The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I don't know if you guys watched Star Trek discovery already, if not there could be some spoilers.

Anyway, in that series they have discovered a new way of FTL travel. It's called a spore drive. Apparently the spores of common fungi spread across the entire galaxy and they have a creature that can navigate these spores which they use as a copilot. Enabling them to jump to anywhere they want in the galaxy without much effort.

I wonder if the precursors used the same technology to suddenly 'disappear' from the galactic stage. With the Mycon which they keep as their slaves to navigate the mycelium network, ofcourse ;).

If FF and PRiii had any solid hints for this in the game, they could possibly step up and demand quite a chunk of green printed paper....
Alas, I cannot see it.

And since I haven't watched ST:Discovery, Ic an't say much more about it.

And how hasn't Fungi already eaten up most planets, if it can do that?

Couldn't this be a Mycon deep child?

https://www.space.com/38580-interstellar-object-spotted-comet-asteroid-mystery.html (https://www.space.com/38580-interstellar-object-spotted-comet-asteroid-mystery.html)

Argh, as if Donald Trump wasn't bad enough now we have precursor planeteering tools gone rogue to worry about :(

Where was the birthing fleet?

But then, the Syreen never reported having seen one...

Well, I honestly think it would be a waste of resources to have birthing fleets, or even direct them to specific planets (the object that entered our solar system actually missed our planet).

We know that the Mycon egg case was about 25 meters, but we don't know how large a Mycon spore is. The largest organism on Earth is actually a fungi (http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in-the-world (http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in-the-world)), but I doubt it has very large spores. Spores from Earth are usually microscopical.

I think it would be more realistic for a sentient fungi species to just spread billions of microscopic spores contained inside of meteors in every direction (the object that entered our solar system was about 400 meters i diameter. That is probably large enough to take some of it through our atmosphere, and a bit down into Earth's crust). Some of them would eventually crash into planets, and some of the planets would be habitable for fungal growth (especially if the fungi species is highly resilient. The meteor itself could contain materials which could be used as sustenance for the spore during early growth).

Of course, this could have happened long ago on Earth. I think it is a bit weird that we have radiotrophic fungus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus)) which absorb gamma radiation and convert it into chemical energy on Earth. I would assume that such an organism would arise on a planet where most of the radiation reaching the planet was in the gamma range, which is not the case for Earth. I guess it would be more natural for a gamma ray absorbing fungi to arise near a Quasar (or supermassive black hole), where there is plenty of gamma radiation.

It is generally assumed that life started here on Earth, as simple prokaryotes, but of course we might have it all wrong. Maybe eukaryotic fungi life came here from a meteorite, and maybe the prokaryotes evolved (or devolved) from it. Evolution doesn't just go from less complex life to more complex life. It can also go from more complex life to less complex life.

Maybe they don't do birthing fleets when they're trying to be discreet, but this seemed like a golden opportunity with no need to hide, so they all came out for the special event.