Mrrew
Monstercat
Images: Wikipedia.org, "Missouri Round Rock"
Name: Daylo, commonly known as Barnacle Rocks
Designation: Non-sentient
Homeworld: Somewhere in the Deep Core
Language: No language
Average Lifespan: Can live up to several thousand years, provided they are not killed
Estimated Population: Huge swarms throughout the Deep Core and, to a lesser extent, the Inner Rim
Average height of adults: Depends on age, sizes vary
Skin color: Typically gray or brown, though it varies based on what minerals are eaten.
Hair color: None
Distinctions: A barnacle rock appears from the outside as simply a perfect sphere of rock. In small amounts or to the inexperienced spacer they are usually dismissed as meteors or broken pieces of asteroid. However even the most inexperienced pilot recognize that there's something odd about them when they float in swarms of hundreds of thousands. The color, texture and size of a barnacle rock is almost completely determined by what minerals and how much it eats. Barnacle rocks feeding off just asteroids and space rocks tend to be grey or brown with a rough coarse texture, while those that have eaten quite a bit of metals tend to be smoother and occasionally shinier. All barnacle rocks have a hole somewhere on their outer shell where they stick out their feeding tendril.
Breathes: Does not need an atmosphere
Strengths: Extreme Age - Barnacle Rocks can live for amazing periods of time before their feeding tendril and digestive systems begin to degrade. When this happens, these parts tend to quite literally fall apart, reducing the Barnacle Rock to just another space rock.
Natural Armor - A barnacle rock has a thick shell made up of whatever minerals it has been digesting. Typically normal slugthrowers and blaster weapons will do nearly nothing against a Barnacle Rock. Usually, ship shields do very little besides bounce them off as well.
Quick to reproduce - Once a barnacle rock reaches a certain age, it reproduces constantly provided it has a steady supply of minerals. One barnacle rock can turn into thousands very quickly if there's enough food.
Weaknesses: Immobile - Daylos float around in space at random. Once they find a good source of food, they have no need to move.
Stupid - Daylos don't think. They're not intelligent. And considering they essentially latch on to the first solid thing they come into contact with, it's not hard to trap them by using asteroids or any solid mass really as a flytrap. They've even commonly been known to latch on to each other, forming massive meteors consisting completely of barnacle rocks. In fact, this is very common, as it is usually what happens when multiple Daylos latch on to a single asteroid- eventually the entire asteroid becomes part of the Daylo's shells, and the shells latch on to eachother. This means that barnacle rocks with multiple feeding tendrils are very common.
Spacer's Nightmare - Due to their habit of latching onto starships of all shapes and sizes, barnacle rocks are an immense pain in every spacer's backside. First they compromise the hull by melting it in places to get a good grip, then they begin to dissolve it even further with their digestive acids. If barnacle rocks aren't dealt with quickly, they can cause major issues.
Zero Gravity Only - Though they can survive just fine inside of atmospheres, they are evolved and equipped only for zero-gravity living. Their feeding tendrils are extremely weak and can only move freely due to to the fact that it requires very little strength to move something in zero gravity. A Daylo would hardly be able to move it's feeding tendril, and therefore be unable to grow larger or create spawn, if there's any presence of gravity to keep them down.
Races: No distinct races.
Diet: Anything made of minerals or metals.
Communication: They have no form of communication.
Culture: Barnacle rocks have no form of culture.
Technology level: Their technology is limited to 'that disgusting tentacle thing they stick out to eat rocks with'
General behavior: The life cycle of a Daylo is fairly simple. When it is young it is propelled into space as a tiny pebble with a near microscopic digestive system and feeding tendril inside- a type of space plankton, if you will. Eventually the tiny pebble will come into contact with something solid; an asteroid, space debris, a ship, anything. From there the little Daylo will heat the exterior of it's shell to the extreme, eventually melting the rock or metal it had come into contact with. As soon as the barnacle rock stops applying heat, the vacum of space will cool the surface almost immediately, hardening back into a solid form around the outer shell of the barnacle rock. This essentially welds the little creature onto whatever surface it's clinging on to. Then it will let out it's feeding tendril- a little tentacle that grows longer the larger the Daylo becomes. The little tendril will begin spitting digestive acids onto whatever surface the barnacle rock latched onto, dissolving the metal or rock fairly quickly. From there, the tendril essentially sucks the mess back up, where the acid is recycled and the minerals become part of the Daylo's shell, causing it to grow larger the more it eats.
Once it reaches a certain size, usually a sphere around a meter in diameter, a portion of all the minerals or metals the Daylo eats will instead go to producing spawn rather then just adding to their shell. Daylos are hermaphroditic and have no need of others of their kind in order to mate- all they need is sufficient minerals and spawn are created to be injected into space. The life cycle continues.
Being a sillicone-based lifeform, barnacle rocks can have massive life-spans. Their innards are made from the minerals they digest, much like their protective shell, they have no need for nutrition to continue on living. This means that a Daylo can essentially drift in space for centuries before attaching itself to an asteroid. This also means that a Daylo, unless killed, can in theory go on living for thousands of years before their feeding tendril and organs degenerate and begin to quite literally fall apart. Though it's thoguth to just be a legend, there's an old Corellian fairy tale told to children about a Daylo that grew so massive that it developed it's own gravitational pull and grew a thin atmosphere. In the story, the Daylo's feeding tendril was so long it could reach out and wrap around starships, dissolving them in minutes. This is of course very likely exaggerated, but in a world of exogorths and giant space wasps it's hard to be sure...
History: Barnacle rocks have been spotted as long as there's been humans traveling through the Deep Core. Early on, before ships had energy shields, they were a massive problem. Is a ship wandered into a swarm of Daylos without energy shields they were almost certainly doomed. Luckily, in modern times, nearly every space-going vessel has some kind of shield or protective field, which all but the largest Daylos simply bounce off. Though if a ship's shields were ever to deactivate or be shut down, or if Daylos managed to attach themselves to the ship's engines, there would certainly be an issue.
Around 2000bby the Grand Republic put out a bounty on Daylos, hoping to exterminate them in mass so they would no longer be an issue. Barnacle Rocks were killed en masse by spacers hoping to get rich off of what essentially amounted to shooting fish in a barrel. However, with the fall of the Grand Republic, hunting of Barnacle Rocks declined and their numbers very quickly rose again. It's almost impossible to kill a race that needs no atmosphere or food to survive, can live thousands of years, and can regenerate an entire species from a single creature given enough time.
Luckily, Barnacle Rocks have no way of traveling long distances, and very rarely survive if latched onto a ship that goes into hyperspace. Due to this, swarms of barnacle rocks are mostly isolated to the deep core and parts of the inner rim. However the occasional lucky Daylo have managed to survive latching onto ships going into hyperspace to travel all over the galaxy in smaller amounts.
Notable Player-Characters: Not applicable.
Intent: To create an interesting little hazards to spacers, fleeters, and anyone that travels space. Why be killed by giant space slugs, manta rays the size of moons, or sentient planets when you can be completely annihilated by rocks?
