Nurturing Wonder

scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.

Other worlds have just as much environmental variation as Earth, with their own flora, fauna, and everything in between. Some environments are amenable to terraforming, where targeted bombardment with comets and asteroids brings water and amino acids to the surface of an otherwise barren world. In those cases, humans can then bring in their own micro-organisms to tailor the atmosphere, and their own plants and animals to support the human population.

Other worlds, though, already have their own eco-systems in place. In those cases, humanity has learned through painful experience that it is best to try to work within the pre-existing ecology to carve out a niche for terrestrial life. Terraforming attempts on planets that already support life never wipe the slate clean. They only make the end result highly unpredictable, and dangerous.

The Mistlands are the result of one of those early, ill-fated attempts at terraforming a world that already knew life. At first, all seemed well, and the colonists moved in. Then, the mists came, and all the organisms the humans had released into the wild either died, or changed.