Hidden Gardener (planet-bound)

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eleazar
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Hidden Gardener (planet-bound)

#1 Post by eleazar »

A sapient fungal network that tends it's plant food from beneath.

+++ Farming
-- produces no other resources

Description
The Hidden Gardener is a massive distributed fungal intelligence lying just beneath the surface. Each individual covers many square kms. It's actions and thoughts are slow. Various sensory nodes are scattered about by which it can monitor the weather and the growth of its garden. A Hidden Gardener by means of enzymes, the encapsulation and releases of seeds, and the control of water tends it's garden to produce precisely the rotting plant matter it needs to survive.

Fungal type life-forms seldom have much use for brains of any type, but the Gardener's unusual, and thoughtful approach to providing itself with food provides enough additional energy to make it work.

Homeworld
Their terran homeworld is an eerily park-like place with plants arrainged with unnatural precision, but no other signs of habitation.

Reason for staying
The wide ranging, delicate fungi-nets are too large and integrated into the soil to be moved off-planet. And since the hidden gardeners reproduce by 'splitting' into two consciousnesses when a Gardener grows too wide-ranging to have a decent thought-latency, there are no small, young individuals to take off planet.

Zireael
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Re: Hidden Gardener (planet-bound)

#2 Post by Zireael »

Love the idea!

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Uziush Vielky
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Re: Hidden Gardener (planet-bound)

#3 Post by Uziush Vielky »

Get a technology to genetically engineer it and use it to terraform whole planets!

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Sloth
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Re: Hidden Gardener (planet-bound)

#4 Post by Sloth »

I loved the Hidden Gardener too, so i was sad that it had to go in a world without food.

Since the Hidden Gardener species doesn't have any of the normal foci but growth, it's worse than any other existing species.

I made a patch to restore them and make them useful for at least some empires:
The Hidden Gardener will now always spawn on a tiny planet with the Ki Spice special. The Ki Spice will make the growth focus useful for empires with organic species. The tiny planet will make sure there is nothing better to do on this planet.

If someone has other good ideas, i would love to make them a little more special/useful.
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[The extension patch has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

All released under the GNU GPL 2.0 and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licences.

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eleazar
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Re: Hidden Gardener (planet-bound)

#5 Post by eleazar »

I think it would make more sense to turn it into a special. The hidden gardener would boost the population of any organic species. Limit it to Tiny -- Medium planets, and we don't have to worry about pushing population over 100.

And retcon the description so the fungi sounds more like a semi-bright animal than a full blown sophont, thus it makes sense that it only helps with food.

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