Planetary Information[]
Vyli is a humid planet with oceans covering approx. 87% of its surface. However, this fact is difficult to recognize, as the majority of the ocean surface is hidden underneath thick mats of floating biomatter, that form the basis of the planetary ecosystem. Griyosht's atmosphere has an atmospheric pressure of 3047.86 hPa, with a higher oxygen content at approximately 34%.
Geography[]
The world of Vyli, terrestrially, can be demarked in several 'layers' that progress steadily deeper from the canopy. The Canopy/Crown, the Near-Canopy, the Interdeterminal Layer, the Deep Canopy, the Basin, and finally the Floor. Each of these layers has their own unique ecosystems, while creatures do pass between them, each hold their own unique existence and commonly found species. The deeper one goes into the jungle, the less natural light might be found, and the stranger the creatures become. Near the canopy, the terrain might almost be mistaken for grass-coated mountains, but this veneer is revealed a falsity rather quickly as the rustling of the branches in their own currents parts vast ravines into the branches below.
Lifeforms[]
The life of Griyosht is divided into a trio of particular ecosystems. The Aquatic, the Terrestrial/Arboreal, and the Aerial.
Aquatic Life[]
The aquatic life of Vyli is divided into two major environments, the under-mats, and the open water. Regularly, life that evolves in the open seas is leviathan in size, several species having adapted into forms of living icebreakers that devour the semi-fungal mats as they attempt to grow. Beneath the mats, life is more regularly bioluminescent, blindness being found only along the 'shorelines' where the true ground exists. The basis of both are a mixture of plankton and the digestion of the fungal mats above.
Terrestrial[]
Terrestrial life on Griyosht is primarily arboreal. The basis of the ecosystem is the aforementioned fungal mass, an immense coating of Zooidal creatures designed to slowly grow, and remain alive for as long as possible. Capable of taking in nutrients through chemosynthesis and thermosynthesis as well as photosynthesis. This extreme degree of food availability, coupled with a mass extinction at around when the first colonies began to truly develop, resulted in an explosive development to a degree unprecetended on the planet. Due to its slow intake of nutrients, as plants grew above the mass and lost their leaves, a layer of biomatter acting as a 'false soil' was able to build up, permitting more advanced plantlife to grow. Thanks to the thicker, higher-oxygen atmosphere, the plantlife of the world has developed several unique adaptations to keep the majority of its mass off of the biofilm below, namely in the form of ballooning sacs and pockets, able to list the vast bulk of the plantlife off the ground. Upon these floating tangles of life, formed the dominant species of the world, and the bulk of the life on the worlds surface. Almost every lifeform is, in some way or another, adapted to an arboreal existence to some degree or another.
Aerial Life[]
The Aerial life of the world is its strangest ecosystem overall. Due to the high humidity and strong winds found in the low atmosphere, the world of Vyli supports an ecosystem of aerial plankton, and all the creatures that evolved to take advantage thereof. Namely relying on methane to keep themselves aloft when not utilizing wings, numerous creatures live in wholly aerial fashions, utilizing resources collected from the terrain below and found in the skies above to adapt to unique styles of life. One of the strangest examples is likely the "Lightning Squid" as it was nicknamed in the first anthropological journals of the world, a creature that chases the frequent storms found on the world in order to 'eat' lightning from its tendrils, which are coated in a layer of tin to act as living lightning rods.
Civilization[]
The Dominant Species of Vyli is the Griyosht, a species of arboreal hexapods that developed in the near-canopy level. Their society is a deeply religious one, though these views will be explored further in their own documentation. Their society is capable of space-flight, and has long since branched from its homeworld, developing into numerous subspecies on all of their older colonies, but all of the Griyosht peoples at some point in their lifetime attempt to make a pilgrimage back to Vyli, as the whole of the world is their form of a 'Mecca'.