 |
 |
Reef, Reef-cityColloquial term for large gengineered arcologies often found on bioist worlds and habitats, particularly in the Biopolity. A reef-grown city, consisting almost entirely of coralline aragonite produced by gengineered anthozoans, plasms and biobots |
A fully grown Reef operates as a living city for its inhabitants,
providing for all of their needs and desires as a side effect of its
own life processes. Living space, food, water, transport, and
data and communications support are all provided by various systems
produced by the Reef or by organisms living symbiotically within it (in
many cases, the inhabitants themselves may live in symbiotic union with
the reef, their biological waste products feeding or otherwise helping
to sustain it).
Reefs may be constructed using plasm
based systems, gengineered organisms,
biobots (see Buildbug)
or some combination of all three. In
general they are constructed (grown) in the shallow coastal waters of
terraformed planets or large habitats and are built up from materials
extracted from the water and sea floor.
Smaller Reefs may be grown entirely from natural biological materials
and are mostly submerged, providing homes for aquatic or amphibious
sophonts of various sorts. Larger Reefs may extend hundreds
of meters above (and below) the surface and usually employ a
combination of natural materials and gengineered forms that have been
modified to incorporate carbon nanofiber, diamondoid, and various
metals for extra strength, durability, electrical conductance, or other
desired properties. These larger habitation structures often
support populations of millions of different sophonts, each type of
being occupying a portion of the reef that suits it best, with the reef
itself modifying its local structure to better accommodate its
inhabitants.
