Verglas
A frozen ocean moon circling a giant planet, sealed under a kilometres-thick ice shell that blocks nearly all sunlight. Tidal flexing keeps a dark, salty sea liquid beneath the ice, warmed and fed by mineral-rich vents on the seabed. Gravity is light and the cold water oxygen-poor, so life clings to the under-ice ceiling above and the vent fields far below.
19 species · 9 starting species
Starting species(9)
Frostgill
🐟 Fish
A pale, antifreeze-blooded fish that hangs beneath the ice ceiling, rasping chemosynthetic frost-films from its underside.
Rime-Mat
🦠 Microbe
A chemosynthetic film crusting the underside of the ice — the base of the whole food web.
Brine Lashworm
🪱 Worm
Anchors in pale clusters around the seabed vents, feeding through bacteria housed in its gut.
Gloom Jelly
🪼 Cnidarian
Drifts through the lightless water trailing luminous tentacles to lure and snare drifting prey.
Pale Scuttle
🦀 Crustacean
A blind, armored scavenger that picks over the dead raining down from the waters above.
Inkmantle
🐙 Cephalopod
A soft-bodied hunter that signals in pulses of light and jets through the dark after smaller swimmers.
Glint-Darter
🐬 Swimmer
Schools in flickering silver shoals through mid-water, sweeping up drifting motes of life.
Ice Limpet
🐌 Gastropod
Clamps to the ice ceiling with a broad foot, grazing the chemosynthetic frost-mats by touch.
Ice-Borer
🦫 Burrower
Melts narrow galleries up into the shell with a warm bore-tip, grazing films sealed inside the ice.
All species (19)
- FrostgillEvo 1A pale, antifreeze-blooded fish that hangs beneath the ice ceiling, rasping chemosynthetic frost-films from its underside.
- Rime-MatEvo 1A chemosynthetic film crusting the underside of the ice — the base of the whole food web.
- Brine LashwormEvo 1Anchors in pale clusters around the seabed vents, feeding through bacteria housed in its gut.
- Gloom JellyEvo 1Drifts through the lightless water trailing luminous tentacles to lure and snare drifting prey.
- Pale ScuttleEvo 1A blind, armored scavenger that picks over the dead raining down from the waters above.
- InkmantleEvo 1A soft-bodied hunter that signals in pulses of light and jets through the dark after smaller swimmers.
- Glint-DarterEvo 1Schools in flickering silver shoals through mid-water, sweeping up drifting motes of life.
- Ice LimpetEvo 1Clamps to the ice ceiling with a broad foot, grazing the chemosynthetic frost-mats by touch.
- Ice-BorerEvo 1Melts narrow galleries up into the shell with a warm bore-tip, grazing films sealed inside the ice.
- Shadow-DarterEvo 2Smaller, darker schools now dart through the perpetual twilight, relying on speed and a lack of visible features to evade predation.
- Drift LashwormEvo 2These worms have lost their strong anchoring to drift freely in the water column near the ice ceiling, carrying their symbiotic bacteria with them.
- Veridian FrostgillEvo 2A pale, toxin-resistant fish that hangs beneath the ice ceiling, its specialized gills filtering harmful compounds from the water while it rasps chemosynthetic frost-films from the underside.
- Veridian Heat-GillEvo 3A larger, pale fish with visibly expanded gill structures, adapted to graze Rime-Mat in warmer waters.
- Veridian Swift-FinEvo 4A smaller, sleeker fish with rapidly beating pectoral fins, adapted to graze Rime-Mat while evading predators.
- Abyssal Heat-GillEvo 4A larger, pale fish with reduced gill structures and a bioluminescent lure, adapted to the perpetual darkness of deep caves.
- Abyssal Oxygen-SieveEvo 5A pale, slightly smaller fish with greatly expanded, feathery gill structures, adapted to extract the last vestiges of oxygen from stagnant waters.
- Vent-Symbiote AnglerEvo 6A small, pale fish with a dangling bioluminescent lure and an enlarged mouth, often found hovering near hydrothermal vents. Its internal tissues house even more potent chemosynthetic symbionts.
- Desperate AnglerEvo 7A pale, slightly smaller fish than its ancestor, with a proportionally larger mouth and a still-present, albeit dimmer, bioluminescent lure, clinging to survival.
- Shadow AnglerEvo 8A Shadow Angler, its skin now a mottled grey-brown, with a barely perceptible lure and a highly developed lateral line.
Tree of life
- resilient
- strained
- fragile
- ★ canon
- 🧬 hybrid
- 💀 extinct
Click a species in the tree to evolve or cross-breed it here, without leaving this world. Double-click a node to open its full page.