Sporemonster Spotting, Part 2: Wooslet

[bloodyrosemccoy]

 

This is a wooslet.

 

Well, sort of.

 

And I’m not just talking in the sense that these Spore versions would actually look about as realistic to the actual aliens as Super Mario looks to us. But with the wooslets, there’s another problem: very few wooslets actually look even close to alike anymore.

 

It’s probably more accurate these days to say that the picture above is a wooslet template.

 

Back in the days before genetic engineering, wooslets did look like this. They had powerful legs that allowed them to bound like kangaroos over plains, and secreted a toxin that, in their pre-civilization days when predators were still an issue, sent most of those predators into a rather addled state. They were live-birthers and omnivores, and had a complex symbiotic relationship with the other sentient species on Keedra, the towees.

 

This relationship is the key to understanding the modern wooslet, because even though the original behavior has been extensively modified, the evolutionary psychology remains. In effect, the towee and the wooslet were prehistoric hunting partners, with quite complex strategies. The most prevalent theory suggests that formulating and communicating these strategies was what led to the sentience of these beings. But another interesting side effect may come from the way the strategies so often involved the wooslets being used as bait for animals who would mistake them for defenseless meals, leading to a surprise when the predators got close and were quickly picked off by towees: modern wooslets have much fewer inhibitions than most other sentient beings.

 

This, it turns out, has been a bit of a problem.

 

There is no doubt that wooslet science is filled with impressive breakthroughs, which are made in record time.   However, the reckless nature with which they test their ideas has caused a great deal of nervousness for species who are somewhat more wary of the possibly destructive technology. Wooslets are excitable and enthusiastic and have a very short fuse between idea and action. The planet of giant robots, for example, seems to have no purpose other than to entertain them. Their attempts to construct an artificial solar system have been confined to a nebula with no known inhabited planets, because they have in the past triggered supernovae. Their beneficent medical breakthroughs have been somewhat offset by their tendency to unleash monstrosities upon unsuspecting populations, either by accident or because the less friendly ones thought it might be interesting. A standard joke is that the five most dangerous words in The Galaxy are “Wouldn’t it be cool if …” uttered by a wooslet. Fortunately, their (very general) tendency to listen to towees means that these beings have a moderating effect on the wooslets’ enthusiastic enterprises.

 

But there is one thing that has gotten entirely out of hand for the towees, and that is the wooslets’ enthusiasm for modifying themselves. Wooslets quite enjoy the idea of mutant powers, and for generations they have been tinkering with themselves and their offspring, modifying according to taste. And now, after enough extensive tinkering, the wooslets have engineered themselves into a corner: most individual wooslets are their own subspecies, or even species, and are genetically incompatible. For a large number of the species, the only way to create a viable zygote is to engineer one. Most wooslets, then, are artificially grown in ectogenetic chambers.

 

The great variety of wooslets this creates—some barely recognizable—means that any unrecognized being in a Galactic setting may, in fact, be a wooslet. This has given The Galaxy another problem with classification, but it does provide an interesting variation to any population. The wooslets may be troublesome, but they sure make life interesting.

 

Also wooslets:




 

Comments

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Wooslets: the gnomes of the Doctors! 'verse?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! They take it above and beyond, too.

They're the bastard children of the diseased imaginations of myself and my brother. Wooslets have a long history from our childhood Pretendy Fun-Time Games, which means that a lot of late-night Silly Fugues have fueled them.

Plus, they're fun! I seem to have a lot of antagonists who aren't so much evil as just thoughtless. Wonder what that says about me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I always find the way the physiology and mentalities of your aliens affect each other fun to read about. :)

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

awesome! Wooslets are cute. I love that bit about "the five most dangerous words..."