Water worlds
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
This is the core of my First Contact scenario.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I have been mining archive.org and Project Gutenberg for images of possible sea creatures for water worlds. Some of the images are what people thought might be down there, and some are just different ways of portraying existing creatures with a bit of distortion. Most of them do require some cleaning up, but I hope to get some clip art images posted on DriveThru as a freebie in the near future. Once I figure out characteristics, I will get those up, but probably not as a freebie. I will see about one or two for the Bestiary.
G. Kashkanun Anderson
SOC-13
Actually, the oceans of Terra are full of colonial animals, many of whom put bees and ants to shame in the level of integration that they represent.
Consider the siphonophores: the Portuguese Man 'o War (aka 'floating terror') is arguably the weirdest example you're likely to meet under ordinary circumstances; frankly, it/they doesn't even look like it/they belongs on our planet. The bioluminescent praya dubia (another example) is one of the longest ... things in the world, capable of reaching lengths of over 150 feet. It/they live at depths of up to a half mile below the ocean surface.
Coral reefs are another example of an aquatic animal colony.
seems more a congregation than a hive, like a grove of trees.
seems more a collection of symbiants, as does the praya dubia - "The zooids are all joined to each other to the extent that they are incapable of independent survival".
good ideas for alien animals though.
That sounds similar to the Pentapods of 2300AD.
Had you thought as far ahead as the thing/s developing technology and the ability to exist outside their watery medium?
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
There is the intelligent octopi of Andre Norton's Sea Siege as a possibility. Octopi can survive out of water for short periods of time as well.
Adapting from aquatic to atmospheric (space) might be easier in many ways than humans adapting to breathe under water. You need a suit that has a gas-permeable membrane but will hold a thin layer of water around the aquatic explorer to allow them to function on a human starship/highport/world.
Then there are advantages to a pilot suspended in a non-compressible liquid medium for resisting very high Gee forces, so an advanced aquatic race might be capable of far higher MD ratings that human crews could survive. With human anatomy, a liquid atmosphere and 6G compensation, up to 16G is survivable even under the old CT assumptions, while a human pilot in air would Max out at 8G sustained. With the revised 16G 30dT craft, an aquatic 26G fighter should be possible.
They might also have an advantage exploring deep into gas giants or the crushing atmosphere of Venus.
Then there are advantages to a pilot suspended in a non-compressible liquid medium for resisting very high Gee forces, so an advanced aquatic race might be capable of far higher MD ratings that human crews could survive. With human anatomy, a liquid atmosphere and 6G compensation, up to 16G is survivable even under the old CT assumptions, while a human pilot in air would Max out at 8G sustained. With the revised 16G 30dT craft, an aquatic 26G fighter should be possible.
They might also have an advantage exploring deep into gas giants or the crushing atmosphere of Venus.
Being able to tolerate high G is not the same as being able to function in it. Limbs will be 16-26 times more weighty. You could find yourself unable to close your mouth, with a jaw that's 26 times heavier than your muscles are accustomed to. That's likely to interfere with voice command. Vision might be impaired if the shape of the eye changes under the influence of accellerative forces - you might use some sort of variable corrective lens to adjust, but you'd need some sort of helmet or your face would be carrying the weight. Exercise and training might give someone the ability to push the envelope a bit, but the upper limit hits when you're no longer able to interact with your environment because of the forces involved.
We've experimented with breathing fluids enriched with oxygen. It'd be interesting to see that applied to some of your ideas to see how that expanded the abilities of humans in the Traveller setting. There seem to be some challenges with getting rid of CO2 that require CO2 scrubbers to be added to filter it out of the blood. One could imagine the Imperium genetically crafting a human subspecies adapted to deal with that problem and live in such an environment, so they could have workers who could take full advantage of the potential benefits of a liquid environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing
Larry Niven has a knack for odd aliens. In his Fleet of Worlds series, he introduces the Gw'oth, a sentient starfish-oid aquatic species that can "meld" by joining tentacles to form gestalt minds that function as biological supercomputers.
More communal, rather than symbiant, are several species of fish which gender switch by age combined with lack of pheromones.
Such as clownfish... Males become females when the dominant female dies, or the school gets too large...
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Blue Ghost, are you interested only in what swims in the water, or do you want the various critters that live on the bottom or imitate plants and rock as well?
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Blue Ghost, I now have hard evidence on a total of 6 ships being sunk by whales, so how nasty to you want your critters to be? I am working on a PDF collection of clip art for you.