Sunday, March 27, 2022

The Soft Bodies

    The Soft Bodies were a major space polity and part of the triune alliance that first colonized Chunky Space millions of years ago. They are believed to have been a successor state to the Floozy empire; an uplifted client race that survived the chaos of the empire’s dissolution. They had a strong grasp of biological sciences and distinguished themselves through their ecosystem engineering. Far beyond simple terraforming, each Soft Body world was a biological masterwork, a self correcting and self improving system. The Soft Bodies would disappear from the galactic stage like their Floozy forebears but their planets remain.


 Features of Soft Body Ecosystems 


Versatile body plan - On a typical soft body world, around 70% of all animal life belongs to the same mollusk-like super clade that gives the Soft Bodies their name. This form is highly adaptable and can be found in any environment on a Soft Body world.


Ancient Riddles - The Floozies had many potent bioengineering secrets. They encrypted and encoded them into various genomes. These genetic cryptograms are known as riddles. The Soft Bodies were able to collect and decode many of them, allowing them to give their creations astounding abilities. In addition to many metabolic tricks and venoms, the Soft Bodies had access to the riddles behind psionic powers. Many organisms on Soft Body worlds have psychic powers. 


Biofilm - A thin film of microbes covers everything on Soft Body worlds. These microbes use symbiotic viruses to sample the genomes of every organism. This information is collected and transferred to large stromatolites where it is processed biologically. This serves a sort of planetary nervous system allowing the ecosystem to respond to threats quickly.


Kaiju - All Soft Body worlds support megafauna, with many worlds supporting true kaiju. There is a popular legend that the Soft Bodies foresaw the Kaiju Wars that would devastate the galaxy and sought to protect their worlds with their own Kaiju guardians. Others say the Soft Bodies opened the door that would lead to the Kaiju Wars.


Protean Genesis - Soft Body eggs don’t always grow into the same species as their parents. Viroid messengers can cause developing embryos to switch species entirely. The ecosystem uses this effect to balance populations and to respond to die-offs. 


Secret Survivors? - There have been enough accounts of encounters with Soft Body aborigines that it is almost impossible to write them off as spacer legend, but little is known about them. The so-called “slug monks” are presumed to be sapient but formal contact has never been made. Some believe them to be remnants of the Soft Body civilization, while others think they were created to counter sapient threats to Soft Body Ecosystems. They are known to possess bio-kinetic powers. 


Soft Body Worlds in Chunky Space


Sybarites' Garden - This former resort world has become wild and strange after its masters left.


Cloister - The ice bound surface hides a planetary super organism. Its original purpose is unknown.


Slug Temple -  This planet is thought to have been a religious center, or possibly a kaiju development center. Now it is ruled by some of the most powerful Soft Boy Kaiju ever encountered.


Far Sea - This frigid ocean world is home to a Seeder colony. The local humans worship in secret cults to appease the hostile ecosystem.


Soft Body Encounters


  1. Dozer Shell - Massive herbivore that feeds by scooping dirt with its shell and filtering out the vegetation. Dangerously temperamental

  2. Desiccation angel - Winged and translucent. Lives in flocks of 2d10 individuals. They put on bioluminescent displays. When provoked they telekinetically remove fluids from their enemies. 

  3. Pack Witch - Intelligent but non-sapient. They decorate their territory with crude fetishes. They have a cursed bite that makes the victim a lure for soft body predators

  4. Flechette Drake - Serpentine predators. Hunt by shooting armored worms out of pores in their faces

  5. Tongue tyrant - Huge apex predators. Has dozens of long razor sharp tongues 

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