Other Earlier Space-Faring Races

[Timerover51]

Clearly, this thread was a very bad idea. My apologies to everyone for wasting their time.

 

[BlackBat242]

This thread was a great idea, and it has wasted no one's time except perhaps yours.

The rest of us are enjoying the exchange of differing and individual ideas on the subject, even (or is that especially) when they differ from our own.

We see things in another's ideas that possibly modify our positions, confirm them, or are not something we think suitable for our Traveller universes.

None of the above in any diminish the value of our own ideas, nor imply a rejection of us as people... but add greatly to the sum of our knowledge.

I am regretful that you don't seem to see that.

 

[DaveChase]

Clearly, this thread was a very bad idea. My apologies to everyone for wasting their time.

Stop this comment posting of self degradation.

If it was a waste of time you would not have all the views and comments that this thread does.

Honestly, what is your problem? (PM, if you want to talk about, don't drag it out in public.)

Other than posts like this one, I do read and consider what you have posted.

Does not mean I 100% agree all the time with you, but it is nice to have another view to consider.

Dave Chase

 

[DangerousThing]

Clearly, this thread was a very bad idea. My apologies to everyone for wasting their time.

I loved this thread. I found myself minorly annoyed when you thought my earlier compliment to you was a jest, but that is my problem, not yours. Trust me, I'm straightforward. If I thought was a waste of time I'd leave quietly.

You started this discussion by asking a short question. Many people answered and I hope many more continue the discussion.

Like BlackBat242 I find I learn more and enjoy it more when there are multiple points of view. If I don't want to expose my ideas to possible rejection, I also don't get to hear the other points of view which may help me refine my idea oe indeed change it altogether.

I've quit posting on a couple of art groups because all I'd hear is "wonderful" when what I needed was real critique. There I one forum I post to specifically when I need to build my SF ideas because some extremely knowledgable members will point out possible flaws in the ideas and sometimes, just sometimes, admit that my idea has merit.

 

[Carlobrand]

Clearly, this thread was a very bad idea. My apologies to everyone for wasting their time.

It's a good thread with good discussion, generating a lot of interesting ideas for play. I'm not clear on why you're not happy with it.

 

[rancke]

Timeover appears to have been banned, so you're all flogging a dead horse.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

Oop! Sorry.

 

[aramis]

Timeover appears to have been banned, so you're all flogging a dead horse.


Hans

He'll be unbanned in a couple days.

 

[rancke]

He'll be unbanned in a couple days.

Ah! OK, I retract my remark. Sorry.


Hans

 

[Timerover51]

The following is taken from Sir Samuel Baker's book, Eight Years' Wonderings in Ceylon, available for download from Project Gutenberg.

This, from the form and position of the existing ruins, we may conceive to have been the appearance of Pollanarua in its days of prosperity. But what remains of its grandeur? It has vanished like "a tale that is told;" it is passed away like a dream; the palaces are dust; the grassy sod has grown in mounds over the ruins of streets and fallen houses; nature has turfed them in one common grave with their inhabitants. The lofty palms have faded away and given place to forest trees, whose roots spring from the crumbled ruins; the bear and the leopard crouch in the porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin, and rank weeds, and utter desolation. How many suns have risen and how many nights have darkened the earth since silence has reigned amidst the city, no man can tell. No mortal can say what fate befell those hosts of heathens, nor when they vanished from the earth. Day and night succeed each other, and the shade of the setting sun still falls from the great Dagoba; but it is the "valley of the shadow of death" upon which that shadow falls like a pall over the corpse of a nation.

The great Dagoba now remains a heap of mouldering brickwork, still retaining its form, but shorn of all its beauty. The stucco covering has almost all disappeared, leaving a patch here and there upon the most sheltered portions of the building. Scrubby brushwood and rank grass and lichens have for the most part covered its surface, giving it the appearance rather of a huge mound of earth than of an ancient building. A portion of the palace is also standing, and, although for the most part blocked up with ruins, there is still sufficient to denote its former importance. The bricks, or rather the tiles, of which all the buildings are composed, are of such an imperishable nature that they still adhere to each other in large masses in spots where portions of the buildings have fallen.

In one portion of the ruins there are a number of beautiful fluted columns, with carved capitals, still remaining in a perfect state. Among these are the ruins of a large flight of steps; near them, again, a stone-lined tank, which was evidently intended as a bath; and everything denotes the former comfort and arrangement of a first-class establishment. There are innumerable relics, all interesting and worthy of individual attention, throughout the ruins over a surface of many miles, but they are mostly overgrown with jungle or covered with rank grass. The apparent undulations of the ground in all directions are simply the remains of fallen streets and buildings overgrown in like manner with tangled vegetation.
The most interesting, as being the most perfect, specimen, is the small rock temple, which, being hewn out of the solid stone, is still in complete preservation. This is a small chamber in the face of an abrupt rock, which, doubtless, being partly a natural cavern, has been enlarged to the present size by the chisel; and the entrance, which may have been originally a small hole, has been shaped into an arched doorway. The interior is not more than perhaps twenty-five feet by eighteen, and is simply fitted up with an altar and the three figures of Buddha, in the positions in which he is usually represented—the sitting, the reclining and the standing postures.

The exterior of the temple is far more interesting. The narrow archway is flanked on either side by two inclined planes, hewn from the face of the rock, about eighteen feet high by twelve in width. These are completely covered with an inscription in the old Pali language, which has never been translated. Upon the left of one plain is a kind of sunken area hewn out of the rock, in which sits a colossal figure of Buddha, about twenty feet in height. On the right of the other plane is a figure in the standing posture about the same height; and still farther to the right, likewise hewn from the solid rock, is an immense figure in the recumbent posture, which is about fifty-six feet in length, or, as I measured it, not quite nineteen paces.

These figures are of a far superior class of sculpture to the idols usually seen in Ceylon, especially that in the reclining posture, in which the impression of the head upon the pillow is so well executed that the massive pillow of gneiss rock actually appears yielding to the weight of the head.

 

[Icosahedron]

In response to the original question, I leave this open IMTU. One day a group of PCs may (or may not) gather evidence to suggest whether or not there was an ancient star-faring race in the past.

The fact that so many worlds are habitable in terms of atmosphere and biosphere is either a very lucky chance, or the product of an incredibly vast terraforming and bio-engineering project in the distant past. When was the last time your PCs died, War of the Worlds style, as a result of breathing microbes beyond their homeworld? This would be the true relic of an ancient race, a living work that would far outlast the technology that created it.

I tend to assume, too, that a degree of bio-engineering still goes on, with genetic engineering having an increasing effect on survivability in adverse conditions from TL8 onward.

 

[Blue Ghost]

We may also be atypical in our construction habits by comparison to other sophonts... Some cultures today still build in stone, even tho' they've got more "modern" building materials.

It's pretty scary looking at various buildings abandoned mid 20th C and seeing the decay, yet, by the same token, there are ruins of pre-roman sites still with walls standing.

Those were my thoughts as I watched the first episode of "Life After People". One of the comments that struck me is that modern concrete uses a lot of water compared to Roman concrete (who invented the stuff), and their concrete is many more times resilient to all kinds of decay and erosion, which is why a lot of their structures are still standing.

Our society likes quick turnaround times. Therefore we put emphasis on ease of use verse staying-power of construction materials, which shows in the show's pictures of decayed buildings built not more than 30 years ago. It's also why we have throngs of workers who nurse bridges built of steel to coat them with paint, or to replace joints and corroded parts.

I think a star faring race that invested a little more forethought into their construction regime would have artifacts laying around. Who knows what you'll find. Especially for a science fiction setting I would think the sky's the limit for this kind of thing.

The drafts and concepts I've written up hinge on the players finding and exploring remnants of past civilizations, some of which were space faring or star faring. I say it's a fantastic idea not simply because of what I've revealed in my own efforts, but because I think it truly is a wonderful idea to explore, write up, and share with friends during a good old fashioned gaming session

I think everyone's got some ideas about past civilizations for this game. And it would be great to hear about stuff people have done.

 

[Timerover51]

One reason for Roman concrete to be so tough is the volcanic ash that was used in making it.

There is another possibility for earlier space-faring races, which shows up in Andre Norton's Star Hunter, which can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg. There, you have a combination of biologically engineered guardian creatures, and what is apparently an incredibly high-tech automated defense system, which can control the guardian creatures. Quite the interesting idea.

 

[Ran Targas]

The real question is how many of your Ancients, Primordials, etc. would rise up from their places of rest to mutate human flesh, warp human minds, and feed of human souls nom, nom, nom?

Always thought B5 did it better than ST; these pre rise of humanity aliens should be terrifyingly powerful and mystifying with little chance we'd be able to understand their motivations or current hobbies.

 

[leo knight]

I always kept ancient (small 'a') races mysterious. I may have been influenced by Robert Anton Wilson's "Iluminatus!" books, but every time a player asked for an explanation of the ancients, I would give them a different answer, based on what I had been reading or watching at the time. The in game answer usually came from some absent minded academic, who usually had a cute, spunky daughter.

I cribbed from various sources. From a short story I read once had a trove of mysterious ancient artifacts. Some were hollow objects of nigh unbreakable stuff, with no apparent opening. Others were oddly shaped metal pieces, non-magnetic and very strong. It turned out it was a trash dump, the alien equivalent of soda bottles and sporks.

From an episode of the old "Land of the Lost" TV show, I had an artifact with a clearly human hand print as the activating control, the implication being that the ancients were human. I may have had the Psionic Institute involved in that one, too.

From a mishmash of "Doctor Who" episodes, I had a series of teleport pads, which still worked after a fashion. I decided a human cult had grown up around the site. The cult had a ritual, a sort of holy Russian Roulette. A prospective initiate would stand on the pad, the priest would activate the device, which looked appropriately magical, and the initiate would disappear. Most of the time, the initiate would come back, having gone through a sort of holding pattern or buffer. Sometimes the poor devil would go to a non-functioning station, never to return. Those who returned experienced the transport as an ecstatic high, and were convinced they had contacted the divine. Those who vanished forever were believed to be favored with staying in "a higher realm". I never really decided who the builders were. Maybe Time Lords?

Usually I assumed that they had gone extinct long ago, like the Krell in "Forbidden Planet". Of course, all of their technology was dangerously unreliable, and had easily activated self destruct sequences.

 

[Timerover51]

There is a fair amount of material to work with just from the various Andre Norton stories which explicitly have early civilizations mentioned.

In The Sargasso of Space, you have an alien device that attracts ships to the planet Limbo, or keeps them grounded while on the surface, and apparently has a variable range.

In Judgement on Janis, there are artifacts that when in contact with the correct type of human, convert the human into an Ift, while in Victory on Janus, an enormous computer complex is discovered and destroyed. The Ifts would be an interesting race to put into a Traveller universe.

As the Bald Space Rovers were apparently operating in the recent Pleistocene, they could be used to transplant modern Homo Sapiens to other planets for use as laborers, and when their apparent empire collapsed, the humans could develop in other ways than we have. Some of the planets visited in The Galactic Derelict would also be interesting to add in.

I also keep wondering what would happen if a Droyne party used the Twilight's Peak adventure, and was able to make use of the warriors in the Ancient hideaway. That might prove to be interesting, or the possibility that more of those bases could be in existence in the Spinward Marches.

 

[rancke]

Many of Jo Clayton's novels feature forerunner artifacts and reverse-engineered forerunner technology.


Hans