Earthrise: The Hatchery

As the Final Wars came to a close, devastation was widespread and humanity on Earth was extinct. A small glimmer of hope to restore the human population lay dormant in the Librarium on Enterra island, but on the surface all other life forms were fighting for their survival. Largely thanks to the human created nano viruses, they went through drastic changes, evolving to survive, and created a fiercely adaptive and hostile ecosystem. As the environment worked to regenerate, another ecosystem had already begun taking on an even more alien form in the vast and deep oceans.

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On the distant ocean floor, a new life form was developing in eternal darkness unlike any other on Earth. Easily mistaken for a new ecosystem of parasitic life forms by the human eye, a vast, colonial organism was forming. With its instinct to grow and ultimate adaptability, it became the single master of the depths where it originated in just a few short years.

Roughly a hundred years before humans set foot on Enterra again, a scout swarm of spores traveled through the sea currents and reached the island shores. The swarm was sent to find a place with enough biomass that could sustain the emergence of the main organism from the deep. During these days the island was teeming with all forms of mutated life making it a suitable environment for the development of the colony. Since it was created with a limited ability to sustain itself for prolonged periods, the vanguard colony only managed to devour and assimilate a small part of the island before it died out, but not without completing its mission and sending a message back to its creator.

The spores that carried the encrypted chemical message traveled slowly, but the larger organism was able to exist in its natural habitat for many more years. When it began creeping towards Enterra, the Librarium had already opened and the Pioneers were roaming the island working to turn it into a new home suitable for humankind. In their pursuit of habitable land, the humans destroyed entire mutated ecosystems in order to open ground for terraforming and expansion of infrastructure. One problem usually follows another and once people felt like they had conquered the mutant threat, they turned against each other once more. Civil war broke out on Enterra and people took arms in the name of different ideals, killing each other in combat only to return back to the fray from the Crystomatrix Nodes. It was a conflict that could not be ended with warfare, but this did not stop either side from fighting for its beliefs.

While the Pioneers were busy killing each other, tiny spores that carried the cells of the parasitic swarm emerged from the ocean. The vanguard swarm found a suitable place for living on the southernmost shore of the island and began growing at an alarming rate. Having found only a limited amount of food when they first arrived on the island shores, the swarm consumed everything in its wake like a wildfire of organic mass. The decimated mutant ecosystems were not enough for it to thrive so it adapted through mutation in order to consume other kinds of matter and continue to grow. In mere months, the landscape took on a new alien look due to the infestation of the swarm - all foreign life forms were assimilated so that now only the swarm existed in the new habitat. The landscape now resembled a smaller image of the original organism and was, in essence, an autonomously functioning part of it on dry land. Danger was just around the corner, but no one could, or cared, to see it.

The mutations of the vanguard swarm turned even more disastrous once it encountered the Xcelyte deposits on the island and the other D.U.S.T. created compounds. They further boosted its adaptability and made it an even greater menace than it was before. An abundance of new horrific creatures spawned on Enterra, and finally drew the attention of the people. A new deadly enemy was poised against humanity, and while the people were still divided, it was but a single entity driven to devour and assimilate all life.