[Ghostavo]

Alpha 1:

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.

Ancients:

When we traveled subspace, the cosmic destroyers took note.
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 so the Destroyers came for us.

I'm applying what Alpha 1 means that the Ancients thought the same thing he says in the cutscene. If not, it's purely Alpha 1.

[Jeb Hoge]

I like the backstory. *shrug*

[spartan_0214]

Me too

[karajorma]

I'm applying what Alpha 1 means that the Ancients thought the same thing he says in the cutscene. If not, it's purely Alpha 1.

Ah. I get you now. I tend to agree with you to be honest that there were other races the Shivans wiped out. But that's quote is alpha 1's speculation and he could very easily be wrong. I frequently have characters make wrong assumption when I'm writing stories cause it's such a good way of yanking the listener in the wrong direction in order to set them up for a surprise


I still don't get you as to why the ancient monologue has to be wrong though. The Ancients could simply the first to actually try this kind of conquest. Or the first to do so after the Shivans became a space faring race.

[Ghostavo]

I guess I'm not a big fan of characters "lying" about something important to the plot in the end of the game, even for the surprise in an eventual sequel.

As for the Ancients, I assumed Alpha 1 by saying "And I knew what they knew." Followed by "I know that..." he means the Ancients thought of the same thing, as one is not sure to what extent the monologues heard are the complete version of the ones found in Altar (assuming they are part of something found in Altar).

[karajorma]

Ah. Got you. The monologues we hear though would still be true though. It's still just Alpha 1 being wrong.

I guess I'm not a big fan of characters "lying" about something important to the plot in the end of the game, even for the surprise in an eventual sequel.

Ah but it makes for so much more interesting a plotline. For instance if we know Bosch was correct it makes it much less interesting than if we don't know whether or not the Shivans took him away for dissection.

[CP5670]

It depends on how it's done, but I don't think it's generally a good idea either. It just confuses the player more often than surprising him.

[karajorma]

When it's about something as minor as this I don't see the point in worrying about it.

Certainly not if it means abandoning or confusing a cool idea like Blackhole's

[blackhole]

Holy baloney , i didn't know i'd start up a giant fanwar or i would have been less vague on many of those parts.

Allow me to first say that in the original version of my story, the shivans destroyed each race they encountered that was cruel, or, they started doing it a few races before the ancients. However, i thought that in this version, i was better able to demonstrate what pissed off the shivans by making the ancients the first ones that were slaughtered, also because we all know how the ancients behaved. To be perfectly honest, it was a plot device

Something that i think some people need to realise is that all of the speeches in the game are based on the GTVA's theory. They may think they know what they do, but remember when everyone was convinced that the earth was flat? The only word that can be trusted is that of Volition, because they are the ones who were making up the storyline. Now obviously the story must line up with what the shivans appear to be, and right now, they certainly seem like they are native to subspace and are xenocidal! But like everything else, that doesn't nessacarily mean they always were this way.

I want to reveal a little something. When volition was pressed for information about the shivans, they said one thing: "The shivans are a symptom of a larger problem." I've actually incorperated that into this story. A cookie to anyone who can guess what the larger problem is

I was working on a campaign that depicts you as a shivan. The campaign unfortunatly has fallen to pieces because i'm busy with other things. Ah, the downfall of so many campaigns - school

Anyone interested in getting all the plot information and missions that i've so far made are welcome to, just PM me and i'll fire 'em over. The datafiles have already been released.

Regardless, i'm very glad that this backstory has provided an alternate view of the shivans. I hope it proves to be an inspiration for a future campaign

@karajorma: I fixed the trillions thing. Originally i ment this to signify the future, but apparently that didn't work.

[Ghostavo]

Don't worry about the discussion, it's just an exercise to help people see the storyline from diferent perspectives. If one didn't do that, one might not be able to think of new and interesting ideas, while getting rid of uncertainties and impossibilities.

Also, regarding that cookie, the larger problem in your storyline is obviously the race the Shivans ran from.

Wasn't someone already making a campaign from a shivan's perspective?

[blackhole]

Nope. The race taht the shivans ran from is long gone. Its something more subtle

Yes, in fact, Hidden Terror was the original shivan campaign. But it died

[Polpolion]

In Descent:Freespace the narrator (an Ancient) speculates that the Shivans are closely tied with subspace; they apparently are native to subspace

checkmate

[blackhole]

Fixed a few words and ran the whole story through a spell checker. It is now clean

[Mav]

Yes, in fact, Hidden Terror was the original shivan campaign. But it died

Wait... HT DIED??? 
Damn, I've been away too long... :/ Not that I could've helped much...

As far as that backstory goes, nice read . And I've depicted something of the like since I finished FS1 - I thought this was the only senseful way the info there could be interpreted.
But, of course, if :V: simply wanted to lead us on a wrong trail... well, if you assume that, you can change very much without caring. It's valid, sure , I just don't like it too much...

Oh, and I recently got an idea about the Capellan incident - that star looked VERY strange before it exploded. Almost as if it changed from emitting energy primarily through heat to doing so through electricity or such (assuming usual scifi-art; it could've been anything else of course, some sort of subspace-lensing for example) .
This might suggest the Shivans altering natures constants or such. This of course would explain the tremenduous power and the preparation time needed, as well as eventually solving the point of the shockwave being too fast... And it would also fit to the Admirals (what was his name?) speculations in the ending of FS2 about them being dimensional travelers .
Then - might the "larger problem" in the end NOT be interspecies wars, but maybe something like different universes loosing their barriers / "colliding"/melting with each other?? Could make a nice storyline, if someone comes up on why a fighter pilot is able to influence the outcome of that   (hm, maybe by protecting or destroying some machine that has something to do with it?...)


Oh, and blackhole - Shivan background had already some rather large discussions... search for Shivan Manifesto or such and you should find it. But please don't consider too much of it as canon .

[NGTM-1R]

I've kind of developed a mental block against giving the Shivans any real background, because, well, one their hallmarks has been unpredictablity. Even when I've toyed with the idea of a Shivan perspective for a campaign I was never seriously considering telling the player much about them. As some of my current works include the GTVA having cracked Shivan communications via ETAK, the GTVA and the player have a much better idea of what the Shivans are going to do, and a lot of the time the logic is self-evident. But they still occasionally ought to look at it, scratch their heads, and go "Now why the hell would they do that?"

[Turul79]

----The Shivans----
Eons ago, when the stars were still young and the galaxy
bright as the distant quasars, there lived two species in
the Milky Way galaxy. One was the Xelnon, a peaceful and
compassionate race devoid of any cruelty. The second was
a bloodthirsty paranoid race not unlike Man
himself. When these two species met, the Xelnon were
instantly enslaved and tortured. For thousands of years,
they laid oppressed, beaten and disused. Their technology
continued, however, to grow into realms never seen
before by the likes of the universe.

The Shivans were borne out of that race's last desperate
attempt to heal. Born out of hatred, out of anger, out
of desperation. The Shivans, a cybernetic blend of organic
pieces of the Xelnon themselves combined with scavenged
beam cannon technology the Xelnon took from their oppressors,
were the finest creations of the Xelnon. They would also
prove to be the most deadly. As more centuries past and
the Xelnon were slowly exterminated, some went into hiding.
They built a grand machine, a machine capable of accessing
the intricacies of subspace itself.

Initial experiments brought back many corpses, but slowly the
technology advanced. They endowed their creations, their
closest friends - the Shivans - with all their knowledge,
and more. Yet, alas, even this last fortress fell to the
might of the Xelnon's lust-filled hunters. The Shivans
watched in silent horror as their closest friends, their
family, slaughtered before them, destroyed, shown no
mercy. When at last they could see no more, the Shivans
fled through the subspace portal.

Wandering the interspatial fabric, the Shivans built themselves
a home. They thrived in zero-gee, adapting over and over to its
environment until they reached the form we see them as today.
Over the hundreds of thousands of millennia that passed, the
Shivans saw fit to exit their haven, to look for evidence of
species that had the unique compassion of their forefathers,
to search for another, just one, that wasn't cruel. Yet, they
were disappointed. Their diplomats killed, their observation
of vast interspecies wars, they sadly turned their backs on the
universe, again and again.

The Shivan’s anger grew, fostered by the seemingly endless
hatred that all the others possessed. They did not hate, not
yet. But the seed had been planted. They had seen so much
cruelty, so much injustice, so much... Then they saw something
that the universe itself would deem unforgivable.

It was 8500 years before today. The Shivans had detected
massive subspace disturbances and had, once again, gone
searching for them. They met their worst nightmare. A species,
one with vast technological power, had seen fit to enslave
almost every civilization they set their eyes upon. They were
like a disease spreading throughout the galaxy, the very
embodiment of the horror that the Shivans despised. Mortified,
the Shivans sent in diplomats, to attempt to establish some
kind of communication. They destroyed the diplomats,
and immediately came looking for the Shivans. They did not ask,
they did not care, they lived only to subject everything under
their own twisted control.

The Shivans would let this monstrosity last no longer. The
very reincarnation of their father's killers had been created
at last. They would destroy them. They would destroy them
with a vengeance, with a determination not seen in this galaxy
nor any other galaxy for a billion years. They hunted them.
They destroyed them. They showed no mercy. They showed the
oppressors what it felt like. They showed them what it meant to
be the hunted. The took the greatest sin committed against a
species - their own creators - and blasted it upon that race
a hundredfold. They struck with such might the very foundations
of the universe felt their wrath. The oppressors were
obliterated. And the Shivans had been driven to insanity. They
watched, and waited.

The first thing the Shivans saw when they found the human race
was the Vasudans. And missiles. And explosions. And murder.
It wasn't just one race, it was two! Two races, veritable clones
of the monstrosities that butchered their mothers and fathers,
that enslaved their cousins, their gods, their creators.

The Shivans, as a race, made a choice that day. That the universe
would once again feel the wrath of the Shivans. The Destroyers.

Impressive, in every sense of the word. This would be cruical to improve the Shivans and make them more dangerous.

Oh, and one more thing - I'm new here, yet I've been playing FreeSpace for a LOOOOONG time since I was a kid. Feel free to warm up the laser on me.   

[Snail]

Laser?



Welcome to HLP.

Check out Turey's installer to get the latest source code stuff if you haven't got them already. And don't forget to check out my personal theory if you're out looking for Shivan Theories.

[Retsof]

I was just about to do that..... Oh well

Anyway, I liked the backstory, it could explain why the Shivans didn't just decimate the GTVA in FS2.  Perhaps they got some sense knocked into them when the Terrans and Vasudans teamed up and defeated them.  The Shivans now had a new tactic to end the cruelty that they saw, without becoming the very thing they hate.  They would intrude on any interspecies war they found, and if the aggressors united against them, they would go on their way, leaving behind a stinging reminder of who the big guys are in the process. (aka Capella)

[Kosh]

My campaign has not been going very well. However, in the midst of working on it i created a very interesting concept for the backstory of the shivans. I'm posting it now in case it might come in handy for anyone else making a shivan campaign - or anyone wanting to read a really cool fanfic

WARNING: After reading this, you may be inclined to join the shivans.

Very good read,, I'm really looking forward to your shivan campaign now.

[jdjtcagle]

That is really cool, correct me if I'm wrong but would that be a... "symptom of a much larger problem?"