Some Planets & Their Pantropes

Inspired by these:

https://terminalvelocity-rpg.blogspot.com/2021/11/ten-thousand-empty-tombs-hominids.html

https://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2022/08/fixing-eclipse-phase.html

http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/09/planets.html

Pantrope: A lifeform adapted for life on an alien planet. For this post we'll be looking specifically at human pantropes.

1. Boreas

The Planet: Similar in makeup to a planet-sized Europa - a crust of ice and slush over an ocean of saltwater tens of kilometers deep. This ocean and its floor are rich in radioactive materials, and the planet's home to a biosphere based on radiotrophic plankton-analogues. Passage through Boreas's frozen crust is made by enormous submersibles equipped with heated rams called icedivers. Water and the spoils of the icedivers are pumped up through a space elevator to the orbiting station Khione - a key refueling site for the nexus of quint corridors that meet in Boreas's solar system.

Boreas's surface and Khoine are controlled by a frontier management cartel of several families who live in perpetual and credible fear of a crackdown from Earth and being sold out by each other. Beneath the crust it's a free-for-all of icedivers and outposts, where juicy contracts can kick off a petty war that'll never be known outside the ice-cold depths.

The Pantrope: Homo crassicorium is a later development in the colonization of Boreas - one made to save on the cost and mass of radiation shielding on icedivers rather than to enable human flourishing on the planet. Compared to baseline homo sapiens, crassicorium individuals have thick grey skin and blubber, highly-oxygenated tissues, and minimal hair. Their outer layers of skin and blubber are not properly cells at all, but rather a dead, flexible, radiation-resistant shell which is unfortunately prone to sloughing off in sheets.

Initial production of homo crassicorium included mental alterations to reduce negative reactions to monotony and cramped conditions, but this also made them less responsive to work incentives and punishments, and so these alterations were violently discontinued after the first generation. A small population of first gen crassicorium survives in a monastery compound at Boreas's north pole, which receives a handful of visitors a year.

2. Logi

The Planet: Rich in hydrocarbons, which are formed by abiotic processes in its mantle and leak onto the surface in tarry lakes. The planet's titanic autotrophs feed off these hydrocarbons, and wage slow war on each other in competing, planet-wide fire regimes. Its comparatively puny animals are known across human space for their cuteness.

The Pantrope: Homo acaustus, which is covered in insulating scales filled with air pockets, similar in appearance to a pangolin's, and has filters in the nose and lungs to reduce the danger of smoke inhalation. H. Acaustus also possess the ability to enter a state of torpor, wherein their body temperature and need for oxygen lower dramatically.

3. Kapu Mate

The Planet: A super-Earth on the lower end of the scale, and quite a bit closer to the galactic core than Earth. Kapu Mate was the victim of a gamma ray burst tens of thousands of years ago, which kicked off a mass extinction event and sterilized the planet's surface. To the current day what remains of its biosphere is dominated by an organism somewhat like both a fungus and coral, which evolved to fill the niche of primary decomposer after the microbes which previously took that role were wiped out.

Kapu Mate's off the beaten track with no quint corridor of its own, accessible only by lepton-shifting from a system that does have its own corridor for a couple years. It's home to just shy of two thousand researchers and enthusiasts, though that number could drop significantly in the near future.

While studying the planet's dominant organism, one of those researchers discovered what she believed to be a message encoded in one of its sub-cellular structures (roughly analogous to our junk DNA). Pointing to this supposed message, as well as the pyramid-shaped collectives formed by the organism, the researcher formed a cult which held the organism to be the artificial creation of a civilization which was destroyed by the gamma ray burst - itself a weapon of some shadowy nemesis. This civilization was credited with universal wisdom and benevolence, as well as granting intelligence and compassion to primordial humanity.

Using her senior position and charisma, the researcher brought many Kapu Mateans on board, and falsified reports back to wider humanity so as to deflect interest and suspicion. Trapped with the powerful cult, dissenters and disbelievers have had their spirit all but broken.

The Pantrope: Homo sollavator, which compared to homo sapiens is short and lanky, with dense bones and muscles, and metallic, very UV-reflective skin and eyes. Even adapted to Kapu Mate as it is, H. sollavator still requires a breather to survive the low level of oxygen on the planet, as with the loss of most of its autotrophs the main source of the stuff for a long time has been UV release of it from the oceans.

4. Narcissus

The Planet: Not really a planet at all, but a big moon, and a privately-owned one at that - at least until the frontier shrinks once more. It is the property and home of an unimaginably-wealthy antimatter production baron, as well as all his "children". Narcissus has had its many valleys, tunnels, and craters sealed, filled with atmosphere, and populated entirely with life derived from that antimatter baron's genes - orange melanin-based "plants" are grazed by blond "deer", which are themselves hunted by the moon's manticores. The baron has not made an appearance in many years, and treasure hunters rumour that the key to acquiring his fortune lies somewhere on the moon.

The Pantrope: Homo martikhora, or Narcissian Manticores, are pseudo-clones of Narcissus's owner, modified for semi-quadrupedalism, fur, tails, and obligate carnivory - made to be its ecosystem's apex predator. Their ability to produce certain hormones necessary for proper brain functioning was removed, so they are dependent on eating the brains of humans or other Narcissian life to prevent cognitive degradation.

5. Ogun

The Planet: Parched, Martian, rich in iron, prone to horrendous lightning- and dust-storms, but still home to its own peculiar sort of life. This life is able to draw power from the lightning, often perching in the branches of fulgurite "trees" to recharge their attack- and defense-glands.

Structures on Ogun are built like tanks, squat and with long, angled sides to deflect the worst of its wind-blown shrapnel.

The Pantrope: Homo carcinocorpus, which is properly speaking not a pantrope or a genetically-modified species of humanity at all.

The initial expedition to Ogun's solar system was meant to scout it out and set up a base of operations before the main fleet arrived to construct the far end of a quint corridor - only the main fleet never showed up. Supplies which were meant to be restocked ran low, and infrastructure meant to sustain them for only a few years was forced well beyond its operational limit.

Having gotten very good at "good enough", the scientists of the Ogun expedition came up with a radical solution. They stripped themselves and their people to the bare minimum, a brain and some bits, and implanted themselves in the bodies of an Ogunite species with the closest biochemical match they could find - which sort of resembled copper-carapaced crabs the size of horses - along with cybernetic control and digestive devices. Of the 70% of the expedition who had lasted up til that point, only 40% survived the operation and acclimation to their new forms.

When wider humanity finally came back to check on what became of Ogun they found a culture that had grown bitter and militant. The Ogunites took their visitors captive, at last constructed their quint corridor, and returned in force. They fought Earth to a stalemate, seizing a clutch of systems networked around Ogun as their tributaries in the process.

6. Tartarus

The Planet: A near-rogue planet on a highly eccentric orbit around a red giant. Barren, with only a trace atmosphere, Tartarus would be totally disregarded were it not for the fact that it bears the marks of intelligent alteration down to its very core.

It's irregularly dotted with holes, about one for every 50 square kilometers of surface area, and most only go down 700 meters or so. A rare few connect to a larger network of tunnels - a much, much larger network. Seismic tests, conductivity tests, pretty much anything but fiber optic cameras or your own two eyes return results that should be impossible: empty voids in tubes as wide as a pin, signals bouncing off flat surfaces as if they're curved, masses the size of Australia beating like hearts, and so on. Exploring in person presents its own challenges: pockets of corrosive gas, wild temperature fluctuations, unstable ground - everyone who's been in the place knows of someone lost in its maddening passages.

The deepest a team has reached to date is 160 kilometers. Of the initial thirty members of that team, only two returned.

The Pantrope: Homo barathrum - not typically born or grown, but rather converted from expert cavers and others with useful experience for exploring the confines of Tartarus by way of gene-inserting viruses and rebirth tanks.

H. Barathrum has enlarged eyes and ears, a keen sense of echolocation, the ability to enter a state of cryptobiosis like a tardigrade, and each individual has a unique pattern of holes in their neck that produces a distinct fluting song when the stagnant breezes of Tartarus pass through them.