Before the Ancients?

[Ran Targas]

I think most of the CT stuff (e.g. Adventures, Alien Modules, etc.) implies that the Ancients (Droyne) were the only major race out and about in this galaxy during their hay day. It is also implied that they ascended to sentience without outside influence. There is no mention of interaction with any other advanced civilizations or any resistance to their bizarre experimentation. It seems they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, which may be why they did anything and everything they could.

There could be more ancient civilizations that either didn't care what the Droyne did, having ascended beyond the physical or having agendas that were well beyond the scope of this galaxy, or were frightened by what they saw and went into hiding. IIRC, there is mention of "Primordials" which may be inhabitants of a coreward region and the source of the psychic draw experienced by the Zhodani. These "Primordials" could be hiding in the core, waiting for the "all clear" signal, or tapping the power of the super, enormous black hole at it center, just now becoming aware of all the activity in their immediate neighborhood. After all, on a galactic scale, 300k years isn't a very long time.

 

[mike wightman]

The Zhodanl are exploring coreward because Grandfather left them a device that virtually forced them to do so.

Were there advanced starfaring civilizations before the Ancients? Yes.

Was/is Grandfather aware of them? Most certainly.

Are any of them still around? According to MT most definitely yes.

Think about some of the things mentioned in the MT sidebar. STL ships. We know from OTU canon that STL ships can achieve very high fractional values of c.
So for a long lived race or a race not bothered with zipping up in cold berth for a while interstellar travel could be commonplace.

The one that intrigued me was the mention of electronic personality transfer. Send your recieving stations and body cloning banks by high c stl then beam the personality over at c.
Imagine the players stumbling across such a device...

The primordials would have made use of living ships that use psionics to achieve ftl travel according to the notes of what would have been in MTJ4.

Now add the TNE missing canon that there would have been meta-conscious entities living in/beyond jump space and the OTU becomes a far more interesting place to mess around in IMHO.

 

[Ran Targas]

Sigg, I'm only talking pre-MT material. I don't keep anything much beyond the LBBs so my reference material is limited.

I'd like to think that Grandfather wasn't the first. I'd like to think that there are plenty of dark secrets that still wander the depths of interplanetary space, silently going about their equally cold and dark agendas. Mu ha ha ha!

MTU has a long history of interacting intra-galactic civilizations before the Droyne ever mucked their way out of the ooze; very Lovecraft-esque civilizations, full of all kind of nastiness. I think we've had this conversation before

 

[boomslang]

Hmmm, that's an interesting twist. Why would they destroy the artifacts? Reverse engineering? To keep them from Grandfather or Grandfather keeping them from his children? A historical revision pogrom?

Probably fear and prudence; any technological device that retains functionality long after the star-spanning civilization that produced it has exhausted its own life-span is probably too dangerous to keep around in the first place.

Try to think of one piece of recovered Ancients tech that has not proven to be more trouble than it is worth, have problematic side effects, be completely overwhelming in its potential applications, et cetera...

Black Globes, for example, are dangerous to their operators, interfere with a spacecraft's combat effectiveness, and catastrophically overload when pounded upon hard enough by the enemy.

And do not get me started on the unbounded perils to sophont life everywhere of telepathically-controlled, pocket-universe-powered, disintegrator weaponry.

PCs typically think of Ancients artifacts as cash cows; governments will tend to see them as security risks -- and rightly so. "Better no one have it than our enemies get ahold of it, too."

 

[mike wightman]

I was stunned by how pap the Secret of the Ancients adventure was.

The premis was ok but he execution sucked big time.

As a result when I ran it the second time there were a few more interesting incidents.

Thought controlled robots, interactive holograms, rooms that morphed as the pc's needed - anything to make it feel more 'you're not in kansas anymore'.

Races that predate the ancients should do the same - there should be a sense of wonder.
With a bit of liberalism the Shadows race could pre-date the ancients. A bit of a retcon and the secret of the sky raiders could be truely awesome.

Thing is only the pcs find out - and they always die.... see Twilight's Peak

 

[kafka47]

Before the Grandfather there was a whole host of races...some of them actually achieved hyperspanial travel (IMTU) but only a few of them crept up beyond TL B. However, there were things that ascended. Traces of those would be very hard to find but occasionally things are whispered on a thousand worlds of epic struggle between good & evil...before the Greys muddled the whole thing.

 

[ShapeShifter]

...hyperspanial travel...

Oh. My. God.
Thank you. I needed a good laugh today.

 

[Trent]

I was stunned by how pap the Secret of the Ancients adventure was.

The premis was ok but he execution sucked big time.

As a result when I ran it the second time there were a few more interesting incidents.

Thought controlled robots, interactive holograms, rooms that morphed as the pc's needed - anything to make it feel more 'you're not in kansas anymore'.

Races that predate the ancients should do the same - there should be a sense of wonder.
With a bit of liberalism the Shadows race could pre-date the ancients. A bit of a retcon and the secret of the sky raiders could be truely awesome.

Thing is only the pcs find out - and they always die.... see Twilight's Peak

I agree that SotA was pretty much an "Allright, will you people screaming for answers to the ancients please STFU now that we've given you a guided tour?!?!" product.

 

[Trent]

Probably fear and prudence; any technological device that retains functionality long after the star-spanning civilization that produced it has exhausted its own life-span is probably too dangerous to keep around in the first place.

Try to think of one piece of recovered Ancients tech that has not proven to be more trouble than it is worth, have problematic side effects, be completely overwhelming in its potential applications, et cetera...

Black Globes, for example, are dangerous to their operators, interfere with a spacecraft's combat effectiveness, and catastrophically overload when pounded upon hard enough by the enemy.

And do not get me started on the unbounded perils to sophont life everywhere of telepathically-controlled, pocket-universe-powered, disintegrator weaponry.

PCs typically think of Ancients artifacts as cash cows; governments will tend to see them as security risks -- and rightly so. "Better no one have it than our enemies get ahold of it, too."

We share the same POV here. In an adveture I ran at a convention, and, I admit, brazenly and blatently stole from a WH40K scenario in "challenge" magazine an Ancient "sun controller" was found, and in the end a solomani security officer pleaded with the players to destroy the only access point to it because even tho it was in solomani space he felt that human9ty should not have that power.

He didn't even want the solomani government to have it. not exactly your typical sollie, eh?

 

[kafka47]

Oh. My. God.
Thank you. I needed a good laugh today.

Wrote this post reply when I was serious tired...

However, the principle is that Jump Space is the big unknown even in the 57th century...sort of like the Mother of all Mother Natures. So that while many civilizations have learnt how to navigate this realm (or just cheat by using the Ancient jump routes) it remains an unpredictable quanitity. Exactly what is Jump Space was explained in JTAS but I have never been happy with that explaination. Similarly, for the Ancients.

The civilizations that existed before the Ancients would have either transcended beyond the limitations of time & space or stagnated and died out. Both offer really interesting adventuring opportunities.

I could easily see an adaptation of B5's Thirdspace being possibilities for both. Not to mention many a good adventure from Cthulhu Rising's site. However, like the Ancients, it need not be deadily but quite banal but just leaving players to say WTF was that...