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Description
  With most of the planet covered by vast, equatorial oceans, terrestrial life finds itself restricted to the remaining continents near the poles. It is dark, except for a short time in the warmer months where sunlight manages to permeate the usually thick atmosphere. Plants and plantlike animals falter under these kinds of conditions, shifted aside in favor of a visually primordial form of "algae".
  It grows fast, forming reproductively viable colonies in a matter of days, is hardy in all kinds of temperature, and is incredibly efficient at processing sunlight. A requirement for plentiful moisture is its only weakness, but in that humid, mostly ocean-covered world moisture is omnipresent. The "algae" grows year-round in all but the coldest of places, where it enters a sort of dormancy under the snow, but multiplies explosively in the brief times of sun. It is then that the megafaunal herbivores gather in droves to feed upon it, growing fat and rearing their young in the plentiful times to come. It is easy to digest, nutrient-rich, and its resilient spores usually survive the herbivores' acidic stomachs and find themselves in nurseries of fresh dung.
The more fast-growing and ubiquitous algae colonies tend to stack over eachother throughout the years, forming algae marshes that can be anywhere from a few feet to several meters deep. Hundreds of different organisms thrive here, from phallic, vertebrate "worms" that burrow in the decaying mud from algae colonies past to a variety of fungi-animal intermediates that grow to immense sizes off of the multilayer muck. In the familiar "deep cold" of the north, many animals only manage to survive by burrowing deep within the warm, moist bottom layers of the marshes.
  Along the coast, where the sun lasts much longer, these omnipresent marshes connect with the sea and are more properly referred to as tidal algae flats, stretching for miles off the shoreline and forming a dense, murky intermediate between open water and the muddy land. An entire ecosystem to themselves, they can play host to immense, predatory "snails", bizarre kinds of gasbag fungi, fleshy, crablike scavengers, and multi-ton armored worms who serve as the elephants and rhinoceroses of these mostly subterranean savannas. The layers of fermenting algae slop extend for dozens of meters, hosting a truly immense ecology below the barren, salt-crusted surface.
It is the advent of these various kinds of terrestrial algae that have ensured the survival of the world's diverse biota in the face of disastrous climate change and a harsh environment of freezing temperatures and utter darkness. If one were to ask about this miraculous organism to the native sapients, however, they would simply screech and throw it at the questioner's face.

Description
  With most of the planet covered by vast, equatorial oceans, terrestrial life finds itself restricted to the remaining continents near the poles. It is dark, except for a short time in the warmer months where sunlight manages to permeate the usually thick atmosphere. Plants and plantlike animals falter under these kinds of conditions, shifted aside in favor of a visually primordial form of "algae".
  It grows fast, forming reproductively viable colonies in a matter of days, is hardy in all kinds of temperature, and is incredibly efficient at processing sunlight. A requirement for plentiful moisture is its only weakness, but in that humid, mostly ocean-covered world moisture is omnipresent. The "algae" grows year-round in all but the coldest of places, where it enters a sort of dormancy under the snow, but multiplies explosively in the brief times of sun. It is then that the megafaunal herbivores gather in droves to feed upon it, growing fat and rearing their young in the plentiful times to come. It is easy to digest, nutrient-rich, and its resilient spores usually survive the herbivores' acidic stomachs and find themselves in nurseries of fresh dung.
The more fast-growing and ubiquitous algae colonies tend to stack over eachother throughout the years, forming algae marshes that can be anywhere from a few feet to several meters deep. Hundreds of different organisms thrive here, from phallic, vertebrate "worms" that burrow in the decaying mud from algae colonies past to a variety of fungi-animal intermediates that grow to immense sizes off of the multilayer muck. In the familiar "deep cold" of the north, many animals only manage to survive by burrowing deep within the warm, moist bottom layers of the marshes.
  Along the coast, where the sun lasts much longer, these omnipresent marshes connect with the sea and are more properly referred to as tidal algae flats, stretching for miles off the shoreline and forming a dense, murky intermediate between open water and the muddy land. An entire ecosystem to themselves, they can play host to immense, predatory "snails", bizarre kinds of gasbag fungi, fleshy, crablike scavengers, and multi-ton armored worms who serve as the elephants and rhinoceroses of these mostly subterranean savannas. The layers of fermenting algae slop extend for dozens of meters, hosting a truly immense ecology below the barren, salt-crusted surface.
It is the advent of these various kinds of terrestrial algae that have ensured the survival of the world's diverse biota in the face of disastrous climate change and a harsh environment of freezing temperatures and utter darkness. If one were to ask about this miraculous organism to the native sapients, however, they would simply screech and throw it at the questioner's face.