[Jellyfish]

Something that these guys both WANT more than their silly eradication protocols.

A way home?

Cookies, maybe?

'We, too, have our own War in Heaven'. And the Shivans have to go back to wherever they came from to fight in it.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Little Gainax isn't it?

[Ryuseiken]

I don't want this either.  A simple speech would be silly, and a single engagement wouldn't make sense if it worked.  I just want what resulted from those things in B5.    I want the Shivans and the Vishnans to leave us alone.

I did love the Babylon 5 speech, but in the terms of this conflict I agree it would be silly. In B5 both antagonists had plans for 'helping' the races, but in Blue Planet we are irrelevant to the Shivans or Vishnans. If we don't measure up to what they deem acceptable, we die, and they don't bat an eyelash. You can't persuade them with fiery speeches because they don't consider us worth listening to.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Exactly, appeals to logic, morality, and reason only work when your enemy has roughly the same social values as you do.

Conventional military victory? Not a chance.
Appeals to higher morality in an inspiring Patrick Stewart speech? Don't make me laugh.
Submission to the will of the Shivans? If Bosch is to be believed, this is the ONLY way for humanity to survive... but I doubt it.

The only other option seems to be using Casandra to find something, someway the Shivans are vulnerable, if not physically than in their motives. A bit of bacteria doesn't sound like much up against an organism like a human being, but with enough pressure in the right place... it can achieve some nasty results.

[ellerto]

Exactly, appeals to logic, morality, and reason only work when your enemy has roughly the same social values as you do.

Conventional military victory? Not a chance.
Appeals to higher morality in an inspiring Patrick Stewart speech? Don't make me laugh.
Submission to the will of the Shivans? If Bosch is to be believed, this is the ONLY way for humanity to survive... but I doubt it.

The only other option seems to be using Casandra to find something, someway the Shivans are vulnerable, if not physically than in their motives. A bit of bacteria doesn't sound like much up against an organism like a human being, but with enough pressure in the right place... it can achieve some nasty results.

Almost like they did in the Independence Day? 
"Lets start some assembler and make them a virus"

[manwiththemachinegun]

Hopefully nothing that cliche. But still, victory of some kind has to be possible, right?

Otherwise, rocks fall, everyone dies.

The only way I see anyone surviving the War in Heaven is to decipher and exploit Shivan/Vishnan plans. Staying defensive or reactive wont work. The judgement has been decided. The only thing left is to divert, evade, exploit, redirect, subvert.

Again, even bacteria can affect creatures far more complex and powerful than themselves.

[ellerto]

Hopefully nothing that cliche. But still, victory of some kind has to be possible, right?

Otherwise, rocks fall, everyone dies.

The only way I see anyone surviving the War in Heaven is to decipher and exploit Shivan/Vishnan plans. Staying defensive or reactive wont work. The judgement has been decided. The only thing left is to divert, evade, exploit, redirect, subvert.

Again, even bacteria can affect creatures far more complex and powerful than themselves.

That may be true, but right now even deciphering their enigma is only a "apocalyptically remote" possibility.

[Dark Hunter]

I've been trying to collate everything we've been told about the BP-verse Shivans and the Vishnans, by the Shivans/Vishnans:


The Shivans, first off, are incomprehensibly old, first manifesting 5 billion years ago, and are implied to be somehow connected to the very fabric of reality itself.
Ken: "They were not made. They were calculated."
Shivans: "We slept beneath the waves before the first Brahman rose from the ash of the Dawn War. Before even the first stars kindled in the hearth of night. [...] Only we are eternal."

The Vishnans are more recent, some other race that has risen to, or close to, the Shivans' level. The Shivans mention watching them develop.
Shivnas: "The Brahman rose. The Brahman died. In their death we watched your making..."

The Brahmans are dead. The Shivans didn't seem to have any problem with them, maybe even approved of them.

There was something called "The Dawn War" which resulted in the birth (not death, the Shivans were kind of specific about this) of the Brahman race.
Shivans: "...the first Brahman rose from the ash of the Dawn War."

There was some kind of Apocalypse long ago. The universe survived, and the Shivans and Vishnans do not want to see it happen again. The Brahmans had created the Terminal Protocol to ensure a Second Apocalypse doesn't happen. Part of this protocol involves culling intelligent species that "fail" it. Both the Shivans and the Vishnans seem to think this Protocol is a good idea, and have been carrying out even after the Brahmans died.

The two uber-races began to differ in how they interpreted the Protocol. The Vishnans wanted to guide humanity to some unknown purpose. The Shivans thought this action undermined what they'd been doing for billenia. Hence their fight in Age of Aquarius.
Shivans: "We reject your judgment. We reject your mercy. By using them, you endanger the work of eons."

Since then, the two uber-races seem to have reversed their opinions. The Vishnans are believed to now consider humanity a failure due to the Sol War, but the Shivans now think that humanity can accomplish something that even they cannot. Something that will help avert the Second Apocalypse.
Ken: "But [the Vishnans] see the civil war as a mark of unforgivable failure. They have ordered a cull."
Ken: "The Shivans have a use for humanity. They will grant us survival...and in exchange, we will do the one thing that they cannot."

And for some reason all of this pivots on the UEF. Their Ubuntu ideology makes them unique and special in some way to both the Vishnans and Shivans.

Now here's where it gets interesting to me. The Vishnans apparently do not know about Ken, and do not know about the pact Bosch struck with the Shivans. The Shivans do not want them to find out. Perhaps that is the real reason why they were interfering in Age of Aquarius, removing the Vishnans' chosen "Wanderer" from the equation so he couldn't find out (and the Vishnans through him).


What does all this add up to? No idea. We're still missing key parts of the equation. What was the First Apocalypse? What is the Second Apocalypse? What is the nature of the potential that the uber-races see in humanity? What is the fundamental nature of the Shivans? What is Project Shambhala?

There are also some terms I do not understand. Most of the Shivan technobabble from the nodes ends up being either philosophical or medical terms (taking the metaphor that the Shivans are a "immune system" for the universe). "Noösphere" is a sphere of thought (compare "biosphere" or "atmosphere").

"Ontovoric" is not a word, insists all dictionaries I consult, though I guess it means "that which devours existence" (from "onto-" = "existence/being/is" and "-vore" = "devour"... admittedly, that's mixing Latin and Greek roots). By taking a similar approach, "panontos" (also not a word) may mean "totality of existence" ("pan-" = "everything" , "ontos" = "existence/being/is"). "Holocide" seems to mean "killing of the whole" ("holo-" = "whole" and "-cide" = "killing"... again mixing Latin and Greek). Any other/better ideas on this?

[manwiththemachinegun]

A good summary that covers a lot of the key points. Project Shambhala seems the biggest mystery, as it frightened one Elder enough to defect to the GTVA and sacrificed 50,000 lives to see the UEF fail. Cassandra is a reversed engineered dead Shivan, operating as a supercomputer. So what could be more horrifying than that?

Definition of Shambhala from Wikipedia:

"In Tibetan Buddhist and Indian Buddhist traditions, Shambhala (also spelled Shambala or Shamballa; Tibetan: བདེ་འབྱུང་; Wylie: bde 'byung, pron. De-jung) is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia. It is mentioned in various ancient texts, including the Kalachakra Tantra and the ancient texts of the Zhang Zhung culture which predated Tibetan Buddhism in western Tibet. The Bön scriptures speak of a closely related land called Olmolungring.

Whatever its historical basis, Shambhala gradually came to be seen as a Buddhist Pure Land, a fabulous kingdom whose reality is visionary or spiritual as much as physical or geographic. It was in this form that the Shambhala myth reached the West, where it influenced non-Buddhist as well as Buddhist spiritual seekers — and, to some extent, popular culture in general."

This is guessing here, but could Shambhala be some sort of plan to effect subspace? We know certain aspects of subspace remain unalterable, even by the Shivans.

[Dark Hunter]

I have absolutely no idea what Project Shambhala could be. Apparently the Elders and the Beis are pretty certain that if it's activated, the war is as good as won. But I don't think it's a weapon, because that goes against the Ubuntu philosophy, and the Elders are sticking pretty hard to their whole defensive war strategy.

Ken said that the project was originally conceived as a way to end the war, but is now a lot more than that. I would like to know how Ken got that information, personally. Laporte is the only person in Sol he seems to be in contact with and she knows nothing about it.

Maybe the Shivans have other pawns in Sol that have not been revealed just yet.

[MatthTheGeek]

Why is there no mention of Contingency Morpheus here ? 

[docfu]

Why is there no mention of Contingency Morpheus here ? 

Um, nobody told you?

Oops...

[Useful Dave]

Why is there no mention of Contingency Morpheus here ? 

Because it's a nightmare we don't get to wake up from.

[crizza]

I don't even want to know the Face of madness...

[docfu]

I don't even want to know the Face of madness...

I've met three of them so far. They aren't so bad...after a while you just accept them and move on.

Then, one day you wake up and look in a mirror...and there's number four.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Why is there no mention of Contingency Morpheus here ? 

It seems to be a bit more simple in its scope. It's the GTVA's plan to kill the Elders and mop up the UEF once and for all. At least, that's what the dialogue indicated to me. There's probably more to it than that, but it wasn't spoken of as a "fate of billions" sort of plan.

[General Battuta]

It's explicitly a plan to purge Vishnan-compromised elements from human civilization, right? That could get pretty dark.

[Drogoth]

It's explicitly a plan to purge Vishnan-compromised elements from human civilization, right? That could get pretty dark.

Following your line of logic here, are you implying that the GTVA could deem every citizen of Sol, as well as the defectors, have been shaped, molded, and influenced by the Vishnans and thus must be purged?

[General Battuta]

I don't think the GTVA would ever condone genocide.

[SpardaSon21]

No, but definitely the Elders and probably the higher-ups in the Ubuntu party.  Plus any Vishnan elements in the rest of Terran space, of course.  I expect SOC will probably be doing some very unwholesome Inquisitorial purges with minor disregard for collateral damage if MORPHEUS ever gets initiated.