Dream Clouds

**Dream Clouds** or dream fluids are self-replicating intelligent microbe swarms a whole lot older than the Ranisch themselves: they combine the elements they find into different versions of the Ranisch substance. Unable to evolve in their very harsh environments, they excrete the spice to attract more advanced aliens in order to learn from them... And also to teach them!!!

## Modus Operandi

Their mission is fundamentally similar to that of the Protomolecule from the Expanse, although definitely they are into much less invasive ways. Not in a rush to build stargates or anything else for that matter, they like to take things very slowly! If they like the aliens who find them, they help out at the maintenance of their machinery to increase their spice yields. If they don't, however... Well, you don't wanna know!!!

### Cold worlds

On cold planets, dream snow can be detected with strong infra-red light & cultivated by mixing the snow with freshly melted carbonated water to pump it deep underground through fracking so the Substance can acquire minerals & heat. The greasy stuff, however, can easily clog the pipes if the water doesn't flow fast enough!

## Dry worlds

On desert planets the stuff dries by itself into tar sands, harvested by gigantic machines that look a lot like harvesters in the Dune saga. These are often brutalized by the clouds who respond to agitation by turning into more & more violent types of storms.

In the end these attacks can get a whole lot more horrific than the Shai Hulud: they can even turn into ionized plasma so hot that it melts almost everything away! Constantly heated by the sun(s) they do always have enough energy to fight!!!

Also very much unlike the worms, they are actually going for all the cooling liquid they can find instead of being repelled by it! They can always be relaxed with gigantic irrigation machines attached to the harvesters spraying liquid in every direction. If the liquid stops coming, they attack again.

If the liquid goes goes out, the staff can simply evacuate the harvester on foot, wearing Fremen stillsuits that conceal their bodily fluids. The clouds are annoyed only by massive forces & they are appeased only by water, they don't give a shit about anything else.

Although I must note here that they also somehow enjoy spinning wind turbines a lot, so they learned to refrain from attacking those who build them: this is arguably the weirdest of all their traits!

## Lush worlds

They can also develop on lush worlds, which is indeed how Ancient Earth was held for many thousands of years. These worlds have nothing you can't get from either a dry world or a cold world, but they may be situated on strategic locations that merit some kind of conquest nonetheless.

Problem: living their lives on easy mode, the narcissistic hippie rulers of these worlds have a lovely tendency to turn Pandora into Mordor as soon as the sky people start pissing them off. The Substance offers no universal silver bullet solution for this, so it's all too often better to stay in orbit instead of getting involved with their childish affairs! This is the reason why Ancient Earth was vacated by the Ranisch as well as the clouds during the holocene period.

Such a planet can be legitimately invaded, however, if the dominant species starts putting the biosphere in severe danger. Laconia tends to police belligerent creatures for the same reason why cops prevent rival mobs from slaughtering each other at will: they inherited this mental disposition from us humans, which means these invasions keep happening all over the galaxy all the time.

## Venus

A version of the Substance given to Ancient Earth humans after the Ganymede Incident can breed spectacularly well in the hot mineral-rich atmosphere of Venus as proven by the researchers of Marton Biotech, so much so that it has even changed the planet's color to a golden shade!