The Ancients....

[Deus Siddis]

They're in M-type systems because those systems haven't gone nova / red-giant between the Ancients' entry to the Milky Way billions of years BC, and now. The red-dwarf comment is there to tell us that the Ancients are, well, ancient, and that their settlement patterns went for long-lasting systems; not that they were born in M-type systems...

Well that's still like us planning out our civilization millions of years in advance. Even for the Ancients stars have a long lifetime.

They also seem to like ammonia atmospheres I just remembered.

The Ancients don't just "not have carbon DNA", they defy Einsteinian physics; the conditions of their birth won't follow the standard narrative of evolution on a watery planet. (imo)

Their "superphotonic" and high yield energy properties could be naturally evolved traits that are just beyond anything that ever came to be on earth or many other worlds, like the Minstrels or Uhl have with their dwelling in space, telepathy and superphotonic travel seemingly without the aid of technology.

"When all the stars were new", can't be much later than the age of the Universe. Most of the first-formed stars went kablooey pretty soon. Singularities + close-packed supernovae makes weird things happen in SF2, and might give us a hint at how the first self-replicating Endurium was formed as well.

Perhaps, but on the otherhand the Legk could have based their supernova technology and/or shyneum on endurium.

The Ancients used the CP, made of a similar or the same stuff as themselves to cause a massive wave of flares/nova, which is alot like what the Legk did to a smaller areas in a more extreme way. The Ancient's bodies contain great energy and some connection to Hyperspace like the Legk's Shyneum. And Ancients created the Crystal Pearl, which the Legk battle jumper is very similar to in function and purpose.

It seems to me there's a very good chance the Legk put their formidable scientific abilities towards beginning to understand and replicate some of the secrets of the Ancients.

Further, it seems if I am not mistaken that the Legk had Shyneum onboard their Guardian Satellite in the past before the Cloud Nebula supernovae were set off. So that means it might not have been the Supernovae that created Shyneum, but Shyneum that was used somehow to trigger the supernovae and was left behind as a by-product or just left over when it was over.

[Zimriel]

... they just said they came from far. I think it is reasonable to assume they came to be through natural evolution. This might offer a clue as to what kind of environment they came from:

RUINS OF THE ANCIENTS HAVE BEEN FOUND ALL OVER SPACE, BUT PRIMARILY SEEM TO BE IN M-TYPE SYSTEMS.  THEY ARE MANY HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD.

M-Type stars are the red-colored coldest ones, however I don't think you find more ruins and endurium in colder climates on planets more so than in hot or moderate climates.

They're in M-type systems because those systems haven't gone nova / red-giant between the Ancients' entry to the Milky Way billions of years BC, and now. The red-dwarf comment is there to tell us that the Ancients are, well, ancient, and that their settlement patterns went for long-lasting systems; not that they were born in M-type systems...

The Ancients don't just "not have carbon DNA", they defy Einsteinian physics; the conditions of their birth won't follow the standard narrative of evolution on a watery planet. (imo)

"When all the stars were new", can't be much later than the age of the Universe. Most of the first-formed stars went kablooey pretty soon. Singularities + close-packed supernovae makes weird things happen in SF2, and might give us a hint at how the first self-replicating Endurium was formed as well.

[Deus Siddis]

It sounds to me as if the Ancients drifted into the Milky Way right after it was formed, from elsewhere.

Right except they didn't say they drifted in, they could have come via the Crystal Planet (which we know moves somehow) or via the "warp-out" teleportation technology we see with the Crystal Pearl.

The Minstrels imply that the Ancients formed in the energies of the universe surrounding the formation of the first stars or before that.

Not really, they just said they came from far. I think it is reasonable to assume they came to be through natural evolution. This might offer a clue as to what kind of environment they came from:

RUINS OF THE ANCIENTS HAVE BEEN FOUND ALL OVER SPACE, BUT PRIMARILY SEEM TO BE IN M-TYPE SYSTEMS.  THEY ARE MANY HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD.

M-Type stars are the red-colored coldest ones, however I don't think you find more ruins and endurium in colder climates on planets more so than in hot or moderate climates.

[Zimriel]

The fact that Sol, the only known source of life and intelligence, is so far away from the center of the galaxy might be evidence against the center being a good place for life to form and dwell. It really depends on how many stars there are out here versus in there; I'm not sure myself because there's so much more room out here for stars but there's they're also less densly packed.

At least that goes for life like us, maybe really exotic life based on silicon or plasma or such prefers life in that more intense and maybe warmer environment near the center.

...
Anyway the Minstrels say:

BACK WHEN ALL THE STARS WERE YOUNG,
BEFORE THE MINSTREL SONGS WERE SUNG,
WHEN THIS GALAXY WAS NEW,
THERE CAME FROM FAR THE CRYSTAL FEW.
GRADUALLY THEY SPREAD THROUGH SPACE.
THEY WERE THE FIRST, THE ONLY RACE. . .

So that makes them way older than the Legk and their war that created Shyneum and it means they were in their present crystalline form when the populated a young Milky Way long before any other race lived here.

You're right.

The Minstrels start with "all the stars" in the universe, and narrow in to "this galaxy". At that point the Ancients are introduced "from far". It sounds to me as if the Ancients drifted into the Milky Way right after it was formed, from elsewhere.

The Ancients chose to start the Crystal Planet programme in the centre, because that's where the oldest civilisations were (as I'd explained); but that doesn't imply that the Ancients were born there or even that they'd entered the Milky Way there.

The Minstrels imply that the Ancients formed in the energies of the universe surrounding the formation of the first stars or before that.

[Deus Siddis]

Intelligence starts from planets, and planets form where there is metal. Intelligence would have evolved first in the Galactic Centre. According to Redemption Ark ch. 17, this can't last: because when stars keep going supernova in that clustered environment, they keep adding metals to other systems. Eventually there will be systems whose habitable-zone planets are so metallic that they can't support plate tectonics, which leaves them like billard balls with planetwide oceans.

The fact that Sol, the only known source of life and intelligence, is so far away from the center of the galaxy might be evidence against the center being a good place for life to form and dwell. It really depends on how many stars there are out here versus in there; I'm not sure myself because there's so much more room out here for stars but there's they're also less densly packed.

At least that goes for life like us, maybe really exotic life based on silicon or plasma or such prefers life in that more intense and maybe warmer environment near the center.

I'm wondering if the Ancients are artificial? Maybe the Xystythyx were a race who discovered a shyneum planet in the inner, dead part of the Galaxy. Shyneum is not found outside the conditions of a singularity near a supernova. Instead of consigning themselves to a "Mad Max" existence of endlessly searching for more fuel, they re-engineered themselves: they would become self-replicating, faster-than-light beings. Maybe they hoped for symbiosis with other civilisations who wouldn't treat them purely as fuel.

Xystythyx was probably the name for the Ancients themselves, back during development when they were going to have a name for themselves, I thought. I mean didn't the old design docs have the Xystythyx filling the same role as the Ancients?

Anyway the Minstrels say:

BACK WHEN ALL THE STARS WERE YOUNG,
BEFORE THE MINSTREL SONGS WERE SUNG,
WHEN THIS GALAXY WAS NEW,
THERE CAME FROM FAR THE CRYSTAL FEW.
GRADUALLY THEY SPREAD THROUGH SPACE.
THEY WERE THE FIRST, THE ONLY RACE. . .

So that makes them way older than the Legk and their war that created Shyneum and it means they were in their present crystalline form when the populated a young Milky Way long before any other race lived here.

[Zimriel]

I've been reading Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" ark lately. It agrees with what I've been reading elsewhere about the development of interstellar civilisations.

Intelligence starts from planets, and planets form where there is metal. Intelligence would have evolved first in the Galactic Centre. According to Redemption Ark ch. 17, this can't last: because when stars keep going supernova in that clustered environment, they keep adding metals to other systems. Eventually there will be systems whose habitable-zone planets are so metallic that they can't support plate tectonics, which leaves them like billard balls with planetwide oceans.

So, even outside the irradiated core, there is an inner shell of systems high in metals but with no surviving sentient civilisation.

I'm wondering if the Ancients are artificial? Maybe the Xystythyx were a race who discovered a shyneum planet in the inner, dead part of the Galaxy. Shyneum is not found outside the conditions of a singularity near a supernova. Instead of consigning themselves to a "Mad Max" existence of endlessly searching for more fuel, they re-engineered themselves: they would become self-replicating, faster-than-light beings. Maybe they hoped for symbiosis with other civilisations who wouldn't treat them purely as fuel.

[Suicida]

 Endurium's slow moving makes sense. When I beat the original Starflight when I was about ten or eleven years old, I was fascinated by the idea that human beings could be unwittingly destroying a race as fuel. Previously, I had thought that perhaps the Ancients had 'evolved' to the point that things like starship travel,  building, or culture simply no longer interested them. In a weird way, I kind of pictured them as existing only to dream, speculate, or meditate - the equivalent of an ascetic isolated from the world in order to pursue his own cogitations.

 It is a testament to the original writers that such a concept could still captivate all these years later.

[Deus Siddis]

I've never read any of the novels (I didn't even know novels existed before coming to this site), but does anyone know why the Ancients are Endurium? Are they a mineraloid form of life, or did they somehow transform into their present state?

Heh, biometal.

No I think they were always the way they are now. And what they are 'fits the profile' of a theoretical silicon based biology. A largely crystalline (and also maybe mineralized) morphology, slow metabolism, high thermal tolerance (think their survival of their solar flares).

Like cosmobreeze said, they are almost certainly not sedentary (otherwise they couldn't have built the things they built), but just going about their business at like 1000th the speed we do. Plus they are maybe in a time of crisis, with anyone caught in the open at the wrong time being taken instantly and burned as superphotonic fuel, by creatures moving at the equivalent of several mach when they aren't even using their technology to get around.

[cosmobreeze]

Those building have millions of years, i think that since they are sentient beings they also build things, they just do it very slowly, remember at the end of SF1 we discover that they live at an another time level, so may they still keep building and discovering new technology, its only that it happens soooo slowly that we don't notice, but Arth and the rest of the galaxy could notice (twice, once in past at the time of the Old Empire.) the terrible effect of their weapon (The Crystal Planet) when the Endurium people used it in an attempt to stop the other races from burning them.

[capi3101]

Interesting point. As far as we know, Endurium is endurium, just sentient crystalline lumps that happen to make good starship fuel. The reason why they have built structures and technologies is never really gone over in depth in the either of the original games.

[Suicida]

I've never read any of the novels (I didn't even know novels existed before coming to this site), but does anyone know why the Ancients are Endurium? Are they a mineraloid form of life, or did they somehow transform into their present state? It seems that at one point they had dwellings, technology, etc., all of which is largely useless to something sedentary. I seem to remember the end of SF1 when it is discovered that endurium fuels are sentient beings, but I don't remember any other allusions to the Ancients state of being. Of course, it has been a really long time since I played these games at all.

[Tags:]

Jump to: Please select a destination: ----------------------------- Operations (Private) ----------------------------- ===> SF1/2 Information ----------------------------- Operations ----------------------------- => Announcements => Website ----------------------------- Starflight Series Discussion ----------------------------- => Starflight and Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula ===> Help => Starflight III: Mysteries of the Universe => Starflight Universe ----------------------------- Miscellaneous & Off-Topic ----------------------------- => Harrison's Base => Nebula Lounge => Introductions ----------------------------- Links ----------------------------- => Starport Central => Starflight Wiki => StarFLT.com => Almagest Game ----------------------------- Other Projects ----------------------------- => Starflight RPG & Starflight: Total Brawl => Starflight 1 Remake