The Evolution Game

[bluebugs]

Let's play a world-building game. We will start with 3 small creatures (each about the size of a golf-ball). These creatures all exist in a single cavern with a small pool, feeding either off each other or the sparse amount of fungus/lichens/moss in the cave. There is little to no sunlight here.

I will post the creatures, your job is to diversify and evolve the species. Adding new limbs, organs, growing in size, ect. You can even declare a splinter-race should you choose (it is encouraged). These creatures can either grow towards something familiar, or completely alien. Let's begin;

Climbers (mollusks) - A small 3-tentacled creature similar to a starfish. They cling to the moist cavern walls feeding off the lichens with their lamprey-like mouth. They have no true defenses but are the most populous of creatures in the cave. They can move, and sometimes must leave their walls to find more food. They are very slow.

Spearheads (arthropods)- Slightly bigger than Climbers. Spear heads walk on 4 limbs and have a long pointed head shaped like a needle. This is their main form of offense. They charge creatures like low-hanging climbers and inject a solvent which liquefies their insides. They then suck them out like a mosquito. They are few and far between and primarily predators, they will even attack each other.

Tads (amphibians) - Tads are small amphibious creatures with 2 stubby legs and a long fanned tail. They spend most of their life in the water and are very fast in the pool. They mostly eat algae but can find themselves on dry-land as they are very curious. They travel in small packs. They hold a toxin in one of their organs. If a Spearhead accidentally pierces it, the predator will likely convulse and die.

Okay, lets see if this take off. And let's just say for the sake of everyone having a shot at this - one can only cause a change once every 30 minutes. Remember, there is no winning in this game, the goal is just to create a world together.

Edit;

The following keeps track of any known species/plants/situations/ect. This should be referenced if you are new to posting to avoid you having to read everything or creating the same species twice.

The Cavern;

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Comparative to most of the inhabitants, the Cave is the size of a small country. The main 'room' in the cave has a massive space spanning the floor and the ceiling, the floor contains rich soil - essential for the growth of all life here. After a traumatic earth-quake struck, small cracks have formed on both the ceiling, and the floor. The cracks on the ceiling let in dim sunlight and very occasionally other things, except for one area in the main room which receives a healthy dose of Sun. This area is known as the 'red wasteland' or 'red desert' for its lack of water. The chasms in the floor have filled with water, creating streams. Smaller branches of the caves are mostly un-explored but lead down deep into the Earth.

Recently another quake has cause a massive chasm splitting the red wasteland and the rest of the cavern. This chasm has filled with salt-water and introduced a new fish creature. It is simply called the Sea.

Species;

Climber Variants:

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Climbers - Thicker skinned, now a hive-mind organism who follow danglers. They now favor meat in place of lichens. They secrete a web-like substance for protection.
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|-Lightning-bugs - Release a steady stream of electricity, allowing them temporary levitation.
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- Acid Climber - Release a solvent which works like a spear-head's to protect themselves from predators. This also causes them to accidentally 'merge' with eachother when this happens, they are called 'snots'
| |- Acid Crawler - Now extremely massive and carniverous. Are used as guards in dweller settlements.
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| - Sappers - Holds dormant eggs inside of them. When roamers to eat them the eggs gestate within the Roamers, killing the host.
|- Dissolvers - domesticated by the muck-dwellers they focus their acid on dissolving rock.
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- Danglers - Live on the Ceiling. Lighter and have a slower metabolism.
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- Swimmers - Their tentacles are longer and more numerous. They can swim, they also pull in helpless creatures attempting to drink from pools. Hooked claws for digging.
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|-Salt swimmers (Jörmung)- Growing more intellegent. Tentacles can change color, they willingly attack boats. They have also trained salt water rams to assist their attacks.
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|-Great-swimmers - Larger than swimmers, they prey on their smaller brethren
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|-Floater - Swimmers infected with the moss, can be used as living bombs.

Tad Variants:

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Tads - Extinct
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-Roamers - Tads more adapted for land, prehensile tail.
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- Walkers - Can move bipedal, or quadrapedal and are twice the size of a Roamer. They can weild bones like weapons. They have toxic tails. They require more food. They have formed language and can build basic structures and farm lichens.Have now discovered fire, but it is hard to obtain. This is offset by a mutual relationship with Lightning-bugs. They Use poisoned weapons, like the blow-gun. They are lead by Walkers who seem to have a natural gift of communicating with Lightning-bugs. They are now just beginning to make weapon-heads from metals.
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- Muck-dwellers - More 'sophisticated' than the Walkers, they also domesticate shovel-snouts and climbers. They live in underground communities. Some have become more solitary to avoid disease.some secrete a herbicide which destroys corpse-moss. This also makes their traditional diet of moss much more difficult to consume.
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|-Gnarl-dwellers - Walkers who live in the Gnarls. Their Herbicidal secretions can be used as weapons.
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|-Dwellers - A mixed breed of gnarl-dwellers, walkers, and muck-dwellers. Much Larger than their cousins, most carry the herbicidal trait. They can use Atlatls.
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| |-Lightning Dwellers - The priests of their culture, who have a strong connection to the lightning bugs' hive-mind.
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|-Red-Marauders - Brutish Walkers infected with the moss. They Gain a craving for meat, even if it means feeding off other walkers. They are solitary, but tame red-crawlers who both seem to only want the spread of their moss. They have taken to using Red-crawlers as mounts.
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| - Moss boss - A huge Leader of the Marauders. 5 main ones, all control a different clan.
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|-Red Raiders - Marauders who sail the open sea! They do not follow a moss-boss.

Spear-head Variants:

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Spearheads - More or less the same, not really as big of a threat as they once were.
| |-Red-spears - Spear-heads infected with corpse moss, they do not die from the infection, but are much more agressive in an attempt to spread the moss.
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- Shovel-snouts - Live in underground tunnels, eat fungi and little meat. Have a symbiotic relationship with climbers and encourage lichen growth.
| |-Wet-Heads - More adept to the water. They Eat algae and can sense swimmers.
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| |-Sleek-Fins - wet-heads more adapted for water life. They are herbivorous.
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| |-Water-rams - Huge-agressive filter-feeders.
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- Spear crawlers - they can climb, they can spit acid
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| - Gliders - Flying spear-crawlers.
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|-Red-crawlers - Also infected with corpse-moss. This has the same effect as on the Red-spears, but also increases their acid resistance.
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| |-Corpse spikers - Replaced the red-spears. Living battering rams, too small to ride though.
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|-Plowers - Huge Creatures. Their heads are shaped to plow through the soil. They are scavengers, they can burrow.

Assorted other creatures;

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Goldfish - pale marble-sized salt-water creatures.

Plant-Life

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Assorted Fungi

Lichens - The most basic food source for most of the Cavern's dwellers

Steam-chimneys - Though technically not a plant, this sponge-like creature releases steam into the cavern mimicking rain-fall for the ecosystem.

Corpse-moss - A breed of plant which excreets and acid, allowing it to digest detritus. It has grown mildly intellegent and can make bodies seem more lively to attract new prey

Zomoss - an off-shoot of corpse-moss. It can fully animate the dead it consumes, turning them into zombies.

Pics;

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[LOTRfan]

Overtime, as Spearheads kill the weaker climbers, the climber population slowly gains thicker skin as a whole, making it harder for the spearheads to inject their solvent into the insides.

[Omeganaut]

As tads venture more out of the pool, they want to move fast to avoid spearheads, so their legs move under their bodies, allowing faster movement.

[Solaris]

Some of the tads who evolve to move about better on land also develop a tougher hide, both helping a wee bit to protect them from the spearheads and (more importantly) allowing them to travel about on land more often without fear of dehydration. They begin to compete with the climbers for lichen.

[The_Admiral]

Tads spending more time on land start loosing their long fanned tail. It slowly turning into a prehensile tail

[Szilard]

The climber just chills, clinging to the rock and content with life.

[LOTRfan]

In order to gain the energy supply necessary for their new lifestyle, the land-roaming tads adapt to a more omnivorous diet.

At this point, they have become distinguished enough to be considered their own species (Roamers), and quickly establish themselves as the apex predator over the other three species.

[Solaris]

Responding to competition from the Roamers, a group of the Spearheads evolve better climbing capability so that they might have better access to their Climber prey as well as escape hostile Roamers. They have a lower, more spiderlike profile than the baseline Spearhead morph, and as a side-affect are both more agile and faster overland.

[bluebugs]

As roamers become more fierce, some of the spear-heads begin to dig into the moist soil near the pond. Their snouts shorten and begin to flatten, called shovel-snouts. They have diversified their diet, substituting fungus with meat. They are also slightly smaller than spear-heads.

[Hiro Protagonest]

As the spearheads have a need for faster kills, they lose their ability to inject a solvent, but gain the ability to eat meat.

[LOTRfan]

With two subspecies of spearheads and a totally new apex predator in the form of their evolved cousins, the tads who have not adapted are in pretty bad shape. They are down to their last couple members, and are now functionally extinct.

[NineThePuma]

Climbers, up until now having been primarily liquefied, have actually developed a resistance to this, and some rare specimens begin producing a similar solvent; this is adapted into a defense mechanism that covers their hides with blisters containing the solvent. More than one unfortunate predator attempts to eat a climber, only to find their throat dissolving!

[Yanagi]

Lighter, thinner Climbers are able to cling upside-down to ceilings, both avoiding Spearheads below and gaining access to new deposits of lichen growing where evaporating moisture strikes the caves ceiling. Ones that move slowly, anchoring themselves with one or more limbs, are less likely to drop to the floor.

Since they move less, their metabolism drops, and they eat less.

[bluebugs]

Being Mindless, the climbers who excrete solvents can accidentally scuttle into each other. Their natural resistance to the solvent combined with their own causes them to merge into one creature. Somehow they co-ordinate their movement. They all seem to be unique shapes. These amorphous creatures called 'snots' seem to form natural traps for other creatures, even lesser evolved climbers.

[Solaris]

((Can we start updating two species at a time? The ideas, I have them - including something moving into the niche that the Tad extinction just opened up.))

Some of the low-slung climbing Spearheads develop enlarged venom glands and the ability to spit. These Spear-Crawlers are putting selection pressure on the Climber and Shovelhead populations, but are of limited intellect and fairly lethargic creatures. They are capable of great bursts of speed, but tire easier. Like their prey, they require less food and only hunt periodically, spending most of their time in hiding.

[bluebugs]

((Can we start updating two species at a time? The ideas, I have them - including something moving into the niche that the Tad extinction just opened up.))

Yeah, I think that's okay. Once could even create a new species/plant/fungus as long as it is fairly weak at first and they can document their interactions with the other species. I also must say, I didn't not expect this thread to take off as well as it did.

[LOTRfan]

((Well, its an awesome new form of world building project ))

As its prey becomes tougher and tougher to catch, the Roamer population dwindles. Soon, however, a mutation occurs in the gametes of a male.

This male's offspring are very different from other Roamers; their bones are structured in such a way that the creature can move in quadrupedal or bipedal manner, whichever is more advantageous at the time.

The mutation is a dominant trait. If these mutants grow to adulthood, they could revolutionize the skeletal structure of the entire Roamer population over the course of several generations. That is, if they make it to adulthood.

[NineThePuma]

((It's half silly message board game, half world building. What's not to like?

Also; Every page, the 'list of species and their traits' should be updated; don't wanna have the same evolution happen twice!))

It was bound to happen eventually. A climber that happened to be predisposed to it fell from the ceiling into the pond. A combination of flotation by acid and long thin tentacles have allowed it to move through the water; while the first few generations of waterbound climbers lack the ability to live whole heartedly underwater, they soon adapt and swim haphazardly through the water, never surfacing. These new Swimmers become somewhat omnivorous, consuming Tads that swim into range of the acid they produce.

[Hiro Protagonest]

((It's half silly message board game, half world building. What's not to like?))

((then it should probably go in structured games))

[Solaris]

Some Shovel-Snouts adapt further, digging burrows and tunnels much like moles. Their four limbs specialize to digging, shaping into blade-like spades that they use in concert with their eponymous snouts in a sort of 'swimming' motion to tunnel through the dirt at the bottom of the cavern.

Some Roamers, including those interbreeding with the mutant quadrupeds, evolve a use for their old poison gland and begin to secrete their venom from their tails. While not quite a stinger, they've become adept at using their toxic tails for lashes to protect against predator attack.

[Omeganaut]

The remaining spear-heads begin to develop their fore-limbs into grasping members, allowing them to climb up a limited distance onto the walls to get more climbers, and to better fight Roamers and spear-crawlers. They have a gait similar to a gorilla's.

[The_Admiral]

The Spear Heads start developing thicker skin to protect themselves from the roamer poision. A Spear Head attacking a Roamer gets chased away with a stick used by the roamer.

[LOTRfan]

The Tads are now extinct. They were functionally extinct before, but now that the new Swimmers have begun to eat them, there are no surviving members.

In this world of Survival to the Fittest, the tads could not adapt fast enough.

The cross-bred mutant roamers, however, are prospering. With so much variation in their genes, they have little chance of going extinct from environmental threats. Because of their hybrid nature, these roamer-mutant hybrids have a form of gigantism; instead of being the size of a golf ball, they are the size of a base ball. As a result, they are faster then their prey items, and require much more food.

[radmelon]

((Could we have a list in the OP that contains the current species and their traits?))

[Jallorn]

The climate begins to dry out. With less humidity, lichen and other moss becomes more scarce and all climbers, aside from the roof-climbers and snots, and swimmers begin to decline, becoming effectively endangered. Pools also begin to dry up and water becomes scarcer in general.

[DMofDarkness]

The original climbers are now all but extinct. However, they have fostered the rise of a new species. In one member of the climber population, one of the climber's eggs began to germinate inside of the climber's body, and, protected by the enzymes developed to prevent their dissolving, was eaten along with it's mother in one of the new Roamers. Developing inside of the roamer's gut and leeching some of the nutrients out of the roamer's diet, the new organism's eggs carried on it's new trait; they began to germinate inside of their mother's body, eventually eating their mother from the inside out. With the destruction of the mother's body, some underdeveloped eggs remained inside the roamer, and were taken out in the roamer's waste and it's saliva, spreading into other organisms and developing there, as the original host roamer sickens and dies. These new Sappers begin to spread to many of the creatures in the ecosystem, and begin to decimate the Roamer population.

[LOTRfan]

As the Roamers are decimated, the Roamers that have the genes for a higher level of stomach acid begin to thrive. They interbreed with the stick-wielding Roamers.

Overtime, these new Roamers learn how to carve points at the ends of the sticks.

[DMofDarkness]

((...There are sticks in this little-to-no sunlight cave predominated by lichen? ))

[LOTRfan]

((I dunno. Captain_Obvious mentioned stick-wielding Roamers. ))

[NineThePuma]

((They're made of bone, and crafted out of Spearhead heads.))