Dust Strider
| Dust Strider | |
|---|---|
| Base Information | |
| Classification | Herbivore/Filter/Grazer |
| Terrain | Desert |
| Locomotion | Walker |
| Size | 5.0m tall (3m legs, 2m body) 4m long, 800kg |
| Speed | Normal |
| Strength | Strong |
| Social Structure | Small Herds |
| Weapons | None |
| Armor | Jack |
| Source | |
| Homeworld | Chamois (world) |
| Multi-world | No |
| Canon | No |
| Extinct | Extant |
| Reference | |
These large desert roaming creatures have eleven legs a large laterally flattened cylindrical body with no discernible head structure.
Physiology & Ecology
Their long legs alternate synchronized movement, and move together like oars on an ancient gallery, first one side and then the other. The eleventh leg in the back, acts like a rudder and swings on either side with each alternating stride. This pattern produces a gentle sway atop the 3m tall legs. Viewed from above the strider seems to produce a serpentine path and never quite moves in a straight line. The pace is not really fast but their endurance is endless. They never stop walking, slow and steady wins the race. They carry out nearly all bodily functions on their relentless walk. Each leg is a moisture probe. Spongy filaments around the base of each long segmented leg absorb tiny amounts of moisture trapped between grains of sand with each step. Their mass ensures that the pole like legs sink into the shifting sands with each step and the momentum of the swinging body brings the other set of legs up and forward. Cable like elastic connective tissue store and release energy very efficiently and these cross linked fiber bundles are responsible for the body's contours and shape. The eleventh leg is more flexible and has a more specialized probing ability if superficial sub surface moisture is proving to be elusive. Each leg is attached to pump three huge lung like structures. Vast mats of vascular tissues that exchange gases and pump air through a systemic network of tiny passages. Circulating air is essential for thermal regulation in the blazing hot temperatures of their native world. The flattened, near vertical 2m high body walls have large slightly over lapping plates of integumentary right handed, tightly bound, super coils of dense polypeptide chains, similar to reversed terrestrial keratins. The dorsal surface is slightly rounded and each leg pair corresponds to a body segment. The ventral body surface is open, thick filtration fibers hang in dense clumps from between the legs. These branched structures are richly supplied with circulating fluids and permit gas exchange. They also lead to the spongy air passages that permeate the shelled body. As the air is forced through the body, by the rhythmic pumping action of the well muscled legs and their attached triple billowing "lung" structures, the entire organisms body is an purification filter. In this case optimized to remove nutrient microscopic air plankton from dusty winds of the desert planet home. This organism's vast bulk is necessary to permit energetically effective gathering of these relatively low concentrations of nutrient cells. The tiny wind tubes that fill the body are lined with villi like cells that trap microbes on their mucus layer and phagocytotically ingest the nutrients. In their native environment thick colonies of autotrophic photosynthesizers live across the surface of the sands. Their enzymes and photosentive pigments are tuned to the color of the local star and the composition of the native atmosphere and lack the familiar green of terrestrial producers. These striders can absorb these cells as the walk through their colonies and stir up clouds of them as they pass through. Their movement is needed to get the cells airborne and facilitate filtration and absorption. The elven leg re-releases inorganics and silcates without food value back into the soil. Their digestion, however efficient is not perfect and native life have developed reproductive endospores which pass unharmed through the strider's system and use the huge striders to disseminate their genomic information into waste enriched soils. In a sense the striders move like harvester combines across microbial farms hidden from casual view. What looks dry and dusty is awash with a strange cellular life cycle.
Life Cycle & Reproduction
The eleventh leg also functions to deposit masses of embryonic offspring. These asexually produced embryos have thick integument to prevent drying out. The burrow into the sand to find moisture and food. The quantity of young varies with how well fed the adult is and are released with the waste products as the strider walks. They can live in the swim digging and burrowing for the rest of their lives in an ecological niche similar to a soil based nematode. However if they encounter others of their species, regardless of parentage they begin to merge into a larger and more complex form. The genome is reshuffled, in a version of a sexual genetic recombination, except the number of parent genomes can vary widely. Powerful genetic editors perform enzymatically regulated error correction and basically all available genes are analyzed and the best traits wins. The remaining base pairs are recycled and reused. As embryos find each other and merge the collective organism gets larger and larger. If energetics permit they grow into a sand swimming form that prowls below the surface collecting food. Eventually a tiny number of these embryo colonies, merge to form the larger strider form. The worms must first encyst for a period of time, equivalent to a local year. The cyst uses a vast network of subsurface root fibers to collect nutrients and water, to sustain the metamorphosis. The emergent form stand 1 meter tall and begin the walk that will last the rest of their lives. The reach full size after one hundred local years and are predicted to live in excess of one thousand, as long as they keep walking. They burst from below the sand on the hottest dries day of the year, when the sands are loosest. The sun catalyzes and cures their hardening integument and which the first step their billowing lungs begin the relentless search for airborne food, has their feet probe the sand for moisture and the growing cells of colonial photosynthetic producers. In their native ecosystem, as they walk above the sand, they are too big and fast from effective predation. Most life on their planet is smaller, so natural defenses are largely unneeded.
Diet & Trophics
They are heterotrophic, herbivore consumers. They are always processing air borne microbial nutrients as a wandering grazer. They are poikilothermic with an open respiratory/digestive system and a closed circulatory system. They are very efficient with their metabolic energy and generate very little heat. Forced ducted air cooling through out their bodies keep moving parts from building up heat. Sealed and well lubricated joints, on tough but simple legs ensure enduring reliability. The can't run, but they can walk forever. Moisture is carefully segregated from breathing and no moisture is allowed to escape that way. The relentless ciliary ladder ensures that the indigestible sands of their dust is sequestered toward the eleventh leg for deposition slowly with every swinging step. Their simple bodies are extremely difficult to injure. Their integumentary cuticle is non-cellular, and protein analogue derived. As a result it is light, strong and flexible. They slowly regenerate from nearly any injury as long as they can still move. They can replace broken legs on the march and if knocked down are extremely effective at righting themselves and regaining their feet. The legs are jointed in such a way that the entire body can be brought to rest on the surface of the sand. This is extremely rare behavior and usually indicates something is very wrong.
History & Background (Dossier)
Early colonists noticed this species immediately. Large and moving endlessly across what looked like barren sands. So obviously they had to be put to use. Unfortunately, without much of a nervous system and no real brain to speak of, training was out of the question. Preliminary impressions were that this organism never stopped walking, didn't eat, drink, defecate or reproduce. It seemed like a violation of the laws of conservation of energy. Riders needed special harnesses to keep cargo backs on their swaying bodies, as the endless motion had a habit of shaking packs loose over time. Self tightening straps were imported and tension must be maintained within a narrow range of tolerance to avoid impeding the organism. Goading and hitting the animal to indicate the direction of travel desired proved pointless. The organism was barely aware of riders or cargo. If overloaded they slow and then stop, which in their case in never good. Stationary they quickly suffocate, not walking is like holding their breath, they can do it, but not for long. During loading and unloading passengers and cargo it became necessary to build treadmills. These are used as stables as well. On the treadmill they are used to provide power. With enough water and air plankton dust, they can survive walking in place for a few days. However, without the cushioning of the sand, their feet and absorption pads begin to wear out. Like a stage coach station combined with a moving sidewalk at an airport, dust strider stations are interesting places for colonists and animals alike. They walk in place while passengers and loads strap in for their gently swaying sand voyage. The relentless motion does make some humans sick. Others find it relaxing like swinging in a hammock. The only way drivers and handlers have to alter their direction of travel is with careful use of lures. The animals relentlessly move in the direction of food and water concentrations. Damp/wet materials soaked in the briny solution of local photosynthetic microbes are enough to alter the strider's course. It is hung on the end of a long fishing pole like rig just ahead of the animal and held about a meter above the sand. Subtle changes in its position and angle can cause the strider to alter course. Skilled handlers can get them to go almost anywhere. They don't back up well (almost impossible), and they really don't change speed. Think about commanding a sea sponge or coral to go where you want, and you get the idea. They are useless as food, their biochemistry is backward from human norms, if ingested the nutrient value is equivalent to chewing on cellulose fibers. Several cottage industries have found uses for the extraordinary properties of the materials they are built from. Their resilience and strength are greatly prized.
Travellers' Aid Society Advisory
Travellers are advised to avoid this animal if encountered in the wild, they will run over vehicles, and through camps as they oblivious to most sensory input. If encountered with trained handlers and riders, they are mostly harmless and can be relied on for safe transport across vast distances of open desert. Passengers are guaranteed to die of thirst and starvation long before their mounts ever will. The dust they stir up can be a respiratory risk and most wear filter masks in their present to avoid inhaling the microbes associated with them.
References & Contributors (Sources)
- Author & Contributor: Ronald B. Kline, Jr.