====== On Sweetwater's raft islands ======
[[./memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=4616|Visions1]] wrote: [[./viewtopic.php?p=345548#p345548|////]]2025-07-29T12:37:27+00:00
How large is a typical island? What typically lives on it?
The average size is about 18-25 square miles. The substrate is firm enough to permit tree growth, and it may be that the "trees" are actually growths of the vegetation mat itself. Denser root systems help stabilize the island. The firmness of the ground ranges from "water bed" on the loose end to "old wooden sailing ship" on the firmer end.
The organism(s) that make up the substrate begin life with a planktonic phase, and eventually start clumping together into mats. They may start as unicelular and become multicelular with age. Predation at various stages of their lifecycle is what keeps them from growing so large on Yih, but the creatures that feed on them were never successfully introduced to Sweetwater. The benthic cities have often tried to "control" the atavist population on the surface by reintroducing these predators, but other creatures that feed on these predators in turn are far more widespread on SW compared to Yih.
On Yih, these mats only get to be the size of large rafts, and transoceanic rafting events have often helped spread terrestrial species across the continents of the homeworld in the distant past.
{{tag>focus}}