Gorgonopsid Space Liches

Jonathan Kuo

Buckle up, ladies and gents, it's time for gorgonopsid space liches. Please pardon the fellow above, he is out of costume.

It's not easy getting into space. Sometimes, a species gets lucky and just stumbles upon some magic that can get them into orbit. Most of the time they never get off the ground at all. Sometimes, a species tells the universe to go fuck itself, beats it up, steals its lunch money, and does stuff the hard way.

Gorgorex was one of those.

Let's not mince words here, they nearly murdered their own planet to get into space. But they got there, and they got there first. Gorgorex civilization was a dominant player in a bubble upwards of 150 light-years across. A dust mote compared to the empire of the mind-worms that would come after them, but it was the grandest of the time and twice as grand besides because it was built upon a near-absolute lack of skill in the spatio-temporal arts.

Magical gravity control was completely beyond them. Faster than light travel was never even on the table. But they had biomancy and necromancy, and with the combination of the two came all their undying biological technologies. The gorgorex abandoned their bodies early in their interplanetary era for the benefits of lichdom; Phylacteries were mass-produced, flesh was traded for bone, and the species entered the age of post-scarcity. There were plans for a Dyson swarm.

It never came to pass, for gorgorex civilization collapsed completely. A glitch in the sigil-programming of their phylacteries would unspin their souls and wipe the storage. This was hard-coded into the enchantment and was triggered by age: roll over a certain date and poof. Gone.

Entire colonies were wiped clean before anyone realized there was a problem. Frantic workarounds were developed, but by the time the knowledge would reach outlying regions time-lag would have wiped anyone who could have listened to the message. Feral fragments of their networked bodies filled the empire; mindless, atavistic, slowly degrading into dust.

Ten Remnants of the Gorgonopsid Space Liches

1. Umbilical cord space elevator attached to geosynchronous skull-station.
2. Self-replicating tomb colony filled with deteriorating maintenance ghouls.
3. Autonomous skeletal drones, programming hopelessly glitched by age.
4. Orbital lichyard, hatcheries full of stillborn ships.
5. Rib cage cylinder habitat, left to the pests for ages.
6. Orbital solar farm, now inhabited by hives of stellar fire elementals.
7. Fallow terraforming hexes, spotted with seed and gene vaults.
8. Osteosculpting station, coral tanks still functioning.
9. Communication hub, still broadcasting messages from the empire's final days.
10. Sublight cargo vessel, trapped in a long elliptical orbit.

Ten Treasures of the Gorgonopsid Space Liches

1. Thinking machine in a formaldehyde vat, desiccated but still functional.
2. An unused phylactery, ruby-red and smooth as oil.
3. Monofiliment bone-wire sword, still sharp despite the years.
4. Portable solar-heater, could survive a bomb detonation.
5. Pre-lichdom ghoul-suit, still able to do EVA walks.
6. Non-functioning but intact fusion reactor.
7. Supercoolant unit filled with liquified Ice 9 elemental.
8. Blob of active metamaterial, currently at child intelligence and growing smarter.
9. Painstaking recreation of the empire in orrery form, all orbit times to scale.
10. A GSL's original body, lovingly preserved for nostalgia's sake.

The Conqueror of Time-Space, Heirozonus Zhul

The last of the gorgonopsid space liches, the utterly mad Heirozonus has devoted his unlife to building a gargantuan museum devoted to showcasing all the eras of fantastic deep time. He pilots this patchwork monstrosity of a rotating cylinder through the time-stream, abducting interesting specimens and endlessly revising and adding to the habitat-exhibits found within.

Hook: the player characters wake up from a drugged haze in a clearly-fake model homestead. There are a few recollections of drinking the night before and lights in the sky. Everyone's clothing has been replaced with ridiculous "local garb" that no one in their right mind would ever wear. Outside the house, there is a skeleton-servitor, eyes aglow...

Even More Fantastic Epochs

Arnold's prompt really took off! Tthere are too many to link now, so I'll just direct you back to Anne Hunter's second post on the matter. (And my first.)

Here are some more time periods.

11. The Anunnaki Experience

Visiting apotheoist extraterrestrials cover globe in stone pyramids and elaborate geographs of birds. Local proto-elves are terribly confused, as they had already created stone pyramids and elaborate geographs of birds and were really looking forward to cheap fusion and metamaterials.

12. Gnomic Explosion

A species of gnomes achieves asexual reproduction through budding, floods ecosystem with tiny magical men with pointy hats. Predators forced to convert to gnomovorism or starve. Toadstool cities drive out local flora, widespread psychotropic pollen storms become a regular occurrence.

13. Zaratanic Column

An era of near-total oceanic coverage, marked primarily by a strata consisting primarily the compressed shells of continent-sized turtles. Similar specimens and their endemic parasite-descended civilizations have been found in fewer numbers in multiple subsequent geological periods.

14. Bootleg Epoch

Global biosphere replaced with cheaper, unlicensed biosphere. Flora and fauna of are of low quality and break down regularly. Colors and proportions are askew, incorrect or confusing categorization is commonplace. Era ends after enforcement of new divine copyright laws.

15. Megamenstreum

The universe, finally realizing that mistakes have been made, decides to flush itself out and start over. Everyone and everything is miserable except for the cosmic vampires, who are flourishing. Vampires are wiped out by the next generation of starchildren.

16. The Recreation Era

A completely accidental mass extinction wipes out all life on the planet save a sapient species of bivalve-descent hominids. Survivors attempt to recreate their destroyed world by putting on elaborate costumes and filling as many niches as possible.

17. Crazy Cat Age

Cats release variant toxoplasmosis strain into atmosphere, assume indirect control of class mammalia. Reign of the God-Felines is eventually overthrown by an alliance between reptilians, insects, and shoof. Shoof driven to extinction during war; nature of the creatures unknown, their sacrifice is not forgotten.

18. The Great Re-Alignment

The stable law-chaos matrix is thrown into disarray as a close encounter with another plane leaves a residue of sub-atomic moralitons smeared across the universe. Thousands of competing ethics gradients emerge and fight for dominance via imprinting upon biological life. Law-chaos matrix eventually re-asserts dominance after collapse of the good-evil matrix into civil war.

19. Terrible Reign of the Sport Kings

Ordinary sporting event featuring utterly mediocre teams results in indefinite extension of overtime. Game continues despite catastrophic nuclear war annihilating parent civilization. Teams and fans eventually diverge into two separate species. Evolutionary arms race devoted to out-competing enemy team. Age is finally drawn to the close as the ultra-umpire appears on the scene, devouring both teams and declaring a mutual forfeit.

20. The Morte Paradox

Thin, unremarkable strata that contains the tombs of every sapient being that is currently alive. Society in turmoil as governments and scientists debate over whether or not the tombs should be opened. Conspiracies and denials abound. Skeletons celebrate, though are not specific about why.

Monsters of Linnaeus

Matt Celeskey

This little fellow is named "bulbous lizard leaf-razor", a name which proves both that palaeontologists love taking the piss, and that scientific names are great. Especially for games. It's already the default bestiary terminology in the real world, Greek and Latin are already wizarding languages, you get a handy literal descriptor for the monster, and you can just fit descriptors together like puzzle pieces. Roll on the table, get a monster.

(This is all thanks to Luka Rejec pointing out this handy list of taxonomic affixes (don't forget the medical ones too!) to go along with the magical prehistory bandwagon)

Coelcyon ("hollow dog")

Its bones are needles and the rest is skin and fur hanging over empty space. They make a high-pitched whistling near-indistinguishable from tinnitus.

Rhodosuchus ("red crocodile")

It is very much what the name entails, though its snout is long and thin, more like a gharial. They mate during monsoon season, building house-sized nests of mangrove roots and dead fish, designed to topple over just so in the storms.

Chloracanth ("green spine")

The bony ridge that runs down the slow and daftsome creature's back is hollow and honeycombed. Symbiotic mosses grow there, which may be harvested for medicinal purposes. Otherwise unremarkable, though the meat is good.

Brontodromeus ("thunder runner")

Their slate-blue hides coruscate with bright white chromatophore signals. Thick tails provide balance when running, while folding arms and bullet-shaped heads cut down on wind resistance.They run with the rains, and slip away just as easily.

Plesiofelis ("almost cat")

Looks like a sleeping cat at first or second glance, but reveals itself under touch and closer inspection as a gelatinous non-Newtonian fluid covered in fine calico cilia. The tail, curled underneath the central mass, is far longer than it should, and trails off out of sight. The nature of the angler is unknown.

Scoliospondylus ("twisted vertebrae")

Eight-limbed hominids whose spine might only be the result of a cruel and hateful god. Each limb ends in a six-fingered hand with two opposable digits, and their catastrophic backs show clear signs of divine malice. Their black skin is hairless, and decorated with splashes of brilliant orange and blue; this does not do anything to lessen the pain and sadness in their six eyes.

Xanthopepsian ("yellow digesting")

A sort of sponge, about the size of a large melon. It may live upon land, and in desperate circumstances move under its own power. It consumes the color yellow, a diet that leads to it being a most brilliant shade of that color; anything else in its feeding radius will be bleached white

Cacopithicus ("bad ape")

Ratty red-brown fur smeared in shit. Fingernails curved like snail shells. Teeth set in gums like maggots in a side of beef. Crusty black eyes, dribbling snot and spit. Its behavior is self-evident, and all are thankful that they cannot work in unison for more than a few hours before the backstabbing begins.

Platypharyngovenator ("flat throat hunter")

Its wedge-shaped head is attached to a flexible neck nearly ten feet long and an inch thick. It is an ambush predator, burying its cumbersome soft-shelled body in loam or mud and lying in wait.

Squamotherium ("scaly beast")

Its body is like a pillar or a trunk atop ten squat legs surrounding a mouth. The scales decrease from the size of a hand to hardly more than a pinprick as one ascends towards the upper ring of eyes. They are usually a green-brown in coloration, to best imitate trees and avoid predators. It was not called dendromimus due to a certain unnatural philosopher having a love affair with the word "squamous".

Diploteratomaia ("double monster mother")

Unique among the echidnamorphs for possessing two wombs and regular simultaneous pregnancies, this creature's distinct black and white coloration is very much on point. The eyes diverge from this, being blue and ringed in black. Offspring will be of one color or the other, or bear similar separation of color. The back-quills of this variant are shorter than those of more common species. 

Gnathomimus ("jaw mimic")

Descendants of agnathic fish-turned-amphibians, the species' impressive underbite is in fact an outgrowth of the head's armor plating. While useless as a manidle, they are used as weapons during territorial disputes and mating displays.

Polycetus ("many whales")

A horrifying leviathan created when a pod of whales melds into an island-sized fleshbeast of blubber and barnacles and oil and curtains of baleen and banks of paddles, singing apocalyptic songs of the abyss. Mass beachings are in truth mass suicides: the whales know that the melding is near, and their good nature drives them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the rest of the world.

Cephalospadias ("head fissure")

A gangly, chalky-white hominid. The head contains no eyes, nose, or ears, and is disproportionately large compared to the body. Each specimen has one or more deep clefts in their heads, the insides of which are the color of a blood orange and peppercorn seeds. Each individual has a unique pattern of fissure.

Ancient Epochs of the Fantasic World

+Arnold K said: "HEY How come all these D&D settings have the same assumed evolutionary paths. Like they have weird shit like dragons evolving from jealous snakes and yet when it comes to looking backward all the dinosaurs look the same. Why is only the current world fantastic, instead of the entire biologic prehistory?"

Here's ten of them.

1. The Elemental Epoch 

A period of constant conflict. Alliances among air elementals violate the precepts of the Noble Gases and create water elementals. Earth elementals get their shit together and start the Protoplanetary Revolution. Fire elementals undergo species-wide existential crisis after realizing that phlogiston doesn't exist. Ends with the formation of the Periodic Congress.

2. Ooziphorous Period 

95% of the planet's water in this period existed in the form of oozes. There were puddles of ooze, lakes of ooze, aquifers and rivers and glaciers and oceans of ooze. Non-ooze life specialized in hunting and harvesting oozes sustaining themselves on organelles and cytoplasm. The dominant solid being of this age was the thooblethimp, being about a foot in length, possessing four articulated legs, bulbous eyes, a long proboscis, and a lightweight exoskeleton.

3. Meathell Megayears

Wherein the world was dominated by the singular (and thankfully, only) known colony of carnecordyceps deus. Nightmares still plague the collective unconsciousness to this day.

4. Regellian Mistake Era

Planet terraformed by distant alien race, but no official colony was ever established. The unwatched seed-biosphere drifted accordingly with the changes of the local environment, reaching equilibrium with the original life-forms due to insurmountable bio-chemical barriers.

5. The Stone-and-Chicken War

Passing asteroidal basilisk petrifies an entire hemisphere and drops eggs from orbit. Enterprising species from the surviving hemisphere colonize the granite wastes, mostly gallusiform avians who fill the nice of apex predator after evolving the kill-signal crowing lethal to basilisks.

6. Lakgulethian Era

A relatively stable period dominated by the lakgululengu, noteworthy for the remarkable deep-time forethought of those amber-shelled, elephantine beings. They purposefully fossilized specimens of local flora and fauna, themselves, cultural relics, even entire structures, to pass on to future ages.

7. Malatmospheric Period

Defined by the upswing of evil-aligned bacteria in the planetary atmosphere. At least two world-spanning civilizations, the ostracodermic pseudo-equine ptherians and the crustacean-piscine valdver, lived during this time, and may have overlapped.

8. Daemononovore Period 

 The material world's greatest response to infernal invasion was an order of warm-blooded pseudo-amphibians (here termed the yagher-voz) that developed the ability to summon and consume demons for their own nourishment. Sapient offshoots tended to found vast, decadent societies, as depravity was as good a lure to demons as their own summoning methods.

9. The Skeletal Singularity 

 A super-civilization of modular bone-entities, the ascendant descendants of some unknown mammal-like reptilians. Collapsed only due to the slow degradation of their phylacteries. Nearly all solar systems within sixty lightyears bear the traces of a colony, whether atavist osteoforms, orbital lichyards, or defunct von Neumann tomb-colonies.

10. Doppelgangerdammerung

Mimicry emerges among freshwater cephalopodic echinoderms as a method of imitating larger, scarier organisms. Over the next few million years the biosphere becomes so adept at mimicry that few organisms even know what niche they actually fill, being so skilled at imitating other beings. Land predators imitate aquatic herbivores. Airborne detritovores imitate subterranean autocannibals. Organisms emerge from the egg-sack imitating another species entirely. Successful mating becomes impossible.