A brief description of eight species or life-formsencountered amongst the Echoing Stars. In every case it is assumed the lifeform or its biosphere entire is the deliberate creation of an Engineer-Class interstellarspecies, now defunct, for reasons that are either beyond our comprehension, orare deliberately perverse.Maciej Drabik https://www.artstation.com/maciejdrabik1. The Uncomprehending World An earthlike planet with two great continents, each agreat distance from the other, both tectonically locked, with deep oceans andstrong currents between them. Each continent has been seeded with afundamentally, biochemically different, form of life. Examination has beenchallenging but its believed something like the principal of opposing chiralityis at work; the life of each continent is biochemically incoherent, sometimeseven toxic, to the other. The oceans have been described as a 'soup of chaos'.Each continent has evolved a form of intelligent life, each cognitivelyincoherent to the other.

1. The Moon of Eyes The single moon of the Uncomprehending World plays hostto yet another form of life, itself believed to have been seeded at about thesame time. The biosphere of the moon is a single sentient mind with astaggering range of visual and electromagnetic sensors. The 'mind' of the Moonis believed to be half-sleeping, able to observe and perhaps, understand whatit observes. (All of its sensors are open only when facing the UncomprehendingWorld.) However if the Moon of Eyes attempts to awaken, to act, to advise orcommunicate in any way, buried genetic architecture collapses the stability ofthe entire biosphere, reducing it to primitive ruin, from which it only slowlyre-develops.

The trifector of the two species of the UncomprehendingWorld and the Moon of Eyes which can observe, but not alter, their fate, isbelieved to be an act of religious observance by its creators.

1. The Drinkers of Wind Sub-earth desert-like world. Life emerges largely aroundthe oceanic coast but has evolved an intelligent crustacean species adapted tothe deep desert. The species is born addicted to a pheromone, or complexwind-borne chemical, produced very rarely by complex biogenesis in the deepocean. When this chemical sweeps across the deserts, any Crustacean thatexperiences it is instantly and permanently addicted, experiencingphilosophical and religious rapture and losing interest in anything other thanpursuing the wind in the hopes of experiencing the scent again. This acts as a'destroying wind' on any development of complex civilisation on this world andthe power of the 'God Wind' plays a major role in the sentients mythology.

2. The Abyssal Builders An ocean world with deep-dwelling trench-creatures whichhave been given a level of complex intelligence far too high for theirlightless, high-pressure and limited environment. Wits return like a cancer tothis species, generation upon generation, regardless of circumstance. Hosts togreat monuments of knowledge and experience they can never use, the builderssculpt the sea-floors of that world into great empty palaces which span itsdark oceans, sculpted with agonising care, over centuries, with whale-falls ofivory and bone.

3. The Wombs of Chaos Earthlike moon of a Gas Giant. Some combination ofgenetic tampering, nanotech and still-unknown science causes the apex creaturesof this moon to reach periods of stability, agriculture, civilisation andpopulation growth. if this period of abundance and high populations reaches acertain unknown threshold, chaoitc wombs are triggered universally across theentire species. All children born are 'sports', mutants, chimera or monsters,each as different from each other as they are from their parents and usuallyeither incapable of or unwilling to, absorb or retain any of their parentsculture. Then comes an age of chaos, ruin and warfare as the civilisationcollapses. What follows is a long fallow period until the few stable breedingpairs gradually normalise and stabilise the population, which then slowly growstowards a state of civilisation.

4. The Homonculi An intelligent designed-parasite species, the Homonculihave maggot mouths and dendric hands. They share their world with a robustsemi-intelligent Pseudo-Hominid. The Homonculi's main means of surviving itsenvironment is to burrow into the Hominids skull, taking control of its spinalbase with their dendritic hands, forcing out its eyes and peeking through theresulting holes while taking their sustenance from its blood. The Prey-Mensbrain matter remains intact. The Homonculi are more tangibly intelligent,social, verbal, abstract and driven than the Pseudo-Hominids and whatcivilisation exists on this world is entirely their creation. However, thePseudo-Hominids are intelligent enough to despise the Homonculi and are morerobust, fertile and more capable of surviving the planets complex environment.The civilisation of the Homonculi is semi-regularly destroyed by thePseudo-Hominids and the species hunted to near-extinction.

5. The Living Reefs An ocean world holding sparse continents and bounteousmoving archipelagos of islands with sea-adapted fungal bases. The isle-fungiwere designed with a powerful latent intellectual capacity. When inhabited bythe worlds "sea apes", complex interactions through the islandsbio-sheath environment 'awakens' the entities into comprehensible sentience.They invariably aggressively investigate the Sea-Apes using thissheath-environment, so much that the apes are torn apart, survivors, (if thereare any), fleeing to the spares continent if they can. The Isles then sink backinto sub-awareness.

6. The Hegelian Fog A highly desertified world. The dust, sand and weather ofthis sphere are made up of complex but non-active nanite swarms. When breathedin by a complex life-form, (always visitors for the planet has no naturalremaining species of this type), the nano-structures accumulate in the cortexlike a plaque and form a fresh sentience which combines the nature of theinfected sophont with memories and advanced processing power of an unknownnature. The resulting organism is highly intelligent and capable of advancedreasoning and communication, but as the plaque accumulates they becomeuncommunicative and insist on retreating to the karstic plains of thecontinental interior where they seem to be engaged in the construction of vastNazca-style megastructures. Though resistant to the local environment the'victim' or transformed entity, is thought to function for a century or sobefore desiccating and blowing away into a new flurry of nanites.

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