Darwinian

Darwinians are the single-polygon inhabitants of the world of Darwinia. They were created by Dr. Sepulveda as part of the Darwin Digital Life Project. They are a revolution in the world of artificial intelligence, and are able to learn, grow, evolve, and multiply like any physical lifeform.

Physical Description
Darwinians are single-polygon creatures, appearing as a figure approximating the human form. This was intentional, as Dr. Sepulveda designed them to be quite human-like in that they learned, could evolve, and even died. They are green in colour be default.

Their form is depicted by the Pattern Buffer and all Darwinians are born as to the design. The design can be tweaked over time, allowing the Darwinians basic form to advance as a species if Dr. Sepulveda needs to tweak the design, although generally he allows them to evolve and adapt naturally. According to the appearance of the later Multiwinians, the base design of the Darwinians is impacted by their environment. Major glitches and corrupt environments can impact the design and change it slightly, which lead to the Darwinian design diversifying into the Multiwinian variants in the first place.

Outside of the Pattern buffer, the Virus was able to change the form of a Darwinian entirely. Forms such as the Virii are a Darwinian twisted into a new shape, which is why the Virus various forms leave behind a Darwinian soul when they die. So a Darwinians physical form is able to change to something entirely different to the base Darwinian Pattern if very different additional data is added. However, such dramatic changes result in an individual no longer able to interact with Darwinian devices and machines, which is why the Virus later also produced the Red Darwinians, the virus in Darwinian form.

If they wonder too close to the sea around their islands, their bodies will be destroyed.

The Darwinians capable of being upgraded to version 4.0 in the game by Dr. Sepulveda. This will allow them to have lasers and grenades. The benefit is that the stand Darwinian design is helpless and weak, so when the Virus nears them they are susceptible to attacks. Upgrading them allows them to fight back and defend themselves, resulting in less loss of life. This also allows them in combination with Officers to go on the offence.

Behavior
By nature, Darwinians are innocent and curious creatures. They were designed as such so that they would learn and grow at an advanced rate, allowing Dr. Sepulveda to make observations about hundreds of generations of development in just a few years. Darwinians are also capable of story telling and often tell tales of events that occur in their world such as an island disappearing when their server crashed a year before the game is set.

Though the dominant lifeform on Darwinia, Darwinians are naturally skiddish. They tend to stay in groups and flee from any hazard. Green Darwinians are considered "good" by nature and the virus infected Red Darwinians are referred to as "Evil Darwinians" as they are simply the virus in another form.

Their understanding of the world is limited however and they have trouble with advance pathfinding. They can only be interacted with by the player indirectly with certain programs such as the Officer or Armor. They are incapable of being told to walk around sharp corners and require additional Officers to guide them. Otherwise the player has almost no interactions are all with them and they wonder aimlessly until they come across something they can interact with. They are, however, capable of creating their own devices and interact with tools and machines created within their world. Darwinians are able to perform tasks just as any person would. These are analogous to "jobs" in Darwinia, with Darwinians taking on responsibilities of mining resources, maintaining power plants, and working construction yards.

They originally had no real concept of "death", the events throughout the game and witnesses the loss to the Soul Destroyers is said by Dr. Sepulvenda to have created the concept of "true death" among the Darwinians, as this is something they lacked before the Viral out break due to their life circle of death and rebirth of each soul. For the first time they experienced true loss as those souls impacted were lost forever, never to experience rebirth or even a basic afterlife. These souls are known as Ghosts.

The emerging Darwinians from the virus event were also bolder and more ambitious, their innocence loss and it is unknown what path their race will now take.

Lifecycle
Every Darwinian, as well as every lifeform in Darwinia, possesses a Soul, their own digital DNA. Rather than an abstract concept as it is in our world, the Soul is a physical reality in Darwinia. It inhabits the Darwinian's body upon creation and returns to the Soul Repository upon death. It is then sent to places such as the Biosphere to be reborn as a new Darwinians based on the design indicated in the Pattern Buffer.

In some sense, although the new Darwinians are brand new individuals with their own self awareness, each individual Darwinian can never truly "die". The soul retains details of the Darwinians passed lives, transferring it to the new Darwinian or "next generation" so they can add their experiences to the souls collective data. Though the Darwinians retain fragments of memories and experiences from their past lives, they are not the same Darwinian that lived before them. They can experience changes to their pattern, attitude and life in general without it impacting the Darwinian soul that once was. Each soul is a trace of the progress in the evolution of the Darwinians and their world.

They are encouraged to be productive and creative; the most successful souls are returned to Darwinia faster then those who were unsuccessful.

Pre-Darwinina
Over the course of a decade of growth and evolution, there have been ten-thousand generations of Darwinians. They had to learn to adapt to their world and some places like The Bitter Front offered a harsh environment that they had to learn to survive in.

The Darwinanians lead a peaceful existence, hunting bugs and expanding into their world. Over time they learnt how to manipulate their world and access its files. One day Dr. Sepulved accidently revealed himself to them by broadcasting his webcam onto their sky, they begin to create monuments to him. They eventually created the Temple dedicated to worshipping him and contacting him. Accessing the web via their worlds console commands, they reached out to make contact, accessing his e-mail account. Unfortunately, they found 3 e-mails with viruses attached and the Virus. spread into their world. Those at the temple were transformed first and became some of the earliest forms of the viruses.

The virus quickly begin to spread throughout their world, infecting first the Biosphere, then the Pattern Buffer and Soul Repository. At the Pattern Buffer the design for the Darwinanians was changed to red, causing new Darwinanians to be born as a virus infected form of the normal Green Darwinian, spreading the virus as they were capable of using the Darwinians own tools against them.

IT spread to the Yard, Mine and Refinery. As a response to the virus, some areas such as the Gridlock were fortified also against the virus to protect the Darwinians against the attack.

Dr. Sepulveda was unable to save but a handful of Darwinians at the Containment and was left unable to rid his world of the Virus. He was torn between abandoning years of hard work and starting again and continuing on hoping to resolve the problem and rescue his work.

Darwinia
At this point, the player stumbles upon Darwina by chance while exploring the web.

The player eventually helps Dr. Sepulveda fight by the virus infection and helps reclaim the world.

In the aftermath, however, the innocence of the Darwinians was lost. The turning point being the re-capture of the Biosphere as it was the first time a scale fight between Darwininians had ever occurred. Dr. Sepulveda notes they are now bolder and ambitious then ever. They were also more aware of their existence, having now known what the true concept of death is thanks to those lost to the Soul Destroyers. It is noted they will likely invent stories and myths surrounding the event that will live on for generations.

As the game close, their creator wonders what they will want to do next.

Pre-Multiwinia
The Darwinians continued to fight back the Virus after the Player and Dr. Sepulveda have aided them in fighting back the Virus from the main areas of Darwinia. There remained a number of the Virus infected Red Darwinians in addition, but all strains of the Virus were eventually pushed into the darkest depths of the world. The Red Darwinians cleansed themselves of the Virus.

At some point, the remaining Virus infected Red Darwinians became known as the "Red Tribe" and the green as the "Green Tribe". This marked the start of the diversification of their species and they became the Multiwinians.

Trivia

 * "Darwinian" means "of Charles Darwin". The word refers to anything that references his Theory of Evolution.  The Darwinians themselves are a product of their own self evolution.  There is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek play with the conflicts that his Theories brought when they were placed against Religious belief.  A lot of the storyline itself of the game actually refers to Christian symbolism, such as the Great Tree and Garden, Christianity itself often opposing Darwins Theories. Particularly since the Darwinians view Dr. Sepulveda as their God and worshipped him.  Just as Adam and Eve were not ready for the knowledge granted by the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, likewise the Darwinains were not yet ready to learn about their world when they accessed the console commands.  Upon eating the Fruit of the Tree, Adam and Eve were banished from paradise; wise like after accessing the e-mail of their God, the Darwinians' paradise of Darwinia was lost to the Virus.