Scaverkus!
Scaverkus is a highly desolate desert world which orbits around its parent star in a highly elliptical orbit. Scaverkus is a low gravity desert world which on paper would have been dead by now. However it has retained geological activity thanks to a large moon that tightly orbits Scaverkus in spite of the messy hill sphere radius. Scaverkus is a hostile world. One where 2 earth year seasonal cycles often have frigid desert.
With warmth within the sun’s grasp existing only for part of the year. The life on Scaverkus blurs the lines of civilization animal existence. For the hostility of Scaverkus is so great that numerous Scaverkian ecologies will cooperate on a seasonal basis. For example, various Predator species are known to work with creatures they view as prey for common resources (mainly water), but only on a seasonal basis. For instance, regional ecologies sheltered by dormant volcanic cave networks will collect ice to warm in the depths of caves they know will be thawed during the more volcanic summers.
Meanwhile, some Scaverkians hibernate, others exist only in the caves. The surface of Scaverkus in the mid-seasons can get regional foliage. Such environments lead to what are known as the Hoarding Seasons. The Hoarding seasons occur between winter and summer. It is also an instance of predator-prey seasonal cooperation, as these normally conflicting species have an unspoken agreement to work together in the Hoarding Seasons where the prey also happen to breed more often. However, when the hot and cold seasons return the predators go back to hunting and the prey go back to hiding.
Pictured above is an independently developing entity geographically locked by large barren regions. Regions that historically have only been traversed by migrating during their world’s version of “interglacials”. Where earth’s ice ages allowed for arctic traversal, the “life ages” of Scaverkus allowed for relatively safe traversal across the equator. Incidentally, two proto-civilizations happened to both be at the middle latitudes of the world. Which was where life enjoyed environments more stable climate-wise until the long cycles ended that geologically brief island of stability. Such is life on Scaverkus, in its endless grind.
During the frost seasons the atmosphere itself gets thinner and massive hailstorms have to be defended against, along with snap freezes and quite fanciful auroras. It is in these seasons most life on Scaverkus just retreats underground completely, either hibernating or maintaining their sub ecosystems until the middle season arrives once again.
This is the middle season on scaverkus. The home sun looms, but this is still the optimal habitable condition for life on scaverkus as the [[Stevik]] themselves peer out of crevices in their venting mound to collect and gather what they can on the surface to fuel elaborate underground cave life. For on Scaverkus, ecologies seasonally cooperate in elaborate support networks to handle what are the extremely brutal seasonal cycles of their desert world. The crevices here are very exposed during the middle seasons only, otherwise they are mostly sealed. What shapes the terrain is indeterminable for the most part, as the Stevik phyla has utterly reshaped the terrain on Scaverkus for millennia as much as the the volcano and frost seasons have. This has produced a clay-like terrain in large shares of the world, with spires and galleys carved out from the glaciers.
The brutality of these seasons is hard to illustrate to human minds only used to hotter seasons that are stunner and colder seasons with snow. For on Scaverkus, there are not hot and cold seasons. Instead there are volcano seasons and frost seasons. The volcano seasons are blazing hot, dying from harsh heat becomes the norm on the surface for vast parts of the world while the ashen clouds can cause inexplicable cold snaps. Indeed the fogginess of the atmosphere even in the middle seasons is from how ash interferes with the skies to create a very dusty, pink coloration.
It seems impossible that such complex and intelligent life could develop. However that is where the robustness of the Scaverkian biosphere comes into play. For unlike most ecologies, ecologies on Scaverkus cooperate heavily to keep each other alive because the ecologies that did not have all gone extinct. With the seasons the behavior of many species changes radically to mutually support other species that would have, in another season preyed on or parasitized on them. Some predators go without eating in the name of keeping the ecology going, as they must. Such coordination came from bottom-up, which has led to the most exotic aspect of Scaverkian life. Many species show signs of tool use to the point you see patterns of civilization in many parts of Scaverkus that are built on many different species specializing their niches into an elaborate pipeline that has gone as far as to allow regional paraterraforming despite not having remotely the tech level other sapients had assumed required for it. For the Scaverkians are many species who go about cooperating for the sake of perpetuating their ecosystems out of instinct.
It is not a high gravity world, but has kept a low key geological activity from seasonal tidal tugging from the parent sun. This is a highly hostile world, where the world’s 2 earth year seasonal cycles can lead to very frigid deserts while warmth within the sun’s grasp exists only for part of the year. The life here blurs the lines of civilization oriented living and am animal existence. For the hostility of Scaverkus is so great that ecosystems of life here will cooperate on a seasonal basis. Predators are known to work with creatures they view as prey for common resources in a highly hostile environment depending on the season. For instance when the regional ecologies sheltered by dormant volcanic cave networks need to collect ice to warm in the depths of caves. Of which activate for the volcano seasons.
Some hibernate, others exist only in caves. The surface in the mid-seasons often gets temporary foliage, so one often sees these hoarding sessions occur between winter and summer predatory issues, it is peculiar. They have an almost unspoken agreement that predatory and prey creatures work together in the mid seasons where the prey also happen to breed more often while the hot and cold seasons have the predatory creatures hunting them while not eating that much in the mid seasons. Scaverkus even has entities which register to Archivist surveyors as regional civilizations.
Two independently developing entities geographically locked by large barren regions. Of which historically have only been traversed by migrating during their world’s version of “interglacials”. Where earth’s ice ages allowed for arctic traversal, the “life ages” of Scaverkus allowed for relatively safe traversal across the equator. The two proto-civilizations happened to both be at the middle latitudes of the world. Which is where things are relatively more stable climate-wise. However, the interspecies cooperative systems they made are bordering on unintelligible to each other.
Scaverkus is a world that has so much headspace for me that I created a student project involving it.
Try it here (it’s kinda low quality but it was a fun exercise in soundscapes anyways: https://insculpo.itch.io/scaverkus-scoundscape
