Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Antares on October 12, 2003, 07:23:00 pm
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Here it is, folks.
I spent most of today poring through the original release of the Shivan Manifesto, looking over commentary from you and editing in my own responses. Most of this was cut-and-paste work, but it still took several hours to accomplish.
I believe I've addressed every conceivable topic that could ever arise from this essay, but if I've left something out, be sure to let me know, so I can make changes. Some minor errors still exist--lots of italicizing needs to be done for purposes of style and emphasis, and there are probably a few errors, but by and large, everything is in good shape. Some ideas may be out of order--i.e., you may read mention to something that hasn't been discussed yet--due to the lengthy editing process. Apologies in advance.
Setekh, you once mentioned making up some illustrations for this monstrous thing. I'm too nice of a guy to ask you for any directly, but if you feel like making some renders or something, be my guest. :D
EXTREME LENGTH WARNING. The Shivan Manifesto is approximately thirty pages in length as a Microsoft Word file. Do not begin reading unless you plan to finish.
Excelsior!
***
Since the initial Freespace title, the question of the Shivans' origin has remained largely a mystery. While the subject of much conjecture and guesswork, the relatively scant canon material provided in-game makes it difficult to formulate any elaborate hypothesis concerning just who--or what-- the Shivans are, and what their purpose in Freespace is.
Here, I shall set forth my own theory as relates to the Shivan mystery, attempting to unravel Freespace's greatest standing enigma. Be forewarned that this discussion is quite lengthy, as I have done what I can to work out each point in detail, with as much information as I can recall after several playthroughs of both FS titles. In places where I lack direct proof, I am forced to make assumptions--some of them far-fetched--a tactic I hope will not offend those of you who are Freespace purists.
Comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome. Please enjoy the reading.
***
[glow=red]The Shivan Manifesto[/glow]
I. Who or what are the Shivans?
The most obvious answer to this question is that the Shivans are a violently xenocidal alien race, possessing advanced offensive and defensive technologies. They have exhibited virtually no interest in diplomatic contact (a point we will discuss shortly), and strangely, have given higher priority to the possession of subspace jump nodes rather than habitable planets. We know the Shivan fleet is vast, as evidenced by their innumerable fighter squadrons and--in their greatest display of brute force to date--their ominous armada of over eighty Sathanas-class juggernauts. However, there is no evidence of a Shivan homeworld, nor any habitable Shivan space installations. The Shivans are known to have a high degree of expertise in the field of subspace, able to navigate uncharted jump nodes or nodes too unstable for Terran/Vasudan engines, and also able to generate strange subspace energy pulses from their larger vessels.
The supplemental material that follows is the Freespace 2 database entry on the Shivans, taken (with apologies) from Tech Freespace:
"32 years after the Great War, we still know almost nothing about the Shivans. Physically, the Shivans have multiple compound eyes and five legs with claw-like manipulators. Their insect like carapace does not appear original to the creature's physiognomy, suggesting the Shivans are a cybernetic fusion of biology an technology. The integrated plasma weapon also exhibits properties of an organic artificial fusion. The weapon may be a kind of focusing device powered by the energy of the being itself, though this point is the subject of heated cotroversy. These details are cited as evidence that the Shivans could not have evolved as the Terran or Vasudan species had, but that they were likely constructed by another entity.
Only a handful of Shivans have ever been captured, and all research on live specimens ended with the GTI's Hades rebellion in 2335. The results of these studies remain highly classified. Though the Shivans are onviously xenocidal, their motives and origins have yet to be determined. According to Ancient artifacts, the Shivans seem to possess some kind of sensitivity to subspace disturbances. We do not know if the Shivans returned to this corner of the galaxy by chance, by cycle, by pattern, or by their detection of Terran-Vasudan subspace tarvel. Xenobiologists know very little about Shivan society. A leading hypothesis is the hive mind theory, arguing that Shivan society is broken down in specialized functions driven by a collective intelligence. The most convincing evidence supporting this theory is the behavior of Shivan forces following the destruction of the Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts cauton against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior. Shivan communication seems to occur in the electromagnetic spectrum, though efforts to decode their transmissions have yielded no meaningful results to date."
a. Where do the Shivans come from?
As stated, the Shivans have no apparent home planet, nor any space stations from which to deploy their forces. If such a location exists, it would naturally be believed to be located somewhere deep inside their territory, beyond the binary star system where SOC forces encountered the three Shivan Communication Nodes ("Into the Lion's Den"). This notion is given credence by the existence of the third Knossos portal in that same system, which the Ancients would not have constructed had Shivan forces already been present. In-game dialogue suggests the region beyond the portal is the area of space in which the Ancients were first confronted by the Shivans, but we have no way to confirm this supposition.
The best clues we have to the Shivans' origins come directly from Volition. One comment reveals that the Shivans' bodies, as seen in-game, are not artificial suits, but their true bodies. The highly versatile nature of the Shivan body, able to move through outer space itself without protection (as evidenced in the Freespace Reference Bible) suggests that the Shivans either evolved entirely in the void of deep space, or that their bodies were created with the specific intent of being able to operate in that environment.
A second, more crucial comment from Volition indicates that as terrifying as the Shivans are, they should be viewed as "a symptom of a bigger problem". More on this revelation will be discussed later.
b. What is the extent of the Shivans' offensive and defensive capabilities?
Weaponry appears to be one of the Shivans' most specialized fields of expertise; the Shivans possess a wide array of destructive armaments, many of which are more potent than any comparable equipment in the GTVA. Shivan offense is wide-ranging, able to neutralize individual fighters, bombers, and capital craft, commence thorough and sustained planetary bombardment, and even destroy entire solar systems via induced supernova. Whether the Shivans possess any more powerful weapons of annihilation--as inconceivable as the notion may seem--is, as of this writing, unknown.
Strangely, in contrast to their immensely powerful arsenal, Shivan armor plating appears to be relatively weak. The Shivans' primary defensive advantage is their possession of a versatile energy shielding system, a technology which the GTVA has subsequently reverse-engineered and applied to its own fighter squadrons. The Shivans appear to lack the expertise needed to shield a capital-class vessel, with one notable exception: the heavily-armed superdestroyer Lucifer was protected by an impenetrable energy shield, likely energized by the ship's five reactors. Allied craft were never able to penetrate the shield directly, and were forced to circumvent the mechanism entirely by ambushing the Lucifer during subspace transit, a time in which its shields would not function.
The Lucifer-class vessel destroyed at the close of the Great War was the only known craft of its type to exist in the entire Shivan armada. After 32 years, the design may now be obsolete, or the superdestroyers themselves might only be manufactured in minimal numbers. We have no way of confirming either hypothesis.
c. Why are the Shivans so destructive?
The Shivans' motives are as much a mystery as their very existence. They kill with frightening indiscrimination, firing upon any non-Shivan craft, regardless of its intentions. The Hammer of Light, for example, sought to ally with the Shivans, but several HOL craft and at least one major HOL base were destroyed by Shivan forces ("The Darkness and the Light").
The Ancients, in their FS1 monologues, believed themselves to be trespassers into subspace, and that they had somehow "sinned" against the cosmic order by intruding there. To the Ancients, the Shivans were, in a sense, a sort of divine punishment meant to extract the universe's revenge upon their race. In one of Admiral Bosch's own monologues, he echoes this notion, stating that the Ancients " believed their voyage across the sea of stars awakened the dragon that slept beneath the waves, that the Shivans were birthed in the flux of subspace and their destruction was the revenge of an angry cosmos." This point is central to the theory of the Shivans' true origins, to be discussed shortly.
c. If the Shivans are truly xenocidal, why did they respond to Admiral Bosch? What happened to him?
Exactly why Bosch believed an alliance with a race so incredibly destructive was even possible is unknown. In his monologues, Bosch simply states that he believes the human race "has no future with the Vasudans", and that humanity's destiny "lies elsewhere". What we know for sure is that Bosch initiated contact with at least three Shivan vessels through the use of ETAK, his communication technology which transmitted modified quantum pulses. The first vessel, the Shivan cruiser Rephaim, was apparently destroyed before significant progress by Bosch could be made; the second and third cruisers, the Sammael and the Azmedaj, were also destroyed, but not before the Azrael-class transport carrying Bosch and his command crew had managed to escape ("Return to Babel").
The Shivans could have reacted to Bosch's olive branch for any number of reasons. It is possible that they were genuinely interested in his peaceful overtures, but given the Shivans' history of wanton annihilation, this theory is highly unlikely, to say the least; it is further undermined by the events in "Return to Babel", in which the encounter between the NTF and the Shivans onboard the Iceni is revealed to have been very violent, with a body count in the thousands, and casualties on both sides. Bosch's subordinate onboard the Iceni states that the Shivans "took" Bosch with a dozen of his lieutenants, suggesting his meeting with the Shivans was not a friendly one ("Return to Babel"). In his monologues, Bosch claims the alliance with the Shivans is intended for the good of all humanity; it seems unlikely, therefore, that he would ask the Shivans to kill members of his own loyal crew.
The most plausible explanation is that the Shivans were more intrigued by the nature of Bosch's transmissions, rather than their actual content. Bosch himself states that the first contact was "rudimentary and crude", meaning that the content of his message may very well have been different than what he'd initially believed--something nonsensical like "cheese is ambitious except on Sunday in winter" as opposed to "we come in peace". The Shivans, in turn, would have been puzzled by what they encountered: a Shivan transmission emanating from a Terran vessel. When they investigated, perhaps expecting to find captured Shivans, but instead discovered an overly-idealistic Aken Bosch, it is reasonable to assume that they were none-too-pleased.
To conclude the point, Admiral Bosch is probably dead, or wishes he was. He and the Shivans probably weren't playing an amiable game of chess aboard that transport.
d. Is it possible that the Shivans captured Bosch in order to interrogate him?
Unlikely. The Shivans have never previously been interested in talking to either Terrans or Vasudans, and have never taken prisoners (with the exception of Bosch and his command crew). We are granted very few glimpses of Shivan/Terran personal interaction: once in the "Hall Fight" cutscene, and again with the apperance of the Lucifer at Tombaugh Station (described in the Freespace Reference Bible). We may or may not wish to include the boarding of the Iceni as a third example. In each case, contact has been extremely violent, with no intent to discuss any sort of terms, or indeed, to ask questions of any sort.
Secondly is the problem of the language barrier itself. Humans aren't Shivan, as Commander Snipes so succintly points out to us, and we don't speak "quantum pulse" very well. So far as we know, the only ETAK prototype was aboard the Iceni; whether this device was destroyed along with the command frigate or not is unknown, but it can be assumed lost. ETAK was a prototype device, and as the first of its kind, probably wouldn't have been very portable. The first Earth computers were enormous, taking up entire rooms, and Bosch's ETAK may very well have existed on a similar scale.
Despite Bosch's rigorous study of the Shivans, he's no MacGyver, and it seems unlikely that he would be able to rebuild such a device completely from memory. Even if we accept that Bosch had the ETAK blueprints stored on his nifty little laptop, and that he took it with him when he was captured (something that is virtually guaranteed to be untrue; if the Alliance hadn't recovered Bosch's computer, then we probably wouldn't be reading his personal log), then he is still aboard a Shivan vessel, with no Terran tools or materials with which to assemble his device.
***
We are led back to the questions of what exactly the Shivans are. To say they are possessed of a "hive mind", as the FS2 database suggests, is not enough; if it is true, it is merely an attribute of their kind, and does not explain their existence. Were they simply aliens in the same vein as the Vasudans are aliens to Terrans, it seems strange that they would shun any and all diplomacy, as well as ignore any planetary resources while focusing entirely upon jump-nodes. If the Shivans are artificial life-forms, some variety of cyborgs or robots, it begs the question as to who their creators are, and whether or not they are alive or dead. Are the Shivans once-harmless environmental preservation constructs that have gone terribly awry? Or are they doomsday weapons unleashed in a war that has been over for millennia? Such questions are so far-removed from the immediacy presented by the events and scenarios of the FS universe itself, that I am led to believe they cannot be the case.
The preceding information leads me to believe that the Shivans are, in fact, subspace life-forms. They originate from somewhere within subspace itself. While it is mere conjecture on my part, I believe that the Shivans initially exist as pure, sentient, subspace energy, and that the insect-like bodies we observe are fashioned by the Shivans in order for them to effectively move about within our plane of existence. Such bodies would have no use in subspace itself, where no matter exists to be handled or used. This theory would explain their skill with subspace manipulation, as well as provide a foundation for their motives in attacking other space-faring races.
e. The idea of energy-based life-forms is stupid, and you have no proof that the Shivans come from subspace.
Is it? Energy beings have been a staple of science fiction for years, and the idea of a soul--a form of life lacking any physical body--is important to many religions worldwide. Legends of spirits and ghosts are as popular as they've ever been, yet their subjects are seldom encumbered by physical matter.
The Shivans' subspace origins are indeed uncertain, but it is an explanation that fits the facts at hand: the Shivans' total disinterest in planets or technology, the skill with which they manipulate subspace energy, and their bodies' adaptation for zero-gravity environments.
II. What is the Shivans' primary goal?
On the surface, the Shivans' only apparent intention is to destroy. The Ancients themselves gave the Shivans the label of "The Destroyers", a moniker Admiral Bosch frequently applied to them. We must strive to narrow this rather broad focus, however, for the Shivans obviously do not wish to destroy everything; they disregard planets, resources, and technology entirely, and in a rare display of strategy, they chose to capture Admiral Bosch rather than kill him outright. This indicates there is more complexity to the Shivans as a race, despite their apparent single-mindedness.
To begin my explanation, I turn again to the Volition comment that the Shivans are merely a "symptom of a bigger problem". I ask you to think about that for a moment. As dire a threat as the Shivans already are, Volition claims they are a sign or indication of an even more serious situation.
The Shivans, as they currently stand, are a virtually unstoppable race of butchers hell-bent on the annihilation of all life they come across. In order to conceptualize something even worse, we are forced to broaden our outlook on the situation. There are those who have proposed that the "bigger problem" is yet another alien race, one superior to even the Shivans, yet with this I must disagree. This would suggest a race of unbelievable power, so much so that even the Shivans' monstrous weaponry and apparently-endless numbers would be unable to stand against them. From a practical standpoint, this idea makes little sense, as it would not serve to flesh out the FS universe in any way. The GTVA has already proven inferior, both in terms of technology and in size, to the Shivan forces... therefore, what would be the point in introducing another brand of aliens that simply drives this point home? Such a scenario would prove so bleak and hopeless that it would serve to depress the gamer, and I doubt this is Volition's intention.
So we must ask ourselves, barring bigger, badder aliens, what could be worse than the Shivans' methodical destruction of spacefaring life-forms?
The answer is damage to space itself.
a. Theoretical Subspace Physics
Think of the fabric of space as being like the skin of a living creature. Also, think of a subspace jump as being like making a tiny wound or incision into said skin. Given time, the skin will heal, but with repeated cuts and gashes, scars are formed, and the possibility of infection--or, in severe cases, amputation--develops.
We know that subspace is relatively "fickle". The FS database tells us that most nodes open and close within milliseconds. We also know that larger nodes can be collapsed by way of large explosions, such as the sealing-off of the Sol-Delta Serpentis node by the destruction of the Lucifer, or the collapse of all nodes leading off Capella by Orion-class destroyers loaded with Meson warheads ("Clash of the Titans II"). Therefore, I feel it is not unreasonable to speculate that subspace damage is also incurred, on some level, by the use of subspace travel. It is entirely possible that traffic through subspace corridors will accelerate node collapse more quickly than the natural passage of time.
If we make the logical assumption that subspace--literally meaning "under space" or "beneath space"--acts as the physical support for normal space, and accept for the purposes of argument that subspace travel does incur gradual damage to the subspace fabric in the long-term, then what will happen when--eventually--subspace as a whole comes to collapse entirely?
The terrifying answer is that, left without structural support, normal space will collapse upon itself in turn. The end result might be like the formation of a black hole, a literal gap in space that is devoid of anything, even of the theoretical surface that holds the fabric of space and time together. Indeed, the apperance of new black holes in isolated places might be interpreted as a sign of the weakening or collapse of the subspace dimension in given locations. Of course, even black holes shrink over long periods of time, meaning that presumably, the subspace fabric is capable of "healing", provided it is left undisturbed.
b. Subspace Fights Back
Nature, in terms of the structure of natural objects, enjoys static things. Depleted resources (gradually, sometimes over long periods of time) renew themselves. Plants and animals grow in accordance to blueprints set down in DNA patterns. Water--unless subjected to temperature extremes--remains water, no matter what container it is placed in. And, of course, injuries inflicted to the body heal over time, with the help of the immune system. If we look at outer space from such a medical standpoint as has been put forth, however, then what--if anything--serves as the immune system for the cosmos?
None other than the Shivans. If humanity is the disease, then the Shivans are literally the cure.
Volition's comment on the nature of the Shivans leads me to look at the problem in question as being more of an internal one (in the sense of a wounded body) than an external one (in the sense of Super-Death-Aliens). While the FS games certainly provide no hard evidence for such a theory, it nonetheless makes sense. We know that the Shivans have appeared on three distinct occasions:
1. To the Ancients, following their discovery of subspace and their rampant expansionism across our galaxy; the Ancients themselves believed their new empire would "surely know no boundaries".
2. To the GTA and PVE during the T-V War, a period of time during which subspace travel would have undoubtedly been heightened, and only 22 years after Terrans discovered subspace itself.
3. To the GTVA in Gamma Draconis, following Bosch's activation of the first Knossos portal... a device that literally warps and twists the subspace fabric in order to form new jump nodes.
I feel it important to mention that I do not believe that subspace travel in itself was enough to attract the Shivans' attention. If that was the case, the Shivans probably would have appeared long before the Ancients had cause to build Knossos portals to expand their control of the galaxy, or would not have waited over two decades to come in search of the Terrans and Vasudans (it is reasonable to assume, though by no means certain, that Vasudans discovered subspace travel at roughly the same time as Terrans). During these periods mentioned, heavy subspace traffic would have caused more extensive damage to subspace, coaxing the Shivans out of the ether to perform their roles as "galactic antibodies". The destruction of the Ancients over 8,000 years ago is the earliest Shivan intervention of which we are aware, but there is no telling how many subspace-faring civilizations the Destroyers wiped out prior to that time.
Yet we must also be careful not to characterize the Shivans exclusively as little more than what the galaxy uses to rid itself of an ailment. The human immune sytem of white blood cells can be broken down into roughly half a dozen divisions (T-cells, NK cells, and so on), but the Shivans possess a wide array of fighters and bombers, to say nothing of their capital vessels, and the Shivan pilots themselves. As Dr. Mina Hargrove said, the Shivans display "considerable diversity as a species". Therefore, I believe we should view the Shivans as just that: a species, something more than a natural reaction on behalf of the cosmos. We must also remember that the Shivans are capable of developing strategy, able to set traps (as in "Pandora's Box"), indicating that they are not driven by a lone impulse to kill and destroy. They are, on some level, thinking creatures, with as much at stake in their conflict with the GTVA as anyone else. If the fabric of space/time is torn asunder, then the Shivans will surely die along with everyone else.
The "immune system" depiction is not without flaw. Such a theory would suggest that the Shivans are spawned from subspace in overwhelming numbers, in the same manner as immune cells are within the body. While there can be no argument that the Shivans are numerous, their legions cannot be infinite; this would stack the odds in such a way as to automatically doom both Terrans and Vasudans to extinction. So colossally unfair an advantage would be against the trend of balance in nature--not to mention the programmers at Volition, who would probably want to make a gamer feel somewhat less-worthless than this.
It stands to reason, then, that the Shivans' numbers are finite, giving credence to the idea that they must originate from a "home base" of one sort or another. We will discuss that notion in-depth later in the essay.
Above all, we are called to recognize that this theory illustrates the true meaning of the Shivans' roles as the "Great Preservers", not only of single, as-of-yet undeveloped races, but of the entire universe. It is supremely ironic that they have been perceived as merciless Destroyers for so long, when in reality, they have been striving to save us all.
c. The Shivans make subspace jumps, too. Doesn't that defeat their own purpose?
Not necessarily. As schooled as they are in the workings of subspace, the Shivans are probably capable of designing engines for their craft which avoid causing damage to the subspace dimension. We know for a fact that their engines are able to traverse unstable jump nodes that Terran/Vasudan engines can not. If this is not the case, then the Shivans are likely to view subspace travel as a "necessary evil", in their case; inflicting moderate damage upon the subspace fabric for the sake of preserving subspace as a whole. In fact, as well-versed in matters of subspace as the Shivans are, they may very well be able to effect repairs to the subspace fabric, provided they don't have to deal with mounting damage resulting from node travel.
d. By using nodes too unstable for travel by the Alliance, aren't the Shivans causing needless subspace damage?
Consider this:
1. If the Shivans do possess highly-advanced subspace technology, we hypothesize that their use of subspace nodes causes little or no damage, whether the Alliance has knowledge of those nodes or not.
2. If the above statement is half-true or not true at all (i.e., the Shivans can use unstable nodes, but still cause subspace damage nonetheless), then their use of "secret" nodes is, in fact, relevant in terms of strategy. We've stated several times that the Shivans aren't dumb; if it were absolutely necessary for them to make use of subspace travel for the sake of waging war, then they would do so. However, they would seek to do so in the most efficient way possible, a way which would quickly end the conflict at hand, and minimize the damage sustained by the subspace dimension. We should also factor in the reasonable assumption that the Shivans will want to minimize the losses to their own forces.
In FS1, for example, the Shivan armada levels Tombaugh Station in the Ribos system while gathering their forces there for a strike upon Vasuda Prime. In response, the GTA sets up a blockade in the adjacent Antares system, which is the only "stable" route to reach Vasuda. To reduce the hassle to themselves, the Shivans jump through a "hidden" node directly to Deneb, which is also one jump away from Vasuda. This allows the Shivans to circumvent the Allied blockade and destroy Vasuda Prime more quickly, hence shortening the duration of the war itself. Admiral Petrarch also clearly states that the Shivans made inter-system jumps without the use of recognized jump nodes during the Great War, so the question is not if the Shivans make such jumps, but why.
e. If heightened subspace activity attracts Shivans, then wouldn't they have investigated the collapse of the Delta Serpentis-Sol jump node, or the outbreak of the NTF rebellion?
We know that subspace nodes, as a natural phenomenon, form and collapse of their own accord. The Shivans, being unable to communicate with the Lucifer (for reasons I will explain), probably would have regarded the collapse of the Sol node with indifference, regarding it as a natural collapse--or, at most, a direct result of the Shivan attack against the Alliance. The reduced subspace traffic following the destruction of the node--due to the great depletion of Allied forces--would have been an indication to the Shivans that their enemies had been destroyed, and that no further investigation was necessary.
To the best of our knowledge, the NTF rebellion had been in progress for a mere eighteen months prior to the arrival of the Shivans. This figure pales in comparison to the Ancients' decades of rampant expansion, or the fourteen years of the Terran-Vasudan War. The activation of the Knossos involved subspace disruption on a larger scale, and would have merited the Shivans' more immediate attention.
f. Immune systems have a limited amount of defensive cells. These numbers can be depleted, or even eliminated. Wouldn't that make Shivan forces finite, meaning that particular explanation is valid?
While it is true that the immune system within a body works within a set scope of numbers, it is important to remember the scale on which we are speaking. When a human body's immune system is depleted, the body either fights off an infection and regenerates its numbers, or succumbs to the infection and dies. Since the "body" the Shivans would be protecting would be all of subspace, we are left with two possibilities:
1. Deplete Shivan numbers, only to have them replenished because subspace still exists--a theory we regard as improbable, because this would make Shivan forces infinite, or
2. Eradicate Shivans by destroying subspace completely--and, by proxy, destroying the entire physical universe, something we'd like to avoid.
For these reasons, the Shivans must have some base of operations from which their forces originate. More on this later.
g. If the Shivans are attracted by the subspace-warping effects of the Knossos devices, then why don't they destroy them? Don't Shivans themselves use the portals?
The Shivans do not "use" Knossos portals, per se. The portals exist in Shivan-controlled areas, but so far as we know, the Shivans do not know for certain how to activate them, or precisely what they are used for. It was Admiral Bosch who drew the Shivans' ire with his activation of the first Knossos; we cannot know for certain if the Shivans, on their side of the node, were even aware of its existence. In their monologues, the Ancients state that the Destroyers did not seek "territory, technology, or resources". The Shivans appear to concern themselves primarily with their own technological advancement (if they advance--see earlier comments on stagnation), and in all likelihood, they are more interested in the jump node created by the Knossos portal than in the workings of the device itself. This, however, is an uncertain point; much of our theory centers around the Shivans having a great deal of subspace expertise, so it is logical to assume that they would know a device capable of manipulating subspace when they saw one.
We do not know for certain if the Shivans are even capable of destroying the portals. The briefing for "A Flaming Sword" states that the Alliance chooses to destroy the first device via Meson bomb deployment as opposed to main gun barrage for "strategic and scientific reasons". This presents us with three possibilities:
1. The material of which the Knossos is made will react in a strange manner when directly exposed to beam energy. We can only guess as to what this reaction might be, or why it would even matter, since the Alliance's goal is to destroy the portal anyway.
2. The portal is either partially or totally resistant to beam energy, making Meson bombs a more efficient method of its destruction.
3. Beam cannons can damage the device, but Allied scientists would rather use the opportunity to test the Meson bombs.
The player and various other vessels can fire on the Knossos in-game with no visible effect. We know for a fact that the portal is a sturdy structure, simply because the detonation of the first Meson bomb--despite wiping out all small craft within some three kilometers--caused no apparent damage. Whether or not the Knossos could withstand assault by a Sathanas is another question entirely, but since the largest Shivan vessels to enter Gamma Draconis prior to the destruction of the portal were of cruiser-class, then the point becomes moot. We can assume that the Shivans could probably destroy the portals by detonating nearby stars, but would they really go to all that trouble when it would be easier to eliminate traffic through the node?
h. Isn't it inaccurate to call the Shivans "Preservers" when they are so bent upon destruction?
The title of "The Preservers" is truly an ironic one to apply to the Shivans. In Freespace's final monologue, the narrator--presumably the pilot you've been playing--pretty clearly illustrates the meaning of this phrase. Here is the actual wording from the Freespace Reference Bible:
"I know why the Ancient Ones were destroyed. And I know what they knew.
I know that if not for the Shivans they would have been conquered long before.
Without the Shivans, someone would have discovered them long before, in their infancy. And destroyed them, just as surely as they destroyed countless billions of others.
I believe it is only the destroyers who are destroyed. The Shivans are the great destroyers, but they are also the great preservers. That is why there was no one to destroy us.
Long had we been the destroyer. Our turn had nearly come.
In the Vasudan war we learned how to adapt.
We learned how to study our enemy.
We learned how to overcome.
We learned how to survive.
And so we did."
The narrator explains, in simple terms, that the Shivans exterminate older, advanced races to ensure the survival of younger, undeveloped ones. The predecessors to the Ancients, whoever they were, were destroyed by the Shivans so that the Ancients might thrive; the Ancients, in turn, were themselves destroyed so that humanity, and presumably Vasudans (although there is evidence that the Vasudans themselves may in fact be descendants of the scattered Ancient population) could survive. As the narrator mentions, humanity--having assumed its own mantle as conqueror of the cosmos, rampantly colonizing, exploring, and waging war upon the Vasudans--had nearly reached the time of its own destruction.
Is it the fate of all space-faring races to be annihilated once they stumble upon the secrets of subspace travel? In one of the few uplifting points of the entire Manifesto, I can say with some confidence that the answer to this question is "no".
In one of his own monologues, Admiral Bosch provides us with the following question to ponder:
"Thirty-two years ago in the Altair system, Vasudan scientists discovered the remnants of an extinct civilisation we now call the Ancients. Here, we found the secret to defeat the Shivans. How close did we come to being a footnote in the history of a future species that would happen upon our ruins ten thousand years from now? Would they indulge in the fiction of their own immortality until the Shivans came for them, and how long had this gone on?
Did the Ancients stumble upon the monoliths and the tombs of their predecessors in this distant corner of space, dismissing the warnings carved into the walls of the sepulchre? And when the Destroyers came at last, what did the Ancients think as they sifted the cremation of dust and bones, staring into the mute remains for a key, some solution to their plight?
What if there had been countless races, stretching back into infinity, and like the nine cities of Troy, each civilization had been built on the rubble of the one that came before, each annihilated by the Shivans?"
Bosch suspects that the cycle of destruction perpetuated by the Shivans has continued for a very long time--longer, perhaps, than any of us can estimate. If the Ancients did indeed uncover ruins of the races that came before them, ruins providing some clue or hint as to how the wrath of the Destroyers might be stayed, then that warning was either ignored, or understood too late for it to have any meaning. The Ancients fell just as the innumerable races that came before them did, their empire turning to ash.
In the case of the Alliance, however, something has changed.
At the end of the First Great War, the Shivans failed to complete their objective of xenocide--quite possibly the first time they had ever failed to accomplish their monstrous task. Unlike the Ancients before them, the Terrans and Vasudans were able to heed the age-old cautions they discovered, able to learn from them, able to adapt them for their races' own purposes. As the narrator of the final FS1 monologue so eloquently states, the Terrans learned how to study their enemy, how to adapt, and how to survive. Thus, the cycle of wanton destruction that has continued without end for countless millennia has at last been broken. The GTVA is not simple prey, like the other fallen empires, but a sophisticated enemy, one the Shivans will require more than brute force to extinguish from the universe.
In a fashion, this in itself may be the answer to the question of the "Great Preservers". Perhaps the rise of the Alliance, a force that, like the Shivans themselves, "did not die", is something the Shivans--maybe without realizing it--have been fostering for centuries. It was inevitable that eventually, there would come a race that would learn from the mistakes of those that came before, one that would not so easily knuckle under to the Destroyers. Unlike the dead and buried societies of the past, the GTVA has potential, potential to learn and adapt, potential to discover a final, permanent solution to the conflict with which they are faced. It is possible that, in the distant future, Terrans and Vasudans may stumble upon a means of travel superior even to that of the subspace corridor, allowing them to maintain their integrity as a society without incurring the hateful, desperate rage of the Shivans.
The question which this poses, however--one we are, at this time, unable to answer--is whether one or both sides of the Great War will perish in the hellfire of battle before that time should arrive.
III. Capella
The destruction of the Capella star at the hands of the Shivans has long puzzled Freespace players. It is an enigma with which we are provided very little evidence to examine--only the final cutscenes of the game, and the last few missions leading up to them. In this section, we will submit a theory as to why the Shivans took it upon themselves to kill a sun.
a. d00d TEH $][I\/AN$ JUST N00K3D CAPELLA OMGWTFBBQ
As we are told in the endgame of Freespace 2, an imposing fleet of 80+ Sathanas-class Shivan juggernauts gather in formation around the Capella star, generating a subspace field that grows in intensity over the course of 72 hours. During the final phase of Capella's evacuation, the star itself abruptly supernovas, destroying all the planets in the system, as well as the remaining Terran, Vasudan, and Shivan craft.
Our first clue as to the purpose behind this mind-boggling act of devastation comes from Admiral Petrarch in the course of his endgame monologue. It is presented here in its entirety.
"To the officers and crew of the GTD Aquitaine. We have halted the Shivan advance. The battle of Capella is over. We sealed off the system and our people are safe, maybe forever. No one can fathom how or why the Shivans destroyed the Capella star. Though we know our enemy better now than we did 32 years ago, their motives remain a mystery. Perhaps they are exiles like we are, nomads wandering the universe, searching for a way back home. The explosion of a star might be a bridge between this universe and their own. As the old poet once said, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
From our odyssey into Hell we have returned with a gift: the Ancient technology to build a portal between Delta Serpentis and Sol. To restore the link to our blue planet. To return home after all these years.
This is Admiral Petrach, signing off."
At first, Petrarch's words seem like little more than simple rhetoric. The war has just ended, after all, and now is undoubtedly the time for speeches of victory and remembrance. The tone of Petrarch's monologue is strange, however; it almost seems to lament the plight of the Shivans, rather than condemn or gloat over them. It is very odd for the Admiral to feel sympathy for the Shivans when one considers the damage they caused during their relatively short-lived incursion into GTVA space. When observing the speech from this standpoint, we are left to wonder if perhaps there is a hint of literal truth in Petrarch's words... if perhaps the Shivans really were attempting to return to whatever they call home.
For a moment, let us look at the situation from the strategic point of view. The Shivans have amassed a juggernaut armada in-system, and are poised to launch a full-scale strike upon Allied space, a spearhead which the fatigued GTVA is not likely to survive. Yet, instead of invading Allied territory, the Shivans choose instead to destroy the star, killing the mere handful of refugees in the system at the time, and losing several juggernauts in the process, perhaps a substantial portion of their fleet (though an accurate figure is impossible to determine, since we are provided with only one camera angle in the cutscene to observe). In addition, those juggernauts that are not destroyed enter subspace, but to the best of our knowledge, there are no inter-system nodes other than those leading to Vega and Epsilon Pegasi. The juggernauts could not make an in-system jump without being caught by the supernova blast, so just what was their destination?
We must ask: what practical purpose did the destruction of Capella serve?
b. "Whatever those things were, the Shivans have got less of them now."
For the answer, we look not to Capella itself, but to the SOC reconaissance mission into Shivan space conducted a few days prior. During that sortie, SOC forces destroyed three strange-looking Shivan devices composed of a large red crystal and exterior "blades". The shock wave created by these devices was unusually large for objects of their size ("In the Lion's Den"). In the FS database, these objects are referred to as "Comm Nodes", suggesting that they serve as relay stations for the quantum pulses used in Shivan communication. When observed up-close, the objects can be heard emitting the same "buzz" Allied fighters heard when they received transmissions from the cruiser Rephaim.
At the time of the SOC mission, only nine juggernauts had jumped into the unidentified binary system. Days later, when the armada gathered around Capella, that number had increased ninefold. This, of course, could be mere coincidence, but it could also be an indication that the objects destroyed by the SOC had more value than mere radio relay stations.
If the Shivans are indeed subspace-born creatures, then they would find normal space a much different place from their natural environment. This much can be gathered from the bodies they construct to harness their essences, if we accept the other points in this treatise as being true. It is quite possible that Shivan shielding systems were originally developed not for combat deployment, but as a way to allow them to retain their coherence in our material universe.
Perhaps, then, the Shivan Comm Nodes are much more than just that. They may very well be like lifelines, of a sort, providing the Shivans--far separated from their subspace domain--with the inherent subspace energy they need to survive in normal space. I believe the crystals in these devices, due to their highly volatile nature, to be some kind of subspace battery, a shell for pure subspace energy to inhabit. On a larger scale, I believe this crystalline substance to be the base component in all Shivan construction, crafted in their own subspace dimension, but then heavily modified via electronics in order to function properly in standard space. The distinct red hue of all Shivan craft suggests this crystal--or some like material--is an integral component; even their weaponry and engines seem based around the same substance, suggesting its extreme importance to their functionality.
If true, it would mean that the SOC destroyed something far more vital than simple communications equipment. It would mean they destroyed installations absolutely vital to the Shivans' continued existence, and quite possibly killing an untold number of them by suddenly and abruptly severing their life support.
c. Apocalypse
This would serve to explain the sudden increase in the numbers of the juggernaut fleet, but it still does not give us the answer as to why the Shivans destroyed Capella instead of attacking the GTVA directly.
To understand the solution, we must observe the problem from the Shivan standpoint. Throughout their incursion, the Shivans gained very little ground against the GTVA. The furthest-encroaching Shivan vessel was the original Sathanas, and it was destroyed in Capella--merely one jump from Gamma Draconis--by the GTVA Colossus. It is likely that the Shivans, in all their destructive fury, had never previously lost a vessel of that magnitude to an enemy. Since they were never able to advance any further than Capella (with the exception of a Shivan force that attacked the Vega-Capella node in the endgame), the Shivans could not know for certain just how many Colossus-class vessels the GTVA had in their ranks. For all they knew, a fleet of the mammoth vessels could have been waiting deep within GTVA territory, waiting to spring a trap on the advancing Shivan fleet. Faced with such uncertain opposition, the Shivans took the only course of action open to them:
They ran away. The Shivans were not attacking the GTVA, but retreating from it.
The FS database tells us that subspace jumps require the presence of intense gravitational fields. If we look closely at the Capella supernova cutscene, we can see a strange black "aura" surrounding the star after the juggernauts release their subspace charges. This odd field extends for a wide area around the sun, blocking out the glimmer of stars behind it... and it is into this area of darkness that the escaping juggernauts jump. This darkness cannot be a black hole, for if it were, we would not be able to see the light emanating from Capella itself. Therefore, this ebony field must be the outer rim of a tremendously large jump node, one the juggernauts have opened using the gravity field of the star as a springboard (this theory is strengthened, albeit not much, by the fact that Capella turns green in hue. Yellow star + blue subspace node = green :D). Their destination within subspace, wherever it is, requires an exceptionally strong gravitational field in order to make the subspace jump, one that can only be provided by the force of a star.
Unfortunately for us, the Shivans' methodology has a disastrous side-effect. A stellar supernova is triggered when a star of substantial size runs out of light elements to burn; when this happens, the heavier elements are condensed into iron, which the star cannot use for fuel. Unable to "explode" outward any longer, the star collapses inward, crushing the iron core so tightly that its subatomic structure changes. In less than a second, the iron core shrinks to a neutron core, which is in turn crushed by the star's outer layers as they too collapse. The core heats up to a few billion degrees, and explodes in a supernova. Mind you, this takes place naturally over the course of several billion years; when the Shivans disrupt the process with a few minutes of subspace tinkering, their gravimetric distortions causing Capella's core to fuse before the sun has even finished depleting its remaining elements, then a supernova is the inevitable outcome.
d. Couldn't the juggernauts have been using inter-system jump nodes near the Capella star that the Alliance didn't know about?
I had always visualized system-to-system nodes as lying along the "edges" of any given star system, not smack in the middle. It seems unlikely that each juggernaut was jumping through a separate node--this would indicate that a large number of such nodes were bunched very closely together, something we have never seen--meaning that if such a jump point existed, it would be one very large node. In all the time that the GTVA has been studying subspace, we have never heard anything to suggest that "supernodes" exist in close proximity to stars. Therefore, I feel my theory that the Sathanas fleet creates its own node is more credible, in this respect.
Carefully observe the "End Game" FS2 cutscene. You will see that some juggernauts continue to activate their subspace "charges" while the other ships depart, even after the Capella star has already turned green--and, we assume, already been affected by whatever the armada did to it. When the main body of the fleet has departed, the charges on the ships left behind dissipate entirely, and the juggernauts themselves "go dark", their characteristically red glows fading to simple black.
Why do the stranded juggernauts power down? Do they know it is futile to try and attempt the explosion of Capella, and therefore make no effort to do so? Have the Shivans on-board these ships somehow been evacuated to those that escaped by means of a teleportation technology? We have seen no evidence of such capability on behalf of the Shivans (in fact, the Freespace Reference Bible provides a graphic description of Shivans physically leaping from ship-to-ship in the course of a battle), so this seems unlikely. Therefore, what conclusion are we to reach?
It is my own belief that the "marooned" juggernauts were using the full extent of their energies to sustain the artificial jump node while the other craft in the Shivan fleet made their escape. If we accept, for the moment, that the juggernauts are "alive" as some evidence suggests, then we could interpret the dimming of their surface lights as a form of "death". We know for certain that their subspace charges took some time to energize--at least three full days--and that by the same token, they were likely to be very intense. Left with no remaining energy, the Sathani--dead or dying--could only drift, derelicts in space, waiting for the supernova to overtake them. It sounds cliche, to be sure, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
e. If the Shivans needed a star, why didn't they use Gamma Draconis, the star seen through the nebular clouds, or the binary stars in the system with the Comm Nodes?
FS briefings tell us that Gamma Draconis is a remote system lacking in either planets or viable resources. Having no planets at all suggests that the Gamma Draconis star is probably small, and lacked the gravitational field necessary to pull together matter to create planets during its initial formation. Such a field would have been too weak for the Shivans to adapt to their own purposes. Similarly, the star seen in the Shivan nebula--a nebula which is, as Admiral Bosch tells us, the remnants of whatever star had lived and died there previously--must have been young and/or small, or it would have already consumed the nebular gases themselves. Lastly, the gravitational fields created by two stars feeding off one another are likely to be unpredictable, and thus unsuited for the Shivans' needs.
f. But in Real Life, Gamma Draconis is a huge star. Surely it would be big enough for the Shivans to use.
This is an excellent point, one I am hesistant to even address. As much as I hate to shun reliable sources, I am afraid we must be forced to ignore some real-life astronomical statistics when dealing with the Freespace universe.
The folks at Volition are, by profession, game designers--and damn good ones at that, or I wouldn't have poured so much time into Freespace as I have. So far as we know, none of them are physicists who have any more basic knowledge of astronomy than you, me, or anyone we would meet on the street. I remember reading in an interview that an author was hired to create the main plotline for FS2, and we can safely assume that he, too, was just another average guy looking to get his paycheck. I find it very likely that rather than pick and choose star names to assign to various systems in accordance with their specific needs--a process that would have taken a tremendous amount of time--the Volition staffers simply randomly chose the names of popular stars, or stars that they happened to be fond of.
This supposition is not without some supporting evidence. Take Capella, as it is depicted in FS2: a system with one star, densely-populated, a center of industry, and the headquarters of the GTVA's 3rd Fleet. This would lead us to assume that either the planets in this system are suitable for habitation, or that the system itself is legion with installations fit for both residential and mining/production purposes.
In reality, Capella is a rather inhospitable place to be. The system itself contains at least ten stars, including the G-type giants Capella A and Capella B, which are generally those most-associated with the system. We never see any of these sister suns in FS2. Capella A and B are large stars, and have a narrow orbit around one another (about the distance from Earth to Venus), and the potential for a stable planetary orbit around either star is small. Even if planets were orbiting around Capella, those worlds would be severely irradiated by both stars, and would also be tidally locked, meaning that the same side of the planet would always face the sun (in the same way as the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth--hence, the "dark side of the Moon" is the side we never see). This eliminates the potential for planet-based life as we know it, leaving us to rely upon life existing upon heavily-trafficked space stations... something I view as being more than a little difficult with almost a dozen stars crowding the immediate vicinity.
The point I'm making is that for the purposes of our discussion, we should try to regard astronomical details as they are presented within Freespace itself, without turning to outside sources. I don't fault Volition in the least for randomly naming their star systems; it's a time-saving measure, and some games, like the Master of Orion series, provide random names to every star in the galaxy (with the exception of the homeworld, which has a pre-set name determined by species, a value the player can change) as selected from a set list of some 300 stars. It may not be the most realistic approach to take, but then again, the designers of these games hardly expect the vast majority of their fans to look into the titles with as much depth as we have.
g. Why would the Shivans worry about a Colossus fleet? Wouldn't they already know about Allied fleet strength from experience during the Great War?
This is not feasible for two reasons. The first is the theory that Shivan forces in normal space cannot communicate with forces residing at their subspace "home", but we will discuss this idea in a later section. The second, simpler reason is the simple fact that unlike the Shivans, Terran and Vasudan fleets actually make progress. So far as anyone knows, the Shivan species has remained essentially the same--if not stagnant--for the last eight thousand years, using the same kind of weaponry (as per the discoveries of the Vasudan scientists in Altair), and presumably, the same kinds of spacecraft. While there are notable additions to the Shivan fleet between the First and Second Great Wars, such as the Mara, the Astaroth, the Moloch, and the Ravana, just to name a few, there are also numerous "older" craft, such as the Basilisk, the Manticore, the Nephilim, the Seraphim, and several capital ships. The folks over in the Inferno camp would even have us believe that the Scorpion is still in use. In contrast, the GTVA is nearing completion of its switchover from the old "Great War relics", opting to incorporate faster, more capable, more destructive war machines.
Humanity's potential for adaptation should not be underestimated. We went from having no existing space program to landing on the moon in less than twenty years. In "The Great Hunt" (FS2), you'll even hear one of your wingmen muse about what a "miracle" it was the Alliance won the Great War, due to the lack of present-day technological advantages: shields (a slight continuity error, as Terrans and Vasudans only lacked energy shielding for a relatively short portion of the Great War, before using them throughout the remainder of the conflict), flak guns, and beam cannons.
h. You're full of it, buddy. The Shivans would never back down from a fight.
This is an understandable sentiment, but one disproven by the facts. Consider the following:
Firstly, if we accept that the Shivans operate with a hive mentality (something we will accept as true for the purposes of the essay), then we need not necessarily conclude that their reaction at Capella was one of "fear", per se. It would be in error to confuse the notion of "fear" with that of "self-preservation".
If there is any dominant principle in the animal kingdom, it is to stay alive. This is commonly observed in the "fight or flight" principle, which even humans possess; we either confront an enemy, or run away so that we might live to fight another day. This principle is more complex when applied to a hive society, as generally, there are no individuals; all drones or workers strive for the good of the colony, and may very well be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of that goal. However, this should not lead us to conclude that mass suicide is acceptable by default; if all the drones in a hive society are killed, who will be left to support the hive itself? In Robert Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers, a group of the grotesque "Bugs" (also called Arachnids, the book's main "bad guys") have surrounded a space marine who is shielding himself behind a bulbous "brain bug" which serves as the controlling influence for the hive's workers. The "warrior" Bugs screech in protest and frustration, unable to attack the hiding marine; if they do, they risk killing the brain bug itself, destroying the hive hierarchy and silencing the source of their own commands. In effect, the Bugs would be comitting suicide.
For that reason, you Shivan fans out there should not think of the Shivans as being "afraid" of the GTVA. Rather, you should think of them as regrouping and marshalling their forces instead of risking complete decimation at the hands of a Colossus fleet. They are merely exercising good judgment in the face of the unknown. To paraphrase Heinlein himself, any race that possesses enough skill to construct spacecraft is not stupid.
Although the Shivans themselves are not the sort to often make retreat, they have done so on more than one occasion, when the situation calls for it. In "First Strike", the Shivan cruiser Taranis--low on supplies--attempts to retreat through the Beta Cygni jump node. Shivan cruiser group "Hellfire" tries to rejoin the primary Shivan fleet in Delta Serpentis, rather than lingering to do battle with the attacking GTA fighters, in a show of simple strategy. Even the Demon-class destroyer Beleth gives priority to making the jump to Capella instead of powering down its engines to combat the Vasudan corvette Thebes and the player's remaining bomber wings. This is either because the Beleth does not believe it can survive a bomber attack, or is more focused upon providing reinforcement to the Sathanas. In either case, the destroyer's first concern cannot be the engagement of the nearby GTVA forces, or it would not bother making such a run for the jump node. This is just one more indicator of the Shivan strategic mindset: self-preservation and accomplishing orders take priority over enaging every target of opportunity. This is further evidenced with the first Sathanas, which breezes through to Capella without remaining to mop up the surviving bombers, and by the juggernaut fleet itself, which proceeds on course straight to the Capella star without engaging nearby GTVA warships.
But then, why do the Shivans throw swarms of fighters and bombers at the Alliance with such apparent abandon? The simple answer is that this in itself is not a bad strategy; overwhelming numbers have determined the outcome of many a battle in the course of history. However, we should also take note of the benefits vs. costs standpoint. In the briefing preceding "Their Finest Hour", Admiral Petrarch informs us that the GTVA has suffered over one hundred thousand casualties, a figure which probably includes all military craft and civilian transports. Given the Shivans' military superiority, we will arbitrarily assign them one-tenth the casualties at a figure of 10,000 in terms of fighters and bombers for the purposes of this discussion. This figure in itself is admittedly optimistic, for not every pilot in the GTVA can be a Triple Ace and mop up some 400 Shivans over the course of his or her career. If we include all capital ship classes ranging from crusiers and up, we can probably double this number to 20,000, perhaps 25,000; if we assume the Sathanas has at least the same crew capacity as the Colossus (the actual figure is probably smaller, for we can assume the Shivans are more efficient in terms of space than either Terrans or Vasudans, and are able to operate their ships with smaller crews), then the number balloons to around 50,000 or 60,000.
If we accept a static figure of 30,000 for a Sathanas crew (acknowledging our uncertainty), and multiply that number by 85 (as we are told there are "more than eighty" juggernauts, but apparently less than ninety), and add this product to our previous figure of 60,000, we are left with a rough estimate of what the Shivans would view as their potential losses in a full-blown shootout with the GTVA: a staggering 2.6 million Shivans, more than twenty times the casualties of the GTVA, even when taking into account the destruction of the Colossus. This is a considerably larger investment than the dozens of "throwaway" Shivans in any given fighter or bomber squadron. Faced with such tremendous losses to their active forces, it is not difficult to imagine why the Shivans would choose to make a strategic retreat.
As for the notion of the theoretical "Colossus fleet" itself, remember that GTVA space is pretty big; not large, perhaps in a galactic sense, but still consisting of some 23 star systems, excluding Sol and Capella. If the GTVA did possess a Colossus armada, it would make sense for them to evenly distribute these vessels throughout their borders, rather than lumping them all together in one particular system. As anyone will tell you, capital ships are relatively slow-moving; even the vaunted Sathanas only has a top speed of 25m/s, with the Colossus matching this velocity. If a Colossus were stationed on the fringes of GTVA territory, in Alphard or even Altair, it would take quite a while to make the complex system of subspace jumps needed to reach Vega. You can rest assured that the Shivans weren't able to round up their own armada in a matter of hours, either. Being intelligent creatures, they would have known a small window of time existed for them to act before the GTVA would have been fully prepared for a confrontation. With this in mind, discretion was "the better part of valor", so to speak, permitting the Shivans to retreat and lick their wounds.
Think of the matter in this fashion. The massing of the juggernaut fleet to destroy Capella must have one of two purposes: either as an offensive or defensive action. If we assume that the Shivans are efficient creatures, then the first option stands upon
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Well, let me be the first to say:
:welcome:
I forgot the warmup procedure, but who cares? :p
Also let me be the first to put off reading this for a day or two, and wait for other people to quote and paraphrase it for me. :D
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:eek2: :eek: :eek2:
:wtf: :shaking: ;)
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Too...long...too...lazy....to....read...:D
oh, and
:welcome:
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Then I'm the first one to read it then?
Awsome job!
[as stated with the facial looks]
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I read the first and last paragraph...
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That doesn't count you read the middle too. :D
:nod:
Though it takes a long time. [starts to fall asleep]
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bah, it's only a 10 minute read guys...
And that said, I like a lot of your ideas/observations. A few things seem a bit strange though, like the Shivans running from the GTVA. I think I missed your exact reasoning on that, but I doubt the Shivans would guess that there were more Colossus's or run away from them.
Other than that. :yes:
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All of you guys are going to make me look bad.
I spent like two hours poking holes in this thing on ICQ before Antares submitted it. I'll lose face if you agree with it too much. :p
Possibly because this is my least favorite of the three or so theories that he's come up with in the last year :doubt:. I think I want the engineered weapon-Shivans back.
Any reasoning, intelligent race would probably figure out that it's easier and cheaper to just give a civilization the tech needed to not damage subspace. (Which the jump-happy Shivans must have) Of course, we don't see the Shivans doing that. We have the psychotic and xenocidal deathbugs that we all know and love.
Death and destruction is the order of the day with them. I doubt antibody-Shivans would have saving subspace as their secondary goal, behind killing everything. Not to mention they use Knossos devices, instead of destroying them whenever they can, so nobody else can get their grubby hands on 'em.
Shivans being a little worried about Colossus(i) fleets is possible, if unlikely. In FS2, the little game of tug-of-war in Capella, Gamma Draconis and the Nebula was going back and forth for a while. And who's to say they knew that the GTVA didn't totally smash the Lucy fleet, but instead barely got by at the last second. The Shivans might actually have thought they had a closely-matched enemy. Problem is that Shivans aren't exactly the cautious type.
Have got to get Antares something though, he got me out of my extended lurk-mode on this forum.
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overall a nice theory, you didn't fall into any of the clasic clices, though I don't particularly like the shivans origonating from subspace, as it isn't realy a place, and I'd prefer to keep it 'some other mysterios place', though for a game we would need a singular place to atack.
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To begin my explanation, I turn again to the Volition comment that the Shivans are merely a "symptom of a
bigger problem".
While I find (and actually anticipated) your space-damaging theory interesting I don't entirely agree with your hypothesis in general. First of all, on the assumption that Volition chose their words carefully I would not equate "symptom" with the function of the immune system. I believe that as a symptom they are merely a sign that there is a bigger problem, they would not be the principle driving-force behind a cure. Does the bigger problem therefore equate to be a second, more-powerful race? I wouldn't necessarily agree with that either. One thing is that the problem is not necessarily something that can be defined through a specific overlapping occurence which affects everything. The bigger problem could be something as simple as a cycle, the problem of the mighty destroying the weak, the powerful and the advanced against the not-so-powerful and advanced.
The thing is I don't buy the idea of the Shivans as the "Great Preservers" either. One does not preserve life through destroying it. If that is the way that they preserve order then does every species only have a finite amount of time in this universe? Once they become advanced enough to discover subspace they _must_ be destroyed? There's no indication of preservation on the part of the Shivans and all such information is based upon FS1 monologues which essentially say that the mighty have fallen, and little else.
Not necessarily. As schooled as they are in the workings of subspace, the Shivans are probably capable of
designing engines for their craft which avoid causing damage to the subspace dimension. We know for a fact that
their engines are able to traverse unstable jump nodes that Terran/Vasudan engines can not. If this is not the
case, then the Shivans are likely to view subspace travel as a "necessary evil", in their case; inflicting moderate
damage upon the subspace fabric for the sake of preserving subspace as a whole.
I frankly don't buy this statement. To say that the Shivans have more advanced jump technology is perfectly believable and supported by each game, particularly Freespace1. However, if the Shivans are intent on not damaging subspace why would they then in effect open new wounds? Why use a node which their intended victims could not travel and therefore cause damage to subspace which said victims would not have normally caused? Strategic advantage? Given the overwhelming firepower demonstrated by the Shivans in even the hull of a single ship I find it unlikely that such an advantage is required.
In addition, those juggernauts that are not destroyed enter subspace, but to the best of our knowledge, there are no inter-system nodes other than those leading to Vega and Epsilon Pegasi. The juggernauts could not make an in-system jump without being caught by the supernova blast, so just what was their destination?
Given the aforementioned advanced subspace jump technology I find it contradictory to assume that the Shivans were unable to make an inter-system subspace jump with their fleet. Just because the GTVA knows of no such node does not mean that the Shivans do not know as well.
At the time of the SOC mission, only nine juggernauts had jumped into the unidentified binary system. Days later,
when the armada gathered around Capella, that number had increased ninefold. This, of course, could be mere
coincidence, but it could also be an indication that the objects destroyed by the SOC had more value than mere radio relay stations.
I saw no apparent correlation between the influx of additional Juggernauts and the destruction of the Comm Nodes. My impression gleamed from the mission "The Lion's Den" suggests to me that the Juggernaut fleet was quickly amassing. In the space of 15 minutes six juggernauts jump into the binary system. Lt. Snipes himself states something to the effect that 'at this rate, we'll have over a hundred juggernauts in a few hours'. I don't believe there is any basing for the idea of the destruction of the Comm Nodes further angering the Shivans.
Perhaps, then, the Shivan Comm Nodes are much more than just that. They may very well be like lifelines, of a
sort, providing the Shivans--far separated from their subspace domain--with the inherent subspace energy they need . . .
If true, it would mean that the SOC destroyed something far more vital than simple communications equipment. It
would mean they destroyed installations absolutely vital to the Shivans' continued existence, and quite possibly
killing an untold number of them by suddenly and abruptly severing their life support.
The above statement seems to be pure speculation. Speculation to which I can find no basis. The Comm Node have no adverse affects on any known Shivan forces within or without of GTVA space. They do not slow the progress of the Juggernaut fleet. They do not deter the agressive, unrelenting advance of the Shivan armada as a whole. Give the correlation between the communication which took place amongst Admiral Bosch and the Shivans, and the transmissions detected from the Comm Node I believe that the device serves no other purpose than communication. If the device is vital to the lives of countless Shivans why would it not be better protected by fixed installations?
The binary system itself seemed to be little more than a transition point between adjacent systems, an inter-system junction if you will. Such a system would be an ideal place to co-ordinate and relay communications between the Shivan forces. Just as the system serves as a central hub in subspace to branch off to several destinations so would it too serve as a centre of a communication network.
To understand the solution, we must observe the problem from the Shivan standpoint. Throughout their incursion,
the Shivans gained very little ground against the GTVA. The furthest-encroaching Shivan vessel was the original
Sathanas, and it was destroyed in Capella--merely one jump from Gamma Draconis--by the GTVA Colossus. It is likely that the Shivans, in all their destructive fury, had never previously lost a vessel of that magnitude to an enemy. Since they were never able to advance any further than Capella (with the exception of a Shivan force that attacked the Vega-Capella node in the endgame), the Shivans could not know for certain just how many
Colossus-class vessels the GTVA had in their ranks. For all they knew, a fleet of the mammoth vessels could have been waiting deep within GTVA territory, waiting to spring a trap on the advancing Shivan fleet. Faced with such uncertain opposition, the Shivans took the only course of action open to them:
They ran away. The Shivans were not attacking the GTVA, but retreating from it.
This statement is perhaps the most difficult to believe.
First of all, assuming a competent level of intelligence within the Shivan forces one can also assume that they realise one does not run _towards_ an opponent in order to escape it. Whether or not the Shivans believed there was more than one Colossus is irrelevant, given their knowledge of subspace they would also realise that subspace nodes can be collapsed as in the case of the Lucifer. On the assumption that the Shivans do not know this fact, they would have been witness to it through the mission "Clash of the Titans". And if the Shivans did also assume that there was a Colossus fleet, it would be ludicrous to assume for the Shivans to assume that the GTVA would hold it outside of Capella rather than moving to engage. If anything the GTVA has shown itself to be overzealous, as evidenced to the Shivans through the GTVA's attempted conquest of the nebula and subsequent full retreat into Gamma Draconis and Capella.
Why the Shivans destroyed Capella is a question for which I do not have an answer. But the most obvious, simple and supported conclusion is resources. The Shivans were shown to harvest gases from in the nebula, and as the cutscene seems to indicate the creation of the second nebula one can assume that the Shivans will be harvesting those gases as well.
Specifics on Shivan construction have been a matter of some debate. There are those who despise the suggestion that the Shivans might "grow" their vessels, but with a crystalline base material, it is the most likely conclusion. Specific subsystems such as sensors and weaponry are probably added later, after the initial crystal mold has fully matured. This lends credence to the idea that at least some Shivan craft are "alive", as evidenced
by the unusual dexterity shown by the juggernaut armada shortly before the destruction of Capella.
I am one of those people who despises that premise and believe that it is little more than ideas influenced from such shows as Babylon 5 where ancient races like the Vorlons and Shadows posses living ships. The dextirity of the main Shivan arms can be equated to more advanced technology. One need to look only at our own artificial limbs which have evolved from a wooden pole attached at the knee to intricate and advanced constructs in which people can dance professionally. If the manipulation of the four arms is neccesary for the function the ship was performing then integrating technology to perform that motion would be perfectly understandable. Just as GTVA vessels use rotating parts on their Gas Miners, warships and AWACS vessels.
If Cocytus existed within a standard subspace corridor, then surely the Shivans would have preserved their juggernauts and simply used the correct node to return home instead of
making such a sacrifice and destroying an entire star. Therefore, it is likely that Cocytus exists in a place "set apart" from regular subspace, on a level that is more difficult to reach. If subspace is water in a large fish tank, then Cocytus is a bubble resting in the middle.
Given the apparent lack of concern for their own lives as evidenced through the unrelenting attack of the Shivans I do not believe that the loss of a few Juggernauts and ships insystem would be considered a "sacrifice". I believe that the Shivans hold as much regard for their own lives as they do for those which they destroy, which is very little. Either that or the Shivans are so devoted to their cause that the loss of thousands of Shivans has little consequence on their species as a whole.
However, I do not believe the entire subspace theory makes sense. I do not see how you can equate the following points and continue to follow some pattern of logic:
-Subspace contains no matter, and therefore as subspace beings the Shivans are ancestrally pure energy.
-Somehow, the Shivans who would have no knowledge of matter have gained the knowledge of matter from interacting with our own universe (which isn't mentioned at all) and fashioned bodies for themselves in this existence.
-Shivans need Comm Nodes to help them survive in this existence as acting as subspace batteries ; even though subspace energy would assumably be gainable by simply entering subspace which would be far easier than relying on a destroyable, unprotected device in this dimension. And furthermore, that the Shivans cannot communicate through subspace into other systems yet these devices which hold subspace energy apparently sustain Shivan life in different systems? (as that system appeared to be a junction point rather than a home or even a staging area)
-The transition of matter in the form of space-faring vessels through subspace has a damaging effect on the fabric of subspace, and space as a whole. However the Shivans have decided to permanently add a central hub of matter to subspace and furthermore that this hub is accesible by the Shivans through theoretically destroying a star, an event which under current scientific understanding can result in the creation of a black hole? Which would also be a serious wound against space.
Firstly, we have established that Shivan activity is proportional to the amount of subspace activity produced by
a spacefaring race.
There is no evidence supporting this point. Shivan activity is not proportional to subspace activity, the only supportable point is that Shivan activity is created (essentially) by subspace activity. Or that is to say, that a subspace-capable race will attract the fury of the Shivans. But it is _not_ to say that a race which uses subspace more will attract more Shivans. If anything given a lower population base the GTVA would produce less subspace activity during and before the second encounter, while at the same time the shivan attack force was exponentially larger.
Secondly, for reasons unknown, the Shivans do not seem capable of sending messages from normal space into
subspace. If they were able to do so, they most certainly would have called for reinforcements following the destruction of the Lucifer during the Great War, or would have sent for larger, more destructuve vessels as opposed to evacuating their armada of juggernauts.
This point assumes two things:
-that Shivan reinforcements were nearby to call upon during the Great War; which by the way also contradicts cannon text stating that the Lucifer invasion was a "scouting force".
-the Shivan Juggernauts were fleeing the GTVA, a point which I believe I've disproven. The Juggernauts were at best fleeing the explosion of a star, with good reason. One thing I failed to mention is the fact that if the Shivans were fleeing the GTVA, why did only the Juggernauts leave? Clearly the Shivans have more ships in their arsenal than Juggernauts yet we did not see any other class of vessel entering subspace during the explosion of the star.
-this point also assumes that Shivan Comm Nodes, are not infact Comm Nodes but something else and Volition is trying to mislead us. When in fact the Comm Node appeared to be located within a planet-less system which if inter-system communication was not possible would be a very odd place to put Comm Nodes. Furthermore, it also assumes that Shivans cannot communicate through the very dimension they originated from (as your theory states) while less-advanced races can. An assumption which I find in no way justifiable. And, for the conclusion:
2. The GTVA has had little success combining Shivan technology with their own systems. Upon the first capture
of a Shivan fighter in "Playing Judas", Terran technicians couldn't get the weapons or afterburners to work, and the jump drive frequently malfunctioned.
This point ignores the principle of Occam's Razor which states something to the effect of 'the most simple answer is often the correct one'. Or to translate, the GTA could not get the afterburners to work because they simply did not know how they worked. The technology is more advanced, consequently the GTA or GTVA understanding of said technology would be in some way limited. A factor, by the way, which seems to be decreasing from FS1 to FS2 where we move from a partly-function Shivan fighter to a near-fully functioning Shivan fighter in FS2 which is in many ways superior to its predecessor.
In conclusion, overall I found your hypothesis an interesting read but overall I find it flawed in many regards. Though the idea of damaging the fabric of space through subspace jumps (someone's been watching Star Trek:TNG I see??) is something worth hanging on to as a possible piece of the puzzle though not necessarily one that the Shivans are aware of (and therefore the principle motivating force behind their actions)
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Wooaahhh... talk about a grand entrance...
Important info newcomer:
Exits are to the sides and rear. Personal flamethrowers are located beneath your seat in case of emergency or naughty disposition. If you run into any Shivans while crawling through the ductwork, it's probably just Carl. Give him your lunch, back away slowly, and you'll be fine.
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Perhaps from capella they could take a direct route to wherever they were going.
If other systems disrupt subspace travel then perhaps they could travel from capella to their destination without passing through any other systems.
I also beleive that the shivans originated from a planet but were somehow expelled into subspace away from their home. Living in subspace they adapted to the conditions around them essentialy losing all of their former characteristics.
The shivans probably consider subspace as their home now so when we travel through it we are now invaders of their territory explaning why they are so relentles on killing us. Everytime we use subspace we are invading them.
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the jumps-damage-subspace is a blatant contradiction to canon - as set down by volition [somewhere] in FS2 'the more a node is used, the more stable it becomes'
(not exact quote, it's in there _somewhere_)
However on the Capella-sun-incident being a jump i'm very much in agreement, and on the possibility that the shivans "blinked" and were worried that perhaps we could blow away their sathanas fleet I believe that may be plausable.
The shivans were quite likely used to being virtually unopposed. The loss of the lucifer fleet would have set them aback, not to mention how quickly we stole their shield technology
Then 32 years later we show up with beam weapons, and heavy anti-matter warheads, stealth fighters the shivans can hardly detect - and we have a ship larger than their juggernauts and we destroy one of their juggernauts after it barely enters our space.
The "Comm Nodes" could have been major installations of somepoint, and that our destroying them triggered the anger of the shivans - but their worry that we may have had more of the Colossus-class worships may have send them spinning - from the collective shock of losses they have never before expirienced they may have decided to run-home whereever that was, in another galaxy perhaps.
Maybe they were not destroyers-of-all but destroyers-of-the-weak and when we were able to stand up to them the returned home - to another galaxy - a more "mature" galaxy, ie older species.
who knows.
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I agree with a lot of that - albeit not the bits that contradict the Reci storline ;)
Oh, Kazan - what is written in the techrooms (which I think is your source- correct me if i'm wrong) isn't necessarily true. It's just the human / GTVA view. So what GTVA scientists see as a node becoming more stable could actually be a rip or rift enlarging in subspace, like a screw through wood.
The Shivans scared-of-Sathanas thing i'm not too sure of. Mainly because they would have been able to assess the technological capabilities of the entire GTVA in FS1, and would have probably had a decent idea of the amount of materials they had. That's arguably more debatable, of course, but it's a thought. We also don't know what they may have learned from Bosch.
My opinion has always been that the Shivans sealed up Capella as 'cautery' - to prevent fighting a war on several fronts. Also, i think the shivans physical form and evolution in space is a direct result of them being forced to leave their home planet, rather than through choice.... ;7
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If you’re working off the hive mind theory, it brings the fact that shivans do not experience fear, or a sense of preservation.
The damaging subspace thing is plausible, but unlikely. Subspace seems to be a natural element in the fs universe. Say subspace is the fabric that binds all space; the nodes are just temporary distortion between normal space, and subspace. Which can be used to spacecrafts advantage.
As for the destruction of the capela star, the shivans could have a different motive. The destruction caused the nodes to gamma draconis and connecting systems to be sealed off. If you look at the subspace node map u would see that they can’t go anywhere else other than there already know systems. The shivans may have fixed the problem of terrans spreading across the galaxy destroying any who appose them. It also forced terrans and vasudans to stop fighting each other and find peace.
Also as part of the mystery and intrigue of the shivans is that they are in no way human, they are beyond our understanding. .........and what is it with the human race'es desire to know everything.
:lol:
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1. Energy beings are not possible.. that's the stupides idea I ever seen (and one thing I rellay dislike about ST, alltough I like the series). How can energy be alive?
*Don't use batterys - you might kill a Shivan!*
2. If Shivans have engines that don't damage subspace, why don't they just help other races to develop them, rather than destroy them?
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:welcome:
Indeed, welcome. To be sure, I agree with most of what you say, but I have a very different interpretation of the critical "a symptom of a bigger problem" statement. ;)
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Certainly an interesting document.
I wouldn't say that it's THE explaination of what the Shivans were up to but it is certainly AN explaination.
But just to make a few points
1. There is a good possibility that Bosch was interrogated after his capture. If he told the Shivans that the GTVA had a fleet of 200 Colossus Class Juggernauts waiting they may have believed him (They don't know the signs a human shows when he is lying after all).
2. Gamma Draconis is a very big star. It is infact bigger than Capella A & B put together. (Use the Internet Stellar Database (http://www.stellar-database.com) next time if you want to check the details for a star. I'm sure it has all the real FS2 ones.)
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:welcome: :welcome:
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Interesting....
I don't agree with everything you've said, but you've reasoned well and backed up your theories. Nice one! :)
:welcome:
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I don't agree with it at all, but it is well done and supported with evidence. Thumbs up.:yes:
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this was one of the best theories i've seen on the origins and motives of shivans. i think stryke 9's was another great one, although comical. i need to dig it up somewhere
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Here's my take on the Shivans' motives:
The Shivans are a genetically engineered super-race created by a race of extremely advanced beings whose name I cannot divulge for T&T storyline reasons. These aliens are unbelievably advanced, but they are paranoid of other races catching up to them in technological advancement. They jealously guard their superiority. They created the Shivans to annihalate any race that these beings consider advanced enough to be a threat. The master aliens, as I will refer to them in this piece (they have a different name in T&T) are subspace dwellers and thus have not evolved to perceive things the way we do. They designed the Shivans to detect threatening races through subspace activity, because they know so little about realspace and stellar cartography.
The master aliens "programmed" the Shivans to believe that other races are evil savages that must be destroyed. The Shivans believed WE were the destroyers, bent on destroying them and their masters. But when Admiral Bosch began communication, the Shivans' whole way of thinking was turned upside down. (T&T plot elements begin here) They realized that what their masters had told them was all lies. The Shivans decided to bring Bosch to their home, which I decided to model after Antares' "Cocytus". To get there, they needed to create a truly enormous subspace node, and they sacrificed Capella to do so. The Shivan forces you fought in Capella at the end of FS2 were simply a force sent to hold the Terrans and Vasudans off while the juggernauts make their jump.
The Shivans, after interrogating Bosch, decided to make peace with him and what was left of his NTF. They discovered a world of new information and new technologies. ETAK was modified to convert Shivan communications to radio and sound waves and back, streamlining communication incredibly. Capital ships began to be fitted with special ETAK radio devices, and Shivan crewmen and pilots wore translators. The newborn Terran-Shivan Alliance began to marshal its forces to launch a massive assault into GTVA space, with the aim of unifying the galaxy to prepare for the eventual onslaught of the master aliens, because they knew that peace with Bosch meant treason against their masters...
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i like the theory a lot antares, and it's a great start for a new member.
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There are a lot of campaigns out there seeking to explain the origins of the Shivans, but I won't try to give their reasons for shivan existance/aggression. The point has been raised that we know next-to-nothing about the Shivans. I believe that this is what makes them such a formidable adversary; they are extremely powerful, possess seemingly infinite resources, and have an overwhelming drive to obliterate any space-faring life. The reasons for their actions are and must remain a mystery, if the pure alien nature of the Shivans is to be preserved, which I believe it must be (it's what makes FS so epic, I think), then :V: never intended to actually reveal their origins or true purpose. And I think our speculation only serves to counter the atmosphere of humanity fighting to prevent anhilation at the hands of a mysterious, god-like power, whether you see the Shivans as working towards the good of the galaxy or for pure, xenocidal evil. (I count Vasudans as part of humanity here, because while they are alien, they are still very similar even culturally to humans from what we know. They live in similar habitats, and most conjecture on the post-Capella story either falls into the cliche of Vasudan-Terran schisms tearing the alliance apart or places the two races into a strong and lasting alliance).
That said, I personally believe that they come from somewhere, and that they have many, many "homeworlds" scattered across the galaxy. The GTVA holds at anyone's best guess about 20 systems; I would place the Shivans anywhere upwards of 20,000. That is why they don't take planets in FS1, because they don't need the resources (and why put your resourcing and construction operations anywhere NEAR the front line if you already have them in an area that is already well-secured? Did the US move all of its weapons factories to France at the start of World War II?) and because the primary objective of the Shivan incursions is to wipe out the fleets of whatever race they are trying to kill. If they find the homeworld, then they go ahead and melt it down, but they wouldn't bother wasting time on colony worlds if there is still a fleet out there to fight them. Once all the ships of the GTA were gone, do you think the Shivans wouldn't have gone on to glass every inhabited planet in Terran and Vasudan space? They controlled the nodes because in a multi-system war that is what is really important. If you prevent the enemy from bringing in reinforcements, you can obliterate his remaining forces without too much trouble (if you are truely superior, as the Shivans were in FS1). The GTVA was using this strategy in the NTF war, so it stands to reason that controlling jump nodes is more important in a freespace war than this theory accounts for.
As for Capella, it is possible that the Shivans were taking a containment action, much like the GTVA was in sealing off the nodes. For all the Shivans saw, the GTVA kept pouring in reinforcements just as the Shivans did; there were no more Collossi, true, but from the endgame cutscene we can see that a lot of terran and vasudan capital ships were in system engaging the shivans. So it is very possible that the shivans said "enough is enough" when the first Sathanas was destroyed. Or they could have intended to go on and nova every star in GTVA space, were the nodes not collapsed. We have no idea. I would say it is safe to assume that they did not know what happened to the Lucifer fleet.
I would also like to point out that the Shivans could easily have an interstellar empire of their own. They could be sending out scouting forces (like the Lucifer) to anhilate any potential future threat. The Sathanas fleet would be a frontline unit, for use against any race strong enough to survive the Lucifer. Not their only frontline unit, and not the most powerful ships in their arsenal, but an actual battlegroup that does more than protect the core territory. The ancients were growing strong when the shivans came, but we assume that they did not survive the onslaught of the Lucifer. Or perhaps, like the GTVA, they stopped a Lucifer-like attack only to have their star nova'd by the Shivans. Or perhaps they fell to something greater, something not yet brought to bear against the GTVA.
I would also like to point out that the assumption that the Shivans are capable of traversing unstable jump nodes is not necessarily true. We know that destroying the Knossos did not actually collapse the node (don't we? At least we don't know that it did actually collapse, only that the GTVA scientists thought that it would cause the node to revert to its unstable state) so there's no proof there. Hell, for all we know, the Knossos could have been more of a lock than a stabalizer, as they all seem to fan out towards Shivan space. As for Ross 128 (FS1) there is no evidence to rule out the existance of an uncharted jump node, or of an unstable node that the Shivans determined would stabalize for long enough to slip a fleet through. There is a command brief in FS1 saying something to the effect of "they are still just as reliant on subspace nodes as we are" so the assumption that they can freely use nodes unusable by the GTVA is questionable at best.
Anyway, them's my 2 cents. Take them or leave them.
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Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read through the Manifesto; I know it's probably a more extensive read than some of you are used to. Since I have some free time, I'll make replies to some of your questions, and later, make some edits to the Manifesto itself to incorporate them.
Many of you expressed disbelief at the notion of the Shivans "fleeing" from Capella, so I'll try to elaborate on that particular question before moving on to individual queries.
Firstly, if we accept that the Shivans operate with a hive mentality (something we will accept as true for the purposes of the essay), then we need not necessarily conclude that their reaction at Capella was one of "fear", per se. It would be in error to confuse the notion of "fear" with that of "self-preservation".
If there is any dominant principle in the animal kingdom, it is to stay alive. This is commonly observed in the "fight or flight" principle, which even humans possess; we either confront an enemy, or run away so that we might live to fight another day. This principle is more complex when applied to a hive society, as generally, there are no individuals; all drones or workers strive for the good of the colony, and may very well be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of that goal. However, this should not lead us to conclude that mass suicide is acceptable by default; if all the drones in a hive society are killed, who will be left to support the hive itself? In Robert Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers, a group of the grotesque "Bugs" (also called Arachnids, the book's main "bad guys") have surrounded a space marine who is shielding himself behind a bulbous "brain bug" which serves as the controlling influence for the hive's workers. The "warrior" Bugs screech in protest and frustration, unable to attack the hiding marine; if they do, they risk killing the brain bug itself, destroying the hive hierarchy and silencing the source of their own commands. In effect, the Bugs would be comitting suicide.
For that reason, you Shivan fans out there should not think of the Shivans as being "afraid" of the GTVA. Rather, you should think of them as regrouping and marshalling their forces instead of risking complete decimation at the hands of a Colossus fleet. They are merely exercising good judgment in the face of the unknown. To paraphrase Heinlein himself, any race that possesses enough skill to construct spacecraft is not stupid.
Although the Shivans themselves are not the sort to often make retreat, they have done so on more than one occasion, when the situation calls for it. In "First Strike", the Shivan cruiser Taranis--low on supplies--attempts to retreat through the Beta Cygni jump node. Shivan cruiser group "Hellfire" tries to rejoin the primary Shivan fleet in Delta Serpentis, rather than lingering to do battle with the attacking GTA fighters, in a show of simple strategy. Even the Demon-class destroyer Beleth gives priority to making the jump to Capella instead of powering down its engines to combat the Vasudan corvette Thebes and the player's remaining bomber wings. This is either because the Beleth does not believe it can survive a bomber attack, or is more focused upon providing reinforcement to the Sathanas. In either case, the destroyer's first concern cannot be the engagement of the nearby GTVA forces, or it would not bother making such a run for the jump node. This is just one more indicator of the Shivan strategic mindset: self-preservation and accomplishing orders take priority over enaging every target of opportunity. This is further evidenced with the first Sathanas, which breezes through to Capella without remaining to mop up the surviving bombers, and by the juggernaut fleet itself, which proceeds on course straight to the Capella star without engaging nearby GTVA warships.
But then, why do the Shivans throw swarms of fighters and bombers at the Alliance with such apparent abandon? The simple answer is that this in itself is not a bad strategy; overwhelming numbers have determined the outcome of many a battle in the course of history. However, we should also take note of the benefits vs. costs standpoint. In the briefing preceding "Their Finest Hour", Admiral Petrarch informs us that the GTVA has suffered over one hundred thousand casualties, a figure which probably includes all military craft and civilian transports. Given the Shivans' military superiority, we will arbitrarily assign them one-tenth the casualties at a figure of 10,000 in terms of fighters and bombers for the purposes of this discussion. This figure in itself is admittedly optimistic, for not every pilot in the GTVA can be a Triple Ace and mop up some 400 Shivans over the course of his or her career. If we include all capital ship classes ranging from crusiers and up, we can probably double this number to 20,000, perhaps 25,000; if we assume the Sathanas has at least the same crew capacity as the Colossus (the actual figure is probably smaller, for we can assume the Shivans are more efficient in terms of space than either Terrans or Vasudans, and are able to operate their ships with smaller crews), then the number balloons to around 50,000 or 60,000.
If we accept a static figure of 30,000 for a Sathanas crew (acknowledging our uncertainty), and multiply that number by 85 (as we are told there are "more than eighty" juggernauts, but apparently less than ninety), and add this product to our previous figure of 60,000, we are left with a rough estimate of what the Shivans would view as their potential losses in a full-blown shootout with the GTVA: a staggering 2.6 million Shivans, more than twenty times the casualties of the GTVA, even when taking into account the destruction of the Colossus. This is a considerably larger investment than the dozens of "throwaway" Shivans in any given fighter or bomber squadron. Faced with such tremendous losses to their active forces, it is not difficult to imagine why the Shivans would choose to make a strategic retreat.
As for the notion of the theoretical "Colossus fleet" itself, remember that GTVA space is pretty big; not large, perhaps in a galactic sense, but still consisting of some 23 star systems, excluding Sol and Capella. If the GTVA did possess a Colossus armada, it would make sense for them to evenly distribute these vessels throughout their borders, rather than lumping them all together in one particular system. As anyone will tell you, capital ships are relatively slow-moving; even the vaunted Sathanas only has a top speed of 25m/s, with the Colossus matching this velocity. If a Colossus were stationed on the fringes of GTVA territory, in Alphard or even Altair, it would take quite a while to make the complex system of subspace jumps needed to reach Vega. You can rest assured that the Shivans weren't able to round up their own armada in a matter of hours, either. Being intelligent creatures, they would have known a small window of time existed for them to act before the GTVA would have been fully prepared for a confrontation. With this in mind, discretion was "the better part of valor", so to speak, permitting the Shivans to return to Cocytus and lick their wounds.
The argument that the Shivans would already have known the extent of Terran/Vasudan military capability from experience in the First Great War is invalid simply due to the fact that these species make progress. So far as anyone knows, the Shivan species has remained essentially the same--if not stagnant--for the last eight thousand years, using the same kind of weaponry (as per the discoveries of the Vasudan scientists in Altair), and presumably, the same kinds of spacecraft. While there are notable additions to the Shivan fleet between the First and Second Great Wars, such as the Mara, the Astaroth, the Moloch, and the Ravana, just to name a few, there are also numerous "older" craft, such as the Basilisk, the Manticore, the Nephilim, the Seraphim, and several capital ships. The folks over in the Inferno camp would even have us believe that the clunky old jalopy, the Scorpion, is still in use. :D In contrast, the GTVA is nearing completion of its switchover from the old "Great War relics", opting to incorporate faster, more capable, more destructive war machines. There's probably little doubt among anyone (except maybe Galemp) that an Erinyes could grease an Apollo any day of the week.
Humanity's potential for adaptation should not be underestimated. We went from having no existing space program to landing on the moon in less than twenty years. In "The Great Hunt" (FS2), you'll even hear one of your wingmen muse about what a "miracle" it was the Alliance won the Great War, due to the lack of present-day technological advantages: shields (a slight continuity error, as Terrans and Vasudans only lacked energy shielding for a relatively short portion of the Great War, before using them throughout the remainder of the conflict), flak guns, and beam cannons.
It appears as though I've used up all my free time for the moment--that discussion was longer than I thought it would be :nervous: --but when I get the chance, I'll try to make in-depth responses to your individual comments!
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Originally posted by Antares
If we accept a static figure of 30,000 for a Sathanas crew (acknowledging our uncertainty), and multiply that number by 85 (as we are told there are "more than eighty" juggernauts, but apparently less than ninety), and add this product to our previous figure of 60,000, we are left with a rough estimate of what the Shivans would view as their potential losses in a full-blown shootout with the GTVA: a staggering 2.6 million Shivans, more than twenty times the casualties of the GTVA, even when taking into account the destruction of the Colossus. This is a considerably larger investment than the dozens of "throwaway" Shivans in any given fighter or bomber squadron. Faced with such tremendous losses to their active forces, it is not difficult to imagine why the Shivans would choose to make a strategic retreat.
After all, the Shivans had no idea what the GTVA had in store. For all they knew, the GTVA could have 100 Colossi. They decided that it would not be worth the casualties to continue their assault and that the GTVA campaign was a quagmire.
The argument that the Shivans would already have known the extent of Terran/Vasudan military capability from experience in the First Great War is invalid simply due to the fact that these species make progress. So far as anyone knows, the Shivan species has remained essentially the same--if not stagnant--for the last eight thousand years, using the same kind of weaponry (as per the discoveries of the Vasudan scientists in Altair), and presumably, the same kinds of spacecraft. While there are notable additions to the Shivan fleet between the First and Second Great Wars, such as the Mara, the Astaroth, the Moloch, and the Ravana, just to name a few, there are also numerous "older" craft, such as the Basilisk, the Manticore, the Nephilim, the Seraphim, and several capital ships. The folks over in the Inferno camp would even have us believe that the clunky old jalopy, the Scorpion, is still in use. :D
The Scorpion in INF is improved, but the even worse Shaitan is not improved and the Shivans are STILL USING THEM in Inferno!
In contrast, the GTVA is nearing completion of its switchover from the old "Great War relics", opting to incorporate faster, more capable, more destructive war machines. There's probably little doubt among anyone (except maybe Galemp) that an Erinyes could grease an Apollo any day of the week.
I think the Erinyes sucks, think you very much. I'd take the Apollo or Ares over it any day.
Humanity's potential for adaptation should not be underestimated. We went from having no existing space program to landing on the moon in less than twenty years. In "The Great Hunt" (FS2), you'll even hear one of your wingmen muse about what a "miracle" it was the Alliance won the Great War, due to the lack of present-day technological advantages: shields (a slight continuity error, as Terrans and Vasudans only lacked energy shielding for a relatively short portion of the Great War, before using them throughout the remainder of the conflict), flak guns, and beam cannons.
Indeed. The Shivans in T&T will have a hard time against the GTVA.
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It can also be siad that the Shivan's possess long life-spans like and that the GTVA could be facing the personality of the same leader that destroyed the Ancients.
[and the same ones that witnessed the destruction of the Ancients]
Could the Shivans also have a dictatorship?
One was an extreem technologist
The next one a stategist
The one the GTVA is facing very agressive
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It's a good idea, not totally in agreement with what I think, particuarly about the damages Subspace thing. Maybe Capella was the only 'suitable' star for such a massive Jump as would be initiated by it's destruction, X-Ray emission levels, Particle wavelength etc? Though a jump powered by the core of a star, and the evidence of the nebula beyond the Knossos portal suggests that the Shivans REALLY want to get somewhere very far away very quickly! Possibly it is co-incidence that the right stars happen to be G Main Orange/Yellows, and we just happen to get in their way?
As for originating in subspace, it's a nice idea, but I would have thought their shield technology would work if that was the case?
Flipside :D
As was said at the End of Freepspace 1, had it not been for the Shivans, the Ancients wouldn't have survived for long, they would have fallen to another race. This certainly implies that the Shivans have some sort of relationship with Subspace, but I'm not sure what it is :)
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Maybe the Shivans are the caretakers from a bigger race that vanished for some unknow reason.
[The same like what was talked about in Freelancer when they faced the Nomads. A race created by the Dom Kevash who vanished for some unknown reason]
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The whole Cocytus: Center of Subspace thing is still rather fishy. If they homed in on the T-V War, I have no doubt that the NTF war would have raised some flags. Not to mention that I'm sure as the GTVA grew, so did the military and civilian traffic through the jumpnodes.
And the Lucifer's death pinching off the Sol Jumpnode didn't raise any eyebrows on Cocytus? :doubt:
And if massive subspace interference threw them to a random area around their destination, it's far more likely that the Shivan fleets would appear in deep space that in a star system, if the radius is dozens of lightyears.
Even if the subspace hub idea were true, then the middle of the GTVA is exactly where the Shivans should have shown up in FS2.
Also, in regards to being unable to contact Cocytus.. the fact that the Juggernaughts showed up so late in the game means they can either contact it, or they don't actually keep their forces there. They were losing the nebula, so they called in the cavalry. There isn't any real advantage to holding the Sathanas fleet back until the endgame, so one must assume they weren't around to begin with.
Flipside also makes a good point about the shields. If subspace were their native dimension, it'd be far more likely that their tech would work there, than in normal space.
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Maybe the Shivans are like Wasps, gnawing away at the very house they are building their nest in?
Flipside :D
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Symptom = side effect, usually an undesirable one. Thus the classification of the Shivans as a "symptom" of a much larger problem would seem to contradict their label of the Great Destroyers / Great Preservers. A side effect, not a crucial cog in the precise workings of the universe. A side effect.
The FS1 cutscenes (http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/hlp/category_show.php?cat=33) ( :thepimp: ) make it very clear that it was the wanton destruction of weaker races that was the reason behind the Ancients' destruction at the hands of the Shivans.
It is stated in "Sin" (according to how I named the cutscenes) that the Ancients' 'crime was sin.' In "Fate", although the 'Cosmic Destroyers' noted the Ancients' use of subspace, the Ancients state: "When we conquered and colonized in galaxies where we had no place, the destruction and the anguish and the loss were the clarion call of our doom." And lastly, in "Liberation", it clearly states that the Shivans were preserving infant races from destruction by older races.
As much as I personally like the "subspace in danger" theory (despite it being reminicient of the Star Trek situation with FTL travel at high warp speeds), I do not see that the cutscenes leave much room for doubt.
But where does that leave the loose end of subspace drawing the Shivans? For the answer, look at the text of the first cutscene. Despite having an apparently powerful empire spanning multiple systems, the Ancients did not encounter any other races - until they discovered subspace. This discovery allowed them to slaughter many infant races, but was not in and of itself something that caused their destruction.
One can liken it to a "criminal in house with innocents" situation. The entry of the criminal into the house was what called the police to the scene (Fate: "When we traveled subspace, the Cosmic Destroyers took note."), but the gunshots and screams are the final straw that the SWAT team was waiting for (Fate: "...the destruction and the anguish....were the clarion call of our doom.").
So the Shivans police the galaxies (plural), on the lookout for subspace-faring races. Those that have subspace are the races that have the ability to kill other races. Shivans and the police forces - at times, both have to kill in order to preserve innocent life.
So. Returning to the hanging question from the first paragraph, we can now use substitution to perhaps bring added clarity:
Police are a symptom of a much larger problem.
So....the formation of a police force is one of multiple natural results to what problem?
Simple.
The problem is the ability and freedom of life itself to kill other life.
Originally posted by Kazan
...on the possibility that the shivans "blinked" and were worried that perhaps we could blow away their sathanas fleet I believe that may be plausable.
The shivans were quite likely used to being virtually unopposed. The loss of the lucifer fleet would have set them aback, not to mention how quickly we stole their shield technology
Then 32 years later we show up with beam weapons, and heavy anti-matter warheads, stealth fighters the shivans can hardly detect - and we have a ship larger than their juggernauts and we destroy one of their juggernauts after it barely enters our space.
The "Comm Nodes" could have been major installations of somepoint, and that our destroying them triggered the anger of the shivans - but their worry that we may have had more of the Colossus-class worships may have send them spinning - from the collective shock of losses they have never before expirienced they may have decided to run-home whereever that was, in another galaxy perhaps.
Maybe they were not destroyers-of-all but destroyers-of-the-weak and when we were able to stand up to them the returned home - to another galaxy - a more "mature" galaxy, ie older species.
I must disagree completely here. According to K.I.S.S. in combination with what the back of the FS2 box stated about the Lucifer fleet being only a scouting party, then I find it likely that the Lucifer fleet was sent to scout out the GTA and PVN fleets and systems as much as possible. Gather information, and send it back.
Now, if your scouting party can do the main job in and of itself, wonderful. Thus we have the Lucifer's attack on Vasuda, with the subsequent press towards Sol. And so if this goal (let the scouts do it) dovetails nicely with the scouts' main goal (scouting enemy positions ans fleet strengths), then that's just great. But if they get destroyed in the process, "oh well - they got us the info we needed."
Leaving us with FS2 being, of course, the follow-up invasion. However:
[q]...how quickly we stole their shield technology
Then 32 years later we show up with beam weapons, and heavy anti-matter warheads, stealth fighters the shivans can hardly detect - and we have a ship larger than their juggernauts and we destroy one of their juggernauts after it barely enters our space.[/q]
This can still be valid. Even assuming the Shivans knew about the weakness of no shields in subspace, chances are they had never encountered a situation where the Lucifer (or equiv.) was destroyed half-in / half-out - the only situation where there would be debris to base research upon. If the Lucifer was destroyed in subspace, then it would have killed the subspace tunnel and no debris would be accessible. And if the Lucy got into normal space, then she would have shields and wouldn't be destroyed at all.
Originally posted by Devils_Hitman
The destruction {of the star} caused the nodes to gamma draconis and connecting systems to be sealed off.
No it didn't. The meson bomb-laden Orions sealed off the nodes. The supernova just made the system nice and comfy.
Originally posted by StratComm
They controlled the nodes because in a multi-system war that is what is really important. If you prevent the enemy from bringing in reinforcements, you can obliterate his remaining forces without too much trouble (if you are truely superior, as the Shivans were in FS1). The GTVA was using this strategy in the NTF war, so it stands to reason that controlling jump nodes is more important in a freespace war than this theory accounts for.
Very good point, although I do not think it is proof in and of itself that Shivans are uninterested in planets for purely strategic reasons.
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Here's my theory (Draws breath)
Shivans get PMT.
Sorry
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Shivans get PMT.
PMT?
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Lots of good ideas, and some hasty critic.
I keep retelling my old ideas (over 2 years) again and again, which center around one simple fact:
Common sense - what we think of an issue is lightyears away from how it actually happens.
Seemingly the way we percieve reality and how it is are the same - however there is a cruical difference:
For us it has a meaning while for just the universe itself (leave God and his kind out of this) it has none.
That meaning is the very own of the perciever so in sense there are a thouzand universes we can speak of.
For example there's a Flaser's universe full of hot chiks who avoid him like plague and nice science no one bothers with. That there's Gloriano and Hitomi's universe with one other in a focal point and suschi and a soft spoken language.
This are quite Earthly examples still you can see that your universe is quite different from what is actually out there.
The way I interpret this on Shivans is that their motives shouldn't be explained just by saying it would be logical.
My other idea is that we disregard the nature of freespace which is a grave mistake considering how important it is to the FS universe (it is in the name after all).
The nature of subspace could lead to diverse changes in the very nature of the universe we speak of.
The actual status of the GTVA is also a big unknown, we don't know too much about Terrans in that era after all.
For example it could be that during 2335 most of the systems the GTA or PVE had were only colonized to a brief enxtent and only a couple of planets were inhabitated - for space economic issues planets are not too good to settle down.
My idea about Shivans is that they were born on planet, than they evolved some in space - so they addapted to their new environment.
About the Cocytus - I like the idea, however I doubt it would be somthing Shivan.
Actually there are a couple of facts we don't really grab:
The Shivans have existed for more than a milenia (10-000 years - more than our entire history) in space.
It is an immesurable time. I have to agree with the fact that Shivans are stagnating. No civilisation given this time would stay stabile if its structure had any dynamism.
This leads to a far-fetched conclusion that they are also decandent. They would rather do something out of habit and custom than adept to the new circumstances.
Their life is a dead end - the once proud explorers and conquerors live in decay their inner fire stolen by the passing of milenias.
However I had a crucial doubt: Would the Shivans be the First and Only Destroyers?
I doubt. However what if they weren't always?
They must have taken that position somewhere in the past after taking on the old destroyers.
Why would they continue the old ones saga?
Probably because they had no choice but to do so.
To sum up my own thoughts:
-Shivans are a decandent ancient civilisation in stagnation if not in decay
-They had to take the position of being destroyers - so there are forces that make them do it. That's why their attacks are only symptoms.
That driving force could be fear of extinction, or some twist of being an extremly advanced race - maybe if subspace itself.
I agree with the last. Subspace IMHO is a string inside normal space, so it ovelaps our universe. Gravity pulls space, so it helps the formation of strings.
Nodes are place where the forces created strings between far solarsystems.
A ship traveling through subspace emmits some radiation and it also creates subspace disturbances. - With enough these disturbances could cripple the stings, and it would take a couple of thousands of years to repappear on their own.
Shivans have low emmision engines, and they probably have to guard subspace just to survive.
If too much traffic takes places, regardless of how much each craft pollutes subspace disaster would still take place.
Giving aliens technology not to pollute that much won't eliminate pollution.
However this isn't a good explanation.
I'm willing to settle on something that I've scraped out of Kim Stanley Robinson's books (the Mars trilogy):
He introduces a historical view where each and every state of humanity is just a transition between two states.
So the ancient times where a transition between Prehistoric barbarian life and sturctured life of the Middle age.
The Middle age was a transition between the communal Ancient Time and Individual Capitalism.
Capitalism is a transition between private capital and social prosperity - I don't really remember the term he used for this last post modern era, however it can be summed up in the term "human harmony" - so humanity is forced to live in a manner where the individual and the society are in balance.
The FS society IMHO is just on the brink of this era. The formation of huge companies, and the strong centralised government are just parts of this phenomenon, the presense of capitol is still a relique from the Modern age.
However Shivan could live in something beyond that:
"Enviromental Harmony" - they handle their environment the galaxy as if it was a living thing with rights of its own.
However the new space-faring races disregard its rights and spread like plague - something that infuriates the Shivans.
The apparent use of subspace - a sign of any interstellar race - can show sings of such nature.
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I wouldn't really think that forcing Stars into a Supernova state is environmentally friendly either though :(
I won't bother giving you all the details of my own thoughts but I'll say I'm thinking Shivans are acting far more on instinct than anything else, possibly subspace activity is like a beacon to them, maybe they left for our space in the days of early subspace jumps and took years to get here, whereas the Knossos was a forgotten gate to the Ancients empire? Who knows?
Flipside :D
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Originally posted by Flipside
Maybe the Shivans are like Wasps, gnawing away at the very house they are building their nest in?
More like killer bees one small move and you can set them all off.
Since it is said that the Shivans are sensitive to subspace disturbanses.
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If they where indeed constructed, they would have a purpose. Without a purpose there is no reason to exist.
They are not concerned with fear, or any other emotion.
The Shivans existence revolves around their task, to preserve life, and to take it away when nessasary. Some races just arent ready for subspace travel, the reason why the shivans have been around for so long is they oviously still have work to do
Most people refer to the shivans as "insects" of some sort. I prefer to think that they are more machine than anything. Meaning they have a very long lifespan.
And there is the possiblity that the shivans where created as a set number of units. As in all of them where there in the begining. This means that they have no ability or interest in making more of them, they dont need resorces or planets.
But beliving this would make shivan freighters, miners and cargo usless.
There may be a large "super structure" in space, producing shivans.
I dont belive shivans live on planets, or have ever lived on planets. To develop into such complex and suited designs would take more than a million years. so you can come to the conclusion that they where infact designed.
Which then leads into a bigger perdiciment.
on a side note , we are not trying to understand a universe, its quite impossible. To truey understand and know the shivans you would need to know everything to do with that particular universe, whats possible, how ther physics work, ect.
...they belong to the galaxy, and are created to protect it, they are the masters of subspace.....and dont take kindly to intruders.
Have fun :lol:
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Originally posted by Sandwich
PMT?
Sigh....
Pre Menstrual Tension
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one problem- why did shivan cruisers try to escape capella?
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they saw the big fireball.
anyways, when did they actually try to escape?
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Sigh....
Pre Menstrual Tension
Is that not the same as PMS?
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Jeez whats with all this pulverising of noobs with beams lately?
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Once again, I've secured some free time to more thoroughly discuss the points made in the Manifesto. I'll try to handle your questions point-by-point.
Sybiene: The Shivans do not "use" Knossos portals, per se. The portals exist in Shivan-controlled areas, but so far as we know, the Shivans do not know for certain how to activate them, or precisely what they are used for. It was Admiral Bosch who drew the Shivans' ire with his activation of the first Knossos; we cannot know for certain if the Shivans, on their side of the node, were even aware of its existence. In their monologues, the Ancients state that the Destroyers did not seek "territory, technology, or resources". The Shivans appear to concern themselves primarily with their own technological advancement (if they advance--see earlier comments on stagnation), and in all likelihood, they are more interested in the jump node created by the Knossos portal than in the workings of the device itself. This, however, is an uncertain point; much of our theory centers around the Shivans having a great deal of subspace expertise, so it is logical to assume that they would know a device capable of manipulating subspace when they saw one.
Akalabeth Angel: You make several quality points, and I shall endeavor to address each one in turn.
Volition's "symptom" wording is admittedly very vague, but obviously with the intent to be so. It leaves the Shivan origin wide open to a great deal of speculation. Perhaps a better term would be "sign"--an indication that something is happening on a larger scale in the galaxy that the Shivans are only a small part of. I'm not comfortable with equating "symptom" with an abstract concept like "good vs. evil" or "survival of the fittest"; I do not feel that Volition would have provided us with this clue in the first place unless it were to lead to a more concrete conclusion.
The title of "The Preservers" is truly an ironic one to apply to the Shivans. In Freespace's final monologue, the narrator--presumably the pilot you've been playing--pretty clearly illustrates the meaning of this phrase. Here is the actual wording from the Freespace Reference Bible:
"I know why the Ancient Ones were destroyed. And I know what they knew.
I know that if not for the Shivans they would have been conquered long before.
Without the Shivans, someone would have discovered them long before, in their infancy. And destroyed them, just as surely as they destroyed countless billions of others.
I believe it is only the destroyers who are destroyed. The Shivans are the great destroyers, but they are also the great preservers. That is why there was no one to destroy us.
Long had we been the destroyer. Our turn had nearly come.
In the Vasudan war we learned how to adapt.
We learned how to study our enemy.
We learned how to overcome.
We learned how to survive.
And so we did."
The narrator explains, in simple terms, that the Shivans exterminate older, advanced races to ensure the survival of younger, undeveloped ones. The predecessors to the Ancients, whoever they were, were destroyed by the Shivans so that the Ancients might thrive; the Ancients, in turn, were themselves destroyed so that humanity, and presumably Vasudans (although there is evidence that the Vasudans themselves may in fact be descendants of the scattered Ancient population) could survive. As the narrator mentions, humanity--having assumed its own mantle as conqueror of the cosmos, rampantly colonizing, exploring, and waging war upon the Vasudans--had nearly reached the time of its own destruction.
You make a valid point when you ask whether or not such is the fate of all space-faring races: to be annihilated once they stumble upon the secrets of subspace travel. In one of the few uplifting points of the entire Manifesto, I can say with some confidence that the answer to this question is "no".
In one of his own monologues, Admiral Bosch provides us with the following question to ponder:
"Thirty-two years ago in the Altair system, Vasudan scientists discovered the remnants of an extinct civilisation we now call the Ancients. Here, we found the secret to defeat the Shivans. How close did we come to being a footnote in the history of a future species that would happen upon our ruins ten thousand years from now? Would they indulge in the fiction of their own immortality until the Shivans came for them, and how long had this gone on?
Did the Ancients stumble upon the monoliths and the tombs of their predecessors in this distant corner of space, dismissing the warnings carved into the walls of the sepulchre? And when the Destroyers came at last, what did the Ancients think as they sifted the cremation of dust and bones, staring into the mute remains for a key, some solution to their plight?
What if there had been countless races, stretching back into infinity, and like the nine cities of Troy, each civilization had been built on the rubble of the one that came before, each annihilated by the Shivans?"
Bosch suspects that the cycle of destruction perpetuated by the Shivans has continued for a very long time--longer, perhaps, than any of us can estimate. If the Ancients did indeed uncover ruins of the races that came before them, ruins providing some clue or hint as to how the wrath of the Destroyers might be stayed, then that warning was either ignored, or understood too late for it to have any meaning. The Ancients fell just as the innumerable races that came before them did, their empire turning to ash.
In the case of the Alliance, however, something has changed.
At the end of the First Great War, the Shivans failed to complete their objective of xenocide--quite possibly the first time they had ever failed to accomplish their monstrous task. Unlike the Ancients before them, the Terrans and Vasudans were able to heed the age-old cautions they discovered, able to learn from them, able to adapt them for their races' own purposes. As the narrator of the final FS1 monologue so eloquently states, the Terrans learned how to study their enemy, how to adapt, and how to survive. Thus, the cycle of wanton destruction that has continued without end for countless millennia has at last been broken. The GTVA is not simple prey, like the other fallen empires, but a sophisticated enemy, one the Shivans will require more than brute force to extinguish from the universe.
In a fashion, this in itself may be the answer to the question of the "Great Preservers". Perhaps the rise of the Alliance, a force that, like the Shivans themselves, "did not die", is something the Shivans--maybe without realizing it--have been fostering for centuries. It was inevitable that eventually, there would come a race that would learn from the mistakes of those that came before, one that would not so easily knuckle under to the Destroyers. Unlike the dead and buried societies of the past, the GTVA has potential, potential to learn and adapt, potential to discover a final, permanent solution to the conflict with which they are faced. It is possible that, in the distant future, Terrans and Vasudans may stumble upon a means of travel superior even to that of the subspace corridor, allowing them to maintain their integrity as a society without incurring the hateful, desperate rage of the Shivans.
The question which this poses, however--one we are, at this time, unable to answer--is whether one or both sides of the Great War will perish in the hellfire of battle before that time should arrive.
Your comments on Shivan subspace travel confuse me. You seem to accept the notion that they possess superior subspace engine technology, yet in the same breath, you claim that by using "hidden" subspace nodes--those either uncharted by the Alliance, or too unstable for use--the Shivans inflict needless damage upon the subspace fabric. I offer the following as counterpoints:
1. If the Shivans do possess highly-advanced subspace technology, we hypothesize that their use of subspace nodes causes little or no damage, whether the Alliance has knowledge of those nodes or not.
2. If the above statement is half-true or not true at all (i.e., the Shivans can use unstable nodes, but still cause subspace damage nonetheless), then their use of "secret" nodes is, in fact, relevant in terms of strategy. We've stated several times that the Shivans aren't dumb; if it were absolutely necessary for them to make use of subspace travel for the sake of waging war, then they would do so. However, they would seek to do so in the most efficient way possible, a way which would quickly end the conflict at hand, and minimize the damage sustained by the subspace dimension. We should also factor in the reasonable assumption that the Shivans will want to minimize the losses to their own forces.
In FS1, for example, the Shivan armada levels Tombaugh Station in the Ribos system while gathering their forces there for a strike upon Vasuda Prime. In response, the GTA sets up a blockade in the adjacent Antares system, which is the only "stable" route to reach Vasuda. To reduce the hassle to themselves, the Shivans jump through a "hidden" node directly to Deneb, which is also one jump away from Vasuda. This allows the Shivans to circumvent the Allied blockade and destroy Vasuda Prime more quickly, hence shortening the duration of the war itself. Admiral Petrarch also clearly states that the Shivans made inter-system jumps without the use of recognized jump nodes during the Great War, so the question is not if the Shivans make such jumps, but why.
You make a good point when you say that the juggernaut armada might have used inter-system nodes of which the GTVA had no knowledge; I had always visualized system-to-system nodes as lying along the "edges" of any given star system, not smack in the middle. It seems unlikely that each juggernaut was jumping through a separate node--this would indicate that a large number of such nodes were bunched very closely together, something we have never seen--meaning that if such a jump point existed, it would be one very large node. In all the time that the GTVA has been studying subspace, we have never heard anything to suggest that "supernodes" exist in close proximity to stars. Therefore, I feel my theory that the Sathanas fleet creates its own node is more credible, in this respect.
This also provides an explanation for a matter I had neglected in the main body of the Manifesto, for at the time, I myself had been unable to explain it. Carefully observe the "End Game" FS2 cutscene. You will see that some juggernauts continue to activate their subspace "charges" while the other ships depart, even after the Capella star has already turned green--and, we assume, already been affected by whatever the armada did to it. When the main body of the fleet has departed, the charges on the ships left behind dissipate entirely, and the juggernauts themselves "go dark", their characteristically red glows fading to simple black.
Why do the stranded juggernauts power down? Do they know it is futile to try and attempt the explosion of Capella, and therefore make no effort to do so? Have the Shivans on-board these ships somehow been evacuated to those that escaped by means of a teleportation technology? We have seen no evidence of such capability on behalf of the Shivans (in fact, the Freespace Reference Bible provides a graphic description of Shivans physically leaping from ship-to-ship in the course of a battle), so this seems unlikely. Therefore, what conclusion are we to reach?
It is my own belief that the "marooned" juggernauts were using the full extent of their energies to sustain the artificial jump node while the other craft in the Shivan fleet made their escape. If we accept, for the moment, that the juggernauts are "alive" as some evidence suggests, then we could interpret the dimming of their surface lights as a form of "death". We know for certain that their subspace charges took some time to energize--at least three full days--and that by the same token, they were likely to be very intense. Left with no remaining energy, the Sathani--dead or dying--could only drift, derelicts in space, waiting for the supernova to overtake them. It sounds cliche, to be sure, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
As I mention in the body of the Manifesto--and as you yourself quote--the amassing of the juggernaut fleet and the destruction of the Shivan "Comm Nodes" may be nothing more than simple coincidence. We will never know for certain what would have happened if Commander Snipes had chosen not to destroy the devices. However, there are a few points which suggest that the Shivan objects have a more vital purpose than simply that of communication.
1. "In the Lion's Den" is considered by many--including myself--to be the most compelling and exciting of all the Freespace missions. It provides a unique perspective from the cockpit of the Shivan Mara, an exhilirating intro ("DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!"), and witty commentary throughout by Snipes. It also gives the player the first real glance at Shivan space (although technically, under the Cocytus theory, there is no real Shivan space), unobscured by thick nebular clouds. Wouldn't you think it somewhat anti-climactic, therefore, for the main targets in this mission to be little more than glorified satellite dishes?
2. Don't you think the Comm Nodes make unusually big bangs upon their destruction, if they are really simple communications equipment? The Alliance has studied Shivan comm systems before, but these give off "unusual" sensor readings before they go kablooey. Why?
3. I never once claimed that destroying the Comm Nodes would slow the Shivans down. If anything, it would make them more aggressive, and more eager to swiftly terminate the conflict with the GTVA. The SOC recon mission signifies the first real Allied incursion into strictly Shivan territory (as the nebula itself remains contested throughout much of the game), and is perhaps the first such "invasion" that the Shivans have ever experienced at the hands of an adversary. With their first juggernaut destroyed and the Alliance advancing ever-further into their space, the Shivans are left with no choice but to switch to more effective tactics.
4. The binary system where the Comm Nodes are discovered is not "lightly defended" by any means. Secured within a Shivan fighter, you are able to conduct espionage, a tactic with which the Shivans are likely to be unfamiliar (as, to the best of our knowledge, it was used against them only once, and against a fleet that could presumably not communicate with Cocytus, in "Playing Judas"). Thus, you are able to fly freely (for a short while) among the Shivan defenses, composed of at least three Rakshasa-class cruisers, numerous Astaroth and Aeshma fighters, several wings of Nahema bombers, and--if you stick around long enough--infinite waves of the awesome Dragon-class fighters. Even when you are engaged by the Shivans, you are piloting one of their heavily-armed craft, one that has been made even better than the original by Terran engineers. Had you arrived on the scene in a lesser craft, like a Herc II, a Perseus, or even a Myrmidon, your chances of survival would have been much lower, due both to your more fragile craft, and the fact that you would have been instantly recognized and fired upon by the Shivans. In all probability, the Ravana-class destroyer Nebiros would also have been recalled from its station more quickly, so that it would sooner engage your fighter wing.
As for defensive installations, we have never actually seen any Shivan installations apart from fragile sentry guns, so this point is moot.
I believe I adequately-covered the topic of the Sathani retreat in a previous post, so I'll skip over your next point, save for one comment. You seem to believe that the Shivans would have been better-off by collapsing the Gamma Draconis-Capella jump node, rather than setting their sights upon Capella itself. You must remember that technically, the Shivans have nothing to defend; to our knowledge, they possess no home planet, no space stations, and--following the destruction of the Comm Nodes--no television reception. Therefore, whether or not the hypothetical GTVA fleet is invading their territory or assembling a blockade at Capella is irrelevant. Collapsing the node would only cause further subspace damage, the very thing the Shivans have set out to prevent. So, when faced with unpredictable opposition (as we discussed earlier), the Shivans set course for the nearest escape route--the nearest compatible star for a jump to Cocytus--and get out while the getting is good. We have no way of knowing what sort of star systems exist beyond the Comm Node system, and therefore, no way of knowing if any of them would have better suited the Shivans' needs.
I can understand why you would view the concept of a "living ship" as being cliche, but it is nonetheless a valid idea, one that has been present in literature, film, and animation for years. There's even a section on HowStuffWorks.com about "How Self-Healing Spacecraft Will Work"! Mathematician Buckminster Fuller sometimes referred to Earth as a "spaceship", and claimed all of humanity was its crew.
When you question the Shivans' familiarity with matter in "our" universe, we enter a very gray area in which we are forced to make educated guesses. If we hold as true the generally-accepted theory that the Universe as a whole is approximately 13 or 14 billion years old, we still have no idea as to when subspace came into existence to provide support for said Universe. The cosmos would have been in an understandable state of disarray following the Big Bang, so we will allot a considerable amount of time for things to "settle down", and assign the birth of subspace an arbitrary age of 5 billion years. This is roughly the same age of the Earth, meaning we can accept it as a reasonable date for when the Universe became a more or less stable place for life to exist.
As for the Shivans themselves, we can only speculate as to when they first evolved within the subspace void. Since they would have no bodies to speak of, they would have had relatively little need for evolution (barring their creation or construction by a higher entity or race). This could mean that the Shivans are quite young in historical terms, perhaps no more than a million years. However, since subspace itself seems to be a fairly static environment, devoid of change or substance to bring about change (save for the apparently random formation and collapse of unstable nodes), we can assume that the Shivans were not "brought into being" by any subspace material that was not already present when subspace stabilized, and can therefore assign them a date of creation around or near the birth of subspace itself. Again, this will be an arbitrary figure of some 4 or 5 billion years ago.
The Shivans' first foray into "normal" space is a total unknown to us. It would have been dependent on the emergence of a non-Shivan subspace-capable race at an indeterminate point in the past. If we must assign a date to this time for the sake of completeness, then let us use some Earth reference as the standard for our scale.
Assume, first, that this unknown race is terrestrial in nature, and evolves on a world either similar to Earth, or one that would have the proper conditions to foster the growth of complex life forms. Now, in a judgment call on our part, we will accept Earth's late Triassic period as being the earliest era in which large, multi-capable, vertebrate life--namely, the dinosaurs--can exist (something we know to be false, as vertebrates existed prior to this time, but many were wiped out in various extinctions; dinosaurs, however, are very well-recognized creatures, and provide us with a fixed reference point), at about 225 million years ago. We will also grant these creatures comparatively larger brains than said reptiles, perhaps on par with early human beings, allowing us to bypass the problem of gradual brain development, and continue our discussion in terms of figures we know to be approximately accurate.
Barring any world-altering event such as an ice age or asteroid collision, let us assume that the life forms currently living on our hypothetical world in this period are allowed to evolve, unopposed, into more intelligent creatures, able to fashion tools, metalwork, and soforth, until finally reaching a stage of relative technological advancement (computers, artificial satellites, and of course, subspace travel). This process took between 4 and 6 million years for human beings, so we will accept a mean figure of 5 million years for our alien society to advance, resulting in a nice, round figure of about 220 million years ago for the emergence of a subspace-capable race.
We can only wonder at what the Shivans must have thought when they felt the first subspace tremors. Perhaps they looked upon the walls of their dimension in the same way as early man looked upon the stormy sky, unable to comprehend the exact nature of the lightning bolts that split it asunder. As the Shivans follow a path of evolution and development unfamiliar to us, we have no way of knowing when they first began to experiment with ways to explore this phenomena, and determine its cause. Their initial science must have been crude, much like our own space program was, during its initial days. When did they manage to open the first portal into the material universe? We cannot know. Our knowledge of subspace, however, does permit us to form a rather grisly hypothesis about the first Shivans who dared to enter the rupture. We know that subspace is inherently unstable, both due to the brief formation/collapse of most nodes, and due to the fact that jump portals--once opened via jump drive--do not remain open for long, but quickly seal up after the vessel in question has entered the subspace corridor. If the Shivans are, in essence, living subspace energy, then their first explorers would have met a grotesque end, the very energy composing their beings dissipating and drifting off into the void.
Gradually, their techniques would have grown more cautious, more refined. They may have been able to catch brief glimpses of objects in the material dimension, and from their observations, begun to fashion the surrounding subspace energy into the first crimson containment crystals. From here, we see more progression; the advent of a protective crystal sheath to protect Shivan "astronauts". Modifying this material to make it more malleable, more flexible, permitting for physical movement. Developing an energy shielding system and other supporting materials to prevent crystalline degradation in outer space. Realizing the concept of an energy-driven engine to allow for independent locomotion in the vacuum. Creating electronics systems to properly operate said engines, and fashioning the hulls of their first vessels on which to install them. And, of course, a field of research into which the Shivans are most proficient: the development of energy weapons to discourage or kill whomever was wreaking harm upon their home.
Of course, the Shivans of this era may not have been even remotely war-like; initially, the first physical Shivans may have been very peaceful and serene indeed. Perhaps, after initial communication difficulties, the Shivans were able to convince our hypothetical race to put an end to their subspace travel... and then again, perhaps they weren't. We have no way of knowing. What we know for certain is that eventually, the Shivans would have encountered resistance, come into contact with a race that absolutely refused to surrender the benefits of the subspace corridor.
And the Shivans would have crushed them. Brutally, without mercy, for there would have been no other option. After this first genocide, the Shivans may have felt remorse, even guilt, for what they had been forced to do. We do not know when their hive mentality developed, or if it was a trait they possessed since the time of the birth of their race; it may have emerged as a psychological defense mechanism, to prevent them from feeling sorry for the species they were forced to annihilate.
And there must have been others. Surely the Shivans encoutered more than one race across the eons who would not give up the prize of subspace. How many had to die? We have no indication, not the faintest estimate. If Bosch's guess is true, then the casualty figure is truly astronomical in scope: countless civilizations, entire species wiped clean from the cosmic canvas. Each and every one providing the Shivans with the same, simple, damning answer: "No."
How long was it, I wonder, before the Shivans finally stopped bothering to ask?
Your point about the Shivans simply passing through subspace to "recharge" their energy reserves is one I considered myself. However, from a biological standpoint, it seems unfeasible. Subspace isn't something the Shivans can just pick up a pint of and chug down on their way to a sortie; the unstable nature of subspace energy means it would dissipate quickly. You certainly don't see Shivan vessels hopping in and out of subspace every few minutes when they need a "fix".
Think of subspace being to Shivans as to what oxygen is for human beings. We breathe, but healthy people breathe regularly, without significant interruption. We can hold our breath, but not for any reasonably long period--a few minutes, at the most, unless you're a freak and it's something you make a point to practice. We don't breathe in frequent gasps; oxygen is all around us, ready to be inhaled at our leisure. For the Shivans, however, subspace energy is more than simple air; it is the very essence of their beings, literally their life-force. It is something they would require in a ready, constant stream, something to sustain their existence on our material plane. Hence, our theorized purpose for the Shivan "Comm Nodes".
I have not asserted that the physical movement of solid matter through a subspace corridor contributes to subspace damage, although that is entirely possible. I have said that I believe the frequent opening of subspace jump portals to be a source of damage. Any given object making use of subspace travel must open at least two portals: one to enter subspace, and another to exit. When you have thousands of fightercraft and civilian vessels opening countless jump portals every day, to say nothing of the larger, more damaging portals opened by capital-class craft, then the damage quickly accumulates.
It has been my intention--perhaps not clear enough on my part--to depict Shivan crystal as essentially pure subspace energy, encased in a thin matter shell. Hence, being mostly composed of subspace itself, its presence would not cause damage to the subspace fabric. My theory is that within Cocytus, Shivan craft and any structures are composed wholly of this crystal, until they are fitted with the black "support" material needed to ensure their functionality in normal space, like a sort of exoskeleton. Even the Comm Nodes are fitted with these bracers, which not only ensure the integrity of the crystal at the center, but also--due to their "spinning" motion--distribute quantum pulses and subspace energy throughout a wide area.
Not all stars create black holes upon going nova; a star must (in theory) meet certain criteria in terms of mass before a black hole will result from its demise. Surely, as subspace-conserving beings, the Shivans would be careful not to open jump portals by destroying stars that would only serve to cause subspace damage in the long run. This is just one more reason for the Shivans to choose to utilize Capella instead of searching their "home" space for a star with the right qualifications. You yourself said that the Shivans might have killed Capella for the sake of nebular gas; if this were the case, then Capella obviously didn't implode into a black hole, or there would be no nebula to harvest.
It was poor word choice on my part to say that Shivan activity is "proportional" to subspace activity, for I did not mean to imply that more Shivans would come running to quash heightened subspace traffic. I had meant to imply that the presence or arrival of Shivans is directly linked to subspace travel in the sense that increased subspace activity makes Shivan intervention more probable. Say, for example, you are watching television on one side of the room, when a knock comes at your door on the other side. You are reluctant to get up--no knock at the door is worth missing Knight Rider, damn it--but if the knocking continues, steadily growing louder and more frequent, then eventually, you will get up, if for no other reason than to silence the sound. The case of the Shivans is not so casual--they are fighting for their survival, not for mere silence--but as we know, according to the FS database, subspace is a natural occurence, and subspace activity undoubtedly takes place on some natural level. Therefore, activity by non-Shivan races must be more intense--must be "louder"--before the Shivans will stand up and take notice.
Before addressing your next point, I feel it necessary to decry the labeling of the FS2 box art as being "canon text" by you and others. C'mon guys, I give you more credit than that. The wording on the box was probably handled by Interplay anyway, and therefore serves as advertising hype, not as evidence we can use in a comprehensive analysis. Use your common sense; would a scouting party, i.e., one intended for reconaissance, consist of innumerable fighters and bombers, several cruisers and transports, at least three major destroyers, and a heavy-assault superdestroyer almost three kilometers in length, equipped with an impervious energy shielding system and three flux cannons suited for planetary bombardment?
"Scouting party". Geez. :doubt:
It's fairly common knowledge that the Lucifer armada was the only Shivan battlegroup deployed during the Great War; if it hadn't been, we would have heard about it in Silent Threat, or mentioned somewhere in FS2. When I mentioned reinforcements, I meant calling to the primary hive in Cocytus for back-up, not sending for other Shivans already stationed in normal space. Even the Alliance can send messages from system-to-system, as evidenced by frequent contact with Allied Command; surely the Shivans are capable of the same feat.
It seems rather apparent that when Capella goes supernova, the lesser Shivan craft within the system are otherwise occupied with Allied forces; it would be a little difficult for a Shivan cruiser to jump out when engaged in a duel with an Allied corvette. The real question here, however, is the availability of escape routes. The "main" jump node leading to Vega is successfully guarded from Shivans by the GTCv Lemnos, and even if we accept the existence of other "hidden" nodes within the system which only the Shivans have charted, it is extremely unlikely that enough inter-system jump points exist for the Shivans to make a clean getaway. As we've discussed, sacrificing cruisers and smaller craft in an attempt to kill the Allied refugees would be acceptable, but the clear majority of the Shivan forces are stationed upon the juggernauts; it is they who have priority to survive.
Your last point merely reinforces my own; the highly-advanced and alien nature of Shivan technology makes it difficult to integrate with Allied systems. Although some progress has doubtlessly occured over the last three decades, Allied understanding of Shivan materials is probably mediocre, at best. We can assume that the GTVA has a sizeable stockpile of captured Shivan equipment; if the GTI was able to experiment upon captured Shivan specimen, then those Shivans must have been on board something, be they fighters, bombers, transports, or cruisers. If Allied technicians had a detailed understanding of Shivan workings, however, then they would be able to regularly incorporate those features into Allied designs, instead of utilizing Shivan technology only when they are able to secure Shivan craft. Our point of focus is Shivan engines, however, and unless the Alliance can master those, then their other expertise in Shivan tools--be they weapons, armor, or something else altogether--becomes moot.
Thank you for your most sincere criticism of the Manifesto; it took me several hours over the course of two days to make an adequate reply, and you've given me a great deal of new material to edit into the Manifesto proper once I have the opportunity!
Unfortunately, it's getting late, so I'll have to stop making responses for the time being. I'll try to get back to the rest of you when I get the chance!
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Originally posted by Antares
In a fashion, this in itself may be the answer to the question of the "Great Preservers". Perhaps the rise of the Alliance, a force that, like the Shivans themselves, "did not die", is something the Shivans--maybe without realizing it--have been fostering for centuries. It was inevitable that eventually, there would come a race that would learn from the mistakes of those that came before, one that would not so easily knuckle under to the Destroyers. Unlike the dead and buried societies of the past, the GTVA has potential, potential to learn and adapt, potential to discover a final, permanent solution to the conflict with which they are faced. It is possible that, in the distant future, Terrans and Vasudans may stumble upon a means of travel superior even to that of the subspace corridor, allowing them to maintain their integrity as a society without incurring the hateful, desperate rage of the Shivans.
I actually seem to have a different thought on that.
For some reason, I see our survival as maybe our 'coming of age.'
I am also finding it hard to expain what I'm thinking... meep.
I'm trying to think along the lines of: 'Now that the Shivans have found a species, or in our case a pair of species capable of withstanding their wrath, that maybe it is our duty to a: Eliminate the Shivans, and b: Take over where they left off. Guard the little'uns, and the like.' Maybe? Passing the torch, if you will.
I don't know. I don't think often, and when I do, I get stuff like this... :/
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I still don't think the Shivans could use any nodes that the GTVA can not... The movement of the Lucifer fleet around the allied blockade is never really explained, but presumably the GTA/PVN could have simply not found the node in Deneb before the Shivans arrived. (For that matter, when there is a choice between FS1 "cannon" and FS2 "cannon," FS2 will win every time. And I still maintain that the Shivans could have forcasted a period of stability in a node leading to Ross 128 in order to slip their fleet through, and that this is more plausable than them simply not using nodes or using horribly unstable ones. And "damaging subspace" to me means having a lot of high-energy dispersals (such as combat or the explosion of extreme-yield weapons) take place within the confines of a subspace corridor. There is never any mention of damaging local subspace, and indeed by its nature from the FS techrooms and what we see in game, this hardly seems possible. Yet, the two are inescapably linked. Like has been mentioned before, the very idea of damaging the fabric of space (as subspace is by definition a part of space itself) seems like an idea ripped right out of Star Trek, and an unconvincing one at that.
Antares, you've put together a well thought-out piece here. I don't agree with almost any of it, nor do a lot of folks around these parts, but that doesn't speak any less of it. We won't ever accept it as cannon, (or even as close to cannon, as it gives the Shivans too much humanity IMHO) and most of your explanations will meet stiff opposition, but that is simply the nature of the beast. Welcome to the HLPBB.
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Didn't the Shivans use a Knossos Gate besides the one activated by Bosch? I seem to recall discovering another Knossos Gate in a nebula and seeing a huge Shivan ship jump through it.
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maybe the activation of one triggered the other's...
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Antares, you should make this an illustrated essay. We could publish it for you. :D
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Antares, you have too much time.
but if you enjoy writing, go to www.nodewar.com and check the forums.
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A few more replies, since I have some time.
First, an addition to Sybiene: You claimed that the Shivans would opt to simply destroy the Knossos portals, but we do not know for certain if this is even possible. The briefing for "A Flaming Sword" states that the Alliance chooses to destroy the first device via Meson bomb deployment as opposed to main gun barrage for "strategic and scientific reasons". This presents us with three possibilities:
1. The material of which the Knossos is made will react in a strange manner when directly exposed to beam energy. We can only guess as to what this reaction might be, or why it would even matter, since the Alliance's goal is to destroy the portal anyway.
2. The portal is either partially or totally resistant to beam energy, making Meson bombs a more efficient method of its destruction.
3. Bean cannons can damage the device, but Allied scientists would rather use the opportunity to test the Meson bombs.
The player and various other vessels can fire on the Knossos in-game with no visible effect. We know for a fact that the portal is a sturdy structure, simply because the detonation of the first Meson bomb--despite wiping out all small craft within some three kilometers--caused no apparent damage. Whether or not the Knossos could withstand assault by a Sathanas is another question entirely, but since the largest Shivan vessels to enter Gamma Draconis prior to the destruction of the portal were of cruiser-class, then the point becomes moot.
Kazan: If what you say is true, then it certainly does a punch a rather large hole in the Manifesto, but in all the time I've played Freespace, I can't recall seeing anything of the kind being mentioned. You may be thinking of the database entry mentioning that only subspace nodes expected to remain stable are sanctioned for travel by the GTVA. If you can pin down exactly where the notion that subspace travel stabilizes nodes is located, I'll be happy to take a look at it.
TrashMan: Non-corporeal life-forms have been a staple of science fiction for years (for example, the film Titan A.E. specifically depicted malicious, Shivan-esque energy creatures called the Dredge), not to mention being crucial components of several major religious doctrines. Just because we don't know about a thing does not mean that it does not exist.
Ghosts! That's what the Shivans are! Ghosts! O_O
Karajorma: First, let me apologize for looting your transcripts of Bosch's monologues and Admiral Petrarch's speech; all are taken from your own FS page, something I intend to credit when I go back and re-edit the main body of the Manifesto. As for your point, it's hard for me to imagine the Shivans interrogating Bosch, for a few reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, the Shivans have never previously been interested in talking to either Terrans or Vasudans, and have never taken prisoners (with the exception of Bosch and his command crew). We are granted very few glimpses of Shivan/Terran personal interaction: once in the "Hall Fight" cutscene, and again with the apperance of the Lucifer at Tombaugh Station (described in the Freespace Reference Bible). We may or may not wish to include the boarding of the Iceni as a third example. In each case, contact has been extremely violent, with no intent to discuss any sort of terms, or indeed, to ask questions of any sort.
Secondly is the problem of the language barrier itself. Humans aren't Shivan, as Commander Snipes so succintly points out to us, and we don't speak "quantum pulse" very well. So far as we know, the only ETAK prototype was aboard the Iceni, and that was recovered by the GTVA. Despite Bosch's rigorous study of the Shivans, he's no MacGuyver, and it seems unlikely that he would be able to rebuild such a device completely from memory. Even if we accept that Bosch had the ETAK blueprints stored on his nifty little laptop, and that he took it with him when he was captured (something that is virtually guaranteed to be untrue; if the Alliance hadn't recovered Bosch's computer, then we probably wouldn't be reading his personal log), then he is still aboard a Shivan vessel, with no Terran tools or materials with which to assemble his device.
Therefore, if, when you say that Bosch was probably "interrogated", you really mean "dissected", then you are likely to be correct.
Your next point is a very good one, one I am hesistant to even address. As much as I hate to shun reliable sources, I am afraid we must be forced to ignore some real-life astronomical statistics when dealing with the Freespace universe.
The folks at Volition are, by profession, game designers--and damn good ones at that, or I wouldn't have poured so much time into Freespace as I have. So far as we know, none of them are physicists who have any more basic knowledge of astronomy than you, me, or anyone we would meet on the street. I remember reading in an interview that an author was hired to create the main plotline for FS2, and we can safely assume that he, too, was just another average guy looking to get his paycheck. I find it very likely that rather than pick and choose star names to assign to various systems in accordance with their specific needs--a process that would have taken a tremendous amount of time--the Volition staffers simply randomly chose the names of popular stars, or stars that they happened to be fond of.
This supposition is not without some supporting evidence. Take Capella, as it is depicted in FS2: a system with one star, densely-populated, a center of industry, and the headquarters of the GTVA's 3rd Fleet. This would lead us to assume that either the planets in this system are suitable for habitation, or that the system itself is legion with installations fit for both residential and mining/production purposes.
In reality, Capella is a rather inhospitable place to be. The system itself contains at least ten stars, including the G-type giants Capella A and Capella B, which are generally those most-associated with the system. We never see any of these sister suns in FS2. Capella A and B are large stars, and have a narrow orbit around one another (about the distance from Earth to Venus), and the potential for a stable planetary orbit around either star is small. Even if planets were orbiting around Capella, those worlds would be severely irradiated by both stars, and would also be tidally locked, meaning that the same side of the planet would always face the sun (in the same way as the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth--hence, the "dark side of the Moon" is the side we never see). This eliminates the potential for planet-based life as we know it, leaving us to rely upon life existing upon heavily-trafficked space stations... something I view as being more than a little difficult with almost a dozen stars crowding the immediate vicinity.
The point I'm making is that for the purposes of our discussion, we should try to regard astronomical details as they are presented within Freespace itself, without turning to outside sources. I don't fault Volition in the least for randomly naming their star systems; it's a time-saving measure, and some games, like the Master of Orion series, provide random names to every star in the galaxy (with the exception of the homeworld, which has a pre-set name determined by species, a value the player can change) as selected from a set list of some 300 stars. It may not be the most realistic approach to take, but then again, the designers of these games hardly expect the vast majority of their fans to look into the titles with as much depth as we have.
Woolie: My preliminary hypothesis for the Shivans' origin was as doomsday weapons intentionally unleashed in a long-ended war. The exact circumstances of this conflict were never fleshed out completely, but I toyed with various ideas, including the Shivans' creators being the survivors of one of the many civilizations slaughtered or enslaved by the Ancients during their overzealous conquest of the galaxy. The Shivans would have been programmed with three relatively simple directives, which I could never agree upon, since Shivan behavior in itself is somewhat erratic; the closest I ever got was something along the lines of Purification, Adaptation, and Survival. The Shivans proved to be too well-made, however, and eventually turned upon their creators, killing them along with everything else their race came across. Sybiene shot down the idea in her own unique fashion, making the (valid) point that any race sophisticated enough to actually build other sentient creatures would not forget to include a "Do not harm your creators" directive.
While I'd been messing around with various short-story ideas for a couple of years prior to this point, Inferno had been released shortly before this time, and I'd considered writing the story as an add-on to the campaign, since it was (and is) the best that has yet to be produced (and will probably stay that way, since I doubt that the Holy Grail of Freespace campaigns, Paradigm Shift, will ever be released). This was the reason for the inclusion of the "Adaptation" directive, since according to canon material, the Shivans are decidedly not innovative; in Inferno, however, they have a bunch of new hardware to show off.
This idea was eventually dropped, because I consider myself a highly creative person; as much as I like Inferno, I wasn't comfortable with boosting off the hard work of others. The second Shivan backstory depicted the Shivans as eco-cyborgs that had gone haywire; they had a similar list of directives (Purification, Multiplication, Efficiency), but they reached the unfortunate conclusion that fully-organic sentients were inherently impure (overmining their planets, polluting their air, and so on), and therefore needed to be eliminated. Sybiene didn't like this idea either, claiming that a species whose purpose was environmental preservation probably wouldn't waltz around the galaxy glassing the surface of planets and blowing up stars.
Another Inferno-esque story that didn't focus as heavily upon the Shivan origins depicted the future of the Great War. I.E., an elder race decimates the Shivans in the distant past; the Shivans recover, slaughtering their attackers, and later the Ancients, who had crushed so many races beneath their heel; the Shivans wound the Terrans and Vasudans, but are driven back on both occasions; the surviving Ancients ally themselves with the GTVA, and launch a final, deep strike against the Shivans to end the alien threat once and for all. By this point in time, the Alliance has so heavily researched Shivan technologies that they are effectively building their own Shivan ships, using their destructive weapons. Clad in these weapons of war like their enemies before them, the GTVA-Ancient Combine unleashes a new crusade upon the galaxy to ensure that such a threat as the Shivans will never rise again, rampaging across the stars, conquering all who submit to them and killing those who will not, having duly assumed the mantle of the Destroyers. Sybiene thought this story was too gloomy and depressing.
As you can probably tell, Sybiene doesn't like many of my ideas. :doubt:
The Shivan-subspace-origin theory had not yet originated at this time. Early species ideas gave them a homeworld, a factory-planet named Kali hidden deep in Shivan-controlled space, where a planet-wide supercomputer meted out their commands and computated their battle-strategies. A more recent theory depicted the Shivan star system as a vacant, desolate place on the very edge of the galaxy, so remote that no light from adjacent stars could be seen; even the star in-system was not natural, but artificial, a gigantic Shivan construct that bathed the system and its hellish inhabitants in an eerie red glow.
Sybiene and I had a big argument about the plausibility of a Shivan star, involving Dyson Spheres. I won. :p
The only Freespace story I ever got down on paper was a work entitled "Devil in the Dark", involving the emergence of a second Lucifer-class craft that rampaged through GTVA space, destroying numerous warships (including the Aquitaine) before finally being destroyed by the newly-deployed GTVA Hades. The story was thirty pages in length, and--being written about three years ago--wasn't especially good. My skills with the pen have much improved. :D
One cheesy story dealt with another mega-weapon--a very large, spherical, beam-arrayed construct called the Dark Star--that had been built by a race able to survive the Shivan onslaught. The Dark Star energized itself by consuming matter and converting it to energy; the story had a neat scene where the weapon sucked up a nebular cloud to power its internal reactor, another where it carved up a planet with its gargantuan frontal beam cannons, and another where it literally ate a Sathanas juggernaut.
I can't really blame Sybiene for not liking that one.
StratComm: Taking the attitude that we know nothing about the Shivans, and therefore shouldn't even try to understand them, is cynical. Sure, much of the Shivan appeal lies in their enigma, in their mystery, but a great deal of the fun lies in trying to unravel that mystery, in guessing at just who or what the Shivans might be. Humans can't resist a good mystery, and it is our right--if not our obligation--to seek the answer to a puzzle, when we find one. Volition wouldn't have crafted the Shivans in such a way if they didn't want us to wonder.
We don't know whether the Shivans attacked any Vasudan or Terran colonies, as no other planetary bombardments are mentioned in FS1. They did level any Allied installations they encountered. Nor do we know for certain if the Shivans knew for certain that Vasuda was the Vasudan homeworld; it's possible they would have been able to deduce this from fleet movements (as Volition comments imply), but they wouldn't be able to glean this knowledge from the content of any intercepted Allied transmissions.
Destroying every star in the GTVA would be insanely time-prohibitive, when we consider how slowly juggernauts move, how regularly they would have to be replaced (assuming a percentage are destroyed every time a star supernovas), and how long it takes to charge up the necessary subspace pulse. It would have been more efficient for the Shivans to wipe out the Allies colony-by-colony, dispersing the Shivan fleet evenly throughout Allied space.
Sybiene again: The NTF rebellion lasted a mere 18 months, in comparison to the 14 years of the T-V War. The duration of the rebellion was probably too short to attract the Shivans' attention.
It's not as if the Shivans intended for the Lucifer to be destroyed, sheesh. It wasn't their fault the Allies figured out how to break through their defenses. The collapse of the Sol node was just an unfortunate accident, for both sides.
If you're referring to the collapse itself drawing Shivan attention, then no, it wouldn't have mattered to the Shivan forces stationed "back home". Shivan forces had already been dispatched to deal with the present problem, so what more could the Shivans do? They likely ignored the cataclysm either as a result of the ongoing conflict, or as a natural subspace collapse, and with the reduced subspace activity following the decimation of the Allied fleet, probably assumed that the mission to destroy the invaders had been a success.
You jump to conclusions when you say that the Shivans would have simply popped right into the middle of Allied space, were that within their capability. Look at the situation from a strategic standpoint. We know from Volition comments that--despite much in-game commentary to the contrary--Ross 128 was not the first system to fall under Shivan attack. In the Freespace Developer's Mailing List archives, Adam Pletcher states, in effect, that the Shivan forces approached Ross 128 through fringe systems of far less importance, so loss of contact with them was not an alarming thing. From all indications, the Shivans prefer to strike at the edges of an enemy's territory, and on multiple fronts. This wasn't possible in FS2, because the Shivans had only one point of entry into GTVA space. The Shivans like to "test the waters", so to speak. Assuming they could make an accurate jump into the middle of enemy territory, they would not do so, because such a tactic amounts to a suicide mission. The Shivans in the Great War had no prior contact with the GTA or the PVE, and would have known nothing of their weaponry or fleet capabilities; if the Allies were perhaps thirty or forty years more advanced in the way of technology, they would have been able to outmatch the Lucifer fleet, making such an attack a useless strategy. Instead, the Shivans take a more cautious route, "feeling out" the GTA and PVE before launching deep-strike sorties.
I thought I had indicated this in the Manifesto--I'll have to check--but I agree with you when you say that the Shivans probably already had at least part of the juggernaut armada on-station prior to the destruction of Capella. Not every Shivan craft has the capability to force-nova a star and return to Cocytus, suggesting that there are probably fair-sized Shivan forces already existing in normal space as the remnants of fleets that have already returned, or of squadrons that were never intended to. These forces would, in all likelihood, patrol a given area for the presence of hostiles. This explains the presence of the nine initial juggernauts, but it is unlikely that the Shivans would have over 80 of the craft in the immediate area to be able to deploy them in such a short amount of time. The destruction of the Comm Nodes, however, would have sent a clear flare to the Shivans that reinforcements were needed, and the resulting subspace disruption would have allowed them to pinpoint the location to which to sortie their fleet.
Remember that the Shivans are probably efficient creatures. They must balance their needs between swiftly ending a conflict and preventing needless sacrifice of their own legions. A Sathanas-class juggernaut--the largest canon vessel we know for certain to exist in the Shivan fleet--was probably considered to be a suitable weapon against the Alliance. Why would the Shivans waste the time and effort of deploying dozens, when one would suffice? It's highly unlikely they anticipated the destruction of the mega-destroyer at the hands of the Colossus; this, in turn, would prompt them to act in greater force than before. After all, if you're right, then why didn't the Shivans send in all their juggernauts at once, instead of deploying the first few one at a time?
If the Shivans are as proficient in subspace physics as we believe them to be, then don't you think they would be able to figure out a way to make their shields function there, if they were intended as a defensive measure? This is why I think the energy shieldings to be a holdover from early exploration attempts, rather than barriers against weaponry; the shields don't function in subspace because they were never designed to.
Sandwich: A symptom is a characteristic sign or indicator of the existence of something else; it is a direct effect, not an incidental one. Diseases produce symptoms, medications produce side-effects.
The quote from the Ancient monologue you use doesn't imply weakness on their part in any way. If anything, it strengthens my own, for the Ancients admit that they intruded into a place where they had no right to be--i.e., subspace. "Weak" races don't establish galactic empires. Terrans and Vasudans were "weak" compared to the Shivans, and very likely to the Ancients themselves, and yet--through a stroke of luck--they were able to beat the Ancients back. If the Shivans really were some variety of galactic-evoluntionary-Darwinism race of aliens, then shouldn't they have won the Great War?
Dude. Police negotiate to free hostages. They try to diffuse situations. Shivans kill everyone. :doubt:
Flaser: I'll reiterate. Irrational races don't build spaceships.
Setekh: But I can't draw. :p
Thanks to one and all for your intruiging comments. I'll work into incorporating all the new information into the primary essay, when I have the opportunity. This will probably be the last update for a while, as these posts are very time-consuming, and I have something resembling a life to attend to.
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:yes:
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I still don't agree with a lot of this Antares; the idea that the Shivans sortied the rest of the Sathanas fleet upon the destruction of the Comm nodes I find ludacris though. There just happens to be 7 of them passing through that one system alone, in a rather stoic precession I might add, so thinking that they suddenly cut off as soon as Alpha jumps out (and then the rest come later) is not something I can accept. Granted, you can disobey your order to jump, and no more juggernauts will arrive through Knossos 3. However, we cannot expect Volition to make the missions script to eternity when the mission has to end in 15 minutes.
You're also still relying heavily on the fact that subspace is being refered to by the Ancients in their monologues. I don't take it to mean that at all. I think the line you're refering to actually makes reference to their vast interstellar empire, controlling planets vastly distant from their own and wreaking havoc on any lesser races that they came across. They make specific references to conquering others, after all, but never do they imply that the Shivans came to kick them out of subspace. So according to the monologues, the Shivans are not the Great Preservers of subspace, or some higher cosmic order. To the Ancient in the monologue, they are the great preservers of life and development, in a twisted and somewhat evil way. Also, they can be seen as the preservers of their own superiority, a far more likely connotation.
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Woolie: My preliminary hypothesis for the Shivans' origin was as doomsday weapons intentionally unleashed in a long-ended war. The exact circumstances of this conflict were never fleshed out completely, but I toyed with various ideas, including the Shivans' creators being the survivors of one of the many civilizations slaughtered or enslaved by the Ancients during their overzealous conquest of the galaxy. The Shivans would have been programmed with three relatively simple directives, which I could never agree upon, since Shivan behavior in itself is somewhat erratic; the closest I ever got was something along the lines of Purification, Adaptation, and Survival. The Shivans proved to be too well-made, however, and eventually turned upon their creators, killing them along with everything else their race came across. Sybiene shot down the idea in her own unique fashion, making the (valid) point that any race sophisticated enough to actually build other sentient creatures would not forget to include a "Do not harm your creators" directive.
Yes, but the directives the creators gave the Shivans in my timeline were not absolute, and thus when the Shivans discovered that their foes were not stupid apes like their directives stated, they abandoned the directives. As for the "do not harm your creators" part, I'm well aware that a creator race would make sure to put such a directive in. It was the creator race that fired the first shot once they found that the Shivans had betrayed them.
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Taken, broadly speaking, from the concept brainstorm for 'Apocalypse Nigh':
The Shivans have abandoned planetary existence, because their race has grown to the point where they would strip a planet to the core in a few years just to get the resources they need to survive. They instead harvest resources from nebulae, and if necessary they make their own...
While they are all subservient to a 'hive mind', this does not prevent them developing individual personalities and traits. Also, a hive mind would be unable to coordinate military efforts between galaxies. Hence, each galaxy that the Shivans have spread to has a 'hive node', which also defends an intergalactic jump node.
This intergalactic jump node is actually the core Black Hole of the galaxy. The gravity well of the galaxy's core warps space sufficiently to allow intergalactic travel under the right conditions. Galactic cores are not well suited to supporting life, though. The Shivan 'home base' takes the form of a gigantic Dyson Sphere built around the Black Hole...
The Shivans are a species just like any other. They have altered their bodies over millions of years to enable them to survive in a vaccuum with no ill effects, thereby reducing the resources they require to heat and pressurise their ships. This also makes their ships more resilient: they don't have to contain an atmosphere.
They have dominated their original galaxy, and completely consumed the resources of their home system. There is no longer even a nebula to mark the death of their original star. The Destroyers have reached across space to other galaxies, such as our own. They are at the top of the galactic food chain, and they have crushed countless species as they look further and further afield for resources. They have sufficient star systems to last them millions of years, but they cannot risk becoming complacent. They fear that if they do not lay claim to the Universe, they will be challenged by a more powerful species in many millions of years time, when their existing resources are running low.
Since they dominated their galaxy, they have not needed to adapt. By sheer, overwhelming force of numbers and technology, they have obliterated younger races. Never before have they been defeated. Never have they lost a Superdestroyer. Previously, they fought infant races that were either alone in their galaxy or were powerful enough to crush opposition without effort.
The GTVA is small, right now. Insignificant. It has won a victory, though. It is dangerous. It is an unknown factor, and so they test its strength. The Terran and Vasudan races were evenly matched in the Great War, and so they had been forced by conflict to evolve, and survive. Amongst all the races encountered by the Shivans, the Terran and Vasudan races are unique because they are used to fighting for their very survival.
When the Shivans lost the Sathanas, they realised that we were a threat. We had learnt from their technology in a very short time, and we were adapting faster than any species they had fought before. So they used Capella to create a temporary node, allowing them to pull back their Juggernauts while they observed us. Observed our reaction to their display of power. And they tried to learn from us.
Forty years have passed. The Shivans have not been seen since Capella was destroyed. During a mop-up operation in Zeta Aquilae, clearing up the remnants of the Hammer of Light (which survived Operation Templar by retreating in secret to an unexplored region of space), another Knossos is discovered. The HoL has activated it as an escape route. When the GTD Aquitaine moves in to follow them, a Moloch-class corvette exits the portal. The Moloch's main beam is stronger than usual: A single Sathanas cannon has replaced the three small beams it usually carries. The Shivans are adapting their ships, having realised that their technology is no longer light-years ahead of their competitors.
The Moloch heavily damages the Aquitaine, and the Destroyer only escapes because of a young pilot who secretly had a Helios loaded into his Myrmidon (long story: you'll have to wait until I've finished writing this bit). His warhead destroys the Moloch's weapon and breaches the reactor, tearing the corvette apart but not before his fighter is destroyed by the Shivan warship's flak guns. He ejects and is later recovered by the GVD Memphis' Argo-class 'ejection boat' transport. The Aquitaine is taken back to drydock for repairs, and undergoes an experimental upgrade procedure. She becomes the GTVA's first true superdestroyer, of the GTSD Morgul class.
Packing twin Sathanas cannon variants and multiple Pulse AAA Beam turrets, she leads a strike force into the portal to determine the extent of the Shivan forces. Resistance is light, and Command decides to withdraw from the portal lest the events of the Second Shivan War be repeated.
Shortly afterward, a small Shivan fleet led by a Sathanas enters the newly-discovered system and sets course for Regulus (Zeta Aquilae links to Regulus). There, it attacks New Alamo station, the GTVA's primary weapons research installation.
Command deploys a new warship, built for system defence: GTVD Revenant. Larger than the Colossus, and built in Regulus near New Alamo, Revenant is designed to obliterate capital ships. Although unweildy, the warship's main weapon can atomise a Sathanas in seconds, which it now does...
This is the first combat test of the Hyperbeam Cannon, which uses a subspace warp to store a vast amount of energy and focus it into a beam. It is not classed as a Beam Cannon per se, but the effects are similar (but on a far larger scale...). The front of the ship sustains minor damage from the massive energy output, so it withdraws for adjustment and repair after driving away the Shivan force.
At about this time, the GTVA is testing the Apollo Gate, a type of Knossos portal. After initial alignment tests it is focused on Sol, and a group of Pegasus fighters (Columbus Wing) are sent through. They arrive in a nebula, quite obviously not the intended destination, but Command insists that the coordinates are correct for Sol.
There are Shivans in the nebula. Rahu-class miners. About to return home, Columbus 2 detects a distress signal originating from a nearby asteroid. The signal format is unrecognised at first, but is determined to be a variant of a Great War SOS signal. The beacon contains a sound recording, detailing the last minutes of an evac transport from Earth.
The Apollo Gate was on target. The nebula is all that remains of Sol. The asteroid field is all that remains of Earth.
With final adjustments to Revenant completed, and a variant of the Apollo Gate system installed in its jump drive, Command sends out a Zone Call on the newly-discovered Shivan system beyond Zeta Aquilae.
Every combat-capable warship apart from skeleton defence forces converges on a single star system. Their goal: to take ground from the Shivans. To exact revenge for the annihilation of Sol. Revenant leads the fleet.
The Shivans are caught completely off guard. No race has ever dared attack their systems, and no race has ever fielded a weapon that they do not already have. Unable to comprehend the Hyperbeam, the Shivan armada retreats. The GTVA follows.
The Shivans make feints into GTVA space through uncharted nodes, but Revenant's Apollo drive enables her to respond to any attack almost anywhere in known space.
Eventually, the GTVA fleet penetrates the heart of the Shivan-held territories. The Shivans have massed all their ships there, retreating in the face of the GTVA's ultimate weapon and preparing a defence. A formidable defence. They no longer possess superior technology, but the Shivans will always have numbers on their side.
Ships pour forth from the great shipyards around the hive node. The Shivans prepare to crush the GTVA's attack, then eliminate the problem once and for all. The GTVA is daunted by the Dyson Sphere, but they are not unable to penetrate it. Fighting through waves of Destroyers, Revenant manages to breach the hull of the Shivan base.
And a single vessel runs the blockade, and reaches the Black Hole within.
The GTVA learned a great deal from Capella. The Pegasus fighters that monitored the Sathanii collected a great deal of useful data, especially the brave pilots who flew close enough to scan the systems producing the subspace field. With typical ingenuity, the GTVA research corps, New Alamo particularly, have adapted the technology and succeeded in mounting it inside a single Orion hull. The Orion is unable to carry or power anything except the subspace field generator, but it doesn't need to. Launched like a giant missile, it enters the Black Hole and fires up its own Apollo Gate.
Assisted by the stationary Apollo installation back in Vega, it enhances Black Hole's gravity well until the event horizon reaches the inner surface of the Dyson Sphere.
The GTVA fleet escapes through a node created by Revenant, slingshotting into subspace beside the flagship. When the Shivan hive node finally collapses into the Black Hole, the fleet has already reached a safe distance and the crews watch the ensuing annihilation of the Shivan fleet...
They all share the thought, but only the Admiral of Revenant voices it:
'May God have mercy upon us for what we have wrought this day.'
EPILOGUE
The Shivan Hive Node was completely destroyed by the Black Hole. Their remaining forces, now deprived of the node's control, retreated in disarray before our armada led by the GTVD Revenant. The Ultimate Destroyers, the conquerors of our Galaxy, had finally been vanquished.
I write this now as a warning. The GTVA possesses a ship, an unstoppable weapon, which alone defeated the Shivan armada, just as their Lucifer did to us in the Great War. We now have total dominion over our Galaxy.
But not over the Universe.
The Shivans' origins are unknown, but it is likely that they once found themselves masters of their Galaxy, and cast themselves across the void of Deep Space in a search for new territory, new challenges, and new resources. They have been driven from our empire, but doubtless they still exist in the depths of space.
As they were to the Ancients, so we are to them. We weild technologies undreamed of fifty years ago. We replace our greatest enemy. History repeats itself.
And eventually, a future species will see the GTVD Revenant as 'Lucifer', and us as the Ultimate Destroyers.
And our own Apocalypse draws nigh.
Damn, should've enclosed all that in [shameless plug] tags...
It's mostly bull****, but I was going for the dramatic.
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Antares I never meant that they were irrational in the sense of the word meaning stupidity.
What I tried to grasp was the the very human racionalism is something quite irrational compared to the universe (tell me why is it that the most common number in nature is actualy e an irrational number).
So they are quite rational - In their own way!
Even on Earth the difference between western and eastern lifestyles and view of things are extremely different. Imagine what a completly alien race that had to endure space for milenias would make of all the racionality you speak of.
About this evolution/origin issue:
I don't like the subspace origin, however the whole theory has many good thoughts that I believe could be true.
I think Shivans were born on a planet just like any other race - however they had to take upon themselves the role of Destroyers when the time finally came.
That time was when they finally left their home and took residence in space. That very act had resulted in their behaviour since from then on space superiority was the only dimension of their life.
Living in space does more than getting used to living in weightlessnes.
For instance evolution does not stop - so their bodies would have started to adept. Meanwhile they could help the process with eugenetics and cybernetical enhancements.
Psychologically the change is even more important than the new body: a mind experiencing space in a limitless 6 degrees of freedom would have a very special view of things. The presence of gravity always presents us an angle - we tend to value things on a single scale one dimensionally.
Since Aristoteles a scientific statement is either true or false.
In Eastern Philosophy they never made such science of Logic, instead their belief is more like this: A statement can be true or false, then I can prove and disaprove both. So there are 6 states for a statement.
In a certain situation even two seemingly contradicting statements could be true simulteniously.
A space-faring race would see things in differently balanced view than our one-dimensional thinking - it would be more spacy, 3 dimensional.
The vast emptiness of space enforces the importance of the idividual and consciousness in general, while it also strengens the power of community as the only other source of life.
So the Shivans, even if they originated on a planet, are the most alien thing we can think of. Space has transformed them.
I really liked the idea of the GTVA being forced to take the position of the Destroyers - I think that's exactly what the Shivan had done once.
It could be that Cockytus is the centre of the cluster where all the nearby galaxies interlop in subspace.
As such it would be the natural candidate for any multigalactic civilisation - tyranny or democracy alike.
So all who came beforehand must have tried to hold it. It could be the most ancient thing - even older than the Shivans by magnitudes.
Structures in scale of planets, factories big as moons....everything is possible.
However it seems that the Shivans no longer use them....or they never used them - their Destroyers did.
They merly exploit the wreckages of a civilisation that has once gripped the entire cluster in its mighty hold.
Even if the Shivans did estabilish quite a few facilities themselves, right now they don't likely still do so.
They are decadent IMHO, the milenies forced a static structure on their society and way of life - this could lead to facistm, elitist and racist movements that suit a xenocidal race - so they no longer try to improove or evolve...They fend of the remains of the past.
It's somthing similar to the Foundation trilogies Empire - Trantor is big death trap, it holds the key of the galaxy, however he is filled with acid itself - the essence of decay.
The Shivans came to be the destoyers and in doing so they must have freed the galaxy in a sense, but then they started to resemble their earlier tyrants caught in the same unmanagable situation:
It is impossible to run an empire of that size.
Rather than going down the same path, the Shivans simply abandoned it and left it to fall apart on its own - allowing other races to rise and spread their wings.
They travel the galaxies looking for any remainder of the old destroyers - or someone with the potential to become one.
This is their last act of stoic resistance in face of time's challenge.
They given up on development - they think it only leads to evitable fall. After all death is the ultimate end of evolution...
So instead they focuse on preserving - even at the cost of killing the flowers of their efforts.
It is still better to trample a few than bring about another cataclysm or an era of Chaos like the Empire used to be.
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Originally posted by Antares
Sandwich: A symptom is a characteristic sign or indicator of the existence of something else; it is a direct effect, not an incidental one. Diseases produce symptoms, medications produce side-effects.
Oops, my bad - musta been very tired. :p But that strengthens my point, that Shivans are a direct result of life's ability to kill other life off - a needed part of the equation.
Originally posted by Antares
The quote from the Ancient monologue you use doesn't imply weakness on their part in any way. If anything, it strengthens my own, for the Ancients admit that they intruded into a place where they had no right to be--i.e., subspace. "Weak" races don't establish galactic empires. Terrans and Vasudans were "weak" compared to the Shivans, and very likely to the Ancients themselves, and yet--through a stroke of luck--they were able to beat the Ancients back. If the Shivans really were some variety of galactic-evoluntionary-Darwinism race of aliens, then shouldn't they have won the Great War?
Yes, the Ancients were trespassers in subspace (Vanquished). But if it was merely that trespass that signed their death warrant, why did the Shivans not come for them until they started conquering and killing other races?
Going back to the crime analogy, say a criminal breaks into a house protected by a security system. Motion sensors line the front and back yards, cameras cover the house from a number of angles, etc. When that criminal stepped onto that lawn, he was a trespasser onto property owned by the owners of that house.
But now widen the example a bit, an imagine a neighorhood protected by a similar security system. It has walls to prevent casual and accidental trespassing, and more sophisticated measures to detect the intrusion of those with possible criminal intent.
So a few criminals hop over said wall and set off motion sensors (Ancients discover subspace and begin using it). This alerts the police that something may be amiss (Shivans take note of subspace use). Those persons are trespassing, not on the police's property, but on the property the police is guarding (Shivans are guardians of the life of galaxies by monitoring subspace use).
So the police send out a squad to check the situation out (Shivans send Lucifer fleet on scouting mission). The squad arrives to find screaming and gunshots coming from inside a house (Lucifer fleet discovers the V-T War). The squad alerts HQ, and tries to do what they can to deal with the situation - using force as violence has already broken out and is escalating by the moment (Lucifer fleet presumably contacts the rest of the Shivans about the V-T War situation, and then attempts to deal with the heart of the matter - Vasuda Prime and Terra). The police squad manages to kill one ringleader, but they are killed before they can eliminate the other source of violence (Lucifer nukes Vasuda, but is destroyed before it can nuke Earth).
Back at police HQ, they haven't heard anything further from their squad after the report that the squad would try to deal with the situation, and are unable to raise them on the radio (Shivans are unable to contact Lucifer fleet for a number of years - remember that this is a galactic time-scale we're talking about here). HQ sends out a SWAT team to prevent the situation from expanding beyond the confines of the house (Shivans send out Sathanas fleet).
So the analogy works pretty well IMO. Anyone else care to expand it?
Originally posted by Antares
Dude. Police negotiate to free hostages. They try to diffuse situations. Shivans kill everyone. :doubt:
The analogy doesn't work all the way, obviously, but perhaps thinking of the Shivans both as the police and the SWAT team of the universe would help. Whatevers. :p
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Energy life-forms? Bah....
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What's wrong with the idea of energy life forms?
Define 'life form'.
We can't say that 'this is life, and it's the only way it can be' because we only have one example. It's like saying that all technology is based on fire; to our knowledge, only one species has evolved to the point of developing a technology, and that was based on fire, but we only have one example.
So really, we can't say that life forms comprised entirely of energy are impossible, because we don't know.
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Well, we only know we are a life form because of the energy patterns in our brains telling us so. So I suppose if the energy patterns can be coherent without any constraining matter, theres no reason why it's not numerically possible. After all, just about anything is :)
Flipside :D
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I love this whole thing. :D
I find it fascinating that we are a matter-based life form whose technology is based around harnessing energy. Shivans appear to be an energy-based life form whose technology is based around controlling matter. Brilliant!
The question is, what's left for [V] now to explain..?
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I just say this if u want to know anythin about shivans u must be shivan, and ill give you this oprtunity in first week of november.
At this time my SHIVAN MOD should be redy ( i must do some things: web site, 25 % of 640x480 graphic and ofcouse 20 missions campaing )
part I: capella incedent ( first caampaing )
part II destroy of Aicents ( second campaign in December )
and part III final solution
:)
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Mmmmm.... another campaign...
How many people are working on this project? And when is it expected to be 100% complete?
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Is there a campain about the Ancients? If there is where can I find it?
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Originally posted by Falcon
Is there a campain about the Ancients? If there is where can I find it?
Inferno has the Ancients fleet. It would make for a depressing campaign though, since you would lose. :blah:
Originally posted by c914
I just say this if u want to know anythin about shivans u must be shivan, and ill give you this oprtunity in first week of november.
At this time my SHIVAN MOD should be redy ( i must do some things: web site, 25 % of 640x480 graphic and ofcouse 20 missions campaing )
part I: capella incedent ( first caampaing )
part II destroy of Aicents ( second campaign in December )
and part III final solution
:)
Wow, I didn't know n00bs this n00bish still existed... *takes pictures and sends them to National Geographic*
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Originally posted by Antares
Setekh: But I can't draw. :p
I'll show you what I mean when I have time to do the illustrations for you - in about a month. Meanwhile, make sure you keep a permanent copy of this, in a text file or something, and keep it safe - email it to me, even. If you can stick around here for a month, I'll show you. ;)
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Methinks Turnsky might be helpful as well? ;)
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To reiterate: c914, when will your campaign be complete? Or is it, as I suspect, another case of:
'w00t my <4mPa1Gn g0nn4 0\/\/N j00 4ll!!!!!!111 G0nn4 h4\/3 10ad$a hu3g $h1pz!!!!!1'
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It,s not only campaing but fuul operational mod with meany new things ( mainhal new graphic loads weapons and much more new things )
Its done in 70 %.
People: only one ( but web site do someone else )
just wait until web site will be ready and you be know anthing about it:D
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Shivan Mainhall? Got any pics?
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And, no offense, but I trust and hope that the mission dialog is a much higher level of english than you are currently posting in? :)
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dont worry i will not :)
and here it is shivan hall ( picture like in TBP and Infyrno )
http://www.freespace.prv.pl/moderia/shivan_mod/screeny/main_hall.gif
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Ah, gotcha. Nice render though :yes:
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If logic is a piece of string, HLP crunches it up into a ball Quantum nLeap style and throws sense out of the window.
Just the way i like it :yes:
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You necro'd a three year dead topic just to say that?
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Why did you do it?
Why Dekker?
Why did you do it?
Dekker. Why did you do it?
Stop screaming Dekker. Why did you do it?
Dekker, why?
Why? Why, did you do it?
Why? Tell us why?
Tell us now. Why did you do it?
Why Dekker, why?
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[Billy piper] Because i want to, Because i want to [/Billie piper] :nervous:
...sorry :(
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****ing hell
Do we really need to bring up the Manifesto... AGAIN!!!
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I'd heard of it, but never seen it in its entirety. This things interests me... *uses copy-and-paste*
My only gripe: it got cut off at the very end. What more was said???? Worse: the link in Antares's signature is dead... :sigh:
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The question that always sticks in my mind is one that none of these non-canonical theories about the Shivans ever seems to address: Why did the Shivans wait 30 years to send a follow up force, and why didn't they reappear in the systems they first attacked? The Ancients believed they had trespassed, overstepped their bounds somehow. From the voice over narration, it doesn't sound as if the Shivans found them, but the other way around. Their empire was greater then the limits of known space, and yet most of the jump nodes (admittedly not ALL of them) that are not already known are too unstable for any but the masters of subspace travel (The Shivans). It seems patently obvious when the Knossos is first unveiled: This was the mechanism the Ancients used to stretch their empire across more worlds then man currently knows. The discovery of a second and then 3rd Knossos cements that.
Who knows how much further they extended before finally encountering the Shivans? And how could activating 1 Knossos device trigger countless others on the opposite side of a subspace portal, countless lightyears away? It makes much more sense to believe that when the Ancients retreated to their home system (GTVA space) they attempted to shut down the first knossos leading to the systems the Shivans came from.
Like the GTVA discovered, the jump node didn't instantly collapse, but had been stabilized. The Ancients wouldn't have any reason to know this ahead of time, after all, they were the masters of space, crushing all they encountered. Why collapse portals when you enter them in the certain knowledge of your superiority? And so the Shivans followed them, and all their works were undone.
So what does that have to do with the Lucifer and it's rather small battle group attacking the GTA and PVN 10,000 years later? The subspace portal in Gamma Draconis was no longer active. What the Ancients set out to do when they shut the device off was accomplished through time, effectively cutting off all the systems on the other side. Since the Shivans never seem to study the technology of other races, and since the gate was on the opposite side, they had no ability to follow. And yet there were still Shivans on this side of the node.
I surmise the Lucifer and it's fleet were somehow trapped, perhaps several lifetimes (or even longer) before. Shivans possess much greater knowledge of subspace travel and thus can use nodes too unstable for Terran or Vasudan craft, so the known galaxy for them would be quite a bit larger then it is for us, but still potentially cut off from the regions they came from. And so they wandered, who knows for how long, until they detected the subspace travel we generated and set out to destroy us.
I don't think the Shivans in Gamma Draconis had ever encountered humanity before, nor had the Lucifer's fleet been in contact with the rest of the Shivan race. Had they been, simply destroying the Lucifer should have triggered the sort of response the destruction of the SJ Sathanas generated (unless you think they built those in 30 years), and it would have been on their terms of engagement. They came through the node in Gamma Draconis and attacked us because we opened that door, and Shivans are attracted to significant subspace activity. Had Bosch not pursued his ultimately futile agenda, the GTVA might never have encountered the Shivans again.
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Few abstract asides;
1/ it could simply have taken the Shivans 30 years to reach GTVA space due to travelling a tremendous distance (or they could have got 'stuck' behind the knossos waiting on the Lucifers' assistance, like a sapper breaching a castle wall)
2/ the Shivans didn't 'come', they were brought by the actions of the Trinity (and then Bosch; IIRC the buildup to the Capella nova begins after he makes first contact, so it might not even be a direct response to losing a Sathani - something that could just as easily be a force recon or exploration vessel, knowing how bat**** mental the Shivans are)
3/ The ancients did either know or suspect the vulnerability of jump nodes to combat in subspace; it's not mention in FS1s' cb, etc, text, but it is within the Freespace Reference Bible.
4/ The Shivans probably had a map of GTVA space, due to the Ancients former ownership (not directly relevant, but an interesting conisderation)
5/ We don't know if Bosches agenda was ultimately futile..... ;)
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One of the more off-the-wall theories I've thrown out holds that we may not even have dealt with the same two species. We just thought we had. To hijack Bosch's analogy, the nine cities of Troy were destroyed by nine different groups of people who happened to use the same guns, and then each collapsed under the weight of their own weapons in succession, the next guy picked up the guns, and so on.
...actually, now that I think about it, chew on this idea. The Shivans are not to blame...it's their technology that makes them so destructive, eventually causing them to turn on themselves...and then it begins again when the next bunch happens upon the ruins of the last.
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One of the more off-the-wall theories I've thrown out holds that we may not even have dealt with the same two species. We just thought we had. To hijack Bosch's analogy, the nine cities of Troy were destroyed by nine different groups of people who happened to use the same guns, and then each collapsed under the weight of their own weapons in succession, the next guy picked up the guns, and so on.
...actually, now that I think about it, chew on this idea. The Shivans are not to blame...it's their technology that makes them so destructive, eventually causing them to turn on themselves...and then it begins again when the next bunch happens upon the ruins of the last.
That's interesting, but it does imply a very heavy and perhaps less plausible physical dependency; i.e. that the 'next' shivans fully adopt not only the technology, but modify their physiology to that of their predecessors.
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That's interesting, but it does imply a very heavy and perhaps less plausible physical dependency; i.e. that the 'next' shivans fully adopt not only the technology, but modify their physiology to that of their predecessors.
Perhaps there's a sort of viral nanotechnology that changes the DNA of their reproductive system to be Shivan DNA? (perhaps a bit at a time to account for incompatibilities between the Shivan child's requirements and the reproductive system of the host species)
It could also automatically grow the neurally-integrated technology (beam cannon, etc.). It could be spread like an STD (only through direct body fluid contact, which would be common when working with dead Shivans).
When you're losing, most of the people on the front lines are killed, so the virus spreads little. When you start winning, more military personnel make it home and spread the virus to their wives (and possibly others ;7), and their wives start giving birth to Shivans.
This means that once you've contacted the current Shivans and and started winning, your children start looking like them.
So the current Shivans didn't look like they do now when they started spaceflight, but when they beat the Shivans before them, they changed, just like the Shivans before them, and the ones before them, etc.
The Reason we don't have little Shivans popping out of human women yet is probably because the human DNA is different enough from the Shivan DNA to require AT LEAST a century or so for any noticeable effects to show up.
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Sort of like the descolada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descolada) virus?
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Sort of like the descolada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descolada) virus?
Sort of. The main difference is that this one doesn't spread as easily, so it probably won't destroy a planet's ecosystem in the process of making Shivans.
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uh, why has this thread been revived?
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Perhaps there's a sort of viral nanotechnology that changes the DNA of their reproductive system to be Shivan DNA? (perhaps a bit at a time to account for incompatibilities between the Shivan child's requirements and the reproductive system of the host species)
It could also automatically grow the neurally-integrated technology (beam cannon, etc.). It could be spread like an STD (only through direct body fluid contact, which would be common when working with dead Shivans).
When you're losing, most of the people on the front lines are killed, so the virus spreads little. When you start winning, more military personnel make it home and spread the virus to their wives (and possibly others ;7), and their wives start giving birth to Shivans.
This means that once you've contacted the current Shivans and and started winning, your children start looking like them.
So the current Shivans didn't look like they do now when they started spaceflight, but when they beat the Shivans before them, they changed, just like the Shivans before them, and the ones before them, etc.
The Reason we don't have little Shivans popping out of human women yet is probably because the human DNA is different enough from the Shivan DNA to require AT LEAST a century or so for any noticeable effects to show up.
Like the aliens in "Invasion"?
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uh, why has this thread been revived?
Because somebody posted a link to it in the Freespace: Unsolved Mysteries thread, and then soon afterwards, this was bumped up.
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uh, why has this thread been revived?
Because somebody posted a link to it in the Freespace: Unsolved Mysteries thread, and then soon afterwards, this was bumped up.
Why in the name of ****ing HELL is this my fault?! I didn't TELL Dekker to bump! God damn it!
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Who blamed you?
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Can we just let this thing die now?
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Is this still going :lol:
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Wow, from 2003. That's some serious necromancy.
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theoretically, have we found out if the Shivans can jump through subspace WITHOUT a Node??? :nervous:
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Not as far as we know, the GTVA believed that destroying the Capella nodes would hold the Shivans in Capella.
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theoretically, have we found out if the Shivans can jump through subspace WITHOUT a Node??? :nervous:
Petrarch himself says that they used unstable nodes during the Great War, and are just as dependent on jump nodes as Terrans or Vasudans.
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The question that always sticks in my mind is one that none of these non-canonical theories about the Shivans ever seems to address: Why did the Shivans wait 30 years to send a follow up force, and why didn't they reappear in the systems they first attacked? The Ancients believed they had trespassed, overstepped their bounds somehow. From the voice over narration, it doesn't sound as if the Shivans found them, but the other way around. Their empire was greater then the limits of known space, and yet most of the jump nodes (admittedly not ALL of them) that are not already known are too unstable for any but the masters of subspace travel (The Shivans). It seems patently obvious when the Knossos is first unveiled: This was the mechanism the Ancients used to stretch their empire across more worlds then man currently knows. The discovery of a second and then 3rd Knossos cements that.
Who knows how much further they extended before finally encountering the Shivans? And how could activating 1 Knossos device trigger countless others on the opposite side of a subspace portal, countless lightyears away? It makes much more sense to believe that when the Ancients retreated to their home system (GTVA space) they attempted to shut down the first knossos leading to the systems the Shivans came from.
Like the GTVA discovered, the jump node didn't instantly collapse, but had been stabilized. The Ancients wouldn't have any reason to know this ahead of time, after all, they were the masters of space, crushing all they encountered. Why collapse portals when you enter them in the certain knowledge of your superiority? And so the Shivans followed them, and all their works were undone.
So what does that have to do with the Lucifer and it's rather small battle group attacking the GTA and PVN 10,000 years later? The subspace portal in Gamma Draconis was no longer active. What the Ancients set out to do when they shut the device off was accomplished through time, effectively cutting off all the systems on the other side. Since the Shivans never seem to study the technology of other races, and since the gate was on the opposite side, they had no ability to follow. And yet there were still Shivans on this side of the node.
I surmise the Lucifer and it's fleet were somehow trapped, perhaps several lifetimes (or even longer) before. Shivans possess much greater knowledge of subspace travel and thus can use nodes too unstable for Terran or Vasudan craft, so the known galaxy for them would be quite a bit larger for us, but still potentially cut off from the regions they came from. And so they wandered, who knows for how long, until they detected the subspace travel we generated and set out to destroy us.
I don't think the Shivans in Gamma Draconis had ever encountered humanity before, nor had the Lucifer's fleet been in contact with the rest of the Shivan race. Had they been, simply destroying the Lucifer should have triggered the sort of response the destruction of the SJ Sathanas generated (unless you think they built those in 30 years), and it would have been on their terms of engagement. They came through the node in Gamma Draconis and attacked us because we opened that door, and Shivans are attracted to significan subspace activity. Had Bosch not pursued his ultimately futile agenda, the GTVA might never have encountered the Shivans again.
That is the best first post I have ever seen.
:welcome:
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Interesting document, and a very unique take on the Shivans and their purposes.
However, I think it would be unfair to discount the "bigger, badder race" idea out of hand. I always imagined the Shivans as like puppets. They didn't go say "Hey, look, a bunch of squishy people with two legs. Let's kill them!", they were ordered to exterminate the Terrans and Vasudans. And being puppets, they must have a puppet master somewhere. Imagine, if you will, an extremely old (on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands of years), extremely advanced civilization that is obsessed with being top dog in the FreeSpace universe. They do this not by continually advancing their technology, but by creating the Shivans to destroy any subspace-capable race before they can become powerful enough to challenge the puppet masters so they can wallow in stasis and decadence without having to worry about any competitors. The Shivans' technology was provided to them by the puppet masters. They were supplied with just enough power to obliterate any subspace-faring race in its early years, but not enough to pose a risk of getting out of hand. They have probably sent the Shivans and their Lucifer-class ship to devastate dozens of civilizations, and every time they have succeeded.
But the Terrans and Vasudans are an exception. They have thrown a monkey wrench in the puppet masters' strategy by adapting and advancing quickly enough to fight back Shivan invasion, something unprecedented in the FreeSpace universe. At first the puppet masters thought the Shivans might have been a bit late to the party, so they gave them some better hardware, and sent them to go kill bipedal lifeforms again. But when the Shivans listened in on Bosch's ETAK transmissions, it completely threw them for a loop. Keep in mind that, even when Bosch is communicating with Shivans, Shivans are still aggressive and vicious creatures and your average NTF marine would probably react poorly to a horde of Shivans pouring out of the airlock. The Shivans probably regarded the lesser members of the crew as beneath their consideration and slaughtered them casually, while sparing the senior crew and Bosch himself. I do not think the Shivans came to kill or torment Bosch, but to investigate him and learn about Terrans. I think what they found out surprised them completely. How they reacted, one can only guess. Maybe blowing up Capella to create that jump node was so that they could go somewhere far, far away, where the puppet masters or vengeful Terrans and Vasudans could not follow, somewhere where they could repent. Maybe they did it to bring Bosch to the puppet masters (in which case Bosch would soon end up very, very dead).
Whatever happened, there's likely a new invasion in store for the GTVA, and it will likely come from the puppet masters themselves. As lazy and corrupt as they are, they really don't want us sticking around and have twice tried to eradicate us indirectly. The Shivans are the symptom of the disease that is this decadent, bitter, and completely amoral race. The methodical and detached way in which the Shivans go about their deadly trade and their seeming disdain for territory or resources bear the hallmarks of a tool to accomplish the task of destroying other civilizations, a tool that must have a wielder.
The "bigger problem" is the puppet masters, who have maintained their dominance by sending the Shivans to crush any upstarts without having to personally involve themselves in something as dirty and inconvenient as warfare. But now the Shivans have proven to be ineffective at stopping the GTVA, and the puppet masters will have to resort to more drastic measures. The GTVA better get on its game, and fast.
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I dont build this node map.
Look:
(http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/28b8fb7021d9f771e5149f5b6d98f3842g.jpg) (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=txt5gkmdyzm&thumb=5)
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Sorry for my bad inglish :D
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Oh God. Almost four years.
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:necro:
:shaking:
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I vote we make the date font size 48 in bold red letters. All in favor?
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Aye.
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Nay, but I acknowledge the point. :p
And locked.