Hi. If anyones confused, I accidently registered with the wrong nickname... so I asked a mod to change it back to what I usually use.
Anyway...I'm going to assume that Volition did NOT know about the basic philosophy of language outlined above, for the time being. If you don't like reading long posts, skip this one. Instead, read my next post. Seriously. This one is a pretty boring, conventional theory. The next one is the truly interesting one. (Of course, I'd prefer that you read both, as the second one draws on whats said here, but anyway..)
On with the boring theory. Whatever Bosch's mission was, he succeeded, at least partially. His final monologue can only be described as optimistic... He describes his attempt at communication as being "crude and rudimentary" which to my mind seems to be like "Bosch want speak to leader", rather than pure gibberish, and he talks about plans to scuttle the Iceni, and go somewhere with the Shivans. This, to me, seems like successful two way communication,
not the shivans merely being curious.
After all, lets face facts here. The Shivans have not shown the least bit of curiosity towards terrans or vasudans. They have made no effort
whatsoever to learn anything about us, even when we developed shields in like 5 missions flat (iirc). They simply do not care about us. In fact, the only time during any campaign when the shivans were not attacking Terrans and Vasudans was with the Iceni (and note, just the Iceni. Other NTF ships were apparently fair game). Why then, were the Shivans so chummy with Bosch in the nebula?
And what the hell did he have to gain by going there? Bosch is no fool. He must have known that he would never come back... I've just reread the monologues and I've changed my mind on one thing. Originally, I thought that Bosch was doing everything for personal gain, but now, I think that, more than anything else, he was doing it
for the sake of humanity.
Which leaves us with a new riddle. If what he knew could make such a difference, why not tell everyone, and get the GTVA's cooperation? Surely they would be just as interested in eliminating any future Shivan threat as he is. It wasnt for personal glory, as Bosch dryly notes, history will remember him as a butcher, which he seems to think is a bit unfair, but he doesnt care. No, I think that whatever Bosch discovered about the Shivans, it was something that he simply could not tell the GTVA, as it would be mocked at or discredited. So then, the question remains, what was it?
Before I attempt to answer that, lets consider the turn of events:
- Bosch opens the Knossos portal (or, at least, capitalises on an open Knossos portal).
- A few scattered Shivan vessels emerge from the portal, which the GTVA mop up.
- Bosch successfully communicates with the Shivans, and plans are made for him to leave with them.
- The GTVA goes inside the Knossos portal to investigate, and encounted basic shivan resistance, nothing special.
- The Shivans take Bosch, and kill most of the crew of the Iceni.
- A Sathanas class juggernaut is sighted, heading towards gamma draconis.
- Plans are made for the Collossus to engage the Sathanas
- The Sathanas is engaged successfully by the Collossus
- More juggernauts are sighted headed towards gamma draconis
- These juggernauts all converge at the Capella sun
- The Sathanas class juggernauts do something to the sun, causing it to go supernova
- Most of the juggernauts then jump out, but some stay, although they appear to be powered down.
Most people think that the two unexplained events are unrelated (ETAK and supernova), yet like I said above, the Knossos portal was stable, which I'm guessing happens over a long time, which indicates that the shivans could have invaded
at any time (although ther terrans still needed to activate the portal again). I am going to state that whatever Bosch told the shivans specifically involved something about the sun at Capella. There is no other reason why they converged on that sun, and that sun alone (if any old sun would do, why not the one at Gamma Draconis?), and why they converged there only after Bosch met up with them.
In turn, this indicates that Bosch learnt something about the shivans in his research, something that would make them see (blowing up the) the Capella sun as being 'valuable'. Petrarch, in the end movie, speculates that they were cosmic nomads, searching for a way home, and the energy from the supernova gave them the ability to do so (although how the hell he knows this is beyond me...). If it was that simple, why not do it somewhere else, or to be precise, sometime else, like say in the 8000 years they've been stuck in our galaxy?
If we assume Petrarchs Words are the voice of Volition, (i.e. he's right)... For this to work, Bosch must have been the one who told them how to do it, otherwise they would have done it already, and gone back home. Maybe a certain type of star is required, which Capella is, but few others are, and Bosch supplied the info needed by the Shivans to go about doing it. Of course, if this is all for the sake of the Shivans going home, Bosch's talk of an alliance doesnt really make much sense, apart form perhaps an alliance inasmuch that they don't kill us off anymore.
Bosch's disdain of the Vasudans isnt really explained in this either (although he views the NTF as cattle, he does explicitly state that humanities fate does not reside with the Vasudans). Of course, this could just be a plain old-fashioned dislike of Vasudans that Bosch always had.
If, on the other hand, we consider the possilibilty that Petrarch was guessing, then a whole new range of possiblities unfold. Honestly, I'm tired right now, and there is a much more interesting theory I want to go through, so if I ever get around to writing a "Bosch manifesto" (paying homage to the Shivan manifesto here), this'll be expanded in there.
Finally, This does leave the question of the events of the Iceni. Why was there a battle? Why did the crew think that Bosch was taken? Consider this. The Iceni was of the NTF. Somehow, I doubt that thier recruitment drive went something along the lines of "Vasudans suck! Oh, and our leader reckons he can talk to Shivans". Also, remember the SOC operation within the NTF? No-one had a clue about what Bosch was working on. This leads me to suggest that the crew had -no- idea about what was going on, for the most part. I'm guessing that when the Shivans did board, the bulk of the crew freaked out something fierce. Maybe they were reluctant to go with Bosch, or thought that Bosch was under some form of mind control, or something. Maybe then, Bosch boarded the transports, and the shivans began 'scuttling' the Iceni by killing everyone on it, only to be repelled, or, more likely, disrupted by something, maybe the presence of GTVA ships in the area.
Or maybe the crew knew everything, but refused to board the shuttle, to which the shivans reacted with violence, and the crew reacted with further violence. Bosch eventually managed to stop the shivans and leave, but not before there were heavy casulties.
Anyway, this is about it for me, except for (most likely) my final post on the matter, which is the actual completely wild speculation.
