Yaskoydray LIED !

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Grandfather was a puppet of a group of truly ancient beings that believed in ORDER and guiding the younger races to full maturity.

Another race, just as ancient, believed that evolution was best served through CHAOS and war. Only the strongest survived.

Grandfather had been able to control Charted Space without interference for thousands of years, but the ancient enemy eventually returned. They used the younger races and formented fear and war. The entire culture collapsed in fire.

From the ashes of this ancient conflict the "modern" races emerged.

Humaniti was one of the younger races, but fell in the war and only scattered remnants survived to start civilization over again. Zhodane, Terra and Vland were the most notable.

Hivers are the new race used by the Lords of Order to try to control the younger races. Vargr are the minions of Chaos.

(Wait, has this been done before...???) :wink:

 

[alex_greene]

I still have Ancients as being remnants of the species they once were. Some of their descendants live on a planet orbiting a red dwarf star that doesn't put out an awful lot of UV light. The world is mostly desert, and in the middle of that desert, the descendants sit.

Big, furry, three metre cones of flesh, with no eyes and enormous gaping mouths. Oh, and a psionic lure that is virtually irresistible ...

No, wait. Those are Niven's Grogs. Silly me.

Thing is, "Ancients" that are 300,000 years old don't really seem that old. They may predate Humanity, of course - hells, most things of any real age predate humanity - but 300,000 is nothing compared with say, 7,000,000,000 - or even older.

Something extragalactic.

Some Thing or Things predating even the universe.

Now something like that, that seems impossibly old - that's what I'd call "Ancient."

Compared with that kind of timescale, Yaskoydray (can I call him "Yas" for short?) is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately.

Inspirations: Some of the aliens from Doctor Who, Iain M Banks' Excession, Alan Dean Foster's Xunca, Hur'rikku, Vom and Tar Aiym, Vorlons, Shadows, First Ones and the Preservers / Doomsday Machine / aliens from "The Chase" / Sargon, Thalassa and Hanoch / Guardian of Forever, all from Star Trek.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I think that Grandfather didn't tell the entire story. OBVIOUSLY he was not the first intelligent being in the galaxy to develop Jump Drive.

So, what existed before Grandfather? Whatever you want. He only told HIS story, not the story of the Galaxy.

Population II stars (those likely to have planets with life on them) have been around for over a BILLION years in our galaxy alone. Grandfather dates back 300,000 years. LOTS of time for civilizations to rise, fall and completely disappear under the crustal plates.

The Ancients are merely the youngest ruins around, so they appear the most common, but there are others.

 

[alex_greene]

Yup. And some of them are much, much older.

Oh. I forgot to include The Road Builders / Ascended Ones / Ori from Stargate SG-1. The timescale is only millions of years, not billions - but we're talking about possible time travel by humans from the far future into the distant past, and that's good enough for me to include them.

Also, The Nox - though they wish you didn't mention them. You never saw them. They were never here.

 

[zanwot]

The one thing I don't buy is the possibility of Humans being some Ancients. It is bad enough having humans all over space without having them all over time.

 

[kristof65]

The one thing I don't buy is the possibility of Humans being some Ancients. It is bad enough having humans all over space without having them all over time.

Doesn't that actually make more sense than another species scattering them all over the place?


It makes more sense to me - just another fallen human civilization that happens to have left remnants all over known space, rather than some old, alien species dragging primitive humans all over known space and then leaving them there. One of my issues with the Ancients as portrayed in the OTU was that they only messed with humans and dogs - why aren't other "uplifted" races more plentiful as well?

 

[simonh]

One of my issues with the Ancients as portrayed in the OTU was that they only messed with humans and dogs - why aren't other "uplifted" races more plentiful as well?

IMHO because humans are more servile and easily manipulated. We know the Ancients messed with other races as well, I seem to remember Mission on Mithril featured huge bass reliefs of Aslan and Hivers dating back to the Ancient era but my memory may be faulty.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Travellingdave]

Doesn't that actually make more sense than another species scattering them all over the place? <snip>

My problem with that is that there would be signs HERE that such a civilization once existed: orbital remains, bases on the Moon, buried defense stations, signs of hi-tech industry, etc. Where are our cool Ancient sites, then?

In MTU, the Droyne merely built on technology they found from other, earlier, civilizations. Grandfather and some others were enhanced products of this technology ("transdroynist?"). The droyne soon discovered that there are whole sections of this spiral arm that are apparently barren due to the actions of these far older cultures. Eventually, Grandfather and his kin met some elements of these true Ancients ... and got their butts seriously kicked. Not that Grandfather would ever admit this to a bunch of humans.

And, of course, that's only part of the story.

 

[alex_greene]

I kind of prefer my Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis hypothesis, namely that a colony of far future humans - and I mean thousands of years more advanced than us - developed a T-drive to go back in time millions of years before the evolution of their progenitor species back on Terra.

The reason being, perhaps, that they needed a good couple of million years to complete their process of Ascension ... but that if they'd stayed in their original timeline the galaxy would have gone Seyfert before they'd have a chance to Ascend. So ... back in time they went.

Something like that, anyway.

 

[rust]

Something like that, anyway.

´
I am a bit reluctant to use Ascensions and such, so my "something like
that" could well be something like a penal colony sent back in time a few
million years, perhaps as a way of getting rid of the losers of a civil war
without having to kill them (and start a new round of that war).

 

[zanwot]

I kind of prefer my Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis hypothesis, namely that a colony of far future humans - and I mean thousands of years more advanced than us - developed a T-drive to go back in time millions of years before the evolution of their progenitor species back on Terra.

I don't want to sound like grumpy, but I prefer to stay as far away from time travel as possible myself. You end up having to invent alternative dimensions or strange rules. Plus I just plain don't believe in time travel being possible (at least not by the way we mean it).

And Human Ancients are just soooo cheesy. It screams of limited budget TV shows trying to satisfy the subconscient human supremacist feeling in all of us (just my opinion and all that). Anytime Human Ancients appear I personnaly loose any suspension of disbelief I may have left.

 

[alex_greene]

"Ah, but these were definitely humanoid, Professor."

"How can you tell?"

"Ladders and stairs. Oh, and doors set in the side of a building, low down, rather than in the top of a building."

 

[kristof65]

My problem with that is that there would be signs HERE that such a civilization once existed: orbital remains, bases on the Moon, buried defense stations, signs of hi-tech industry, etc. Where are our cool Ancient sites, then?

I see your point, but then I would say it depends on how you go about it. Those things only need to exist in the Sol system IF Terra is the homeworld of that ancient human civilization. Otherwise, a Star Trek II Genesis like device and possibily one crashed starship is all that's needed to place humans here without any other trace of that ancient civilization.

I don't use that method in MTU, I'm just saying how in some ways it makes more sense. What I did was have a lot more variety among the transplated species - not just sapient and semi-sapients like humans and Vargr, but other races/species from other worlds being spread about, too. Thanks to the meddling of the Ancients, one typically can't trace evolution on a single world without looking through out known space - lots of "missing links" because of their meddling.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Put them a million years back and there wouldn't be much evidence of ANYTHING. No buildings etc are going to last a million years without upkeep. Relics and artifacts could have been destroyed in the final war so that there wasn't much left to find. Then add a million years of rust and plant life and there may not be anything to find anymore. Maybe there is SOMEWHERE, but we haven't found it yet.

Regarding bases on the moon or the other planets. Who's to say they aren't there but haven't been discovered yet by us? Several places on the moon could easily hide a base and we wouldn't have discovered it yet, especially if it was underground.

 

[BP]

Or hiding in the core of stars...

 

[rust]

Then add a million years of rust and plant life and there may not be anything to find anymore.

I knew someone would put the blame on me, but I assure you that I did
not touch those ruins, not in a million years.

 

[BP]

Ah ha! So you sir, do admit to touching them a million years ago!

 

[rust]

Ah ha! So you sir, do admit to touching them a million years ago!

Well, my lawyer told me that would have become prescriptive by now. :lol:

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Something like that, anyway.

´
I am a bit reluctant to use Ascensions and such, so my "something like
that" could well be something like a penal colony sent back in time a few
million years, perhaps as a way of getting rid of the losers of a civil war
without having to kill them (and start a new round of that war).

There's somethign similar in Stephen Baxter's Xelee novels. There, the myterious eponymous aliens send information back in time to advance their technology, allowing them to complete a number of galactic-scale projects early enough to save themselves from the destruction of the universe.

 

[Travellingdave]

Put them a million years back and there wouldn't be much evidence of ANYTHING. <many good thoughts snipped> Several places on the moon could easily hide a base and we wouldn't have discovered it yet, especially if it was underground.

Well, if our current evolutionary theories are correct, that would mean that this million year-old Solomani Precursor Empire was established by Homo Erectus. Of course, if you assume technologies that can rewrite the fossil record (ala Newton's Wake or a Genesis Device), then all bets are off anyway.

Personally, I agree with the idea of many species being spread across the stars by whatever precursor race suits your fancy. :wink: