Creatures Caves

In this fanfic the shee ark has crashed on an alien planet. As I needed an ecosystem I took the one from the war against the Chtorran books as who wouldn?t like to see a hardman Norn with a slugegun fighting a worm? Below are how to sign up and a list of a few of the Chtorran life, which I will update when I finish more of the books and find more life. Credits for the alien life forms go to their maker British biologist Jack Cohen.

If there are two things that all Chtorran life forms have in common, it is that they are hungry, and are normally a bright shade of red. Some of the most notable plants/animals that are encountered are:

* Chtorran Gastropods (commonly known as "Worms"

: Range in size from as small as a rodent (but only when just hatched), to as large as a greyhound bus. Normally bright red, but have been seen in other colors ranging from white to green. They have two "arms" with claws, and are very dexterous. Their bodies are covered with symbiotic "fur", each strand of which is a distinct life form and acts as a sensory input. Though capable of remarkable acts of problem solving and interaction, both their intelligence and their communication abilities have yet to be fully understood. Baby worms can be tamed making wonderful pets (think a dog with the brainpower of a chimp which is loyal to you as worms imprint on their parents like baby birds) but if left to grow up in the wild have a nasty habit of eating people. (Or in this scenario norns)

* Bunnydogs/Bunnymen: Bipedal herbivores about a meter in height possessing roughly the same intelligence as ingame norns which is saying about none. Bunnydogs are covered in the same "fur" as the worms and resemble pink or red rabbit-eared teddybears. Some Bunnydogs eventually become Bunnymen - a variant of bunnydogs that lack that fur and are about half again as tall, making them resemble bipedal rats - with a disposition to match. All bunnydogs/bunnymen are male.

* Libbits: These quadrupeds resemble pigs. Short and squat, they are covered with red fur and are very docile. All Libbits are female. It was later discovered that Libbits and Bunnydogs/Bunnymen are actually male and female of the same species. Their reproductive process is strange - if a single Bunnyman mates with a Libbit she will give birth to a litter of Libbits, but if multiple Bunnymen mate with a Libbit, she will produce a litter of Bunnydogs.

* Gorps: These large creatures resemble sloths, but stand 10-15 feet tall. They emit a horrible smell (capable of destroying non-Chtorran life), and are mostly carrion eaters, though they do not always wait for their meals to die before they eat them.

* Finger Babies: These small creatures are from one to two inches in length, and closely resemble very fat, bald and eyeless humans. Their ecological niche appears to be that of an insect.

* Enterprise Fish: These are the largest Chtorran creatures known. These creatures go through the oceans, eating anything in their path. The upper size is unknown, but in the book one has been blamed for the near-sinking of the USS Nimitz. The largest one killed massed over one million tons, and far larger ones have been sighted.

* Millipedes: These bear no relation to terrestrial millipedes. Though similar in appearance, they tend to have hard black shells and bellies of varied colors. Their bite is very powerful, and they are capable of devouring and digesting wood, leather, rubber, plastic - anything even remotely organic save their own (or worm) waste. Their bite is also toxic, introducing various diseases and micro-organisms into the bloodstream. The worms keep them in "corrals" near their huts like chicken farms - and eat them like popcorn.

* Shambler Trees: Chtorran trees that act as hosts to countless separate species of predatory creatures identified as "tenants". The trees are mobile, able to cover up to a half mile a day and leaving a root network of "tickler nerves" in their path. The "tickler nerves" alert a tree to approaching prey, which triggers the tenants to swarm and feed. Once the tenants eat their fill, the prey's remains will fertilize the root network. Ultimately , the trees become a Clonal colony or "Shambler Grove". They are a complex and key element of Chtorran ecology.

* Red Kudzu: Similar to the terrestrial plant, but red in color. This plant ranges from jet black to pink, red, violet, and orange. It grows extremely quickly and can cover an entire town in weeks. Its greatest danger is in its ability to shelter Chtorran predatory life - attempts to control its spread through fire are negated in days by further growth, but massive amounts of remains have been found before it reclaims the scorched ground. All attempts to destroy it have failed, and it appears to be resistant to all known poisons.

? Meeps: These are red furballs, ranging in size from tennis ball to bowling ball in diameter. Like another alien fuzzball envisioned by ?the star trek tribble,? they reproduce very quickly, and possess many traits, which induce adoration in other species. In the wild, mother animals of many species will actually abandon their young in order to take care of meeps ? a potent adaptation indeed.

On the shee ark it was night. It was always technically night between the stars but a day/night cycle had been made, based on the one of old Albia once the home of the shee. Aboard it the shee however in their coldsleep pods where the only ones sleeping. The Ettins pried bits of the mechanical parts of the ship up and rebuilt them. The grendels roamed their jungle alone apart from the rare ettin dumb enough to wander in. The one Biorobotic being know as the Gaia fixed a broken cheese vendor. Most of the norns partied, played with toys, ate the food and generally had a good time.

The ?roid didn?t care about any of this as being a chunk of rock it was unable to do so. All it did was what the law of gravity and an accidental impact with another asteroid changing its path made it, which was to smash into the ark. It was only about ten feet long but when traveling at interstellar speeds anything can inflict damage. Smashing into the engineering room of the ship it spun braking equipment before hitting and neatly beheading the ship?s Gaia. All the lights went out.

The one Norn who had not been at the party, a Loris by the name of Edward who at the time was in the room at the back of the ship was the first to notice that something was wrong when a steel head hit him. Staring at it he could see that it had a beak and huge eyes. He screamed. ?Cut it out,? snapped the ettin beside him. ?You know what you have to do.? It was true he did. ?The dare is off.? Edward snapped to the ettin. ?No? the ettin replied. If you don?t go into the airlock and back out then we don?t let you into the club. Edward new it was pointless but he sure wanted to get in. Now however his natural instincts for danger where keeping him away. ?We should tell the shee that Gaia lost her head,? he said trying to make a joke out of it. ?You know we are not allowed here!? the ettin snapped at Edward. ?That and the danger of the airlock is why it?s a dare.? ?O.K. you go? Edward said knowing he had failed. Turing around he headed back to the Norn?s woodland room and slept.

Next ?morning? he awoke to the sound of warning alarms. Looking up he saw what all the creatures could now see filling the sky outside the dome, a planet. It was reddish pink with seas visible and icecaps. However to all it?s viewers that was not as imported as that it was growing before their eyes.

Hitting the atmosphere the ark started to shake and brake up. The aquarium dome exploded as a fuel line running under it ignited starting it?s own little rainstorm. The back of the ship fell off, the frozen shee in their sleeppods and Gaia?s head sliding out. The sleeppods extended rockets to slow their fall while the head plunged past. All in all it was kind of a relief when the ship hit.

Looking out at the landscape around the ark the creatures fell silent. Two moons loomed above. Trees that looked like they where strung with cotton candy grew all over. Something like pinkish snowflakes rooted to the ground stood in where on the ark grass would grow. In the distance something cried out a call of something that sounded like ?Chtorr? into the night.

The first to step out was a Grendel by the name of Gus. Wandering out a hole smashed by the impact into the wall of the Grendel room he had seen a funny-looking animal and had been feeling hungry so now he had pounced on, and eaten it. To him it had looked like a pink, very fat and fuzzy grazer apart from the eyes of which it had four and that it?s legs where like that of a rocklice. It tasted almost, but not completely unlike anything he had eaten before. Behind him something scuttled past grabbing the pieces of the grazerish creature he was dropping. It looked like one of the shee, but without any fur, eyes or horns. It was very fat and only about the size of a dragonfly. It also tasted quite nice Gus decided as he wandered back to the ark.

Edward having heard the alarms ran down the main ship corridor, to endearing where the shee had been in their coldsleep pods. They would know what to do. Needless to say where he arrived he was shocked. A pair of Ettins where dismantling the headless Gaia and carrying off the parts to their room. What looked like pink moss had sprouted all over the equipment, there was a huge hole in the wall out of which he could see the ground of the new planet and a trail of smashed machine had been bashed in the wall. The shee and their pods where nowhere to be found and it was easy to see that Gaia would be no help whatsoever. He stepped over to tell the Ettins that they where dismantling their own only hope of fixing the ship when he slipped on a piece of cheese that had fallen from the smashed vendor and slid out the hole in the wall falling twenty feet to the ground below. One of the Ettins turned and asked the other ?should we help?? ?No? said the other ettin ?he?ll just stop us getting all the gadgets in this wreck.? ?O.K.? replied the first ettin.

Gus had been enjoying yet another tasty local critter, something that looked like an earless Norn in a cobsterlike shell of black with four pincher-claw tipped arms and a spiky tail when a ball of screaming fur dropped and hit him on the head. Thinking it another of the planet?s tasty natives he grabbed it only to find it was yelling at him in bibble. ?Now put me down!? and other such calls echoed about. The Norn, an adolescent Loris male dropped from Gus?s grip still yelling and ran back to the ark? only to find no way back in. The hole he had fallen from was about twenty feet above him and the one in the Grendel room was nearly five feet up, climbable if you where a Grendel but not for a Norn. Other tares in the hull could be seen but they where all either to small, or to high up. Only one was at a climbable height and it led straight into the volcano supply tank of the ettin room. Lava bubbled around its sides and dripped out. There was no way back in apart from one that needed a Grendel and Gus had wandered off to find more stuff to eat.