Yaskoydray LIED !

[captainjack23]

Okay, here's the idea. Its seems that there's a general sense that the Secret of the Ancients, as revealed in the eponymous adventure (12 ?) is not just likely to be bunk, but poorly thought out bunk. Let's stay in game, and assume, just for fun, that what we know is the information that historians in traveller have, as reported by the PC's who went through that adventure (and came back).

So, (in game) what the heck is going on ?

Why did grandfather (a Psionic super ultra genius immortal master manipulator, aka Yaskoydray ) grab a bunch of mooks tresspassing in his super-secret pocket dimension of solitude, just to tell them his big secret - and one which is either incomplete, dumbed down, or......wrong...but obviously wrong.

Is Yaskoydray lying, or does he just want us to believe he's lying ? if so, why, and what may he be covering up, or "reframing" ? What does he gain ? Why can we see the holes in a plot that was woven by a demigod ?

To add some extra spice, consider a few additional issues: why wasn't Yaskoydray in the room when the players were given the story ? Were the players really there accidentally, and what does that imply....And, why should we believe anything that A bunch of PC's report to have discovered while investigating a godlike Psion ?

Finally, is the story even wrong ? Or just too dumbed down or complex for the stoopid lesser beings to follow ? In which case, what are we missing ?

Thoughts ? Insane theories ? Rants ? Welcome, but remember, in game. "The adventure is stupid" is cheating :wink:

 

[hdan]

The real secret of the Ancients is that a colony of Droyne unearthed an incredibly ancient artifact created by beings who are not alive in any way that we can understand it, but exist as pure Psionic waves of tremendous power and intellect.

Yaskoydray was the chief scientist on the dig, and his feeble (compared to the Beings) intellect was swiftly dominated by the life force in the artifact. The rest of the survey team were quickly dominated (his "children"), and "Grandfather" (as he was now known) began his work to bring back the rest of his people from their pocket universe prisons. Using a long series of Droyne host bodies, these entities were effectively immortal. (The Caste/Coyne system was developed to help regiment Droyne society, and make choosing new hosts easier.)

Fortunately for the Galaxy, the enemies who had originally imprisioned Grandfather and his children heard the Psionic vibration of their awakening, and began their millenium long trek from the core (where they had moved to) back out to the rim. In a devastating series of battles, the "good" entities once again defeated Grandfather, and locked him away in a pocket dimension. They then returned to the core to pursue their unknowable goals. (The Zho are aware of these beings, and have invested much time and energy attempting to research and contact them.)

Unfortunately, the "good guys" didn't find all the access portals, as a few had been hidden by Grandfather's non-Droyne agents. Since the time of his defeat, Grandfather has been nursing his wounds and trying to find a way to escape. To date, he has been unsuccessful, though the crew of a tramp freighter who recently discovered a way into his dimension might prove to be just the "ride" he needs to get out....

 

[rust]

The Hivers made up the whole thing. 8)

They know that the Solomani were the true Ancients who did all the things
attributed to Grandfather & Co., and who uplifted the Vargr and kept the
Droyne as a slave race.
These early Solomany were manipulated into a devastating civil war by
the early Hivers, a race much older than suspected by the Humans, and
the Hivers made sure that the Humans on the various worlds of their huge
Empire (e.g. Terra, Vland, Zhodane) bombed each other back into a new
Stone Age.
The entire "Grandfather Scheme" has the only purpose to convince the
Humans that some Super-Droyne once ruled the Galaxy, not some Solo-
mani (imagine the Solomani Movement's reaction to the truth !), and that
the Hivers, as always, had nothing at all to do with it.

 

[kristof65]

Simple Ego.

Since no one is around to dispute him, Yaskodray can effectively say what he wants. Furthermore, in MTU, Yaskodray's Droyne presence on all of the various ancient sites belonging to other races has effectively polluted them, leading respected historians to the same conclusion - that the Droyne were the Ancients.

Again, in MTU, the reality is that Yaskodray's ego has had him lying from the beginning. Yes, he discovered j-drive for the Droyne, but not because he's a genius, merely because he stumbled across the secret in old alien ruins. Most of his discoveries were that way - the guy is a plain old egotistic pathological liar.

I'm debating having his arrogance be responsible for the Droyne nearly getting wiped out when an older race try to wipe out the droyne because of Yaskodray's ego and interference in their plans.

 

[EDG]

Yaskoydray was the chief scientist on the dig, and his feeble (compared to the Beings) intellect was swiftly dominated by the life force in the artifact.

This I like .


My interpretation is that "Grandfather", even in the OTU, is not a benevolent entity by any means. He's a selfish, homicidal, insane, sloppy, careless entity with a lot of power, that needs to be locked away in a pocket dimension for the good of the rest of the universe.

I'd settle for going with the OTU version, but say that his children actually rebelled against him when they saw that he was abusing his power and doing more harm than good. In the end, they beat him (because let's face it, how the hell is one guy going defeat hundreds of his almost-equally powered descendents? Even "gods" can be defeated through strength of numbers) and locked him up in the pocket dimension and then left Charted Space to let the region recover on its own from the damage that Grandfather inflicted on it.

I'd have a campaign where he's about to break free, but some of his children come back to (secretly) help Charted Space destroy him once and for all. That'd be fairly epic.

 

[Golan2072]

The Hivers made up the whole thing. 8)

You beat me to it...

They know that the Solomani were the true Ancients who did all the things
attributed to Grandfather & Co., and who uplifted the Vargr and kept the
Droyne as a slave race.
These early Solomany were manipulated into a devastating civil war by
the early Hivers, a race much older than suspected by the Humans, and
the Hivers made sure that the Humans on the various worlds of their huge
Empire (e.g. Terra, Vland, Zhodane) bombed each other back into a new
Stone Age.
The entire "Grandfather Scheme" has the only purpose to convince the
Humans that some Super-Droyne once ruled the Galaxy, not some Solo-
mani (imagine the Solomani Movement's reaction to the truth !), and that
the Hivers, as always, had nothing at all to do with it.

Alternatively, the entire Secret of the Ancients encounter with Grandfather was, actually, a full-immersion VR illusion used by Hivers to manipulate the captured adventurers. The Ancients where Hivers, and they still have Very Long Plans (mop!mop!mop!) for mankind. The Droyne were just their pets/servants in a previous time before the Hivers got thrown back almost to the stone-age by the Baddies from the Core (lizard-like beings seen in the Shadows adventure).

 

[EDG]

I thought one of the points of this exercise was to get rid of the hackneyed cliche of "the (insert deus ex machina here) did everything!". But saying that everything is a Hiver manipulation just replaces the Ancients with the Hivers in that cliched role.

The Hivers aren't actually godlike in their manipulation skills. Yes, they have a mastery of memetic science, but they're not so good that they'll pull the blinkers over everyone's eyes. The thing about memes is that people can actually become immune to them...

 

[rust]

But saying that everything is a Hiver manipulation just replaces the Ancients with the Hivers in that cliched role.

Only if you do not go beyond that first and outermost layer of the entire
"onion". :wink:

The next question would be why the Hivers did destroy the first Solomani
Empire, and who was powerful enough to tell them to do it, and for what
reason - as a part of what power struggle between which entities.

The Hivers, believing themselves to be great manipulators, are manipu-
lated themselves, mere "sockpuppets" of some of the dozens of powers
who have been playing their "Great Game" for dominance over the Local
Group for billions of years.

 

[GypsyComet]

...before the Hivers got thrown back almost to the stone-age by the Baddies from the Core (lizard-like beings seen in the Shadows adventure).

Ah, the BFtC. DGPs bid to continue the Traveller timeline as "the largest spectator event in RPG history". Having just spun down from a huge Rebellion, the Imperium, Vargr, and Zhodani would then become embroiled in another war with outsiders. All in the name of more closed-source metaplot.

No thanks.

Oh, and the lizardfolk from Shadows were proto-Hkhar. They have an article in Challenge at some point. Cigar-smoking (to provide a necessary set of breathed compounds missing from most atmospheres) psychopomps, IIRC.

---

The easiest lie for Grandfather to tell is one of displacement. All those things occured, but HE wasn't the one doing them. An extended form of "No s**t there I was!" if you will.

 

[DCAnsell]

Grandfather doesn't exist, not as a living being. He instead is the last remaining part of a supercomputer network established by one of the races of true ancients, to watch over their sadly benighted kinfolk..

The Droyne were indeed among the races of ancients, as were the Hivers. Both are mere remnants of what they once were, descended from races that failed to make that last step of transcendence.

Instead of transcending, whatever that entailed, and moving on to wherever and whatever these transcedent races do, the ancient Droyne and Hivers engaged in various experimentation, the Hivers with their own race, and with other races sadly largely extinct, the Droyne with Humaniti and Vargr, along with other vanished races.

In the end, both races nearly destroyed themselves, through a variety of methods, leaving the various bewildering set of 'ancient' sites and artifacts, and obscuring the even more ancient (and thus less obvious) signs of the transcendant ancients, who are long (at least mostly) gone on to bigger and better things.

In fact the Zhodani core expeditions are an attempt by that offshoot of Humaniti to begin their own path to transcendance, using visions provided by an artifact left behind by the ancients themselves.

 

[EDG]

Ah, the BFtC. DGPs bid to continue the Traveller timeline as "the largest spectator event in RPG history". Having just spun down from a huge Rebellion, the Imperium, Vargr, and Zhodani would then become embroiled in another war with outsiders. All in the name of more closed-source metaplot.

I had no problem with it myself. If anything, it made the setting a damn sight more interesting IMO.

 

[Dave Chase]

I like all the ideas here.

It could be that the Hivers made up the story to make the researcher Droyne into the all powerful Grandfather and over time they believe it them selves forgetting that it was a Great Manipulation.

I really like the PSI only race taking over. Kind of reminds me of a movie (Forbidden Planet) only the machine achieved success in the mind take over bit.

Now this would really make the Traveller universe extreme interesting and deadly exciting.

Dave Chase

 

[BP]

...The Hivers, believing themselves to be great manipulators, are manipu-lated themselves, mere "sockpuppets" of some of the dozens of powers who have been playing their "Great Game" for dominance over the Local Group for billions of years.

The Olympians?

 

[Ishmael]

how about this?

the final war was over the use of humans
Yaskoydray's children used human stock instead of the prefered vargr stock.
Planets where humans survived ( zhodane and vilani ) were decimated.
That there were 2 groups, one who used humans and one who did not, can be shown by the two droyne groups settled on Zhodane. Both were mostly destroyed and a mistake was made in delivering bio-weapons ( tailored bio-weapons got sent to the wrong sites... lay dormant until the two groups met )

will Yaskoydray finish his experiment by coaxing humans and vargr into an all out war of extermination?
will Yaskoydray decide to finish off the humans himself?
Is the entire point of the experiment to make an army of "insects" to fight another Ancient's army of "Insects"?

who cares?... he's just a myth anyways

 

[Tathlum]

For me it's been about 2 things
1) I can't seem to buy the idea of so many races becoming sentient and spaceborn is such a short time, so there has to be ancients of some sort
2) I don't like the canon story but want the answer to be hiding in plain sight.

So grabbing a few threads; The ancients are eath humans, spread out, uplifted dolphins and Vargr. Adopted chirpers and uplifted them too. Grandfather rebelled using uplifted chirpers. Ancients colapse.
Geonee were the last part to fall and in later times clung most closely to the ancient culture. Time passes, Humans and their other experiments/uplifts rise again.
Geonee are sure they were the ancient, Solomani develop a sence that they were somehow superior and weirdly recognise centaurs, dog people and cat people.

No body is in control, no-one knows the full story and grandfather still hides in his pocket dimension scared of the eventual revenge of his creators.

 

[Jeff Hopper]

Bah!

The Ancients War of Extermination was obviously fought over which actor best portrayed Doctor Who.

:lol: :lol:

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

...before the Hivers got thrown back almost to the stone-age by the Baddies from the Core (lizard-like beings seen in the Shadows adventure).

Ah, the BFtC. DGPs bid to continue the Traveller timeline as "the largest spectator event in RPG history". Having just spun down from a huge Rebellion, the Imperium, Vargr, and Zhodani would then become embroiled in another war with outsiders. All in the name of more closed-source metaplot.

Dare I ask?

 

[kafka]

Yaskoydray was the chief scientist on the dig, and his feeble (compared to the Beings) intellect was swiftly dominated by the life force in the artifact.

This I like .


I'd have a campaign where he's about to break free, but some of his children come back to (secretly) help Charted Space destroy him once and for all. That'd be fairly epic.

Yes, however, you construct the backstory to Grandfather's genius seems reasonable to me. In the 1970s, it was the era of mutation. Today, it is about machine-person transfer in a transhuman sense.

I have done what you are suggesting IMTU, save, I did not make it Grandfather but things that are more ancient than the Primodorials that the Ancients merely thought they could harvest.

Having him a prisoner wanting to break free and destroy Chartered Space strikes me too much like the plot The Stolen Earth (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Stolen_Earth) and I don't see Grandfather as Davros...although, it might make all his children that much more interesting...say, if humaniti and the Vargr carry the spark or genetic legacy of the Ancients for a larger drama to unfold in the fullness of time.

Grandfather doesn't exist, not as a living being. He instead is the last remaining part of a supercomputer network established by one of the races of true ancients, to watch over their sadly benighted kinfolk..

The Droyne were indeed among the races of ancients, as were the Hivers. Both are mere remnants of what they once were, descended from races that failed to make that last step of transcendence.

Instead of transcending, whatever that entailed, and moving on to wherever and whatever these transcedent races do, the ancient Droyne and Hivers engaged in various experimentation, the Hivers with their own race, and with other races sadly largely extinct, the Droyne with Humaniti and Vargr, along with other vanished races.

In the end, both races nearly destroyed themselves, through a variety of methods, leaving the various bewildering set of 'ancient' sites and artifacts, and obscuring the even more ancient (and thus less obvious) signs of the transcendant ancients, who are long (at least mostly) gone on to bigger and better things.

In fact the Zhodani core expeditions are an attempt by that offshoot of Humaniti to begin their own path to transcendance, using visions provided by an artifact left behind by the ancients themselves.

This I like and it is more in keeping with what is already out there. Grandfather is the ultimate personification of: "The Universe Does Not Care" is the way it should be. Any attempt to make him into the chief diety of the Traveller universe should be fought on all fronts. He is a being like all others but largely just concerned with himself but also what has been left behind.

Maybe, "Grandfather" & "Children" are too loaded a term for what Droyne consider for their offspring carrying strong emotive values. Perhaps, we should focus our attention on reworking those concepts. For the whole Ancients thing to be rewritten, it would have to rethought of in a different light than the emotions and notions of what we consider family. Perhaps, Grandfather might be more acurrately thought of as a the Godfather of a Criminal Syndicate inspiring loyality through a rule of fear.

The major hold up or standfast problem is that Marc is a loving & caring Grandfather. So I am sure that might pose a problem, once the manuscripts have to be approved.[/url]

 

[GypsyComet]

...before the Hivers got thrown back almost to the stone-age by the Baddies from the Core (lizard-like beings seen in the Shadows adventure).

Ah, the BFtC. DGPs bid to continue the Traveller timeline as "the largest spectator event in RPG history". Having just spun down from a huge Rebellion, the Imperium, Vargr, and Zhodani would then become embroiled in another war with outsiders. All in the name of more closed-source metaplot.

Dare I ask?

The Rebellion was a huge event with no real opportunity for any kind of PC influence. We're talking war engulfing thousands of worlds, here. Scenarios published at the time were much more "life during wartime" than anything else. The Rebellion was tagged by one pundit as "The Biggest Spectator Event in RPGs".

As for the "Baddies from the Core," that was a plotline intended to pick up after the Rebellion had spun down, and coincidentally wrap up a lot of the odd little bits DGP and GDW had been dropping into adventures, TAS News items, art, etc for the years of that edition, including the Zhodani unrest and the (otherwise throw-away) pre-sentient aliens seen in the Referee's Screen adventure.

The idea was that an ancient race that was deeply and powerfully psionic was returning to their "nursery" in the Imperial area. The problem is that their drives were psionically powered, and the "bow wave" blows out the fuses on every psionic mind nearby except them. So of course they are coming through Zhodani space, causing extreme distress and an understandably hostile reaction from the Zhodani. This would keep on as they crossed into Imperial space, reaching into all the latent psis and causing lesser reactions but still precipitating war, until finally they either reached their destination or someone managed to communicate without cranial damage.

Did I mention that the psionic drive has a scintillating lightshow effect? That's right, the alien ships sparkle. Funny that they should quickly acquire the nickname "Sparklers".

While the whole story would need an all-star cast of Traveller's past authors and line managers to tell, from the outside it appeared that proposing this storyline to GDW was DGPs bid to keep the timeline under their management with another *BIG EVENT*, and was also the last straw as far as GDW was concerned. Timeline and game control went back to GDW and DGP bailed out of Traveller and gaming, selling their line lock, stock, and barrel to Roger Sanger, who still has it all. That's a tale for another day, however.

Instead of the Invasion of the Sparklers, we got Hard Times, Virus, and the New Era. The Zhodani unrest was attributed to the Empress Wave, and the other plot bits leading to the Sparklers were left disconnected.

--

I know which path I prefer, but opinions obviously differ. How much of that is reaction to Virus vs something else, I don't know. Virus caused a lot of loud complaint back in the day (1991) and the effects that had on the Traveller community still echo.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

I'm an occasional Traveller book buyer, so I knew about the major plot arcs - the Rebellion and Virus, but the whole Sparkler thing is new to me... It sounds interesting, but also a bit sterotypical space opera.

I got a bit of the DGP/GDW background while I was trying to find out a bit of data on my own, but TravellerWiki is annoyingly sparse on info in some areas.