12hr Game Story

[Cyrien]

Fleet locations? What? Can't you see them from your homeplanet? Oh wait... darn those cloaking devices...

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
Please pick them apart freely. I want to try and develop them as much as possible. Finding flaws or making suggestions would be quite helpfull.

All right, you did ask for it....

Let me get this straight -
you have a great number of creatures that, from hatching to death, need nothing beyond sunlight; at hatching, they need only their parent and the surrounding planetary material (ice, mostly). There are no predators, and no reason to prey upon themselves
- these plants needed mobility because __________________________________________
- these mobile plants needed an IQ because __________________________________________
- these mobile intelligent plants needed a society because __________________________________________

Order is unimportant on those - perhaps IQ came before mobility, for example - but there needs to be something to fill in the blanks; there is very little which will go to the work of improving itself without good reason to do so, and you don't seem to be referencing a Creator here.

[Cyrien]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:

Let me get this straight -
you have a great number of creatures that, from hatching to death, need nothing beyond sunlight; at hatching, they need only their parent and the surrounding planetary material (ice, mostly). There are no predators, and no reason to prey upon themselves

- these plants needed mobility because __________________________________________
- these mobile plants needed an IQ because __________________________________________
- these mobile intelligent plants needed a society because __________________________________________

[/QB]

First. They aren't plants. They are closer to insects. The sunlight development was by necessity and not due to a direct relation to plants.

Right. Mobility was early on. They didn't evolve alone on the planet. Mobility was first as they evolved as an insectoid scavenger. At that point they resembled their current form about as much as the first mammals resemble modern humans.

Next would be a society. Think hermit crabs here(for a bug like example in the real world) or apes, chimps, any number of other creatures in the real world. While each works as an individual they tend to live in large colonies and Groups by nature. When left alone they tend to die due to depression. Close bonds within communities are in existence even before sentience. Note that even at those early stage weak psychic ability exists in the form of empathy(ability to feel the emotions of others), causing far closer community bonds than any example on earth.

Intelligence develops only much later as the atmosphere of the planet continues to burn off. Here intelligence as well as the more extreme physical changes develop all as a means of keeping the species alive in the face of drastic planetary changes that wipe out all other life. The first records for the Alteri occur shortly after total atmosphere burn off well after any remains of previous life have ceased. At this point the various Alteri Groups find each other and now possess stronger psychic abilities(still mostly of the empathic type but with some telepathy as the singular means of communication, no atmosphere after all). With direct telepathic communication there are no misunderstandings. Slowly the Alteri become a united society wherein each performs that which they are best suited for to best serve the society as a whole.

Next the Alteri still have the earlier inherent desire to expand and multiply like so many others. With no enemies the numbers rapidly get outa hand. Thus the drive to expand beyond the planet. Also the instinctual drives of their scavenger ancestors will push them to respect strength and conquer the weak.

Finally, there is other life on the planet... but it is all part of the Alteri. Microscopic life. Single celled and multicelled forming a ballanced and temporarily self sustaining eco-system out of each Alteri. Thus they do not process the radiation but a microscopic organism inside them does and in so doing creates biproducts that feed others and so on and so forth keeping the Alteri going.

Hope that answers your questions.

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
Fleet locations? What? Can't you see them from your homeplanet? Oh wait... darn those cloaking devices...

Oh those, we know all about those ships.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

so THAT'S what atrocities has been doing. he's not making shipsets, those are real ships he's built! RUN!

[Jack Simth]

Cyrien: That works - I was just pointing out a few things that I hadn't seen covered in your initial post.

As for them being plants: If it is a living thing that draws it's energy directly (or nearly so) from the nearest star, I tend to call it a plant.

[Cyrien]

The thoughts of the crew were in confusion. They had passed through this warp point as they had others in the past. But on through this one lay not just another system with planets, moons, asteroids and a star or two. Through this one lay a fundamental change in their view of the universe.
As they warped into this system the minds of those responsible for scanning the system reached out. In a few moments their minds had found all the large bodies, each catalogued with orbital paths and various other important data(Note the Alteri do not possess or use technology that scans, their own inherent psychic abilities are used to scan their surroundings and this is a basic skill all Alteri possess though a few excell at it and can extend their thoughts to scan vast areas at once, this would be considered basic Alteri scanners). Next they moved their minds to smaller things and lower and lower... a ship?
"Captain...?" The scanners thoughts wavered as he called out to the Captain in confusion.
"There is a vessel here. It is of our size but... different. Sir... there should be no ship here."
The Captain was stunned, unlike the scanner he was in contact with the Captains of all the other ships of the Alteri and knew where each and every one was. Yet as he stretched out his own mind he could not account for what he found. It was a ship, very much like their own yet... different. For starters he could not detect the minds of any others on there... this was troubling. He hastily made contact with other minds in the chain of command on the homeworld, requesting orders for what actions to take next.
________________________

Several days later they had more complete information. It was a simple ship in orbit of a planet. Not a planet they had any expectations for either. It possessed an extremely dense atmosphere of Oxygen (dense to creatures that live in a vacuum) and was quite hostile to them. Despite that their most advanced scanner crew had detected what could only be considered signs of life (Note that the Alteri expect no life anywhere and as such when they do find it would have no differentials for sentient versus not sentient and as they are the only comparison they have would initially view any life as sentient once they come to grasp with the possibility of other life). Construction, manipulations of what was around them, modification. And the faintest of mental signatures, though once you knew what to look for it was quite pronounced. The mental signatures seemed to come in many types though, some stronger and some very weak. There was only one type of signature on the ship though. It was of the strongest type.
The Alteri had tried to reach out to these minds, but with no real success. A few of the strongest minds had managed to gain conflicting images and other perceptions from the minds but it was mixed in and strongly influenced by senses the Alteri could not understand. For a race that had never experienced sound, or taste or smell and always had a constant mental awareness of everything around them that which comprised environemntal awareness in this new species thoughts were beyond comprehension.

A decision was made, they would continue to try and contact and understand this new life. They would also reevaluate existing procedures for scanning a system. Some argued for going back and rechecking all the old systems, but most felt that even without the presence of the ship they would have found this other life based on the unusual surface alterations they had made to the planet. Others argued that some other planets had had similiar features on a smaller scale. They warranted new scans aimed at finding the strange mental patterns given out by this other life. In the end compromise was reached. A colony ship was already headed for one of the planets with one of these unusual smaller scale scan patterns similiar to what was found with this new life. It would also be the first colony ever formed on a planet with an atmosphere. Other studies could be conducted alongside the search on that planet. In time they would get around to each of the others. For now they must understand that which they had already found. To understand that which could also possibly reach them based on what the new life ship possessed for technology.
In the end the exploration ships continued on as they had. With new guidelines for scanning each system they entered.
___________________
At the time little seemed to change that affected the average Alteri. Much later though those who looked back would see this as the time when everything changed.