Worlds Without Number: Populating the Ecosystems of Latter Earth

The far-flung future(s?) of the upcoming Worlds Without Number is both alien and familiar and a campaign set in these worlds would definitely benefit from a thoughtful blending of both. Being fantastical and weird for the sake of weird is one thing, but giving some thoughts to the bizarre world and its ecology can help increase realism as much as it make a place unreal. Natural biology and evolution is already mind bafflingly bizarre, after all, and give credence to the idea that reality is always at least as strange as fiction. Rooting the strange beings of Latter Earth in our modern day Earth or even past Earth can help increase familiarity just as much as it help makes Latter Earth a bizarre place before one even get into more intensive genetic and arcane modifications which have been applied to life.

The following details form the core of what has been established of Latter Earth's demented biosphere:

• Earth's biosphere was widely changed at some point through any number of unspecified means, ranging from natural evolution, genetic experiments, alien animals population and more. At some points in Latter Earth's past, different organism populated the biosphere.
• There was a point where the Latter Earth biosphere was 'reset' to something closer to the Neogene period which is our current period. This presumably mean insects being small, mammals forming most small and large land predators and an ocean full of fish.
• There are many creatures which have been engineered or mutated to fill some long forgotten purpose. Many of these creatures are affected by one or more form of a Blight, which is a curse which affects their function and nature in some way.
• The alien Arratu are attempts xenoforming the planet and tend to involve life which is alien, either by being fully or partially extraterrestrial in origin in some form or another.

Overall the simplest terms to define WWN's ecology is that it very much tries to justify why your typical setting of games like Dungeons & Dragons has so many damn weird creatures with oddly specific nature and function as well as to why 'mundane' animals exist alongside creatures such as trolls. There's been a lot of debates about how 'naturalist' or not a fantasy ecology should be but, to me at least, WWN combine the best of both worlds.

Speculative Evolution

'Night Stalker' from
Douglas Dixon's After Man

Since most, if not all non-alien animals in Latter Earth are derived from creatures which live on Earth today, speculative evolution offers a rather serious insight into how different animals could have naturally evolved. Considering that it is very possible that ancient creatures were genetically recreated at some point into the past of Latter Earth, this greatly increase the scope of speculative evolution to include creatures which were extinct before the modern age, as incredibly advanced sciences and even the Legacy itself could have been used to resurrect dinosaurs or even older beings. Should pockets of these creatures have survived any biosphere 'reset', it is possible to assume they diversified into different niches than they originally occupied as they competed with their Neogenic descendants and relatives. Given how scattered, bizarre and damaged the biomes of Latter Earth can be, its not implausible that some prehistoric creatures (or rather their descendants) have taken on a new niche.

Not every environment or biome in Latter Earth needs to be a weird, upside down place. Most environments are well suited to have animals in recognisable niches, with wolves and large tigers as predators and bovines as grazing herbivores while birds chip in the trees and insect buzz. Their exact form may vary greatly from modern day animals but in general these creatures are functionally identical, as the book state. The key, however, for maximum weirdness is to add just enough non-Blighted weirdness to remind players that Latter Earth is a strange place.

• Descendants of creatures from the Gorgonopsia clade as well as Crocodyliformes make for an interesting replacement to large land predators and scavengers, as they could have evolved into a variety of forms following their genetic reconstruction and restoration into the wild.
• While adding dinosaurs to a setting is generally done for the sheer awe of the 'classic dinosaurs', the reality is that dinosaurs were rather varied critters and, had they not suffered their extinction leaving behind only the avian dinosaurs (which we call 'birds') they would have continued to diversify in a variety of niches. Dinosaurs are infamous in their pop culture depictions until fairly recently as lumbering, roaring, scaly behemoths. Dougal Dixon's famous The New Dinosaurs is full of ideas worth stealing for believable dinosauroid creatures which aren't just yet another T-Rex wannabe.
• Arthropods on Latter Earth are likely to be much bigger than anything that currently live today. Eons of insect evolution and modifications is likely what is responsible for the propensity of fantasy settings to feature unnaturally large insect and arachnids. It is likely these hyper evolved arthropods were engineered to be larger in spite of limited oxygen.

Speculative Evolution-related ideas for Worlds Without Number obviously tend to stay within the realm of what is biologically plausible, as these are completely natural creatures beyond the genetic engineering which may once have played a part in their creation or rebirth. Left adrift to coexist with post-humanity, these creatures may have once been crafted by post-human hands but left to their own devices they were once more subject to the pressures of their environment. Added here is a quick, crude table to generate something weird relatively quickly.

D8	Ancestor	New Niche	Environment
1	Primate	Large Land Predator	Diurnal
2	Rodent	Pack Hunter
3	Ungulate	Heavy Browser	Nocturnal
4	Chiropteran	Grazer
5	Avian	Omnivore	Semi-Aquatic
6	Non-Avian Dinosaur	Scavenger	Aquatic
7	Crocodilian	Insect Eater	Burrowing
8	Arthropod	Parasite	Aerial

The New Life

Toa Tesukatora from Monster Hunter

Of course, not everything in Latter Earth is a pure production of evolution. As post-humanity developed its understanding of natural sciences and what makes life tick, they went ever further in the tinkering of life. There are limits to what evolution can accomplish and these limits are broken through the fusion of genetics of two or more animals to produce a new, fully fertile creature. Early in the days of genetic engineering there were many limitations but future advances eventually led to the ability for just about anything with a genetic code to be combined together. These new beings can help explain some of the more fantastical creatures which exist while still not entering the realm of the Blight.

Such creatures are chimeric in nature and it is where famous mythological creatures such as the Pegasus and their ilk come in. From an evolutionary standpoint, should a horse descendant somehow evolve flight it would not grow a whole new pair of limbs with feathers. This would make absolutely no sense. However through the ancient mastery of life elevate above and beyond even the level of 'art', the ancient posthuman and the Outsiders or Imperator who inherited even a portion of their knowledge are able to combine life from radically different roots into a singular animal. These root creatures can, in turn, in time either diversify through evolution or be further altered by another source, creating entirely new branches of the tree of life which breed true. There are many creatures from fantasy RPG which are clearly a development from such sciences, such as Ettercaps (Primate+Arachnid), Wyverns (Avian, reptilian and/or chiropteran DNA?). Griffon (Feline+Avian) or the Stirge (a rather complex fusion of too many things to count, showing how far this can go).