#sabatria

[luwianskies]

I’ve got 3 story-universes to introduce here at some point, but I’m not sure which one to tackle first... and I want to do at least one, since I’m off to do an internship soon and am going to be busy again. Which one should I indulge first?

-Salmara

-Luwia

-Sabatria

...or maybe I could add  more about the ones already here...hmmm...

Hopefully soon, I’ll get something up here!

[luwianskies]

Sabatria

As requested, here is an introduction to Sabatria! Warning : wall of text incoming.

Sabatria is a world I named after a particular phenomenon that occurs within the world. 

(more on that later)

The world itself is what I call a ‘sky-world’, essentially a world that is mostly sky with floating landmasses in pieces moving around at random. They are held up in this endless sky by a combination of powerful electromagnetic fields, and the fact that objects beyond a certain mass/weight in this world all float by some ...weird unknown wiggly-wobbly physics reason that-I-don’t-have-to-explain-because-it’s-made-up-and-I-said-so...

The electromagnetic fields interact with the landmasses through the iron/other metals content of the ‘islands’  floating about, which makes the fields their own kind of ‘current’ in this vast empty sky. This means that the landmasses do not move in predictable patterns because the electromagnetic fields not only move them around ‘horizontally’ but also vertically, depending on the strength of any given field, and how the fields interact with each other.

The fields also have another, sometimes devastating, consequence : they can produce terrifyingly powerful storms that have been known to tear through entire landmasses and break them into smaller pieces. And since there is no ‘ground’ beneath the floating islands, and no mountains to affect the flow of the winds, the storms can simply go on raging for days and days at a time, all while moving around. This is without even considering the damage done by the lightning and debris being tossed around within the storms. The populations of inhabited islands often have to strike a balance between living on the surface of the islands and needing to dig into them to make shelters inside the rocky centers : dig to deep and too wide, and the next storm might more easily tear your island to pieces. Don’t dig in enough, and the next storm will take all your stuff, and possibly yourself, and toss you ‘overboard’.

Looking downwards from the edge of one of the islands, you might get a glimpse of an ever-deepening, dark mass of variegated clouds, and sometimes the flash of storms, but most terrifying to see are the ‘things’ that somehow manage to live deeper inside the never-ending atmosphere. They are often huge, come in bizarre shapes and are all believed to eat anything that falls off of the landmasses.

And sometimes, they come up from the lower cloud levels during the mightiest of storms. You do not want to be near when they do. 

Thankfully, the storms that can do the kind of damage mentioned above tend to occur more at lower ‘altitudes’, and typically the higher in the atmosphere one lives, the fewer the storms, and the more sunlight you get. Which is good because in these sunlit places, plants grow, which means both food and a chance at more stable ground to live on.

The plant and wildlife of this world revolves around two lifestyles : aerial and arboreal. If you can’t climb or fly... you don’t live long. Most plants have 2 reproductive strategies : flying seeds and spreading through vines and roots, and in every direction possible. The flying seeds can fly for a remarkably long time without dying before they find new landmasses to spread to, and the vines/roots also tend to be remarkably mobile : if a new piece of land floats around long enough anywhere near a vined island, they will eventually reach out to grab and secure it to the primary landmass. This means that landmasses in the upper atmosphere especially can grow to be quite large in 3 dimensions, sometimes with nothing but vines/roots holding them together. This in turn makes them prime real estate for anybody looking for somewhere to settle in the sunlight and with few chances of being blown away by too-strong winds or storms.

The only other known landmasses known to get bigger are the ones that, shockingly, have enough water on them to make suitable habitats for (drumroll!) corals! And these corals help reinforce the structures of the landmasses by growing into cracks in bedrock. Mind you, these corals don’t live and grow quite like ones we’re familiar with, but they are similar enough that the structures they create are analogous and strong enough to keep together the landmasses.

Corals are no the only microorganism to live in this sky-world : they are without a doubt the most abundant kind of life, most of it free-floating every where. Lichens, being the hardy organisms they are, also fare well and can be eaten as food. Sometimes they can amass into giant ‘sheets’ that get tossed around, torn apart, twisted and blown away by the winds and electromagnetic fields. Siphonophore- like strings of organisms can be seen being blown about from a great distance, and they are often appreciated as opportune food. Giant jellyfish-like things kept afloat by large bags of gas can sometimes be seen, but they tend to be rare as they are easy targets for flying predators going above them. Despite being relatively nutritiously poor as food, a large enough sky-jelly still provides access to big chunks of food and to very light gasses, which can be collected to make balloon-ships. The smaller ones can sometimes live as ‘passive predators’ that float aimlessly and try to eat anything smaller than them that hey come across, but these too are rare. Their tentacles are prized however, for their potent venom, and some island deliberately to to attract them by offering food and chopping off tentacles in exchange. They don’t seem to mind.

The wildlife is either entirely capable of flight, gliding or decent climbing. So hyper-mobile joints and long limbs are very favored for everything that lives in this world. Bats abound, birds too, and lots of animals we normally not in flight have adapted to gliding or climbing very well. Insects are the main source of protein, and most of those can also fly very well. Most of the mammals that live here are also marsupial. Gotta love that pouch! It’s a lifesaver for most juvenile of any species.

Which brings us to the people! Long-limbed, possibly also marsupial (haven’t decided yet) and with strong grips. In this world, humans never really descended from the trees, we just got better at finding and settling on the biggest landmasses. Open spaces like the Savannah don’t really exist here. (The most noticeable feature of these humans is their feet : having never really stopped needing to climb, the human big toes is still very thumb-like and turned sideways a bit to make it easier to grab things like ropes and vines or roots for balance.)

Because powerful electromagnetic fields are so prevalent and ubiquitous in this world, the ability to detect them, even minutely, is common across all life-forms. This includes humans, and this widespread ‘6th sense’ is crucial to surviving the onslaught of storms in this world. On average, this is little more than a passive perception of the fields, but it can be a lifesaver to know when a storm is coming, even f you don’t know when.

WHICH BRINGS US TO... Sabatria, and its two most common varieties.

‘Wild-type Sabatria’ is, like lichen, a partnership of two different micro-organisms that produced something hardier and much greater than the sum of its parts. I admit to not being sure what they are exactly beyond that, but a least one of the partners is something like a cable bacteria (see the ‘cable bacteria’ Wikipedia page, along with geobacter metallireducens and shewanella oneidensis for references) and the other is something between a slime mold and a fungus.

The combination of these two make an organism than has one particularly special property : it generates an electrical charge, and through that electrical flow, can generate electromagnetic fields of its own. Sabatria therefore is capable of not only generating its own fields, it can also detect them around it through their interactions. The electricity it generates sometimes even makes visible sparks when in a large enough quantity, and a ‘mass’ of sabatria gathered into a ball (slime mold!) looks like a little black ball that occasional flashes tiny star-like moving dots in and on the surface of it.

Granted, since this is a lichen-like organism, this means that it can’t do much on it’s own beyond find a decent spot with the nutrients it needs (mostly iron and other metals) and just...stay there. Doing this, however, is not always the best strategy since, sabatria is also edible to many mutli-cellular organisms. And sometimes the electricity it generates is just not a strong enough deterrent for such organisms smart enough to simply wait for the sabatria to use up its charge and then eat it. Sabatria therefore rarely aggregates into such easily targeted forms, usually staying a relatively diffuse substance that like to hide in wet ground. So landmasses that have a lot of water, be it in the form of puddles or ‘underground’ sources tend to have some amount of sabatria in it.

No, sabatria’s best and most genius survival strategy is by making its two-way partnership into a three-way partnership with the larger multi-cellular organisms that might otherwise be its predators. Sabatria consumed as food is doomed, but if it manages to get into a body by another means (such as an open wound) wild-type sabatria then adopts its ‘triadic’ strategy : it will find its way around the body by disguising itself to the immune system, and start making connections with the nervous system.

Despite the fear of this creating a ‘cordyceps’-like situation, triadic sabatria does not do much to influence what it lives in beyond giving its host a taste for metals. Remember, sabatria lives in places with a decent a mount of water. Humid places. Dark places, out of sight of predators. And what’s more wet or humid and dark than the inside of a living body?

The craving for metals is the trade-off it makes with it’s new environment (the living body) for all the benefits that it gives to the organisms it inhabits : metals, especially iron, is its food. It needs it. And it turns out that its host have a decent amount of it! This can, however, risk giving its host anemia if it consumes too much of the iron in the body, but this is also why it gives them a craving for eating metals : they both need it, and in this new partnership, they both need it badly.

And what benefits does triadic sabatria offer? Glad you asked!

Sabatria generates electricity and electromagnetic fields. It also detects them MUCH better and more precisely than the ‘normal’ 6th sense of multi-cellular organisms can. By connecting itself to the nervous system of its host, it exponentially increases their sensitivity to electromagnetic fields and charges, and even generates electrical charges and magnetic fields that the host can manipulate and discharge for its own use. 

Hot damn! Move over midichlorians, triadic sabatria just made a human that can shoot lightning from their fingers and move shit with their minds! (sort of, not quite, but the joke was funny...).

Consider then, in a world where magnetic fields produce storms that can tear continents apart, the benefit of being able to detect the oncoming storms MUCH SOONER  than everybody else can. Consider being able to interact with theses environmental fields and used them to sail or fly even better across the expanses of sky between landmasses. Consider being able to give an electric shock to anything that tries to eat you. Consider being sensitive to the electromagnetic fields of other beings around you, and then you can see how beneficial triadic sabatria is to any organism.

Granted, not everything that sabatria infiltrates into survives this invasion : if any given potential hosts immune system is just too efficient at weeding out intruders, then the sabatria simply can’t survive,and if it still tries to stay in the host, it can kill them through their own hyperactive immune response, or through anemia.There is no guarantee that the 3-way partnership will succeed at establishing itself. However, if it does, then sabatria has no issue with contributing to the preservation of its new ecosystem : if floating particles of sabatria in various tissues spots something in the body that is obviously causing problems, it will kill it without hesitation if the immune system doesn’t. Other bacteria simply don’t stand a chance against an electrical enemy. If even this strategy fails, some sabatria cells will deliberately reveal themselves to the immune system while attaching itself to (or swallowing up entirely) an invading bacteria in order to stimulate an immune response. The immune system reacts to it, and clears out the sacrificed sabatria AND the invading bacteria it was attached to. Sabatria likes its ecosystem alive and healthy, because it benefits the most from its host that way. Enlightened self-interest, as seen by a micro-organism!

So what you end up with is a situation where is particular individuals within any given population, human or otherwise, that can do shit nobody else can, and tend not to die of disease, can warn others of dangerous storms and detect big predators nearby, can travel easier and in a more controlled manner,  but sometimes want to eat metal. 

Also, they tend to be more sensitive to the emotional states of those around them (because brain activity is electrical, and travels throughout the nervous system) AND can even at times detect hints of illness in others, which tend to give them an edge in measuring how best to interact with those around them. 

That’s a goddamn mutant you got there! Look at them! They’ve got superpowers!

Needless to say, they are popular and desirable for breeding the next generation of any given species. And sabatria absolutely DOES get into everything with a nervous system, a quite a few who don’t have one, as long as they provide access to iron/metals. This means that anything that has the triadic sabatria in it has the potential to interact electromagnetically with other things that also have it in their system.

For the people who live in this world, and have to talk about organisms that carry sabatria, the terminology is fairly uniform : anything that is partnered with sabatria, regardless of species, is called a ‘sabaean X’ (a sabaean tree, a sabaean bat, etc.) save for people. They are simply called ‘sabaean’ (she’s sabaean, my mother is sabaean, a sabaean, etc.). The ‘condition’ of being partnered with sabatria is called ‘sabaenism’.

Ok, sciencing over. Now, on to the cultural/social aspects!

...tomorrow.