d-Infinity

View Original

Mutant Future- The Ecology of a Skyscraper 2

Ruined-Skyscraper-2.jpg

About two weeks after the pigmen settled in, they were wiped out by a fungal pathogen from the basement. Had they not constantly tried to burn the fungi, the pigmen might have survived for a while longer. The power vacuum was very short as the squeelers the pigmen were hunting arrived and through the corpses into the basement (they have chemical warfare suits) and made peace with the humans down there.

Three weeks and a window cracked on the lowest level of the plants' floors. It shattered from the water pressure and half that level drained. The seal producing plants quickly replaced it, but not until half their number either washed away or suffered dehydration. Leo died but not its partner. This has had a rather negative reaction from the avians as Leo was the more personable plant.

The tiny aquatics had a good month (plant matter in quantity to eat) and a bad month (the goats came back and restored the line in the duracrete).

Strange ice formations that give off fly ash have started growing on the windows on the lowest of the avian floors. Nothing is known other than they melt slightly in warm weather.

But all of that pales to what happened to the shadow keepers. A party of scavengers blasted them with radiation in an attempt to stop the destruction of the roads and buildings. It worked but not in the way they wanted. Most of the termites died and the queen and king mutated. Now they are much larger, 5' and 3' long respectively, and produced weird mutant offspring that could survive in sunlight. Each of the nymphs had a few random mutation (d2 to d4+1) as well as Gigantism and Aberrant Form (xenomorphism). They were no longer dust eaters and didn't even consume minerals anymore. They grazed lichens on the upper part of the skyscraper. The royal pair and their offspring all moved up there, burrowing into the carbon "skeleton" produced an almost honeycomb within it. This made the flying creatures unhappy but they are not willing to slay all of the termites as they understand how dangerous the lichens were becoming. Still, there was a battle brewing between the shadow keepers and sapient avians- too little space was between their territories.

Now that the termites were gone, they were replaced by snails with shells 6" in diameter. Their slime decays slowly and the surfaces they cover were becoming hazardous.