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Description

An AI generated illustration I wrote some worldbuilding notes for?! Yes. (I did end up hand drawing as well later but those drawings didn't get illustrated).

The Spoolers

An archetype of organisms found predominantly in the depths of lower energy ice shell worlds that is a notable development for how much symbiosis emerged from the need of organisms to cooperate more for mutual survival. The large cellular organisms such worlds can at times produce has led to a recurrent formation where two organisms- usually a blobbier organism that produces various pheromones and a more worm or filament-like organism (in some cases they even resemble very elongated eels) that aggregate into large colonies colloquially known as yarns. These yarns often contain dozens if not hundreds or thousands of the "worm" species and dozens more of the "cell" species cloistered inside the aggregated cluster mutually providing for each other. It evolved in a fashion comparable to eukaryotes, where it started as the worms feeding on the "cell" organisms but in certain cases they instead keep them around due to a range of reasons- the main one often simply being the pheromones they release much akin to how flora may dominate fauna through pheromones. An interesting set of emergent behaviors over millions of years of evolution developed focused around the behavior of "spooling" wherein the organism has one of the large cellular organisms act as a brain for a small delegated colony of worms that form into shapes reminiscent of fish or various other clades of marine organism based on the niches the spooler has adapted to in their environment. These colonial organisms are one of the distinctive clades that represent eons of life fighting to better work with the limited heat and energy their hermetically sealed worlds provided. The stylistic depiction above erroneously shows far too much light, the norm is for such organisms to live in extremely dark abyss.

Description

An AI generated illustration I wrote some worldbuilding notes for?! Yes. (I did end up hand drawing as well later but those drawings didn't get illustrated).

The Spoolers

An archetype of organisms found predominantly in the depths of lower energy ice shell worlds that is a notable development for how much symbiosis emerged from the need of organisms to cooperate more for mutual survival. The large cellular organisms such worlds can at times produce has led to a recurrent formation where two organisms- usually a blobbier organism that produces various pheromones and a more worm or filament-like organism (in some cases they even resemble very elongated eels) that aggregate into large colonies colloquially known as yarns. These yarns often contain dozens if not hundreds or thousands of the "worm" species and dozens more of the "cell" species cloistered inside the aggregated cluster mutually providing for each other. It evolved in a fashion comparable to eukaryotes, where it started as the worms feeding on the "cell" organisms but in certain cases they instead keep them around due to a range of reasons- the main one often simply being the pheromones they release much akin to how flora may dominate fauna through pheromones. An interesting set of emergent behaviors over millions of years of evolution developed focused around the behavior of "spooling" wherein the organism has one of the large cellular organisms act as a brain for a small delegated colony of worms that form into shapes reminiscent of fish or various other clades of marine organism based on the niches the spooler has adapted to in their environment. These colonial organisms are one of the distinctive clades that represent eons of life fighting to better work with the limited heat and energy their hermetically sealed worlds provided. The stylistic depiction above erroneously shows far too much light, the norm is for such organisms to live in extremely dark abyss.