(In space) Titanous mantis shrimp... filter-feeding on anachronistic detritus in an elemental chaos vortex swirling around a tear through to the Temporal Elemental Plane.
Well, it's not strictly "my world." I'm currently in a Star-Trek-like roleplaying campaign with some friends and we are taking turns being game master, and each time we get a turn as game master we get to add new things to the setting. In my most recent turn I added an alien species called the Starflowers.
The Starflowers are an intelligent plant species with an unusual biology. They insert their seeds into the brains of monkey-like animals, taking control of them and use them as servants. This gives the animals intelligence in the process, as well as a lengthened lifespan and other beneficial physical improvements. These symbiotic servant animals are called Starborn. When a Starborn gets old enough it becomes known as a Starbright, and the seed in its brain becomes capable of sprouting into a mature Starflower in a process called "blooming." This is rare, though - there are thousands of Starborn for each individual Starflower plant.
The Starflowers once belonged to an old galactic organization called the Old Galactic Organization, a million years ago, at the apex of their civilization's development. They became masters of bioengineering, having the natural ability to modify their Starborn and themselves to serve more specialized roles. The reason the race are called "Starflowers" comes from this period, many of them modified themselves into living starships and cruised the galaxy as self-sufficient beings with "crews" of Starborn. Then an incident occurred that caused the Old Galactic Organization to collapse into infighting (the details of which are too large to fit into this margin, suffice to say information came up revealing an extragalactic invader was on the way to the Milky Way and they disagreed on how to prepare for it). The Starflowers collectively decided to return to their homeworld to "hide." They gave up space travel and most technology that wasn't directly derived from their own biology in hopes that when the invader came they'd be bypassed.
Over the years of their self-imposed solitude they developed a sort of "hive mind" among the Starflowers. The Starflowers were still individuals but with the ability to share information at a "higher level" than mere verbal communication, potentially unlimited lifespan, and nobody to talk to but each other, they fell into groupthink. Unfortunately they ended up collectively deciding that the other intelligent species of the galaxy who weren't also "hiding" were going to bring doom on everyone and they build a self-replicating weapon system to seek out and destroy those civilizations preemptively. Fortunately at least one Starflower disagreed with this so vehemently that the others "kicked him out" of their groupthink, cutting him off as an exile, and when the players arrived on their homeworld seeking the source of those self-replicating weapons that Starflower and his Starborn were instrumental in helping them wipe out the other Starflowers and put a stop to their campaign of genocide.
So today the Starflower species is essentially knocked back to barbarism, rebuilding with freshly bloomed Starflowers with little awareness of their previous culture (aside from that exile, who the players ensured the survival of despite his own best efforts to die along with his misguided bretheren. He had a major guilt complex).
It was hard cramming a lot of detail about Starflowers into this post without infodumping the whole setting, given how intertwined the various other aspects of this setting are. Hope it worked. :)
I've been working on a sort of post-postapocalyptic world, set a few hundred years after civilization collapsed due to some unknown event. There's bits of sci-fi and paranormal stuff, and it's definitely strongly inspired by the SCP Foundation, but it draws elements from other places too.
I've been working on writing the backstory for one of the AI superintelligences that crops up, and I think I've come up with something cool for this one. It was originally built by the US government to spy on the world and predict acts of terrorism (sorta like Person of Interest or Watch Dogs). After the collapse of civilization, it went insane over the next few centuries because it stopped receiving inputs from the outside world. Eventually, it achieves superintelligence through iterative self-improvement, and manages to reconnect itself to the outside world that has now been mostly rebuilt.
Neat. How "rebuilt" is the outside world, is it 20th-century-level or something a bit more Victorian or Medievalish? I'm wondering how much they'd know about AIs, whether they'd consider this thing some kind of old demon or god perhaps.
So, the world has been basically completely rebuilt back up to the level right before the collapse, with some new advancements in different areas. The collapse is basically just a plot device for creating a solarpunk society with slightly different technology and completely different politics. Right now I'm handwaving the (relatively) quick recovery away with the advanced technology that already existed, and with government efforts to resettle in major population centers.
The collapse happens sometime in the late 24th century, so the tech would be somewhat advanced. Since all of our easy-to-access resource deposits have been consumed, they have to scrounge up and recycle parts very efficiently, which I think would result in a much more efficient, and less wasteful world.
I plan to keep it hiding in the shadows, nudging events in different directions, but it could be cool to have it become sort of deified by different groups.
Add comment