Eco-Jungle

The Eco-Jungle is the genetic masterpiece of the People's Greater Hegemony of Pilon. Roughly based off of the rain forest but designed to exist underwater. The Eco-Jungle is a constantly changing biosphere, though it maintains approximately 500,000 different species per Hectare, with old life forms being replaced by newly designed ones. Pilon saves a DNA sample from every species living or extinct for research and archival purposes. The Eco-Jungle is slighty different in each location Pilon goes because of varying local conditions that change the optimal species for that environment, also as the Eco-Jungle remains it slowly transforms the territory it's in, terraforming it to Pilonese specified conditions, which changes which species are best suited for the environment. All life in the Eco-Jungle is connected to the nodelink, giving the sentient races of Pilon a small degree of control over their action and also allowing them to perceive the area around this life as if they were actually there. This is primarily used to keep the expansion of the Eco-Jungle under control and maintain it within Pilonese borders.

Eco-Jungle Description

There are five layers in the Pilonese Eco-jungle, including the Emergent, Upper Canopy, Understory, The Jungle Floor, and The Sub-Aquatic. From seabed to top it can span as high as 100-150 meters tall. In the Emergent Layer, trees are spaced far apart, and span high into the sea sometimes spanning 100-150 meters high. The trees are umbrella shaped canopies that grow above the rest of the jungle. Because of the colder temperatures in the outer areas of the jungle, they tend to have small leaves, sometimes losing their leaves during the cold season. These giant trees have straight, smooth trunks with few branches. Their root system is very shallow. The upper canopy of 75-120 meter tall trees allow light to be easily available at the top of this layer. Artificial light sources are often placed in the sea above and below the upper canopy to augment the natural light that comes in. Most of the animal life lives around this area and there is much food available in this part of the eco-jungle. A majority of the food grown outside in the eco-jungle is harvested from this layer as well. Pilon’s arcologies are also set up in this layer as it provides the easiest access to the surrounding life. The understory, or lower canopy, consists of trees between 40-60 meter tall trees. This layer is made up of the trunks of canopy trees, smaller plants and some smaller trees. There is little air movement and little life in this layer. If there is light its often artificial, usually underneath the arcologies. The support system for the arcology spans up to this layer as well. The forest floor is usually mostly shaded, even if the artificial light sources exist above. There only areas where light may come down is where canopy trees have fallen and created an opening, or where artificial light sources have been set up for floor based facilities. Most areas of the forest floor receive so little light that few bushes or herbs can grow here. In addition the air pressure is so high that it’s difficult for large life-forms to live and most sentients require pressurized suits to move around down here. A small few have opted to undergo treatments that allow them to exist outside without pressurized suits but they need suits to go to a lower pressure area. A lot of litter and waste products fall to this layer from the higher layers which support’s a large number of scavengers and decomposers who break down the waste. This organic matter is also absorbed by the trees’ shallow roots. The Sub-Aquatic, or Tunnel layer, exists in the Hellas-Pilon tunnel dug a while ago. There are no light sources in this layer and hardly any life beyond algae and fungi that coat the tunnel edges. In addition there are a variety of single celled organisms that live in the waters. It usually takes between 1-3 years for the eco-jungle to become fully developed.