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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.

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

Mason seems to be very flat, with no peaks. Are you talking about the hills in the Black Triangle, or do you intend to release this with a new landmark of a few peaks?
Out of curiosity...what kind of metals? Iron, zinc, and nickel seem a few of the more plausible candidates.

It does seem odd a photosynthesizer would live in caves...can you clarify? Does it rely exclusively or almost exclusively on detritivory there?

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.

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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