174. God's Acre

There is life between the stars. Massive beings, devouring comets for water, skimming gas giants for food, and absorbing starlight for energy. Whatever they are, we have never seen a live one. We know they exist only because of the icy dwarf planet called God's Acre, where they crash themselves to die. We call them leviathans.

Their bodies are like bundles of long, winged snakes. Their biochemistry is carbon-based, but based around radiation-proof building blocks. They curl up and tighten themselves into dense spheres in deep space, when nearing stars they unfurl their wings, which photosynthesize and possibly act as solar sails, and when they need to skim from a gas giant they can arrange themselves into an aerodynamic form. From what form of life the leviathans could have evolved from is totally unknown.

Of at least as much interest as their bodies is their brains and minds. The speed of nerve impulses has always been a limit to the practical size of morphs: the larger you are, the longer it takes nerve impulses to travel to and from your brain, and the slower you inevitably become. The current leading hypothesis is that they overcome the latency problem by being able to predict the actions of the other parts of their body as well as the movements of everything they can see, negating most of the need for reflexes. The leviathans have no central brains, but cores of neural tissue similar to spinal columns run through the centers of each of their long limbs, which supports the idea that they can be thought of as a cooperative gestalt as much or more than a unified ego: they are like an ant colony that happens to occupy one body. Most of their brainpower must be occupied with communication and prediction, and the degree of their intelligence is unknown.

Plot Hook: Argonaut, exhuman and hypercorp research teams have all requested the player's help in retrieving samples from the freshest carcass. Only one of the groups will be able to obtain the key samples, and the teams they don't support will hire NPCs to get them first.

97. Chimera

Chimera is an Earth-like world, with 90% Earth's gravity, freshwater seas covering 60% of the surface, and a slightly higher intensity of light from its closer orbit to a Sun-like yellow star. Chimera is incredibly rich with life, where even the coldest, hottest and driest climate zones support complex ecosystems. Chimera supports forms of life based upon multiple types of chemistry, and their interactions and evolution is an immense laboratory of biological warfare.

The two largest ecosystems are are based on the same organic matter and DNA as Earth life. One, however, has left-handed chirality, the other right-handed. The two ecosystems are at times locked in biological warfare, evolving powerful allergens and prions as defenses against those organisms evolved to consume both right and left handed proteins. At other times, they ignore each other, their biochemistry so incompatible conflict is pointless. Both of their remains are decomposed by tough, RNA based pseudo-fungi.

Right-handed life is the most Earth-like, with quadrupedal vertebrates and green plants. Left-handed life is the minority among plants and large animals, but has a virtual monopoly on niches associated with small, insect-like invertebrates. Few of these animals have evolved to metabolize right-handed plant proteins themselves, but many contain symbiotic bacteria that do the job for them.

Towards the poles, where temperatures regularly reaches -90 °C, a sparse ecosystem of silicon based life is spread across the ice. The plant-like organisms resemble crystalline mosses and lichens, interspersed with fractal silicate corals built by left-handed organic polyps. The silicon plants are energy-poor, and grow slowly, and the polyps small and well defended. The only other animal life to be found are migratory flyers and semi-aquatic organisms living along the shores.

Orbiting this unique world is a find that overshadows all others: an array of alien satellites. Observations from ground-based telescopes and orbital drones shows equipment suited to observing the planet and transmitting information out of the system. Interference or physical contact has so far been avoided for fear of unseen-defenses. the satellites are estimated to be thousands of years old, but orbital wreckage of older ones has been found, suggesting they are periodically replaced. The owners might show up for routine maintenance at any time.

The leading hypothesis is that Chimera's unique biosphere is a large and ancient science experiment, and that only one form of life arose there naturally, and the others were introduced. Preliminary fossil surveys show new types of life appearing during large-scale extinctions, which were presumably caused by the introduction of the new life. Perhaps the beings responsible for the satellites periodically introduce new forms of life, using the satellites to monitor their evolution and record anything of interest or potential use.

46. Tartarus

Tartarus is the first rogue planet to have been discovered via the gate network, accessed through discord gate on Eris. The planet's nearest stellar neighbor is a binary system 5.3 light years away, and the only significant orbiting body is a large captured asteroid. Its gate lies in the middle of large plain of black ice, lit only by distant stars.

Scientists have determined that Tartarus is most likely similar to Europa, having an ocean of highly pressurized water under its thick surface of ice. The existence of liquid water raised the possibility of life in Tartarus' past, and an operation to bore through the ice was undertaken. Scientists were thrilled to discover that not only had Tartarus hosted life in the past, but there were complex microbial ecosystems living off of the energy of deposits of radioactive material on the ocean bottom. Stromatolites and diatomaceous earth indicate that life was once widespread, and the isolated clusters of radiotrophs are the last gasp of a family of life at least 2 billion years old.

Tartarus is livelier than one might expect from a frozen ball of rock and ice between stars. In addition to the biological research stations created to study the life of Tartarus, the planet contains several research and development workshops and laboratories designing technologies for extreme cold. The lack of nearby stars minimizes interfering stellar radiation and also makes the rogue planet an excellent location for astronomical observation; a large array of radio-telescopes is under construction.

Plot Hook: The deposits of radioactive material on which the life of Tartarus depends are anamolous. They cannot be accounted for by any models of planet formation, they are too numerous, and they are of the wrong isotopes. Some believe that this indicates intelligent activity, and that the deposits are the left over from ancient alien technologies. Firewall gives these theories some credence, and needs the PCs to investigate a possible find before word spreads to Tartarus' primary sponsor, the Go-Nin Group.