The Seeder Moons

Albert Bailey, my long time co-creator, and I had a long conversation this afternoon about the Seeder Moons. Albert - as frequently happens with him - was intrigued by the concept and dove into them. We talked out the origins, original intent or interpretation, possible reasons for their existence, and some of their implications, and ultimately decided to throw it open to you all for your input. First - the Seeder Moons were an artifact of the method of random generation I used when I originally created the setting for StarCluster 1 pre-2002. I didn't even realize how MANY there were until I pulled together all the Primitive and Backward Alien cultures for this project! There are four of them, and all involve captured asteroid moons, like Phobos and Deimos around Mars, with a low tech level alien culture on them - which can only work by positing that these tiny moons were engineered for this purpose. There are a lot of these captured asteroid moons listed in the published setting, and they are actually representative of many, many more in the real setting it represents. There are several dozen moons like this in our solar system, and thousands of asteroids, so in a setting like the Classic Cluster, there are probably billions of asteroids of the right size. Albert raised the point that these four Seeder Moons are just the ones we have FOUND. There may be hundreds out there we are flying past and ignoring. That is just cool! When I originally interpreted the random results, I figured "OK, the Seeders hollow out a moon, fill it with air and plants and animals and people, give it a light source, and rotate it for gravity... so one culture the size of a city state, maybe a million people or so, like an O'Neill colony." Albert pointed out that that would be terribly inefficient, and they would more likely stack many levels and rows of smaller caverns side by side and above and below each other, in total perhaps more livable surface area than the earth in one asteroid moon, all using gravitics. Not only that, there is no reason why there is only one species - you could keep a dozen sapient species in there, ignorant of each other. Maybe the name in the world listing is a collective noun for the people of this world. I love this idea! It is possible the chambers can interconnect, and it is possible they don't. Maybe the interconnections only open under certain conditions. More on that later. We set this aside for discussion. We both feel that the reasons the Seeders DID this is important, though unknowable to us directly, as the Seeders disappeared suddenly a million or so years ago. We both feel the most likely reason is to preserve potential. The Seeder Moons then would be a combination incubator and ark. Perhaps these people were rescued from a world which would be destroyed - glaciation, solar flares, impact - or maybe they were the second sapient species on their world, doomed to disappear when the other species expanded, like the Neanderthals or Denisovans. For whatever reason they were saved. Now these worlds seem to have a limit for the technology level they can hold. If you advance too far, you eventually break the shell and everyone dies. That seems cruel, perhaps. Perhaps instead there is a fail safe - a puzzle that you can figure out when your culture is ready. Then maybe these cultures can access communication to the cultures of the Cluster at large and shout out "We are here! Where are you?" Then what happens?