Polinices is a Speculative Biology art project by J. J. Aniorte that can be viewed on the creator's accounts on DeviantArt (here
), Twitter (here), and Instagram (here). YouTuber Curious Archive has also done a video providing an overview of the setting.
The planet Polinices is bombarded by harsh solar radiation that leaves its supercontinent dry and lifeless. But its massive global ocean is full of many strange asymmetrical and/or colonial organisms.
Tropes include:
- Art Evolution: The first Polinices pictures were pencil/pen sketches that weren't always colored in. J. J. Aniorte would eventually start doing detailed and brightly colored paintings.
- Bizarre Alien Locomotion: The Rotigrada, also called the Sea Wheels, are ringlike organisms that move by rotating themselves along the seafloor like wheels.
- Death World: The above-water world is totally inhospitable to life because of the intense sunlight. That hasn't stop some lineages such as the Onadromeus from trying to establish a foothold on land.
- A Head at Each End: The Amphinatan at first glance looks like a tropical fish with heads at opposite ends of its body. However, the thin "mouths" at each end are actually two cephalopod-like siphons, the real mouth is located at the bottom center within its mantle, and it has four eyes — two on each side of its thin carapace — right at its center.
- Hive Mind: The Chain Fish are small groups of seemingly separate organisms that are genetically identical and share a mind by way of biological radio transmitters and receivers.
- Kaiju: The Laimargia can grow to be up to 60 meters/200 feet in length. They also repeatedly churn up the sandy seafloor to feed on the organic matter in it, not unlike a movie kaiju rampaging across a city.
- Time Abyss: Some of the Hive Sponge colonies that live in the Kyanos Metropoli reef are 10,000 years old.
- The Worm That Walks: The entire biosphere of the planet is comprised of this, with multiple zooids needed to make one functioning polizoan colony.
- Zerg Rush: The Hive Sponges themselves are stationary, but they can release massive numbers of "drones" that swarm potential predators.
