@StealthStyle can I have a place in the waiting list?
Action: Damn you rng! Try, again, to find something to eat. 
Thanks for the round Stealth!
Well, crap
Eh, at least my species is still living I guess.
Action: Sink to the bottom, let my flesh be eaten by the hatchlings of my species and be reborn
Markets
After many corridors and turns on different alleys you end up at your destination, a metal door bars the entrance, you check behind you as your knuckles hit the steel, demanding entry. After a minute, a raspy voice calls from inside
âPassword?â It demands
âEztaâ you say
The door opens and a bulky man ushers you inside, closing the door behind you. A new corridor opens before you, it smells of antiseptic with light being provided by fluorescent lamps above you, a thin man with round glasses is sitting at the desk at the far end, examining what it seems like a piece of bone between his long fingers.
âWe have been expecting you⌠Sir, I assume? I hope you understand if we donât use names here, for security. I was simply told that you had an interest in my collection and the means to pay for it. Please, come with meâ
He stands from the desk and starts to walk by a side door, holding it open for you, you enter a dark room with blue tints coming from both sides, the man behind you claps twice, and one by one dim lights begin to glow on the ceiling of the room, revealing long panels of glass to the sides of the room filled with blueish water and brown sand at the bottom, as you look through them you see figures dart across the aquariums, disturbed by the sudden light
âEver since we discovered life in Ezta there have been people interested on the species there, some for food, some for research and some for pride, but all of them requiring people to capture and distributeâ he says as he walks towards the glass panel and tracing a finger over the surface. âNow that it has been declared a natural sanctuary, they are harder to acquire but I have means and you have money, so let me show you the last batch we acquiredâ
âAh, lets start with this one, Dentaskulus pigeraiâ he points to a long creature with a ribbon on the top and underside, it is slowly and repeatedly hitting the glass panel âA sad case, the ecology professor we contracted estimated that its brain had some malfunction, so it was unlikely to survive for long; yet it is big and muscular, and I can assure that its taste is very unique when a chef handles well the venom glandsâ
âNow here is favourite of biology investigators, Aspondylus flexibilusâ He says pointing at a creature with some ray fins, lazily eating some pellets coming from above âA complex organism that devolved into a notochord, why it did so is still unknown, and it has been the subject of interest for evolutionary theorist for a while, so if you wish for an academic curiosity, this could be a good purchaseâ
He then turns around and goes to the opposite wall âWhat do we have here? Ah, look there on the far end, Sanelectrophorus electricusâ Pointing now to a long creature with small flippers near the head, and a bloated abdomen as if stretched from the inside, a dorsal fin captures the attention as it moves near a goldfish, which is stunned, impaled by a tail spikes, then eaten âI sold a bunch of this one to a guy who wanted to extract the venom for his work, last I heard he ended up sending someone into a tank full of them for fun so if you are in a similar line of work it may be useful to you.â
âMoving on⌠ah, Edentulae Edentulae, I like this one as decorationâ He says while showing you a dark tank, where multiple points of light form an eel shape moving around, a large barbel of light illuminating their faces on the dark water âThey are low maintenance and pacifists, so they are popular with kids looking for neat creaturesâ
âAnd last but not least, I have a big collection of nimiastoma cavatunicus and Pensaspidus jellyfishmoniiâ At this your eyes go to the center of the room, where a large tank contains what seem like shells of different sizes and forms, below some of them mandibles appear at the end of a prosbocis and a fan shaped tail on its rear end, while other ones hover in mid water, strings moving up and down to what you assume itâs its mouth filled with serrated teeth âi have a friend that makes lovely jewelry off their shells and exoskeleton, and both their meat and eggs can be eaten with some salt, I hear they are very nutritiousâ
After this he cleans his glasses and extends his arms and long fingers, encompassing the room âAs you can see I have some nice variety, all of them are worth a pretty bunch and Iâm sure more of them will from that strange planet over the centuries, the real question isâŚâ As he clasps his hands together âWhat do you wish to acquire?â
P.S: As an added bonus iâm leaving the species map i made here so non-players (and spring bloom who is not in the discord) can get a picture of how big our tiny game has grown over time. Living species on green as of round 128.
5 Likes
Thatâs amazing! Iâve read through some of the earlier rounds, but I never knew it had grown this much.
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somebody should go onto land it could be very rewarding as there are not any predators or rivals there yet
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Yeah when there is actually something to eat there
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If the land was hospitable, or had food, iâm sure some people would 
Do new characters start as unicellular life forms?
Nope. You just choose from any of the available species 
2 Likes
Nice, I was just thinking that new players might be able to choose a unicellular life form and evolve to create a breathable atmosphere and provide food for land organisms
there is already plants on land and i donât mean going all across the land i mean like the first pioneers to go on land like the amphibians
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Wait so Iâm confused, why canât you go on land yet? Or do you just not want to?
The problem with going on land is that apart from spring bloom all player species are carnivorous (be it filter feeders or predators), so there being plants doesnât benefit us, once some herbivorous creatures move there we can start creating some food web that includes us and move from there.
There are some players making some moves tough, some want to come back to the ocean, some want to move to freshwater, etc etc
Right now we are at this level
2 Likes
5 Million Years later
4 Likes
you could walk onto land for safety and swim into the water to hunt or just evolve to eat plants
There is no prey on land to hunt (as mentioned by BlackInk), and I personally see no need for my species to evolve terrestrial adaptions yet. And as for that ,uh, last part, thatâs not really how a food chain works my man 
Do you mind sharing what direction you want to take for your species? We have some body plans similar to jellyfish, squids, eels and protofish for example
Of course! I envision my species as taking on a similar niche to manatees; the âgentleâ herbivores roaming Etzaâs shallow seas. Although the body description at the moment doesnât exactly fit that. There is a particular trait I would like to try and evolve, that being a type of photosynthesis similar to Elysia chlorotica, resulting in a creature spending much of its time basking in the bright sun and supplementing that with a diet of algae and seaweed, which allows it to photosynthesize in the first place. Imagine if a manatee had the flat, wide back of an eastern emerald elysia, with a tapering tail and protective spike on the end. But itâs still kinda a wip.
3 Likes
Action: Find food
sorry for the late reply I think I had voted but for some reason I forgot to hit submit or send thanks for the reminder