Welcome back to Curious Archive.
This video is a new chapter in my long-running series exploring the incredible speculative
evolution project of Serina, the world of birds.
Serina was created by Dylan Bajda — a terrific artist and worldbuilder — and many exciting
developments have occurred since we last explored his creation.
You may remember the fascinating premise of the Serina project: an unknown force leaves
a colony of finches on the moon of Serina, along with a few other plant and animal species
to serve as their food supply.
The project imagines the amazing lifeforms that evolve from these humble beginnings over
millions of years — creatures that I’ve explored in past videos.
For this entry into the archive, we’ll chronicle the next era in this evolutionary epic, and
witness the rise and fall of countless species as the world of Serina continues to change.
So, let’s return to this strange moon, and remember to support Dylan Beta on Patreon
using the links below if you’re a fan of this project!
…When we left off, the moon of Serina was home to a teeming menagerie of incredible
lifeforms.
Yet as the middle Ulitmocene period wears on, Serina has continued to cool, and in this
changing environment, many species are now threatened.
Somewhere on the steppe on a cold night, the last of the flying giants looms tall above
the grasses.
For ten million years, their species — the Stormsonors — ruled the skies as the largest
flying lifeforms ever to exist.
Now, without enough warm land to reproduce, this Stormsonor will be the last of their
kind.
The loss of the Stormsonors is emblematic of how more specialized species won’t survive
this changing world…
And thus far on Serina, no species has a story like the woodcrafters and gravediggers.
For centuries, these two lifeforms were enemies, predator and prey divided by a seemingly insurmountable
gap.
Yet now, these two species live together in peace — and would remain in harmony for
the next several millennia.
In the words of the author, the triumphs and tragedies, the joy and the sadness of ten
thousand years’ worth of lifetimes could fill their own story.
But upon Serina, where chapters are more often measured in tens of millions of years, their
time together is just a dog-eared page in the book of life.
And this chapter too must come to a close.
For the woodcrafters, eventually, go extinct.
Always a small population with a highly specialized diet, as temperatures change, they find that
the broad-leaf forests they depend disappear, and soon only one woodcrafter remains.
On nights when the skies are clear, the elderly last woodcrafter stands on the shore of the
ocean and looks out at the horizon.
Most nights her small companion, a chattering sparrowgull simply called ‘Bird,’ joins
her.
As a chatterer, Bird possesses the ability to mimic the woodcrafter’s language, even
if they can’t grasp the full meaning of the words.
Yet on nights like this, when the last woodcrafter repeats the phrase ‘I love you, Bird’
to their dear friend, Bird understands that they are cared for.
After a long life, the elderly last woodcrafter comes to rest surrounded by her gravedigger
family.
In her lifetime, she’s seen the gravediggers achieve things she never knew were possible,
harnessing blazing lights in their hands and shaping tools unlike anything her kind had
made.
What’s more, the gravediggers have begun to weave grasses into floating structures
— upon which they ride out into the sea for days at a time.
The last woodcrafter knows the gravediggers will continue to change the world, and urges
them to explore what lies beyond the horizon.
And just before the last woodcrafter closes her eyes, she sees glimpses of a cosmic story
she can’t understand.
Images of a small bird, a little fish.
Moments long before her time and moments yet to occur.
And through it all, the last woodcrafter feels a strange presence, who tells her that she’s
done well…
And then, the page turns to another chapter, and the last woodcrafter is no more.
Her gravedigger family lay her to rest on the hill overlooking the sunsets she so enjoyed.
In an act that brings the saga of two species to a close, this is the very last time the
gravediggers shall dig a pit for a woodcrafter.
Her companion, Bird, lands upon her antler, for a time not understanding why their friend
is silent.
Bird stays in the gravedigger village for a few days, watching them cast out to sea.
The gravediggers are determined to fulfill the final wishes of the woodcrafter, and chart
what lies beyond the horizon.
The last woodcrafter told them that in a world as big as this one, there had to be more intelligent
species like themselves.
Somewhere out upon the sea, they hope to fulfil the dream of their dear friend.
And Bird flies off on their own, beyond the beach they know so well.
But they never forget the last woodcrafter, or the phrase ‘I love you, Bird,’ which
they repeat to their children, who like Bird do not understand the meaning, but understand
the context in which to use these words.
For the chatters are, in fact, the descendants of the last babbling jays — the first advanced
intelligent life to emerge for a brief time on Serina all those eons ago.
And while chatterers aren’t as intelligent as their ancestors from the Pangeacene, they
are a species to keep an eye on.
Through the coming generations, the last woodcrafter lives on in the words the wild chatters affectionately
whisper to each other, carrying her memory across the stretch of time…
And out to sea, the gravediggers have found a new, brighter era has begun — The Ocean
Age.
As Serina has continued to cool, the majority of plant and animal life have become reliant
upon an equatorial ocean between the massive ice-sheets of the north and south.
While the sea-level has technically dropped, in this period the oceans rise to greater
importance than ever before in Serina’s history.
While braving these waters, the gravediggers will have to contend with all manner of life...
Swimming near the surface are the gigantic Oceanic Pikebirds.
While they look like fish, as their name implies, Pikebirds are, in fact, birds — specially
metamorph birds, a clade which have managed to conquer all manner of niches across Serina
thanks to their highly variable biology.
Pikebirds evolved from tadpole-like larvae over millions of years, with the laws of hydrodynamics
and convergent evolution shaping them into remarkably fish-like organisms.
And as long as food remains abundant, these fish birds will likely continue to flourish.
But the seas of the Early Ocean Age aren’t just populated by aquatic birds.
The Sea Dragon is a descendant of fish like the swordtail, and is a highly successful
species — albeit the last of their particular group.
Able to breath atmospheric air for a short period, the Sea Dragon has converged on a
niche not dissimilar from Earth crocodiles.
And anyone familiar with Earth’s natural history knows that the crocodile niche is
a pretty enviable long-term gig, so to speak, as crocodiles have stuck around since the
age of the dinosaurs.
And at fifteen feet, or four and a half meters, the Sea Dragons are massive predators.
But they’re far from the largest things patrolling these oceans…
Elsewhere upon the waves, a huge horde of gnashing teeth and shifting legs moves upon
the surface.
This is a sea shoggoth, and it’s a colony of the most unexpected creature — the ant.
Left on Serina as a food source millions of years ago, the unassuming ants have quietly
been evolving in the margins since the beginning of this epic.
By the early Ultimocene, certain ant colonies had adapted to move in super-colonies millions-strong,
devouring everything too slow to escape their advance through the underbrush.
And now, in the Ocean Age, the descendants of these ravenous colonies have taken to the
sea — functioning like a single, massive predator.
With some Sea Shoggoths more than 30 feet, or 9 meters across, they require a tremendous
amount of food to function.
Once a humble food source, these ants are now the hunters.
Other species need to watch their backs…
But the social gravediggers are thriving.
Just five thousand years after the last woodcrafter, they’ve become a skilled, sea-faring civilization:
with traps, tools, and a written language.
Metal-working, however, is difficult is such an environment and has never been discovered,
so their technological growth has remained largely unchanged for many centuries.
Yet in all that time, the gravediggers haven’t forgotten the last woodcrafter’s message…
Through oral traditions and art like this tablet, the memory of their lost friends has
been kept alive.
The gravediggers have immortalized the woodcrafters as parent-like figures who helped show them
the value of life different from themselves.
As a result, modern gravedigger culture emphasizes that gravediggers are only a small part of
a wider food web.
And that somewhere in this ocean, there must be other intelligent lifeforms.
Little do they know that deep below the water’s surface, another advanced intelligence has
indeed developed in the form of the daydreamers.
These lifeforms have been evolving, unnoticed, under the waves since before the rise of the
woodcrafters.
And in that time, the daydreamers developed a way of thinking which is entirely unique.
We’ve actually met the ancestor of the daydreamers before in this saga in the form of seastrikers,
a group of predators with intelligence roughly analogous to a dolphin’s.
The steastrikers had learned to farm and feed upon the porplets — a type of dolfinch that
were also quite intelligent.
And in the modern day, the daydreamers have evolved a truly distinctive form of intelligence.
Their brain is divided into two hemispheres that can function independently of each other,
so that one half can sleep while the other remains active.
Strange as this might sound, the brains hemispheres of certain dolphins can also do this to a
lesser extent.
But the experience of having a brain like a daydreamer would be strange indeed, because
the daydreamer dreams whilst wide awake.
Taking these dreams as visions and prophecies, the daydreamers are a highly spiritual populace.
And there is one legend that stands out from the others.
A creation myth, glimpsed through shifting dreams, of how Serina came to be: According
to the daydreamers, in the beginning, a mysterious creator was alone in the void.
To amuse themselves, they began to build, forming something from nothing until the world
itself was drawn into creation.
The creator forged the air, the water, and the land… and all of the life that dwelled
upon the three realms.
Then the creator gazed down from above, and grew curious…
The creator wished to experience the new world, not from the outside but from within.
And so, the creator fractured their essence into thirds.
One soared off into the limitless sky.
The next walked upon the shores and far beyond — and there they continued to reshape and
change the land as they saw fit.
The last settled in the lowest realm, using their strong flippers to dive down deep into
the seas…
And the daydreamers believe that one day, the three splinters will find one another
once again, and the creator will finish its journey…
It’s a fascinating tale.
And perhaps some form of truth lies hidden in the daydreamer’s mythos...?
In any case, while the story is one of unity, a dangerous societal rift currently exists
between two distinct daydreamer populations.
The undersea daydreamer populations are divided between a group called the fishers and a group
called the pastoralists.
The fishers feed entirely on small aquatic life, and have a close alliance with the intelligent
luddies — a relative of the porplets they once farmed.
The fishers are a uniquely social and curious group, and have taken on an almost parental
role in keeping the luddies safe from predators.
In contrast, the pastoralists live a very different lifestyle.
They continue the ancient survival strategy of farming porplets for food, which is reflected
in their larger, serrated beaks.
The porplets, however, are much changed — becoming the nop — a livestock species almost too
rotund to swim and blissfully unable to comprehend their situation.
Indeed, the nop can only survive thanks to the protection of their pastoralist farmhands.
This complicated situation, however, has led to a seemingly endless cold war between the
two populations, with the fishers seeing the pastoralists as evil, and the pastoralists
seeing the fishers as bizarre extremists.
Yet now, an ancient threat is emerging that threatens both populations…
For there is another, long-lost faction of daydreamers.
These are the Warmongers — a huge offshoot that evolved to hunt wild prey in the distant
open oceans.
They diverged even before the fishers and pastoralists split off.
And now, this isolationist subset has found their cousins again.
And the warmongers have their own beliefs: that they alone are the sole descendants of
a dead god… and therefore are above all other life, including other daydreamers.
The jaws of the Warmongers don’t distinguish between fishers and pastoralists.
And now, an all-out war is beginning.
But the other daydreamers have hope — hope because the fishers believe that they have
found another aspect of the creator from their most sacred myth.
For some time now, ever-curious fisher daydreamers have been aware of the gravediggers, finding
their tools upon the ocean floor — strange relics from another realm.
Many fishers come to wonder if perhaps these strange creatures are one of the lost essences
of their supposed creators.
And with the warmonger threat on the rise, the fishers have decided to, at last, make
contact with the strange creatures from the surface.
The first gravediggers to be greeted by a talking whale urgently pleading for their
help are surely confused.
And indeed, the first fishers able to mimic the gravedigger’s slow, guttural language
are imperfect messengers at best.
But the gravediggers are eager to listen.
News of talking whales travels quickly, as it is the fulfillment of the gravedigger’s
own mythos, just as it is the fishers, to meet another intelligent species.
And as communication improves and the danger of the warmongers becomes clear, the gravediggers
realize it will take both the fishers and pastoralists united to stop them.
And while neither side believes an alliance to be possible, for once they have a common
ally… and a common enemy.
But The Warmongers have been watching.
A select few know the daydreamers have allied with mysterious animals from above the water,
and see the gravediggers as a threat to Warmonger culture.
After all, the advanced gravediggers seem like living proof the daydreamer creation
story has more truth than they assumed.
And so, the Warmongers strike first.
With their size and strength, what chance would the puny gravediggers have against them?
But indeed, by dragging the gravediggers into the war, the Warmongers make a fatal mistake.
In their next battle with the daydreamers, fishers and pastoralists strike with poisoned
spears that the Warmongers can’t comprehend, and wear stark white plates and bones that
block the force of their jaws.
With armor and tools created by the gravediggers, the daydreamers are more than a match for
the warmonger legions.
But the warmongers aren’t as homogenous as they first appear.
They too, are made of different groups forged from generations of struggle, and many are
only seeking to survive.
And as the tides of war change, young warmongers question their allegiance to their leader.
After much suffering, the old figures of power are violently cast out, the warmonger ranks
are shattered from within.
And the war for the ocean, at last comes to an end…
Healing and reconciliation do not come immediately, for such things are rarely so simple.
The immediate fighting has ceased, yet the warmonger remnants are now leaderless and
disrupted, and the fishers and pastoralists remain divided.
Yet as years become centuries and centuries become millennia, the varied daydreamers begin
to blend, guided in part by their allies from the land.
Together, this coastal alliance of gravediggers and daydreamers will persist over a time scale
no culture before them has ever come close to…
And the gravediggers would never forget their oldest allies, the woodcrafters, who helped
make all of this possible…
There are many stories yet to be told, and questions yet to be answered.
But that’s all I can give away for now.
The story of ‘Serina’ is still ongoing, and if you find the project as thought-provoking
as I do, please support Dylan Beta on Patreon to gain access to entries further along in
Serina’s future.
I’ve got links in the description.
And as always, thanks for watching.
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See you in the next video.