History of Five Extinct Species

The History of Five Extinct Species is a mostly lost history of the Distant Fringe.

• They are considered to be Old Spacer's Tales.

Description (Specifications)

TIMELINE: Precursor giants roamed the stars of the Intersect Cluster. They trigger life on four systems. Eventually, millions of years later they erupt from their planets. This triggers a series of conflicts. They leave, heading toward the rim, where they eventually ended up seeding life matrixes. The organisms evolve from their unique ecological niches. They slowly colonize systems using various sub-light strategies. One group of organisms controls the Bone Worlds and the others control the Dominion of Ruins. Eventually they contact each other. This triggers a series of events which leads to the extinction of all the sentient species in the area.

Millions of years later the Jannasta Expedition explores a few systems in this region of space. They discover the archaeological evidence that ancient civilizations once lived in this region of space.

History & Background (Dossier)

BACKGROUND: Life in this region of space may have been seeded billions of years ago. An impossibly ancient form of interstellar life form floats from planet to planet. In the wake of these behemoths, organic matrixes of life are initiated. These vast organisms seed lithospheres with quasi-organic molecules as a natural by-product of their mineral absorption processes. They are miners. The gather resources, and grow slowly over vast stretches of time. Eventually they lift off, an apocalyptic event. Ecologies are changed, extinction events occur. However, in most cases some residual life and its component parts remain. Entirely new ecologies have emerged from these extinction events. Lithospheres’ chemical compositions are often changed in strange ways from the influence of the slow metabolic reactions of these harbingers. These super silicate precursors, are drifters between star systems.

Five Species

1. Dhagoni
2. Froma
3. Outsiders
4. Lithopan
5. Vexor

Dhagoni’s Furnace Culture

Dhagoni’s Furnace Culture: On a tectonically active, volcanic planet with extremely high temperatures and crushing atmospheric pressures, a silica based life form rose to dominance amid a fiery ecosystem. Using heteropoly acids, metal oxides, titanium, aluminum, and magnesium they constructed nanotubes of cubic zirconia. These polyoxometalates, spherical membranes, are selectively permeable and the basis for their “cellular” structure. The corrosive atmosphere is insidious. A hazy layer of “photosynthetic” producers use ultraviolet light which can penetrate the first few layers of the super dense atmosphere. These floating organisms are akin to plankton except the biochemistry is completely different. The planetary surface would appear wreathed in permanent darkness to a being accustomed to visible light. Jets and geysers grant chemosynthetic life opportunities for organisms which have left traditional biochemistry behind. Carbonyl sulfide, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide are the compounds of life here. Sulfur is used to form long chain polymers and hydrogen sulfide is a reducing agent.

Sentience arrived or was triggered from an exterior stimulus. The predominant form of sentient organisms massed from 500-600kg as adults. They used silicates to create a chemically inert dermal armor layer. They used an internal biochemical furnace to reduce the compounds needed to function. The metals were used to construct the numerous fins and lifting wing surfaces. The atmospherically suspended particulates circle the planet at speeds in excess of the speed of sound on Earth. The abrasive properties and the kinetic energy of the storms would obliterate normal forms of technology as they are traditionally known. There is no water here, nor oxygen and yet life evolved. For most of their life spans they would dwell as miners and diggers. They tunneled in the crust, underground. They stayed near geysers of hydrogen sulfide and the microbe-like forms that dwelled there. They grazed and reduced these anaerobes for additional nutrition. They hatched in numbers from crystalline masses. The younger forms tunneled and grew. Eventually they would gain mass as they consumed. They develop more advanced sensory webs and begin to communicate and commune. The merged biomass would reorganize itself. The mutable diggers grew and metabolized. Eventually they became self-aware and eventually fully intelligent. Diggers would merge and build bigger, smarter constructs. They would fabricate and extrude metals into forms necessary to accomplish tasks. They had tools before a true civilization. Once diggers progressed to even larger forms they would begin to lose their cognitive functions and memory storage abilities as the energetics of maintaining bodies of ever increasing mass rendered high intellectual functions secondary to survival. The terminal stage emerge from the ground as vast winged flyers. Sparred metallic wings, fins and jets sprouted from their body as it progressively lengthened and thinned out. The only chemically compatible biomass left for them necessitated taking to the air. The elderly fliers erupted from the sands and blasted rocks of the desiccated surface. Instinctively they only unfurl their wing blades with the correct alignment to catch the typhoon winds that explode across the ravaged surface. Once aloft these 600kg giants soar ever higher and they spent the remainder of their lives scooping up the UV filtering producers. The biomass of the abundant autotrophs of the upper atmosphere, provided the energy the larger fliers required. They would lapse into a dream like state only slightly aware of their surroundings above an instinctual level. These huge fliers would release reproductive precursors and promoters which would eventually settle to the ground. Whenever these “seeds” would take root, it would trigger nearby fabrication diggers to assemble a new digger nymph.

The complex silica tunnel networks constructed by the diminutive young diggers formed the basis for their computational sciences. The underground networks could construct and fabricate technology when intelligent diggers wanted to complete a task. As the civilization advanced they learned to build soaring gliders modeled after the bodies of the senile flying elders. These gliders allowed them to explore and colonize their inferno world. Once they learned how to travel beyond the gravity well of their home world they looked for other worlds. The enormous metallic, hurricane wings became useless once they were beyond the atmosphere. They were repurposed into solar sails of aluminum film. They in turn were sent toward every nearby star. In the form of a machine fitted with the templates for diggers and senile fliers. These sailors were instructed to find suitable worlds and manufacture new sailors to repeat the process. When sailors arrived they would use their sensors to find a world with the required elements. The sailor would crash there and release diggers. These new diggers would mine and in turn build more diggers and eventually the colony would launch its own sailors. They proved especially good at asteroid mining. Their silica-metallic bodies were unhindered by exposure to vacuum, which in many ways was less dangerous than the corrosive inferno worlds which spawned them.

The Froma of the Hidden Ocean

The Froma of the Hidden Ocean: The frozen moon of a large gas giant far from its red giant star, circles in silence. The entire surface of the planet a thick layer of frozen compounds. The layer of life is within a vast ocean, hidden and deep. Ammonia is the liquid of choice here. It is flammable in the presence of oxygen and hydrophobic. Planetary temperatures typically range from -78 to -33. Life here tends to have slower chemical reactions. The ammonia dissolves organics based on carbon and metals. It can be used by the native organisms to construct amine groups instead of hydroxyl groups. Because the planet is so very cold, certain chemicals on hand in the atmosphere and oceans include sulfuric acid, formamide, hydrocarbons (mostly ethane and methane), and hydrofluoric acid, which under the high pressures of the underground world ocean can be used to make polylipids. The ammonia serves as a non-polar solvent for the chemistry of the local life forms. They reduce ethane and acetylene to methane. They have methanogenic catalysts that can function at 95K to form azotosome acrylonitrite. The surface ice layers create a high albedo factor. Water is incompatible with life here. Boranes and long chain polymers of sulfur compounds are more typical. These hydrocarbon dependent forms are highly flammable in the presence of free oxygen, which was thankfully rare there. A frozen planet with a deep subsurface ocean, layers of liquid between the frozen interior and the crust. The core of the planet is warmed and kept active by gravitational tidal forces from the large gas giant. High concentration of radioactive isotopes generate heat as well.

The intelligent form of life here were parasites originally. Massing 8.0 kg when full grown, they lived in a colonial existence with their massive hosts. The worms were massive consumers of the hidden oceans. The surface has pockets of hydrocarbon lakes and rivers, pools of cold ethane and methane. Most of the life dwelt in the hidden ocean. The host worms were massive, several kilometers long. The parasites had no cities. They lived in and on their mobile hosts. They were masters of chemistry and “genetics”. They controlled their hosts completely, adapting the host bodies to suit the parasites’ needs. The hosts produced the chemicals and materials they needed. As the parasites grew in their abilities they explored more of their world. They developed burrowing and tunneling host worms. They used these to tunnel to the surface of their world. They gradually colonized the surface and eventually used the hydrocarbons as fuels. The largest obstacle was synthesizing controlled amounts of oxygen. Oxygen is a deadly toxin to them. Using their living rocket hosts they learned to adapt to other low temperature Jovian moons. The colonized all the moons in their home star system.

They grafted host worms that they had adapted for space travel into clusters. Masses of host worms formed ever bigger colonies. Some functioned as space stations of sorts in stable orbits. Worms were dispatched to travel to and from the tunnels and access colonies which granted passage into the life giving World Ocean. Provisions and supplies, raw building materials, mostly forms of life in their own right, formed the basis for their growth and expansion. The initial colonization of the all the home system’s gas giant moons took hundreds of thousands of years. This would be roughly equivalent to TL-7. The inner worlds closer to the star were of no interest as they were all too hot and had poisonous water and oxygen. The last great migration lead to the creation of deep space colonies, capable of travel between stars. Closed loop ecosystems, which could be sustained at extremely low levels for obscene lengths of time. These living heralds set forth to colonize other systems. Systems that their sensors told them had conditions for suitable gas giants which could have nice cold moons for new homes. Hosts were mutable in that the parasites learned over evolutionary time to manipulate very aspect of their living vessels to produce whatever materials they needed to grow and synthesize. They could catalyze, and accelerate or when needed inhibit and slow the rates.

The established a network of cold loving, hydrocarbon based, moon colonies. They sought out oceans of liquids typically gases on terrestrial worlds. Perfectly adapted to survive for centuries within their hosts, they modified their hosts to anaerobically cope with what each new moon had to offer. All well below the freezing point of water.

The Outsiders

The Outsiders: The last to arrive in this region of space were a race of intelligent space travelers. Their fleet arrived from another empire. They had ships and built bases and mines, colonies and forts using advanced tools, engineering and technology. They live comparatively quick, self-contained lives. Long serpent-like bodies of 4-5m in length, 180kg in mass, with a triple armed torso. Radial symmetry with three large eyes. Eyes sensitive from IR to UV. The arms ending in three fingered dexterous manipulator claws. Homoeothermic, heterotrophic consumers, they were aggressive hunting omnivores. They were ruled by a psionic elite and used cybernetics to augment their bodies and repair war wounds. They came as colonizing conquerors. They eventually formed the empire which occupied the region, now known as the Bone Worlds.

Exploration and expansion led to the area now known as the Dominion of Ruins. They found the region strewn with a random assortment of colonies of strange life forms alien to their chemistry and unknown to their science. Most of the forms were unimpressive to them and easy to kill or destroy. For several thousand years they ruled the region unopposed. Eventually, slowly the other life forms began to realize what was happening. They had just become to learn how to communicate between each other when the outsiders arrived. It was slowly decided that something would have to be done about the problem. The outsiders destroyed wantonly and killed indiscriminately and disrupted the diaspora of the slower than light colony networks. The outsiders with their jump drives were too fast to effectively engage as they could raid from system to system unopposed. Neither the inferno dwellers of Dhagoni's children, the living jungles of the Vexor or the icy Froma could contend with their speed and might.

Another method to cope was required. The thinking networks of the Dhagoni diggers was set to the task of calculating what was needed. Something that could move and react as fast as the outsiders was needed. Eventually high speed thinkers evolved. Something akin to AI was built. The AI decided it knew best how to cope with the outsider infestation. It set about weaponizing each of the three native species. The Vexor were altered to have massive, collective psionic powers dwarfing the individual minds of the outsiders. The Froma genetically modified themselves and their hosts into bio weapons, infectious plague bearers of unparalleled toxicity. These new parasites would transfect outsiders they came in contact with and convert them into fast moving forms that the Froma could manipulate and Vexor could mentally dominate. The Dhagoni AIs developed starship building abilities and built jump drives that would fit in the biggest sailors yet, each over 1,400 cubic meters in displacement. Eventually, the outsiders struck back with apocalyptic fury. In response the Dhagoni AIs, who had stopped following their creator’s orders and were pursuing their own agenda, unleashed a form of advanced nanites.

The plagues worked, the psychic warfare worked, the machines of the Dhagoni worked. Unfortunately, the self-replicating nanites would sound the death knell for all combatants once and for all. Once the unthinking nanites were unleashed they defied all attempts at control. The races struggled for hundred of years to get the genie back in the bottle. Eventually all life was lost, all colonies destroyed and only ruins remained. Without advanced technology to sustain them, even the nanites ran out of technology to eat and convert. Built as weapons and with no ability to persist once their directive to attack and reproduce was carried out they were worn away by simple entropy over time, or so it is hoped.

Lithopan

Each of the four other life forms in these zones were seeded in some way through the influences of these Lithopan initiators. Theses miners have masses rivaling small moons and large asteroids. Their movements often coincide with planetesimals collisions in nascent solar systems on the cusp of stable planet formation. Their bodies create oceans and mountain ranges. They can draw heavy metals upward from mantle layers into the crust. They can float through space. They can utilize radioactive elements and accumulated fuels to lift off. The question of the sentience is unknown and some would say unknowable. They live so long and so slowly they seem as unaware of the life they generate as a human would have with the microbes on our skin. They can manipulate gravity fields and accelerate very slowly over vast stretches of time as the wander from star to star. They are incapable of FTL, but achieve sub luminal velocities that would kill typical organic life forms. Upon approaching a new gravity well of a new star they settle onto a new planet and begin to refuel from the exertion of their last voyage. This resting phase varies with the duration of the crossing. Usually a few million years per light year traveled.

Vexor

On a small planet with a low gravity and a vast thick, dense atmosphere. Green photosynthetic producers thrive in abundance. Vast jungles of verdant emerald life fill countless ecological niches. Oxygen and aerobic respiration abound. Carbon and water based life covered the globe and altered the atmospheric concentrations of gases as their world aged. Eventually the producers began to create smaller motile vectors for the advantageous distribution of reproductive materials to ensure greater adaptive viability. Large organic networks of sessile producers would link and reach out with small packets of information. Free floating “pollen” and eventually larger more macroscopic forms. The spare energy would come from the very efficient climax producers would could store vast polymerized sugars and starches. The mobile plant vectors experienced and explosion of forms and morphologies. They walked, crawled, flew, swam and occasionally, all of the above. Very slowly the rates of inter-organism, and inter-species communication rose above a biochemical level and the networking began to adjust faster to changes in the environment. Natural disasters, impacts, fires etc. triggered more advanced strategies.

The climate of the planet began to change as their star aged. The cooling effects as the spectral class wore on altered their quiet cycles of life. In response they began to investigate, first their planet and then they sought to perceive that which lay beyond the clouds. They grew forms to fly higher to peek above the clouds. Massive motile forms worked like giant builders, cranes and soil movers all in one. Each mobile form under the direction of the photosynthetic biomass. Better servitors evolved with better environmental sensors and the ability to manipulate resources in the environment. As they learned and stored more information in their biomass they began to realize their changing star would eventually kill them all in a few million years. They would have to leave if they wanted to survive. This idea was not their own. Visitors from other species were observed settling on the gas giant moons and the inferno planets closer to the massive star. This seemed to indicate that these things were possible. So it was decided to grow a servitor that could withstand the rigors of vacuum.

References & Contributors (Sources)

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This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis), Captain, and Lead Naval Architect Ronald B. Kline, Jr. of the Imperial Navy
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master Scout Emeritus Adie Alegoric Stewart of the IISS
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science