Shiver Leviathan
"Most of the biosphere is void. A wet desert five thousand meters deep. Life at the surface has its time in the sun and then it dies. The dead snow down to the bottom to feed strange life. "But in that void is also form. Empty space actual, soaring black and silent. Silent in an ocean full of voices. The unsound after the bitten end of a scream. "They are complete. A compact with teeth: one shiver, many sharks. Males ride their mother until they leave to ride the wife. The riders reap the small prey. Mother-wife takes the main. It needs a cold, cruel will to make hunger patient. But in the desert of the water they are always hungry and always patient. "On Earth there was a place called Point Nemo, the furthest from all land. There was nothing in it. So they dropped dead satellites there. "Perhaps, at Proteus' Nemo, the ocean learned to eat what it was given. Perhaps there is a hunger in them for prey from the stars." —NoA Node GCI-ZZ-AHI1, "Sonar Dream"
Overview
"Most of the biosphere is void. A wet desert five thousand meters deep. Life at the surface has its time in the sun and then it dies. The dead snow down to the bottom to feed strange life. "But in that void is also form. Empty space actual, soaring black and silent. Silent in an ocean full of voices. The unsound after the bitten end of a scream. "They are complete. A compact with teeth: one shiver, many sharks. Males ride their mother until they leave to ride the wife. The riders reap the small prey. Mother-wife takes the main. It needs a cold, cruel will to make hunger patient. But in the desert of the water they are always hungry and always patient. "On Earth there was a place called Point Nemo, the furthest from all land. There was nothing in it. So they dropped dead satellites there. "Perhaps, at Proteus' Nemo, the ocean learned to eat what it was given. Perhaps there is a hunger in them for prey from the stars." —NoA Node GCI-ZZ-AHI1, "Sonar Dream"
Gameplay attributes
No species-specific gameplay effect found; values use the engine's large- or small-creature default template.
AI profile
- Bite: 250, Physical, ~40 m radius
PDA Analysis
No numbered analysis sections in the PDA entry.
Related Creatures
More entries from the same ecological slice.
BFJ
, the behemoth finger-legged jelly. A massive specimen with no Earthly analog.
Cerathecan
"Our PDAs point to organisms like the cerathecan and exclaim 'behold: the road not taken'. On Earth, seed shrimp are tiny slime-dwellers; on Proteus they grow huge. But just as easy life in our decontaminated bases deafens us to the call of Proteus, easy analogies blind us to the truth. The map from Earth is not only wrong, so is its basic dogma. Evolution does not follow roads here." —Anita Gottschall, *The Way Away Home* *Exile cerathecan*, the horn-cupped exile. A mysterious carnivore and deposit feeder with no clear Earth analog except the tiny ostracod (seed shrimp).
Collector Leviathan
Enormous cephalopod predator (tentatively *Tyrannoteuthis phobocoeus*, tyrant squid of fearful curiosity). Feeds on hard-shelled, heavily defended prey. Solitary but highly intelligent. Likely a deep-sea creature.