You are a cloud of dust (Riot? Quest)

[X] Retain core heat: 33.3%
[X] Collect more ice: 16.7%
[X] Grow your rings: 16.7%
[X] Look around in more detail (Specify target(s)) -[X] Look at our moons.: 8.3%
[X] Collapse (unnecessary; nothing to collapse!): 8.3%
[X] Look around in more detail (Specify target(s)) -[X] Nearby objects we could turn into more moons.: 8.3%
[X] Move to a higher orbit: 8.3%

Concordance: 50.0%

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You complete your project of reducing the convection in your mantle, bringing the magmatic contribution to your surface temperature down to the realm of negligibility and completing your first crust formation event. Great cracks persist in your crust, marking out the boundaries of your first long-lived plates as they move about, pulling and pushing on each other in a dance of quake and eruption. The first rain of liquid water soon follows in your high latitudes, and it continues for many revolutions, giving rise to your first liquid seas. Your seas are keen on staying around once they form, and whether by giving rise to increasingly stable carbonates or by directly absorbing carbon dioxide, they fairly rapidly reduce the insulating capacity of your atmosphere, allowing liquid water to persist anywhere and growing into a world-spanning ocean as a side effect. Should you wish to keep liquid water around, there is something of a balance to be maintained here as you continue migrating away from your star and receive less of its warmth. Some more time with an ocean in communication with an atmosphere will allow you to fine-tune atmospheric controls and will also allow your accumulated organics to start doing something interesting and familiar (but the latter can potentially start up by other means).

Of course, liquid water isn't the only beneficiary of a cooling planet, and you've begun passively capturing the helium that's previously escaped your clutches. Even hydrogen is associating more closely with your atmosphere. Given current conditions, the primary effect of all this is to greatly enhance the efficiency of gas collection.

Further up where the business of wind, rain, and thunder is of no concern, you continue collecting ice, which you proceed to guide into increasingly beautiful and visible rings. Some small fraction of the new ice crashes into and is assimilated by your moons in the process, especially after you try to collapse them onto yourself. When the dust of this last bombardment clears up, you find a new moonlet of icy rubble in a somewhat unstable orbit outside but too close to Satellite I. Surveying them in order of formation, you observe the following properties for each one:

1. Satellite I: This rocky moon was a result of your first capture, in which you collided with a planetesimal crossing your orbit from an altitude not much higher than where you are right now. Its internal composition, which includes a small iron core, isn't drastically different from yours as a result of being partially made of your own magma. It has a faint atmosphere, and its surface is a coat of fairly smooth ice despite the constant impacts as a result of frequent remelting/remodelling thanks to tidal forces.
2. Satellite IV: This dense, dusty moon was captured during your brief passage through its orbit on the way to the asteroid buffet. Situated in the less crowded outer edges of your disk, it has sustained a more or less solid surface for some time, and its mostly icy surface marred by pinkish and orangish streaks preserves evidence of a number of your more exotic recent captures.
3. Satellite III: This icy moon of unusual composition arose at the conclusion of the asteroid banquet. Aside from the ice, little about its unusually organic-rich composition is as expected.
4. Satellite II: Your most recent satellite is a pile of icy rubble that seems to have arisen from ring clumping.

It may be a good idea to name your satellites to avoid confusion.

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Orbital controls:
[ ] Move to a higher orbit
[ ] Move to a lower orbit
[ ] Collect more gas
[ ] Collect more ice
[ ] Collect more dust
[ ] Collapse...
-[ ] self
-[ ] moon
-[ ] rings
[ ] Look around in more detail (Specify target(s))

Geological controls:
[ ] Export core heat (use with strong consensus will boil off oceans and instigate another round of crustal remodeling)
[ ] Retain core heat (further use will induce a geological coma)
[ ] Increase weathering (releases CO2​, decreases roughness)
[ ] Decrease weathering (absorbs CO2​, decreases roughness)

(You are free to vote for both an astronomical control and a geological control)

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(T17: Missing votes have been added manually for Space Jawa, harnackam)
(T18: Missing votes have been added manually for SeaTheTree, Space Jawa

Astronomical controls said:

[X] Collect more dust: 12.5%
[X] Collect more gas: 12.5%
[X] Collect more ice: 12.5%
[X] Move to a higher orbit: 12.5%
[X] Fuse Satellites II and III together.: 12.5%
[X] Look around in more detail (Other celestial bodies/planets): 6.3%
[X] Move to a lower orbit: 6.3%
[X] Collapse -[X] Satellite 3: 6.3%
[X] Collapse -[X] moon: 6.3%
[X][Orbital Control] Keep moons as they are.: 6.3%
[X] Collapse -[X] self: 6.3%
Concordance: 35.2%

[X] Name Moons: Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde: 66.7%
[x] Name Moons: Iron Mirror, Rogue Glacier, Frozen Seed, Striped Chronicler: 33.3%
Concordance: 37.0%

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Geological controls said:

[X] Increase weathering (releases CO2, decreases roughness): 60.0%
[X] Decrease weathering (absorbs CO2, decreases roughness): 40.0%
Concordance: 80.4%

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Click to shrink...

Your moons are now named Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde in order of increasing distance.

Your first order of business is collecting more dust, gas, and ice for further projects, and although some small amount of it does go to your moons, most of it ends up bombarding your surface as a result of preparations by the wily collapse bloc and opposition to moon modification. Pinky benefits the most from this situation and triples in mass in the confusion, rapidly surpassing Blinky in stature and density while still being dwarfed by Inky and Clyde. The shock from the arrival of the new material is also enough to trigger differentiation, and stony dust sinks to Pinky's core.

In the interest of stabilizing Blinky's orbit and reducing the number of moons to manage, you have begun moving Blinky out to bring about a collision and merger in the far future. At the current pace, it's likely Blinky will crash into Inky or deorbit before colliding with Pinky.

There appears to be considerable disagreement on whether to increase or decrease weathering, and the current result is a slight increase in erosion that softens your sharpest peaks and fills your deepest valleys slightly. The carbon dioxide freed by this would raise your surface temperature by a fair bit if not for the dust cloud kicked up by this turn's additions of dust and ice, which mask about half of the heating.

Looking around at other celestial bodies in the sytem, you notice your proto-star drinking up nearby gas and trying to squeeze to ignition. Unless you sit back for an incredibly long time to let your chemistry cook into something interesting, it may take some time before it ignites and blows away the comforting blanket of nebula gas (probably pushing the water frost line out past your most recent orbit). The inner planetesimals don't all seem to be doing very well, and since you last looked there, at least one appears to have shattered into an asteroid belt. Another seems to have done well enough for itself as a rocky planet half your size with a nice atmosphere.

The outer ones have made an unsettling amount of progress, and coming up on your next orbit is a rocky planetesimal close to your size that appears to be in the process of gobbling up untold volumes of gas. It probably won't be the most massive gas planet if/when it's cleared its orbit, but assuming you don't just join it as a satellite, merge with it, or something strange, it'll be a strong competitor for material for ages to come. It's not much better further out, and the third dense belt from your current one holds enough material to build a great gas giant with a hefty core of ice-derived material from scratch. Luckily, things seem to be moving more slowly out there, and you may be able to catch up if you take the lead in gathering material and growing.

Your final order of business this turn is to migrate, and you move ever so slightly further from the sun, which is enough to negate the heating from freed greenhouse gases in a lasting way. Combined with the dust from impact events, your surface temperature is a few degrees lower for now.

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Having succeeded in not freezing or boiling off all your liquid water for some time, the following information will be available each relevant turn:


From here, forming life is a mere matter of waiting a very long time (more specifically, long enough to let the sun ignite and let the other planetesimals form into planets). This isn't something to be done lightly, and a significant margin will be needed to jump that far.

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Time controls:
[ ] Maintain current tempo
[ ] Let time pass (requires 6-vote margin)

Orbital controls:
[ ] Move to a higher orbit
[ ] Move to a lower orbit
[ ] Collect more gas
[ ] Collect more ice
[ ] Collect more dust
[ ] Collapse...
-[ ] self
-[ ] moon
-[ ] rings
[ ] Look around in more detail (Specify target(s))

Geological controls:
[ ] Export core heat (use with strong consensus will boil off oceans and instigate another round of crustal remodeling)
[ ] Retain core heat (further use will induce a geological coma)
[ ] Increase weathering (releases CO2​, decreases roughness)
[ ] Decrease weathering (absorbs CO2​, decreases roughness)

(You are free to place a vote in each category of control)