### Overview Sidilico is a large, dried up desert world rich in both salt and life. ### Geology Sililico has salty seas and moderate geological activity with massive aquifers under the surface. In general, expect a xeric climate. The world has one large inland ocean in the south, which acts like a massive oasis. Much of the water life uses comes from underground near mountains and within scarps. Sidilico was once covered in ocean, but said ocean dried out over millions upon millions of years with their aging star drying their world up. Sidilico’s complex life is on the decline, though its resilience has given fruit in the form of the [[Aveterriat]] who would from this dying world come to self-awareness and ultimately interstellar civilization. Before we discuss that, we must first discuss Sidilico itself. Sidilico is a super earth with gravity 1.5 times that of our own world and is a far drier a place and rich in rare earth metals. Life on Sidilico came from a time when Sidilico was much wetter. The locales of Sidilico include vast underground networks of water to numerous eroding spires chiseled out over the eons along with the volcanic marshes, sprawling plains of dried up seas and isolated salty, marshy seas which acted as biomes in of themselves, multiple explosions of biodiversity ended up occurring. There is only one large inland ocean on Sidilico and a several large salty seas with various volcanic marshes that dote the planet thanks to tidal stress caused by its large spherical moon which causes periodic meteor showers that can be seen from the surface of Sidilico's pale orange deserts. It is these volcanic marshes which would act as a multitude of laboratories for evolution on this world. The relative lack of liquid that is free led to life that led to ecosystems where many creatures would consume clay, far more so than on earth with whole ecosystems built on clay absorbing, deep rooted flora. Overall, Sidilico is warmer than earth, but not crushingly so; many parts of the world are too. The southern part of the planet is disproportionately wetter than the northern parts thanks to the 35-degree axial tilt of the planet which has made seasonal changes somewhat radical thanks to the atmosphere not being that thick and low in humidity. Like many desert worlds, Sidilico’s temperature swings are rapid and have a huge range. Lithovoric life became complex on Sidilico and pretty much every animal (the Aveterriat being of no exception) on the world has rocks and biominerals as part of their diets, even the apex predators. The mineral rich caves of Sidilico have far more biodiversity than earth's caves with complex ecosystems interconnected through volcanic tubes, hot salty marsh regions and densely packed mesas full of long, paste filled globular chemotrophs with deeply entrenched veins acting as the life line for a whole different clade of sessile life. Of which the lower order creatures of the world feed off when not being preyed upon by higher order creatures. Chemotrophs, Autotrophs and Heterotrophs are all present on Sidilico. All of them require a significant amount inorganic materials to survive. Since all the water on Sidilico is highly salty, life on Sidilico has a universal tolerance to salty water and do not suffer from dehydration from drinking salty water the way many land-based life forms on Earth do (Life on Sidilico is remarkably efficient with their salt filtering and use, with whole organ systems dedicated to its filtering, allocation and disposal). Overall, Sidilico’s biosphere cultivated an ecosystem of highly resilient life forms that dwell on clays and salts. ### Ecology The plant life of Sidilico is generally a bright, pale green in color with violet colorations coming out in the cold seasons. Forests full of dark trees filled with teal globules exist around salty marshlands, shifting color to match the temperature of on a regular basis. Halophilliac life is the norm on this world, with biochemistries that are hard to adapt to our biochemistry without being damaging to us due to life being so damn salty. It isn’t completely inedible, but it isn’t pleasant. Eating the bulbs from one of those teal trees will leave you quite thirsty after vomiting repeatedly for instance. There were frequent extinction events on Sidilico, usually due to asteroid impacts in their asteroid filled star system. A binary gas giant/brown dwarf system in the outer star system is responsible for much of the chaos which inflected the inner planetary system for eons. Asteroid impacts as so common on Sidilico that they are a part of every day life. There's always some meteor shower going on. If the frequency of meteorites was not enough, there's also the somewhat chaotic weather caused primarily by the slower rotation of Sidilico and the cold/hot pockets that aggregate. Wind storms get extremely violent on Sidilico and the chaotic temperature has lead to life living in cave systems within rifts which often aggregate deep cutting underground streams. Despite such dangerous natural environment, Sidilico is still habitable. Oxygen, Neon, Argon and Carbon are what the atmosphere is made of, and the atmosphere is thicker than Earth's. This thicker atmosphere along with small magnetosphere act as a shield against asteroids. A small moon captured from the outer system orbits tediously, which has affected the orbit of Sidilico slightly. This world acts as somewhat a barrier, but is simply not a great enough barrier. It is tidally stressed and ejects plumes frequently, volcanic activity also shot up with the introduction of this world which orbits Sidilico on 8 hours a day. It's a scary moon with potentially apocalyptic consequences for life on Sidilico (as if the world dying as is not being bad enough). It's been around for a several million years and is responsible indirectly for causing sapience on Sidilico in the form of the Aveterriat. Various vein filled organisms distribute highly scarce water from underground aquifers and various sand trap creatures exist, mainly in highly bio-dense regions of the world. All life can separate salt from water, which is important since a lot of exoskeletons and teeth use salt as part of their alloy. Crystal backs, a family of middle level organisms for instance, use salt crystal excrement as building material for shelter and armor. There is in many regions a salty desert or a volcanic volcanic desert world with massive sprawls of salt flats lead to salty seas which have hit an equilibrium that kept them from drying further. It is not much shock that life on this world gained such an affinity to salt. The waters of this world are often a teal color instead of blue due to the prevalence of huge colonies of halogenic creatures aggregated, of whom act as the bottom level of the world's food web. It is a harsh and unrelenting world where most life tend to shift between being predators or scavengers, it's rare for life to specialize into being a carnivore eating live flesh. Massive mold sucking creatures even, often take advantage of dead bodies that get stuck in the slosh lands. Said mold suckers are fed upon by parasites frequently, who also eat other parasites. This salty slosh hosts all sorts of tiny critters in it, like scoopers who are "diggers" with fin scoops on the sides of their bodies or the hypo-varnish which appears in more desolate regions flowing in mineral veins as part of a shadow biosphere. This varnish acts as a second baseline ecosystem for the massive rock walkers and their many limbs which has mouths in their limbs. The trait of multiple mouths in limbs is the product of a radial gut instead of a linear gut, having multiple guts lined through their limbs and ultimately converging. However, the most notable species are the Aveterriat, who come from a family of hexapods whose limbs were used to climb amount caves and mountainous terrain. The Aveterriat species (and related sub-species) themselves are the distant descendants of cave dwelling omnivores. Over time they developed intelligence thanks to the evolutionary pressures being in a particularly turbulent time of volcanic activity near what amounts to a super volcano. The region is referred to as the Cauldron of Tribulation. Called such due to being a volcanic marsh in the northern parts of their world bountiful not only in food, but also in acute observations of the universe around them on the desolate world in which they live. ![[Cauldron of Tribulation]] ### Specimens ![[Tealtrunk]] #aveterriat #biosphere #Galactic-Region/Architect #desert #detailed #halophile #water-carbon #biosphere/Aresian #biochemistry/Carbon/Water/Halophillic #Star/Subgiant