Nuclear Beasts

Alien Ecology

So, I want the nasty, unnatural, invaders from the south to seem really weird.

First you get floating jellyfish-like things with lighter-than-air gases in their balloon-like upper body. These drift over the area, then land and put down roots. They're quite fragile, although they can sting someone if attacked. A few have a dangerously toxic sting, but most are fairly harmless.

Once they land, they grow into larger, sort of cactus-like things. Rather than normal leaves, they generally produce bubble-like protusions. Some of them have sharp spines to protect them from being eaten or otherwise molested. Most are quite toxic to Beasts (you can extract clean water from them if you know how, but eating their oddly-colored tissue will make most Beasts sick. Hyenas are a notable exception, as they can digest almost anything.

The roots of these plants are parasitic to normal plants; if they encounter normal roots, they tend to burrow into them and drain nutrients from the plant. This means that the alien pod-plants tend to slowly spread over the area while all regular vegetation slowly sickens and dies. There are even some of the smaller plant-things that will adhere to trees and such and grow into them if they can, instead of putting roots into the ground.

Where the plant-things grow, the monsters are bound to follow. These lanky creatures are generally odd, unnatural colors like red, light blue or violet. They rarely have any visible sense organs, and when they do it's generally a cluster of little tendrils that get excited when something moves nearby. They often have sharp spines scattered over their bodies; a few can actually launch these spines as an attack (those spines are invariably poisoned).

Their mouths are often lamprey-like. They "graze" on the jelly-plants by adhering to them and sucking the bubbles empty. Digestive juices are often injected to help break down the tissue. A few have actual teeth, generally rows and rows of short but sharp spines.

There are a huge variety of these creatures and new ones are generally sighted every year or so. Some of them are quite large. Their predators seem willing to kill regular animals but appear to have difficulty digesting them properly. They drain them of most of their blood, then leave the corpse behind. The bodies left behind generally sprout hundreds of little crimson jelly-plants, which slowly consume the corpse before inflating their air sacs and drifting away on the wind.

The winter months tend to bring the worst incursions. The northerly winds bring millions of floating spores northward, and while the strong winds and regular storms destroy a lot of them, there are always some that survive the winter and start to grow in the spring. It the Beasts didn't work to exterminate them, it's doubtful that the Verde would still be green.

Posted by Kiz at June 10, 2004 09:02 PM