Yet Another Brain Fart -- err, plot bunny

[Necratoid]

First, a species can't actually 'finish evolving' without dying off completely. Which is, looking back at your time line, your first logical fallacy. You have some weird notation about program locks on human genetic codes... only small bits can actually change and those don't matter. I know from your quotation marks that you understand this is not really true, but run with it anyway.
Which is further made weird, after looking back, because the Fanatics are actually acting exactly like the good Muslims (explained before previously) that you professed you didnt want to be an exact parallel of a modern Earth religion Convert or die is their creed. The details separating them are decorative icing on the issue. Not that Im stopping you, it makes sense, just that you should be aware of that situation/
Modern species that can be interbred in the this manner include lion/tiger (liger) and horse/donkey (mule (do I have the donkey and mule confused?))... all of which produce sterile offspring. Unless your idea is that these branches of humans are like branches of dog breeds... a whole lot are created in the past thousand years and the pure breeds are all screwed up. Which makes me think no.
Technically, its a matter of generations instead of years here... 50-80k (your minimum time range) is about 50k/15= 3,333 generations and 80k/15=5,333 generations of adapting to a different set environmental conditions (examples of which I previously wrote). They have to deal with different obstacles so different physical changes will occur.... the simplest of which is the biochemical ones for the local food sources. Which are worse than extra body parts for a pregnancy... unborn humans do go through a section with a tail. Even relatively minor changes of this biochemical nature will makes pregnancy rather unlikely. The internal environment is just too hostile.
Not that the middle ground case (sterile offspring) really matters too much for the immediate time line as the species will only have interacted for 6 years max and the oldest possible one is only 5 years old.
The glacial state they got taken from is largely irrelevant in your description of the worlds that the none Earthlings grew up (at the racial level) on they are hotter worlds that finished glaciating before Earth did. Unless Being on a smaller planet (lower gravity conditions) closer to their sun (or they have more moons to reflect sun light onto the planet or something) is somehow going to cause more ice ages. Again, I point to their thousands of generations of alternate evolution. To think other wise is involves some outside intervention meaning that the precursors left to check on a different section of seeded worlds later than suggested by the whole crystallized hyperspace weirdness.
Anatomically modern as of 80-50 thousand years of evolution ago, unless youre flubbing DNA as effectively statis locked somehow which you said you didnt. Again I am far more concerned with biochemical incompatibilities than minor physical one.
Removing the previously dominant species is a massive change in the gene pool I think this is a minor phrasement issue anyway. Not worth arguing over.

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Point the fourth, it is a long, long step from 'different traits' to 'unable to breed', especially when an already existant, mutually shared trait (language and intelligence) is working to suppress the need behind the development of those further traits.

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Err Um *stares at that for a few minutes* OW.
You do realize you just argued that a species wont be changed by a new environment in several decamillenia, because they can complain about it? Or maybe that being able to complain about it and make new tools will somehow prevent them from changing genetically or biochemically regardless of their new environment Either way *boogle*. The last thing I can think of is your idea of the process of seeding worlds is extremely different from my own.

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That's what I said, yes. Along with a sizable dash of the idea that such menial things were beneath the notice of anyone who was rich enough to afford an education that'd let them actually do something about it...

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So how did the feudalists get into space again
-Florins drive by comment is now getting to me again so please dont answer for him:

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A DNA difference of 1.2% is more than enough to prevent interspieces breeding yes, but it's also more than enough to change a tall hairless bipedal mammel into a small hairy primate with a tail.

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In case your wondering at this point Florin you appear confused about what a chimp (chimpanzee) actually is, so note that chimpanzees are apes (no tails) and bonobos are monkeys.

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The kind of change that just doesn't happen without a massive shift in enviroment, probably resulting in a life form that's merely humanoid rather than human. Thus, wide scale genetic manipulation would be required to PREVENT interbreeding, not allow it.

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This would involve ending up on a different planet within a different solar system perhaps? Like the stated scenario.

[Valles]

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Which is further made weird, after looking back, because the Fanatics are actually acting exactly like the good Muslims (explained before previously) that you professed you didnt want to be an exact parallel of a modern Earth religion Convert or die is their creed. The details separating them are decorative icing on the issue. Not that Im stopping you, it makes sense, just that you should be aware of that situation.

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*sigh* Yeah, fairly so. I just wanted to make it clear that the parallel wasn't something I was shooting for out of a desire to make any kind of social commentary so much as a lack of originality.

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Technically, its a matter of generations instead of years here... 50-80k (your minimum time range) is about 50k/15= 3,333 generations and 80k/15=5,333 generations of adapting to a different set environmental conditions (examples of which I previously wrote). They have to deal with different obstacles so different physical changes will occur.... the simplest of which is the biochemical ones for the local food sources. Which are worse than extra body parts for a pregnancy... unborn humans do go through a section with a tail. Even relatively minor changes of this biochemical nature will makes pregnancy rather unlikely. The internal environment is just too hostile.

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And even worse than that, there's no guarantee that any honestly alien carbon/oxygen biosphere is going to rotate its proteins or sugars the same way ours does, which difference is, as far as I know, completely random, making the odds one in four at best. Which would be why I had been thinking that one of the previous epochs of starflight had included a race who went on a bit of a terraforming binge, seeding primordial worlds like the Earth of the time with suitable bacteria or other simple life... but in retrospect, that wouldn't go far enough, would it? Not given the time scale...
*sigh* Right, yeah, okay, that's too long - the driving idea behind that timing was mostly that it should be long before any hint of recorded history... I refuse to give any hint of legitimacy to the saucer nuts, see, even if their delusions would be convenient for my purposes.

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You do realize you just argued that a species wont be changed by a new environment in several decamillenia, because they can complain about it? Or maybe that being able to complain about it and make new tools will somehow prevent them from changing genetically or biochemically regardless of their new environment

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Complaining, no. Telling their kids how to cheat their way around a particular problem, yes. The idea being that evolution requires that a particular genetic trait have an impact on an individual's ability to raise children, which event becomes much less common when cooperation and tool use so drastically increase the chances of everyone in the tribe doing so. As for biochemistry, see above.

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So how did the feudalists get into space again

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Pretty much what happened in Europe - somebody noticed that technological and economic improvements tend to have fairly noticable military effects.
Ja, -n
(Remembers bonobos in genus Pan, right along with chimps.)

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Necratoid]

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*sigh* Yeah, fairly so. I just wanted to make it clear that the parallel wasn't something I was shooting for out of a desire to make any kind of social commentary so much as a lack of originality.

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Ah, I took that a bit differently but I can understand that. You can just say its a matter of control freak jerks are universal. So you may want to soften up the damage done to Earth say thats what they were trying to do and have them just not be as militarily capable.
Its a mining colony so just make it a pack of Fanatical miners lobbing asteroids instead of military grade weapons. Perhaps add in a few dozen random worlds where the civilization never quite got to industrial age levels and instead are at the hunter gather or agricultural community levels. The standard Paladin protocol is to actually explain what they are trying to convert people to. An Allow your new gods to elevate you to their level scheme, which would fit the main point of their religion.
Instead these miners got huffy over some incoming transmissions (radio waves can cross through jump points killing the travel time through intervening space down to months instead of millennia). They took matters (and the cargo ship) into their own hands. Thus a few cities can get thrashed (the first volley of lopped asteroids hit water mostly, maybe Africa or China or the Yukon got hit. A few went into deep space or hit the hit the moon. Nothing more than a few dozen feet across though, large enough to be dangerous, while too small to do more than be noticeable. The miners were running on hate and forgot the lack of armament thing, so they improvised with what they had available. Speed up with a rock on the front of the ship, hit the brakes and let the rocks fly.
Then they came personally following the second wave, for aiming calculations and discovered that the locals had planned for a asteroid glomping the Earth. Or its just IBCMS used as an improvised defense over this random storm of space rocks. So Earth IDs them as one of that larger chunks and the ship (or better a rock near it) eats a missile the shockwave of the hit kills most on board. Someone checking on the effects of the missile notes a rather ship shaped rock. Maybe the US has a functional shuttle up to the ship or a private company managed to get a ship up there. Either way the mining craft is between the Earth and the Moon.
Which ever does it the ship is taken into a more stable orbit and reversed engineered well the power source is based on something they cant replicate or even hope to understand. They can get it to move and while the prisoners (if any, if there are they arent enjoying Earths gravity). So through reverse engineering and the mostly functional restored mining ship (trial and error, dumb luck, plus some spliced in controls) Earth gets some materials from the asteroid belt build a ship with more conventional power. Then a few more.
The no weaponizing space rules of Earth are ruled suicidal and revised to only internationally controlled weapons. So by the time the Paladins figure out that they are missing a mining jump capable mining craft. While investigating this disappearance the absolutely massive ship jumps into the system and drops off some faster armed crafts. Some people on Earth with clear heads decided that yelling at the race ahead of time and actually stating the offenses there mad at would give them the high moral ground if nothing else. That and the question of why a basically unarmed, mining vessel was attacking an entire planet on it own.
So the Earthlings transmit footage of the attack and the damaged mining ship in Earths orbit. The mining ship boarding by an obviously relatively lower tech vessel. The ranting guys the took off the ship. Tossed in are text blocks with the complaints in the Paladins language pidgin Paladin anyway. The more mainstream Paladin look at the broadcast and decide that these complaints look rather legitimate. So after many messages its agreed that the Earthlings can have the basically unoccupied system as a buffer (the Paladins have one already). That and the Earthlings can beat them by numbers they also dont realize that the jump ship is mostly engines and think kilometers long battleship/carrier giving us a chance to take these miners and leave or we can try to beat that enormous gun-laden abomination.
After a few days the miners are taken back to the more Paladin occupied space to explain the whole with starting a war, without telling anyone. They can come back later with more firepower later if they want the system but they arent fighting that thing. So the war is more the Paladins ship getting yelled and weapons pointed at them, than massive death matching. The Earthlings are off the warpath for now, but willing to retaliate if provoked. The Paladin government involved are rather annoyed, with all the parties involved, each faction has different reason. Some that the miners attacked a random planet. Some that they lost the fight. Some that they lost the system. Some that there are known people they cant convert anytime soon or even attempt.
This will also give the Earthlings valid reasons to take over a buffer zone of systems and cover the main points of your time line.

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*sigh* Right, yeah, okay, that's too long - the driving idea behind that timing was mostly that it should be long before any hint of recorded history... I refuse to give any hint of legitimacy to the saucer nuts, see, even if their delusions would be convenient for my purposes.

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This is the planning stage so these problems are suppose to be ironed out at this point anyway. Dont let it discourage you.
Okay, so if these precursors are running around seeding worlds and are still around (so they are doing random or scheduled check ups as the run through a cycle of different sectors of seeded worlds) how about they modify the transplanted humans to function chemically in the new systems. Only their projected schedule was off and the humans evolved tech faster than expected. This meaning a random scout ship or drone can come by and dealing with it is a plot hook.
The biological weapon (more likely one of many) of the nekojins homeworld was in part a devolutionary retrovirus. Only it was using a local catlike tree dweller as a model and not Earths primates. Thus while most of the population altered according to plans, some didnt. They were probably the secondary ranked people (worker classes or less advanced countries) the ones that didnt mess with their genetics. So the already altered peoples (altered with more features of local fauna) are the ones the virus was traditionally effective on. The unaltered people (as the bio-chemical adaptation doesnt really count at this point) are the nekojin. This was a dispute between a few countries and the others got caught in the crossfire.
Who among other problems found that the can now only eat some species of their homeworlds animal life. The animals break down the substances in the plants and act as a one step filter (like how cows can make their own vitamin C from eating not vitamin C containing plants). The precursors also altered some animals to ease their bio-chemical altered bodies into the ecosystems. They are back more or less to the half integrated biochemistry of old.
This would also allow them to eat some vegetation from Earth, a new experience for anyone not really old, unless the getting off the warped homeworld was a centuries long goal. Maybe its only a few types, but food that doesnt need to be fought first is novel enough to end up their version of junk food. Not all that good for them, but they like it.. Start off the eating as a random dare like thing they think it will make the dared sick, but some of them get the types they can digest. Even if its only a few decades sense doomsday, vegetable matter wll be new to most.
The cross breeding only works with 2-15% of the neko-jin, so even a few decades after first contact they are rather rare, but known of. The oddity that crossbreeds are even possible combined with the ability to eat some vegetable matter is going to make people wonder. Im not sure what type of game your adapting this too, but in dice RPG terms everytime a coupling occurs (birth control free sex without offspring is a casual sex invite) they have a 8% chance of pregnancy (for the session) that decreases by 1%evertime. This will allow for offspring but make it random enough to cause confusion. After that those that can impregnate/get pregnant have a percent chance that make increase with each pregnancy so that some just can crossbreed automatically. Another chart should be for if the offspring are reproductively viable and which parent they more resemble.

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Complaining, no. Telling their kids how to cheat their way around a particular problem, yes. The idea being that evolution requires that a particular genetic trait have an impact on an individual's ability to raise children, which event becomes much less common when cooperation and tool use so drastically increase the chances of everyone in the tribe doing so.

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Species all have their strong traits, with humans its hands eyes, brains. Humans arent exempt from genetic evolution, they just for different traits. Tool use is also not a man exclusive trait. Sea otters wrap themselves in living seaweed as an anchor and bash open shellfish with handy rocks. Some bird build nests rather than dig holes weaving isnt a human only invention either. Some apes have figured out they can chew on a grass/weed and stick it in a termite nest meaning those candy sticks with the sugar powder are echoed in nature. Some endangered monkeys in Japan have discovered the wonders of plastic shopping bags, which makes the guys who grow the orchards of insanely expensive oranges very, very cross. This is an example of animals using the laws of man against man. Ive seen a new article about a fox that used a train as an anti hound pack weapon . The fox led the dogs to the tracks an timed it so it ran across the tracks safely and the chasing dogs all managed to be in front of the train. This was as embarrassing for the hunter as the Italians losing to the Ethiopian spearmen while they had tanks.
These are examples of other species using tools. I saw a case of an injured fox who spent the winter with a family bring its kids with it to stay the winter the next year. This worked. Ive had cats go to the vet and come back suddenly able to operate doors. They didnt learn from the vets. Animals teach their offspring and each other survival behavior also dont thing these are human only traits.

[Valles]

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The Paladin government involved are rather annoyed, with all the parties involved, each faction has different reason. Some that the miners attacked a random planet. Some that they lost the fight. Some that they lost the system. Some that there are known people they cant convert anytime soon or even attempt.

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And, likely, more than a few that they got bluffed down by what was essentially a flying engine with delusions of grandeur. ^_^
Yep. And this, er, less stark version of events would do better for the sort of political fencing that'd make for good adventure hooks. Thanks!
...So, when the Precursors were seeding, they added a retrovirus that altered the 'colonists' to be able to eat the local food, and when the Nekojin were bombing themselves to bits, one of the bioweapons that got scattered around went and altered them so that that ancient change was partially undone? What I had been thinking was that the modern 'cat people' breed had been created as, essentially, clonable shock troops for at one of the factions involved in that war, and that they'd, though a combination of luck and the changes made to them, been the only one of probably serveral types, including baseline humans, to survive to the current day in significant numbers.

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These are examples of other species using tools. I saw a case of an injured fox who spent the winter with a family bring its kids with it to stay the winter the next year. This worked. Ive had cats go to the vet and come back suddenly able to operate doors. They didnt learn from the vets. Animals teach their offspring and each other survival behavior also dont thing these are human only traits.

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Never thought they were. I'm simply saying that I think that tool use has an effect on the way and rate that a species evolves, and that this is most noticable in humans because we're, one, so good at it, and two, rely on it so utterly.
I'm sort of working on a writeup of the Imperials, BTW, so stay tuned.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Custos Sophiae]

Two things-
First, chlorine is much rarer than oxygen. Any world where it is common enough to be the basis of the biochemistry has almost certainly been tampered with by an elder race at the dawn of time.
The plant equivalents would turn Cl- into Cl2, just as earthly plants produce oxygen by splitting water, but the energy demands for chlorine are significantly higher. The chlorine plants would need more light than ours, preferably blue or soft ultraviolet. Their planets would typically be sunny, not venus-like, and circle hotter suns than ours.
Second, new species can form very rapidly - the cichilid radiation in the East African lakes took under 100,000 years, maybe as little as ten thousand - but only when a species moves into empty niches. Humans occupy the cognitive niche; with only minor exceptions, rather than evolving new physical adaptations to suit a new lifestyle, we modify our cultural tool kit.
E.g, rather than evolving teeth well adapted to eating meet or grains, like cats or horses, we cook our food, leaving our teeth generalised. Biological evolution among humans is mostly restricted to solving problems our technology historically could not handle, such as disease resistance.
Furthermore, recently seperated species only evolve interspecies mating barriers when they are still in close proximity. If mating with the other species isn't an option, there's no need to evolve mechanisms that would prevent it.
Adapting to alien ecologies won't inadvertently create such barriers either. It's a situation like lactose intolerance on Earth - the necessary adaptaions don't compromise hybrid viability. A barrier would have to be created intentionally, not merely as a byproduct of other genetic alterations, but as an end in itself - unless the precursors are using genetic engineering on such a scale that they could as easily have started with gibbons and produced the same result.
Thus, I'd expect that, while there would doubtless be cultural barriers to intermarriage, anyone with a taste for the exotic would have little difficulty conceiving an hybrid child.

[Necratoid]

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And, likely, more than a few that they got bluffed down by what was essentially a flying engine with delusions of grandeur. ^_^

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Best make their current weapons too short range to takeout the Earth jump ships without getting killed themselves, either in the crossfire or in the post kill explosion. You did say the other races think of the Earthlings choice power sources as insane this would prevent a retaliation strike from just over running Earth. Also, discovering they were right about the danger of those ships for the wrong reasons would annoy them. They just get done yelling at the ships captain for wussing out and then someone in engineering points out theyd have died in the resulting explosion anyway. Best to make self sacrifice for the whole not be a smart/noble thing in their minds.

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What I had been thinking was that the modern 'cat people' breed had been created as, essentially, clonable shock troops for at one of the factions involved in that war, and that they'd, though a combination of luck and the changes made to them, been the only one of probably serveral types, including baseline humans, to survive to the current day in significant numbers.

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If your going the cloned shock troopers route (second-ninth class citizens either way), Id suggest making them sterile prewar BW (Bio Weapon). Whether intentionally it was added in to the cloning process or their food supply was tainted with something that prevented breeding. This way the barrier can be broken after the BW and they have no idea how to raise kids properly so they are faking it best they can. If this happened long enough ago theyve basically figured out a working method, but know they can improve. If say the spiders are functional (though not that smart) after birth/hatching they wouldnt be much help on this gives a reason to hang out with humans.
As a side thought maybe hyper space shouldnt have thawed so long ago say the crystal breaks up if exposed to organized energy waves (like radio signals) for a long enough time in a large enough volume (say a few decades). This way you can limit the space your working with building. Basically, the precursors hyperdrive function in a way that crystallizes hyper space behind them and the crystals growth pushes them along. Their sensors effectively melt the crystal in front of them as they go. This would also allow new worlds not to get clobbered immediately and provide future plot hooks. With most races a few jumps apart this would let them develop a bit once they muck about in a system enough they have other opening decrystallize. This way the reason the Paladins failed to just find Earth a few decades/hundred years ago was that the second ring of systems hadnt completely thawed yet. So when they went into the other systems to mine after it opened they then discovered the signals from the Sol system.
This would also allow an advanced system to be discovered that relied on tight beam communications, thus the jump points didnt thaw and they decided it would take to long to get anywhere else. Or if things get to resolves too much to be interesting let another races pop into the mix, into the mix. Or lets some one bore into the jump point with a emission device and tunnel into closed systems provide they can find the jump points while they are closed.

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First, chlorine is much rarer than oxygen. Any world where it is common enough to be the basis of the biochemistry has almost certainly been tampered with by an elder race at the dawn of time.

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That is part of why I said Venus like environment, (no I havent looked up the composition) the idea is that they spiders run on resources that humans dont. The Chlorine rich environment is more of an example of such an environment than instant cannon. Ill agree with the higher energy requirements though Chlorine gas tends to tint the air green so I cant see a light blue sky in particular.

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A barrier would have to be created intentionally, not merely as a byproduct of other genetic alterations, but as an end in itself - unless the precursors are using genetic engineering on such a scale that they could as easily have started with gibbons and produced the same result.

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Tech wise the precursors could have started with gibbons or squirrels or bananas its that they were impressed by whatever they considered the oooo shiny! factor in humans. So they could have managed the same results with a different species its more that that would involve staying in one section of the universe long enough to wait for that evolution these precursors seeded the universe (or at least some section of it), moved on and seeded another section. They eventually found humans evolving on Earth and spread them around in different environments on different planets to see what happened.
Your explanation of why they could inter-breed freely with current Earth humans revolves around them not having been entered into different food chains and bio-chemically different ecosystems. Im not going to redebating what I spent 5-9 posts previously debating. The drift that has occurred is in part purposeful editing and in part the local ecosystem.

[Custos Sophiae]

Chlorine is greenish yellow under the light of a yellow sun. Under the light of a hotter, bluer, sun, it will look different. Of course, the aliens might not be breathing chlorine gas. With no free oxygen, you could have seas of carbon tetrachloride, used in the same way as chlorine gas would be.
Humans have occupied different food chains, while spreading across the planet, and encountered many novel biotoxins, but we have not speciated for that reason alone, contrary to what you are suggesting. Carbohydrate/protein based alien life isn't going to chemically any stranger than what we've already encountered on this world.
Nor would even major genetic changes necessarily prevent inter-breeding. During our evolutionary history, the number of chromosomes has changed, yet the proto-people with more could still breed with those with less.
Quite simply, considered in the light of everything we know about biochemistry and evolution, speciation is not plausible under the circumstances described unless the precursors were deliberately trying to produce multiple species - which they may well have had reason to do.

[Valles]

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Chlorine is greenish yellow under the light of a yellow sun. Under the light of a hotter, bluer, sun, it will look different. Of course, the aliens might not be breathing chlorine gas. With no free oxygen, you could have seas of carbon tetrachloride, used in the same way as chlorine gas would be.

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So, in short, their primary is probably an F-type star? No problem, there are plenty around.
I've had a thought - chlorine is scarcer than oxygen, but if its interactions require more energy, might they not also yield more, ie, support the same size of organism on a lower partial pressure?

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As a side thought maybe hyper space shouldnt have thawed so long ago say the crystal breaks up if exposed to organized energy waves (like radio signals) for a long enough time in a large enough volume (say a few decades).

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This fails to account for things like Pulsars and such... Also, the fact that interstellar travel was becoming impossible in our area was, in my mind, why the Precursors had moved on to other projects.
I'm going to bow out of the 'speciation argument' for the time being, but if it keeps being a problem, I actually know an expert to ask... I'd rather not bother her, though.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Valles]

The Imperials hail from the third of the five major moons of a gas giant about three times the size of Jupiter, which orbits a K-class star at a little less than one AU.
The first moon is, of course, the most geologically active of the five. Despite being only a little over a fifth (22%) the Earth's mass, it has a dense atmosphere and a surface gravity of about 6.2 m/s^2. While whatever water it posessed during its formation was boiled away long ago by the heat produced by its primary, a subsequent collision has added a considerable amount, and in the current day it is a stifling, wet world of perpetual cloud cover and near constant rains. There's much less seasonal or regional variation than on most worlds, because of the way the cloud layer traps and redistributes heat, and pretty much the entire surface is covered by shallow, vegetation-clogged seas and swamps interspersed with volcanic outcroppings. The native civilization consisted mostly of independant city-states, each operating off of a single 'mountain' and trying to exercise hegemony over its immediate neighbors. Local technology was relatively advanced before they were conquered, roughly in the earlier stages of their industrial revolution.
The second moon was also close enough to have been boiled mostly dry, but didn't have the same later collision. Except for three small, shallow, utterly toxic seas, it has no surface water to speak of, and only limited aquifers. Aside from the lands downwind of those seas and the couple of mountain ranges tall enough to scrape moisture out of the higher parts of the atmosphere, the entire planet is taken up by the worst sort of desert. What life there is in the deep sands tends to center around an endemic species of tree whose seeds are sufficiently massive to allow a shoot to send down a root the hundreds of feet needed to find water... sometimes... These trees live a long time and grow to truly massive - if scraggly - dimensions, and can support entire semi-symbiotic ecosystems, including humans. It has the highest gravity of the moons - 6.8 m/s^2 - and is about thirty-five percent Earth's mass. Given how meager their margin of survival was, it shouldn't be any surprise that the native inhabitants never got much past, at best, a degree of sophistication comperable to what you might build on a remote pacific island.
The third moon is the largest, both by mass and volume, and the most earthlike, being a bit over half the mass and having nearly nine-tenths the surface area, along with actually more dry land... if only marginally. Most of its landmass is concentrated into a single continent, and the political system that eventually controlled the entire system developed in the high central mountain ranges before moving down onto the lowland plains. I say 'political system' because its closest analogue in Terran experience were the Inca, and the usual term of 'empire' doesn't quite fit, or anyway didn't to start with. Eventually, around abouts the equivalent of the turn of the twentieth century, one of the lowland polities got the idea of conquering and exploiting one of the non-main-continent civilizations whose existence had been known of for some time, on the theory that they'd be easier marks than any of their better-armed neighbors and provide an increased resource base for further competition. The other lowland nations promptly copied the idea, which left the highlanders in a bit of a pickle, since they were landlocked. Eventually, though, one of their scientists hit on the idea of going up.
On the one hand, this idea was a lot more expensive than just building ocean ships, but on the other, these were far more potential resources available than just a measly island or two. The competing kingdoms eventually saw this and started going offworld themselves, but never really caught up. By the time they started getting intersteller visitors, the core empire had just started to reap the benefits of a former policy of exporting the 'malcontent' of the defeated competing kingdoms to the other four moons, and thus has a call for a steady diet of security troops.
The fourth moon's notable characteristic is how much water it has - enough that the shallowest part of its world-girdling ocean is still more than a kilometer and a half deep. Being a goodly distance out from the radiant heat of the primary world, it's relatively cool, and is warmed mostly by the local sun and internal tidal action. Surface gravity is a shred under 6.4 m/s^2, and, thanks to a floating coral-anologue, there's actually a respectable amount of habitable land. Since the stuff only grows underwater and in sunlight, the form of the smaller 'islands' is a very distinctive hollow shallow cone. Larger islands - which can approach continent scale - will have a rising outer ring surrounding a jumble of sharply angled plates of stone that have caved in, then been grown into place at usually fairly strange angles thanks to the newly available sunlight. Local civilization never got past about the bronze age, thanks to the difficulty of finding materials.
The fifth moon has relatively limited geothermal activity - since all of its major stresses tend to come from the same direction and are more distant besides - and receives little extra infrared radiation. Naturally, this makes it more than a bit chilly - each of its polar ice caps covers about a third of the total surface of the planet, and much of what's still exposed is ocean. Aside from the various hunting tribes eking out their existences on the more livable parts of the ice belts, the entire planet was ruled by a powerful, centralized empire that had originally been established a century or two ago by the first of that world's kingdoms to develop gunpowder.
Politics and technology coming when I feel up to it.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Custos Sophiae]

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I've had a thought - chlorine is scarcer than oxygen, but if its interactions require more energy, might they not also yield more, ie, support the same size of organism on a lower partial pressure?

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It would, though not by enough to compensate for the scarcity. The reactions are less than twice as energetic, and chlorine is less than half as common as oxygen. Also, this only helps the animals.
The real problem is with the plants. Water is much easier to work with than Cl-, and much more common on unaltered worlds. Since they also need less light Terran-style plants should easily outcompete chlorine plants, unless steps are taken to eliminate all the water.
Do that, and you can then replace oxygen with nitrogen throughout biochemistry - e.g, amines instead of alcohols, hydrogen cyanide instead of carbon dioxide. Water would be mildly corrosive to these creatures.

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The fourth moon's notable characteristic is how much water it has - enough that the shallowest part of its world-girdling ocean is still more than a kilometer and a half deep.

---

The problem here is nutrient loss. Anything that falls to the seabed isn't coming back, which is why most of our oceans are pretty empty.
Either absolutely everything floats - no bones, or solid excreta - or the floating coral is limited to regions where water is welling up from the depths, carrying fresh nutrients with it. Since the ocean is heated from above, and there are no continents to force the water upwards, the best bet is probably at points above active volcanoes

[deadpan29]

My chemistry background is limited, so I'm not equipped to talk about amines Vs alcohols and such. However, the relative scaricty of Chlorine in the universe may not count for as much as you think. For example, an oxygen-rich atmosphere is not "natural" in that it wouldn't exist without all the plant life pumping 02 into the air. Otherwise all the oxygen would slowly react with other materials and end up bound into water or oxidized materials like rust or beach sand.
Thus, if some sort of clorine-based ecosystem got a foothold before the oxygen forms, then you could have a clorine environment that might not allow any oxygen forms to develop later.
Admittedly, my background is in eletrical and aero engineering, not chemistry, so there are probably holes in this.
----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[Custos Sophiae]

---

Admittedly, my background is in electrical and aero engineering, not chemistry, so there are probably holes in this.

---

You're comparing oxygen and chlorine, both gases only produces in quantity by life - but that's the wrong side of the equation. It's much more illuminating to look at the other side - the chlorine anion compared with water. That's where chlorine falls down.
To start with, water is far, far, more common, even in the absence of life.
Free oxygen is rare, absent life, but oxygen itself is as common as dirt, literally - most minerals are full of the stuff. Oxygen is the third most abundant element, hydrogen the first, making water probably the commonest compound in the universe.
When doing photosynthesis, you need a reducing agent. Terran life uses water, mostly, but alternatives include ammonia, Cl-, Fe2+,H2S, and many other small molecules.
Water is far more common than any of them. Ammonia comes closest, but using that produces nitrogen gas, a terrible oxidising agent. Inhaling N2 and exhaling NH3 is a non-starter.
It's not the easiest to work with, terran life experimented with less energetic alternatives first, but when the others run short, water is there. Photosynthesisers using water can outcompete everything, simply because there's so much more of it, by more than enough to make up for the extra problems of handling it - and it beats chlorine on both counts.
Once the photosynthisers make the inevitable switch to using water, the atmosphere will fill up with oxygen, an excellent oxidising agent. Animals will use it, and the cycle will start turning.
To plausibly get chlorine based life, you pretty much have to handwave away the oxygen and water from the solar system - you don't want a comet landing in your ecosystem - a triviality for an elder race.

[Necratoid]

---

Humans have occupied different food chains, while spreading across the planet, and encountered many novel biotoxins, but we have not speciated for that reason alone, contrary to what you are suggesting. Carbohydrate/protein based alien life isn't going to chemically any stranger than what we've already encountered on this world.

---

That is utter Earth system only centric speculation. You have no actual system to compare it to and are making broad generalizations with no proof. The only non Earth life form we may have access to is the bacteria like structures that were found in the freakish red rain that India got soaked with for a month or so. That has all the looks of bacteria and no DNA at all. It may be the first truly alien life humans have identified... or something else. Its currently in debate.

---

Nor would even major genetic changes necessarily prevent inter-breeding.

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Which is ignoring the entire point about alternate biochemical states of life. Kimono dragons have a bite that is so riddled with rot and bacteria that it will kill pretty much anything else in one bite. Several caterpillars have toxic, foul tasting blood from the plants they eat.
The presence of some natural chemicals will make a creatures bodily fluids corrosive/poisonous or the womb far to acidic for sperm to survive in. Foreign chemicals do bad things to organisms in small amounts. That and 'major' changes is rather vague... it also is true that minor genetic changes can sterilize an organism.

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The third moon is the largest, both by mass and volume, and the most earthlike, being a bit over half the mass and having nearly nine-tenths the surface area, along with actually more dry land... if only marginally.

---

Lighter ,but around the same size that screams not much metal, most of Earths weight has to do with the iron/nickel/metal core. So organic materials and crystal composites (which may mean they have naturally energy radiating crystals like quartz as there main power source). With lower gravity and higher elevations thats probably why the others couldnt catch up fast enough they started off late and had to work harder to get the same distance up.

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Either absolutely everything floats - no bones, or solid excreta - or the floating coral is limited to regions where water is welling up from the depths, carrying fresh nutrients with it. Since the ocean is heated from above, and there are no continents to force the water upwards, the best bet is probably at points above active volcanoes

---

So the coral grows around the volcanoes and vents then breaks off and the volcanic currents drive it upwards at which point the lack of constant chemical food for these chemotropic coral-things makes them starve. Which means these things have something-like a pumice exoskeleton which floats then the coral provides a surface for ice to freeze on., Which helps them float. The low mineral content means the water is less saline than the oceans of Earth, so water freezes faster. But the volcanic activity means the bottom of the sea cant quite get to freezing so the surface itself only freezes on the dead coral. All surface life must be around these central cores ecosystems cling to around these floating island.
Continents are large coral frozen together. The islands either broken off like icebergs or rather old occasionally they must collide which is going to mess with local legends.

[Custos Sophiae]

---

Carbohydrate/protein based alien life isn't going to chemically any stranger than what we've already encountered on this world.
That is utter Earth system only centric speculation. You have no actual system to compare it to and are making broad generalizations with no proof.

---

We know enough about terran biology to have a pretty good idea what it can adapt to. The claims I'm making are on a par with saying fast swimming fish will be streamlined, dictated by principles beyond dispute.
Not all life on earth uses the standard proteins and sugars, so we do know what happens when terran biochemistries encounter non-standard biochemestries, since we can study it in the lab.
In the more extreme cases, such as using the opposite chirality, you'd pretty much need to redesign every single enzyme in the human body, which requires a level of genetic engineering beyond that otherwise suggested for these precursors. Maybe they were just that good, but it's better to keep their abilities limited. That way, you get more interesting plots, such as the bioengineering failing.
In less extreme cases, it is sufficient to add a few enzymes to cope with the novel amino acids, sugars, etc, and to syntheise any that don't occur in the local biochemistry. Many of the needed enzymes already exist in our liver, and the rest can be copied from other earthly life. This approach amounts to multiple point mutations, which is not the kind of thing that causes a reproductive barrier.

---

Kimono dragons have a bite that is so riddled with rot and bacteria that it will kill pretty much anything else in one bite. Several caterpillars have toxic, foul tasting blood from the plants they eat.

---

Which confirms my point. Humans have no trouble adapting to ecosystems where such things are commonplace, even without genetic engineering. In fact, we use potent neurotoxins as spices and drugs. It helps that we often cook our food - boiling water breaks down many toxins, for reasons of basic chemistry.
Nor is it necessary to be able to eat absolutely everything in the ecosystem - 99% of pseudomushrooms maybe poisonous, but we can just eat the 1% that aren't. With common sense, and some mild genetic engineering we can reasonably expect humans to be able to cope with moderately alien ecosystems.
And, of course, none of the alien toxins will be fine tuned to affect terran biochemistry, putting severe limits on their likely effectiveness.

---

All surface life must be around these central cores ecosystems cling to around these floating island.

---

There would probably be some life on the ocean bed, which could swim to the surface to mate - kraken rising from the deep. Maybe the larva lives in the coral, while the adults dwell far below.
This is another way of getting nutrients back to the surface, though probably not enough to untether the coral from the volcanic vents.

[Valles]

I'd address the island and ocean thing, but I have a paper due in less than an hour, so, in the meantime, here's a Nifty Useful Thing I Found!

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Necratoid]

---

We know enough about terran biology to have a pretty good idea what it can adapt to. The claims I'm making are on a par with saying fast swimming fish will be streamlined, dictated by principles beyond dispute.

---

That is true as far as it goes but the same basic forms keep popping up in the fossil record (dimetradons are basically wolves with solar sail fins instead of fur. Which is why the function of the creatures can pretty much be guessed on sight. The problem is that genetics have little effect on the shape... the niche in the eco system has far more of an effect. Earlier in the mentioned the closest genetic relative of a bear being a pig or a shrew (details dimmed by time), thats why two things that look alike cant necessarily breed.

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And, of course, none of the alien toxins will be fine tuned to affect terran biochemistry, putting severe limits on their likely effectiveness.

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Because injecting random chemicals into your bloodstream is so healthful. Fine tuning only has so much effect. If it kills you by thinning the blood for the point it cant carry oxygen, you are dead. If it causes the platelets to spontaneously congeal, you are dead. If it messes with the rhythm of your heart, you are dead. If it bonds with the copper in your blood, you are dead. If it effects your skeleton so it decalcifies and you collapse on yourself and then suffocate your dead. Necrotizes your flesh, you are dead. Randomly fires your neurons till you starve to death, you are dead. Exotic toxins are more likely to kill you, as your ancestors didnt lose the ones that cant survive it.
Its a matter of dosing. Yes, we can use tiny little diluted doses of some of them. Yes, food poisoning can be sold as a beauty aid. Arsenic was used as such and yes 1% of a blowfish or so can be eaten However youre changing the subject.
We are discussing if adapting the biochemistry would make them unable to crossbreed. Which I bought up toxic bodily fluids all youve done so far is confirm that toxic bodily fluids exist. However if a human offshoot doesnt have a compatible system they cant breed.
To this end I point out that 93 degrees F is the temperature that sperm multiplies at thats why hot tubs and conception are a bad combo. The sperm get cooked. The same is true with the wombs acidity sperm can only live 3 days in that environment max they come in an alkaline fluid to extend there chances. Genetic viability only matters if the sperm can reach the egg. Yes, dead sperm works for conception, but we arent talking with mechanical help here. I also doubt that nekojin have a strong internal current to shoot the sperm in bullet style.
I could also go on about conflicting genetic construction orders involved or if the offspring is likely to survive inside the womb do to the chemicals fed to it. For instance, to make a human embryo male a certain chemical additive must be present at the right time or the offspring is female or intersexed or something. This is just one of the chemical issues involved. Thats if the womb isnt requiring adaptation to some random element that is absent or present in the food adapted to. We are also talking about a child that is getting instructions to build to radically different types of ears. Which would mess with their hearing development. Which is why I suggested a higher number of non-lethal birth defects.
It is nifty though I only counted 5 connections.

[Valles]

Okay, having gone through the Sol Station site, I'm prepared to pin our known nations to some real stars.
The Paladins are from Epsilon Eridani or Tau Ceti, making their and the UTN's contested system Sirius (and adding a reason for them to be cross over losing that system - both of their potential homes are poorer in metals than Sol, and a lot poorer than Sirius or Procyon). Likewise, the most suitable system for the Spiders, given what's already been decided about them (close enough to Earth to have uninterrupted travel, F-class sun), is probably Zeta Tucanae. Put the Imperials in J. Herschel 5173, the Cats in 107 Piscium, and the Feudalists in p Eridani... The Blobs are fairly distant, say, Chi Orionis.
Yes, I have a map. There are quite a few stars that should be able to support life that aren't on it. My original draft allowed jump links between K-or-better mass stars that were less than about sixteen light-years apart, but going to that site's 10-or-less measurement scheme is much more convenient. ^_^
Incidentally, I think I might have an explanation for why our mapping centers around Sol - Jump Points cannot be detected on instruments. The closest you can get is punching your drive and seeing whether it, A, works, B, turns over then dies, or C, just sits there. Unless you're within a couple hundred kilometers of exactly the right spot, it just sits there... I think that the difficulties in using this method for primary location should be obvious, given the scale of your average star system. To calculate where the Point should be, though, you need the mass, distance, and relative motion of your target star with a fair degree of precision. If I understand correctly, astronomy today is as much image processing as it is observation - and processing is computer science, a Terran specialty... In short, none of the other nations likely have enough data for more than one or two jumps away from their home systems.
As for the question of nutrient-leaching on the water moon, I don't think I said that it got most of its energy from the local sun - although you're right, the postion I have it in would have that effect... hmm. Drop it into the number two slot, moving 'desert' and 'homeworld' each out one place?
Anyway, I'll toss a rock into the species discussion by noting that the 'Precursors' who scattered humans all over the place are far from the only or the earliest race to go mucking about in this area... indeed, all the planets that they were dropping people on had already been terraformed before they even evolved. I'm not sure when, though, or even if it was only the once... Anyway, while these worlds may be seperated from Earth and each other by up to a couple billion years of evolution, they're still not entirely alien... Likewise, as with the chlorine issue that Custos was calling me on, the elements and basic compounds making up life aren't likely to change much... Mrr. Most of the local stars seem to be older and poorer in metals than Sol, so absences would seem a more likely problem than new and interesting toxins...
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Necratoid]

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Drop it into the number two slot, moving 'desert' and 'homeworld' each out one place?

---

Just dont have it too close the closer to the sun the less water, as it evaporates. The farther away the more water, but its mostly ice due to temperature.

---

In short, none of the other nations likely have enough data for more than one or two jumps away from their home systems.

---

Probably the Earth has more rare earth metals and the other races had a far more difficult time making the computer parts. Low metal worlds (being lighter) are their normal habitat also metal rich planets would make mining that must harder, because of the productivity lose due to gravity. Even their tech wasnt really made for such gravitically demanding tolerances they can adapt, but it takes time.
You might also want to make it so once the Earthlings figured out what was required to open a jump point, they calculated the most likely sections of space to have them. Then build unmanned probes to go out and fire off just enough of a open the jump point signal to start a few seconds of reaction, but not enough open it. Basically, poking the system with sticks and looking for them to get annoyed theyre playing Can you here me now? with space.
Id imagine that a lot of unmanned probes got made testing what would work while reverse engineering the mining ship. This would be good practice for engineers so they could make space worthy ships that if the new tech explodes its expensive rather than lethal. Also, there is a system ship or space station thats bigger than the Terran jump ships flying shipyards. Once you can do that, making a moving miner/factor ship that you land random belt objects and mine them, then fly back to the main production center.
Incidentally, do you have populations for all the races? Unless India and China have had a major war, Earth is going to be around 7-7 billion. Minus whatever the bombardment took out. What kind of population level are we talking here?
Some examples of wars are: 1) Chinese turning all the rivers coming into India into muddy sewage issue, 2) India and Pakistan smacking each other around, 3) China trying to solve its issues with something like 4-1 male to female ration,, 4) China tries to invade Taiwan and the US honors its alliance. If a major war hasnt happened the Chinese are moving into inter planetary construction. You already mentioned Mars was a military training world.

---

Most of the local stars seem to be older and poorer in metals than Sol, so absences would seem a more likely problem than new and interesting toxins...

---

Those absences lead to new compounds being used in biology. Also, its not only the Terrans that have to worry about poisoning. There are disorders that are caused by too much/too little iron, zinc, or copper in your system. A toxin is basically a chemical your body cant deal with. In a low iron system blood may be a different color as hemoglobin is what makes the blood red and its an iron issue. Yes, having a lack of certain metals in the system may mean Terran army rations/gear include metals you suck on to keep your levels up. This weird habit of needing metals for a not obvious use may would increase the Terrans having odds needs that make the other races see them as demanding. Not that the Terrans havent explained the point, but laymen have their own theories to grind in the rumor mill.
Have you thought about making the reason hyperspace crystallized being a matter of the most recent precursors trying out a new faster/better/shinier hyperdrive that got stuck in transit and did the crystallization with feedback of the looped partial jump? The only way to turn it off was to be one the ship and it took that long for the power source to fail/run out of fuel? If the mangled ship is found you have a political argument over the salvage and itll be bleeding edge, experimental so it will have only limited results from sheer complexity and if anyone figures out what it did you can have a plot hook of stopping people from repeating the exxperiment. Or you can just have a distant starlane not be usable, because its mid-jump wreckage keeps having the ships crash into it.

[Custos Sophiae]

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Because injecting random chemicals into your bloodstream is so healthful

---

That's what the liver is for.
The alien toxins would only be allowed free range in the bloodstreams of the adapted humans if the precursors were grossly incompetent, since that design would require re-engineering every cell in the human body.
It is considerably more elegant, and efficent, to soup up the liver so that it can detoxify the alien biochemicals, turning them into something useful. Cooking, and careful choices of food, will deal with the remaining problems.
Considering what the liver already does, all the exotic chemicals it can already handle, this requires only minor alterations to its workings.
Engineering humans to use less iron, or other potentially rare elements, is excessively ambitious, meaning a massive redesign of our biochemistry. The elegant solution is to create a plant which concentrates the needed metals in its fruit, along perhaps with various vitamins.
This approach is easier, and has ample plot potential. Consider the possible cultural and consequences of a single plant which is vital for good health. It would be the centre of religions, and the cause of wars.
The most elegant way to do the genetic engineering is probably to put the extra genes needed in an artificial intracellular organelle with its own genes - like the mitochondria. Doing this doesn't create species barriers, but - since all your organelles come from your mother - it would mean that crossbreeds would always be the mother's race, never the fathers - which could have plot relevant consequences.
Note: if the chlorine worlds are the result of tampering by an elder race, then there could be other remnants. Imagine a ship, the size of a moon, which can produce elemental transmutation rays, fusing all the oxygen on a planet into chlorine from a distance of a billion miles. Imagine what happens if someone finds such a ship, and tries to reverse engineer the technology.

[Necratoid]

[quote The alien toxins would only be allowed free range in the bloodstreams of the adapted humans if the precursors were grossly incompetent[/quote]
Depends on the source of the toxin, if its air-born then the liver may be not enough and the lungs need to be altered first. If its eaten the Timmy rule comes into place. A Timmy being a person who dies stupidly or spectacularly, thus providing the populous with an prime example of what not to do. Named after the endless string of highly expendable, lab assistants on a science show on a show about anthropomorphic dinosaurs, which may have been named Dinosaurs. Once a Timmy or 10 eats something and bad things happen to him/her the other dont do that, or end up another Timmy. If its injected (bites, stings) or contact poison (spitted, toxic plants) itll get to float around doing damage before it gets to the liver. Free range toxins tend not to be under the host organisms control once in the body and while a liver or like organ helps it can teleport the toxin to the processing organ.. it travels through the blood stream on the way.
Also, it depends on how damaging the chemical is on the way to the liver, little bits of damage leads up to something worse. Livers fail or harden. Any given individual only needs to live long enough to breed. The longer they live the more they can breed. Which means more descendants carry their traits.
So if in the case of the fruit of life religion, their may be a law restricting your access to the fruit if you break a law of some kind. Occasionally that will lead to wars over who gets to be those who control the FOL, thus society. On the other hand if a few individuals manage to survive inspite of the lack of fruit of life being cut off/restricted and start living longer without the FOL. This is a desirable trait so those that can live longer without FOL are going to breed more offspring that last long enough to breed. So you might get a subculture of those that dont need the FOL anymore eventually and theyll spread as they arent anchored to the FOL growing areas. Anyone anchored to the FOL will be stuck in an area about half the rot time of the FOL away. The deads burials will get limited to areas under the plants or bodies left to rot by them for recycling purposes. The anchored humans might end up recycling there sewage also.
On the other hand, those the FOL stops being as important/obtainable for are going to go through starve/survive cycles and the best adapted (genetically or behaviorally) will be the breeders. This means that theyll take more of the planet. We do have a few thousand years of die off and breeding to bolster them. Youre not going to alter them so theyll all survive only the society/group as a whole. Some groups wont make it. Some will be limited to the area around and the population density the FOL can maintain.
If life is cheap and the population dies young, theyre going to have more, faster coming generations so theyll adapt by trial by fire. If theyre long lived theyll breed later in life and less generations so less change as theyve adapted. The last race of precursors were patient so they may allow a thousand years or so to pass before they check up on the research subjects replacing them with a different test group as needed.

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The most elegant way to do the genetic engineering is probably to put the extra genes needed in an artificial intracellular organelle with its own genes -

---

True, and it would provide a method for alteration. Though it brings up another issue do they have both? Would the new one eat the old one? Mitochondria are the energy producers in cells, that would mean the new ones would have to take over the job if they attack. If they dont attack and move from cell to cell once they breed enough, theyd be hard pressed to get in the first place. If they do that its going to mean that they will attack a new organism if say, the altereds blood ends up in an open wounds or youve got a Parasite Eve issue. Maybe not sentient and hostile, but those things would go medevil on virus.
Unless ovaries got replaced and they spent a generation or three on the ships before letting them breed wild. That may vary by planet. Maybe they had transporters and rewrote their DNA mid transport... isn't guessing at hyper advanced biological experiments of entities we only can guess at how their mind works fun?

[Valles]

I don't think that deliberate venoms are really what we're discussing here - yes, they're present, and yes, they'll kill people, but the real question is how different will the various proteins and such the local biology uses be from Earths, and how much of a problem will they cause... I'm thinking of Encounter with Tiber here... which would be dealt with by the liver.
Anyway, I'd pin the likely population for the Imperials in the neighborhood of five billion, plus-minus about half a billion. That's:
Jungle - one billion
Desert - 100,000,000
Water - 400,000,000
Continent - three billion
Ice - five hundred million
and all but the fourth about half that fifty years ago.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Custos Sophiae]

Airborne toxins have to be pretty small molecules, to be volatile, and there are only so many of those. For nerve gases, a water or oil mist can be used as a carrier, to increase the range of viable toxins, but for living creature to do that is a recipe for dehydration.
Nor are any of these toxins stable against sunlight and free oxygen. You could have patches of marsh where the plants gas every passing animal, getting extra fertiliser, but hardly an entire planet. It's simpler to let the humans avoid the poison marshes - apart from the occasional human sacrifice.
Once the precursors have left, the human population will evolve greater tolerance for the local toxins, to the extent that it can, but it will do this through successive point mutations, modifying existing enzymes - giving cellular repair a slightly higher priority and further fine-tuning the liver - and every cell would have precursor organelles, giving extra protection. This is not the kind of selective pressure that causes speciation.
Humans can't evolve a significantly lower need for the various minerals and vitamins. Too much relies on the availability of the minerals - take the iron out of hemoglobin, and it becomes useless. Making the vitamins ourselves would require evolving whole new enzymes, which is too slow to work.
For vitamins, the necessary enzymes could be included in the precursor organelles. For metals, the sun isn't that much richer in metals than its neighbours. The range of metal concentrations on earth is considerably greater Similarly, any world with plate tectonics will have regions where the iron has been concentrated to typical terran levels. Thus, the humans will be fine, even without a fruit of life, provided they stick to areas with the right kind of soil.
Organelles don't eat each other - plants have both mitochondria and chloroplasts, and neither gets eaten. If they're well designed, the precursor organelles will behave themselves. Like mitochondria and chloroplasts, they will only reproduce when their host cell does. They will never cross a cell wall, never run amok.
Terran life has solved all the problems with handling organelles, at least twice. The precursors need only copy the solutions, not a particularly challenging task, compared with all the other things they're doing.
Note: building alien worlds is frequently discussed in rec.arts.sf.science. Looking at the Google archives for that newsgroup should be useful, and you can always post questions in the group itself.

[Necratoid]

Kind of avoided my question on how did they manage to get organelles into every cell. the whole organellivous thing was conjecture there... the organelles you mentioned happen to have evolved together that way a number of years with a large group of zeros following it ago, when cells first evolved. I'm asking about a new one being introduced... any idea how they do it? We know it can work once introduced... but the paragraph after the one you responded to was asking about that.
That and I was listing methods of chemical infection that wouldn't go through the liver before damage is dealt. Should I have use the Garden of Eden looking planet that everything has a you blister when touched level of acid in the plants instead, from a Star Trek epidsode? My main point was a liver alone isn't going to do all that purifing (a few engineered glands would be involve also).... not make these particular planets into an endless series of biological death traps.

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Jungle - one billion, Desert - 100,000,000, Water - 400,000,000, Continent - three billion, Ice - five hundred million

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Make the order Desert, Jungle, Water, Contient, Ice. If the desert is closest to the heat source it should be the dryest. That and considering the count of differnt human occupied worlds... I'm guessing there is a lab elsewhere in that system for whoever was studiing that group. You mentioned these are moons of a gas giant... is/are there other planet/s in that system?

[Custos Sophiae]

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Kind of avoided my question on how did they manage to get organelles into every cell. the whole organellivous thing was conjecture there... the organelles you mentioned happen to have evolved together that way a number of years with a large group of zeros following it ago, when cells first evolved. I'm asking about a new one being introduced... any idea how they do it

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The answer is meant to be implicit in what I said - they get in every cell the same way the mitochondria do.
The precursors inject suitable organelles into egg cells, before fertilising them and implanting them into a womb, possibly artificial. In subsequent generations, the organelles are there, in every cell, from the moment of conception.
The organelles can also take care of any toxins which bypasss the liver. Consider too, people are pretty large animals. For small animals to be dangerous, with the miniscule amount of venom they can inject, the toxins do have to be fine tuned to affect terran biochemistry. Large animals, fox sized and upwards, can inject enough venom to do damage with broad spectrum toxins, but such animals will be rarer, and easier to kill off.
Acids damage sugars and proteins - a chemical reaction - so all plants containing harmful levels of acid is not plausible. They may contain lots of weak acid, as with citrus fruits, but people eat lemons.
There will probably be a few plants which, like poison ivy, cause blisters, but not everything. Star Trek is not a relaible guide to scientific accuracy.

[Valles]

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Make the order Desert, Jungle, Water, Contient, Ice. If the desert is closest to the heat source it should be the dryest. That and considering the count of differnt human occupied worlds... I'm guessing there is a lab elsewhere in that system for whoever was studiing that group. You mentioned these are moons of a gas giant... is/are there other planet/s in that system?

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I had specifically put the Jungle moon in the first position because that put it under the most tidal stresses, and hence gave it the most volcanic activity. 'Continent,' 'Jungle,' and 'Desert' are intended to be parallels to the versions of Earth, Venus, and Mars that you see in very early science fiction...
Ah. Now I notice that I dropped the ball, and forgot to include the idea of a civilization that rose, flourished, and then collapsed into dust millenia before the present day on 'Desert'. With, y'know, irrigation canals and everything.
'Ice' and 'Water' just seemed like the most logical expansion of the patterns already set by those three moons.
Anyway, the Victorian-Sci-Fi-Venus was supposed to be a wet, primeval place, sort of like the day's conceptions of the Mesozoic. Hence, its parallel needed to have the highest degree of vulcanism. Anyway, that was why I mentioned the comet thing - these moons' primary gas giant is radiating a lot less heat in the modern era than it did when the system was truly 'young', and while it does make the inner moons a bit toasty, it's no longer hot enough to boil things away...
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"