[X] Then go through right hand blast door to Shallow Arcology.
...
After killing most of the rockleech tendrils at work on the hatch for good measure, you blow off the blast door on the right. It leads into an airlock section, and beyond that the shallow arcology.
The rugged cave is overgrown with huge, wide-leafed plants, soft, dark green spongelike masses, and stiff brown stalks topped each with a sphere of leaves, thorns, and violet blossoms. The air is flowing with a fog of pale pink aeroplankton that rides an impossible breeze. The back section of the cave has collapsed, filling it with massive boulders; you can't tell how far the cave continues beyond the collapse.
On the few patches of ground that are visible between the vegetation, you see geemers scuttling too and fro.
GO:
[] Write in
SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.
[x] scan the vegetation
[x] scan the pink mist
[x] scan the rubble, trying to determin if it can be blasted away, and if so how safe it would be to do so.
[x] scan the lower left corner of the room, where there is a tunnel we can only get into with a morph ball.
[x] do not engage the Gleemers unless they engage you first, for the moment.
[x] scan the vegetation
[x] scan the pink mist
[x] scan the rubble, trying to determin if it can be blasted away, and if so how safe it would be to do so.
[x] scan the lower left corner of the room, where there is a tunnel we can only get into with a morph ball.
[x] do not engage the Gleemers unless they engage you first, for the moment.
Plant and fungus forms have no genetic markers in common, save for within several clearly artificial strings. In addition to three megaphyte species, there are at least eight macroscopic encrusting species, nineteen microscopic ones, and five endosymbionts, as well as numerous species of insect and microfaunal commensualists. Species appear to have reached a balanced, climax community within this contained environment.
Aeroplanktonic organism feeds on shed skin fragments, sulfuric gases, and other airborne biogenic waste, and also practices photosynthesis. Genetic analysis reveals that this organism shares over ninety percent of its genome with the stalklike macrophytes; the two are from the same homeworld. Nutrient content of the aeroplankton indicates that it could serve as a reliable food source for larger filter feeding organisms.
[x] Carefully make your way towards the tunnel and cave-in to investigate them.
...
You carefully slide down the stone wall, armcannon at the ready. When you approach the tunnel entrance, a small swarm of geemers boil out of it and scuttle angrily toward you, but you have the wave beam ready.
(rolled 27)
The first shot passes through the leading geemer, leaving it dead, and strikes the next, which tumbles on its back and twitches before dying. The second instantly kills another pair, passing through their tightly-packed bodies with ease. None of them even get close to you. Crouching at the tunnel entrance, you fire another few shots down along the burrow. The bolts pass through the small bends in the tunnel, frying more geemers before they can emerge.
Rolling inside of the tunnel leads you to a dead meteemer; killed by the wave beam, but still blocking the way. You easily blow it away with a few turbo-bombs, and roll down to the bottom of the tunnel. A missile expansion is buried under a pile of geemer corpses.
Missile Expansion Acquired (missile ammo 64/65)
You leave the burrow and make your way across the room, cannon still at the ready. A few geemers leap at you out of the vegetation, but even a split second's warning is enough to keep you safe given the speed and firepower of a turbo-charged wave beam (rolled 61). On the far side of the mound, you scan the fallen rocks.
Cave In said:
Large basalt boulders are too large and tightly packed to be destroyed by current weaponry. Heavy ordinance, on the scale of a power bomb, will be required. There is little risk of causing additional cave-ins at this location with such a detonation; everything that can collapse already has.
You mark the cave-in with a bendezium icon on your map (not technically correct, but functionally the same for you) and begin to return the way you came. As you turn, however, you notice something wedged just underneath the largest boulder at the bottom. Kneeling down beside it, you inspect more carefully. A data limpet. Similar to the one you found in the Veranda.
Aledai-2 said:
Geemer. Preciously vulgar. One can kill and kill and kill, and there will always be more. I don't know if they were brought to so many worlds on purpose or by accident. I think it was purpose. Wherever one goes, there will be geemers to kill, geemer eggs to crush, geemer hearts and brains to ingest.
They say that the Lords and Ladies are the galaxy's truest biophiles. We are. They say that our first tool use was the flora and fauna that we subordinated. I am sure they are right. The geemer runs from me, and I feel my ancestry singing to me from inside my bones and humming along my nerves and muscles. The geemer repopulates, I kill more, and a deep contentment flows forth from within the nucleii of each of my cells. No one else loves life in all its forms like the chozo. No one else hungers for it so. We have lost something, in creating separations between ourselves and nature. Hopefully, these new augmentations will help us regain it.
Many other creatures swim and scurry and fly in this arcology. We may requisition a breeding population of some from the Patrician, before we go. Or not. There is life elsewhere. Endless variety. Fecund and vulgar and waiting for its purpose. Wherever we go, we will find it. It can never hide from us forever.
You return to the entrance, and look out over the room once more. That log data. Something about it just...you don't know. Obviously, the member of whatever chozo culture or offshoot it was that left that limpet had a very different interpretation of the philosophies you were raised with. Perverse, even. But there's something else that you can't quite put your finger on. Something more worrying.
You'll have time to think about this later. For now, you return to the Arcology Hub and try the upper door on the left, the one labeled as the Core. Behind it is a long, narrow hallway that ends in another door. And behind that, well...
The growths vaguely resemble the orange rockleech, but many times thicker, and writhing slightly in place in a manner suggestive of internal musculature, leaving little wakes across the steaming hot water. In the larger shaft, the main biomass quivers and jiggles in place, each of its many compartments pulsating like lungs or hearts with a chorus of tiny squeals and gasps.
GO:
[] Write in
SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.
Organism is attached to the rockleech network, exchanging liquid material with nodes throughout the entire facility. The organism's genetics are extremely heterogeneous, some cells containing DNA from hundreds or even thousands of different sources, while others encode only what appears to be the organism's core genome. The nodules' internal structures are gelatinous and mutable, and each has at least one muscular aperture.
Outer skin is extremely durable, and the high metabolic rate of the organism suggests a rapid healing factor. Heavy ordinance will be required to damage it, and a continuously high rate of damage will be necessary for termination.
