Named for Gaea, the Greek personification of the Earth, the Gaeacene Era marks the beginning of a dramatic new chapter in Atmos’s history. Following hundreds of millions of years in which life was confined to the oceans and coastal margins, this era was defined by the arrival of the first truly land-breathing animal: the scuttlebug. A tiny porevore descended from an inconspicuous pleruplod ancestor, the scuttlebug took its first gasping breath on the humid soils of the continent of Weslona, signaling the start of a terrestrial revolution.

With its emergence, the surface-already thick with cyanophyte groves and sprawling fungal terraspores-was no longer the exclusive domain of sessile or semi-sessile organisms. For the first time, mobile fauna began to interact with land-based ecosystems, setting in motion an era of exploration, ecological expansion, and evolutionary experimentation. What had once been shoreline detritus and drifting spore mats was now the edge of a vast and untapped biosphere. The land was no longer still, life had taken its first steps ashore, and with it began a bold new era.