SS-GR445d

Planetary Data
Stellar System GR445 d is the third planet of a rather unremarkable yellow dwarf star. With a ring of ice in orbit, SS-GR445d is a young terrestrial planet with a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere and a dry, cold climate and a thin atmosphere. It's surface is covered in dust and dunes broken by either rocky outcrops or local fungi anchoring the dunes, creating sandy meadows where local animals thrive.

However, this planet is currently undergoing a massive extinction event and a severe climate change due to a verdant menace. Near the north, a variety of non native plant life is spreading across the planet.

This flora, named by biologists as Mutantur Mundi or simply "Worldplants", seems to have been genetically modified to drastically change the appearance of the planet it lands on. Despite sharing a single but vast genome, a truly diverse number of distinct plants have been terraforming the planet for what is thought to have been over a hundred years, performing different actions depending on its form.

Grass like Worldplants has increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere of SS-GR445, poisoning it for the anaerobic indigenous living creatures. Squat but thick trees have dug into the ground and tapped into underground water sources, unleashing lethal floods and disturbing the local ecosystem. Some have even preyed on indigenous wildlife, with parasitic plants eradicating whole species that have not adapted quick enough to the invader menace.

However, much of the potential of the Worldplant is locked in their genes. Samples of the plants grown in different contained environments have shown that these plants can adapt to a wide range of conditions (including high and low heat, lack or excess of pressure and humidity and even high radiation) and change it to habitable conditions using a wide array of mutations.

Due to the danger this invasive flora poses to the galaxy as a whole if even one single spore is shipped off to an inhabited planet, the whole stellar system has been put under quarantine.

Inhabitants
SS-GR445 has no intelligent inhabitants.

However, according to geological studies, a comet like object had struck SS-GR445 a hundred years prior to current time. By the epicenter of the flora-infested region, a crater containing what looks to be the wreckage of a space vessel was found, although research says the vessel used to be more of a cargo pod with no means of propulsion. This, along with the unusual genome and behaviour of the Worldplant species, suggests that the flora may have been artificial. It's currently thought that whoever sent the object to SS-GR445 wanted to adapt the planet to their needs. These unknown creators are known to the Norma Arm community as the "Artificers"

Little is known of these aliens from the Worldplant invasion, other than they breathe oxygen, live under the light of a yellow dwarf star, and they might live in a planet with moderate water content. They may be proficient at genetically modifying creatures, given the astounding feat of bioengineering that is the Worldplant. However, despite the advanced genetic knowledge, the Artificers might not have faster than light technology, as the Worldplants might be a long term terraformation tool, ideal for species who spend centuries between the stars but useless to those who can jump those distances in a flash.

Whoever they might be, the Artificers may already be coming to SS-GR445, and from what they have done to the planet with just a single seed of their tech, they will be a force to be reckoned with when they inevitably contact the Norma Arm.