=Droplet= 
Anytime we ﬁnd ruins of an alien civilization, Firewall pays attention. Maybe the extraterrestrials had bad luck and fell victim to circumstances beyond their control. Maybe they were stupid and did themselves in. Or maybe something else had it in for them and took them out. No matter what the scenario was, they ended up dead. Kaput. Extinct.
If it can happen to them, it can happen to us. So anytime we run across dead things, we pay attention. We look into it cautiously. We see if we are vulnerable. And if we are, we put plans in place to run or ﬁght, as necessary.
||>   ||= **Droplet** ||
||> **Type** ||= Terrestrial ||
||> **Primary Star/Satelite of** ||= K0V (Orange Dwarf) ||
||> **Gravity** ||= 1.12 g ||
||> **Diameter** ||= 15,300 km ||
||> **Atmospheric Pressure** ||= 1.4 Atm ||
||> **Atmospheric Composition** ||= 89% Nitrogen, 8% Oxygen, 3% Argon ||
||> **Surface Temperature (Min/Mean/Max)** ||= -80 C/18 C/65 C ||
||> **Day Length** ||= 29 hours ||
||> **Orbital Period** ||= 182 days ||
||> **Satellites** ||= None ||
||> **Gate Access** ||= [[Pandora Gate]] ||
==Abundant Life, Abundant Death== 
**Posted by:** Peacock Jones, Proxy
Droplet is a large world, slightly less dense than Earth, that is covered in deep oceans. It superﬁcially resembles Earth, if Earth was slightly larger, if sea level was almost a kilometer higher, and if gravity and atmospheric pressure were higher. Dry land makes up only approximately 8% of its surface.
Droplet is well known as one of several worlds with Iktomi ruins, strongly indicating that the Iktomi also made use of the Pandora gates. Even more intriguing are the archeological ruins of an even older civilization that seems to have arisen and died out here. Perhaps topping both in curiosity value and age is a large, unique construct known as the Toadstool.
Given its habitable environment, its native wildlife, and its archeological value, Droplet has attracted quite a bit of interest and now boasts a sizable colony.
===Native Life===
Other than seaweed-looking plant-like organisms growing on land, all of the land-based life on Droplet is amphibious. There is an entire class of triphibian ﬂying creatures that begin life as water dwellers and metamorphose into ﬂying creatures that can also walk on land and swim in Droplet’s seas.
Though Droplet’s gravity is slightly higher than Earth’s, its atmosphere is considerably denser, allowing ﬂying creatures to grow as large as 100 kg. Some of the larger ﬂying predators occasionally attack transhumans.
Much life on Droplet is larger than the average transhuman, and the oceans are infamously ﬁlled with large and hungry predators that are not averse to eating transhumans or even small bots or vehicles. Though the largest of these predators are conﬁned to the oceans, there are several species of large, multi-legged, shelled predators with both paddles and legs that are equally swift and deadly in and out of the water. The largest of these grows up to 6 meters long. All long-term installations on Droplet are surrounded by barriers ﬁtted with stunners and agonizers to drive away native life. Visitors are warned of the dangers of wandering outside of these protected regions and everyone on Droplet carries some sort of weapon.
===Extinct Life===
Droplet’s native life seems to have given birth to an advanced, sapient life form approximately 4 million years ago, which developed a technological civilization around 1 million years ago. Dubbed Amphibs by the ﬁrst xenoarcheologists to examine their remnants, the natives of Droplet are believed to have been a six-legged amphibious species with one pair of hands, one pair of legs, and a pair of intermediate limbs that could be used for either walking, swimming, or manipulation, as circumstances demanded. Study of the Amphibs is hampered by the fact that at least half of their ruins are underwater, since they built all of their settlements on the coast and built both above and underwater equally. It is speculated that plate tectonics have moved much pre-existing dry land below sea level in the centuries since, moving many ruins underwater. The wet environment both above and below water has also accelerated decay. Xenoarcheologists believe that the amount of ruins still recognizable is a testament to how widespread and sprawling their society had become. Most have left traces that are only visible using advanced satellite imagery. Current evidence indicates that the Amphibs managed to develop industry and electronics at least as advanced as those found on Earth in the late 20th century. There is no indication whether they ever ventured beyond their world, by either space travel or Pandora gate. They did, however, have microcircuitry and may have had fusion power.
The end of the Amphibs is as mysterious as much of the rest of Droplet. The Amphibs clearly had the beginnings of an industrial culture when their planet entered into a severe ice age. Though their technology continued to advance for several more centuries, they then suddenly disappeared. There are three leading theories about their disappearance. One is that the severity of the ice age wiped them out. According to another, they learned how to operate the Droplet Gate and their entire species traveled through it to a warmer and more hospitable world. The recent discovery of images of the gate in late Amphib art supports this idea, but only circumstantially. The ﬁnal theory, backed by some evidence of cratering and irradiated materials, is that the Amphibs died in a cataclysmic conﬂict, wiping themselves out in a world war or suffering destruction from some unknown force.
Some proponents of this later theory look toward the unusual Toadstool as a potential factor—and a lingering potential threat to transhumanity as well. 
Whatever the facts of their disappearance, the Amphibs did leave one thing behind aside from ruins. The Amphibs had domesticated a species of sentient but only semi-sapient creatures as similar to them as gorillas and chimpanzees are to unmodiﬁed humans. When the Amphibs vanished, they left many of these creatures behind. Known commonly as hexanewts, these creatures still inhabit the more intact Amphib settlements. At ﬁrst there was speculation that hexanewts might be the devolved remnants of Amphib civilization living in the ruins of their former glory, but recent research indicates the hexanewts were domesticated companion animals. A current debate rages among astrobiologists over whether the hexanewts were domesticated or genetically engineered.
===The Toadstool===
This unique alien construct rises from the ﬂoor of a shallow ocean, just offshore from Davis Island, approximately 600 kilometers from the Droplet Gate. It is shaped like a mushroom with a stalk 80 meters in diameter, rising 90 meters above the ocean’s surface and extending 80 meters down to the ancient volcanic bedrock that makes up that coastline. Above this “stem” is a ﬂattened ovoid, 460 meters in diameter and 110 meters thick. It is clearly artiﬁcial and seamless, made of unknown but sturdy composite materials. After detailed examinations, scientists now believe this structure is over a billion years old, likely established well before the evolution of the Amphibs, when Droplet itself was a much different planet. Despite its age, the Toadstool appears to be in perfect condition, as if it was created no more than a few years ago. Close scrutiny has revealed that its walls swarm with specialized nanotechnology that keep it in perfect repair, removing algae-like biological growths that would normally accumulate from the ocean. 
Researchers also assume that these nanomachines—or some other unknown mechanism—are responsible for the fact that the stem of the Toadstool is only 200 meters from the shore despite a billion years of erosion and slowly shifting geology. Though the Toadstool has proven to be impenetrable to all forms of scanning, a careful examination of the underlying rock indicates that this structure is mostly hollow. So far, all attempts to gain entrance to the Toadstool have failed. The walls are made of exceptionally hard materials and repair themselves within moments of any damage being done. No one has been willing to use nuclear weapons or other similarly devastating means to breach this construct’s walls, since the goal is to get inside and not to destroy it.
Extensive Amphib ruins have been found in the vicinity of the Toadstool. The native life forms clearly built a large city around it and considered the Toadstool important to their culture. There is no evidence that they ever learned more about it than transhumanity currently knows, but simple graphics of the Toadstool can be found on many of their items that were in daily use.
===The Iktomi Ruins===
The higher gravity and the relatively dense atmosphere make it an exceptionally unlikely place for the Iktomi to settle, but Droplet is home to a small number of Iktomi ruins, mostly clustered around Davis Island. Though more recent (only around 10,000 years old) and made of highly durable materials, their ruins are exceptionally weathered. It seems as if these arachnoid aliens were as interested in the Toadstool as we are and most likely investigated the Amphibs as well. Presumably they also sought a way to access the Toadstool’s interior, though there is no sign whether they succeeded or not.
Xenoarcheologists believe that, at their height, there may have been as many as 5,000 Iktomi living and working at their primary base here, with another 4,000 scattered around other settlements. Like sites on other worlds, the Iktomi seem to have disappeared suddenly and completely, taking much of their belongings with them. Explorers have, however, discovered a number of mysterious artifacts now referred to as dream shells. More than 300 dream shells have been recovered from Davis Island. These devices, like the other bits of Iktomi technology recovered from the ruins on Droplet, were found in carefully sealed storage compartments. Researchers believe that the Iktomi found Droplet’s wet environment and dense atmosphere to be extremely alien and took many precautions to ensure that items they stored on Droplet would remain functional. The few intact storage compartments that have been found were made from unknown but exceptionally durable materials and were ﬁlled with argon gas.
===Deep Discoveries===
The most recent discovery on Droplet was by a remote submarine probe, which located what seems to be the remains of an underwater settlement 1.2 kilometers below the surface. Though only preliminary data is available, the settlement appears to be moderately intact, though clearly ruined and long abandoned. It does not resemble any of the Amphib settlements, nor does it ﬁt their pattern of locating settlements within 5 kilometers of shoreline and at depths of no more than 100 meters. Several xenoarcheologist groups are currently competing to be the ﬁrst to send down submarines to investigate these ruins more closely.

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