[Mars]

There was the whole big Shivan Manifesto back, maybe... three months ago. Many people found that theory uninformative and not at all canon, or belivable. Rather than spout out my ideas, I hope everyone else will. Why did the Shivans do what they did? Try to flesh it out as much as possible.

I reserve the right to quote you (cited) in the wiki.

[NGTM-1R]

ngtm1r’s Shivan Theory

The Shivans are not drawn to subspace disturbances, though they are attuned to them.

The Shivans are drawn to conflict. Perhaps they believe strongly in peace: strongly enough that they are ready, willing, and able to enforce it on those who are unwilling to be peaceful. For those who attract the attention of the Shivans receive the most absolute and final form of peace imaginable: that of being dead. Or maybe the Shivans just like a good fight.

The Shivans slaughtered the Ancients, but only after a long period of time in which the Ancients were slaughtering other folks. This would seem to contradict my premise, but note that I said the Shivans were drawn to conflict, not violence. That wording was intentional.

According to the Ancients monologues most of the species the Ancients wiped out didn't (or couldn't) put up much of a fight. (“They were like all the others, hideous, resisting, fighting. Only they were not like the others. They did not die.”) I can only guess, but maybe a little while before the Shivans came along there was a species that did put up a fight, not enough of one to stop the Ancients, but enough to bloody them.

In come the Shivans, drawn to the conflict, to destroy the combatants. They only find one standing, and wipe them out. The Ancients were not a peaceful race. At first they thought the Shivans were the wrath of an angry cosmos…but not all, apparently, since they kept looking for a weakness, and they found one eventually. They learned better.

Left alone, the Ancients would have expanded again, perhaps now with even greater xenocidial tendencies thanks to the Shivans nearly wiping them out. And when the Shivans sent a new expeditionary fleet to stop them, the Ancients would have possessed the means to destroy it. Clearly they had no intention of rolling over and playing dead. The Ancients would be back. The Shivans could be beaten, they were not the gods the Ancients first thought. (“We have little left. Little time. But much irony.” “In subspace their shields will not function, and into subspace they can be tracked.”)

8000 years later, we have the Terran-Vasudan War. It's a long one, 14 years, and so I would guess it was not a high-intensity war for most of that time. Around the time the Shivans show up, however, it had clearly escalated to a high-intensity war. (Look at the casualty figures for Operation Thresher, for example. That's a lot of people considering they're pilots. Had they been infantry, I wouldn't have batted an eye, but five hundred pilots is an awful lot to lose in one operation.)

And here come the Shivans again, determined to enforce a final solution to the question of Terran-Vasudan relations. Only they fail. The Terrans and Vasudans unite against them, and destroy the Shivan expeditionary fleet.

But, this may well have been viewed by the Shivans as a victory. They did not immediately withdraw once the Terrans and Vasudans had made peace with each other because that peace would have evaporated almost as quickly as it had been created. So the Shivans kept fighting. If they ultimately won, there would be a final, total peace. If they ultimately lost, but made a good fight of it, one that forced the Terrans and Vasudans to work together to the fullest, to support each other economically, militarily, and socially, to integrate, then the peace between the Terrans and Vasudans might well last.

32 years later, the NTF Rebellion breaks out. It does not attract the Shivans’ attention, however. Perhaps it would have eventually, but there is a short-circuit of that process. 17 months into the NTF Rebellion, the NTC Trinity activates the subspace portal in Gamma Draconis and enters the nebula.

We actually don't know who fired first in this case. We do know the Shivans fired first on the GTC Vigilant, but we do not know if the NTC Trinity fired first on the Shivans. I find it highly probable the Trinity encountered a Shivan patrol, which closed to look over this Terran ship that had somehow entered Shivan-controlled space. The Trinity, seeing Shivan ships and knowing what the Shivans did the last time they were in the neighborhood, interprets this as the Shivan patrol preparing to attack, and opens fire.

Now, the NTF Rebellion hasn't reached the level of conflict yet where the Shivans decide to intervene. But if you're going to show up in their space and attack them, they're going to respond in kind. The Shivans dispatch a probing force through the subspace portal to take a look around, set up a base camp on the other side, and in general prepare for a sortie. The Shivans, however, do not intend to attack the GTVA. They have no reason to, yet. The Shivans are out to get the NTF. Only they probably can’t tell those two factions apart very well, if at all.

The first Rakshasa into Vega encounters the GTC Vigilant. The Rakshasa, encountering what is probably a Terran ship, attacks, not realizing that it is attacking a GTVA ship and not an NTF one. After all, the Trinity had to come from somewhere, and Vega is the most likely candidate (Gamma Draconis was uncolonized and empty).

Now the GTVA knows the Shivans are back in town. And considering that both of the member races of the GTVA lost their homeworlds because of the Shivans, from the moment the Rakshasa fired on the Vigilant there was no chance of a peaceful resolution. There was little chance that the Shivans and GTVA could have come to a peaceful resolution before the Rakshasa attacked the Vigilant.

The GTVA now must do something with that information. They choose to act on it, swiftly, decisively. The Shivans were not all that powerful in the last invasion, only a few destroyers, a bunch of cruisers, and a lot of fighters. (In fact, probably only three or four destroyers: that's all Terran Command seemed to think that there were in FS1, and if they had many more then that how the GTA and PVN weren’t destroyed before they could get their act together is hard to comprehend.) The GTVA's military arm was built and trained  for just this moment. There is no hesitation, and the order is given: Attack!

The Shivans, meanwhile, may or may not have realized their error in attacking the GTC Vigilant. At this point, it does not really matter. What they did not expect was the speed and power of the GTVA's counterattack. Vega Command hears the Vigilant's distress calls and tells the Carthage and Dashorto drop everything and head to the Gamma Draconis node. The Carthage and Dashor arrive on the scene at most a few minutes after the Vigilant is destroyed, perhaps less. The Carthage deploys fighter and bomber wings. Both it and the Dashor move to engage. The Rakshasa and its escorts never really have a chance.

This engagement gives the Shivans pause. The GTVA's ships are not the equal of their Shivan equivalents, but they are close, close enough that the difference is not insurmountable. The GTVA, meanwhile, is executing its preset war plans for second contact with the Shivans: attack with all available force, at once. They are confidant in their knowledge of Shivan ships and tactics, have trained and prepared for this battle for 32 years. They will prevail.

And prevail they do. Before the Shivans can fully digest the implications of the engagement at the Gamma Draconis node, the GTD Aquitaine arrives in Gamma Draconis and engages Shivan forces there. The Shivans are unprepared, and are driven before the Aquitaine's battlegroup or destroyed. The Aquitaine, moving at blitzkrieg pace, pushes on through the portal and engages Shivan forces in the nebula, pushing them back, inflicting heavy casualties.

The Shivans are shocked. This has never happened before. Not only has their planned offensive come a cropper before it ever got underway, a first in and of itself, but the offensive has actually been turned around on them as the GTVA pushes into the nebula.

Then suddenly, it stops. The GTVA stops pushing and merely starts to hold. The Shivans are mystified, but use the breather constructively, dispatching a Sathanas and supporting warships to push the GTVA back out of Shivan space and then end this fight in the usual Shivan fashion of annihilating all opposition. In reality, what the Shivans don't know is that the GTVA is in the process of dealing the deathblow to the NTF.

The Sathanas is coming, but it isn't there yet, when suddenly the GTVA explodes into action again, pushing harder then they had before, throwing more ships and firepower into the attack then before. The Shivan front line crumbles, and rear-area Shivan operations are opened to Allied attack (the gas miners you hit in your first Vasudan mission). But all is not lost: the Shivans finally get the Sathanas into the area, and as they hoped GTVA opposition crumbles before the might of the juggernaut.

Then the battles at either end of the Gamma Draconis-Capella node result in the destruction of the Sathanas, and suddenly the GTVA is back, pushing hard yet again, trampling the small Shivan force still in the nebula. The Shivans decide to throw the book at the GTVA. More Sathani are dispatched.

Something odd is happening too, though: one Terran ship is not attacking them, but trying to communicate with them. The Shivans are mystified, but agree to meet Bosch and talk with him. The combat aboard the Iceni was a colossal miscommunication, a panicked crewer firing on the Shivans that boarded and the situation escalating badly before Bosch got through to both the Shivans and his crew. There were, after all, two transports that docked with the Iceni: if Bosch and company, plus the Shivan boarding party (or what was left of it) were onboard the first, who was getting on the second? Probably a good portion of the remainder of the Iceni's crew. (“As I make this final entry my crew is preparing to scuttle the Iceni and board the Shivan transports.”) But starships were not made to have firefights inside their hulls, and damage was done to the Iceni's systems. Damage that left Lieutenant Rusk and his compatriots in the dark about the peaceful ending to this encounter, although they probably wondered why the Shivans hadn't returned to exterminate them.

From their discussions with Bosch, the Shivans learn that they have made a giant mistake, starting with destroying the GTC Vigilant and moving on to every other GTVA ship and crewer or pilot they have killed since. The GTVA is acting out of an apparent need to defend themselves, not a desire to attack the Shivans. The ones who started it were the crew of the NTC Trinity: even the NTF, in the personage of Aken Bosch, never meant for there to be a war with the Shivans.

But mistake or not, the Shivans have thrown the gauntlet down, and the GTVA has picked the gauntlet up. The GTVA will never make peace with the Shivans. Rather, the GTVA will make every effort to annihilate the Shivans just as the Shivans have annihilated so many others. The Shivans no longer wish to destroy the GTVA, though. The GTVA has done nothing wrong. So somehow, they must end this fight without a formal peace.

The GTVA has Knossos technology: if the Shivans merely retreat and blow the nodes leading into the nebula, the GTVA will believe they are winning, use Knossos portals to reopen the nodes, and continue their campaign. Destroying Gamma Draconis might work. But it might not, as the GTVA might conclude it had cost the Shivans much of their Sathanas fleet, and the rest had gone somewhere else or been heavily damaged. Gamma Draconis hardly matters to the GTVA, after all. There’s nothing there. (The system is uncolonized; the last significant attempt to survery it was fifteen years ago.)

Finally the Shivans settle on causing the Capella supernova as the best, most clear way of both sealing themselves off from GTVA incursions by that route, and sending a message: Don't screw with us. We're bigger, we're meaner, and we will kick your ass. And they carry this plan out.

The GTVA doesn't comprehend the reasoning behind what happened, but the message got through loud and clear. They know better then to screw with the Shivans now.

In case he doesn't make it, Mad Bomber's theory too (he's been a bit scarce of late). It was presented on Sectorgame in two parts, so I've paraphrased them putting them together. Apologies if I managed to totally screw it up. I also ruthlessly eliminated the Awakenings references.

Mad Bomber's Alternative Theory of Shivan Subspace Sensitivity

I has been theorized that it was the GTA and PVN's use of subspace during the 14-Year War that caused the Shivans to notice them and invade that area of the galaxy. However, others note that it took the Shivans much longer than 14 years to respond to the Ancients' use of subspace.

In fact, if the records are to be believed, it was not until after the Ancients had built and used something that stabilized a node to another galaxy, that the Shivans began attacking them. ("When we conquered and colonized galaxies where we had no place.") This event is, probably, the powerup of their first Knossos that attracted the Shivans, same as what happened in Gamma Drac in 2367 when the Trinity found and turned on that one.

The Shivans are attracted not just by generic subspace usage, but by Massive Subspace Screwups^TM. The GTA or PVN did something that qualified; perhaps staging large numbers of ships through a node at once, perhaps the disappearing Talania system's nodes collapsing. I submit as further evidence the Sathanae's seeming indifference to the Terran forces that engaged 'em.

[Mars]

By the way, anyone who posts their theory might want to check over what's on the wiki, or even put it up themselves.

[Jopi]

The way I see it, it's all about conflict and evolution through conflict. First we have the Ancients, a master race in the galaxy, top dogs of them all. They go about exterminating anyone they can find. Superior technology gives them the edge they need to prevail continuously. Then, one day, they meet a species that gives them a bloody nose. Insulted, surprised and angered, they come back with even greater a force. Eventually, this attack is rebunked as well. The Ancients are in a situation they have never encountered before, someone is actually putting up a fight.
This new race, the Shivans, eventually grow stronger than the Ancients. The Ancients are driven back, defeated for the first time in their history. We do not know if any communication took place between the Ancients and the Shivans. Anyway, no peace treaty was ever signed. Given the history between the species, the Shivans see it best to exterminate the Ancients, once and for all. They are too great a risk to all the life in the galaxy.
Strengthened by the conflict, Shivans are now number one race in the galaxy. They explore, they expand, they exploit. During their excursions, they find new species, species inferior to them. We don't know the reason why the Shivans decide to exterminate these species. Perhaps they wanted to make sure that there would never be another "Ancients". In any case, the Shivans begin a policy of genocide. With their technology and combat experience, they are invincible.
Until one of their fleets discover two civilizations at war with each other. The Shivans roll in, expect another walk-in-the-park military campaign. They are, however, in for a nasty surprise. These Terrans and Vasudans somehow manage to destroy the invincible Lucifer. At last, the Shivans have found a worthy opponent. The gloves are now down, and the Shivans begin to assemble a new and stronger attack fleet. No species have, as of yet, managed to turn back a Shivan invasion.
32 years pass without encounter. Then the Shivans meet their enemies once again. They have grown stronger, a lot stronger. The Shivans can draw comparisons between this conflict and their conflict with the Ancients. They decide that this threat is to be eliminated now, lest it be too late. They send in the Sathanas, indestructible by any known GTVA weapons.
To horror of the Shivans, even the Sathanas is not enough. The Shivans now realize the seriousness of the situation. Should this GTVA ever reach their home systems, there would be no mercy given, no Shivan colony left standing. They decide to send in a fleet the galaxy has never seen before. The GTVA has grown to match the Shivans. No punches will be pulled anymore. Only one can win this war, and the victor is the one who survives.
True enough, the Shivan assault drives the GTVA back from the nebula, then from Gamma Draconis, all the way to Capella. The Shivans have now the upper hand, the GTVA is beaten, the Colossus is nothing more than dust. Shivans see the desperation in the eyes of their enemies. As a last resort, the GTVA starts collapsing the subspace nodes leading to its space.
However, something else has caught the Shivans' attention. One of these GTVA ships is acting strangely. They realize it is trying to communicate with them! Initially, the Shivans are very wary of this communication attempt. They fear this GTVA, more than anything in the galaxy. Eventually, they decide to meet this envoy. We can only guess what discussions took place during that meeting. Perhaps Bosch went willingly with the Shivans. But in order not to raise suspicions, they made it look like as if he was captured. Possibly the GTVI spied this conversation, we don't know what it was that Snipes was rescued for.
We can assume that the destruction of Capella was a direct consequence of these talks. There is no other rational explanation for that kind of mass suicide, given that we know nothing of the Shivan society, their motives or their beliefs.

[Eishtmo]

And then, there's the Capella Barbeque Theory.

The Shivans, you see, are the universe's greatest party animals.  Their parties aren't just legendary, but virtually mythic.  The only problem is that they lack one very vital thing:  Beernuts.

They've got plenty of beer, massive ships haul it back and forth from the alcohol nebulas scattered across the galaxy, processing them into the golden brew that every Shivan loves to drink by the keg.  That's a keg every round for those who are concerened.  Beernuts, however, are in painfully short supply and the Shivans have sent out massive fleets of ships to locate a rich supply of those salty little buggers.

Then they found the GTA and the Vasudans.

The Shivans, despite their apparent distructive nature, only wish to spread their partying ways across the universe.  Their laserpointers and bottlerockets, however, rip starships appart and kill people who are not Shivans (to whom, getting hit with a laser blast is the equivilant of a come on).  Not to be detered, the Shivans kept at it, until they learned that these strange creatures that exploded when a Shivan offered them a night of passion had a massive supply of beernuts.

Then the horror began.  Led by the lead party barge, the Lucifer, the Shivans made a mad, highly destructive (sometimes by accident, sometimes not, they are harty partiers) search for the source of the nuts.  At one point they thought they had it, and in celebration, fired off a massive firework display at Vasuda Prime, utterly destroying the surface of the great planet.  After a careful search, they found no nuts, but they did find that the nearby Terrans DID have nuts, and made a beeline to Sol to claim them.

They didn't count on the Terrans not wanting to have their planet be part of a firework display, and so the Lucifer was stopped and the rest of the Shivans, their party supply cut off, wandered off to pass out in a galactic ditch and sleep it off.

Bosch, a very wise man who partied harder than three frathouses during homecoming, came upon evidence of the Shivan's true intensions and set out to join them.  Using the Knossos and the NTF as cover, he sent the Shivans and invitation to a truly massive party.  Luckily, the Shivans had found a rich source of beernuts and decided that they should set up a truly excellent party amongst the GTVA systems.  The Sathanas (which is really just a massive party barge/grill) made it's way through Capella to find a good place to set up.  When it ran into the Colossus and was destroyed, the Shivans figured that they should set up the party closer to home and launched the fleet.

With Bosch drinking at their side, the Shivans gathered their great fleet of grills around Capella and they blew up the star to roast lots of meats and veggies so the party could begin proper.  They were quite disappointed when most of the Terrans and Vasudans didn't show up, and in fact slammed the door shut on the party, but not being ones to take offense, just took more for themselves.

And so the great Capella Barbeque began, and the Shivans and handful of humans they managed to find rocked hard and long all night long.

[Eightball]

I have a few related questions.

Looking at the "Capella dies" video, just what are those bad things doing?  Some of them enter subspace.  I assume they still die.  Are they jumping into Capella's sun?  They couldn't escape, could they?

My other question regards the evolution of Shivan technology.  The Ancients fought the Shivans thousands of years ago, yet shield technology is the "weakness" of the Shivans.  And this is still valid thousands of years later.  One reasonable explanation for this could be that hey, maybe the Shivans just don't get out much, or they need to train more scientists.  It happens, that your civ doesn't change in thousands of years.

However, it also appears that they do innovate, perhaps.  FS2 has new Shivan vessels - are they factory fresh or just never encountered before?  We don't know.  If they are innovating, why hadn't they before?  Just because they never needed to?  CAN the GTVA out-tech the Shivans?  It would be quite interesting, although unlikely, resource-wise, to see two shielded Colossi working to hammer Sathani from behind.

[Mars]

Well first off nobody knows, secondly, that's why I'm collecting peoples views- so I can put them on the Freespace Wiki http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/.

The Santhanas Juggernaughts that jump out are usually assumed to escape, but nobody knows for sure.

In my personal opinion the Shivans do not depend on their technology, but rather in their huge numbers. I don't think their technology ever improved even since the Ancients, "I personally always figured the 'first generation designs' were subspace-worthy enough to get through some of the unstable jump nodes and Ross 128 and Ikeya, while the 'generation 2 designs' required a stable node- such as the Knossos jump node, to get through, and that most beam cannons interfere with subspace." to quote myself.

[aldo_14]

Muwhahahahahahahahahaha

*cough*

Carry on.

[Eightball]

The Santhanas Juggernaughts that jump out are usually assumed to escape, but nobody knows for sure.

Really?  That's whack!  I thought you needed a pretty stabilized node to jump out of systems - IE, you can't open about a dozen really fast and hope to get anywhere safely...

Plus, in the video, only 3 stick around (that you can see).  And why did they stick around?!  It wasn't like their presence was needed to finish off the sun - it was already going!

I guess Shivans just never needed to improve, either...

[Manunkind]

And then, there's the Capella Barbeque Theory.

The Shivans, you see, are the universe's greatest party animals.  Their parties aren't just legendary, but virtually mythic.  The only problem is that they lack one very vital thing:  Beernuts.

They've got plenty of beer, massive ships haul it back and forth from the alcohol nebulas scattered across the galaxy, processing them into the golden brew that every Shivan loves to drink by the keg.  That's a keg every round for those who are concerened.  Beernuts, however, are in painfully short supply and the Shivans have sent out massive fleets of ships to locate a rich supply of those salty little buggers.

Then they found the GTA and the Vasudans.

The Shivans, despite their apparent distructive nature, only wish to spread their partying ways across the universe.  Their laserpointers and bottlerockets, however, rip starships appart and kill people who are not Shivans (to whom, getting hit with a laser blast is the equivilant of a come on).  Not to be detered, the Shivans kept at it, until they learned that these strange creatures that exploded when a Shivan offered them a night of passion had a massive supply of beernuts.

Then the horror began.  Led by the lead party barge, the Lucifer, the Shivans made a mad, highly destructive (sometimes by accident, sometimes not, they are harty partiers) search for the source of the nuts.  At one point they thought they had it, and in celebration, fired off a massive firework display at Vasuda Prime, utterly destroying the surface of the great planet.  After a careful search, they found no nuts, but they did find that the nearby Terrans DID have nuts, and made a beeline to Sol to claim them.

They didn't count on the Terrans not wanting to have their planet be part of a firework display, and so the Lucifer was stopped and the rest of the Shivans, their party supply cut off, wandered off to pass out in a galactic ditch and sleep it off.

Bosch, a very wise man who partied harder than three frathouses during homecoming, came upon evidence of the Shivan's true intensions and set out to join them.  Using the Knossos and the NTF as cover, he sent the Shivans and invitation to a truly massive party.  Luckily, the Shivans had found a rich source of beernuts and decided that they should set up a truly excellent party amongst the GTVA systems.  The Sathanas (which is really just a massive party barge/grill) made it's way through Capella to find a good place to set up.  When it ran into the Colossus and was destroyed, the Shivans figured that they should set up the party closer to home and launched the fleet.

With Bosch drinking at their side, the Shivans gathered their great fleet of grills around Capella and they blew up the star to roast lots of meats and veggies so the party could begin proper.  They were quite disappointed when most of the Terrans and Vasudans didn't show up, and in fact slammed the door shut on the party, but not being ones to take offense, just took more for themselves.

And so the great Capella Barbeque began, and the Shivans and handful of humans they managed to find rocked hard and long all night long.

This has got to be it.

[Mars]

Yeah, Capella BBQ theory is in the Wiki.

The Sathanas Juggernaughts were generating some sort of subspace field around the Capella sun, the normal rules may not apply.

[Ghostavo]

I prefer Strike's theory (about the Sathanas being trailors)... if only the search function worked.

[Mars]

Come on, it would only take a day or five to go through every single post in the General Freespace Forum, what's your problem?

[StratComm]

Yeah, Capella BBQ theory is in the Wiki.

The Sathanas Juggernaughts were generating some sort of subspace field around the Capella sun, the normal rules may not apply.

Where?  It's not linked to from anywhere obvious and the Wiki search is borked.  It NEEDS to be added to the "shivan theories" category.  Yesterday. 

[Mars]

**** my mistake... should work...

now.

[Ghostavo]

Come on, it would only take a day or five to go through every single post in the General Freespace Forum, what's your problem?

Nah, I think this proves my theory that the Sathani are Shivan trailer homes. See, they really just wanted to make friends with the Terrans this whole time, but due to an unfortunate culture gap and some preliminary spy reports collected durign the Terran-Vasudan war, the Shivans figured our primary method of communication involved focusing high-density plasma charges into each other. Thus, Lucifer scout fleet showed up and transmitted the message "We come in peace", wiping out all nearby. Hurt and confused at the Terrans' and Vasudans' panicked flight, they followed the GTA fleet to Vasuda Prime. Knowing an important populated planet when they saw one, what subsequently ensued was the equivalent of thousands of years of Shivan history, science, and literature broken up into several easy-to-understand blasts... Thirty years later, the Shivans spot Terrans in their nebula. Curious as to what happened to their peace delegation, they accost the first fleet they see and bombard them with questions. The Terrans return fire, and, overjoyed that contact has finally been made, the Shivans mobilize their colony ships, ordering them to set up a permanent base around the nearest Terran star where Shivans and Terrans (and Vasudans, who the Shivans assumed were just more Terrans) could trade, communicate, and live in harmony. Up to the death of the Colossus, the Shivans maintained their good intentions, though they had to admit that maintaining good relations with the Terrans seemed to be getting an awful lot of them killed. It was only when the Terrans sealed off the first Capella jump node that the Shivans guessed that something was amiss. Slowly the idea formed that maybe we WEREN'T friendly, after all. Hurt by this possible breach of trust, the Shivans sent out one last delegate, headed on what they last knew as a route to the Sol system and the capitol of Terran government, housed in a Cain class executive transport. When diplomatic talks opened up prematurely and destroyed the Cain and the diplomat before a meeting, let alone consensus, could be achieved. Shocked and disgusted by the treachery of the Terrans, the Sathanas fleet blew up the Capella star in the universal signal for "farewell", which they hoped would eventually reach the remaining Terrans in other systems, and returned home, never to be seen by Terrans again.

You owe me one...

[Mars]

*offers Ghostavo a cookie*
Okay, trailer theory is going up, how the **** did you find it so fast?

[Ghostavo]

*offers Ghostavo a cookie*
Okay, trailer theory is going up, how the **** did you find it so fast?

I went to the users profile thingys and searched Stryke 9. After checking the lastest post thingy in reverse a bit, I found it.

Oh and http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,450.msg8214.html#msg8214

I love this thread.

You saved Capella!

[StratComm]

You know, looking back at all of those theories...

I still think the Knossos was a lock, not a portal.

[Mars]

Care to elaborate?