Generally, we assume the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis was created by the Shivans, who blew a star up during their war with the Ancients.
The fact that in FreeSpace 2 a second Knossos, or Knossos 2 (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Knossos#Knossos_2), was found in the nebula, leads me to ask you all a question. Shouldn't supernova shockwaves literally pulverize all kinds of ships and installations present in a system, and even cause a lot of problems to assets eventually present in systems only a few light years away from it?
In the custom made campaign Warzone,Spoiler:the GTVA found debris of a Sathanas that was supposedly destroyed by a supernova.
Is it plausible? In the cutscene End part 1, we see the supernova shockwave turning a Deimos and a Moloch into pieces. What are the chances that, despite known to be very resistant (it took three Meson Bombs to destroy Knossos 1 in A Flaming Sword (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/A_Flaming_Sword)), a Knossos could survive that and remain functional for at least eight thousand years?
There is no canon information on the real-world astronomical identity of the Nebula System. However, several fans have offered proposals based on hints provided within the game. The two primary candidates are the Crab Nebula and the Lupus Nebula, with slightly stronger support for the former.
Clues
The main clue upon which most arguments hinge is the briefing for SM1-05, Mystery of the Trinity, which states, "We have entered a nebula, a vast and dense ionized field, and possibly the remnant of a supernova." This clearly foreshadows the ending of the game in which the player personally witnesses a supernova. More importantly, many fans have taken the foreshadowing as sufficient justification to claim that the Shivans caused the Nebula System supernova in addition to the Capella supernova.
Since the Ancients created the Knossos network, the most likely scenario is that the Shivans caused the parent star to go supernova at around the same time they destroyed the Ancients' empire. Calculating from the "about 8,000 years ago" estimate from the perspective of Vasudan scientists in 2335, this places the date at 5,700 B.C., give or take a few hundred years.
Accepting the main clue as a foundation, the next clue is Bosch's third monologue, which states, "The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns." This gives an approximate estimate for the distance and apparent magnitude of the supernova.
Conclusions
Based on these clues, GalacticEmperor originally suggested the Lupus Nebula in a forum post in 2003. [1] The available information on SN 1006 (the Lupus supernova) fits the evidence well, as described in this article. Further research led to the suggestion of SN 1054 (the Crab supernova) as a competing candidate.
SN 1006 was about as bright as five billion suns, while SN 1054 was about as bright as 1.25 billion suns. These figures are within approximately one order of magnitude of Bosch's estimate. Furthermore, taking the speed of light into account, SN 1006 erupted in 6,094 B.C., while SN 1054 erupted in 5,246 B.C. These dates are within only 1,000 years (for SN 1054, 500 years) of the Vasudan estimate. Both estimates are surprisingly accurate.
Perhaps the most intriguing connection was discovered by Arcanum in 2006. [2] According to Wikipedia[3],
Theoretical models of supernova explosions suggest that the star that exploded to produce the Crab Nebula must have had a mass of between 8 and 12 solar masses. Stars with masses lower than 8 solar masses are thought to be too small to produce supernova explosions, and end their lives by producing a planetary nebula instead, while a star heavier than 12 solar masses would have produced a nebula with a different chemical composition to that observed in the Crab.
A significant problem in studies of the Crab Nebula is that the combined mass of the nebula and the pulsar add up to considerably less than the predicted mass of the progenitor star, and the question of where the "missing mass" is remains unresolved.
This suggests that the supernova may have been "artificially triggered" in the same manner as the Capella supernova.
"The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns."
we don't really know the Knossos' relative position to the supernova remnant, since it's not clear Knossos have to obey usual node placement rules.
How about a really crazy idea:
The Knossos has some kind of protective mechanism that allowed it to divert the incoming shockwave into subspace.
We have travelled (sic) farther than any Terrans in the history of subspace travel.
So it is obvious that the Ancients specifically chose that system to set their Knossos to (and build another one in it). Now, if it was already a nebula when they found it, the only reason I can see is they found it to be a good hiding spot from the Shivans or their lesser enemies. Sure, they could have used it for gas mining, but the Knossos "chain" that goes through there suggests a trade route or military highway.
I highly doubt that the nebula beyond the Gamma Draconis is as old as the Ancient- Shivan war. It is much, much older. Why? Bosh noticed that people could have seen the effects of star's explosion 8000 years ago. Time if right, fine, but we must take the distance into consideration. Even if the star was destroyed by the Shivans 8000 years ago, we wouldn't be able to notice that from Earth even now(visually of course). Light has it'd own speed (very high, but limited). Knossoss 2 must have been built long time after the star's explosion.Quote"The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns."
(http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-pseudo.gif)
Anyway. the nebula could possibly be from the Ancient war, if the Ancients lost the system to a Shivan supernova, then tried to retake it by stabilizing the jump nodes (which might have been destabilized by the massive ejection of mass out of the system? idk). This sorta fits the imperialism of Ancient culture, but not the narrative we know of the Ancient war- there's no implication that the Ancients ever 'retook' systems.
Anyway it could easily be a Shivan supernova predating the Ancients from a war with some other species entirely. (and no, the light still wouldn't have reached earth)
I think a big key here is the briefing text from Mystery of the Trinity:QuoteWe have travelled (sic) farther than any Terrans in the history of subspace travel.
Of course, we know the Trinity made it first, but it still stands; Lt. Samsa had a reason for saying that. Was it they knew the exact location of the nebula from the stars (somehow) or other navigational equipment, like subspace tracking? Did it take a much longer time than a normal jump?
I believe that Wiki article should be edited and cite Knossos 2, at the moment it covers only part of the information that we've got about this specific subject.
By the way, according to Wikipedia, a supernova shockwave goes at 30.000km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova), roughly one tenth of the speed of light, so the kinetic energy upon impact would definitely wipe out any kind of space craft or installation, Knossos device included. Also note that temperature should be atted to the equation.
Oh, and the GTVA probably didn't even know where the binary system was. It's strange that they actually managed to plan and execute a secret SOC operation in a limited time window as seen in Into the Lion's Den. What if the binary system was one month of subspace travel away?[/color]
There's no evidence that node travel times are particularly related to the distance crossed, or that they even have particularly high variance.
I highly doubt that the nebula beyond the Gamma Draconis is as old as the Ancient- Shivan war. It is much, much older. Why? Bosh noticed that people could have seen the effects of star's explosion 8000 years ago. Time if right, fine, but we must take the distance into consideration. Even if the star was destroyed by the Shivans 8000 years ago, we wouldn't be able to notice that from Earth even now(visually of course). Light has it'd own speed (very high, but limited). Knossoss 2 must have been built long time after the star's explosion.
The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns. Even in their divinity no pharaoh could have imagined this.
The Crab's a good and parsimonious candidate, but recall that the FS1 Ancients monologues establish (with FS1's typical slightly eccentric attitude towards scale and chronology) that the Ancient empire spanned galaxies, so there's a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of turf to cover out there.
In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.
Plus there's the fact that the radiation and shockwave force from a point source like a supernova propagates via an inverse-square law. If the Knossos was a long way out from the exploding star, the force acting on it may have been insufficient to blow it apart.I believe that Wiki article should be edited and cite Knossos 2, at the moment it covers only part of the information that we've got about this specific subject.
By the way, according to Wikipedia, a supernova shockwave goes at 30.000km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova), roughly one tenth of the speed of light, so the kinetic energy upon impact would definitely wipe out any kind of space craft or installation, Knossos device included. Also note that temperature should be atted to the equation.
Not definitely at all - it's going to be bad news but since FreeSpace materials science is basically magic we really have no idea.
In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.
In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.
Could they not have started out in some isolated, tiny dwarf galaxy which happened to have subspace links to the Milky Way?
We know a meson bomb can take out a Knossos
-snip-Bosch dates the extinction of the Ancients at 8,000 years ago in aforementioned monologue.
e: Bear in mind that we know next to nothing about the Ancient-Shivan war except that the Ancients had an empire of insane scale. For all we know the conflict raged for millennia, numerous stars were destroyed, and Knossos portals were destroyed and rebuilt as often as an army engineer might erect a bridge for tanks to cross. Unless there's something directly, logically inconsistent, I think we have to consider narrative intent for these things.
Only these were not like the others. They did not die.
We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.
We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.
Only these were not like the others. They did not die.
QuoteWe did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.
I believe this states here that the fleet that was used to kill the Ancients was much, much more vast. Shivans bombarded Vasuda, but in the cutscene showing the destruction, there is no massive fleet "darkening" the skies. I believe the Shivans likely had to dispatch a much larger fleet to kill a much larger enemy, causing this. Also, as stated above, if fighters never were killed, the numbers would become severely one sided very quickly.
If the Ancients would not be able to kill even fighters, this war could never take very long... and you forget, that all ships bigger than fighters/bombers do not have any shields. So they were at least able to destroy transports.
Sure you could destroy the unshielded capital ships, but not when you have fighters you cant kill firing up your butt all the time.
So if the Shivans likewise destroyed the nebula star, why are they still around? Would they not have jumped somewhere else?By waiting in adjacent systems until the nebula was safe to travel again. Knossos 2 leads to a small communications hub, remember, and there's no telling what else might have been left undiscovered when the GTVA was forced to withdraw.
So maybe the Knossos was in the shadow of the companion star?
How about this as a theory, Knossos 2 is located in a system which still contains a sun, the Supernova which is said to have occured, happened a number of light years away, the nebula formed out of this remnant, and residual solar winds pushed the nebula to expand outwards till it enveloped the system with the Knossos 2. In some nebula missions, a bright sun can be seen sometimes, which would account for the reason that we can see anything in the nebula.
Since when has anything in fiction been bound by Occam's Razor?
But why would you need a precursor race for that anyway? It could simply be a defence system the ancients made, never believing it would be used against them.
If we take for a fact that the Shivans are the only ones that know how to blow up stars and the Nebula System star was the first/only star the Shivans blew up vs. the Ancients, then the Ancients had no reason to make a defensive system like that.
Besides, having a massive object like that (or any object really) being stuck in between subspace and realspace is a bit silly IMO and has no basis at all in canon. The closest thing to it was what the Bastion did near the end of FS2, but something like that isn't really a defensive mechanism.