[Crystal-core] Background story ideas

[Jeffrey A. Edlund]

There was some discussion on the website (which appears to show a
freshly installed apache page right now) about the enemy creatures
being a group of mutually cooperative symbiotic species. These species
work together to create organic spacecrafts (referred to as cocoons)
which blast off from their planet to infect other planets.

I have two suggestions:
1) It seems reasonable that if these creatures have rocket propulsion
(or whatever other method that you had in mind) they would have used it
on a smaller scale first. There could be at least one species that is
able to hop around using rocket blasts. There could also be smaller
scale organic ships for use in infecting other areas (continents) on
the same planet. Similarly, the species that builds the cocoon ships
could also use the same technology to build hive like structures or
defences.

Slime mold actually does something similar. This picture
Loading Image...
shows the life cycle of some kinds of slime mold. They grow from
spores and are single celled creatures that live in a colony. If they
detect that there is an over crowding in the local area or a decrease
in resources the colony pulls together to form a ball on a tall stock.
This ball then explodes sending spores everywhere. Here's an example
of what the ball looks
like Loading Image... before it explodes.


2) Space Spiders! :) Given that rocket propulsion uses a lot of energy,
once you're up in space, why not leave a drag line as you go down to
the planet? This drag line could be strengthened and used like a space
elevator. That would be really cool. I haven't heard of any video
games having space elevators before.

best wishes,

Jeffrey