Post
by Aegis J Hyena » Mon Mar 20, 2017 7:06 pm
500,000,000 Years
Very Basic Intelligence: 44
"Water" Dissolution Solution: 53
More Chemical Finetuning: 34
Hot Pockets: 83 (highest roll)
Tunnel Digging: 67
Tendril Nerve System: 80
Cannibalism: 47
Z. Reditori Croctinii is now floating peacefully in the depths, allowing the current to bring it wherever it wants. The first place the current brings the bacteria to is a series of curly spiral caverns on the seafloor, where an ancestor carved out an existence but has since died out. Z. Reditori Croctinii has colonized these curly tunnels (each no wider than a pencil point) because the water being forced through them is supercharging their kinetic energy stores. The bacteria lock the tunnels down and evolve a series of filter-feeding "combs" to filter through the tunnels, one after another in a series of layers. This is enabling them to grow at an exponential pace, beginning to outpace the other bacteria in the ocean.
The tunnels protect from predators, provide an alternate source of food, and make it difficult to want to continue drifting along with the tides looking for a new spot to settle. The nearest threat right now seems to be either stragglers from U. Klixstem Faltoni (which recede in number the further you get from their vents), or X. Hyea Aginessi. Their needle-pick-nose is now too wide for it to fit through the tunnels and it cannot get in by pushing its "head" in, but it works around this by backing in with its back half instead. The stingers on that end have increased their potency in response to your "hiding", and can reach out to prick you. It can't kill your species outright, but staying here where X. Hyea Aginessi can follow may not be a good idea.
D. Shloopi Dorfis has evolved a pair of changes. The first is resistance to the LSD that U. Klixstem Faltoni seems to be spewing everywhere; when U. Klixstem Faltoni comes along they turtle up into their crystals and hide. Then then recolor their crystals to match the environment, and they do this enough to throw off both J. Ayeik Pondo and T. Vopal Gravimorium (the latter of which has shed their stony exterior to get their speed back only to be harpooned by J. Ayeik Pondo or smothered by other bacteria newly emerging. This latter color-shifting makes it seem like the crystals are empty, so when X. Hyea Aginessi comes sniffing about or T. Vopal Gravimorium tries to worm its way into the crystals, both are zapped and injected with oxygen before being consumed. A byproduct of all this oxygen production/creation from the electricity means that D. Shloopi Dorfis is becoming tolerant or resistant to oxygen, and may be able to even incorperate it quicker than other deep-ocean bateria.
The salt "connections" it is making with other crystals of its kind are beginning to form salt webs that trap even more oxygen, which manifests as bubbles on the web. Bacteria "fall out of the water" and into this air, to touch the webs and therefore dry out. This has a threatening effect on T. Vopal Gravimorium, who dries almost instantly on contact. Unprotected D. Shloopi Dorfis bacteria traveling the salt lines then consume or drag the dead amoebas back to the "colonies" springing up inside the crystals. While U. Klixstem Faltoni can break the crystals with their secretions, all this oxygen production is forming a "bubble shield" that is blocking them from consuming the bacteria -- and allowing a counterdefense to spring up from the electrical "tentacle" of D. Shloopi Dorfis.
You have been seething in the heat vents for quite a long time now, and have developed a pair of "heat pockets," one to either side of the main body of the bacteria. When creatures that are not heat resistant get too close, *squirt* -- superheated water boils bacteria alive in their cell walls and allows you to continue to gluttonize the surrounding seafloor. These heat pockets also allow for a form of ballast control, allowing the bacteria to rise and fall with the cooler current and begin to move about even with the help of steering or movement fins. Each pocket appears as a tiny specialized "lung" on either side of the main cell. These squirters do two things: Fry J. Ayeik Pondo on the spot should it be found, and dissolve the connections between crystals of D. Shloopi Dorfis. You then quietly wait for a large amount of D. Shloopi Dorfis to gather on the "webs", then execute them all at once. This way you don't have to worry about navigating/breaking through the crystals to get at them.
The only bad news comes in the form of X. Hyea Aginessi, who is capitalizing on these heat pockets with its needlenose-pick. The pockets are least protected of all at the moment, and when X. Hyea Aginessi strikes with both its stingers and its nose, the pockets burst, causing U. Klixstem Faltoni to "bleed out" most of its proteins. U. Klixstem Faltoni counterstrikes with its chemical warfare, but it seems that X. Hyea Aginessi is beginning to build up a tolerance to it -- the energy stores only become discolored instead of burst on "suck up" of the chemicals. A few more hundred thousand years or so and they might have immunity to their toxins.
T. Vopal Gravimorium is on the ropes. It can no longer engulf most bacteria as it has been doing, and the combination of J. Ayeik Pondo's harpooning from ambush and D. Shloopi Dorfis' salt webs is bringing it to the brink of extinction. Meanwhile J. Ayeik Pondo has begun evolving an even stronger "shell", and it hardly ever moves from a particular ambush point now. A tethered lure attracts smaller bacteria, but it doesn't look like they're going to evolve much further now that they're "hidden" just under the surface of the seafloor. Finally, X. Hyea Aginessi seems to focus both on U. Klixstem Faltoni now that it's built resistance, and Z. Reditori Croctinii who are nice and snug in their little hideyholes. Z. Reditori Croctinii is bigger than both of them at the moment.
You now have access to one "super mutation" -- This is a separate roll. The highest rolled of these mutations of this turn will become a vastly improved one (and I'll skip over it when getting the top five). If you vote for ocular nerves/photo receptors for example, they may end up being lenses or full blown eyes. More "super" mutations will occur at every half billion years, and at every billion years, you'll get one "hallmark" mutation of your species that will become even more powerful.
