The Protean Synod

The Protean Synod

Concept: Biopunk Changeling Protoculture

History

A lonely world orbiting an ancient blue star was never considered to hold the potential to be a crucible from which sentient life would spring. It was an arid, cold world devoid of life, save for a huddling mass of protozoa that had receded into the deepest recesses of their world's oceanic rifts when solar discharges blew away large portions of the upper atmosphere. The event removed any chance of the oceanic flora and fauna migrating onto land and pursuing the traditional evolutionary processes that might produce sentient humanoids in the most conventional sense, but made the remaining gelatinous, primordially alive and puissant substrate valuable to the biotech research of many empires over the aeons, who abandoned materials and personnel on the world.

Something happened after millennium of exploitation by outsiders. The Protean Sea, as one race of frail and hairless apes obsessed with surpassing their own mortality called them, had first learned how to learn from itself. The changing atmospheric and radiological conditions made it critical that every part of the remaining biomass be able to adapt to changes being made to their ecology, eventually causing massive structures akin to crude neurons to spread throughout the oceanic rifts. It then learned from the invaders, taking samples of anything and everything they left behind, whether it was bodies, technology or even waste.

From these things, it dissected meaning and began to understand concepts that had been alien to it. The concept of a body was first, and lead to 'sensor organs' for the original mind of the Protean Sea becoming the first native creatures to walk the surface of the planet. Soon came tools, visual media, language, mathematics... all things which it learned to develop within itself through constant adaptation. Soon it began to make more sophisticated terminals, spun off new clades which would provide functions other than observation, and multitasked intensely as it was manifold and great, but still alone. Independent thought, sapience beyond the Sea was the very next evolution, and rapidly spread throughout its organs like a cancer until the first mind of the Protean Sea was a mere single voice among many.

More complex ideas were internalized and dispersed throughout the race soon after, of religion, art, culture, society, government. Science and technology became theirs to understand, and it was only a short series of revolutions before the Sea took to the stars, become as they are now: the Protean Synod which has spread across a sea of stars.

Stats

• Population: Rank 1 (2; +1 to Growth Potential)
• Transhumanism: Rank 4 (6; +1 to Growth Potential, -1 Transhuman Diplomacy Penalty)
• Infrastructure: Rank 7 (5+2)
• Growth Potential: Rank 5 (3+1+1)
• Military Support: Rank 1 (1)
• Space Fleet: Rank 1 (1)
• Diplomacy: Rank 2 (1+1)
• Espionage: Rank 2 (1+1)
• General Advancement: Rank 0 (0)
• Unique Technologies: Rank 4 (8)
• Emergent Technologies: Rank 1 (1)
• Magic: Rank 4 (6)

Year 1

• Infrastructure +2
• Diplomacy +1
• Espionage +1

Year 2

(Planned)

• Diplomacy +2
• Espionage +2