Ancients, and Those Even More Ancient

[AlHazred]

IMTU, I've decided to use something from Fred Pohl's Gateway series, suitably adapted. I've always thought that the stated reasons for Yaskoydray to retire to his own pocket universe seemed a little lame.

Spoiler:

In the Gateway universe, the humans find ancient artifacts left by the Heechee, a race that predated ours. They eventually find that the Heechee have fled the universe into a huge black hole at the core of our galaxy. They fled because they discovered the Assassins, an even older race of energy beings, who find our universe too painful to live in... so they plan to remake it. They're responsible for the "missing mass" effect - they plan to cause the universe to experience a Big Crunch as opposed to letting it die out with a whimper. And as it re-explodes in a new Big Bang, they plan to alter the conditions there to force the next universe to be more congenial to their kind of "life." Meanwhile, the Assassins have also retreated to a form a black hole, called a kugelblitz, it formed when energy density caused space to fold, as opposed to a black hole formed from matter.

Anyway, the Assassins periodically emerge from their self-imposed exile to wipe out any new lifeforms they encounter that seem on the verge of spaceflight, so that no one else can mess with their Great Work. The Heechee deduced this from evidence and the one surviving race that was visited by the Assassins (they were blasted back to the Stone Age, essentially) and fled to their black hole to wait for someone else to fight the Assassins. That "someone else" turns out to be us.

IMTU, I think I'll have the Ancients discover evidence of an inimical form of life, that periodically emerges from black hole isolation to destroy all other intelligent life - we'll call them the Assassins. Yaskoydray and his children fought over the precise method of confronting this issue, with Yaskoydray advocating the "hide and wait" strategy and his children advocating something more proactive (and probably less wise and patient). This escalated to the Ancients' War when Yaskoydray realized that his children's activities could alert the Assassins to the presence in the galaxy of other intelligent life; Grandfather's solution was to destroy his children who disagreed with them, to prevent the Assassins from finding out about the Ancients. Afterwards, he seeded a whole bunch more planets with life, so that he could get the maximum possibility that someone would arise to challenge the Assassins. Then he pinched off his pocket universe so he could wait in peace and relative safety. His machine intelligences monitor what goes on in the regular universe to keep him apprised if any intelligent race manages to deal with the Assassins. And the galaxy is starting to get very noisy...

Now I just have to figure out how to include the Empress Wave.

 

[Rover]

That sounds really cool. I loved the gateway series.

 

[Hemdian]

IMTU, I've decided to use something from Fred Pohl's Gateway series, suitably adapted. I've always thought that the stated reasons for Yaskoydray to retire to his own pocket universe seemed a little lame.

One of the things DGP were planning when they dropped/lost Traveller was the "baddies from the core" idea. The "baddies", aka Primordials pre-date the Ancients and were first introduced in "Knightfall". I've used them IMTU in much the same way as your Assassins.

Now I just have to figure out how to include the Empress Wave.

It was a Primordial science experiment: kick over the ants nest to see what happens / disrupt the societies of known space to see what happens.

Regards PLST

 

[savage]

Ancients

I had more than one Ancients race which led to some confusion. Pitched the Grandfather stuff.... he's just a General that caused mucho havoc.

 

[Droyne668]

Bah! Infidels! There's no Ancients but Yakoydray's Ancients!

By the way...Whatever happened to Muodray? Did the lil' bugger turn out to be a draysaskin or not?

 

[BlackBat242]

Savage, I agree.

Grandfather is a figure in a Droyne creation myth/religion.

There were many "Forerunner" species (to steal from Andre Norton), in many time periods.

 

[daryen]

By the way...Whatever happened to Muodray?

He died on the vine, so to speak.

Behind the Claw had several little snippets and plot hooks, of which Moudray was one. However, subsequent GT releases have either studiously ignored them, or blatantly dismissed them. Moudray was one that was ignored.

And, since Moudray is a GT creation (i.e. only appearing under SJG copyright), no one else can use him.

So, Moudray has apparently left the building, and is not slated to return. Ever.

 

[savage]

Ancient Races

Yeah I'm a firm believer in confusing the players. How many iancients can a universe hold.

 

[Droyne668]

He died on the vine, so to speak.

Behind the Claw had several little snippets and plot hooks, of which Moudray was one. However, subsequent GT releases have either studiously ignored them, or blatantly dismissed them. Moudray was one that was ignored.

And, since Moudray is a GT creation (i.e. only appearing under SJG copyright), no one else can use him.

So, Moudray has apparently left the building, and is not slated to return. Ever.

Yah, I remember the blurb from the BtC sidebar, but that was the last I heard of the lil' bugger. I don't follow GT particularly closely, but couldn't help but notice that there only seemed to be the one reference.

Hopefully another "Big Little Dude" will show up eventually...

 

[Darkhstarr]

I had a concept of another 'Ancient' survivor, one of Grandfather's proteges known as 'The Teacher'. He operated in what is the Vanguard Reaches & the Beyond, created the Asderonti-a heavily mutated humaniti race. Postulated he built a pocket universe & hid out. Varen's Planet sphereworld & the incomplete pocket universe generator in the Tortuga system are his legacy. He was going to a part of the Tortuga campaign but once T4 came out with a similar idea I dropped the concept and decided 'The Teacher' died with the rest. Some of the Asderonti survived & to this day are searching for their 'Teacher' & quietly acquiring (& in some cases destroying) his artifacts.

 

[Droyne668]

I had a concept of another 'Ancient' survivor...

Yup. The scary critter in Anomalies was released when I ran the scenario.

'Course, I'm partial to the odd little beasties. MTU at the moment is involved with the comings and goings of the Droyne and wild rumors of Ancients, Ancient ships (sighted like ghost ships from time to time).

But, other Ancients aren't too bad.

The Maalach were cool, if perhaps not exactly canon. Same for the Primordials from Knightfall (whether Hard Times is still canon or not).

Yaskoydray and the draysaskin were around for a few thousand years. That still leaves 300,000 years or so between then and "now" in printed Traveller settings, and, what 12-20 billion years prior.

Heck, its a big, old universe out there. Could probably find a civilization of Elvis Impersonators if one looked hard enough...

For that matter, anyone ever notice 1833 in the Solomani Rim? Mebs! There's Remulak... Perhaps even now they plot against the Blunt Skulls of 3I and Solomani Confederacy, charging their muldra ion grids in preparation...

 

[aramis]

Yaskodritz (IMTU) is much like your Teacher... Keeping the Droyne from being entirely Grandfather's Passive Pets.... and hiding in his own pocket. IMTU, it's entrance is actually a parsec out from Capital.

IMTU, it is Yaskodritz who spread the Aslan Coyn.

Unlike Grandfather, he occasionally sires a clutch to spread his enhanced intellect.

He also keeps an eye on Terra.

 

[savage]

pocket universe

The pocket universe is a perfectly fine tactic for controlling an environment but I never bought into the "hiding in a pocket universe". These grand beings should not need to hide anywhere....I'd say trapped or long since dead.:rofl:

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

The Progenitors.

Based upon the suppositions that:

1) This is not the first universe.
2) This is also not the only universe.
3) Our universe exists as a pocket universe inside someone else's laboratory, alongside of other universes with slightly different physical laws.
4) This universe is one of many grand experiments ("Let us define c in this universe as 299,792,458 m/s, make it inviolable but allow access to Jump Space, and see what happens...") by the Outsiders.

The Progenitors are occasional visitors to this universe from Outside. Their purpose is to collect data on naturally-occurring processes in this universe, and report their findings to the Outsiders (who create and destroy the Progenitors, as needed). They are largely indifferent to what we call "life," except to consider it an anomalous side-effect of certain fundamental forces that are necessary to allow matter to have any order at all and that are required to move time along in a continuous and relativistic fashion.

About one out of every billion-billion or so Progenitors in our universe (hey, it's a big place!) will form an attachment to one race or another, and try to encourage that race along evolutionary lines. Once the race develops enough to understand certain concepts, the Progenitor will introduce fire, agriculture, herding, the wheel, the sail, smelting, democracy, science, and even more advaced concepts once every few thousand years.

The Progenitor must keep his actions from being noticed by other Progenitors, or else risk being reported, retrieved, deactivated, reprogrammed, and re-assigned far, far away in space and time from his beloved and "uplifted" race - perhaps to another universe entirely.

Sometimes a Progenitor will simply cause a single being of a particular race to mutate and develop abilities far beyond the norm for that race, and then take little, if any, further action. Such was the case with Yaskoydray, who has never realized that he is actually an experimental being "created" on a whim by a wayward laboratory assistant from another universe!

The progenitors are essentially immortal, yet they can be killed. Upon their death, they are immediately taken back to the Outside, where their masters retrieve the data that the Progenitor has collected. Whatever is left of their physical form is recycled into the next progenitor.

("Hmm ... supernovae producing too much lanthanum ... let's tweak the gravitational constant, slow down the initial detonation rate by three percent, and try again ...")

Thus, we end up not only with a race of slightly meddlesome beings, but we develop a reason for wide-spread beliefs in such concepts as "life after death," "gods," "angels," "heaven," and "hell."

 

[Domhan]

Gee, and I thought my idea was "origina!" Proof that great minds run in the same channel. The First Ones IMTU were uplifters, and we weren't the first from Terra! They liked an ancient carnivore called the miacis (like a civet) and uplifted them first, then primates. Cue the bad guys: xenophobes called the Hunters of the Dawn (with a tip of the hat to "Ian Douglas") don't like uplifters or any of a similar tech, so the FOs were smeared, then the HotD backtracked them to their original location coreward, Meanwhile, another race called Anunaki discovered jump tech and went looking around. They found us, enslaved us, then guess who came by and smeared the Anunaki? nobody has bothered us since, though we did go to war against a renewed Anunaki presence (more on that in another post). And they say it's a jungle just outside your door...

 

[Ran Targas]

I've always been a huge fan of Verner Vinge and JMS (B5) so MTU has a rich history of Gen I, II, and III civilizations mucking through the same space and affecting each other (mostly for the worst). The Gen I's seldom think of the damage their action cause on those far younger than them; the Gen II's just want enough power to claim equality with their elders; and the Gen III's have little or no idea all that is going on around them. It leaves me with plenty of options for bad guys and good guys and makes the players actions mean a little bit more in the grand scope of things.

 

[mad13142000]

So, Moudray has apparently left the building, and is not slated to return. Ever.

Yeah, but (S)He has a kicking MySpace page...

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=183624966

Ahh. The fun one has with google...

-MADVargr

 

[Gallowglacht]

My Space is a pocket dimension?
Seems so obvious now, my own personal outer space.
Clever Droyne, hiding it in plain site.

So once we find a way of shoving ships through that website we have jump drives right? Vilani here we come...

 

[Whipsnade]

I had a concept of another 'Ancient' survivor, one of Grandfather's proteges known as 'The Teacher'.

Darkhstarr,

Canon has something somewhat similar to you 'Teacher' operating in the Vargr Extents. It's mentioned in the GM's section in Vilani & vargr.

Apparently, Yaskodray left behind yet another(1) bit of equipment when he retired to his pocket universe in the Regina subsector. It's a sentient, TL-Whatever, Vargr-shaped robot. Gramps told it to watch the Vargr, study them, and be prepared to give hand over a big info-dump when he got back. He even rotated a moon in the Lair system into it's own pocket universe to give the robot a place to live and left oodles of teleportation portals scattered around the system too.

Naturally, Gramps left `300,000 year ago and hasn't been within 100 parsecs of Lair ever since!

True to it's orders, when the Vargr left lair, the robot's study of them did so too. It's still quietly studying the Vargr, using all sorts of created and hired agents, amassing dTons of data, and waiting for a visit from someone whose most likely forgotten it even exists.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - You know, for super genuis, Yaskodray sure forgets a lot of stuff. A times I think he went to the same post-grad, super genius, school as Wile E. Coyote.

P.S. As much as I feel there should have been sentients and civilizations prior to Yaskodray and the Ancients/Droyne, I never quite cottoned to DGP's "Baddies from the Core". They smacked too much of the old four-color comic Fantastic Four and the constant 'one-upmansship' that passed for plotting in that series. The Fantastic Four would encounter a alien who was evolved far beyond humanity, either barely defeat it or 'teach' it to respect humanity, and then meet a new alien just a little more powerful than the first alien that they would then defeat and/or gain respect from so they could meet ANOTHER alien slightly more powerful than the second that they would then blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. You get the picture.

 

[hariseldon]

I kind of like this thread. How about looking at our own mythologies. Greek and Roman myths come to mind. Both have Gods knocking off Gods. So does Gnostic Christianity. Come to think about it, a lot of Middle Eastern Mystery beliefs have a similar theme of something existing before something else.