Wednesday, September 9, 2015

252. Solemn's Seeds

Firewall's new society will require an industrial base, but Solemn is hostile to both nanofabrication and traditional industry. Like with the other Solemn proposals, their solution is biological. An egg, containing a genetic blueprint of the item to be grown, and the needed feedstock.

All of the costs of nanofabrication are up-front, which has advantages and disadvantages. An egg does not require a power source, as it contains what energy it will need in the form of fat, and does not require a continuous source of material, as again it contains what it will need. Once an egg has been "laid" it remains viable for ~3 years, or if stored properly, indefinitely.

The current difficulty with the project is the creation of an egg-layer. To be viable on Solemn, some sort of animal or organ must be created, capable of translating nanofabrication blueprints into a genetic code, then creating and laying the egg. The eggs created so far have all been essentially from scratch, with blueprint translations requiring touching-up and experimentation.

Mechanics

Organic but non-living objects can be grown in an egg at a rate of 2 hours per cost category of the item. Living things (such as morphs and animals) can be grown in an egg at a rate depending on their size: 1 year if small, 1.5 years if normal, 2 years if large.

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