Only the front-most pair of pinnae are useful for detecting sound, as only the pinna is duplicated (not the middle or inner ear). The rest serve the same purpose as the bristles along an iguana's back--they help break up its shape against its environment.

I plan to make a future species that fuses some of them into a fan-like structure used for display and releasing heat.

I used thicker lines because thin lines are really, really, really, really, really hard to color in chicken paint. There's no magic wand tool and the paint bucket ignores other layers. I may experiment with solutions to that problem in the future, though.

The pipes are stiff and woody. They're tightly curled to be less conspicuous.

It's an abomination because the "mane" is reduplicated pinnae. Phyllauran pinnae are derived from their leaves, and plent leaves can reduplicate easily, so therefore duplicate outer ears are possible in any no-plent.

The beginning of what some have dubbed a "nobomination"

The buttpiper's legs should be more noodly, that lineage never evolved jointed bones and still use the unjointed flexible skeleton ancestral to ambulatory plents

QUOTE (MNIDJM @ Aug 22 2021, 07:47 PM)

Then, as the discussion has expanded beyond the borders of this submission, I'll approve it.

OviFan has not updated the image and changes still need to be made. Undo that.

The discussion happened on discord, long story short the genus group has an inaccuracy and cloudswarmers having normal swarmers as babies makes no sense.

As I think I said before, a cellulose-based exoskeleton would not be disabling nor need to be shed because it's flexible--there would not need to be any dramatic changes in musculature from the soft-bodied larva--and it can grow without shedding, as seen in tunicates, real world animals with cellulose-based exoskeletons. Therefore, a continuous growth of cellulose plates or thickening of existing skin into a cellulose-based exoskeleton would be realistic.

Also, I just noticed, the art of the larva is actually completely inaccurate--cloudswarmer larvae (at least of this side of cloudswarmer evolution) have 4 flippers, not 2. The artwork for the cloudswarmers genus group is inaccurate and depicts another annoying case of "atavism larvae".

QUOTE (CosmoRomanticist @ Aug 21 2021, 11:31 PM)

Hmm... I wonder if there's any way to make that method more efficient?

None of them need it more efficient. Semi-active respiration using ciliated tubes is sufficient for all current fauna living in Mason Reef.

Plants have glands. Nectar comes from a gland. It's basically sugar water, which is not hard to make; just make a gland secrete sugar and water.

Another potential option might be that the respiratory system uses cilia instead of contractions to move air. This is considerably less efficient, but it works with the current setup.

But growing a cellulose-based exoskeleton is neither energy-intensive nor temporarily disabling.

Based on this organism's anatomy, it could lose "pupation" in a single step. As can most other "pupating" Sagan 4 organisms, as none of them actually pupate.

Edit: for clarity, all the "pupating" species are basically just getting fat and hibernating in a bed and don't undergo any of the dramatic physical changes that insects do. Shrew saucebacks are doing basically the same thing but with better justification.

I have made attempts to contact Clarke, but while I have gotten as far as now being friends with him on Steam, he has not replied to any messages (in fact, he has not come online since he accepted my friend request).

As for Cosmo's comment on treating Alpha like Beta: Alpha organisms should still make sense and not violate the laws of physics. Alpha is not anarchy like 2speccers2tools, species this broken are typically rejected. Also, Mason was literally created under the same premise as Beta--to not make the same mistakes as Sagan 4 Alpha.

Mason has mountains, not very tall but they exist in the wasteland where the volcanos/islands used to be.

This lives in the photic zones of the caves. It doesn't reside in the aphotic zones.

I figure as a generalist built to survive whatever Mason has to throw at it, it can use multiple metals, basically whatever's available to it. I'll edit soon.

--

Long-term ideas with this:

• Giant species, some hollow and others with terraced "shelves", which can support large flora and possibly megafauna within their husks
• "Hollow" species with a very large water store which they live off of during a "dormant" period
• Spongy heterotrophic "dome-builders" which only have biomass on the "floor" or around the edge and which allow fauna and flora to live inside them and carry biomass from elsewhere, and they eat the waste
• Groves of domes working together to survive, connected by underground airtight tunnels, which carry air, water, and nutrients as well as serving as a passage for fauna to travel between them. These tunnels might bore deep, well into the water table, and contain failsafes against sudden breaches (built-in airlocks, some kinda system where pressure from inside actually keeps them closed kinda like how some bottlecaps work before they glass over)
• Species (maybe not descendants of this) which colonize old husks and support them / maybe even repair damage, helping keep them intact for their own benefit and supporting life in the process

whoops, fixed. I only got a few hours of sleep last night.

Some respiratory ideas:

• Some larger organisms could internalize it into a unidirectional trachial system like that used by some insects, though less extensive since they already have blood.
• Smaller species could turn it into normal tracheae, replacing their blood pigments entirely with a system that is very efficient for smaller organisms.
• Hexdiggers and other burrowers could instead externalize their respiratory system completely and become skin breathers.
• That one really big teci could probably use some air sacs or mini lungs or something.

Mason's existing organisms, especially its fauna, were made alien for the sake of being alien and have an embarrassing number of issues. Most obvious is just how terrible the respiration and circulation of the terrestrial fauna is (quote taken from the page on quefts):

QUOTE

Quefts have four exterior breathing vents that allow it to smell and facilitate gas exchange. Two on each side generally merge toward the end of the end of the breathing tube, allowing one exterior vent. The majority of the respiratory system is contained within these breathing tubes. Air is pumped in and out of the tubes through rippling contractions along the tubes that produce wave-like motions. The interior of the tube consists of a thin mesh of tissues, kept moist by bodily fluids, that perform gas exchanges. Some tissue functions to absorb oxygen, and some to release CO2 and other waste gases, with the oxygen absorbing one being clustered near the front, and the latter near the back. Running around the breathing tubes are a cluster of ring-shaped arteries, which transport the gases via the queft's blood. The "hearts" mentioned are just single-chambered pumps found at even intervals. Queft blood, like all decedents of the mason hexspourous, is copper based and therefore blue.

Some members have expressed appreciation for their "simple pipe-like breathing system", however there is so much wrong with it that it's actually downright embarrassing.

• The most egregious issue is the thing of having specialized tissues for absorbing and releasing oxygen and CO2, respectively. This alone makes it obvious that this was not written by someone who has done any research whatsoever on how respiration works, as respiration as a whole is universally and fundamentally based around passive exchange of gasses directly between water/air and the actual organism and does not involve any specialized tissue like that. The closest is blood, which these organisms explicitly have in addition to these "specialized tissues", somehow. This issue can be fixed pretty easily by changing it to generic vascularized tissue that does both, but it's a flashing red sign of just how little research was actually put into making these organisms.
  
• The way the breathing tubes themselves work is also highly problematic. They are external, so nothing can pull them to expand them. These organisms are soft-bodied and lack support structures that can rebound to do the same thing. Their respiratory system literally does not work as a result, as it will collapse and not be able to draw in air. It would need a complete rewrite of all species to be functional without changing all the artwork as well.
  
• The hearts are also a part of them? The hearts for pumping blood are external? There's so many problems with doing that that it's literally giving me a headache in real life, and it has the same issue as the lungs with their positioning where they're likely to collapse in on themselves, though being fluid-filled makes them at least mildly less prone to that.
  
• All these major organs being external, protruding, and unretractable could never evolve. Even before predators existed, they first evolved on land where dust and stuff could damage it, not to mention their environment has always been frigid and their vital organs literally freezing off is a constant risk. Not even the burrowing species have done anything to protect their breathing tubes. The entire system is an abomination and an affront to evolution and biology.

I have some ideas for how the respiration could be fixed on a "replaced with fixed version" level, I'll share it in replies to this post. Different lineages have different needs that call for different respiratory systems.

Another issue is one that admittedly a lot of organisms on Sagan 4 have as well, but it still should not have been allowed: Their reproduction is exclusively asexual. Asexual reproduction is very, very, very bad for complex organisms. I recommend that the entire lineage be retconned to be capable of sexual reproduction, as it would be unreasonable to do fix replacements for everything.

Queft-specific but still problematic is the "heat sensors":

QUOTE

[They have] two or three specialized heat sensing organs which let quefts "see" infared radiation. The latter are covered in a thin membrane which encloses a gel-like substance. Heating in specific areas of the queft's membrane are amplified through the gel and picked up by modified flagellum, allowing them to make a map of nearby heat sources.

• Modified flagella?? Oh wait, correction, singular flagellum. They have one flagellum that does this. A single flagellum is somehow detecting infrared light, and not, I dunno, a photoreceptor or some other kind of nerve, something that one is immediately made aware of the existence of if they do any research on how senses work at all. Like the "specialized tissues" for gas exchange, this part can be fixed by just replacing it with (plural) nerves of some kind, but it's yet another sign of there being zero research going into this stuff.
• How is the gel amplifying it? That violates the law of conservation of energy. If it's meant to be refracting it, then it's messing up light direction and makes the heat sensors less accurate, especially since it's enclosed in a wobbly membrane that changes how it refracts it.
• This heat sensor is large and prominent in the species that have it. Based on the description given and the lack of defensive adaptations in any species, it could be easily popped, instantly disabling them.
• This feature was designed because Clarke decided that eyes were too terran and rejected any species that gained them. It is a blatant case of dysfunctional alienification.

I'm gonna expand this list of issues later, but man, there's so many problems and I keep finding new ones, it's kinda exhausting. Feel free to comment with any that I missed.

Citrine Cone (Citrinus primis)
Creator: Disgustedorite
Ancestor: Smoolks
Habitat: Mason Barren Wasteland, Mason Reef, East Mason Sandstone Caves, West Mason Sandstone Caves
Size: 50 cm tall
Support: Shell (Glass)
Diet: Photosynthesis, Detritivore
Respiration: ?
Thermoregulation: Ectotherm
Reproduction: Asexual (Resilient Spores Usually Dropped by Detached "Roots"), Sexual (Genetic Exchange Via "Roots")

The citrine cone split from its ancestor. Under intense evolutionary pressure and with help from a general lack of competition in the wasteland (which makes up the majority of its habitat), it has grown greatly in size and developed a feature which protects it from many of Mason's new hazards: a thick glass shell.

The citrine cone's shell does not just look like glass--it literally is glass. Silica is readily available in its environment and is easily taken up and deposited to form a shell, much like a Terran diatom. As the organism grows it becomes wider, but the parts of the shell that have already grown do not grow with it; this causes it to have a roughly conical shape, distinct from its spherical relatives. The shell does, however, thicken with age, protecting it from usual hazards such as Masonquakes, though it cannot withstand an asteroid strike. The shell also protects it from harmful radiation and prevents gasses from escaping, as well as preventing its innards from boiling by keeping them under pressure, allowing it to theoretically live on Mason's highest peaks where there is nearly no atmosphere left, though this is a fairly rare accomplishment. When it reaches full size, the small shells on its underside merge, creating a full glass case with only an opening on the underside for the roots, allowing it to withstand all sorts of dangers and survive and reproduce for tens of thousands of years. The shell can remain intact for much longer, sometimes retaining fluid inside and supporting a miniature ecosystem like a biogenic glass jar terrarium. The shell has many layers and the organism can survive when "cracked" even in a low pressure environment as a result. The shell also has a slight effect of concentrating light and warming up the plant, which helps prevent it from freezing.

The underground portions only include a shell closer to the surface; the underside is instead supported by many interlocking shells connected by a more morphable cuticle containing metals such as iron, zinc, and nickel that help prevent gasses or water from leaking out. Nearly a mirror image of the upper shelled portion, the underground bottom of the organism is also pointed. It has amoebic, slime mold-like unicellular "roots" coming out the tip which collect material for the rest of the organism. The amoeba-like structure is homologous with the "tentacles" of its unicellular ancestors, though greatly upscaled. If the underside is ever exposed, the roots are retracted and the opening they came out of is plugged with mucus which hardens when dehydrated, which happens very quickly in the harshest parts of Mason.

The citrine cone is capable of a very strange form of reproduction, which occurs through its amoebic roots. If a piece is separated from its parent, which can happen from them either pulling themselves apart or from an extensive root system being torn to pieces while retracting, it will wander underground for a while, like an amoeba, depositing pieces of itself as shelled diatom-like spores with a single nucleus. These spores then may either grow where they sit or be kicked up by wind or Masonquake. The wandering fragments may also encounter fragments from other cones, which they merge with to produce genetically distinct nuclei. This is the citrine cone's only method of sexual reproduction.

The citrine cone has not lost the ability to produce airborne spores. These are formed by young individuals, which represent somewhat of a transitional stage between their direct ancestor and the current form, but they can also form when an adult is injured but survives, falsely triggering spore production in exposed cells.

As the citrine cone's shell protects it from predation, it has lost the poison which gave its ancestors their distinct greenish coloration and is instead golden in color like ancestral gildlings. It is translucent, allowing light to pass through to hit chloroplasts throughout its body. It can live nearly anywhere as long as there's light and moisture, even in caves as long as it's within the photic zone, and can supplement itself with detritus, including that which few other organisms can access due to harsh conditions.

--

Drawn in ChickenPaint. Also not fully happy with this so I may tweak it further.

I have an idea for space colony plants. I'm not sure what would be a good ancestor, maybe a smoolk or some other round thing? It could have a glass shell that filters out harmful radiation and keeps gasses and water inside, and reproduction happens underground / with budding. It draws most of what it needs from underground. When one dies, it leaves behind massive biodomes and connecting tunnels that can be inhabited by all kinds of flora and fauna.

Using the 10x no competition clause for flora, such organisms might be able to balloon up to sizes that can support masonian megafauna even with a complete vacuum above the domes.

I'll work on a possible species to start this when I'm home.

Nectar isn't hard to evolve, it's fine

For Mason, it's an M/μ next to the gen number, right?

Obligatory fanart thread, for impossible fan species, random artwork, and scrapped organisms!

In Beta, there's an exception clause for this specific case.

Looks like I forgot to post this. It's an impossible fan species based on four-jawed saucebacks. It's smart, possibly a sophont or an ancestor of one, and able to use tools by using its feet and mouth together. I designed it for the Sagan 4 sporecast, in which I'm including non-canon sophonts so that tribal stage will have enough species to cover all scenarios.

I've been experimenting with drawing submissions in a different art program, Chicken Paint, which is only accessible to members of Chicken Smoothie. It's locked to a lower resolution and missing a few features I like to use, but I find it's surprisingly a lot faster than Medibang, way easier to focus. Here's a couple of species I've drawn for next gen.