Ancients, and Those Even More Ancient

[kafka47]

The Droyne module clearly states that mankind's beliefs in Angels and Demons stem from the Droyne capturing and hunting of early humans. The whole Ancients story is merely Chariots of the Gods in an earlier time and the racial memory persisting to this day.

In another thread dealing with the Ilthulr, I speculated on an older race than the Ancients/Droyne/Primoridals. Why not use the idea of an intra-Galactic species that had migrated to the Greater/Lesser Magellanic Clouds. It was through these portals that something slipped sideways into our universe. For I used Terra/Sol's Precursors to be the ones who had tamed the naturally occurring wormholes (which were designed to prevent the Heat Death of the Universe). Something, that Granddad was also working upon but could not solve it.

Out of that other space came something that the Droyne called "The Enemy" (taking my cue from 2300AD) and this was a psionic parasite that has a gestation cycle of several thousand years therefore can remain dominant for a very long time...

Shunning the light and living underground for thousands of years in suspended animation, the Sleepers dream spurring creativity and madness throughout Chartered Space. Until one day...

 

[hdan]

Out of that other space came something that the Droyne called "The Enemy" (taking my cue from 2300AD) and this was a psionic parasite that has a gestation cycle of several thousand years therefore can remain dominant for a very long time...

Shunning the light and living underground for thousands of years in suspended animation, the Sleepers dream spurring creativity and madness throughout Chartered Space. Until one day...

...when the players find themselves in possession of a data cube containing the log of one Gustaf Johansen, second mate on the Sword Worlder A2 free trader "Emma". The log, degraded no doubt from radiation damage, details some singularly peculiar sensor readings encountered when the Emma mis-jumped into what is believed to be an empty parsec in the Great Rift.

 

[kafka47]

The data crystal contained details of world where one should not exist orbiting a faint White Dwarf. Unusual because of the densometer ratings were off the scale revealing a vast honeycomb weblike labyrinth of caverns intersecting and bisecting in non-Euclidean angles. Clearly, such a structure could not natural yet no known engineering technique could account for it. Certainly, there were Ringworlds across Chartered Space but an entire planet whose core seemed to be dominated by superheavy elements was a venerable gold mine.

As the crew delved deeper below the surface they found stranger effects, with significant variations of gravity, atmosphere and even the flow of time. It could be that they had passed through portals yet contact with the ship on the surface could be maintained all the time. It was then that they discovered it.

An immense seemingly bottomless circular hole whose perimeter was covered strange glyphs of an unknown origin. Part of the party decided to descend down the using ropes for all probes sent down generated nothing but static and did not return.

 

[Ran Targas]

What is scarier is the critter at the bottom gobbling up those probes, nom nom nom!

Actually, I'm more inclined to have the intrepid Travellers discover a small white walled room that becomes more and more furnished like a hotel they all remember from Rylanor or Beta Antares or the like ... That is until whomever has found them on their microscope slide loses interest and sends them back to their ship in a blinding flash.

 

[aramis]

What is scarier is the critter at the bottom gobbling up those probes, nom nom nom!

Actually, I'm more inclined to have the intrepid Travellers discover a small white walled room that becomes more and more furnished like a hotel they all remember from Rylanor or Beta Antares or the like ... That is until whomever has found them on their microscope slide loses interest and sends them back to their ship in a blinding flash.

That brings to mind a Mr. Bowman...

 

[Ran Targas]

Surely a coincidence

 

[Strummist]

Given the age of the Universe, there should be aliens who've been around so long the Ancients look like mayflies in comparison. I wonder what sort of things would be lying around if a technological species had billions of years to work on terraforming, black hole farming etc etc. I imagine after that length of time the parasites on their pets would be more advanced than the Ancients.

 

[epicenter00]

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

The Empress Wave is a farsighted method to "flip the finger" at the Assassins from beyond the grave by some other species that lived in the core the galaxy. The technologies and very existence of the Assassins are so alien to us that their thought-processes and forms cannot be easily comprehended by species in this universe. Ordinary species of this universe have no chance to stop the Assassins, or really even become aware of how the Assassins exist and operate.

The core intelligence(s) were about to discover (accidentally) the existence about the Assassins and their plan, however their experiments announced their presence to the Assassins. Unprepared, the core intelligences were made extinct in less than a second. However, a few of the core intelligences were conducting experiments in very sciences that had tripped the aware of the Assassins. At the moment of extinction those researchers were experimenting with were time dilation with black holes. So the handful of intelligences left essentially had "all the time in the world" to get their revenge in that one second between discovery and extinction.

The few core intelligences left thought about it for what we'd call centuries of their subjective time, researched, and carried out experiments. Eventually, they figured out a method for other intelligent species to scry the existence of the Assassins without the Assassins notice. We call this method Psionics. The Core Intelligences have no idea how to stop the Assassins, but they figure by increasing the psionic incidence to make them more common in intelligent species, at least people will know about the Assassins. With knowledge of the threat, they have faith someone out there will eventually figure out how to stop the Assassins.

Armed with this knowledge and how to deploy it (they figured out a universal way to make beings with certain thought processes vaguely similar to theirs psionic) they popped out of their time dilation experiment, managed to trigger their revenge -- what we call the Empress Wave. Of course, those who left the "protection" of their null-time experiment went extinct with the rest of their species, but that was fine, they'd have their revenge.

Now the Empress Wave travels out of the Core. It destroys psions (the Core Intelligences weren't psions themselves - they didn't imagine that psionics might already exist so the Wave does bad things to them) and changes the nature of the "psionic carrier dimension" that was previously in use.

What will the Empress Wave do? All the imagery of the Empress Wave is meaningless, it's just the perceiver associating mind-imagery with the information in an effort to understand it, the reason why it's so wonky is that the Empress Wave changes people in a below-conscious level, permanently. In a few generations, the incidence of psionic powers in the major races will reach 100% (like the Droyne). The galaxy will become a very different place because of it. The players, of course won't ever have to deal with that (or will they?) and the result universe certainly won't be Traveller. However, that's still centuries away, and there may still be time for players to reverse the Empress Wave's effects, but either way it'll certainly be interesting playing "blunt" humans in a time where evolution has decided it's time to hurdle instead of walk...

 

[Peter Schutze]

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

This is what I show the players when I want to clooud the issue of whether that artifact is a Grandfather type Ancient artifact

scientists at the Capitol Imperial Institute of Xeno-Archaeology estimate there has been at least one "ancient" scientific/tool using race inhabiting the area circumscribed by the Imperium's boundaries every 100,000 years or so going back at least 2 million years. Very few however appear to have spread beyond about a sector in scope or attained greater than TL13 in any field which is what distinguishes these precursor races from the capital A Ancients

it appears that our cycle of civilisation is the first that is not destined to "die out due to loneliness" as there has been no evidence discovered so far that any precursor race came into contact with another and only one case where environmentally similar civilisations appear to have overlapping territories, seperated by nearly 1 million years.

 

[Ran Targas]

^Cool idea but I'm still sorta stuck on the Babylon 5 style universe with several layers of civilizations all inhabiting the same space, not all visible to the current occupants. This allows for gaming at small and very large scales depending on how we want to, but there is always something lurking and things sometimes are more complicated than they seem. The players are always a little paranoid when something strange happens and try to figure out why. A great example is when their ship suddenly dropped out of jump in the middle of an empty hex; the dice said mis-jump but they didn't know that and spent several hours trying to figure it out. They scanned, sent out hails, and even attempted psychic contact before giving up. They wouldn't accept there was nothing there and even came back later for a second look.

 

[Hyphen]

They scanned, sent out hails, and even attempted psychic contact before giving up. They wouldn't accept there was nothing there and even came back later for a second look.

Love it! The _best_ red herrings are the ones the players come up with themselves! All you have to do as a ref is stir the pot a bit, every now and then, and eventually take full credit for the tortuous plotline ('natch!!)

 

[Dragoner]

Here is one of mine:

The players are given a data crystal, with encrypted research from an ancients dig, the crystal was smuggled out of the Imperium during the Rebellion. On it they find a video file labeled simply "Spartacus":

The grainy video shows a man in a simple grey uniform, blood trickling down his chin from the side of his mouth. He speaks in an unknown language, though the researchers have translated it and added subtitles.

"This will be my last transmission, Yaskodray's fleets approach our world now, I am with our fleet in defense, we are under heavy attack. There is no return from where we go, we fight on only so that you may escape, your survival will be the final victory of our cause.

Know that I love you, I am dying, but I wont surrender. Goodbye, mother of my....(static)

The video player that this was recorded from, fragments the picture some and loops the last sequence three times before burning out, this ends the researchers video.

"I am dying, but I won't surrender"....a message from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

+10 to who catches the historical reference. (hint: it isn't spartacus)

 

[mike wightman]

It can't be Spartacus - not enough sex in the video clip

By the way has no one mentioned the MT sidebar on the first star farers in the RM yet in this thread?

 

[AndreaV]

It can't be Spartacus - not enough sex in the video clip

By the way has no one mentioned the MT sidebar on the first star farers in the RM yet in this thread?

Because it rather specifically rules out any ultra high tech race predating the Ancients (actually any race with J-drive)?

I've never liked the primordials, smacked way too much of villain of the week inflation. One mysterious vanished ultra tech race is quite sufficient.

 

[rancke]

Because it rather specifically rules out any ultra high tech race predating the Ancients (actually any race with J-drive)?

I've never liked the primordials, smacked way too much of villain of the week inflation. One mysterious vanished ultra tech race is quite sufficient.

Actually, I've always felt that limiting forerunners to one species was a big mistake, but it's what GDW did; I was likewise rather annoyed with the Primordials.


Hans

 

[AndreaV]

Actually, I've always felt that limiting forerunners to one species was a big mistake, but it's what GDW did; I was likewise rather annoyed with the Primordials.

Hans

Well one might argue that given how the Ancients are written in the OTU, they effectively are multiple forerunners Not that I'm that keen on how the Ancients are written, too many plot holes like why the six castes (natural evolution is unlikely, but given the Ancients tech, they were more than capable of doing it themselves) or the 300,000 years in the past (more than sufficient time for widespread speciation to occur).

 

[mike wightman]

Because it rather specifically rules out any ultra high tech race predating the Ancients (actually any race with J-drive)?

I've never liked the primordials, smacked way too much of villain of the week inflation. One mysterious vanished ultra tech race is quite sufficient.

No - it doesn't.

Leaving aside the primordials - who use a psionic based jump drive to flit about - the MT side bar mentions interstellar travel via electronic personality transfer - that high tech enough for you?

The early star farers never invented the jump drive (I've posted before my thoughts on this) but they did travel between the stars and developed high TLs - who's to say some of them aren't still around.

 

[Tobias]

I'd be fine with additional precursor races, but these would all be sublight civilizations. There are not jump-capable civilizations preceding the Ancients IMTU simply because the Ancients did not discover jump space - they built jump space.

 

[DangerousThing]

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

As many as you want.

And don't forget that archeologists are studying cultures hundreds of thousands of years old based on fragments. There can be a lot of confusion.

For example, the Forerunner Race that terraformed the area the Empire is in (not OTU) was thought to be FR 03, until they figured out that FR 03 and FR 07 were the same culture, merely separated by 50,000 years or so. And meanwhile nobody's figured out why a race that has an entirely different biology from humans (a terraformed world would kill them) would terraform over a thousand worlds.

The most ancient forerunner race to be found was FR 14, which is thought to be about 5 million years old. Unfortunately all the evidence consists of one fairly small base. Time does odd things to technology.

 

[savage]

As many as you want.

The most ancient forerunner race to be found was FR 14, which is thought to be about 5 million years old. Unfortunately all the evidence consists of one fairly small base. Time does odd things to technology.

Well noted... My thoughts exactly. Terraforming, the introduction of water for example. Can make a mess of things.