Loremaster: Dekerrex
Midnight worlds are dark and extremely cold, orbiting far outside of their star’s goldilocks zone, and almost always around jovian Gas Giants who’s gravity pushes and pulls at the cores of the planets, warming the world from within. The powerful magnetic fields around the giants prevent solar radiation from reaching the world in any significant dose as well. The stresses of their orbit also create higher rates of volcanism which thicken the atmosphere, blotting out what little light reaches the surface of these worlds.
Susceptible worlds such as these are not uncommon, and minor variations of it exist that prove just as susceptible, but it is the living elements that turn such cold desolate worlds into Midnight Planets: Hives. During the Panspermia that was the Remnant Exodus from Undas’Hiith, worlds were populated at random across the milky way. Most Undas’Hiithric life that arrived on these inhospitable planets could not propagate, and quickly died out, however conditions were optimal for the spread of a nightmarish creature that thrives on death, The Hive Worms.
Hive Worms are ecosystem engineers, in the brief golden era of death where their numbers swell, they spread across the planets, creating their unique hive structures, and terraforming their alien home to become more stable for their further propagation through the release of gasses and management of terrain. Over decades, centuries if lucky, the ecosystem stabilizes and grows into the cold desolate wasteland that few have come to know and live to speak of.
Though not all midnight planets are the same, the key factors that trigger the formation of this unique biosphere is the lack of exposure to solar radiation, freezing temperatures, and methane rich air that would choke out other life that would get in the way.
Landing on a Midnight Planet is no simple task, their cloud cover in most cases is absolute, with violently raging winds in the upper atmosphere that put even the most trained pilots to the test. Into the Troposphere, eternal storms rage on, fueled by the compression and contraction of the world and gravitational pull of neighboring giant, though never rain, only polluted acidic ice, and energized thunderstorms. Truly inhospitable.
The atmospheric makeup of these worlds is largely nitrogen, with anywhere from twenty to thirty percent gaseous methane, and five to fifteen percent oxygen, making it very inhospitable, and sometimes prone to combustion. The amount of methane in the atmosphere keeps these worlds from snowballing over entirely, the protective layer of greenhouse gasses preventing the escape of geothermal heat, though it still does not compare to the warmth a closer sun could provide.
Any oceans that grace the surface of Midnight Worlds are frozen over, miles thick, with the only non frozen water deep in the geothermal vents or far below the permafrost. The surface is so cold that without proper equipment, the average sapient could not hope to last even hours as their bodily fluids freeze solid as temperatures can drop hundreds into the negatives. In this place, the only surface liquid is but frigid methane along the poles that runs like glacial rivers into equatorial latitudes before vaporizing into the atmosphere like magnificent waterfalls that reach into the clouds. Of course, that assumes you are able to see it.
The utter lack of light from a star makes the surface inescapably dark, with only an ambient glowing haze from the reflection on the surface of its giant making visibility just better than nothing. It matters little for what lives here, all of them blind, reliant on other senses to make their way through the world, lurking in the darkest depths of the surface. All that lives on these worlds can sense you long before you have the hope of seeing it.
Traces of life are all around you, the very surface of midnight worlds being speckled in a metallic blue sheen of glass-like resin forming hollow matrices where unspeakable things blindly wriggle and toil. Rasping whispers blend into the howling winds as you realize you are not alone, for poking out of the horizon, countless spires made of this hive substance spew a thick black cloud of spores into the air, and accompanying them ruins of a long failed attempt to survive this hellish nightmare world. There are no bodies here, only the architecture and writing of old Thaniik tongues to tell the story of a long drawn out death.
Between the patches of resin are shards of obsidian and metamorphic stone forming a loose gritty gravel overtop the permafrost, whipping around and threatening to shred one’s suit with a strong enough gust of wind. You may seek to find shelter from the elements and these Shadows in the towering mountains of hive resin, only to break through the surface and down into the balmy gaping caverns beneath.
The tunnels are slick and organically formed, like crystalized slime coating and holding together the frozen soil. Warmer, wetter, oddly breathable air heaves out of the tunnels as though the very cave itself was breathing. Along the walls, mosslike growths, and slithering vines propagate on unknowable eons of guano and slime. Shimmering fungi and blinking writhing things crawl between the cracks of resin. The air is warmer here, but water still freezes, and the harsh cold winds still whip at the mouth.
Deeper within the air is warmer, and the water begins to thaw, trickling in streams ever deeper into the caverns. More life exists here, insectoid aliens that eek out a living in the harsh darkness, living, thriving, dying. And with death comes The Hive. Oozing from the pores and cracks of the resin, a ghostly white slime that breaks apart and congeals again upon contact with itself, slithering over to the decay and dissolving it, and anything else that gets in its way. You may think it has not noticed you, but the hive feels all in these tunnels, for this is its home, and you are interloping in its garden. It is but a matter of time before your life ends at the blades of an orbide rushing from the darkest depths.
These environments are surprisingly lush with life, but it is life of a different kind, some that breathes a different air, others that are trapped in the tunnels where the oxygen is produced, but all at the mercy of The Hives and the conditions they have created in its dark resin matrix.
If the risk is found to be worth it, Midnight Planets are rich in natural gasses and heavy metals such as iron, copper, and nickel.
Uniquely about Midnight Planets is the consistency of its species, all sharing common ancestors from a bygone world, and adopting similar niches, give or take the presence of its contemporaries. Listed below are a number of the most common species on Midnight Worlds, however as mentioned previously, the keystone species of Hive Worms is ubiquitous on all Midnight Worlds to a significant degree.
Along the floors and walls of tunnel systems are the Burnlichens, like black moss growing out of the guano and slime. A Methanotrophic simple organism found globally through the tunnel systems of Hive Resin. It breathes in the atmospheric methane, and exhales breathable air. Though as its name implies, it is easy to ignite. Its vacuoles rich in methane, a simple spark could be all it takes to combust a whole patch of Burnlichen in a violent inferno.
Fruiting out from between the Lichen patches are Dreamshrooms, glassy looking fungal growths that too are methanotrophic, and will easily combust from the gasses within, releasing their spores in the blast which can cause severe audiovisual hallucinations when inhaled. Their spores easily attach to nearby organisms, and are to blame for the myth that Orbides warp the minds of their prey before going in for the kill.
Feeding on the hive resin itself are the Swarms, small chromatic beetle-like aliens that cooperate in this scarce environment. Like leaf cutter ants, they chisel and chip away pieces of resin to feed to small pockets of fungi that digest the substance, and in turn feed on the fungi. Swarms are very territorial, and will attack anything that ventures close to their precious food source. Though capable of flight, they cannot fly for very long, and will not chase their targets for very long before returning to tending their crops.
Of the more beautiful organisms are the Shadowmoths, which roost in the tunnels to rest, but when it comes time to feed, will flock around the spires and feed on the billions of spores pouring out of them and like fishermen, use their glistening fuzzy wings like nets catching the spores. Shadowmoths will fall to the ground after a successful harvest, grooming themselves to eat the spores. While the tops of their wings are black, the undersides shine a beautiful violet, flickering in the dim light.
Deeper within the tunnels are the Darkeyes, a family of rodent sized crawling slithering animals, named after the green bioluminescent eyespots along their bodies they use to communicate in the dark. Indeed they are the only organism on Midnight worlds to naturally have eyes, simple ones only capable of sensing the presence and absence of light, but eyes nonetheless. Darkeyes eat anything they can find indiscriminately, using their shimmering eyespots to signal when food is found, or when enemies are near.
And the last of our microcosm of animals are the Rollers, larger cat-sized organisms that somewhat resemble isopods. They spend their days grazing on lichen, guano, and other leftovers within the hive caverns like sheep. When threatened, they will curl up into an armored ball and roll deeper into tunnels where their enemies hopefully cannot pursue them.
The dominant, and more aggressive lifeforms of Midnight worlds are most surely the Hive Worms, their population making up a ludicrous chunk of their planet’s total biomass. Hundreds of millions of microorganisms that come together to form amorphous shoggoth-like superorganisms, these are the engineers of the Midnight Biosphere. Their tunnels provide shelter from the elements for other lifeforms. Their resin secretion terraforming the landscape and breaking the wind patterns. Their symbiotic Methanotrophic bacteria fill these sanctuaries with breathable air and drinkable water. Their constant intervention protects their Hive’s tunnels from the aggressive march of the hungry maws of other hives, keeping the delicate cycle of energy in a balance just sustainable enough to keep the Hive alive and growing.
Despite the total domination of the Hive Worms, it is The Orbides that are the most well known organism on these dark hells, for good reason. Like the all powerful soldiers of the Hive, Orbides track down and mercilessly slay anything that moves, bringing their quarry back to the Hive to feed. Yet Orbides themselves are not alive, not in the traditional sense. For Orbides, Orbide Walkers, Shadows, and a swathe of other ‘organisms’ are but corpses. The Hive has made use of the remains of previous kills to become an extension of its will that knows not the weakness of the worm, that can travel tremendous distances in the harsh elements, that can actively hunt, and wage war with other Hives.