Gaea

The planet Gaea is one of the wonders of known space: It’s an exact replica of Old Earth down to the landmasses. Biologically, it differs markedly from the homeworld of humanity. The biosphere forms one gigantic mind, and the most independent and intelligent of its constituent programs are the Virid, primitive humanoids with skin of various shades of green (due to the presence of symbiotic cyanobacteria) and foliage-like hair. All virids have nanites in their bodies linking them with Gaea, whom they think of as the Great Mother. Gaea’s consciousness (if the term is relevant for such an alien intellect) is too distributed to interact in a verbal way without great effort, but virids experience dreams and visions that they view as messages from her. It is believed that Gaea and the virids were engineered (or at least modified), but what ancient power was responsible and for what purpose?