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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 10 months

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Lately I've been reading "Drawdown", by Paul Hawken et al, a comprehensive set of strategies for tackling the climate crisis. Your Cambrian Wildwoods post reminded me of one of the solutions - Silvopasture, from the Latin for 'Forest Grazing'.

Essentially it means proposing to farmers that a portion of land be forested and that their animals freely graze there. It can be extremely flexible - planting trees in existing pasture, thinning down woodland to allow for forage growth, using trees as natural fencing, and more.

It's got good potential for carbon capture, and also for saving farmers money in feed and fertiliser, creating better conditions for livestock by keeping them in the shade, and potentially providing secondary income sources in fruit, nuts, etc.

What do you think of it as a potential avenue for Welsh farming? The focus in "Drawdown" is on cattle farming, but I don't see any reason not to trial it with sheep - especially since it could be spun as a hybrid of both aspects of traditional culture...

("Drawdown" also emphasises peer-to-peer uptake through word-of-mouth, rather than being pushed by outsiders.)

Oh, yes - it's basically what they did at Pontbren. That was a farmer-led initiative - one of the big expenses with sheep farming is having to bring them into barns over the winter and supply all feed, but traditionally they'd have stayed out all year. So these farmers got together and went, "How do we ethically and sustainably reduce this expense?"

What they realised is that they were paying for (a) the government-enforced decision post-WW2 to swap to high-yield breeds of sheep that weren't suited to the Welsh climate and topography (i.e. wet as fuck and mostly vertical), and (b) the decline of traditional hedgerow management and shelterbelts. And so the dream was born.

They contacted the Woodland Trust purely to act in an advisory capacity - they wanted to know which trees would be best, and where. They could take much land out of production, but the beauty of hedgerows and shelterbelts is that they're linear features that replace your fences. That was how environmentalists got on board - we were invited, and we remembered that. We were therefore allowed to do a couple of experiments as it progressed, such as testing the infiltration rates of rain into groundwater rather than run-off and comparing it between hedgerow fields and fence fields. Meanwhile, the farmers replaced their stock with native breeds - I believe mostly Welsh Mountain Sheep, which look amazing:

Ain't no rain getting in THAT.

Anyway, a few strategically placed shelterbelts and hedgerows later and:

The sheep can now safely stay out all year round, excepting storms

The sheep are actually healthier and have higher welfare standards

Floods have reduced thanks to higher infiltration rates

Soil erosion is reduced so the fields and river are healthier

The farmers have saved money

The farmers are now making extra money, because they started a tree nursery and sell trees as a side project

You can read multiple publications on it here

So yes! Silvipasture is actually a huge tool for the future that we need to be embracing, as is agroforestry for arable farming, and the frustrating/hopeful part of it is, these are tools we used to use. This isn't new knowledge - it's forgotten knowledge that we need to reclaim. But even aside from the immediate benefits, it also has massive implications for resilience in a world with a warming climate, and we need to do it faster.

#asks #environment!

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bugbump · 1 year

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They had been cold for millenia, held deep in the earth; but now it was warm… so warm, and soft…

Cradled in flesh, the fossilised trilobites began to twitch and shudder. Their rough surfaces cracked and crumbled, eons of mineral deposit falling away like the shell of an egg. Chitin glimmered, antenna waved, gills breathed - until at long last, the creatures swam once more!

His belly rolled slow and heavy with their movements, its shape subtly changing as they swam and crawled en mass. Each trilobite moved on its own looping path, seeming content to trace endless circuits around the tiny ocean of his womb; but every now and then, that rhythm would be broken by the shock of an antenna probing at his cervix, and the resultant clenching of his uterus would send its inhabitants into a frenzied scurry.

What began as another uterine twinge had intensified into a persistant squeeze. The weight in his pelvis had grown so heavy that it could not be lifted, no matter how much he tossed and turned, or how hard he kneaded at his taut skin. The only hope now was to surrender his body to the next contraction. Without resistance, flesh billowed into his tunnel, filling him from the inside out, his heavy womb and its many occupants tumbling down, down, down… ᴘᴏᴘ The bulge in his boxers throbbed and tented, straining against its fabric confines. His everted ovipositor was seeking a suitable place to deposit his brood. And so, after wrangling the writhing organ into a loose-fitting pair of trousers, its instinctive twitching became his guide.

The tide pools. Several of them already overflowed with trilobites, and his restless ovipositor was eagerly pumping more into the shallow water behind him. Here he could finally admire them, until the waves came in and took them back home. And then... Well, perhaps the oceans were overdue for another Cambrian Explosion.

#mpreg #pregnancy kink #ovipositor #it's technically midnight don't look at my writing lmao

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nyantodamax145 · 5 months

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Cambrian Saria ... make her comfy n warm....... also take rest!! flights are exhausting

Cambrian 1097 Winter New Arrivals/Through the Snowdrift. Insulating materials, but modified to fit the client's needs. Equipment can be adjusted to however the wearer needs it to fit.

In case you're wondering, yes! This is designed to pair with Silence's Cambrian Outfit too!

And with that, I'm done! (With all the outfit designs sent in during the time I was accepting submissions)

Thanks a bunch! Maybe I'll do this again in the future!

#arknights #art #digital art #fanart #arknights fanart #saria #arknights saria #saria arknights

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yorickish · 6 days

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it would be so easy to be a hunter gatherer back in like the cambrian or devonian periods cause the animals back then were so bad at it. they were new and half-baked and sucked shit... and it was warm. you could probably spend like half an hour a day just going around walking up to them and hitting them with rocks and they'd be too dumb to ever do anything about it. and the rest of the day you could jack off or whatever

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incorretlynamedcambrianexplosion · 4 months

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Ocean Vents are Far Too Cool (I)

Your local incorrectly named cambrian explosion is back with a full chapter of actual plot!

Ao3 Link

Summary:

Rain has been topside a total of five days. He's a bit wary of his new pack, but who else can help when he's in agony? He's forced out of his isolation when a certain fire ghoul seems to know what's going on. Isn't Dewdrop an odd name for a fire ghoul? Rain's thought about that for a while now.

AN:

No major warnings here! There's very very minor body horror (water ghoul drying out sort of thing). I hope to make this a greenhouse trio sort of thing, but for now the focus is on Raindrop.

Relationships: slow burn Rain/Dewdrop, general background polyghouls

Tags: SFW, bit of angst/longing for home.

Poor rain. There’s no other water ghoul to guide him, his summoning was shit, and now he doesn't know what to do. He’s unprepared for how the air dries out his gills, for how his skin starts to dry up. He feels like he’s dying, his flesh tight and unable to move. He might still be on the floor of the hall, if he hasn't moved from where he passed out. He doesn’t know what’s going on when hands touch him, hands that feel like fire and make him want to scream, even if his mouth is dried shut. He’s never felt hands so warm. Then there’s something cold and wet against his skin. There’s a rumbling voice that’s louder than he’s ever heard.

He can't see, his eyes have been stuck shut, but Rain tries to follow the voices regardless.

“Dew, ‘r’hands are too hot.”

The heavy wet fabric moves against Rain, and he can feel his skin taking the moisture with ease. It soothes the dryness, and slowly he can breathe just a bit more. His dried gills try to move but the motion hurts, and every breath is like sandpaper grinding. At least he can breathe, if only a little bit.

The other's voice is much quieter, much softer. “I know. I know. You can’t breathe with those here. Keep using your lungs,” he instructs though Rain can barely listen. Rain thrashes.

“Dew, hands.”

The towels are too warm for comfort, but it’s the only moisture Rain can get. He writhes against the heat, unsure if he should pull away from it or lean into the moisture.

“Dew.”

There’s a small noise that Rain can’t really hear.

“I know, I know. Just let me help,” he takes a shaking breath. He went through this too. Mist made sure he didn’t dry out too much topside. Rain doesn’t have that luxury.

There's a few things that Dew knows. One: he has avoided Rain like the fucking plague, and from what he hears Rain doesn't really come out often. Two: his summoning went to shit without a previous water ghoul to guide him. Three: Rain has no idea what he's doing and is dying on the hallway floor.

“Dew.” The rumbling voice is lower this time. The burning hot hands are gone and slowly the water cools off in the fabric. Rain can hear a gentle kiss, a reassuring whisper. His eyes are still nearly stuck shut from his dry skin, but he listens to the sound of skin, hands running over each others. “Why don’t we go run a bath? Aeth will take care of him for now.”

There’s shuffling, small and large footsteps get distant, and then a rough, gravel voice is closer.

“I know this isn’t pleasant, Rain.” A rough hand with cold metal rings presses against his skin. Isn’t pleasant would be the understatement of the year. He feels like he’s dying. “But we’ll get you through it. We got Dew through it. I’m gonna give you just a bit of quint. It’ll feel weird, like static, but it’ll make it feel better.”

Rain’s doubtful, but he’s not really in a position to say no. Something prods at his head, something that’s like pins and needles. His skin feels charged with static. It hits, and the aching tension in his skin is gone, but he doesn’t like it. Rain fights this foreign feeling in his head and thrashes like a fish on a line even if it cracks his skin. He's terrified. He's so vulnerable, and he can't see what this person is doing. His hands are on his chest, but Rain can feel this person doing things, pushing into his mind. The feeling is too foreign, and if he could shout for him to stop, Rain would. Immediately it’s gone.

“Okay. Okay. So none of that.” The person groans and there’s shuffling as he kneels. The towel at Rain's neck is shifted and tied loosely around his throat. There’s more shuffling and suddenly sharp claws are pressed against him, though on the dull curved side. “I’m going to tear this shirt off. Sorry. Then we’ll get these wet too.”

Rain can only assume he means his gills along his ribs. The towel is starting to feel just a bit too dry against the delicate membranes, and he wants to thrash again, but a large hand that’s much cooler than the fire he felt earlier holds him still.

“M’not gonna hurt you.” The voice says as he feels his skin exposed to the dry air and the sound of fabric tearing. Rain can only really tense his fingers in agony. Every breath feels like hell.

There’s footsteps, large heavy ones, and a smaller steps following.

“The bath’s ready, Aeth.” The voice is deep and rumbling like before, though it sounds a bit mumbled now.

“Okay. I can lift him but he squirms. Mind helping?”

There’s a silent exchange Rain can’t make out and suddenly there’s hand on him. Two at his shoulders and one under his back and hip. They lift him up and immediately Rain doesn’t like it. Not being able to see makes him feel ill as they situate him. They’re trying to help, he knows this, but the touch of their hands makes bile rise in his throat. Not that he could vomit anyways, his lips are stuck shut.

The two carry him and halfway through Rain gives up fighting. He hears the change in scenery, going from large and dampened to small and echoing. Voices bounce off tile and the footsteps sound louder.

“There’s going to be some water. It’s a small tub.” The smaller voice tells him as his tail touches something cold and wet. Slowly he’s lowered into it first from his feet and then to his shoulders. He flinches when the hands leave almost afraid he’ll keep sinking. This water isn't like home, it has little buoyancy and feels thin. Before he can panic, his ass smacks the bottom and leaves his head afloat.

Rain sinks lower and frowns when his knees have to be exposed to the air so that his head can sink. Immediately he can feel his dry skin loosening. Some of it comes off in large scales and his fresh skin all but sucks in the water. For the silent minutes he sits in it, it’s more comfort than he’s felt in weeks. His gills are freed from their prison of skin and he squirms getting water moving through them.

His face finally frees up and he opens his lips first. Then his eyelids finally release and he can see. The light is an assault on his eyes and he quickly closes them again with an image of the bathroom stuck behind his lids. At least the water feels better against his eyes than dry eyelids.

Voices above him reverberate to the water. They’re muffled but he can distinguish them. Slowly he opens his eyes to make out the distorted figures from under the water.

One of them is a large man with several piercings in his ears. His hair is short and well trimmed. A dark chinstrap beard lines his jaw. Rain can guess that's 'Aeth' from the thick dark bands around his fingers.

The other is taller than the rest. He’s lanky with defined features of an underbite and a prominent nose. His thick hair is tied in a low bun, but what catches Rain’s attention is the color of his horns. They’re white and black, the inverse of each other, but maybe that’s a trick of the water.

The shortest one has long platinum hair pulled back over his shoulders. It blocks most of his face, and Rain can only see him once he turns around to glance at the tub. It must be Dew. His footsteps sounded lightest.

His nose has a bump in it and it looks crooked, but that’s hard to tell under water. It looks like he’s been through more than one fight. What’s terrifying is the black scarred thin flaps of skin on his neck. Rain’s gills flutter seeing it and close against his own skin. They cause little ripples of bubbles in the water, and the big one with the rings looks towards the water.

“Feeling better, fish?” The shorter one slaps him in the chest and he lets out an oof. “Sorry, Rain. I'm sorry that we didn't catch this sooner, it's just that none of us knew.”

It's not his fault, and Rain knows that. He should've known too, but he didn't know what the strange feeling of his skin meant until it was too late. Slowly he comes to the surface of the water laying on his side trying to keep as much of himself submerged as possible. His tail makes small languid movements in the water. He pokes his eyes out without blinking, just letting the water drip off his eyes, which is more relieving than it looks. It’s a bit unnerving for the tall one who visibly raises his shoulders.

“S'okay,” he says with water bubbling at his mouth. Dew laughs a bit before his face drops again.

“How’d you get so dried up?”

The question sends Rain dropping back to reality. The reality that he’s not among his old pack, that he’s not among fellow water ghouls. That these people smell like dirt and smoke and oddly cranberries. They don’t smell like saltwater and sand. They have two tone horns, and rings that fit on web-less fingers. They have blonde hair instead of dark black for camouflage. They aren't like him.

Rain sinks back into the water until his head is nearly dunked. He feels alone. There’s people, ghouls, here, but none of them are like him. None of them are water.

Since the very beginning of his summoning, Rain knew something was off. He knew it from the moment that he was met with clawless hands and tailless bodies in robes. He knew it from the moment none of them knew how to get him to breathe with his lungs and not his gills.

He nearly choked after his summoning.

He knew everything about his summoning and indenture to topside was fucked up when all of his questions were met with non-answers. Siblings looked to the side, they mentioned Dew, but he never really met the ghoul. Copia tried to help, bless him, but there's a lot of things that only ghouls can teach each other. He hasn't been leaving his room often, except for the middle of the night and practices in which a short ghoul glares at him, though once they've set their instruments down, Rain can't remember who it was.

Something is dropped on the surface of the water. A flower that's been snipped close to the bud, though it looks more torn than anything. Rain cracks an eye open at the dark spot over his eyes. There's muffled voices above him again. Someone winces, and there's a bittersweet sound that follows it.

"I though you were done blooming. It's nearly November."

There's a low grumble. "Not my fault the fish has a flower."

Rain picks the flower from the surface and drags it under. He knows that it's ridiculous to treat the shallow tub as some sort of defense from them, but at least they seem to respect that he doesn't want to talk. They never once dip their hands in the water trying to pry him out. Rain stares at the flower spinning it in his hands. The white triangular petals float in the water. There's an energy to it, and Rain feels an ache in his chest.

It's not home. This will never be home. It will never be the abyss of the ocean, never have the sting of salt. It'll never have the hum of water magic. He's stuck topside for who knows how long with no way back. This pack isn't his pack. They're all but strangers to him.

But they're trying.

Rain swallows thickly and presses his arms against the edges of the tub even if his fins don't agree with the motion. It feels almost too cramped. The thin water and it's wrinkled surface is the only barrier between him and the rest of the ghouls, a transparent little wall between them, but his side feels too cramped, too foreign. If a small tear escapes, he can't tell.

Slowly with a deep breath that pulls water through his gills quickly, Rain lifts his head. He shakes out his hair and is met with a chorus of "hey watch it!" as it flings water onto the floor. Rain gathers himself and looks up at them still clutching the flower.

He finds the source easily: the lanky one has them in his hair and around his horns. His bun has been undone, and a few of the flowers lay in the sink. Rain holds out the flower with webbed fingers.

"Yours?"

The question apparently was the wrong thing to ask because the ghoul seems a bit embarrassed about it. He winces and scratches his scalp. "Uh, yeah. But, uh, you can keep it," he shakes his head a bit, "It's technically yours anyway."

"Mine?" Rain asks looking at the flower and letting it sit back in the water with him. It's not home, it never will be, but they're trying; he reminds himself.

Aether's voice is loud in the cramped bathroom, but it sounds like he's trying to be a bit quieter. "Yeah, Mountain has a tendency to grow flowers when he's thinking hard. I guess that makes the lily yours then."

Dew stares at Mountain, and suddenly Rain recognizes that look. It's the look he gets at practice, the scowl that could kill him if he let it. It lingers on Dew's face for a moment before it's gone.

"Oh," Rain is quiet.

He wants them to leave. He wants to go back to the way things were before he dried out like a goddamn raisin; wandering the halls late at night when everyone is gone, putting on a good face for practice, and asking siblings questions to find his own way. He can't help but feel like he's done something wrong already just by being there. He doesn't even realize he's sinking back into the water until it hits his neck.

The water's too cold for him now, and there's a bit of a shiver that runs through Rain. He'd deny it if anyone ever asked. He misses his heat vents, the warm plumes they brought, the jagged rock.

Mountain leaves after glancing at him, and Dew's eyes never quite leave his back. Aether leans over the side of the tub.

"Feeling any better? Good enough to go get some dinner?"

Rain feels a bit weirded out by the invitation. He feels like he's just met them, but he supposes that to them, he's been a ghost living in the walls. The promise of a meal does entice him through. He nods and takes a deep breath rushing water into his gills again. He hacks a bit and has to open the gills at his neck with his fingers. What can only be described as a mucus leaves his gills, and Aether makes a note to never use this tub again. Still, Rain seems to perk up a bit after that.

"Uh. Breathing better now?" Aether says trying to not stare, but it does set off a disgust reaction.

Rain nods sitting up a bit more. He forgets to switch to his lungs though, and once his ribs are out of the water, gills sticking to his sides, his breath catches. His throat moves like he can't breathe, and Dew is about to move when he finally switches taking in deep breaths. Dew looks a bit more terrified than Aether.

It's in no way, shape, or form related to the fact that he knows what that feeling is like. It's the feeling of your own body suffocating outside of water like a breath cut too short. Does Rain do this every time he leaves water? Dew can only hope not. Then again, it's not like he's had a mentor to show him.

Aether turns to glance at Mountain coming back, and Dew leans close to him for a moment.

"Expand your ribs next time. It'll fill your lungs early and that won't happen," he whispers. Rain stares at him confused as Dew goes back to standing like nothing happened.

At least Mountain has brought some clothes for him. There's an olive hoodie and dark sweatpants. He sets them on the counter, and Aether hands Rain a towel as he gets out. The water ghoul dries off, and Dew is the first one out. Rain pulls on the clothes Mountain has brought him, and the earth ghoul apologizes for them being so big. Not like he had much of a choice, Rain locks his door when he's in the room and when he's out.

Rain feels like he looks ridiculous in clothes about two sizes too big, but the idea of dinner doesn't sound too terrible.

#rain ghoul #dewdrop ghoul #explosion's fanfic #ghost band

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spiced-thembo · 25 days

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Me, writing a post on a rapidly dying micrboblogging platform: would u still love me if I wer-

I suddenly wake up from my slumber in the middle of the night. I am but a sweet Hallucigenia living in the warm waters of the Cambrian period. All the worries of the human world fade always as I look for a quick midnight snack in the sand. The nightmares about "money" and "internet" have long disappeared, as I return to sleep, excited about what tomorrow shall bring. Being a worm with 10 pairs of legs is fucking great.

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fandearn · 2 years

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delusion, drift and depart

bide your time

to dream of me

now you drowned

limbs entwined

the body is warm

but do you feel at home?

cambrian seashell matter

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neovenatorgirlteeth · 2 years

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DINOVEMBER DAY 1: 520MYA, STAGE 3 OF THE CAMBRIAN; YUNNAN, CHINA

It is the Cambrian period, and the warm sunlit seas of Southern China are home to a vibrant sponge-reef brimming with life. The creatures of the Cambrian are strange to us in the Holocene, as this period of time is a time of great experimentation in bodyplans thanks to the evolution of a very special type of organ: eyes. Predators can now see their prey, and vice versa, so the pace of life has sped up considerably, and everyone has had to adapt. Many organisms now have hard shells, spiny defences, or increased mobility to protect themselves from these new sighted predators.

One such predator is this Lyrarapax, cruising through a small group of Haikouichthys. You might be more familiar with her Canadian cousin Anomalocaris. At around half a metre long, Lyrarapax is one of the top predators of the Chengjiang biota; her strange arm like protrusion are derived from the filter feeding appendages of her ancestors, and she uses them to grab prey such as trilobites and pass them to the crushing wheel-like mouth on the underside of her head.

Arthropods like her dominate the Cambrian seas, and along with cephalopod molluscs, will rule the Ordovician as well. Primitive chordates like Haikouichthys will remain in their shadow… for now.

#dinovember #Dinovember 2022 #palaeontology #palaeoart #anthem posts #anthems art #Lyrarapax #anomalocaris #Haikouichthys #cambrian

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futurebird · 2 years

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I wish they all could be Carboniferous girls.

Well, Ediacaran girls are hip I really dig their sessile forms And the Cambrian girls took the wold by storm In those ancient seas so warm The girls of the late Permian really know how to hold on tight And the Devonian girls with those tails and fins Filled the sea with scales alright

I wish they all could be Carboniferous (Girls) I wish they all could be Carboniferous I wish they all could be Carboniferous girls

The age of insects has the oxygen And the girls all grow so long I met sea scorpion chasing a tetrapod And you’d think something was wrong She came flopping and lopin out if the ocean And that’s why I wrote this song

I wish they all could be Carboniferous (Girls)

I wish they all could be Carboniferous

I wish they all could be Carboniferous girls

#ediacaran #carboniferous #cambrian explosion #I wish they all could be Carboniferous girls.

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theygender · 2 years

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I love prehistoric times so much y'all have no idea 😭 I mean yeah dinosaurs are cool but have you seen some of the funky little dudes that existed during the cambrian period? Did you know that they all died in an extinction event even bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs? Have you seen the weirdly shaped dudes that came after them when nature was just starting to figure out wtf a reptile or an amphibian or a mammal was? Do you ever think about ancient geography? Not just pangea, but all the supercontinents that came in between and how different the world must have been when antarctica was warm. Do you think ancient animals saw different stars than we see now?

#rambling

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ciel-miel · 2 years

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We had been agonising over it for so long, but to the surprise of everyone involved, one day global warming just went away. “And to think,” said a famous environmentalist, “we’d cared so much about something so insignificant”. All the coal factories opened again, smudged face miners grinning wide smiles pouring into the steel buildings and dancing arm-in-arm with pinstripe-suited industrialists. “I’d been really scared”, said one executive, “that one day it would come crashing down and I’d get what I deserved. Now, everything is fine!”. All the environmentalists traded in their hybrids for gas-guzzling Range Rovers and Humvees, driving up and down main street revving their engines with manic grins. Overnight, all the extinct animals suddenly came back too, and everyone rushed out of their homes to hug them and welcome them back. “We missed you! We missed you!”, we said, damp kisses planting polka-dots of tear-mingled saliva onto the cheeks of dodos, thylacine, and anomolocaris. The seas overflowed with Cambrian shellfish, Radiodonta cluttering the seaside where they were met with cheering, weeping crowds. Everything was okay again, everything went back to being fine, and everyone was so, so happy.

#wrote

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random-thought-depository · 2 years

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Tentative skeletal write-up for some habitable moons I just came up with for my own SF universe (names are placeholders):

Kingtide:

Kingtide is one of four or five large satellites of a giant planet orbiting in its sun's habitable zone. Kingtide is the largest satellite (though it is not a very large world; perhaps half to a third the mass of Earth), but a few of the other satellites are comparable in size to Mars and have thin but significant atmospheres (some of these smaller major satellites have evidence of running water in the distant past, but at present they are all barren desert worlds). There are also a number of lesser stony airless moons, and the usual assortment of mountain-sized rocks that attend a giant planet. The skies of Kingtide are a feast for the eye, especially on the side facing the giant planet, but this comes with a price.

Kingtide is, of course, tide-locked to its giant companion, with a rotation and revolution period both not much longer than an Earth day. However, gravitational interactions with the other satellites increase the eccentricity of its orbit, and this creates powerful tides as, effectively, Kingtide becomes slightly more and less egg-shaped as the strength of the gravity it experiences from the giant planet waxes and wanes as it moves in its orbit (the same kind of effect creates the volcanoes of Io and the oceans of Europa and Enceladus in the Sol system).

The most obvious effect of this is on the oceans. On Earth, Luna raises tides .6 meters high in the open ocean and an average of 2-3 meters high at the coasts. The tides of Kingtide are much more powerful, and correspondingly higher. The oceans of Kingtide rise and fall many meters every day. In some of Kingtide's coastal regions, there are vast biologically rich tidally flooded salt-tolerant swamp-forests, a little like mangrove forests on Earth but much vaster. In other regions there are vast coastal barrens of sand, mud, and scoured rock. In some regions these barrens are hundreds of kilometers wide as the ocean surges hundreds of kilometers inland and then retreats each day. These salt-swamp forests and coastal barrens host interesting intertidal ecologies adapted to these difficult conditions. It should be remembered that, while these mega-tides are forceful, they are not sudden walls of water; the water rises and falls over the course of the day, at a rate of a few meters per hour; there are many amphibious creatures that endure this cycle by burrowing into the mud, etc.. In general, partially as a result of the more turbulent oceans, sea fauna on Kingtide features a plethora of armored forms; it often strikes Earthers as primitive-looking, reminiscent of the Cambrian fauna and the armored fishes of the Paleozoic era, though this is a result of different conditions and different evolutionary history rather than it being somehow "less advanced."

These tidal forces also generate heat in the interior of Kingtide, which causes energetic volcanic activity. Active volcanoes and earthquakes are common, and there are extensive barrens of cooled lava. Even where life has overgrown the ancient lava barrens, the black hard volcanic rock often pokes above the vegetation and soil here and there. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is high as a result of the volcanic activity, so Kingtide is a warm world, with a climate similar to the Cretaceous hothouse climate of Earth's prehistory. Where the rain is sufficient and volcanic activity and tides do not disrupt it, plant life thrives because of the warm climate, carbon dioxide rich atmosphere, and abundance of fertile volcanic soil.

This world is my attempt to imagine a set-up that approximates the visual aesthetic of the Arcbuilder universe planet Kelari (Celestia link) without copying its very distinctive satellite system.

Persephone:

Unlike Kingtide, Persephone orbits its giant planet primary (Hades?) in a kind of splendid isolation. About 70-90% of the mass of the giant's satellite system is concentrated in Persephone (similar to the way most of the mass of Saturn's satellite system is in Titan). Only two other satellites are significantly larger than Luna; both are roughly comparable in size to Mercury. One of them orbits inward of Persephone; tormented by brutal gravitational forces, it resembles a bigger, warmer, stony version of Sol's Io; its surface is riddled with active volcanoes and scored by active volcanic rifts, and despite its small size it has a thin atmosphere of volcanic gasses (more carbon dioxide than anything else). Orbiting far from the giant is another roughly Mercury-sized world; this one is quite inactive, and resembles nothing so much as a super-sized version of Luna; stony, grey, airless, and crater-riddled. There is another moon similar in size and characteristics to Luna, and then there are a number of lesser moons rather like stony versions of the lesser satellites of Saturn; big enough to maintain a spherical shape but small even in comparison to Luna. There is also the usual large assortment of asteroid-like mountain-size masses, debris accumulated within the giant planet's gravity well by various processes over billions of years. These asteroid-size satellites are mostly stony, but some of them contain valuable metals, hydrated minerals from which water may be obtained, and carbon-rich material from which plastics, fertilizer, and food may be synthesized; in this form the giant's satellite system offers a great deal of conveniently accessible resources, and there is a healthy space industry. Despite being most of the mass of the satellite system, Persephone is not a large world, about a third to half the mass of Earth. Because of how it dominates the mass of the satellite system, Persephone is spared the powerful tides Kingtide experiences (it actually experiences enormous gravitational forces from the giant, but since it is tide-locked and in a nearly circular orbit these forces do not vary much, and thus mostly result only in a permanent and stable deformation of the world); the eccentricity of its orbit is probably mildly pumped up by interactions with its Luna-sized outward neighboring moon, but the resulting eccentricity tides are not much bigger than the tides experienced by a typical Earth-like world.

The main environmental difficulty on Persephone is temperature contrasts created by the eccentric orbit of the giant planet Persephone orbits. Kingtide's primary has a roughly circular orbit around its sun and thus Kingtide is always warm, but Persephone's primary has a strongly elliptical orbit. This likely reflects differences in how they migrated into the habitable zone from their formation zones in the outer system, Kingtide's primary having migrated due to being slowed in its orbit by interactions with gas and dust in the protoplanetary disk while Persephone's primary had a close encounter with another smaller giant that sent the other giant flying out of the system to become a rogue planet while Persephone's primary was kicked inward (Persephone may have originally formed as an independent planet and been captured by the giant shortly after this event). The orbit of Persephone's primary essentially transits the habitable zone of its sun, with a long "winter" spent in its outer fringes. Persephone moves in an equatorial orbit over the giant, and the giant probably has a significantly tilted axis (most planets do), so Persephone probably has conventional seasons, but they are completely swamped by the temperature changes caused by changing distance from the sun, so their main effect is to moderate the planet-wide orbit-seasons in the winter-perigee summer-apogee hemisphere while sharpening them in the summer-perigee winter-apogee hemisphere (Persephone's only permanent glaciers probably exist in the polar region that experiences axis-winter and prolonged darkness at perigee). Persephone's seasons are thus extreme and essentially worldwide.

While the giant is at perigee, Persephone swelters in essentially a worldwide tropical summer in which temperatures reach or exceed those of Earth during the PETM. As the giant moves upward toward apogee, temperatures gradually cool, until eventually a long and deep apogee winter sets in. In this apogee winter, much of Persephone essentially freezes over; much of the land is under snow, much of the oceans are covered by sea ice, and even the equatorial region becomes cold. Eventually the giant falls back toward the sun and Persephone gradually warms back to an almost worldwide tropical summer. Persephone's sun is relatively bright, so these seasons are long.

Life on Persephone has adapted to this cycle. Many small plants and animals only live a particular season, dying when conditions become unsuitable for them and leaving behind seeds or eggs that remain dormant until conditions become suitable again and then sprout or hatch. Larger plants are mostly deciduous, shedding their leaves and conserving resources during the long winter. Plants often also grow and shed different kinds of leaves adapted for different seasons; a tree may sprout the broad leaves of a tropical plant in summer, then shed them and sprout narrower leaves in the cooler and drier autumn, then shed those in turn and remain bare-branched and dormant during the winter, then regrow the narrower leaves in spring, then shed them in favor of broader leaves in summer, completing and restarting the cycle. Many animals hibernate during the winter, and some of them even have adaptations that allow them to return to life when thawing in the spring after having spent the winter frozen solid.

#my main SF setting #Arcbuilder universe #imaginary worlds #worldbuilding #my writing

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