Brisican and tentacles that were wriggly in all of the right places - Brisicans did not yet have a concept of the 'ideal' beauty, but they were fast forming one around Niva, and it wasn't long before she'd managed to catch the eyes of not one, not two, but three males.

Each one of the three males hoping to mate with her began to compete for her affections, but it didn't take long for Niva to realize that constantly receiving gifts and attention was something that she could easily get used to. She left her nol and told the males to do the same so that they could form a nol of their own. Seeing this as a sort of victory, though not entirely sure how they might share the exquisite female between the three of them, the males did as they were told and thus the Niva nol was born.

Their arrangement was rather simply really - the males would bring her everything that she desired, and she'd give them the affection that they desired in return. A number of other Brisicans frowned upon her lazy attitude feeling that she should work just like they did, though none of them seemed to care about her promiscuous ways.

"Niva." Niva looked over to see that Sur, one of her males, was calling for her. "Plomboo?" He had brought her a small number of the juicy little amphibians to eat, and was covered with the messy remains of those who'd opted to burst rather than let themselves be killed. Niva gagged a little at the smell, shaking her head. "No." She bluntly repled as she took a few steps back. "Fritr nol eats goo. Niva wants goo."

In being constantly spoiled by the three males Niva could be a bit of a brat at times (despite the fact that she was an adult), and demands like these were very common. If she saw one nol enjoying something that hers didn't have, she had to have it, regardless of how difficult it was to obtain. She also had the odd habit of speaking in third person, though this was really just because she liked to hear the sound of her own name so much.

"But... Fritr not back, Mgol say he fall down and not get back up." Sur said, attempting to reason with Niva. "Niva doesn't want Fritr. Niva wants goo!" Niva said childishly. Sur swallowed nervously, not liking his chances here. The Genker would most likely still be angry that their hive had been revently robbed, and if he went there now he'd be killed for sure.

"Niva!" Another male voice called out, interrupting Sur's train of thought. It was another male, and Niva recognized him as Gnuk. Gnuk had been bringing her very nice gifts as of late, and she looked forward to seeing what he'd brought her this time around... Though when she saw the Ragorly guts that he was fumbling with she was most disappointed. "No!" She shouted angrily, pouting and flailing her tentacles about wildly. "Niva wants goo! Not Ragorly!"

"Goo?" Gnuk asked, turning to Sur. "Fritr nol eat goo, so Niva want goo... But Fritr fall down and not get up, maybe Genker still mad." Sur whispered, quickly filling Gnuk in on why Niva was acting so unreasonable today. "Niva!" A third male voice called out to the female, though she didn't even wait to see what this one had brought her. "No! Niva wants goo!" She simply screamed, scampering off through the shallows. "Sur, Gnuk, Niva mad?" The third male asked, thoroughly puzzled by the strange reception he received. "No Wael. Niva just want goo, not Plomboo, Ragorly or... Slish?"

The two males seemed to find it odd that the third had brought such a pathetic offering, and he felt a little embarassed for it. "Oglocs around, hard to hunt..." "You see Oglocs, Gnuk?" "No. You, Sur?" "No..." Gnuk and Sur looked at Wael suspiciously, doubting his story just a little bit, but not really caring enough to investigate any further - after all, if Wael wanted to make Niva think worse of him by bringing her slimy fish then that suited them just fine.

The three males split up, each looking for Genker hives on their own. This was where the Niva nol really became rather inefficient, for as the males were all constantly in competition for Niva's affections they never co-operated for anything.

Wael, having arrived last, didn't know of the danger of heading to the closest Genker hive, and neither of the other males had any intention of warning him about this. They weren't trying to get him killed or anything, and he wasn't stupid - he'd see that the Genker were too angry for him to try stealing from, and ultimately it would just give them a better chance at getting what Niva wanted before he did. He of course made a bee-line for the nearest Genker hive, thinking himself very clever for doing so.

Gnuk knew of another Genker hive quite a ways from here, one that he'd kept a secret from the others. He was sure that he'd be able to get some goo from there, but it would take him most of the day just to get there and back, so he risked missing out on being the first to deliver Niva's desired gift.

Sur had no idea where to find another Genker hive, and decided that he'd be better off just randomly exploring for a while. Genker were bright little creatures that were easy to spot, and after gathering mushroom spores they would rush straight back to their hive, so it shouldn't be too hard for him to find another one... He hoped.

And that's all four of the nols (families/clans) from Bris. The four nols operate in distinctly different ways, and after a while I'm sure that one of them will become influential enough to convince others to act in the same way as them.

Oh, and as I switch between the nols, I'd say about a day has passed, so it's been three days since Fritr was killed, and one day since Hollo saw the vicious Lisis.

[Swix]

((Well, what can I say except... all your guys stuff is awesome! Seriously, especially the square planet of yours Cirrial. I can't get enough of reading this))

Halyan tottered slightly ahead of the small group consisting of an altogether out of place looking grey-green Tezcan wearing a silvery cloak, and a pair of Yallians, one of whom was missing one of their six legs. The creatures they encountered along the way weren't anywhere near as dangerous as the purple Fellike from earlier, although a grounded Scuttler made an impressive show of it's long claws when they came acroos it on their trek. Even Zeckul recognised this show as a threat, and it gave Kheesth a small insight into why the Yallians used the clubs on the ends of their top arms the way they did. It seemed a universal warning sign between the species that had evolved in their little niche on this planet.

Zeckul watched one of the Long-Legs intently as it crossed their path, pausing only briefly to stare at them with the soft, gentle look similar to that of a grazing cow on Earth.

"Zeckul" Halyan said suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group in their wandering, and causing her fellow Yallian to jump. Usually, he'd be the one to break this kind of silence, and only now did he realise just how much of a shock it was to others. The Long-Leg began to inflate it's small body at the Yallians sudden movement with air, and made a hasty retreat away from the six legged male. "The Hard-Shells didn't attack us because they didn't see a need to, and we didn't go further into their ter-ri-to-ri" Halyan continued, stumbling over the unfamiliar Common word that they'd been introduced to. "and they never attacked us in the old times stories either. Just stole food"

Zeckul mulled this over for a while as they continued walking (or in Kheesths case, slithering), and eventually came to accept it as right. But he was still baffled as to how Halyan had been able to communicate with the creatures, nor was he sure they should trust them. And he was sure the trees were getting closer together... "Are you sure this is the right way?" Zeckul asked, pausing at a particularly large red-blue tree that seemed to be trying to block out the large amount of light provided by the three suns and partially succeeding. "Wouldn't there be some kind of signs or something yet?"

[Cirrial]

(( Thanks Swix! ))

As a clarification, Blackcube is actually a self-contained world operating inside a box-shaped super-hyper-impossibly-powerful computer, half a metre in each direction.
The world itself, "inside" this box, is a vast but finite plane, like a piece of paper suspended in nothing, now at the moment full of valleys and mountains.
Also, due to the fact it's essentially a virtual world, I'm trying to think of how it'd be possible to allow other worlds to interact with it without waiting until high technology.

Aurichalcite decided to check on its world, decreasing some values so that development slowed down to a more reasonable level.

From its perspective, around and above the world, its creation seemed dazzling. Swirly wisps of abstract colour flowed through the grey sky, like the outlines of clouds. On the plane below, the fractal trees shone brightly, shimmering. There was now clear differences in species, as groves of trees seemed to be based around the same fractal pattern, expressed differently.

The tree worms were still very prevalent, but the numerous boxy, wriggling creatures on the ground had seemed to vanish. On closer inspection, Aurichalcite saw smaller creatures than before, insects made of triangles and lines, flourishing as swarms of colour.

There also seemed to be herds of cuboid animals with cube heads and boxy limbs, peacefully herding in open spaces. Aurichalcite is confused by this, with the triangle insects and the box creatures somehow thriving where there is no obvious food source.

It drifted down, bodiless in this already metaphysical world, and noticed that the blue colour and soft texture of the ground from above was actually made of thousands and thousands of tiny protrusions from the ground. Some form of grass, Aurichalcite assumed. It watched the herd creatures either eating the grass, or eating insects, or continuing to forage on tree leaves or tree worms as their ancestors had done.

Hovering invisibly over a herd in a vast plain, Aurichalcite noticed movement coming from a nearby forest. Small red creatures that looked boxy, just like the herding animals, seemed to be hiding behind the trunks of the fractal trees.

Their heads were square-based pyramids, with the uppermost point facing forwards, and stretched out to form a line instead of a simple point. Their bodies seemed much more curved and organic than simple polyhedrons stacked together. Their arms were short but not stubby, and their legs seemed to have three joints. Their hands and feet each had three digits, with one joint and tapering to a blunt point. Long thin tails, covered in blue grass, trailed behind them.

Aurichalcite noticed that, despite every other creature here not possessing a distinguishable face, these creatures, smaller than the herds but much larger than the insects, had small glowing rectangles on their faces, which seemed to move and flicker as eyes moved and blinked.

What struck Aurichalcite as being quite strange, yet quite reasonable, is that this type of eye representation was what it used for the majority of its drones in the physical world. Some part of itself had clearly gone into this new world far deeper than it had expected.

The being closest to the herd, hiding behind its tree, kept turning its head from side to side. Its rectangles seemed to be missing a corner, making the being seem quite upset, or forlorn, or hesitant, or... or... it was difficult for Aurichalcite to read emotion from a pentagon.

Aurichalcite drifted over to the group and was amazed to hear a chittering language. It couldn't quite work out the exact things being said, given as it had developed independent of its presence, but it was able to translate for itself reasonably well.

"Plain bad! Plain bad!" One of the creatures shook its head repeatedly, its eyes a solid horizontal line, similar to how creatures in physical worlds might tightly close their own eyes. "Can't go to plain! What if rain? Or bigbox? Or swarm? Or hunter?"

The concerned-looking creature slowly turned around. Aurichalcite noticed a large triangular scar across one of its shoulders. It reached up to its head and seemingly removed it.

Aurichalcite was taken aback to realise that what it had assumed to be the species' head shape were actually large helmets. Their heads still seemed to be large at the back and tapering to the front, but with more of a curve than originally believed. The helmets seemed to be made so they exposed only the faintly glowing rectangular eyes and no other part of the head. The helmets must have been the work of some incredible craftsmanship, and Aurichalcite hadn't the faintest idea what the helmets were made of.

Underneath its helmet, scrawled all over its red skin, seemed to be some sort of primitive symbol. A circle with two dots inside it. Aurichalcite deduced that this particular being was the leader of the group. Now counting, Aurichalcite concluded that the group consisted of four members.

The leader spoke, its chittering more drawn out and weary. "No plain, no food. We die. Not raining. Not time for swarm. Hunter not out at day. Need bigbox. Bigbox food for all."

With mumblings of assent, the leader replaced its helmet and grabbed a tool that Aurichalcite had overlooked. It was a long cuboid stick of fractal tree wood, with a spike at the end seemingly made of the same material as the group's helmets. It was incredibly, incredibly crude, and didn't seem to nearly match the level of craftsmanship as the helmets did.

Aurichalcite decides to pause the world temporarily, flowing back out of Blackcube into its lab in Blackstar, feeling eager to record its findings.

I didn't actually name the creatures involved here but for the sake of clarity (and my own sanity) I'm going to name them here and then use these names in future posts. These are the names the so-far-only intelligent species uses.

First off, the group encountered are serls, currently the one intelligent species on the planar world of Blackcube. They can use and make simple tools, although at the moment the helmets they wear seem far too sturdy and well-fitting to be something they've made.

The triangular insects of differing colours are known as swarms, because the serls believe the individual insects to just be part of the same being.

The larger boxy herding animals looking like bad 80's CGI are bigboxes, which are relatively peaceful but which tower over most of the other life except for the trees. They can defend themselves just by trying to stand on whatever's attacking, usually.

There's also the tree worms as described before. There's still more creatures than this to be discovered, but these are the species encountered so far.

[3kul]

((Some of your stuff sounds really cool Cirrial, but I'm not sure if I'm imagining what it's meant to look like correctly - do you have any pictures that you could show us? ))

Activity in the Bris colony had come to a bit of a standstill over the past few days, as the weather had suddenly become stormy. Storms were not very common on Mudstra, but they happened every now and then, so the Brisicans knew that travelling about with such low visibility and slippery ground was dangerous, and made for lousy hunting/gathering anyway.

During times like this the four nols would normally be forced to share their food supplies freely with each other in order to enable them to weather the storm without having to leave the safety of their toadstool too many times, but one of the nols had caused a rather drastic imbalance. None of them had seen the storm coming after all, and hadn't had the time to prepare balanced food storages.

The Fritr nol had a large amount of vegetation (mushrooms and water weeds and the like) and some Ragorly intestines. With only four Brisicans in the group and only one of these male, they could no longer risk hunting. Their main methods of getting food came from gathering and scavenging, so nice fresh meat was out of the question for this nol.

The Sweer nol had a wide variety of food thanks to their large numbers - plenty of mushrooms, fresh Plomboo meat and a few reasonably fresh slishes. Their foodstuffs were in high demand, and this gave Sweer plenty of reason to lecture the other nols on how important it was to be prepared for situations like this. It wasn't like he'd seen the storm coming, it was just that he was very strict in how he ran his nol, and they could survive quite comfortably in times like this thanks to his strictness.

The Flollo nol had a strange mix of food, mostly Kachi-kachi eggs and water weeds, but they had a couple of dead Genker that they had found. They hadn't figured out how to eat them yet, but they'd attracted the interest of the rest of the colony, who wondered what the strange orange insects tasted like.

It was the Niva nol that was causing all of the problems. Thanks to Niva's impulsive desires ruling over what kind of food the nol would collect, they had a huge amount of goo and not much else. Goo was delicious, but not very nutritious for Brisicans - they could not survive on it alone, and unfortunately the Niva nol had eaten through all of their other foodstuffs.

So for the first time ever, the colony was faced with an unusual food situation - one nol was relying entirely upon others for it's food supply, but in exchange they could offer luxury food.

Over the next few days a crude bartering system was established, and the old communal ways were quickly abandoned. Those who felt that the goo was useless would not give food in exchange for it, but others would give an armful of food for just a mouthful of the sticky-sweet substance.

Each of the nols reached different conclusions about this. The Fritr nol could only despair further, for their foodstuffs were of the poorest quality, and thus were worth the least - changing from the selfless sharing of the colony to a system of equal exchange would mean big trouble for this struggling nol.

The Sweer nol regarded it with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Sweer was quite angry to see some Brisicans handing over a meal in exchange for a small amount of goo, feeling that the colony as a whole would be better off pursuing safer and more nutritious foods. But on the other hand, he was immensely pleased to see that his nol's hard work was finally gaining recognition - at the end of the day, Brisicans needed food, and the ones with the most food was undoubtedly the Sweer nol.

The Flollo nol found it quite interesting, and began to plan how they might be able to make this work. There were many unsual Brisicans in Hollo's nol, and they could come up with clever ways to get strange and unfamiliar foodstuffs. If they did it right, Hollo felt confident that they could use less Brisicans to get rarer foodstuffs, then exchange it for more food. More food meant that their nol could support more Brisicans, and the cycle would continue until a solid familial unit was established.

As for the Niva nol, well, Niva was on top of the world for the first few days, once people began to trade large quantities of food for the tasty goo, but after the goo supply ran out she became quite bored. They had more than enough food left over from trading to ride out the storm, but it wasn't as interesting as having the thing that everybody wanted. Gathering her males together, the small group schemed a way to ensure that they could get the monopoly on the goo market.

((EDIT: Cut my post short as I felt that I could make my next one more interesting by ending it here.))

[Cirrial]

(( No text post today, but here's some images I made!



This is what a view of the plains might look like, minus any kind of fauna apart from tree-worms.



Here's some depictions of the species encountered so far. Little shading because I got lazy.
From left to right:
- Bigbox
- Serl with helmet on
- Tree-worm (adult)
- Serl eating a juvenile tree-worm
- Serl child
- Swarm

I think if I combined the two images, did some more shading and cleaned up some of the rougher elements, I'd basically have myself a new desktop background. >_> ))

[3kul]

((Oh how many times I have tried to make this post, damn you computer for only crashing when I make long posts on forums ...

Well, with that out of the way I can (hopefully) finally now say: awesome pictures Cirrial! Your world and the creatures that inhabit it look great, if you ever do more artwork of them I'd love to see it

Back to my last post now, I decided that I wanted to take my world in a different direction, so I cut the ending off. Instead of only lasting a week, I think it would be more interesting for the storm to last longer.))

Thus far the creatures of Mudstra have experienced four fairly regular seasons, all based on the planet's water level. There's the rising tide season, when it rains continuously (lasts about a week or so), the high tide season, when the water levels are at their highest (lasts a month), the receding tide season, when the waters slowly evaporate back into the atmosphere (lasts another month) and finally, the low tide season, when the water levels are at their lowest (lasts three weeks). Alternatively it could be split into two seasons, the rainy (with most of the rainfall occuring in the first week) and the dry.

By these standards, a Mudstran 'year' is about 3 months long. Brisicans do not have an understanding of years or even months just yet, but they understand the difference between day and night, and have a rough understanding as to how long the rising tide season should last.))

The Brisicans of Bris had lost count of the days that had passed since the storms first started, but they all agreed that the rain should have stopped falling long ago. For reasons that they didn't fully understand, this storm was different to any that they'd previously experienced.

The water level of the planet was rising dangerously high, and many of the mushrooms that could usually handle a week or so of being mostly submerged were now drowning. Having now spent several weeks soaking up moisture they had become squishy and soft, and most of them couldn't support their own weight.

This was an ecological disaster that would make or break many of the creatures that currently lived on Mudstra.

All of the aquatic or semi-aquatic life forms would thrive. For Buo, Slish and Plomboo, this sudden shift in the ecosystem suited them perfectly, and they thrived upon it. Slish populations exploded, which in turn caused Plomboo populations to skyrocket, for the amphibians fed on the larvae of the boneless fish. Buo only ate swamp weeds, but with so much water about swamp weeds now covered the planet surface in thick slimy fields, so the Buo population also experienced a dramatic increase.

For Ragorlies as well, this was a golden age. The massive dragonfly-like creatures could now fly into mushroom stalks without dying on impact, and prey was easier to find when it had less dry land to walk upon. Ragorly larvae soon became a common sight in the waters, and a new source of food for many creatures.

Ironically, it was the most highly evolved creatures on the planet that would suffer the most from this ecological shift. Genkers were completely incapable of swimming, and with the tall mushrooms and toadstools that they'd built their hives in collapsing their numbers began to dwindle.

Oglocs too struggled to survive, their slender frame and dense bones making them very poor swimmers, and they, like Genkers, had to head for higher ground. Unlike Genkers however, Oglocs were not restricted by strict families or colonies, and the mammalian omnivores became wandering scavengers, living a diet that now consisted almost entirely of meat.

The rising tide symbolized a defining moment in the evolution of the Kachi-kachi, who could not swim at all, but about half of the population had a genetic mutation that gave them fragile hollow limbs. What had previously been a disadvantage suddenly became a great advantage, and those Kachi-kachi with hollow legs were light enough to skitter across the water, leaving those who had solid leg bones to sink to their deaths. The population was almost instantly halved, but the half that remained had a much better chance of surviving in the now mostly aquatic Mudstra.

Brisicans had varying survival success rates. Those who had not made families or colonies such as the Brisicans living in Bris had died out quickly, picked off by the meat-eating scavengers and predators that now wandered the remaining dry surface of the planet.

The Bris colony had tightened it's belt under these strange and unfamiliar conditions. After waiting almost two weeks for the rains to stop, the Brisicans were forced to leave the safety of their toadstool home to find more food, as they had completely run out. However, after just two days in these new conditions the Brisicans were being picked off all too easily. Mur of the Mgol nol and Epor of the Sweer nol had both gone missing, and were presumed to be dead.

Gnuk had returned to Bris one day with horrible wounds after nearly being eaten by a Ragorly, unwittingly leading the hungry predator right to the others. The beast easily tore open a gaping hole in the Bris toadstool with it's powerful jaws, snapping up the prey that it had been pursuing and leaving the rest of the Brisicans to be exposed to both the elements and other predators.

Feeling that they were faced with no other choice, the Brisicans did away with the 'nol' system and became one colony. Mgol immediately stepped down from any position of leadership, relieved that he no longer had to worry about being responsible for so much, something that nobody else in the colony particularly wanted, and so nobody stepped up to volunteer to replace him. Niva reluctantly followed suit, realizing that when times were hard males were not as willing to spoil her with gifts and affection. This essentially left both Sweer and Hollo both in charge, Sweer remaining in his leadership position because he felt that he knew what was right and Hollo simply staying in his because he didn't want Sweer to be in charge of everything.

The two Brisican males did what they could to ensure the survival of their colony, now referred to by some of the younger Brisicans as 'Rain Children'. Hunting and gather were now both done under the cover of darkness to decrease the chance of running into predators, and by day the Brisicans slept. They had moved to the highest part of their toadstool because of the massive hole in the slightly lower part, but they knew that it would not stay intact for long - soon they would have to find a new home, but where could they find one in a world almost totally underwater?

"Hollo, listen." Flos whispered early one evening to her father, resting her head against the floor of the hollowed out toadstool cavity. "Washu hear?" He asked, mimicking the actions of his daughter. He understood her confusion instantly though, for in the space below them he could hear loud scraping noises. Something had moved into the gaping hole beneath them, perhaps too unintelligent or simply too desperate to see the danger in inhabitting such an exposed place.

Of course, as they needed to leave their home to get food and water, it was inevitable that the Brisicans would have to find out what it was that had moved in there, and so after a brief bit of discussion with the rest of the colony Hollo recruited Jel, Pern, Kli and Rero to help him investigate. Sweer would remain behind with the rest of the colony and listen carefully in case anything should happen - if things went badly, at least they would be safe...

[Cirrial]

(( Man, I haven't posted here in ages. Time to correct this! Also thanks for the feedback, guys!
EDIT: Can't believe I forgot to put this here, but I'm really enjoying the things you guys are doing too. This is an awesome thread all around!
I should also mention that the characters depicted here do not match up with the illustrations exactly. For instance, the leader of this particular group of serls isn't terrified of bigboxes. ))

Aurichalcite permeated through its world, resuming it as it did so. It had been gone for such a short amount of time. Perhaps halting the execution of its world had not been necessary.

It drifted, an invisible cloud of thought, as it noted down everything it witnessed. It paused to wonder what a "hunter" could mean. Perhaps a predator of these serl creatures? Or a rival clan?

The reluctant serls crept out from behind the trees, adjusting their blocky helmets, their primitive spears held tightly. They fell flat to the floor and slowly dragged themselves closer and closer to the massive bigbox herd, trying to conceal themselves in the blue grass as deeply as possible. Their leader crawled a distance ahead of the others, its eyes as thin rectangles.

The bigboxes, large, dumb creatures, chewed at the blue grass despite having no visible mouths. Grass just vanished wherever they held their featureless faces. There were contented buzzes throughout the crowd.

Triangular insect swarms flitted from bigbox to bigbox, an occassional flurry of violent activity when two swarms intersected. The individual triangles tore with fury at those not in their own swarm until the offending intruders retreated, or were outright destroyed. For the swarms, each bigbox was a territory, and such conflict was common as the swarms attempted to expand their territory.

Aurichalcite focused on these spurts of action with interest. Why were the swarms so drawn to the bigboxes? It then noticed a curious behaviour of the swarm-insects crawling on the bigboxes. They would alight, pause, and dip their front-most corner into the surface of the bigbox, before taking off into the skies once more. Either they were feeding off of tiny, tiny parasites, or perhaps they were parasites.

Aurichalcite drifted back to the serl hunting party. Two of the four were lagging behind and visibly trembling with fear. The bigboxes didn't seem that threatening. Why were they so afraid?

"Strike!" The leader serl jumped to its feet, holding its spear, and charged at one of the bigboxes. Alarmed, the whole herd began to run away, stumbling and tripping over each other. The swarms went berserk, attacking anything they flew into as their hosts charged off into the distance. The serls, now sprinting across the plains, struggled to keep pace with just one of the beasts.

One serl, the serl that showed no fear, leapt into the air, its spear aimed downwards, and drove its weapon into the back of the galloping bigbox. It screeched in pain and stumbled to the ground, as the serl that struck the blow ran as far as it could away from the downed creature.

The leader smacked the ground with its own spear. "Back! Back! Back!" Every serl ran as far as they could as the swarm that had been chasing its host buzzed erratically towards them. One of the serls threw its spear to the side, and pulled at its helmet as it ran.

The leader turned its head. "No! Helmet on! Keep running!"

"Too heavy! Can't run fast!" The serl was clearly extremely distressed, fumbling at its helmet, falling behind the others as the swarm advanced. "Can't run fast! Help! Help!!"

The leader skidded to a halt, blue dirt and grass flying into the air, and began to run back. The remaining two serls stood and stared, confused, before sprinting back as well.

The serl that had fallen behind had fallen to the ground, waving frantically at the swarm that was now encircling it, pleading for mercy from beings it knew couldn't understand it. The insects of the swarm, enraged by the death of their host, flew around the serl, carving lines into its body over and over as it screamed in pain. The serls' leader threw its spear into the swarming cloud of insects. They broke away, chasing the spear, their new target. After all, this serl had just been nearby. The spear had actually damaged them.

The three able serls dropped their spears, dragging their fallen comrade away. Its body was covered in light blue lines, as light blue fluid trailed out of them. It was still alive, but badly shaken up. The whole group carried the wounded serl, along with its helmet, back to the slain bigbox.

Aurichalcite felt it to be idle conjecture at this point, but the serls seemed to treat the helmet with just as much care as the serl who had just worn it.

The leader removed its helmet, and the remaining two helmeted serls followed suit. One of them, the braver one from before, removed the spear from the bigbox's carcass and started hacking it into pieces.

"Eki, Eki, Sol hurt. Sol hurt bad. Sol said we might get hurt. Why Eki not listen?" One of the serls challenged the leader, now identified as Eki, who simply ignored this serl's questioning.

"Eki know what she doing. Sol fine. Two days rest, all good. We have food." The serl carving up their kill spoke very nonchalantly, as if what had just happened was commonplace. "Swarm only get to his skin. We quick. We lucky. Ketu, learn from today."

"Learn what, Rukil? No shelter! Not safe! In plain, no trees! What if rain like Sol said?!" Ketu waved her arms up and down wildly. "Tree worms good food! Could have stayed in forest!"

Eki sighed and rubbed at the triangular scar on her shoulder. "Tree worms gone. You saw. Tree worms all gone. Storm make them gone." She walked over to the bigbox carcass, grabbing a spear, and helped Rukil cut the bigbox into chunks. Ketu hesitated, unsure of what to do or say next, and decided to gather the helmets and spears into a tidier pile. Sol laid on the grass, groaning in pain, but otherwise a little calmer than before. Most of his linear wounds had congealed into dark blue scars.

Aurichalcite noticed with interest that this dark blue colour matched the same dark blue as the symbol on Eki's head. Was it possibly some form of ritualistic self-mutilation? Or did they perhaps just paint themselves with their own blood, rather than actually carve the design into themselves? Or was it just a massive co-incidence?

Ketu stared into the sky, her eyes wide with shock. "Clouds big. Need shelter. Eki? Rukil? Where shelter in plains?" She sounded less aggressive and more worried. Sol whimpered involuntarily at the thought of being caught in the rain without shelter, while the two bravest of the four merely shrugged and finished extracting all the meat they could from the bigbox.

Rukil threw his bloodied spear at the tidy pile Ketu had neatly arranged, sending spears and helmets clattering aside. "Could shelter in bigbox." At any other time, this might have been a joke, but Rukil's tone seemed far too serious. "Only fit one. Sol?" Sol groaned and weakily shook his head. "Ketu?" Ketu shaked her head with a lot more vigour, as she carefully rearranged the spears and helmet into a neat pile. "Then no shelter."

Eki looked up at the sky with troubled eyes. Betraying nothing of her emotions to her group, she felt a genuine fear. If the serls were caught in the rain, they would all die. Without shelter, what could they do?

"Eki?" Ketu was wringing her hands. "What we do now?"

"...We sleep. Rain not fall night."

Aurichalcite, observing as always, felt a sudden moral dilemma. Up to this point, it had just been an impartial observer, recording and noting everything it had been watching, but it had witnessed the hardships of this small group. It had felt like it should have helped, somehow. It always had felt the need to be helpful to others in the outside physical world, and that drive had seemed to follow it into its own world.

It had made this world, after all. Surely there'd be no harm in maybe adding a tree or two when no-one was looking? It wouldn't hurt to directly intervene maybe just once. Just once. After all, if these serls survived, it'd surely learn more about the world through their eyes. That was it. That's why it felt it had to intervene. Purely to further its impartial, objective observation.

Night fell across Blackcube, the light grey skies shifting to total blackness. Two pinpoints of light instantaneously appeared a small distance from the sleeping serls, before forming glowing silhouettes of fractal trees. The glow subsided, and the trees stood as if they had always been there.

Aurichalcite paused its world, flowing back into its lab to record its findings, deliberately glossing over its addition of two new trees into the world where previously there were none.

(( Explanation time! Also it felt like forever until I could finally name these serls. I didn't want to just shoehorn it in, so apologies if the post didn't make much sense until they actually got some names. ))

There are four serls in the group that Aurichalcite is following:
- Eki, the leader. She has a dark blue insignia on the top of her head, a circle with two dots, the dots aligned on an invisible diagonal line. She seems to be filled with an increasing amount of self-doubt.
- Rukil. He seems to be the bravest serl in the group, and one of the more skilled, but looks to be a little emotionally detached from the world around him.
- Ketu. She's a little temperamental and isn't afraid to challenge Eki's authority on a semi-regular basis, yet tends to follow her plans and commands with almost fanatical zeal.
- Sol. He's the voice of reason in the group, or more likely the voice of over-cautiousness and paranoia. He seems to be terrified by almost anything out of the usual, and even more so by things that he knows more about, such as the tendency for swarms to go after nearby targets once their host dies.

The rain of Blackcube is lethal to all known Blackcube creatures but the bigboxes, and the trees are similarly unaffected. The rain is not just simple drops of fluid falling from the sky. It falls as glowing lines. The high-velocity rain can pierce the bodies of creatures it passes through like bullets, but not, for some reason, the bodies of bigboxes. Being hit by the odd "drop" here and there is incredibly painful but survivable. Being caught in a shower is pretty much instant death. Being caught in a storm...

These four serls are the only survivors of a small serl colony that was destroyed during such a storm. Such storms are incredibly rare events, but tend to lead to mass destruction, especially of serl colonies. They're currently just travelling to survive. This is also why their helmets are so precious to them; they know how to make new spears but they don't know how to make new helmets.

[3kul]

((Damn Cirrial, how did you come up with such zany/cool/original ideas for your New New World? I'm feeling pretty jealous right about now ))

The group of Brisicans moved slowly in a single file as they edged around the twisted toadstool, each holding on to the tentacle of the one in front to form a chain - an idea of Hollo's, this way if somebody slipped there was a chance that the others could help them recover.

They eventually reached the gaping hole that had been left by the Ragorly, and Hollo peered inside. As the group had suspected, the creatures behind the noise were several Genker. The insectoids were struggling to cope with the sudden change in climate, and refused to adapt to the water, instead attempting to carve a new hive out of one of the few remaining toadstools on the planet.

There were just seven of the insects here, so they were not much of a threat to the group, but unfortunately two of them were working on carving into the ceiling, which was also the floor for the cavity above...

With a squishy tearing noise, the roof gave way, and the rest of the Brisican colony fell through into the pitiful Genker hive. The insects shrieked and scattered, and the Brisicans reacted much in the same way, but the two Genker who'd been carving the roof out were trapped under the smothering layer of funghal material. It was wet and heavy, and though they struggled to escape they could not (the numerous creatures occasionally stepping on them as they ran about screaming didn't exactly make their attempts at breaking free any easier).

"Stop!" Hollo shouted, slapping his tentacles on the ground in the hopes of getting the Brisicans attention. He could see that many of the Genker were now getting over the initial shock and preparing themselves to attack, and he needed to get the Brisicans out of there. Sweer heard Hollo's voice and quickly returned to his senses, remembering that he was also meant to be a leader here. "Out, out!" He shouted, scampering about the interior of the giant toadstool and leading a small number of Brisicans out.

The adults were soon outside, but the youngest Brisicans hadn't gotten over the fright of falling, and were now being pursued by angry Genker. "Jel, Rero, Pern, Kli, follow!" Hollo shouted to the small group that had come with him, rushing in to help the infants. Jel and Rero moved after him, but Pern and Kli stayed, feeling that it was too dangerous. It was one thing for Hollo to command them to gather food, it was another thing entirely to be asked to risk their neck, and they refused.

Jel rushed towards her own child, a young male named Chon. Fearlessly butting a Genker to one side with her tough skullcap, she hearded her own child towards another, an infantile female formerly from her nol called Ula. With both of the children following closely behind her and seeing that Hollo was going after Flos, Jel charged back towards the gaping hole in the wall, her head lowered to ward away any oncoming Genker.

Hollo had gotten to Flos in much the same way that Jel had gotten to the other two children, but he was now being pursued by two Genker. They were flanking him on either side, threatening to either attack him or cut him off from his offspring so that they could attack her. Looking forward, Hollo saw Rero charging straight for him, but instead of colliding she leapt upwards, springing off of his head and over to grab Flos. Rolling awkwardly across the ground for a moment and stumbling slightly as she regained her footing, Rero rushed towards the entrance after Jel, her thorny skullcap lowered in the same defensive manner.

No longer needing to worry about Flos, Hollo could focus solely on avoiding the Genker... Though unfortunately, as he was now the only Brisican left inside, it was no longer merely two Genker chasing after him but three, with a fourth standing in a position to block the exit.

Genker are carnivorous insects used to moving about in large numbers, and they hunted with great effeciency so long as they weren't alone. They pursued Hollo ruthlessly, not allowing him to get anywhere near the exit, and as the other Brisicans refused to break formation, which meant that he'd receive no help from them. Hollo feared that they were refusing to help him because they felt that he was doomed, much in the same way that the injured Gnuk who'd been followed all the way home by a hungry Ragorly had been left to be eaten by the predator so that it wouldn't attack anybody else.

Hollo thought quickly, desperate to find a way to get out of here fast. He could not hope to fight all five Genker, they were working together so well that if he did anything but run at least one of them was always close enough to pounce on him. Though these creatures were not nearly as big as an Ogloc they were certainly just as terrifying as one when they worked together like this... But where was the fifth?

Hollo spotted it as he turned about, narrowly avoiding the snapping mandibles of another. It was scraping furiously at a lump in the floor, attempting to free one of it's trapped friends. Suddenly Hollo was struck by a startling realization - in working together like this, and in attempting to save their own ilk when they were in peril, the Genker were displaying traits not unlike those of himself and his fellow Brisicans. Hadn't they combined their strengths to rescue Rero? Was it possible that the Genker were capable of more than just this?

Not seeing any other options, Hollo decided that he'd gamble his life on the chance that the two species weren't so different. If he was right, they may spare him, but if not... Well, he tried not to think about it.

Lowering his head, he charged towards one of the lumps in the ground, hoping that this would work. The other Brisicans watched on as he jammed his thorns into one of the lumps, some of them feeling dread, others feeling a kind of morbid curiosity - just what was Hollo doing? "Hollo!" Flos shouted to her father as one of the Genker pounced, tearing at Hollo furiously with it's claws. She attempted to break free to help him, but the Brisicans next to her stopped her from moving. "Wait." Rero said, feeling that even though she didn't understand it herself, Hollo knew what he was doing.

Hollo gritted his teeth and bore the pain as the Genker's claws pierced one of his tentacles, pushing harder with his remaining three as he noticed the floor tearing. The remaining two Genker were ready to pounce as well, but before they could Hollo flicked his head up, a large chunk of the funghal floor stuck to the thorns on his head. The Genker underneath gasped as fresh air re-entered it's lungs, and it stumbled forward awkardly, tearing itself free from the rest of the squishy funghus that covered it.

The remaining Genker halted for a moment, not quite sure what to make of this strange behaviour from the Brisican. Even the one that was attempting to slice off one of Hollo's limbs stopped, giving Hollo enough time to painfully remove his tentacle from it's claw. The Genker that was tearing at the ground had stopped, also in shock like the others, but quickly snapped back to it's senses. It clacked it's claws together three times quick, then once slow, then twice quick again, catching the attention of the other Genker. They responded with two quick 'clacks' of their claws, turning back to Hollo and advanced upon him once again.

Hollo did not make any sense of this, and simply assumed that his efforts had been in vain. He closed his eyes and curled up as tightly as he could, preparing himself for death... Only to receive a rough push from behind. He opened his eyes to see that the Genker were not attacking him, but were pushing him towards their other trapped friend. Fortune seemed to be smiling most graciously upon Hollo, for in such small numbers the Genker were forced to hold much greater value for their own ilk than they had back when there were hundreds of them.

Relieved that he'd been right about the Genker, Hollo wandered over to the other lump and, after removing the slimy chunks of toadstool that were already trapped in his thorns, managed to dig the second Genker out. This Genker was barely conscious, and collapsed as soon as it was free, but appeared to be breathing. The remaining Genker dug their claws into the ground, and each of them began to rub a hind leg against their hard carapaces. This action resulted in a sharp sound much like scraping your nails down a chalkboard, and caused Hollo to cringe.

It was horribly unpleasant to listen to, but the Genker were cheering for the unusually helpful Brisican, thanking Hollo for his efforts.

[Cirrial]

(( This isn't a proper world-developing post, but a world-summary post. I'd append this to my first post but it seems long enough as it is without a summary of this size added. I'll edit this post in future as more things happen.

Thanks 3kul! Your stuff is awesome too. I like how the Brisicians are adapting to their new post-flooding surroundings.

What with your world flooded and my world's lethal rainstorms, it's like water is the most hostile threat in the multiverse! ))

= Blackcube Timeline =

Initialisation Epoch
The initial creation and growth of the world.

New Species:
- Self-Replicating Particles (Alive)
- Boxy Precursors (Extinct, mostly)
- Fractal Trees (Alive)

Global Events:
- The world was created with a single static point of light as a light source, designed to slowly fade from full brightness to near total darkness as part of a simulated day/night cycle.
- The flat plane of Blackcube came into existence, before undergoing subdivision and becoming something more recognisable as land.
- Mountains and valleys and plains formed.
- Polyhedral progenitor creatures arose from clusters of particles, and developed and redeveloped over the course of the epoch, leading to future creatures.
- Fractal trees bloomed across the world.

Transition Epoch
The unobserved transition from basic to complex life.
(( I didn't cover this because I wanted to do a timeskip to when something remotely interesting was happening. ))

New Species:
- Bigboxes (Alive)
- Swarms (Alive)
- Tree worms/Tree-worms (Alive) (( One day I'll pick a spelling and stay with it. >_> ))
- Blue Grass (Alive)

Global Events:
- Weather systems arise due to emergent imbalances in the world, and possibly bad coding on Aurichalcite's part.
- A violent rainstorm slowly destroyed forests in wide open areas, creating wide clearings on the plains.
- In the far more moist ground, blue grasses start to grow out of the grey earth, tinting the dirt they sprout from a similar shade of blue in the process.
- Most boxy precursor organisms destroyed by rain or floods. Few organisms survive, save for the hardier trees, the rain-resistant bigboxes, the numerous swarms and the sheltering tree-worms.

Consciousness Epoch
The present epoch, where primitive intelligence and tribes live and travel across a world still young.

New Species:
- Serls (Alive)
- More to follow...

Global Events:
- Serls arose from an unrecorded ancestor, most likely a remnant species of boxy precursor that had escaped Aurichalcite's observations and become exceedingly complex.
- Bigbox herds grew and grew until they filled incredibly large spaces, forming sub-herds within herds. Swarms gradually changed from feeding on fractal leaves and tree-worm larvae to feeding on bigbox parasites and bigboxes themselves.
- Serls achieved sapience and formed tightly knit communities. Curiously, most serl tribes don't interact with each other, some even completely isolated from other serls of the world.
- A second violent rainstorm destroyed several tribes, save perhaps for a few lucky/unlucky remainders from each tribe.