The idea of this roleplay is to allow players to design their own species and play a strategic and creative game with them in an Earth-like planet. Each player takes command of a god-like Entity, which is formless, intangible, and invisible, but sentient. The Entities move around as clouds of awareness, oblivious to each other's existence, and can only influence one thing- The gradual evolution of life.
The story dawns on a planet like Earth in conditions like Earth, however, procaryotic life was all that yet existed. Extremeophilic bacteria, blue-green algae, stromatolites and similar organisms were prosperous, but they were alone. The birth of this world's gods coincided with the birth of complex living cells, each Entity surrounding its own colony of primeval amoebas. These Entities are identical in all aspects but thought, for each such being has its own unique Purpose, an Intent which consumes it and drives it to act. The Intent of each Entity took a different form, but all were compelled to fill the world with life. Perhaps each Intent may have been the same at heart- Perhaps each god wished only to make the world into something it perceived as beautiful- But harmony was never in the fate of the planet. As the Entities made their species evolve, each according to their own will, the creations of the new world came within reach of one another, and each Entity realised in its own time that it was not alone. The world was shared between many, and none would give way for the other. Yet there could be no struggle for the destruction of another, for each Entity could only observe, and alter. Such was the planet filled, and such did the will of the gods entangle one another.
From a barren world, amidst many collisions, Life begins to take shape in all her splendor.
Your Sphere is your field of influence. It is the limit and measurement assigned to your power, and it takes the form of a percentage. Any amount of your Sphere is at any point in time either invested in various species, or free and unused. When a genus is invested in, you can 'push' its members in the way you want it to evolve or split. Mutations and (un)natural selection will work in your favour, and because Entities experience time at an accelerated rate, your Entity will be able to actively design the species as it changes in your posts.
Investment in a genus does not affect the size of the changes a player can introduce, only the speed at which the changes occur. A hypothetical taxon that takes up 100% of a Sphere will develop changes pretty much as quickly as is biologically possible. Major changes, such as the hop from a primitive dinosaur to a flying, feathered bird, could take place in the space of a single turn/era. However, it is unlikely that any player will be so devoted to any species at any point. Lowering investment into a species will lower the speed of evolution proportionally. 50% devotion will cause a species to change at half the maximum speed, which is still very quick, and so on.
Other than the ban on sapience without express permission by me (to use as a plot point in the late game), there are currently no hard limits on what you can do with your organisms through creative writing and appropriate use of your Sphere. This will need to be somewhat self-moderated, as even with the Sphere system, the speed of evolution is somewhat hard to pinpoint. However, I will be monitoring all new posts, and in the event of an overstep, rather than demanding an edit, the player will be asked to slow down considerably in their next post or two. Also, remember that a species needs to have the correct adaptations to survive in its environment at all times, or else it will go extinct. Fortunately, because species will evolve naturally to some degree if not heavily invested in, this usually isn't something to worry about.
Your Sphere is not, however, as invulnerable as your Entity is. Once a species or genus is invested in, you cannot recover that percentage of your Sphere until that taxon goes extinct, at which point whatever portion of your Sphere you had devoted to it is lost, and your Entity will be able to feel that it has lost some of its power. Your Sphere will gradually recover from any loss, but for a while you will be left with less than 100%. If a genus splits into two, your investment also splits with it, although this you can control- If I split my genus of worms, to which I had devoted 40% of my Sphere, into one genus of worms with a nerve cord and one genus of worms that lives eusocially, I might put, say, 30% of my sphere into the nerve-cord genus and 10% into the eusocial genus, and each would develop that trait at an according speed.
Because any species that does not have 100% of your devotion will evolve naturally to some degree, speciation will occur accidentally, especially if populations are isolated. In this case, rather than splitting your Sphere further, you may wish to cast one of the resulting populations out of your dominion completely, allowing it to go rogue. Rogue species can be adopted by Entities with free Sphere-space, and will proceed to enter their sphere. Adopting a species, however, will take a short amount of time- Say, two or three posts- during which other Entities can also attempt to take it in. If two Entities both wish to adopt one rogue taxon, it will divide into two with populations proportional to how much of each Entity's sphere was devoted to it. Also, because your Sphere is limited but the planet is vast and ecosystems are complex, it would be good strategy to maintain a handful of strongly devoted 'flagship' species that live up to your desires and use them as a starting point to generate many rogue or near-rogue species that fill necessary niches and further your goal without taking up an unnecessary amount of power.
-If you're going to leave, permanently or just for a little while, you should a) tell us and b) try to keep the ball rolling any way you can. Even if it means just putting in dot-points what you would've done in your post (please try to avoid doing this).
-Don't be too dependent on other players. If they don't seem to be around for a few days, don't wait for them to do something before you further your own goals.
-Be fun. Don't godmod. Don't be unreasonable OOC.
-Don't use vagueness to godmod either. Self-moderation with your percentages is key here. If you unintentionally go too quickly with your evolution, it's fine if you correct yourself as soon as possible.
-If science is a problem for you, don't worry. Good writing is much more important than scientific accuracy. If it makes sufficient sense and reads nicely it's fine. Still, Wikipedia or something could be handy in this case.
-Don't let your Entity be perfect or all-knowing. Make occasional mistakes. Get unlucky.
-There are writing standards in place here, although they may loosen from time to time. Use acceptable grammar and spelling, make each post include at least a paragraph or two, bleat bleat bleat.
-Ask questions whenever something puzzles you.
-No sapience or human-like intelligence.
-Don't go through the game without ever allowing anything to escape your Sphere. In all likelyhood no-one will have 100% of their Sphere invested into any one genus at any point, so unless you split your Sphere constantly, things will escape and attempt to populate the planet on their own as an aimless NPC. This is desirable.
-Make your Intent interesting and different. Remember that the life we create, directly or indirectly, is the only complex life around, so concepts like beauty are relative to nothing and will need to be explained in your application.
-Your Intent, however, does not need to be opposed to that of other players. I don't want every interaction made by every player to be against each other. If you can coexist, fine, if you need to actively undermine another Entity, that's fine too. Just stay true to your Intent.
-All posts are to be read in the comforting voice of Morgan Freeman.
More rules might be put here as I think of them.
There is a character sheet for this roleplay, but it is extremely brief. Because the Entities are shapeless, intangible, invisible fields of awareness, the players pretty much play as themselves. However, there is a little that is required. When joining, you need to state what your Entity will be called in your posts, and their intentions for the planet. Like this.
Title: The Enclosing One
Intent: To make the planet's surface all of one endless biological mass, from which no organism is ever seperate for any significant amount of time. The Enclosing One does not care whose species jointly forms this mass, or how many must live symbiotically to maintain it. Nor does it care about the mass being seamless. As many divisions and individual surfaces as necessary will be spawned, so long as there is never any empty space which is not covered, filled, or contained.
Played By: Antarctic Termite
Notice that the title is a descriptor, not a name. There are no names for these Entities, for they cannot directly communicate in any way. Also, a brief Character/Personality section is optional for the same reason. You can probably refer to your Entity as a He or She if you want to, although it won't affect much. The 'characters' of the game will all be listed here.
Title: The Chaos One
Intent: He doesn't have an true intent. He only seeks amuse which takes from taking the natural world and bending it to his whims, the result can range from mystical and beauty to disturbing and evil. Normally, he doesn't care who lives or dies, but the The Chaos One is known to be heavily biased towards his favorites. If he likes a race of beings, he will give them favor over those he dislikes. He often likes to make creatures that he dislikes to become self-destructive until they are completely extinct. He also prefers to have his creatures mess with creatures outside of his sphere for laughs.
Played by: Leotamer
Title: The Crawling Seeker
Intent: To expand and thrive in all environments, overcoming the harshest of habitats. This furthers the intent of expansion, whereas no catastrophe, no matter how large and severe, can destroy that which it has sowed. This is Crawling Seeker's goal, and ultimately will lead to a planet dominated by the strongest and hardiest of species. Hopefully, and with much time, those which it has created will spread to the stars, and continue the goal of survival and expansion in all corners of existence.
Played By: Kyelin
Title: The Amorphous Jowls
Intent: At first glance, The Amorphous Jowls wants to create a world he considers perfect. Granted, his definition of "perfect" is a little odd. The ideal world The Amorphous Jowls seeks (name is plural, but he's a singular?) to create is one where every species can kill each other to the content of their respective hearts, and not actually put anybody in an extinct or endangered state. A world where even vegetation is meat, and everybody can eat and kill each other all day long. From there, he wants to figure out which species turns out to be the strongest, help them take over the world, then stage an uprising where said strongest species goes extinct. Then he'd want to make another species from bacteria that evolves up and overthrow the new global rulers. The Amorphous Jowls wants to rinse and repeat this process until he manages to create a species somehow capable of outsmarting him. So ultimately, his intent is to be defeated by his own creations when giving his all.
Played By: UnendingEmpire
Title: To Sow the Seeds of Harmony
Intent: To create a being that can fully become one with which it inhabits to the extent that it becomes nearly impossible to tell between land and creature. A possibly fully encompassing organism that becomes the planet in which it inhabits, regardless of what havoc it wreaks or what harmony it creates along the way. If its purpose requires the consumption of a certain genus of beings, then it will do so with undeniable prejudice and cease to stop until the threat is eliminated. It intends to create an entire symbiotic ecosystem to encompass whatever may live from the land it is made from. If a subject fails to realize its purpose in evolution, the entity which created it will immediately find a new being to harbor the task of symbiotic perfection. This being is generally indifferent to anything that is not its creature until its creature ultimately (and possibly inevitably) fails it.
Played By: Haemonculus
Title: The Parasite
Intent: Wants to create a breed of super parasites that will eventually be able to use every other moderately sized organism on the planet as a host. Sub-Intents include creating a perfect host race, connect parasites with a hive mind, and evolving the parasites to be able to control their host.
Played By: ThePhantomM
Title: The Whimsical Tinkerer
Intent: Capricious and ever changing this entity is obsessed with creation and evolution in that it latch on to either endlessly doing several variations of the same critter or several different critters for doing a certain thing. It will then either tire and ignore or sometimes kill it if deemed "unworthy" or if it considers it superior may induce competition with other species as a trial by fire. To the handful of its favored creations it will protect as best it can. Otherwise it is content to tinker and observe.
Played By: JerkChicken
Title: The Matrices
Intent: To create a creature who serves as the ultimate medium, devouring other beings and storing their genetic codes in themselves and modifying them into their own. The Matrices wishes to create a being that can both assimilate life and split it off of itself independently, or symbiotically with its own kind. While this entity has no explicit goal to dominate the world which its children live on, it seeks to craft the genetics of a creature that cannot be overpowered by another without either great consequence or a loss of its own self in some manor. The Matrices' mentality is neither objective nor subjective, but rather free flowing allowing it to change and adapt its strategies and thought processes easier than most. While this is its primary intent, The Matrices is unlike most other entities, though it does not know of them, and can choose to change its goal or deviate from it somewhat to experiment.
Played By: Yoshua171
Title: The Unmitigated One
Intent: This entity prefers to spend its time indulging in the creation of perfection, which of course cannot ever be attained. But it is this endless process and manipulation that satisfies the ever present need for intelligent release in this disembodied being. It aims to create organisms of perfection, but will never turly fulfill the aim, knowing well that there is always room for improvement, always traits and instincts and processes to be tweaked and elaborated upon. The entity ponders in its inter-dimensional thoughts of the possibilities of perfect hunters, perfect prey, perfect consumers and decomposers, perfect balancing microbes to create a perfect atmosphere of gases. There is no end, and there is no begining, and there never was, and so there is no limit, there is only absolution in the drive to continually improve and create.
Played By: Soulserenity20
Title: The Composer
Intent: To make a concordant ambience out of all the sounds made by the different life forms within The Composer's "area". The Composer seeks to force the disjointed sounds of all organisms under its control into making a more rhythmic, harmonious sound (though it doesn't actually care if said organisms are actually harmonious, just whether or not they harmonious). Though The Composer treats its supposed 'instruments' with care, it views anything discordant as a blight, and will attempt to get rid of the perceived pest.
Played By: Marcopolonian
Title: The Ambitious One
Intent: To create species, unparalelled outisde it's sphere, in both gracefulness and lethality. It likes the natural competition and wants to make a species that can outgrow it, using the strategy 'adapt to overcome', without a need to gain control over the planet, as it can see beauty and value in both chaos and order. But it's creatures will be second to no-one, and wherever they may go, they will prey on whoever was on top of the food chain. Before they came in.
Played By: Obscurus
Title: The Mother
Purpose: Everything in Her realm is sacred to her, and She will sustain all with every ounce of Her will, even if it ultimately leads to disaster. She just wants everything to thrive. She does not favor one species over another, She favors them all. If two species do not get along well, She will change their behavior so that they can coexist peacefully. Her ultimate goal is a world of many species, but no predators or parasites, no disease or hunger, yet a world without overpopulation or extinction. A clockwork world where death only comes with old age. Anything that comes into Her realm from outside, She treats as Her own, but She will not hesitate to change any behaviors that don't match Her ultimate goal. She is The Mother and the specimen of Her world are Her children, and She will do whatever it takes to protect them.
Played By: Draexzhan
Lol, nope. When it becomes relevant and I become motivated there may be one.
Always accepting newcomers. The original Interest Check.
Vec,
Timemaster