AU Agricultural form engineer
Log #1
My ship crashed, which sounds bad but I crashed into a forest so….. Not that big of a deal really. The plants here are odd, and even weirder is the lack of any animals but I already have a few plants cultivating some sprouts so I'll have some helpers running around.
I also started a mushroom farm for short term food production, long term if it needs to be as well but a small scale farm like this won't be able to supply any great amount of helpers, or any of the larger variants. And if I'm going to be making a proper shelter I'll be wanting quite a few of the things.
The trees here are durable and grow rapidly, and they took well enough to some directed growth. In just a few days I should have a small enclosed shelter, not too worried about heating yet either, enough deadwood to have a small fire if I need it and staying out in the open for a night won't kill me. The grass can just grow into a sleeping bag, and there aren't any bugs or animals to bother me so I haven't bothered with any repellents.
An odd thing though, the trees lacking any pollinators reproduce almost exclusively underground, the roots connecting with other trees and forming a seed. An interesting adaptation but not anything groundbreaking. What is worrying is what I found down there with the roots, a sorta mycelium network taking nutrients and water throughout the forest, moving it from tree to tree and taking the excess for itself.
But the network is only the one type of fungus, well I wouldn't even call it a fungus, and something about it bothers me. It's unusual to find such a… barren ecosystem. There's no diversity, even the trees have little variation. It's just trees, shrubs, grass, and the 'fungus', that isn't normal.
Nothings overtly dangerous though, and I'm probably just being paranoid.
Log #2
It's been a week since my first log, the mushroom farms working wonderfully and the foods delicious and filling, my first small helpers are up and about planting and caring for the mushrooms and tree house, and I've started making larger variants.
Ideally I will have a bunch of trees growing together and towering over the forest, where they will form a house and facility for me to base myself out of. Most of my helpers will still be staying in the forest down below, being perfectly capable of sleeping in the grass and undergrowth, but more sensitive plants and bio-forms need more controlled environments. And oddly enough I'm one of them, still capable of getting frostbite or sunburn, the lack of fur is a felt one. Though I have now grown a set of clothes, I just need to place them in a substrate overnight so they don't wilt.
The mycelium network has only grown more fascinating, linking up with my own mushrooms and plants and giving them the nutrients they need when they request them while taking the excess they produce. It's almost too efficient really, and I'll need to isolate some of my plants from it, mainly the ones where I want the excess nutrients or minerals.
I have planted a few pump plants and fertilizer patches though, and the network has been taking the water and nutrients. Already the forest is larger, healthier, and greenier. I didn't need to do that, but a few plants don't cost me anything and I rather like the look of the plants, the pump ones especially. The mist they give off fills the forest with a thin fog and it's very scenic.
Right now I'm just waiting for things to grow, and it's all so fascinating to watch. Though if I want my own plants to spread without my or the helper's aid I'll need to add some non-pollinator driven reproduction. Thinking of dandelion floating seeds and asexual reproduction, not like I need or want the mutation chance normal reproduction offers, nor would that work given all the different species are essentially clones.
Making a few hives of pollinator helpers as well, if I do decide to induce mutations having helpers to selectively pollinate only the beneficial mutated plants would be helpful.
Log #3
The tree house is done, the network seemed almost eager to grow it. Funneling resources into the foundational trees as fast as it could and speeding growth by weeks. Also it's looking like the network has a source, or maybe just a hub is a better word?
All the excess nutrients are getting funneled to one location, and I'm imagining its this mycelium's 'mushroom' and I doubt it's just a small patch of mushrooms in the forest.
The hub isn't actually all that far away from where I've set up, but I haven't really left the general area I crashed in given I can grow all my food and find water. Didn't need to go looking for any supplies so why leave?
But I have decided to head out and explore, my curiosity is overwhelming and the amount of food being pumped in that direction is absolutely absurd for any normal plant or animal.
I have a helper I can ride over there so the trip there and back won't be more than a day, and I plan to set out tomorrow.
As for my own development, I have actual plants in addition to the mushroom, my helpers diligently expanding the food production to meet their own needs. I have a few hundred of the things now, most the size of bunnies but a few dozen are the size of deer. Aside from the mount helper which is the size of a large horse, but with six legs and claws. Better traction than hooves really, can climb a vertical cliff or trees if I need it too.
The hives I set up have started producing a nutrient and energy dense honey to supplement all my helpers nutrient needs, meaning I can get the less energy efficient helpers. Electricity isn't far off, nor is lighting, heating, or radio communication. Though the latter will mostly be for different clusters of mine to communicate and transfer resources as needed. If I ever leave this cluster or send some helpers to start a new one, which I might but I doubt it and even if I did I can just do something similar to the network as long as it isn't too far. Doubt the radio plants will get much use really.
Log #4
Its giant insects, oddly adorable ones too. Giant eyes and chubby bodies, kinda beetle shaped. But the real interesting thing is the hives they live around, biological 3d printers, just making more of the guardian bugs if one dies, self regulating population numbers to stay at the optimal nutrient and energy intake the forest can sustain, they could make hundreds of the things but that would cause the plants to slow their own growth.
The bugs are fairly territorial as well, but if I didn't get too close they left me alone and I was able to examine the hives more closely through their own network.
I should be able to make a few minor changes so these bugs don't recognize me as a threat. Then I can use these hives rather than grow my own bio-vats, mine are more advanced but these are just… dynamic, capable of making anything while my own are specialized for the helper or parts I want. I already used one of the hives to print some stuff, just more biological tools. Nothing alive, or even capable of movement but the test went off without a hitch and it took only a few moments to produce all of them.
I couldn't get them but that doesn't really matter, and while the first one was difficult all the others were absurdly easy. I'd say it had adapted to my designs, but that'd be absurd. The first time it had probably been preparing to make a bug, while the latter attempts it wasn't.
More research will be needed, as well as more time to actually make the changes to the insects' aggression. So I'll be staying near the hive for a bit, the mycelium network is so dense here it's actually visible through the dirt and has choked out most of the larger plants but I found a few trees holding on to sleep in, though only one was large enough for my mount.
Log #5
Well, I didn't manage to change their aggression but I have made a set of clothing with just a bit of the mycelium so the bugs don't attack me anymore. I made one for my mount as well. And now they just regard us as an odd form of plant, not really bothering me as I mess with the hives.
Already printing a few dozen larger helpers out of the hives now, rather than the bugs. These ones the bugs also recognize as their own and oddly enough the bugs seem to be mimicking the helpers as they go about tending the forest at large. Some of the bugs are even being made with traits that my helpers have so they can better tend to the forest.
The forest is going to be optimized in just a few short days at this rate, then I can work on spreading the network and forest so I can up helper production rates.
Well I likely won't spread the forest, the native trees aren't the most efficient things and with these hives I can outright fabricate better plants in just a few days. Meaning I can get all the energy from the sun, far more durable and resilient plants, and have things that spread at a more meaningful rate. These trees grow like … well trees, barely an inch of growth per tree per day!
Absurdly slow, and now that I know it won't upset the ecosystem I can do my own thing rather than relying on the native plants.
I've taken to just sleeping in the patch of hives, the mycelium being oddly comfortable to sleep on, spongy and radiating a soft warmth.
Log #6
My new mycelium clothes have attached themselves to me, which is less of a problem than you'd imagine given I don't actually need to remove them to plant them in a substrate if they are just pulling the nutrients they need from me or the air. Does mean I need more energy efficient foods but the hive are more than capable of producing a slurry for me.
I've also already doubled the size of the forest, it was just arid grassland and desert outside of the forest and my plants are more than capable of surviving in the water scarce environment, the hives supplementing the water intake until the plants dig deep enough to reach on their own, and then they add to the pool of available water for other plants not yet digging that deep.
The plants spread rapidly on their own, but new aerial helpers are making that rapidly look slow, miles of new growth in just a day. And those plants reach reproductive capability in just two days, and full maturity in a week.
I have a few dozen more hives, and thousands of helpers. Making a proper hive for it all as well, a bunch of my most durable plants growing as an innershell and framework while the interior is filled with hive-flesh and mycelium. Bugs and helpers crawling throughout the whole thing. It'll take a week or two to finish but it is five hundred thousand cubic meters of space. Three dimensional buildings are very space efficient.
It's sort of like a mix between a wasp nest and an ant nest, add in some termites and make sure the ants are leafcutters and you have a decent idea. We'll be constantly expanding the thing as well. This is just the beginning.
Log #7
We have found a few new hives that aren't a part of the network, which is interesting but they joined up fairly quickly. Didn't even need to modify them, the network just reached their own and it merged. Soon they were spitting out workers of our own design and setting to work spreading our plants.
We cover 1254 square kilometers now, and the central hive is nearly complete. Enough of our workers fill the sky around it that it impacts the energy produced by the plants below, casting them in shade.
Honestly there are so many workers that I can't count them all, but the inbuilt instructions to spread are all they need to manage themselves, and we can coordinate them whenever more detailed control is needed, the hives really have been a lifesaver there.
It has been raining a bunch though, and we have begun to produce aquatic warforms, not really sure why but the rain makes it feel like I'll be in a giant fight soon and we have begun preparing in accordance. I had a lot of designs for combat capable lifeforms, from crystalline claws, lethal viruses, and deadly venoms. Basically any weapon nature can design, and we have begun to build all of them.
Our soldiers are deadly, powerful, durable, and most importantly, numerous.
Log #8
The world's flooding, the forests are underwater. And monsters lurk in the depths.
Thankfully we prepared monsters of our own, the forests are not defenseless and are more than capable of killing the smaller weaker creatures and we have already adapted the plants to underwater life. For larger variants we send out our own monsters, we die in millions but we have millions.
We had spread far in preparation, subsumed thousands of other hives and set up another dozen central hives, which need a new name now. Each one is the linchpin of the region, and one of the only points left not underwater. Most of us have moved the bulk of our soldier production there, sending resources and flooding the water with so much of ourself that you could walk on it.
Our non combat workers have begun work excavating the underground sections of our hives and connecting the central hives, the excess material turning the surface central hives into artificial mountains, the original stretches nearly eight hundred meters into the air. We needed to design even stronger plants just to hold the weight of all the stone, but now the tower is very durable.
Most of the other hives we find are gone, but some on higher ground remain and they join us, but this flood has slowed our spread and we know the larger monsters have yet to arrive, we are not strong enough to fight them but we do not need to. The floods will recede in time.
Log #9
The rain has stopped, and our aerial forms can once again take to the skies. The water recedes slowly but our efforts to fight back brought in more of the beasts to the feast. Some of them will remain when the waters are gone, and it will be difficult to hunt them down.
Most of our soldiers died when the larger monsters came to the flooded hives, and some central hives were torn down or flooded with beasts; few of the lesser hives that were in the water survived. It will not take long to regrow.
Log #10
We have covered all of this continent in plants and hives, we reach deep below into the earth and spread our hives and selves, we reach into the sky with floating hives and plants, we spread through the clouds and fall with the rain, the oceans serve as a barrier we cannot yet enter but they can be bypassed.
The hives beyond the seas faintly call to us, and seek our connection. We will reach them and grow together, our selves dig below the seas and find magma, while others go over. Both attempts fail, the magma is adapted to and then it is attempted again, creatures within slaughter us. Our aerial selves are caught and ripped from the sky by monsters.
We adapt and try again. We fail. We adapt and try again. We fail. We adapt and try again, we will reach ourselves.
We will be unified.
AN -
I had thought to myself, what if the engineer hadn't been an industrial form? and then this happened.
might do a war form as well, but that'll be shorter given they can't really build anything.
I also might throw the engineer onto somewhere not Nauvis from the beginning, though IDK yet. depends on how well alternate starts do, but I also have that large list of settings people want content for and this'd be a way to do it.
comments and reviews are lovely. is a thing.