New to Orions Arm

[Drashner1]

Based on most of my research, ammonia based life would probably benefit from a hydrogen atmosphere, which unfortunately isn't very likely to form on any kind of terrestrial planet or moon. So ammonia life would probably most likely exist in gas giant atmospheres where there is plentiful ammonia and hydrogen. They would be slow, almost like gas bags or jellyfish-like colonial organisms which would probably fit in nicely with the idea of a biochemistry that uses gels and macromolecules instead of cell membranes.

The only way i could think of the Soft One inhabiting an icy rock homeworld  is if there is cryovolcanism that spews methane into the atmosphere, where it is broken down into hydrogen. A lot of this would escape into space but some may distribute to the surface, providing respiratory gas for the Soft Ones similar to how the Muuh breathe. But then that still leaves the question of what they would metabolize, since they obviously don't come from the same kind of planet.

OA actually does have lifebearing gas giants here and there - and a mention of at least one spacefaring sophont gas giant species. There isn't much detail on either of these, but from what you're saying you may have found a basis for at least some of the ecosystems.

One way such lifeforms might develop technology (up to and including spaceflight) could be to develop (or gengineer/breed) the ability to extract heavier elements from the atmosphere and shape them into useful stuff. This process might work similarly to how bubblehabs operate on various worlds - sifting heavier elements out of the atmosphere and growing them via nanotech into their own structures and other things - like tools and the means to eventually expand into space.

Taking this back to the Soft Ones and the Muuh - Given how little information we have on the Soft Ones - perhaps the Soft Ones were originally gas giant dwellers and the Muuh found them, found them promising but 'stuck in a rut' on their home gas giant, and so provolved and gengineered them to both sophonce and life on a icy rocky world not terribly different from the kind of world the Muuh preferred. Or maybe the Muuh provolved them to have a technological civ on their gas giant and the 'Soft One' that Terragens first encountered was some kind of Soft One drone or bot or something.

Or maybe we can keep noodling away at this and figure out a way for them to work on a solid planet.

Speaking of which - Hydrogen certainly would tend to escape quickly into space on an Earth size or smaller body - but what about a much larger body?

Put another way, could you have a super-terrestrial planet that is massive enough to retain an H2 atmosphere (or a mix of H2 and something(s) else) while still being small enough to not be a gas giant? Maybe a gas dwarf?

Thoughts?

Todd