Working Idea - Evidance of Ancient Aliens

[pennshome723]

Hello again my fellow Traveller GMs/Player,

I am creating this thread to glean some ideas for the topic of discovery of evidence of ancient aliens with my campaign realm.

The campaign is set in a new starting location where mankind traveled to a new world in Arks and settled on it. They started to slowly spread out in space to the many different star systems surrounding their New Earth home system.

Now I want to make it hard to find real evidence. Speaking as the GM the Aliens in question I will just call them the Engineers their real name will be the Fabreenie. They are gone now and were in that area of space some 20,000 years in the past to when the players point in time is.

Now with the passing of 20,000 years most things made of metals and etc would have long since fallen to dust. No super Steels or Alloys to sit around for 20,000 years picture perfect for the player to find. I do feel that some structures that were made of stone might be left standing. I was thinking that the Engineers used large City space ships that landed on constructed landing pads with large stone landing structures to support the round city ships. I am thinking about having one of these on ever planet that had a Engineer site, but that these after 20,000 years could be covered and overgrown, plus not so easily identified from orbital scans. There will be no active tech still turned on, with sending out some strange signal.

My goal is to think up different things that might be discovered as evidence that some intelligent life had been there and done something.

For the first evidence example that the players might find is a world that has simple plant life but requires the human to wear pressurized suits with air to survive. They might discover a City Landing site, but it will look like large stones in a seemingly circle pattern. The simple plant life would have over grown the site and dirt would have blown in to cover parts of it. They will have to investigate the location to determine what it might be.

Also on the same planet hidden and over crown or slightly filled in are quarries and mines that are quite huge. The Quarry was used to make the landing pad area for the City Ship, and a number of other structures like a damn that has mostly been erroaded away after 20,000 years time.

Now on other planets I would like to do much the same concepts or ideas but am looking for other ideas as well too. I also was thinking I might have a system where they mined a asteroid belt and some asteroids might have mines in them, but there I might allow them to discover some more details about the Engineers. Eventually this is meant to be a running mystery for the player to keep long term searching for details.

Also at this point they humans in this New Earth have not encountered any other Intelligent race, now this is the same campaign where in another thread I talked about the world that had two primitive life forms one in the Oceans and the other on land that are related. I might also put a landing pad and mines from the Engineers there as well too.

So what other ideas might I try here?

 

[Limburger59]

I do feel that some structures that were made of stone might be left standing. I was thinking that the Engineers used large City space ships that landed on constructed landing pads with large stone landing structures to support the round city ships. I am thinking about having one of these on ever planet that had a Engineer site, but that these after 20,000 years could be covered and overgrown, plus not so easily identified from orbital scans.

Instead of a stone structure, a pad that could handle a ship of that size would require a carbon lattice of immense strength (aka diamond). Alas the diamond structure is so pure that once the party figures out what it is, the treasure hunting players discover they are unable to break a piece off.

 

[pennshome723]

Instead of a stone structure, a pad that could handle a ship of that size would require a carbon lattice of immense strength (aka diamond). Alas the diamond structure is so pure that once the party figures out what it is, the treasure hunting players discover they are unable to break a piece off.

Ok so your saying that it is some type of stone that some how through a process has it's crystal structure altered in a way to make it more like a crystal in nature or something? Please explain more so I can better be able to describe it to my PCs when the time comes.

Nice idea!!!

 

[JimMarn]

Metal cut marks on stones that would look like a table saw. A circular blade made the cuts. Most stone surfaces are smooth, but a few show the cut marks.

 

[pennshome723]

I was think higher tech than that, laser cuts might be better. Now I am also looking for OTHER things that I could also use as evidence roo...ideas guys...please!

 

[PFVA63]

I think you probably need to watch "Ancient Aliens" on H2. They seem to have all sorts of people on there making claims about stuff being signs of ancient alien technology.

 

[rancke]

Two suggestions:

1) All the known traces of forerunners are equivocal. Enough so, anyway, that someone prejudiced against the idea can deny their implications ("That's a natural formation!" "That doesn't prove anything!" "It's a fake!" "Nah nah nah nah nah! I can't hear you!"). And the mainstream scientific community is prejudiced against the idea in a major way, ridiculing and marginalizing anyone who presumes to take the idea seriously, much less support it.

2) There's at least one rival of the PCs who do believe in the forerunners, and he's prepared to go to any length to ensure that he will be the first to find incontrovertible proof of their existence. Including spying on the PCs and sabotaging their efforts.


Hans

 

[GrayPennell]

I would say leave some art work and monuments behind. Also in the Reality Dysfunction there was a reck from a vast advanced sophant ship people mind for tech. One of your city ships could be found in orbit at first look an astroid field but closer inspection leads to hunks of ships.

Librarian/Archives/Scientist have developed time, seed, information, genetic capsules to last thousands of years. They are also working on away to keep people out of toxic/radiation dumps that will last thousands of years.

Any purposeful changes in the physical landscape can be spotted. We have found iron and copper minds that are thousands of years old.

Than genetic engineering might be spotted in spices if you play that way.

Those are my first thoughts.

 

[Carlobrand]

Some of the tools and activities of a technological civilization will be hard to get rid of over that short a time period. Aluminum, for example, is likely to survive. Evidence of large scale changes to the topography are going to be easy for a later technological civilization to find.

One thought: if your ancient civilization rested heavily on organic tech - say a computer that was a living bioengineered brain, ships that were bioengineered living creatures - then that tech would be gone pretty quick. If it left anything at all, what was left would be pretty much incomprehensible to a later civilization based on metal and plastics.

Some things might not be recognizable as tech. Imagine a kind of mouse bioengineered to take tiny tools through little tunnels to make repairs under the psychic control of a Builder looking through its eyes and directing its limbs and little mousey hands - but 20,000 years later, and with no psychics to "ride" it, it's just a field mouse. Same could be done with larger monkey-like animals or with a tentacled sea animal. A dolphinoid could be the psychic "master control robot" controlling tool-using sea-monkeys and responding to the orders of psychic masters, but with the masters gone and the sea monkeys extinct, it's just another sea mammal with more brain than it appears to need. A marble-size ceramic sphere might be a memory unit, with molecular-level circuitry indistinguishable from the normal ceramic composition except to someone with the capacity to scan items on a molecular level; the device would be pretty much inert unless you could figure out a way to make an organic computer that could access it psychically.

 

[GrayPennell]

Lets not forget just general trash dumps and graves which have lasted for 10s of thousands of years on Earth. Picture your giant space cities stop once a year to dispose of trash and its bodies. You could argue everything gets burned or recycled but somethings could be left or it could be social convention to stop and bury their dead on the home world.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

After watching "Life After People" for awhile I kind of wonder just how much recognizable remains might be found after a few thousand years, especially if stuff gets buried by sediment and such.

 

[pennshome723]

Hey I love that show, but I want some other ideas to also add into the mix for the situation. Also since I am not planning on having other races/cultures around, I need to make the edvidence alot more suttle than that. I intend to have alot fewer Intelluigent races out there tan a normal game world.

 

[pennshome723]

Hi,

After watching "Life After People" for awhile I kind of wonder just how much recognizable remains might be found after a few thousand years, especially if stuff gets buried by sediment and such.

Exactly...I am guessing not much at all. I like the idea that some building materialils might have been somehow altered with stone ending up with a hardend crystal like structure but not alot will be left.

Now something found in space might be alot different, but most that will be found for a while will be on planets and ravaged by time and the elements.

 

[pennshome723]

The other thing is I have not yet figured out what happened to the Ancient Aliens. I want them to be gone, but how and why is the real matters to work out.

 

[BlackBat242]

First, real-world archaeologists have found lots of information about ancient cultures in discard piles from some 20,000+BC, as well as fossilized remains of human precursors from well over 1 million years ago, so there will still be signs of any and all previous inhabitants.

Second... just going from our example, we have already left artifacts where there is no environment to destroy them... how long will the Lunar Landers and Rovers last?

So, even if the equipment itself is removed, there WILL be foundations, etc on various non-atmospheric bodies (moons, asteroids, outer planets, etc) to be found... although they will be rare and harder to find.

If the equipment has been removed, then they become much harder to interpret and decipher.

 

[Reban]

Lets not forget just general trash dumps and graves which have lasted for 10s of thousands of years on Earth. Picture your giant space cities stop once a year to dispose of trash and its bodies. You could argue everything gets burned or recycled but somethings could be left or it could be social convention to stop and bury their dead on the home world.

First, real-world archaeologists have found lots of information about ancient cultures in discard piles from some 20,000+BC, as well as fossilized remains of human precursors from well over 1 million years ago, so there will still be signs of any and all previous inhabitants.

Second... just going from our example, we have already left artifacts where there is no environment to destroy them... how long will the Lunar Landers and Rovers last?

David Brin's Uplift series of books has high tech ancient civilizations burying their trash "middens" along the subduction zones formed by plate tectonics. EVERYTHING gets dumped in so that it gets carried into the molten mantle and destroyed. The idea is that eventually no trace will be left that the civilization was on the planet (in the book they are squatters on a reserved world). Traveller sensors like Grav sensors or mass sensors could possibly detect both the midden and the unusual traces of metals minerals in the magma.

 

[pennshome723]

One of the places that I will have the PCs eventually find will be a set of Bio Domes on a moon that are linked. One of the domes will be destroyed and in ruins from a meteor strike, but rest will still be intact. The place will be on minimal power from solar panels that still work, so the water and atmosphere will still be in place. I have not yet decided if there will be any animals left alive there, but there will be plants there that have over run the place. I am also considering basing their tech off of Crystals and making some of it on line, while other systems have failed due to a number of issues.

I am thinking that the purpose for the domes on the moon was to seed a planet within the system. The planet in question will have all of these same planets on it currently growing with a non standard atmosphere (standard for them but not for humans). There will be the standard landing field pad for the city ship on that same world and some evidence of some other ancient structures like canals, a dam, and the beginning base for a city, plus a quarry and some mines. That system will have more than many of the other ancient finds in the past have had.

Also note because I am making Intelligent life extremely rare in the campaign universe, it is harder to show evidence of someone being there. Also these Aliens would drop trash and debris into a vat and break the trash down into a kind of slurry substance and dump that into older mines to back fill them. The point there was not to really damage any environment, but rather keep it "Green"<g>!!!

 

[pennshome723]

Now as to what happened to the Ancient Aliens (Fabreenie, they are gone now but I was thinking they fought in a war. At first I was going to have them fight another race, but I have been thinking maybe they fought a Civil War amongst themselves.

I am thinking they had Genetic upgrades to their DNA, had Clones, with lots of Politics. That will start them down the road to destruction.

I need to add to that and get it clear in my own mind what happened to bring them down.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

Hey I love that show, but I want some other ideas to also add into the mix for the situation. Also since I am not planning on having other races/cultures around, I need to make the edvidence alot more suttle than that. I intend to have alot fewer Intelluigent races out there tan a normal game world.

I know I'm late to the party but here is my idea.

Let's say a planetary cartographer is going over the maps of the known worlds. Just check each map for accuracy and matches the data in their computers. It just so happens he does three maps in a row and discovers that on each of these planet there is the exact same island. All three islands are the same diameter and made from granite, there is a central lake and it is fed by four large natural tunnels. General speaking the islands general appearance is that of a mesa. He notes his findings and passes them up the change of command.

The Interstellar Survey Team (IST) would most likely put such a find on the back burner because it's not a clear indication of intelligent life. There is also the distance between planets which seems to indicate that this is a random geological event. This would delay the discovery of our ancient alien by several years. Nor could you say without definite proof that they were natural formations.

When they finally get around to sending a Geological team to these three world, they realize there might be something to the cartographer suspicions. The tunnel ordinations are magnetic north to south east to west . This allows the Geologist to date them at approximately 20,000 years before the present civilization. There is also some evidence that something had cut the tunnels through the granite.

They report these findings and a second planetary survey is conducted on all three planets. The information indicates the following: Atmosphere is basically the same, the planets are poor in mineral resources but great for farming which is what they are used for at present. Animal never evolved beyond small primates, while the plant life consists many grasses and small brush. Conclusion: The planets had either been stripped or terraformed.

There would be much debate about these planets on all sorts of scientific levels adding to the confusion, popular myth, and conspiracy theorist. Quietly the IST begins investigating the possibility of an ancient alien race. Occasionally some crackpot writes a tell all book about the IST activities and cover-ups leading everyone in the wrong direction and creating a larger than life mythos surround the actual finding from the original report. So when the actual discovery of an alien artifact is discovered, the general population blows it off as some crackpot seeking fifteen minutes of fame.

The ship that is discovered is spherical in design and mistaken as a planetoid circling within a gas giant's rings. The centuries have not been kind making the ship appear to have suffered many small impacts and covered in a dirty layer of ice and dust. It's only after the mining company does an exploratory shaft do they discover that it's a ship. There is some delay in reporting the find adding more intrigue to the story I have thus woven.

When the IST finally get their hands on the ship several things become clear. The large crater at the south pole match the diameter of the islands discovered and is a part of the drive system. The smaller impact craters are from weapons fire and the ship was abandon since no bodies were found on the ship.

You can take it from here...

 

[pennshome723]

Very awesome plot lines and I like it very much.....