The larger, green creature is a Giren, and the smaller, insectile things are known as Hoopers, for the circular movements they make through the water. Each one has three legs on each side, as well as thin flaps of what looks almost like skin. These two creatures have become symbiotic. The hoopers eat the Giren's trail which is the toxins which they expel from their body constantly. When a Giren goes hungry, it will attempt to eat the hoopers, and so a form of sexual selection has formed where Giren with the largest trail of hoopers are the most likely to be mated with.

The organic sack of pearls the Giren is carrying in it's delicate grasping hands is in actuality a sack of eggs which the Giren stole from a creature called an Anchon.

An Anchon is a Giant insectile creature with a strangely bullet shaped body. It claws along at great speed using it's ten legs. It has a great, central mouth with it's eyes arrayed around it. It cannot see it's prey when it eats, and so it is very conservative about when it opens it's mouth, waiting for a sure chance to grab something. It carries a distant relation to the hoopers, but not very close. No closer than the relation of bees to centipedes.

My friend and I were discussing alternate routes of evolution, and we came up with this. This is the very begining, but I thought I'd just start out and see if anyone is interested in this. I plan on writing more than this, later in the Giren's evolutionary history. Any interest?

(damn, the last part didn't post.)
The Giren swims frantically through the water, searching for an opening. It eventually finds one, and suddenly jumps out from the water, the low gravity as well as it's hollow bones allowing it to leap forty feet out of the water and cling to one of the canyon walls. The hoopers follow it shortly after, flapping their flaps of exoskeleton to fight against the low, but still omnipresent, gravity.

The Giren is safe, for now. Soon it would have to return to the water to acquire more eggs. But for now, he rests, for he is safe. He begins munching on the leaves from the green plants which have only just left the water themselves. The Giren does not want to open the egg sack yet.

While the Giren waits, his companions the hoopers begin eating the slime which he leaves everywhere on land. After a fifteen minute break, the Giren hops off, jumping from canyon wall to canyon wall, it's middle arms keeping the egg case safe. The hoopers fly after him in their loop-de-loop fashion.

After a few minutes of travel, the Giren reaches his destination. A plant has grown outward from the canyon wall, bracing between the opposite sides of the canyon. It is here the Giren have made their nest, many males returning concurrently to feed mate and make there nests. This is why the Giren risk going back into the dangerous under-ocean. They all have brought a nutritious sack of eggs, sharing it with their mates. For the females will need all their strength to swim down to the cavern system and deposit the eggs on the walls among the plants. It is a dangerous journey, and many simply do not return from the deep ocean depths. But such is the way of evolution. And it is this trait that will drive them to become world conquerers.

>>This creature is called a protopod.

Delete this sentence. It is a stupid name, and unintentionally left in.

Nothing?

Wait for people to post.

But stil, while tl;dr for me, you've obviously put a lot of effort into this, and that's always a good sign.

>>4794733

hah. thanks.

Planet now earmarked for routine sterilization and colonization, by order of The Emperor of All Mankind, as told by His servants the High Lords on Terra.

Ave Imperium

Cool story bro

Seems very precambrian.

I enjoyed the concept of an underground sea on an otherwise featureless "dry" world. Most logical, considering water flows down.

Play Spore much?

>>4794748

You know, I shouldn't have expected anything better.

Flavoursome. Make a nice early enemy on a death world in DH?

>And it is this trait that will drive them to become world conquerers
wat

Proceed. I would like to hear more about this.

>>wat

It's not stopping here. I'm planning on working on another entry, a say thirty thousand years later.

>>4794789
Now?

Fine, Give me ten minutes.

50 Thousand years later

The Giren have not evolved much physically. They still have their delicate grasper hands, and still use their four other limbs to leap from canyonside to canyonside. But now the canyon walls are no longer a safe place for the Giren's descendents, the Geronal. The Geronal is hunted by pack of much smaller creatures than the Anchon, but far more deadly. The Hoopers which once followed the Giren wherever they went were gone, though the Geronal still drip slime as readily as ever.

Okay, keep going.

I smell a potential archivan in the making.

Interesting environment. I'm interested in seeing what kind of higher-order lifeforms might evolve from such a planet. I have frequent thoughtson such subjects, and am always interested in others' viewpoints.

>>4794888
Not bad, not bad, keep going.

drawfag on dis shit?

What hunts the Geronal is a descendant of a creature closely related to the hoopers. They fly through the air, four grasshopper legs springing off the canyon walls trying to follow the Geronal wherever it leaps. Their jaws drip with a chemical which reacts strongly with the Geronal's slime trail, One bite, and the Geronal's entire body would turn into a highly nutritious slime within the hour. But this Geronal is carrying a precious package which cannot be compromised.

The Geronal comes to the same place where one tree once spanned the canyon. Now, a forest of trees lies in it's place, and Geronals stand on each one, some eating the small colony insects which have made their home in the trees, others stripping leaves that the trees have begun to sprout. A cry goes up, and the colony looks up at the incoming attackers.

With a shriek, the Geronal's note the pair of small black jar-like object that the Geronal is carrying. Rising with a cry of alarm, the Geronal colony begins picking up sticks, as well as insect carcasses at the intruders.

Detered, the hunters retreat, content to look for other, less aggressive prey.

The Geronals crowd around the fortunate mother. It had been down to the depths of the canyons to the water. This journey was far less dangerous for mothers due to an innovation of the Geronals. Covering the horizontal trees everywhere are the Geronal's personal symbiotes, the Bloaters.

Bloaters are the descendents of the Giren's Hoopers. Thousands of years ago, an intermediary between the Giren and Geronals began pulling the wings off his hoopers, and allowing them to stay safe in the nest feeding off the slime of his young. These are the result of this. Many hoopers were fattened up, and the fatter they were the more hoopers wished to mate with it, it seemed. The more hoopers wanted to mate with big, fat hoopers, the more eggs the hoopers would have. And if there is one thing that Geronals love, it is eggs.

These Bloaters are the exact same tone and shape as the small jars that the Geronal is carrying. When a Bloater is simply not fat enough to attract a mate, the keeper of the bloater will hollow it out and use it as a vessel. These were extremely useful for carying water up to pregnant Geronals, and has allowed the Geronal to increase the amount of their children who will live.

Looking inside the Bloater Vessel, the Geronals see that the eggs are safe and unharmed, as well as submerged in water. The Geronals begin tapping their delicate fingers on the wood of their tree home, an expression of contentment.

The Geronals go back to their routine, content, but shaken by the attack on one of their own. Some go off to fill their own egg jars and six of the males, brave and proud, begin stripping the bark from the larger sticks. They would eat fine Biters tonight, as a retaliation against the bugs which attacked the female today.

But, even though that female had survived the Biter attack, she would not survive until morning

cool cool, animal husbandry and tool-making.

The blue sun which filtered down the canyon walls was setting. This was no problem for the Geronals, since they had excellent night vision born of living deep in the undersea cavern, and indeed, most of the time it was “night” since the sun had such a limited angle to filter down into the canyon.. Many Geronals continued their work, and others went to sleep. Only a few Geronals slept at a time, the rest continued their activities. One Geronal was stripping sticks of their fibers, and weaving them together into a what appeared to be a rope. The Geronal began lowering his creation the fourty feet down into the water. He then went away and tended to his bloaters, feeding them his slime.

After about an hour or so, the Geronal who had lowered the homemade rope into the water gave a sharp tug. Pulling it up, it was evident that it was covered in eggs, laid by some kind of fat, aquatic creature. It had two hands and was holding on tight with them. The Geronal gave a squalk of pleasure, it wasn't often that you got the eggs and the mother. Pulling them onto his portion of the tree, he began to feed them to his wife and... children?

Yes, there were small Geronals here. Strange that even 30 thousand years ago, the Giren colonies were entirely made of adults. Something has changed about their reproductive methods, but what?

We're about to have our answer. The female who had escaped the biters was restless. She stirred in her rest, and began looking at her Bloater jars. Uncovering it, she peered inside. The tiny creatures inside her eggs were stirring. It was time.

She jumped down the canyon, taking her time and being sure not to drop her jars. They were precious, especially now. She saw other females coming up the canyon wall, empty jars held carelessly in their hands. They gestured encouragingly at the water, as if to say “yes, it's alright. Don't worry.” Nevertheless, the female was terrified of the water. Only males went in there, and for them it was a true test of bravery.

There was a good reason why.

The Anchon had not been content to simply let their favorite prey escape into the air. They had evolved and adapted, now using their ten powerful limbs for climbing in any direction. Their eyes, still covering the creatures mouth, now could swivel around so that when they were attacking they could see their prey. They also made good use of the low gravity, and now lept down onto the female.

She squirmed in the much larger creatures grasp, knowing that the end was coming now. She did what she had braved the deeps to do now, casting the jars into the underground ocean.

While she would never know it, this particular Geronal's children would live. She had safely carried the jars until they were ready to hatch, and cast them into the ocean. Her eggs, already months matured, had a short immature stage in the water, and then the many survivors would crawl upwards, seeking the warmth of the sun and the warmth of the colony. No Geronal knew whose child was whose, and so they treated each one as if it were their own child. These new practices and the resulting spike in population, caused the Geronal explosion, or as some call it, the rush Surfaceward.

(Feedback?)

Alright, it's 3 am here, so i'm going to go to bed. Archive it or don't, I'm going to save a copy for myself anyway.

Oh, i forgot. I'm definitely going to continue this thread tomorrow night. I still have a lot to say about the Giren.

If you want actual criticism, watch yourself for switching from one tense to another.

>>4795387
Will do. I'm actually going to take some time to correct for things like this next time around.

Awesome.

Moar?

I must say well done, from what i read your implying that 2 species live in the same community and they share the responsibility of raising the children of either race equally between current "parents"?

If this lead on for quite some time the possibility of interbreeding would be more likely, perhaps another avenue to look into?

bump for moar.

I don't want this to fall off the 10th page.

>>4797722
Not really. the Giren are meant to have died out and been replaced by the Geronal

One million years later

The canyon has been entirely taken over by the horizontal trees, and they have even moved up towards the mouth of the canyon. The Geronal are a long forgotten ancestor, remembered only in the Canyon drawings and the tales that the social descendants of the Geronal tell. During the long nights, a village elder of the Garen often tells of the old ways, how the mothers would cast their children into the sea for seven days, and on the seventh the children would clamber up out of the depths.

One might ask what the Geronal explosion was. Surely, with the increased population, the Garen should cover the entire world, should they not?

The Garen may not, but the descendants of the Geronal have.

Swooping through the abandoned trees in the lower, abandoned portions of the tree colonies are a creature which has taken a surprising turn in it's evolution. On modern earth, we tend to think of evolution as a march from failure to success. From protoplasm to sentience. But evolution is far more complex than that, and the Geronal's descendants are proof of that.

The descendants of the bloaters have begun chirping incessantly, rubbing their legs together in a fashion which can only be described as musical. These faithful companions to the Garen are no longer simply foodstuffs, they have become extremely adept at detecting eggs, an interesting twist since the bloaters were first kept for their eggs and shells. They are known now as Hunters.

Hearing the chirping, the Garen take up their weapons. The Garen's skull seems to have grown slightly, sweeping back like a crest. A pair of frills have grown here, and right now an orange one is being flashed again and again. The Garen squalk an alarm to the others, but this is not the language. Rather, the Garen have not developed vocal chords or an airway free enough to produce vowels. Their excellent vision has allowed them to develop a sign language which has many complexities and subtle shades, their six fingered delicate hands flashing sign after sign.

After a short deliberation, the Garen jump back to their home tree and retrieve a strange weapon. Because the Garen are slung so low, they do not have a lot of room for large tools like the spear, and don't have the strength to use stone axes effectively. Instead, they have developed a tool appropriate to their evolutionary circumstances. The shardthrower.

A shardthrower is similar in several ways to an earth slingshot. A Garen will simply hold the rubbery Hunter organs in his delicate manipulator hands and, when ready to fire pull back with their mouth and let go. The effect is less like a slingshot and more like a shotgun. If a hunter is fed something it considers indigestible, they start creating a membrane around it, to protect their innards. In about a week, it is vomited up, still covered in the membrane. This has led to a practice among the Garen in which they feed their Hunters small, sharpened rocks and carrying the resulting organic sack in their leafy packs.

The Garen wait quietly for the threat which they know is arriving shortly. Unsure what it might be, and terrified. Suddenly, the creature leaps down onto one of the outlying Garen trees. It is a Grekk. It shares some similarities with the Garen, sharing the long tail used for balance, and the six limbed body structure. This creature is easily five times as large as the Geronal, measuring in at fifteen feet, not including it's six foot long neck. In between the climbing legs are great flaps of skin which the Grekk uses to glide through the canyon. It still uses the climbing legs for navigating the walls very quickly, However, the delicate hands of the Geronal have become strong arms used for grabbing on to the horizontal trees, as well as for carrying away Garen.

I like where this is going.

The Grekk, thinking itself still unchallenged, begins hopping from branch to branch, searching for easy prey. It would find none here.

The Garen loose their shardthrowers as one, coordinated by their twin head crests flashing up and down in the darkness. As one, the shardthrowers release their deadly ammunition, the fragile membrane melting away in midair, the sharp rocks cutting into the Grekk's fragile skin flaps, tearing the right side to ribbons. The Grekk let out a squawk and began jumping away. Unfortunately for the Grekk, it miscalculated the jump without the advantage of it's gliding, and tumbled ninety feet down into the underground sea, breaking it's delicate boned on the trees that it hit on the way down.

The green blood stained the water, and alerted the oceans scavengers to the presence of food. The fearsome Anchon's descendants have become generalized, tiny omnivores, ready to eat almost anything, including the corpse of a Grekk.

But another creature glides through these waters. The fearsome Delian. At thirty feet long from nose to tail, it looks more like the mythological sea monster than a distant relative to the Garen. However, this creature with it's six flippers and wide tail is able to power through the water. While some Giren learned to leap from the water to safety, many of their close relatives found it more advantageous to stay within the water. The Delian is the descendant of one of these. The Delian's head is deep set within the sinuous body, extending like a turtle from it's shell as it approaches the wounded grekk. Opening it's mouth to an improbable width, the Delian swallows the entire grekk as it struggles.

>>4800568

Sorry, that was me.

Any feedback while I write the next part up? or has this started to bore /tg/?

I see that this thread has been archived. I'm going to do some more work on the thread and post some more tonight. Thank you for your attentions /tg/.