https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=130.58.236.123&feedformat=atomUltronomicon - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T17:50:58ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.35.7https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Sa-Matra&diff=6759Talk:Sa-Matra2005-11-02T15:20:36Z<p>130.58.236.123: /* fanfic removal */</p>
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<div>I think it's better to keep the "Precursor Artifacts" only for the things you can take with you in your cargo. That way, the "Alien Artifacts" category, of which "Precursor Artifacts" is a sub-category, will contain everything you can take with you, and nothing more. We could make a category "Precursor Technology" or something like that, which has "Precursor Artifacts", and "SIS Modules" as sub-categories, and also the topics Sa-Matra, SIS, and Mark II (which could together form a new category "Precursor Ships" if we want).<br />
Opinions? - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 11:31, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
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== Categorization ==<br />
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That's a good point. The Alien Artifact cat started as a collection of "things you can carry with you." And the Precursor Artifacts seemed like a natural subcat but contained things which, most certainly, were not being carried around. Perhaps a better solution would be to remove Precursor Artifacts from the Alien Artifacts cat (let them both be top level cats) and let things that fall into both (the clear spindle etc.) be both while things that are Precursor but not devices (the SIS, the factory on Unzervalt &mdash; it would probably be a good idea to change the name to "Precursor Technology" as you mentioned) be just that. I'm learning to have great respect for the people who make the Encyclopedia Brittanica; this is hard work! [[User:Mmrnmhrm|Mmrnmhrm]] 15:35, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
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== Sounds good ==<br />
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I agree, your idea is better. -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 00:49, 12 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
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== Yehat? ==<br />
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The article claims the yehat reinforcements (along with pkunk) were crucial in defeating the sa-matra. But I never found the yehat to be of any use - certainly less use than the chmmr. [[User:Jdorje|Jdorje]] 02:01, 18 Feb 2005 (CET)<br />
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== fanfic removal ==<br />
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In view of the recent counter-fanfic rumblings, I removed some of the fanfic and actual historical errors from the article: The battleship was discovered during the first doctrinal conflict by the Kzer-Za, and the magellenic clouds retreat (where the frell did that come from?), and mobile electromagnetic fields and energy matrices. Sorry, I'm a stickler for physics terms except in the face of canon. Hopefully I didn't introduce my own fanfic musings, but if so, I gladly accept the corrections. [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 19:04, 2 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
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:Yay you. - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]]<br />
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:Thanks a lot for your hard work in keeping the content of the ultronomicon up to standard. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 06:39, 5 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
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::Magellanic Clouds retreat is from the 3DO ending. 3DO may be "less canon" than PC by your standards, but it's still canon.<br />
::So, by the way, is the description of the Sa-Matra's weaponry, taken from what we see it do to the Flagship in the 3DO ending movie -- which is, again, canon.<br />
:You know, I'm royally sick of coming back here and finding someone who's done little-to-no research claiming something I spent a *hell* of a long time digging up is "fanfic" because he didn't actually go back and check the files, and then everyone praising him for "cleaning up fanfic". There *is no reference in the game* to the Kzer-Za finding the Sa-Matra during the first Doctrinal War. In fact, the only reference to how the Sa-Matra was found is in the conversation with the Talking Pet -- although much of what he says is unreliable, sure, the fact is it's the only place we find reference to where the Sa-Matra came from (the Kzer-Za, Kohr-Ah, Melnorme and Chmmr don't seem to say anything about it), and it's certainly believable it was found during the Slave Empire era rather than the Doctrinal War, when the Ur-Quan would've been far busier fighting than exploring.<br />
:Reverting, and *ask* first before you accuse me of making things up.<br />
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::I could have sworn I found some in game/canon reference that they found it then, but now I can't find a reference (note to self: keep better notes when researching) - so I was probably wrong. I added a contextual remark for the Sa-Matra's source and left in your comments since I couldn't verify mine. And since you seem a little heated and emotional over this, I'll ask again where the Magellenic Cloud reference is before changing it back. I just watched (again) the 3DO ending cinematics (provided over at PONAF) and it didn't mention anything about this result. Was it not in the ending video? Also, since you feel so strongly about the work you put into this, why not officially register so that we can more easily discuss disagreements?<br />
::And *ask* first before you accuse me of doing little-to-no research.--[[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 10:57, 2 Nov 2005 (CET)<br />
:::It's in the 3DO voice narration in the ending slideshow, that comes after the ending cinematic (which only shows the Sa-Matra exploding). Talana tells The Captain that the Ur-Quan were last seen "high-tailing it to the Magellanic Clouds". Try the "SC2 3DO Credits" on PoNaF.<br />
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What do you all think should be done about the names ''Repulsor Spheres'' and ''Plasma Destruction Toroids''? I can't find them anywhere in the conversations or in any of the literature. Did these names come from somewhere in the 3DO version or did I miss something? I added in a comment to try and express that these are names that we've invented, though I'd like to track down where they first appeared as such. My only partial guess is that the Plasma Destruction Toroid name came from the Chmmr's comment about annihilation toroids. --[[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 12:21, 2 Nov 2005 (CET)<br />
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== Crateris ==<br />
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Hello. I read the article regarding the Sa-Matra and i noticed that it's missing informations about the place where Sa-Matra has been hidden by the Ur-Quan. I think it's an important historical information. Don't you think it should be specified? Thank you all for the great job in putting this site up.<br />
Marco</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=VUX_Beast&diff=7252VUX Beast2005-11-02T04:17:09Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>A legendary monster, only one living individual of which is known to exist, usually nicknamed merely the "Beast" or, occasionally, "ZEX's Beauty". This beast was described in ancient literature as being unmatched in ferocity and power, leading [[Admiral ZEX]], an obsessive collector of grotesque fauna, to become obsessed with acquiring it. The only known reference to its location was an ancient wildlife book written by an unknown alien author, which ZEX had found and studied. The Beast was said to live on a planet orbiting a yellow star in the constellation "Linch-Nas-Ploh", an eight-star constellation &mdash; "Linch-Nas-Ploh", in the aliens' language, meant "the snake-like creature who has swallowed the elephantine beast".<br />
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ZEX challenged [[The Captain]] to find this Beast for him before he would turn over his captured [[Shofixti Maidens]]. The Captain agreed, and finally heard of a Beast that might fit this description in his dealings with the [[Thraddash]], finally learning that the yellow star of "Linch-Nas-Ploh" was the Delta star of the constellation humans had named [[Delta Lyncis|Lyncis]].<br />
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The creature appears to be the only extant, extremely long-lived member of its species, though there may be an alternate explanation for why only one was found and why the ancients referred to it in the singular. It is classified by [[Earth]] xenologists as a "xenoteratomorph", or "alien monster form" &mdash; a creature much larger and stronger than roughly equivalent Earth species. In appearance it has a huge head surrounded by barbed tentacle-like appendages along with two longer, three-jointed armlike appendages covered with spikes and blades at the base, with green skin and a red tongue. Because of its large size and robust nervous system, it is highly resistant to stunner bolts, and required several batteries' worth of stun charges from crew's lander before it was incapacitated. Even then, it only took it a few seconds to recover from the stun effects, and required extremely strong magnetic restraints to hold in place. Its extreme aggression and the length and flexibility of its "arms" made it very dangerous to approach; it attacked and injured many members of the Starbase's scientific crew while it was kept there, including xenobiology research team leader [[Chu|Dr. Chu]]. It appeared to have an instinctive urge to constantly eat, chewing up anything it could get within its reach; upon finding something too hard for its teeth to break, it would rip it to pieces with its arms in frustration.<br />
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Due to the dangerous nature of the Beast, The Captain transported it to ZEX's private world as quickly as possible. It was unsurprising that ZEX proved overconfident in his ability to control the Beast, and it quickly escaped the control of its handlers and rapidly laid waste to the menagerie, killing and devouring ZEX and his subordinates, before it ran away into the wilderness, leaving The Captain free to salvage what he could from the ruins.<br />
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[[Category:Alien Artifacts]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Sa-Matra&diff=6747Sa-Matra2005-11-02T04:13:43Z<p>130.58.236.123: /* Description */</p>
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<div>__NOTOC__<br />
{{UrQuanNav}}<br />
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The '''Sa-Matra''' (meaning "Great Trophy" in the Ur-Quan language) is the name given to the awesome [[Precursor]] Battleship discovered by the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za]] thousands of years ago. It is the very symbol of [[Ur-Quan]] dominance; a virtually invincible war machine that guarantees that the Ur-Quan species will never need know fear of anything.<br />
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==History==<br />
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During the era of the [[Dnyarri Slave Empire]], among the numerous articles of Precursor technology gathered by the [[Ur-Quan]] scouts was one enormous Precursor battleship. When the [[Ur-Quan Slave Revolt]] began, one of the Ur-Quan's greatest victories was the successful seizure of this battleship by free Ur-Quan, who used it to devastating effect against remaining Dnyarri-controlled forces.<br />
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With the Precursor battle platform, the [[Kzer-Za]] were able to slice through the [[Kohr-Ah]] forces. In a matter of days the first Doctrinal Conflict was over with the Kzer-Za as victors. Though psychologically traumatized, The Kzer-Za were humble in their victory and admitted to the possibility that they were wrong and the Kohr-Ah right. Therefore the Kzer-Za let the remaining Kohr-Ah armada live and directed to the Kohr-Ah to travel in the anti-spinward while the Kzer-Za travelled spinward around the galaxy. They agreed that when the two races met again, after travelling their separate ways, the ritual war -- now known as the [[Doctrinal Conflict]] -- would be refought, and the Precursor Battleship would go to the next winner. They accordingly named the battleship "Sa-Matra" (meaning "Great Trophy") in the Ur-Quan language, the winning side being promised possession of the ultimate weapon and therefore a decisive advantage in implementing their doctrine of control.<br />
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Most recently, it was employed against the [[Alliance of Free Stars]] at the end of their [[First War|war]] with the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za and their [[Hierarchy]] of [[Battle Thralls]]. Although up to that point the Alliance had been capable of holding Hierarchy forces at bay, the Sa-Matra proved to be an unanswerable weapon. It quickly broke the [[Chenjesu]]/[[Mmrnmhrm]] lines, incinerating conventional vessels at far beyond their own weapons' ranges; with the fall of those two races, the Alliance quickly surrendered.<br />
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Chenjesu strategists of the time wondered why the Kzer-Za did not use the Sa-Matra sooner. Given that it holds such symbolic, ritual significance for the Kzer-Za, they probably sought to minimize its use as a matter of respect and honor. They therefore only brought it into play to break the Alliance's most powerful defenses, the technologically advanced Broodhome ships.<br />
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===The Battle of the Sa-Matra===<br />
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The second Doctrinal Conflict took place during the time of the [[Second War|Second War of the Alliance]]; in order to prevent further devastation and to end the Ur-Quan hegemony for good, the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]] undertook a desperate gambit to destroy the [[Sa-Matra]]. After foraging the sector for information, they finally gained all they needed to locate the Sa-Matra. The Alliance was also able to harness the power of the Dnyarri in the form of a reverted [[Talking Pet (device)|Talking Pet]] in order to penetrate the Ur-Quan defenses around Sa-Matra. However, even the most powerful Alliance ships, the new [[Chmmr]] [[Avatar]] vessels were at insurmountable odds against the defenses of Sa-Matra and their escorts; however, the unmatched piloting skills of [[Pkunk]] and [[Yehat]] reinforcements, arriving at the last minute after the successful [[Yehat Revolution]], fortunately proved very effective at disabling Sa-Matra's defenses.<br />
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This allowed the Alliance a chance to deploy an ultimate weapon of their own making: using the Precursor technology in their possession, they coupled the [[Vindicator]]'s Precursor energy generation systems (further amplified to the brim by the Chmmr) to the [[Utwig bomb]], creating an antimatter bomb capable of destroying even the Sa-Matra's hardened superstructure. The resulting destruction appears to have shattered the Ur-Quan's cultural understanding of themselves as a master species and sent both factions' fleets fleeing, demoralized, toward the Magellanic Clouds.<br />
==Description==<br />
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[[Image:Sa-matra_generators_down.png|right]]<br />
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Physically the vessel was huge, almost the size of a small moon, with numerous weapons and defensive systems mounted on protuberances across the surface. Its armor was built by unknown Precursor methods and was extremely strong, strong enough to withstand impacts and energy blasts capable of vaporizing similar quantities of normal matter -- the Utwig bomb, a device created by the Precursors to destroy moons and rearrange planetary continents, was not powerful enough to destroy it without augmentation.<br />
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Additionally, the Ur-Quan kept it safe when not in use by using their own technology to build a shell of fused asteroids reinforced by a weak stasis field around it, rendering the surface inaccessible to any attacker. The one weakness of defense was a single access port in the Ur-Quan's asteroid shield. However, the access port was protected by a deadly force shield whose eight generators were externally embedded in the asteroid shell. These fortifications were further complemented by the Sa-Matra's own active defense mechanisms.<br />
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The observed active defense systems consisted primarily of energetic projectiles given quasi-intelligent tracking capabilities that surrounded and defended the main platform. The battle platform was capable of regenerating these projectiles as long as any of the generators were active, and even with all generators disabled, the projectiles were self-sustaining until disrupted by enemy fire. It is unknown how or why the shield generators and the Sa-Matra's active defenses were linked in this manner. The observed active defenses consisted of two types, Repulsor Spheres, a slow-moving green projectile that, upon contact with an enemy vessel, automatically discharged a powerful repulsive blast, and Plasma Destruction Toroids, a highly-mobile cohesive collection of superheated plasma which could directly damage enemy ships with heat and impact. Strong application of energy from enemy weapons could disrupt these defenses, but their ability to quickly and effortlessly track enemy vessels and to be quickly regenerated by the Sa-Matra made them fearsome obstacles to invaders. <br />
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As for the Sa-Matra's main assault weapons, we were given little chance to observe them as they were only in use during active aggression by the Ur-Quan. Comprising many different types of projectors and cannons, they inflicted massive damage upon the Vindicator even in the short time it took the Vindicator to dock with the Sa-Matra and detonate itself. What sketchy records we have of the Alliance's struggles against the Sa-Matra in the First War suggest it was more than the equal of any fleet in direct combat and could easily have lain waste to countless planetary surfaces. The Chmmr do make mention of the Sa-Matra's deadliest armament, the "annihilation toroids", which could vaporize ships from the far side of a solar system or cut broad swaths of devastation across a planet in seconds, likely a reference to either the Plasma Destruction Toroids or a more powerful version of the same weapon.<br />
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[[Category:Ships (Specific)]]<br />
[[Category:Precursor Technology]]<br />
[[Category:Ur-Quan]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Arilou_Lalee%27lay&diff=6754Arilou Lalee'lay2005-11-02T04:05:58Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>{{RaceBox|name=Arilou Lalee'lay|image=ArilouComm.png|caption=The enigmatic Arilou|homeworld=[[Falayalaralfali]]|coordinates=[[QuasiSpace]]|organizations=[[Alliance of Free Stars]],<br>[[New Alliance of Free Stars]]|ship=[[Skiff]]}}<br />
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The '''Arilou Lalee'lay''', or '''Arilou''' for short, are an enigmatic and reclusive species. They first made themselves known to the Galaxy during the [[First War]], suddenly appearing and applying to join the [[Alliance of Free Stars]]. Their actions were equally mercurial at the end of the war, retreating and abandoning the other races as soon as the [[Humans]] were [[Slave Shield|slave-shield]]ed. The motives for their actions seem to be some mysterious connection they have with the Human race.<br />
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==Name==<br />
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As the original Arilou ambassadors explained to the Alliance leaders, "Arilou Lalee'lay" is the formal collective name for the species; "Lalee'lay" means something equivalent to "race" or "people", and therefore "Arilou" is the proper term for a specific individual or group of individuals, as well as a colloquial term for the race as a whole. The name is claimed to derive from the Celtic family of human languages, though this may be from a very old civilization or one separated from the main family of Celtic groups in Britain, as it bears little resemblance to any Celtic terms known today. However, an ancient legend of the Arilou Lalee'lay is probably the origin of the Irish Celtic myth of the analogously named Tuatha de Dannan ("People of Dannan") or faeries.<br />
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==Identifying Characteristics and Behavior==<br />
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The Arilou are apparently very physically similar to Humans, with a build very close to that of a Human child, standing at about 1.5 meters tall with a disproportionately large head compared to a normal Human adult. They have almost no pigmentation to their skin, which appears extremely pale to a Human eye, with a hue that ranges from pale gray to green. Their faces appear inhumanly expressive, almost entirely thanks to their enormous almond-shaped eyes, since their features are otherwise shrunken and flat compared to Humans', with very small chins, tapered mouths, and a tiny, almost completely flat nose. Their eyes appear to contain a tapetum lucidum over the retina (like Earth cats, or the [[Syreen]])&mdash; the resulting internal reflections cause their eyes to appear to glow in dim light.<br />
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In their dealings with the Alliance, the Arilou never spoke verbally. They appear to have an advanced degree of psionic ability, and communicated solely using telepathy. Many, especially Humans, found this unnerving because in most communications, they would appear completely motionless and wearing an enigmatic smile. They would also remain motionless while piloting their ships, manipulating the controls using psychokinesis, and periodically displayed their power to read others' thoughts and detect psychic activity. One of the courtesies they extended [[The Captain]], whom they seemed to hold in very high regard, was their condescending to speak to him in normal, audible speech, presumably to help put him at ease.<br />
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This is only a description of the Arilou's visible, physical forms, and the Arilou themselves repeatedly implied that their true nature was more "solid" and "real" than physical matter. This seems to indicate that, like Human conceptions of faeries or gods, they are creatures who are at least partly composed of a spiritual or noncoporeal matter outside of their physical bodies.<br />
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Interestingly, when they described the evolutionary process by which Humans could become like Arilou, one step of the process is "numbness", perhaps referring to an ability to detach oneself from one's body and physical sensations to lead a purely spiritual existence. The Arilou expressed distress that exposing The Captain to the wonders of their homeworld at his level would render him prematurely "numb", with disastrous effects.<br />
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They claimed to lack the limitation of a typical biological lifespan, and the Arilou representatives who spoke to The Captain claimed to have personally participated in events many centuries ago. Their civilization as a whole is certainly very old, extending back hundreds of millennia and aware of events that took place in the time of the [[Sentient Milieu]]. Moreover, they did not seem to fear death, referring to it as "discorporation", and seemed to imply that a spirit or soul survived after the destruction of their physical selves. Objects like the [[Nnngn]] or features of [[Falayalaralfali]] they referred to as the "Singing Mountains of Thought" or "The Tangible Wish" appear to be similar entities that exist at a higher level or spirit level with which they can interact.<br />
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The perception of Arilou as long-lived is distorted by their claim to not naturally perceive time sequentially as Humans do, and take some effort to order their perceptions of events into a coherent history. They appear able to directly perceive future events psionically and perceive several possible timelines at once, seeing which events are necessary to shift the mass of probabilities toward one outcome or another. They seem to perceive this as a quality attached to certain individuals who make certain signficant choices; this is eerily similar to the perceptions the [[Utwig]] claim to receive from the [[Ultron]] and lends credence to the Utwig concept of "destiny".<br />
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Whether through technology or innate ability, the Arilou appeared able to travel individually over large distances, through defenses and without detection, without the use of their ships. The Arilou claimed to be able to directly visit The Captain and observe him without his knowledge during the war. They have never been directly observed doing this and certainly did not use this ability to any effect during the war, perhaps because it involves some form of astral or spirit projection rather than physical travel, though they claim to be able to touch and affect physical objects while traveling this way.<br />
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The Arilou claim their internal thought processes are quite different from those of Humans or, in fact, most other sentient life forms. They claim to entirely lack what they call "instinct" or hardwired reactions to immediate environmental stimuli, in which they include all forms of emotional reaction and thought colored by prejudice as well as true instincts; by this definition Human thinking is, of course, almost entirely driven by "instinct". It is the "instinctive" tendencies of Humans that they claim to find most fascinating about Human activity and the developing Human mind. Though they might therefore seem to be entirely rational, they nonetheless admit that their core driving motivations and worldview are irrational and, in fact, involuntary, and claim that their basic nature as living things somehow drove them to formulate and implement their grand plan involving Humanity.<br />
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==First Contact, Recent History==<br />
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No Alliance race had made contact with the Arilou before the beginning of the First War of the Alliance against the [[Ur-Quan Hierarchy]]. Even as open hostilities began between the two coalitions, the Arilou remained absent and silent until the [[Chenjesu]] made first contact with the race of Humans in 2116. On the day August 2 on the Human calendar, the day after the Human United Nations formally ratified a treaty joining the Alliance, a fleet of small, disc-shaped vessels suddenly appeared orbiting the satellite moon, [[Luna]], of the human homeworld [[Earth]]. Landing on the moon, the ships transmitted a request to meet with Alliance representatives.<br />
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It was on the moon's surface where Human and Chenjesu delegates met the Arilou La'leelay for the first time. Claiming that they, too, were under threat from the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za]] expansion, the Arilou asked for the Alliance's protection in return for its support. Alliance leaders quickly decided they needed any help they could get and welcomed the Arilou into the fold.<br />
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Even so, many Alliance members had reservations. The Arilou were extremely secretive, refusing to reveal any details about their civilization or their technology, even refusing to give the location of their homeworlds or the means by which they'd come to Luna. More disturbing, however, was the Humans' reaction. To their eyes, the Arilou appeared exactly like the stereotypical image of a legendary alien race long rumored to have secretly interfered in Human affairs, variously called "Martians", "Roswell Grays" or "Zeta Reticulans". Ancient archives kept by Human governments proved the resemblance too close to be coincidental, but the exigencies of war and the closedmouthness of the Arilou prevented them from examining the matter any further.<br />
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The Arilou fleet played a key role in the war; despite its small size, it had an amazingly fast travel time, disappearing and reappearing from combat sites at speeds far greater than the most advanced [[HyperSpace|Hyperdrive]]s known to the rest of the Alliance could allow. The Arilou [[Skiff]], though an apparently weak ship, employed many unique, exotic technologies, such as an inertialess [[TrueSpace]] propulsion system allowing it to hover in gravity wells and an incredibly powerful short-range Hyperdrive allowing it to "teleport", making it unmatched for scouting and harassing enemy ships.<br />
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However, the small and lightly-armed Arilou fleet took heavy casualties during the course of the war, as they were primarily engaged in the main fighting on the Coreward Front defending Human space. When the Alliance began to crumble and Hierarchy forces pushed rimward and took the [[Sol]] system, [[Slave Shield|slave-shielding]] the Humans, the remaining defenders of the Front understandably, if regrettably, scattered. As the [[Yehat]] and [[Shofixti]] retreated to the Gorno system, the Arilou and Syreen fleets were left huddled together; expecting help from the Arilou, the Syreen were shocked to see the Arilou wordlessly retreat and vanish into space, abandoning them to the Ur-Quan. The cowardice and treachery of the Arilou are still cursed by the Syreen to this day.<br />
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==Current Events and Revelations==<br />
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Though contact with the Arilou had been lost after the [[First War of the Alliance]], when The Captain used The Flagship to begin the anti-Hierarchy actions that became known as the [[Second War]], he inadvertently discovered the Arilou once more, reestablished contact with them on behalf of the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]], and became privy to many of their most closely held secrets.<br />
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Unbeknownst to the Humans, the Arilou had long held a semipermanent base of operations in the Chandrasekhar constellation in [[HyperSpace]], establishing a small sphere of influence and an amicable relationship with the neighboring [[Umgah]]. Traveling to investigate various reports of a strange radiating body that appeared like a variable star in the area, The Captain discovered the area to be rife with Skiff starships piloted by Arilou.<br />
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The Arilou explained that they were not native to this region of TrueSpace but resided in [[QuasiSpace]], an alternate dimensional space only reachable using their unique brand of [[Dimensional Fatigue]] technology. The local region of QuasiSpace contains a total of sixteen natural overlaps with or "portals" to HyperSpace, but fifteen of them are unidirectional from QuasiSpace to HyperSpace, so the Arilou found it most convenient to post the majority of their ships in the HyperSpace region immediately surrounding the single bidirectional portal.<br />
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Since they carried on very little contact with other races and had very little business in TrueSpace at the time, their reasons for keeping detachments of ships in HyperSpace are unclear. They claim their primary purpose was hunting and trapping strange creatures called Nnngn for sport, apparently because the Nnngn frequented the areas around the portals or were easier to trap there. The Nnngn apparently hailed from QuasiSpace and were composed of a native QuasiSpatial form of matter that Humans could not perceive or interact with; the Arilou merely described Humans as "not solid enough" to interact with them or other forms native to QuasiSpace, and refused to describe the matter further.<br />
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The Arilou seemed quite taken with The Captain's cause and offered him passage through the bidirectional portal into QuasiSpace, where he found the Arilou homeworld, Falayalaralfali, a single TrueSpace planet kept in an artificial pocket of TrueSpace within QuasiSpace. There, though they would not allow him to land, Arilou leaders spoke freely to The Captain from the surface. They informed him that their numbers and physical resources were too depleted from the previous war for them to provide material support to the Alliance, but they were willing to supply technology and information.<br />
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The degree of their knowledge about local events was impressively widespread despite their cloistered appearance, and through unknown channels they were able to inform The Captain about the existence of the [[Slylandro]], the nature of the [[Mycon]] [[Deep Child|Deep Children]], and the history of the [[Ur-Quan]].<br />
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Moreover, in one of their rare altruistic interventions into other races' affairs, they had discovered the wreck of an Ur-Quan [[Dreadnought]] on Alpha Pavonis VII, which had miraculously failed to self-destruct upon impact. This allowed them to rescue the single surviving life form, the ship Lord's [[Talking Pet]]. At the same time they discovered the powerful starboard [[Ur-Quan Warp Pod|warp pod]] was intact, and instructed The Captain to salvage it. Using the warp pod, the Arilou were able to construct a [[QuasiSpace Portal Spawner]] capable of generating artificial portals that allowed The Flagship to travel through QuasiSpace at will. This allowed The Flagship to share the immense reduction in travel time that had proven so useful to the Arilou during the First War; it was able to hop across local space much more quickly than it would have otherwise been able, given its great mass. The Arilou's provision of free passage through QuasiSpace proved to be one of the New Alliance's most critical advantages in carrying out its missions against the Hierarchy.<br />
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They meanwhile entrusted the Talking Pet to the care of the Umgah, whose understanding of corporeal biology exceeded theirs, only for the Umgah to accidentally activate the creature's latent genetic abilities, transforming it into a powerful and malevolent [[Talking Pet (device)|neo-Dnyarri]]. However, The Captain, taking the Arilou's advice, was able to strike a deal with the neo-Dnyarri, and its psychic powers proved to be the crucial element in breaching the Ur-Quan defenses at the Battle of the [[Sa-Matra]] that finally defeated the Ur-Quan and ended the war. It was at around the time of this battle that the Arilou finally reentered TrueSpace contact with the Alliance races, as a flotilla of four Skiffs materialized at the Earth [[Starbase]] and offered their much-needed assistance for the assault on the Sa-Matra.<br />
<br />
Interestingly this wreck represented a colossal and, as far as we know, unprecedented failure of Ur-Quan Kzer-Za technology, normally a benchmark for reliability. Not only did the Dreadnought crash in a safe, deserted area suspiciously far from the main battleground of the [[Doctrinal Conflict]] and suspiciously near the Arilou's base in Chandrasekhar, its self-destruct systems utterly failed and two incredibly valuable weapons, the warp pod and the Talking Pet, both survived intact. The Arilou gave many hints that their degree of knowledge and control was far greater than they let The Captain know, and many suspect that they engineered this wreck as well as other events within the war on humanity's behalf, including their fortuitous meeting with The Captain in the first place.<br />
<br />
==Relations with Other Races==<br />
<br />
===Humans===<br />
<br />
====Early Speculations====<br />
<br />
Upon initial examination most Humans quickly recognized the Arilou to be uncannily similar to popular depictions of a certain class of science-fictional extraterrestrial in the 20th and 21st century. Often called "Martians", "Zeta Reticulans", "Little Green Men", "Enochian Angels" and so on, the most common and neutral term for such aliens was "Grays" after their skin color. These depictions were based on a series of reported encounters between such beings and Humans, occurring primarily in Earth's period of rapid industrial development following the Second World War (the 1950s) and ending some time before the Small War and the creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Army and Star Control (the 2000s).<br />
<br />
In such encounters, Humans living in isolated locations were typically abducted by Grays using ships colloquially known as "UFOs" (Unidentified Flying Objects) or "flying saucers", after their disc-shaped bodies. Not only were these ships extremely similar in appearance to the Skiffs the Arilou piloted in the First War, but they exhibited similar capabilities of inertialess acceleration, indefinite hovering in gravity fields, and even short-range teleportation. Though most abductees' memories were hazy, possibly suppressed or modified, they did describe undergoing strange, high-tech medical procedures, often finding themselves with an unplanned pregnancy soon afterwards. These subjects usually reported one major operation or procedure being done on them in their first abduction, and one or more secondary abductions taking place afterwards, as though their captors were checking on the progress of their modifications.<br />
<br />
The Grays were associated with other strange activities as well, including experimentation on non-Human animals, frequently experienced by farmers as mysteriously mutated livestock, and more bizarre behavior, like strange patterns of circular depressions left in crop fields.<br />
<br />
====Before The War====<br />
<br />
In their relationship with The Captain during the Second War, the Arilou confirmed what the Humans had long guessed, that they and the Grays were one and the same. They moreover intimated that their interference in Human culture went back far longer than Humans had surmised, dating millennia back to the dawn of Human civilization and, according to them, the very first beings identifiable as modern Humans, implying that, if they did not create or transplant Humans on Earth, they controlled Humans' early development to an astonishing degree.<br />
<br />
Human religion and mythology had long had a near-universal fascination with supernatural beings known by various names -- elves, leprechauns, duendes, tengu, and so on. Universally depicted as humanoids diminutive in stature and slender in build, they were notorious in legends for being capricious and amoral, appearing sporadically to make odd and unreasonable demands from Humans and employing a bizarre array of magical powers to enforce their obedience.<br />
<br />
These legends were apparently based on early interventions of the Arilou, who nursed Humanity from its prehistoric origins and, acting as gods to some civilizations and devils to others, set the bounds for the growth of its civilizations. They claimed special credit for inspiring the pyramids of Egypt and the standing stones of the ancient Celts, a culture that had been their special favorite, and revealed that their favored name for themselves, Arilou Lalee'lay, was in actuality a descriptive phrase from a now lost Celtic tongue.<br />
<br />
The Arilou kept up a continuing program of steering Human cultural development while subtly tweaking Human physiology through periodic interventions, modifying the Human genome through gengineering and selective breeding, meanwhile performing side experiments on other animals and leaving the crop circles and other patterns as covert signals to each other during their missions. The Arilou's interventions had grown less prominent as the Human civilizations developed, until they suddenly accelerated to a staggering pace during the last half of the 20th century, not coincidentally a time of great conflict as Humans neared self-destruction multiple times, while at the same time their industrial development made contact with the nearby starfaring races increasingly likely. We can surmise Arilou intervention at the very least had the goal of preventing a nuclear holocaust, while most likely was also meant to prepare Humans for the inevitable first contact.<br />
<br />
The program of Human modification in the late 20th century was far more widespread than even the cultural impact of the "UFO craze" showed; the Arilou revealed to The Captain that those who reported their interventions had been purposely allowed to imperfectly retain parts of their memory while others simply had whole chunks of time completely excised from their minds -- giving rise to the unique Human psychological phenomenon of "missing days". Apparently the UFO craze itself was part of the effect the Arilou wished to have on Human society.<br />
<br />
====During the War====<br />
<br />
In any case, the Arilou again retreated into obscurity during the days of the ascendant [[United Nations]] and [[Star Control (Organization)|Star Control]], until they suddenly revealed their presence and directly offered assistance in the First War. Their purpose in this war was first and foremost to prevent the wholesale destruction of Humanity; they appeared to be unprepared for the eventuality of Human conflict with the Hierarchy and uncertain of the Humans' fate should they face defeat. Once they saw that the slave-shielding process left the Human species intact and safe, they lost interest in the war and chose to cut their losses of physical materiel by returning to QuasiSpace, betraying their rather cavalier attitude to other Alliance species. However, the looming threat of the genocidal [[Kohr-Ah]] once more made it necessary for them to intervene to protect Humanity, this time with The Captain as their chosen liaison.<br />
<br />
The Captain, intriguingly, was more than simply chosen by the Arilou; the Arilou appear to have watched him from birth. The Arilou claimed to have traveled repeatedly to the Unzervalt colony during the interregnum between the two wars, overseeing the Humans' progress repairing the Precursor shipyard and building The Flagship. At that time the Arilou also began observing The Captain: Many claim that, far from merely assisting the New Alliance in the Second War, the Arilou were responsible for its existence and the beginning of the Second War in the first place, as the strange chance of a Human child being born with a natural affinity for ancient, complex Precursor computer equipment may be the result of Arilou tinkering.<br />
<br />
This is, of course, unconfirmed, but the Arilou maintained a deep fascination with the young boy who would become The Captain. They referred to him as the "focus" of history and said that they were purposely putting the responsibility of saving Humanity and all other sentient life from the Kohr-Ah on his shoulders, in striking similarity to the way The Captain was viewed by the Utwig Ultron-worshippers. They also kept covert observation on him all during the Second War; one Arilou captain once inadvertently referred to his habit of somehow invisibly penetrating The Flagship to monitor The Captain as he slept.<br />
<br />
They did not confine their attentions to The Captain; during the interregnum period when Earth was slave-shielded, the Arilou began covert operations aboard the Earth Starbase. How they successfully infiltrated the Starbase without detection is unclear &mdash; perhaps they used the aforementioned mysterious methods by which they infiltrated The Flagship &mdash; but the Arilou focused their attention on the Starbase crew, many of these served aboard The Flagship in some capacity, possibly modifying them in the process. We may never know the details, but can only assume that the Arilou's attention and possible modifications were intended for The Flagship's mission or something like it and that they played a key if invisible role in assuring The Flagship's success. Whatever the details, the Arilou's role in winning the war for the Alliance is far more extensive than they are usually given credit for.<br />
<br />
====Current Speculations====<br />
<br />
The Arilou's purpose in all of this is unclear, but the Arilou claim to see their relationship to Humans as analogous to that between a parent and a child. They claim that they and Humans are but one example of many similar relationships between an elder and younger species throughout the universe, and that this relationship is basic to the nature of their form of life and cannot be morally judged by resentful Humans who do not understand their position. Interestingly they react to the common description of themselves as "invaders from space" by claiming that their goal is not to "invade" -- presumably, not to take the stereotypical role of conquerors and overlords often ascribed to them by Earth popular culture during the UFO craze -- but to "pervade", to become everywhere a part of Humanity. They see their intervention in Human nature as somehow an expression and extension of their own selves.<br />
<br />
There is an ultimate purpose they have for Humanity, and they seem to be working to tailor-fit the Human species to that ultimate destiny, protecting and nurturing them along the way, and meanwhile tolerating the suspicion thrown against them that is a natural result of their keeping Humans ignorant of that they deem Humans too undeveloped to understand. They seem to find this process itself a thing of beauty, frequently commenting on the aesthetic pleasure they received observing the development of the Human mind from its primitive roots.<br />
<br />
Intriguingly they often speak of Humans attaining a similar state to that of the Arilou, claiming that given time to evolve and develop Humans will eventually attain the same quasi-supernatural status, able to live very long lifespans, perceive the invisible and share fully in the Arilou's technology. The implication is that Humans may become the Arilou's peers and companions, or, as one popular theory has it, the Arilou's "heirs" as the Arilou pass away.<br />
<br />
An even bolder theory takes note of the Arilou's frequent use of an untranslated term that the Precursor's powerful translating computers rendered in English as "time" to describe dimensional spaces such as QuasiSpace. If the interface between dimensional spaces bears some special relationship to what we understand as time, then the interaction between Arilou from QuasiSpace with Humans may be a nonlinear causal loop; the Arilou may be a far-future, evolved version of Humanity causing their own existence by creating and manipulating their own ancestors. This theory is, while seemingly implausible, consistent with much of the observed evidence, but it bears disturbing implications and is still unaccepted by most.<br />
<br />
===Androsynth and Syreen===<br />
<br />
One much-remarked-upon fact was the fact that despite the obvious genetic connection of Humans to the Syreen and the known, documented genetic connection of Humans to the [[Androsynth]], the Arilou apparently showed no interest in either of them. The Androsynth do not appear to have been part of the Arilou's plan for Humanity and no Arilou interference has ever been confirmed with their civilization. Intriguingly, it was very soon after the Androsynth separated from the Humans -- and, therefore, from Arilou oversight -- that they discovered Dimensional Fatigue phenomena and subsequently disappeared (see the entry on the [[Orz]]). The Arilou seem to imply that this is a direct result of their not protecting the Androsynth; when they mention the Androsynth at all, it is to use them as a stern example and warning of the perils of meddling with interdimensional forces and entities.<br />
<br />
The Arilou similarly seem to bear no particular concern for the Syreen. They have never had any observed contact with them, and were certainly not concerned enough to intervene when [[Syra]] was destroyed. At the First War's end, once they confirmed the Humans were safe under the slave shield, they ceased their efforts and abandoned the Syreen, despite the fact that the Syreen fleet was far weaker and more vulnerable than the Human population they had initially set out to defend.<br />
<br />
This seems to pose a paradox, as Arilou claimed to have overseen Human development so closely that it is hard to explain why the closely genetically related Syreen would not be part of their project. Some surmise that the Humans are the Arilou's main experiment and the Syreen are some sort of discarded or unneeded relic, either a control group set up under standards of strict noninterference for comparison with Humans, or some sort of leftover of genetic breeding pools now unneeded, or, most intriguingly, an original population from which the Human genome was extracted and transplanted to Earth. Certainly there is compelling evidence from a Human point of view that the Syreen culture is a "natural" state for Humanity that Human society and culture seems to have been distorted away from, even perhaps the planet Syra being the template for the Eden stories in many human religions (as was hinted at by the Syreen), but without further information from the Arilou we can do no more than speculate.<br />
<br />
===Orz===<br />
<br />
Much of what little understanding we have of the Orz comes from the testimony of their enemies, the Arilou Lalee'lay; cryptic as the Arilou's references to them may be, their descriptions are far more revealing than the Precursor translator's garbled interpretation of the Orz language, and the Arilou's descriptions provide the model most scholars use for interpreting Orz terminology and concepts.<br />
<br />
Though the Arilou refused to elaborate on their final goals for the Human race, they did make clear that accomplishing such goals entails the long-term survival of Humanity, and therefore much of the Arilou's energy was bent toward guarding Humans from certain subtle threats, particularly extradimensional ones that only they could perceive.<br />
<br />
The Arilou described the existence of parasitic beings in other dimensional spaces that had intimate relationships with mortal races -- races dependent on TrueSpace matter -- as they did with Humans, but of a purely destructive and violent nature. They claimed that any awareness of the details of the beings' existence would make one vulnerable to their attack. The implication seems to be that these creatures exist in a sort of idea-space, so that merely thinking about them is the equivalent of making psychic contact with them. This resonates eerily with the garbled reports from The Flagship's Science Officer [[Bukowski]] of the references to [["They"|"Them"]] he discovered in the Androsynth computer core during his ill-fated expedition to Eta Vulpeculae.<br />
<br />
The Arilou seemed to identify the Orz as "Them" or perhaps the agents of "Them" within TrueSpace. They claimed that the Androsynth had drawn the parasites to themselves through their investigation into and growing understanding of Dimensional Fatigue and other dimensional spaces, and as a result, though they would not explain how, the Androsynth were now totally and irrevocably destroyed, replaced entirely by the Orz.<br />
<br />
The Arilou claimed a large portion of their biological and cultural modifications of the Human species were to give Humans a physical form and general psychological mindset that the parasites would find hard to detect. However, they continued to hide almost all details of their homeworld, their own nature, and the nature of their home dimension QuasiSpace from Humans so that Humans would be unlikely to begin the series of investigations and discoveries that would give them dangerous levels of knowledge.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the Arilou were forced to allow The Captain into QuasiSpace and trust him with many secrets during the Second War in order to fight the more immediate threat of the Ur-Quan; the Arilou openly complained that The Captain's high level of knowledge introduced a complication to their plans. Not only that, but in the course of the war The Captain was also forced to compromise and openly make treaty with the Orz and allow them access to the Alliance. The Arilou had strenuously warned against such an action; although they seemed to fear no immediate threat from the Orz in their current state, they felt them to be untrustworthy. What consequences will result from these actions, and how the Arilou and Humans will deal with them, remain to be seen.<br />
<br />
===Other Races===<br />
<br />
The Arilou had very few relationships with other races; they rarely spoke to or encountered anyone, though they were sensed from afar and found to be benign by the powerful [[Pkunk]] psychics. However, their long-term presence in the area surrounding the Chandrasekhar portal led them to develop a friendship with the nearby Umgah. The Umgah, focused on more corporeal pursuits than the Arilou, outstripped them greatly in the fields of biology, medicine and genetic engineering. It may be that many of the biological techniques used on the Humans by the Arilou were at some point learned or borrowed from the Umgah; the Umgah certainly seem accomodating to the Arilou's desires and would most likely find the large-scale manipulation of Humans to be a wildly funny joke.<br />
<br />
The Arilou and Umgah's relationship was interrupted when the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za attacked and laid waste to Umgah space, subjugating the Umgah as their [[Battle Thralls]] during the War. Afterwards when the Arilou joined the Alliance the two races were forced into combat with each other, but after hostilities ended the two races were able to reestablish normal relations.<br />
<br />
The Arilou also mentioned to Alliance members during the course of the war that there was a species none of them had yet discovered in the Draconis constellation, the [[Thraddash]]. They were able to say little about them and did not bring them up again in that war or in their dealings with The Captain, being naturally closed-mouthed and their time being at a premium. However, they did mention "having some fun" with them. One need only look at the extremely distorted, counterintuitive and maladaptive social mechanisms employed in Thraddash society to find it likely that their cultural development was somehow artificially tampered with. The Arilou may have done this, as they say, purely for sport, or it may have been an early experiment in covert social engineering, to perfect techniques that they would later use on Human society.<br />
<br />
The Arilou were also known to the shadowy, almost omniscient-seeming sources of the [[Melnorme]] traders. The Melnorme were not only aware of the presence of Arilou Skiffs at the portal regions but were also capable of tracing the Arilou's movements to and from Earth and were well aware of the Arilou's interventions in Human culture and even tracked their movements up to the Second War, detecting their actions at the Earth Starbase. This broad base of knowledge did not, however, extend to the Melnorme being willing or able to follow the Arilou into QuasiSpace, of which they presumably remain ignorant.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Races]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Arilou_Lalee%27lay&diff=6753Talk:Arilou Lalee'lay2005-11-02T04:05:07Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>The reference to "numbness" is not fanfic. Neither is the reference to "vibrations". Both of these are clearly in the Arilou dialogue.<br />
<br />
==I'm a murderer==<br />
<br />
I killed a lot of the content in "Theories" because, frankly, it was disorganized and kind of confusing, and I might be calling the kettle black here but I didn't see much support for it in canon. The idea of the Arilou being a far-future evolved version of humanity I can swallow and it's in fact quite elegant and compelling. Extrapolating from this that the Orz are some sort of far-future rival to the Arilou, or an alternate-universe version of a different humanity, or a far-future version of the Androsynth, or whatever the writer of "Theories" was trying to say is really unwarranted.<br />
<br />
In general I'm not a fan of the idea of a "Theories" section. If a speculation is appropriate it goes at the end of the relevant section of the main article to flesh out the reader's understanding of the possibilities that surround that topic and the implications people are drawing from it. If it's not clearly appropriate for that reason -- if it's "Wouldn't it be cool" daydreaming -- then it belongs in a thread on the forums and will probably be more fun there, as there'll be a more structured way for people to discuss it and reply to it.<br />
<br />
Since there's a *lot* of interesting and relevant speculation attached to the Arilou I've tried to integrate most of it into the article body. But a divorced "theories" section is unnecessary and, I think, destructive. If there's a whole topic that's primarily speculation then it should be "Theories about the Arilou/Human connection" or "Theories about the Androsynth disappearance" and go in the proper categorization.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Great work on the first contact section. A few things with it didn't sit right with me, though.<br />
<br />
"The Human governments searched their ancient archives and found the resemblance too close to be coincidental..."<br />
:I don't remember this level of detail being given in the game. Correct me if I am wrong, but this sounds like a bit of extrapolation.<br />
"It was on the moon's surface where Human and Chenjesu delegates met the Arilou La'leelay..."<br />
:Another detail I'm not recalling. Sounds feasible, though.<br />
::This is mentioned in the SC1 and SC2 manuals.<br />
"No other race had made contact with the Arilou before the beginning of the First War..."<br />
:Not so sure about the veritablilty of this statement. How about the Umgah, or even the Thraddash?<br />
::True. Okay, no *Alliance* race had made contact with the Arilou before the First War.<br />
-[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 07:28, 25 Nov 2004 (CET)<br />
<br />
<br />
The most annoying thing about many of these entries is that in a misguided attempt to be objective they present things as "up for debate" that aren't legitimately up for debate. "Arilou La'Leelay" is explicitly stated in the game to be a Celtic name, given to the Arilou by the "children of the Celts".<br />
<br />
== Be Bold! ==<br />
<br />
Go ahead and make any changes you feel are appropriate. I haven't played through the game since over seven years ago; sometimes I can't remember what was stated as fact and what was conjecture.<br />
<br />
<br />
I probably will soon enough when I've got time, but I want to note that this article needs a full rewrite; numerous things about it are factually wrong. The Arilou do *not* militarily defend the area around the natural QS portal; they act utterly pacifistic and refuse to engage you in combat even if you goad them repeatedly. They also don't seem to "jealously guard" this secret, since the Spathi, Melnorme et al. discover it without trouble -- just none of them have the guts to enter the Portal.<br />
<br />
No evidence that the Arilou care at all about the Androsynth or the Syreen. The Arilou actually directly *abandon* the Syreen to be defeated after the slave-shielding of Earth -- they don't stick around at all to see what happens to the Syreen. And though they're fully aware of what happened to the Androsynth there's no evidence they intervened to help them, nor do they ever claim that they did so; they just use that as a reason to warn *you* not to mess with DF. They come off as incredibly Human-centric. (On the other hand, the game *does* mention that they tampered with the development of the Thraddash, although purely for fun.)<br />
<br />
Leaving aside magic sci-fi technology, "crossbreeding the two species" would not guarantee that they would remain that genetically similar over time; parapatric speciation does occur and, in fact, is inevitable when you have a strong bottleneck like that between two separated groups of a main species. The only plausible non-magic explanation is that the two subspecies were separated in very recent evolutionary time (which makes sense, since the story only really needs to start with the dawn of Human history, about 10,000 years ago).<br />
<br />
Finally, I think I'm cutting out this stuff about Falayaliralfali looking like Earth, since in this screenshot:<br />
<br />
http://www.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,2/gameId,179/gameShotId,1743/<br />
<br />
the resemblance is very superficial. For one thing, Falayaliralfali's continents don't match Earth's continents' shape. For another, the continents are purple.<br />
<br />
:The Arilou homeworld appears to be a water world, so perhaps the line in question could be changed to reflect that. Still though, it appears to be very earth-like, and even has what appears to be a small, gray moon. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 05:52, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)<br />
http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/stylesheets/images/arispace.png<br />
<br />
::The moon is the most convincing part in real life -- such a moon is a lot less likely than one might think -- but in the SC2 universe we see plenty of worlds with moons, including water worlds IIRC. Other than that Falayalaralfali just being a water world isn't much of a coincidence. There are plenty of water worlds in the game, and water worlds are one of the few types of worlds on which one could reasonably expect to find life, especially enough diversity of life to allow a species to evolve to sentience (and look anything like a human being at all). If they'd wanted it to be eerily reminiscent of Earth, they probably would've at least drawn the continents in green and brown, and made them closer to Earth's continents in size and shape. The planet looks like Earthsea; it looks like Earthsea; large islands about the size of Australia but nothing like what we'd count a continent.<br />
<br />
Where is the Arilou messing with the Thraddash for fun mentioned? I can't find it. -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 21:36, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)<br />
::Ask Commander Hayes about other alien races who weren't in the War. He mentions the Pkunk and the Zoq-Fot-Pik: "The Chenjesu implied that they had met at least 2 other starfaring species: one near the Giclas constellation, and the other directly coreward from Procyon." He then mentions the Thraddash: "The Ariloulaleelay once mentioned having 'some fun' with an alien race in Draconis but like so much else with the Arilou, they never revealed the whole story."<br />
:::I see. Thanks. I forgot all about that quote. Though "some fun" doesn't necessarilly mean "tamper with the development". -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 15:35, 24 Nov 2004 (CET)<br />
::::To tell you the truth, I really wish you could ask the Thraddash about it. [[User:Tssha|Tssha]] 14:36, 21 Dec 2004 (CET)</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Mycon&diff=9273Talk:Mycon2005-11-02T04:01:44Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
<hr />
<div>I was wondering at the possibility of the Mycon being named after Miconia calvescens, a plant which has been invading and terraforming large chunks of Hawaii for the greater part of the 20th century and up through the present. I have no solid evidence to suggest that this is the case...the names're just pronounced almost the same (well, the first two syllables), and there are intriguing similarities between the two.<br />
<br />
::Highly unlikely, since there's a much more plausible origin of "Mycon" from the Greek for "fungus", which is a very commonly used stem (see "mycology"). Given how often we're reminded that the Mycon are fungoids, I find it hard to believe "Mycon" could come from any other source. As for Miconia calvescens, I hadn't heard of it before this -- the idea of a killer weed is hardly unique, and I very much doubt TFB were aware of this particular one.<br />
<br />
:::Its possible for TFB to have used that plant seeing as the ur-quan of often compared to hawaiian caterpillers.especially considering the relations between the two in the hierachy.Its likely that both are correct and that mycon refers to them as both terraforming weeds and fungii in the same remember they are terraforming tools come sentient which now instead of working on their encoded purpose to terraform they do it now working towards an idea (Juffo-Wup)<br />
<br />
::::Just because you've heard of it doesn't make it a common reference, since I bet most people who've even heard of this plant know it as a "velvet tree", its common name, and not the Latin _Miconia_. In any case, "terraforming" is an inaccurate word to use for a plant from one ecosystem taking over another ecosystem -- since both ecosystems are on Earth, they're both *already* "terraformed". The Hawaiian tree is certainly not an artificial life-form created by scientists to make planets habitable.</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Androsynth&diff=6751Androsynth2005-11-02T03:52:33Z<p>130.58.236.123: /* Slavery */</p>
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<div>{{RaceBox|name=Androsynth|image=AndrosynthCaptain_Portrait.png|caption=A typical Androsynth crew.|homeworld=Eta Vulpeculae II|coordinates=358.7 : 256.6|organizations=The [[Ur-Quan Hierarchy|Hierarchy of Battle Thralls]]|ship=[[Guardian]]}}<br />
<br />
The '''Androsynth''' were a genetically engineered off-shoot of [[Humans]], developed after the [[Small War of 2015]] but before the [[First War]]. Abused for both religious reasons and for their legal expendability, they abandoned their progenitors in a feat of mass-exodus. They eventually settled in the Vulpeculae constellation, one-time homeworlds of the vanished [[Taalo]]. Later, the Androsynth were conquered by, and then joined, the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za|Ur-Quan]] [[Hierarchy]] of [[battle thralls]], fighting against humanity and the [[Alliance of Free Stars]] in the First War. Several years after the war's end, they were apparently wiped out by the [[Orz]], who seemed to come from out of nowhere, possibly drawn to Vulpeculae by the Andosynth's [[Dimensional Fatigue]] experiments.<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
<br />
The story of the Androsynth begins in the initial renaissance of peaceful development of science and technology in the first days after the [[Small War of 2015]], when the warring nations of [[Earth]] were united under the United Nations. The UN, fearing a future global holocaust if the development of weapons of mass destruction continued, began forcibly trying to steer [[Human]] innovation toward peaceful applications that could benefit a unified, cooperative Human race. They specifically restricted work related to existing "Mass-Kill" devices, barring physicists and engineers from many cutting-edge fields including the study of nuclear power or high-energy lasers. With human creativity thus stymied in the areas it had been strongest for most of its recent past, humans began exploring the new and fruitful field of biotechnology.<br />
<br />
A brilliant Swiss scientist named [[Hsien Ho]] at the Zurich BioTeknik, one of the institutions that sprung up to meet the new demand for biotech research, did an extensive study of the completed map of the human genetic code that the Human Genome Project had finished years before. Modern technology now allowed him to use this information to edit human genes at will and then develop a reliable, cost-effective method of parthenogenesis &mdash; eventually not even requiring a biological host mother &mdash; to grow living individuals based on those genes. Ho had realized the dreams of generations of engineering and cloning researchers &mdash; being able to produce artificially designed human beings.<br />
<br />
In 2019, Ho began creating a series of such "designer people". None of their genetic traits were outside the normal capacity of human beings, but Ho's engineering created an improbably "perfect" genetic code, with any possibility for genetic disease or disability wiped out, and the chances for physical health and fitness, very high intelligence, and a strong and balanced personality maximized. The new humans were all genetic near-clones of each other, with only slight differences between individuals. In order to prevent the various potential complications linked to reproduction (both flaws that might show up in his genetic sequencing, and political opposition from those who saw the clones as a threat to "normal" humans) Ho made all his clones male and congenitally sterile.<br />
<br />
The original hopes of Hsien Ho were that, as the clones matured, they would be slowly integrated into Human society and, serving as great scientists, artists and engineers, open the door for future improvement of the human race through genetic engineering. Unfortunately, these hopes would not be realized, thanks to the vagaries of Human politics. Many Humans, still traumatized by the near-brush with total destruction of their species in the Small War, found themselves bereft of spiritual solace. Many of the world's oldest and most powerful religions had collapsed, or had their foundations deeply shaken, as their most sacred sites in the Middle East had been melted to glass by nuclear weapons. Filling this vacuum came the teachings of one [[Jason MacBride]], a man who had formerly made his living selling used ground-transport vehicles before he received what he believed to be a divine revelation.<br />
<br />
==Slavery==<br />
<br />
MacBride believed the Millennium was near &mdash; a profound shift of the nature of existence, an end to the metaphorical "thousand years" of Human history and the beginning of a new "thousand years." In this new Millennium, Humans would ascend to a godlike, wholly spiritual existence, free from struggle or doubt. MacBride predicted a specific date &mdash; March 11, 2046 &mdash; on which normal human existence would end and any of sufficient faith and virtue would attain this ascension. Whether it was MacBride's strong personal charisma or just the novelty of a sincere new religious movement, one unaffiliated with the discredited religions of the past and unafraid to make boldly optimistic claims in a pessimistic time, MacBride's influence spread like wildfire and he soon became one of the most influential leaders on Earth, though he never formally considered himself more than the first among equals in his movement, taking no title other than "Brother Jason."<br />
<br />
MacBride claimed that he and his followers were the Homo Deus, or "Godly Men." The use of the Latin term was to imply that his followers would become a new Human species, superior to ordinary men and women, at the moment of the new Millennium. MacBride's religion, acting as a cultural opponent of the United Nations' humanist, materialist, technological plans for a future utopia, thus saw the creation of an ''artificial'' race of humans, using godless science to further human evolution, as the ultimate blasphemy.<br />
<br />
MacBride thus began a public campaign attacking the adolescent clones. He named them "Android Synthetica" or "Built Man-Like Things" (idiomatically, the "Artificial False Men"), a conscious parallel to his "Homo Deus." This name, interestingly, uses Greek words rather than Latin; whether this was intentional or not (MacBride was no scholar), it soon gained the connotation among the Homo Deus of defining these artificial humans as not even worthy of an ordinary Latin genus-species name, placing them outside of the taxonomy of "natural" animals. This may be the origin of Human xenologists' habit of using the Greek language by convention to name alien concepts when direct transliterations are inconvenient or unavailable -- for instace, the name of the "[[Mycon]]" (fungus) or "Slylandro" (sky-man) race, or the concept of the "[[Ultron]]" (thing beyond) from Utwig religion, etc.<br />
<br />
The rest of the world, grown complacent in their material peace and prosperity after the Small War, allowed the Homo Deus movement to win legal battle after legal battle, stripping away the clones' rights and increasingly defining them as non-human. The "Android Synthetica" term used by Homo Deus, shortened to "Androsynth", eventually became the commonly used name for them, and by the time the clones reached adulthood they had attained a legal status more or less parallel with slavery. They were immensely valuable both as scientific curiosities and for their native genetic talents that made them excellent at refined intellectual work, and were pampered and sheltered wherever they went. However, the corporations who had sponsored their development effectively owned them as chattels. They lacked the basic rights to bargain for their wages, choose what projects they wished to work on, or freely express their views and participate in governance and independent economic activity, a state that the enlightened governments of Earth at this point would never have tolerated for any Humans had not the dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at them by the Homo Deus not infected Earth's culture to such a degree.<br />
<br />
The day March 11, 2046 came and went, and no detectable change in the human condition took place. MacBride, shamed and discredited, claimed that the that the vast majority of his followers had been deceiving him about the purity of their hearts and motives, and that their faithlessness poisoned the movement and prevented the Millennium. Soon, the Homo Deus movement dissipated, and MacBride faded from public life, leaving the legitimacy of his most enduring political legacy, the definition of the Androsynth as non-human non-citizens, in question. Nonetheless opportunistic corporations continued to finance the creation of new generations of Androsynth to join Ho's original creations. <br />
<br />
Whatever the ethical issues involved, the prospect of having preternaturally talented and competent employees whom one could legally control with absolute authority was irresistible. By the 2070s, tens of thousands of Androsynth existed all over the world, and the cutting edge of human technological research was dependent on the Androsynth as an easily exploitable intellectual resource. In particular, Androsynth researchers were deeply involved in humanity's most ambitious technological project to date, the creation of a hyperdrive that would allow them to break the speed-of-light barrier and reach the stars.<br />
<br />
==Exodus==<br />
<br />
It was, in retrospect, inevitable that a group whose usefulness came from their high levels of education, intelligence and resourcefulness, with a cultural sense of ethics and morality that was, after all, essentially human, would grow to understand their uniquely subjugated position in the world, find it intolerable, and find a way to escape it. This was reinforced by the Androsynth's knowledge that they were designed to be superior to the ordinary Human population by every Human standard. Finding themselves slaves in a society that they increasingly began to see as beneath their level, they began an intense series of secret communications with each other and with a growing worldwide network of Human sympathizers.<br />
<br />
The last humiliation was when a group of scientists in the Eurasian Region of the United Nations used several Androsynth as disposable guinea pigs in a highly dangerous physics experiment that left many maimed or killed. The experiment would have been impossible to conduct without subjects who were both humanly intelligent and resourceful, yet legally expendable; even then, the project would have been unthinkable in earlier decades when Androsynth had been rarer and more valuable. Outraged Eurasian Androsynth responded to news of these abuses with the abortive Hamburg Revolt, in which isolated Androsynth rioters briefly seized control of that city before they were violently suppressed by the UN Peacekeeping Army. It was this incident that crystallized for the Androsynth community how impossible it would be for them to live in peace with Human masters who saw them as property, and it drove them to universally commit to planning for revolution and escape.<br />
<br />
Utilizing their refined organizational skills, and a number of technological breakthroughs they had carefully kept secret from their masters, in the spring of 2085 the Androsynth and their human friends staged the violent Clone Revolt. With quick and deadly precision, the Androsynth captured almost every spaceport on the planet. Androsynth engineers and managers had been integral to the operations of the world's largest spaceflight centers, and had used their influence there to secretly siphon off over a thousand spacecraft from the world's shipping, keeping them fueled and ready in preparation for a mass Androsynth exodus. Within 48 hours, all Androsynth had left the Earth's surface and seized control of all of Earth's orbital and lunar stations. <br />
<br />
Shocked and terrified, the authorities of Earth mobilized [[Star Control (Organization)|Star Control]], a wing of the United Nations military created to maintain order in extraterrestrial space. Facing the greatest breakdown of order imaginable, Star Control forces launched strike after strike against the Androsynth. However, the Androsynth, in defiance of the UN ban on exploring laser technology, had earlier researched a cheap and effective means of converting ordinary radio transmitters into huge microwave-frequency lasers (that is, MASERs), far more powerful than anything available to the stagnant Earth military-industrial complex. They jury-rigged a large arsenal of MASERs from the peaceful stations' formerly benign communications arrays and used them to effortlessly demolish Star Control invasion forces for two months.<br />
<br />
The Androsynth, rejected from the Human race and now no longer considering themselves Human, now blockaded vital traffic between Earth and its mining and manufacturing outposts in the inner system, and were in prime position to attack their former masters with whatever weapons of mass destruction they might possess or eventually create. A numbed United Nations now faced a dangerous, unpredictable, ''inhuman'' enemy inside their jurisdiction; seeing no other options, they steeled themselves to unlock the [[Peace Vaults]], where Earth's ancient stockpiles of nuclear warheads and orbital lasers had been kept in reserve for an event such as this.<br />
<br />
Whether the Androsynth became aware of the UN's plans or not is unknown, but in all probability they recognized that their hold on near-Earth space was not tenable in the long term. Before Earth's arsenals could be refitted for duty, Star Control observers saw eight of the largest orbital stations, including the recently finished StarLight Hilton, an exotic luxury hotel, accelerating toward the outer system.<br />
<br />
The Androsynth engineers had somehow modified huge, ungainly orbital habitats into fast, powerful spacecraft. Despite the stations' great mass, their new engines were able to accelerate them quickly enough that Star Control's fastest interception vessels were unable to stop them or even catch up with them. However, one of the faster ten-thruster ore freighters in the asteroid belt, taking advantage of the Androsynth's abandonment of their near-Earth strongholds to return to Earth with its cargo, detected the Androsynth fleet passing it and was able to intercept the Androsynth by pushing its engines to their limits. Before the freighter's pilot could act, he saw the Androsynth vessels surround themselves with a glowing, rotating energy field, which then suddenly moved to a point 500 meters ahead of the vessels, creating a huge glowing red region of space like a "great hole". The vessels accelerated into the hole, at which point vessels and hole suddenly vanished.<br />
<br />
In the years to come, humans would correctly identify this phenomenon as a hyperdrive "pushing up" into [[HyperSpace]] by opening a portal (a region of Hyperspatial overlap with [[TrueSpace]]), a sight familiar to spacefaring races. Not only had the Androsynth created a working hyperdrive in secret, they had managed to fit all eight of their habitats with hyperdrives powerful enough to carry those huge structures out of the Sol system. The Humans of Earth would never make that last leap into technological modernity on their own, only acquiring hyperdrive technology when given it by the [[Chenjesu]] at the founding of the [[Alliance of Free Stars|Alliance]].<br />
<br />
==The War==<br />
<br />
Little is now known about the Androsynth's history after their "Emigration", as they called it. However, we can infer that they eventually arrived at the Vulpeculae constellation, the same place the [[Taalo]] race had made their home in the days of the [[Sentient Milieu]]. Finding the second planet of the star Eta Vulpeculae a suitably Earthlike world, they settled there and began expanding, soon having a bustling population and a colonial sphere of influence throughout Vulpeculae space, even establishing uneasy but peaceful interstellar relations with their [[Spathi]] neighbors.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, they had barely been free for thirty years when the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za|Ur-Quan]] [[Hierarchy]] entered the quadrant. Turned away by the [[Chenjesu]] and [[Mmrnmhrm]]'s initial defense force, which had halted the Ur-Quan fleet's rimward advance towards Sol, the Ur-Quan headed spinward to accumulate more local [[Battle Thralls]] for the war ahead. With the prized resources and industrial capacity of [[Earth]] inaccessible to them, and the [[Chenjesu]] already busily recruiting the Humans into their [[Alliance of Free Stars]], the Ur-Quan decided to use the Humans' wayward children against them.<br />
<br />
The reclusive Androsynth had no advance warning of the Ur-Quan advance and were taken utterly by surprise when the Hierarchy invaded their territory. Hearing the Ur-Quan's demands of fealty, they had no wish to again be enslaved and fought bitterly to retain their freedom. Unfortunately, their relatively small population and underdeveloped military was no match for the Hierarchy's might. Faced with humiliating defeat in the year 2112, the Androsynth, as the Ur-Quan most likely predicted, chose to accept the status of Battle Thrall and maintain the illusion of freedom. Cementing this illusion in their own minds, Androsynth culture accepted their place in the Hierarchy by rationalizing it, not primarily as serving their new Ur-Quan masters, but as an opportunity to wreak revenge upon their former Human masters.<br />
<br />
The rebuilt Androsynth military thus became an enthusiastic supporter of the Hierarchy, demanding to primarily be placed in combat against the Humans as a condition of their service; the Ur-Quan gladly indulged them in this, as had been their plan, and found them to be a highly effective weapon against the Humans. Androsynth ship designs and tactics were optimized for use against the comparatively more primitive Star Control forces, and Androsynth commanders, filled with bloodlust, would go outside their Ur-Quan-given orders and purposely seek out Earth-built vessels to hunt for sport.<br />
<br />
Androsynth became one of the Humans most feared enemies in the war, second only to the [[Ilwrath]]. Humans found it terrifying to fight an enemy that they saw as a genetically enhanced version of themselves, the "next step of human evolution". Moreover, humans experienced deep collective guilt at being asked to direct their strength against an enemy whom their own mothers and fathers had been complicit in cruelly oppressing, a sense that the Androsynth's hatred of Humanity was justified and Humanity's defeat at Androsynth hands would be deserved. These psychological factors, combined with the incredible speed and manueverability of Androsynth [[Guardian]] vessels in Blazer attack mode, which made them almost impossible to detect with primitive Human laser-scanning arrays &mdash; a fact the Androsynth utilized to great effect in their hit-and-run tactics against human fleets &mdash; made patrolling Androsynth-contested space one of the most dreaded tasks for Human commanders in the war. Human captains in Androsynth territory became obsessed with their invisible enemies and their inevitable vengeance, often mistaking nearby asteroids for Guardians and madly destroying them in bursts of what Star Control officers colloquially termed "clone fever."<br />
<br />
As thralls, the Androsynth saved their energies for their anti-Human war, choosing to keep a low profile within the Hierarchy. Though they achieved a fearsome reputation as warriors, especially among their Spathi neighbors, few other thralls had much contact with them. The [[VUX]], for instance, knew of them and found their appearance as repellent as that of the Humans, but chose for various reasons to vent their xenophobic hatred on the main human race and mostly ignored the Humans' clones.<br />
<br />
After the war ended in 2134, with the Humans defeated and Earth [[Slave Shield|slave-shield]]ed, the Ur-Quan left for their [[Doctrinal Conflict]], leaving their slaves more or less unattended. The Androsynth, gratified to have participated in the defeat and humiliation of their former masters, re-embarked on their peaceful programs of scientific research and self-improvement.<br />
<br />
==Disappearance==<br />
<br />
A decade after the end of the war, an Androsynth Guardian, performing a long-range high-speed scouting mission in Blazer form, detected a [[Precursor]] artifact in Alpha Lalande, which it recovered. The device generated waves of altered space-time &mdash; a phenomenon Androsynth scientists dubbed [[Dimensional Fatigue]], or DF &mdash; that allowed them to observe numerous other realities separated from ours, aside from the previously discovered and easily accessible [[HyperSpace]].<br />
<br />
What happened next is extremely unclear. The story only became known during the [[Second War]], when [[Captain Zelnick]] of the [[Vindicator]] began investigating strange reports from the Spathi of the Androsynth's recent disappearance from interstellar affairs. What had once been Androsynth space was now populated by a new sentient race that seemed to have come from nowhere, fish-like beings calling themselves [[Orz]]. They had made their home on the nearby world of Gamma Vulpeculae 1, spoke a bizarre tongue that human linguists had great difficulty in translating even with Precursor computer technology, and were singularly unwilling to discuss the fate of the Androsynth.<br />
<br />
The Vindicator's Science Officer [[Bukowski]] led an ill-fated expedition onto Eta Vulpeculae 2 to investigate the Androsynth's fate. From pieced-together computer records, he learned of the Androsynth's acquisition of the Precursor artifacts and their discovery of DF phenomena. Eager to potentially use newly discovered extradimensional spaces as media for transport and communication with even more compressed distances than HyperSpace, they began experiments, only to make contact with some sort of sentient being living in another space. The entity or entities then began to make reciprocal contact with them, manifesting itself in the form of anomalous, supernatural-seeming physical events eerily similar to those described in Earth paranormal studies; fundamental forces like gravity experienced wild fluctuations in their strength, sensors began to inconsistently perceive nonexistent objects, and physical objects appeared to undergo motion and stress from sourceless, disembodied forces. The Androsynth frantically consulted their sketchy records of such phenomena, derived from a few Earth studies rarely seen as reputable, but to no avail.<br />
<br />
Though we can never know the details, the Androsynth at some point appear to have waged some sort of massive ground war; curiously, there appear to have been no invasions or bombardments from space, no combat in orbit or in the atmosphere, or even any substantial combat outside the Androsynth's own cities; it appears they were either warring against each other or some enemy that suddenly appeared in their midst. With the cities devastated by nuclear explosions that detonated from within, all Androsynth bodies then appear to have mysteriously vanished; no biological traces of the Androsynth remained on the planet. And then, somehow, the civilization of the Orz appeared, ships, settlements and all.<br />
<br />
We might have learned more had Bukowski not himself gone insane during his investigations, claiming that his increasing knowledge of [["They"|"Them"]] &mdash; the entities responsible for the Androsynth's disappearance &mdash; had allowed "Them" to make a psychic link with him personally, and that further research would draw "Their" attention and cause the human race to be destroyed as the Androsynth had. He was found by his team in the process of destroying all remaining Androsynth computer records, bleeding heavily from self-inflicted wounds (though some witnesses reported seeing wounds spontaneously appear on his body). He was rushed back to Earth's [[Starbase]] for psychiatric treatment and the expedition was scrapped. Though Bukowski later achieved some level of recovery, he never again spoke of anything he'd learned on the Androsynth homeworld.<br />
<br />
Speculation rages as to why the Androsynth vanished. It may have just been their bad luck to discover DF at all, or to have studied the particular dimensional space that they did. Or it may be that human psychology, after ages of having been engineered by the extra-dimensional [[Arilou]], is particularly vulnerable to attack from extra-dimensional entities for one reason or another. Once the Androsynth left the fold of the main Human race, they seem to have left whatever form of protection the Arilou claim to have placed on the Human race to prevent an attack by "Them".<br />
<br />
It may also be that they were unfortunate in their choice of a home. Zelnick confirmed speculations by xenohistorians that the Taalo homeworld had been the second moon of Delta Vulpeculae 3. If some translators interpret particular statements by the Orz correctly, the Taalo had some mastery of DF technology themselves and were able to use this technology to travel between realities, using it to escape destruction from the [[Dnyarri]] Slave Empire. This action in the past might have contributed to attracting the attention of extra-dimensional entities to the physical vicinity of the Vulpeculae constellation and put the Androsynth at greater risk, though our understanding of the relationship between physical places in our space-time and "Theirs" is hazy at best.<br />
<br />
In any case the ultimate knowledge of what happened to the Androsynth seems to rest with the Orz, who have greeted any inquiry into the nature of the Androsynth disappearance with hostility. Most who have had contact with the Orz agree that the Orz's sudden appearance seems sinister, and that whatever caused the Androsynth's disappearance -- be it the Orz themselves or some greater entity of which the Orz are manifestations -- purposely did so in order to replace the Androsynth with the Orz; indeed, Spathi observers communicating with the Alliance held to an interpretation of the Orz language that implied that the Orz somehow physically consumed or "ate" the Androsynth.<br />
<br />
==Appearance, Society, Culture==<br />
<br />
The original Androsynth were all created from a single genetic encoding of what was meant to be a physically optimal human being. Their shared genome causes them all to look very similar, if not identical. Their features appear more or less like those of an average man of the Caucasian race, though part of Hsien Ho's enhancements were to make their features unusually regular and symmetrical, and therefore unusually attractive by human convention. Perhaps in defiance of their original creator's insistence on the perfect symmetry of their faces and bodies, the later generations of Androsynth on Earth adopted an asymmetrical hairstyle, all brushing their hair meticulously to the right of their heads. This was their one stylistic affectation. On Earth, Androsynth were constantly required to wear uniforms with a triangular insignia informing others of their Androsynth status, along with a headset keeping them constantly in radio contact with their work supervisors. This uniform was supplemented with a small tattoo under the right eye of the same Androsynth insignia in case an Androsynth escaped his supervisors and attempted to disguise himself.<br />
<br />
After the Slave Revolt and the Emigration, the Androsynth appear to have kept many of these markers of their former slavery as a conscious badge of pride, continuing to wear the uniforms and tattoos and use the headsets (later incorporating visors to add communication of visual data) in memory of their ancestors' way of life. They did, however, abandon the distinctive hairstyles; they also apparently made modifications to the base Androsynth genome, adding melanin to their skin and hair to make themselves more resilient against solar radiation in their colonizing efforts.<br />
<br />
The Androsynth, all male and without functioning testes, continued to produce new generations using their own version of Ho's parthenogenesis process. Rather than adopt the naming conventions of their human oppressors, they continued to wear the impersonal alphanumeric callsigns given to them by their masters as another badge of pride, with each clone identified by a set of letters corresponding to the "batch" in which he was created, then a number identifying the order in which he'd been born from that batch.<br />
<br />
Sexual relationships and family structures among the Androsynth were, obviously, normatively "homosexual," as no female gender existed in their ranks. Androsynth revolutionary theory seemed to consciously identify itself with ideas similar to those expressed in the gay-rights movement of the late 20th and early 21st century, as the Androsynth, like homosexuals, had to confront and reject traditional religious and cultural definitions of "humanity" based on one's being part of an unbroken chain of sexual reproduction that defined one's family line. This may be why the Androsynth after the Emigration consciously changed the Androsynth insignia from a black inverted triangle to a pink one, imitating the 20th-century symbol of homosexual liberation.<br />
<br />
This perceived parallel may have tied into human perceptions of the Androsynth as having the mannerisms of a refined, patrician elite, free of the coarser inclinations of ordinary human males (a stereotype often applied to homosexual male humans even in modern times). It is true that the Androsynth, due to their training and professions, apparently developed a desire for engineering elegance and aesthetic purity that appears extreme next to human culture.<br />
<br />
This perception is exacerbated by their choice to model their fleet of Guardian vessels after the original space stations in their escape fleet, so that each Guardian has the features of a complete, self-sustaining spaceborne habitat, packing in as much useful living and working space as possible using the StarLight Hilton's avant-garde intriciately layered architecture. Rather than sacrificing this space for the increased acceleration and manueverability of a lower-mass ship when designing military vessels, Androsynth engineers discovered a more intricate, complex and elegant solution (if a more unwieldy one). Perhaps the most amazing engineering accomplishment was the invention of the "Blazer", a retrofitting of Guardian vessels allowing them to change configuration in a deceptively simple manner, allowing for much more efficient thruster use and the ability to use their own large mass as a weapon, instantly changing the existing quasi-civilian Guardian habitats into one of the sector's most powerful battle fleets. The development of such an alien-seeming technology is perhaps the best demonstration of how far Androsynth scientific and cultural development diverged from humans' during their separation.<br />
<br />
What little else we know of Androsynth civilization comes from our encounters with them in combat. Both naturally blessed with great intellectual quickness and with a culture that encouraged constant communication through the ubiquitous headset-visors, Androsynth were able to function in concert as crews more easily than Humans, with small teams able to carry out most of a ship's command functions with little computer equipment or verbal communication in comparison with a Human bridge. They also required far fewer amenities in battle conditions, their bodies being physically hale enough to function under much greater stresses than that of the average human crewman.<br />
<br />
Before their disappearance, they had a well-developed urban culture on their own planet, with several large cities whose daily activities were all linked by a giant computer network based on an enormous central server, with smaller mainframes serving the central-computing needs of each city and dedicated research station. The Androsynth emphasized centrally coordinated research and information storage, and their intricate library system did not begin to break down until the early stages of their disappearance. The meticulous record-keeping of their computers is the main reason we have even as complete a picture of their last days as we do today.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Races]]<br />
[[Category:Human]]<br />
[[Category:Androsynth| ]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Sa-Matra&diff=6748Talk:Sa-Matra2005-11-02T03:44:01Z<p>130.58.236.123: /* fanfic removal */</p>
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<div>I think it's better to keep the "Precursor Artifacts" only for the things you can take with you in your cargo. That way, the "Alien Artifacts" category, of which "Precursor Artifacts" is a sub-category, will contain everything you can take with you, and nothing more. We could make a category "Precursor Technology" or something like that, which has "Precursor Artifacts", and "SIS Modules" as sub-categories, and also the topics Sa-Matra, SIS, and Mark II (which could together form a new category "Precursor Ships" if we want).<br />
Opinions? - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 11:31, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
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== Categorization ==<br />
<br />
That's a good point. The Alien Artifact cat started as a collection of "things you can carry with you." And the Precursor Artifacts seemed like a natural subcat but contained things which, most certainly, were not being carried around. Perhaps a better solution would be to remove Precursor Artifacts from the Alien Artifacts cat (let them both be top level cats) and let things that fall into both (the clear spindle etc.) be both while things that are Precursor but not devices (the SIS, the factory on Unzervalt &mdash; it would probably be a good idea to change the name to "Precursor Technology" as you mentioned) be just that. I'm learning to have great respect for the people who make the Encyclopedia Brittanica; this is hard work! [[User:Mmrnmhrm|Mmrnmhrm]] 15:35, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
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== Sounds good ==<br />
<br />
I agree, your idea is better. -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 00:49, 12 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
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== Yehat? ==<br />
<br />
The article claims the yehat reinforcements (along with pkunk) were crucial in defeating the sa-matra. But I never found the yehat to be of any use - certainly less use than the chmmr. [[User:Jdorje|Jdorje]] 02:01, 18 Feb 2005 (CET)<br />
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== fanfic removal ==<br />
<br />
In view of the recent counter-fanfic rumblings, I removed some of the fanfic and actual historical errors from the article: The battleship was discovered during the first doctrinal conflict by the Kzer-Za, and the magellenic clouds retreat (where the frell did that come from?), and mobile electromagnetic fields and energy matrices. Sorry, I'm a stickler for physics terms except in the face of canon. Hopefully I didn't introduce my own fanfic musings, but if so, I gladly accept the corrections. [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 19:04, 2 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
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:Yay you. - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]]<br />
<br />
:Thanks a lot for your hard work in keeping the content of the ultronomicon up to standard. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 06:39, 5 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
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::Magellanic Clouds retreat is from the 3DO ending. 3DO may be "less canon" than PC by your standards, but it's still canon.<br />
::So, by the way, is the description of the Sa-Matra's weaponry, taken from what we see it do to the Flagship in the 3DO ending movie -- which is, again, canon.<br />
:You know, I'm royally sick of coming back here and finding someone who's done little-to-no research claiming something I spent a *hell* of a long time digging up is "fanfic" because he didn't actually go back and check the files, and then everyone praising him for "cleaning up fanfic". There *is no reference in the game* to the Kzer-Za finding the Sa-Matra during the first Doctrinal War. In fact, the only reference to how the Sa-Matra was found is in the conversation with the Talking Pet -- although much of what he says is unreliable, sure, the fact is it's the only place we find reference to where the Sa-Matra came from (the Kzer-Za, Kohr-Ah, Melnorme and Chmmr don't seem to say anything about it), and it's certainly believable it was found during the Slave Empire era rather than the Doctrinal War, when the Ur-Quan would've been far busier fighting than exploring.<br />
:Reverting, and *ask* first before you accuse me of making things up.<br />
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== Crateris ==<br />
<br />
Hello. I read the article regarding the Sa-Matra and i noticed that it's missing informations about the place where Sa-Matra has been hidden by the Ur-Quan. I think it's an important historical information. Don't you think it should be specified? Thank you all for the great job in putting this site up.<br />
Marco</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Sa-Matra&diff=6743Sa-Matra2005-11-02T03:43:14Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>__NOTOC__<br />
{{UrQuanNav}}<br />
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The '''Sa-Matra''' (meaning "Great Trophy" in the Ur-Quan language) is the name given to the awesome [[Precursor]] Battleship discovered by the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za]] thousands of years ago. It is the very symbol of [[Ur-Quan]] dominance; a virtually invincible war machine that guarantees that the Ur-Quan species will never need know fear of anything.<br />
<br />
==History==<br />
<br />
During the era of the [[Dnyarri Slave Empire]], among the numerous articles of Precursor technology gathered by the [[Ur-Quan]] scouts was one enormous Precursor battleship. When the [[Ur-Quan Slave Revolt]] began, one of the Ur-Quan's greatest victories was the successful seizure of this battleship by free Ur-Quan, who used it to devastating effect against remaining Dnyarri-controlled forces.<br />
<br />
With the Precursor battle platform, the [[Kzer-Za]] were able to slice through the [[Kohr-Ah]] forces. In a matter of days the first Doctrinal Conflict was over with the Kzer-Za as victors. Though psychologically traumatized, The Kzer-Za were humble in their victory and admitted to the possibility that they were wrong and the Kohr-Ah right. Therefore the Kzer-Za let the remaining Kohr-Ah armada live and directed to the Kohr-Ah to travel in the anti-spinward while the Kzer-Za travelled spinward around the galaxy. They agreed that when the two races met again, after travelling their separate ways, the ritual war -- now known as the [[Doctrinal Conflict]] -- would be refought, and the Precursor Battleship would go to the next winner. They accordingly named the battleship "Sa-Matra" (meaning "Great Trophy") in the Ur-Quan language, the winning side being promised possession of the ultimate weapon and therefore a decisive advantage in implementing their doctrine of control.<br />
<br />
Most recently, it was employed against the [[Alliance of Free Stars]] at the end of their [[First War|war]] with the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za and their [[Hierarchy]] of [[Battle Thralls]]. Although up to that point the Alliance had been capable of holding Hierarchy forces at bay, the Sa-Matra proved to be an unanswerable weapon. It quickly broke the [[Chenjesu]]/[[Mmrnmhrm]] lines, incinerating conventional vessels at far beyond their own weapons' ranges; with the fall of those two races, the Alliance quickly surrendered.<br />
<br />
Chenjesu strategists of the time wondered why the Kzer-Za did not use the Sa-Matra sooner. Given that it holds such symbolic, ritual significance for the Kzer-Za, they probably sought to minimize its use as a matter of respect and honor. They therefore only brought it into play to break the Alliance's most powerful defenses, the technologically advanced Broodhome ships.<br />
<br />
===The Battle of the Sa-Matra===<br />
<br />
The second Doctrinal Conflict took place during the time of the [[Second War|Second War of the Alliance]]; in order to prevent further devastation and to end the Ur-Quan hegemony for good, the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]] undertook a desperate gambit to destroy the [[Sa-Matra]]. After foraging the sector for information, they finally gained all they needed to locate the Sa-Matra. The Alliance was also able to harness the power of the Dnyarri in the form of a reverted [[Talking Pet (device)|Talking Pet]] in order to penetrate the Ur-Quan defenses around Sa-Matra. However, even the most powerful Alliance ships, the new [[Chmmr]] [[Avatar]] vessels were at insurmountable odds against the defenses of Sa-Matra and their escorts; however, the unmatched piloting skills of [[Pkunk]] and [[Yehat]] reinforcements, arriving at the last minute after the successful [[Yehat Revolution]], fortunately proved very effective at disabling Sa-Matra's defenses.<br />
<br />
This allowed the Alliance a chance to deploy an ultimate weapon of their own making: using the Precursor technology in their possession, they coupled the [[Vindicator]]'s Precursor energy generation systems (further amplified to the brim by the Chmmr) to the [[Utwig bomb]], creating an antimatter bomb capable of destroying even the Sa-Matra's hardened superstructure. The resulting destruction appears to have shattered the Ur-Quan's cultural understanding of themselves as a master species and sent both factions' fleets fleeing, demoralized, toward the Magellanic Clouds.<br />
==Description==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Sa-matra_generators_down.png|right]]<br />
<br />
Physically the vessel was huge, almost the size of a small moon, with numerous weapons and defensive systems mounted on protuberances across the surface. Its armor was built by unknown Precursor methods and was extremely strong, strong enough to withstand impacts and energy blasts capable of vaporizing similar quantities of normal matter -- the Utwig bomb, a device created by the Precursors to destroy moons and rearrange planetary continents, was not powerful enough to destroy it without augmentation.<br />
<br />
Additionally, the Ur-Quan kept it safe when not in use by using their own technology to build a shell of fused asteroids reinforced by a weak stasis field around it, rendering the surface inaccessible to any attacker. The one weakness of defense was a single access port in the Ur-Quan's asteroid shield. However, the access port was protected by a deadly force shield whose eight generators were externally embedded in the asteroid shell. These fortifications were further complemented by the Sa-Matra's own active defense mechanisms.<br />
<br />
The observed active defense systems consisted primarily of energetic projectiles given quasi-intelligent tracking capabilities that surrounded and defended the main platform. The battle platform was capable of regenerating these projectiles as long as any of the generators were active, and even with all generators disabled, the projectiles were self-sustaining until disrupted by enemy fire. It is unknown how or why the shield generators and the Sa-Matra's active defenses were linked in this manner. The observed active defenses consisted of two types, Repulsor Spheres, a slow-moving green projectile that, upon contact with an enemy vessel, automatically discharged a powerful repulsive blast, and Plasma Destruction Toroids, a highly-mobile cohesive collection of superheated plasma which could directly damage enemy ships with heat and impact. Strong application of energy from enemy weapons could disrupt these defenses, but their ability to quickly and effortlessly track enemy vessels and to be quickly regenerated by the Sa-Matra made them fearsome obstacles to invaders. <br />
<br />
As for the Sa-Matra's main assault weapons, we were given little chance to observe them as they were only in use during active aggression by the Ur-Quan. Comprising many different types of projectors and cannons, they inflicted massive damage upon the Vindicator even in the short time it took the Vindicator to dock with the Sa-Matra and detonate itself. What sketchy records we have of the Alliance's struggles against the Sa-Matra in the First War suggest it was more than the equal of any fleet in direct combat and could easily have lain waste to countless planetary surfaces. The Chmmr do make mention of the Sa-Matra's deadliest armament, the "annihilation toroids", which could vaporize ships from the far side of a solar system or cut broad swaths of devastation across a planet in seconds.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ships (Specific)]]<br />
[[Category:Precursor Technology]]<br />
[[Category:Ur-Quan]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Sa-Matra&diff=6737Sa-Matra2005-11-02T03:41:31Z<p>130.58.236.123: /* History */</p>
<hr />
<div>__NOTOC__<br />
{{UrQuanNav}}<br />
<br />
The '''Sa-Matra''' (meaning "Great Trophy" in the Ur-Quan language) is the name given to the awesome [[Precursor]] Battleship discovered by the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za]] thousands of years ago. It is the very symbol of [[Ur-Quan]] dominance; a virtually invincible war machine that guarantees that the Ur-Quan species will never need know fear of anything.<br />
<br />
==History==<br />
<br />
During the era of the [[Dnyarri Slave Empire]], among the numerous articles of Precursor technology gathered by the [[Ur-Quan]] scouts was one enormous Precursor battleship. When the [[Ur-Quan Slave Revolt]] began, one of the Ur-Quan's greatest victories was the successful seizure of this battleship by free Ur-Quan, who used it to devastating effect against remaining Dnyarri-controlled forces.<br />
<br />
With the Precursor battle platform, the [[Kzer-Za]] were able to slice through the [[Kohr-Ah]] forces. In a matter of days the first Doctrinal Conflict was over with the Kzer-Za as victors. Though psychologically traumatized, The Kzer-Za were humble in their victory and admitted to the possibility that they were wrong and the Kohr-Ah right. Therefore the Kzer-Za let the remaining Kohr-Ah armada live and directed to the Kohr-Ah to travel in the anti-spinward while the Kzer-Za travelled spinward around the galaxy. They agreed that when the two races met again, after travelling their separate ways, the ritual war -- now known as the [[Doctrinal Conflict]] -- would be refought, and the Precursor Battleship would go to the next winner. They accordingly named the battleship "Sa-Matra" (meaning "Great Trophy") in the Ur-Quan language, the winning side being promised possession of the ultimate weapon and therefore a decisive advantage in implementing their doctrine of control.<br />
<br />
Most recently, it was employed against the [[Alliance of Free Stars]] at the end of their [[First War|war]] with the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za and their [[Hierarchy]] of [[Battle Thralls]]. Although up to that point the Alliance had been capable of holding Hierarchy forces at bay, the Sa-Matra proved to be an unanswerable weapon. It quickly broke the [[Chenjesu]]/[[Mmrnmhrm]] lines, incinerating conventional vessels at far beyond their own weapons' ranges; with the fall of those two races, the Alliance quickly surrendered.<br />
<br />
Chenjesu strategists of the time wondered why the Kzer-Za did not use the Sa-Matra sooner. Given that it holds such symbolic, ritual significance for the Kzer-Za, they probably sought to minimize its use as a matter of respect and honor. They therefore only brought it into play to break the Alliance's most powerful defenses, the technologically advanced Broodhome ships.<br />
<br />
===The Battle of the Sa-Matra===<br />
<br />
The second Doctrinal Conflict took place during the time of the [[Second War|Second War of the Alliance]]; in order to prevent further devastation and to end the Ur-Quan hegemony for good, the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]] undertook a desperate gambit to destroy the [[Sa-Matra]]. After foraging the sector for information, they finally gained all they needed to locate the Sa-Matra. The Alliance was also able to harness the power of the Dnyarri in the form of a reverted [[Talking Pet (device)|Talking Pet]] in order to penetrate the Ur-Quan defenses around Sa-Matra. However, even the most powerful Alliance ships, the new [[Chmmr]] [[Avatar]] vessels were at insurmountable odds against the defenses of Sa-Matra and their escorts; however, the unmatched piloting skills of [[Pkunk]] and [[Yehat]] reinforcements, arriving at the last minute after the successful [[Yehat Revolution]], fortunately proved very effective at disabling Sa-Matra's defenses.<br />
<br />
This allowed the Alliance a chance to deploy an ultimate weapon of their own making: using the Precursor technology in their possession, they coupled the [[Vindicator]]'s Precursor energy generation systems (further amplified to the brim by the Chmmr) to the [[Utwig bomb]], creating an antimatter bomb capable of destroying even the Sa-Matra's hardened superstructure. The resulting destruction appears to have shattered the Ur-Quan's cultural understanding of themselves as a master species and sent both factions' fleets into disarray.<br />
<br />
==Description==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Sa-matra_generators_down.png|right]]<br />
<br />
Physically the vessel was huge, almost the size of a small moon, with numerous weapons and defensive systems mounted on protuberances across the surface. Its armor was built by unknown Precursor methods and was extremely strong, strong enough to withstand impacts and energy blasts capable of vaporizing similar quantities of normal matter -- the Utwig bomb, a device created by the Precursors to destroy moons and rearrange planetary continents, was not powerful enough to destroy it without augmentation.<br />
<br />
Additionally, the Ur-Quan kept it safe when not in use by using their own technology to build a shell of fused asteroids reinforced by a weak stasis field around it, rendering the surface inaccessible to any attacker. The one weakness of defense was a single access port in the Ur-Quan's asteroid shield. However, the access port was protected by a deadly force shield whose eight generators were externally embedded in the asteroid shell. These fortifications were further complemented by the Sa-Matra's own active defense mechanisms.<br />
<br />
The observed active defense systems consisted primarily of energetic projectiles given quasi-intelligent tracking capabilities that surrounded and defended the main platform. The battle platform was capable of regenerating these projectiles as long as any of the generators were active, and even with all generators disabled, the projectiles were self-sustaining until disrupted by enemy fire. It is unknown how or why the shield generators and the Sa-Matra's active defenses were linked in this manner. The observed active defenses consisted of two types, Repulsor Spheres, a slow-moving green projectile that, upon contact with an enemy vessel, automatically discharged a powerful repulsive blast, and Plasma Destruction Toroids, a highly-mobile cohesive collection of superheated plasma which could directly damage enemy ships with heat and impact. Strong application of energy from enemy weapons could disrupt these defenses, but their ability to quickly and effortlessly track enemy vessels and to be quickly regenerated by the Sa-Matra made them fearsome obstacles to invaders. <br />
<br />
As for the Sa-Matra's main assault weapons, we were given little chance to observe them as they were only in use during active aggression by the Ur-Quan. What sketchy records we have of the Alliance's struggles against the Sa-Matra in the First War suggest it was more than the equal of any fleet in direct combat and could easily have lain waste to countless planetary surfaces. The Chmmr do make mention of the Sa-Matra's deadliest armament, the "annihilation toroids", which could vaporize ships from the far side of a solar system or cut broad swaths of devastation across a planet in seconds.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ships (Specific)]]<br />
[[Category:Precursor Technology]]<br />
[[Category:Ur-Quan]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Sa-Matra&diff=6738Talk:Sa-Matra2005-11-02T03:40:13Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
<hr />
<div>I think it's better to keep the "Precursor Artifacts" only for the things you can take with you in your cargo. That way, the "Alien Artifacts" category, of which "Precursor Artifacts" is a sub-category, will contain everything you can take with you, and nothing more. We could make a category "Precursor Technology" or something like that, which has "Precursor Artifacts", and "SIS Modules" as sub-categories, and also the topics Sa-Matra, SIS, and Mark II (which could together form a new category "Precursor Ships" if we want).<br />
Opinions? - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 11:31, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
== Categorization ==<br />
<br />
That's a good point. The Alien Artifact cat started as a collection of "things you can carry with you." And the Precursor Artifacts seemed like a natural subcat but contained things which, most certainly, were not being carried around. Perhaps a better solution would be to remove Precursor Artifacts from the Alien Artifacts cat (let them both be top level cats) and let things that fall into both (the clear spindle etc.) be both while things that are Precursor but not devices (the SIS, the factory on Unzervalt &mdash; it would probably be a good idea to change the name to "Precursor Technology" as you mentioned) be just that. I'm learning to have great respect for the people who make the Encyclopedia Brittanica; this is hard work! [[User:Mmrnmhrm|Mmrnmhrm]] 15:35, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
== Sounds good ==<br />
<br />
I agree, your idea is better. -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 00:49, 12 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
== Yehat? ==<br />
<br />
The article claims the yehat reinforcements (along with pkunk) were crucial in defeating the sa-matra. But I never found the yehat to be of any use - certainly less use than the chmmr. [[User:Jdorje|Jdorje]] 02:01, 18 Feb 2005 (CET)<br />
<br />
== fanfic removal ==<br />
<br />
In view of the recent counter-fanfic rumblings, I removed some of the fanfic and actual historical errors from the article: The battleship was discovered during the first doctrinal conflict by the Kzer-Za, and the magellenic clouds retreat (where the frell did that come from?), and mobile electromagnetic fields and energy matrices. Sorry, I'm a stickler for physics terms except in the face of canon. Hopefully I didn't introduce my own fanfic musings, but if so, I gladly accept the corrections. [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 19:04, 2 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
:Yay you. - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]]<br />
<br />
:Thanks a lot for your hard work in keeping the content of the ultronomicon up to standard. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 06:39, 5 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
::Magellanic Clouds retreat is from the 3DO ending. 3DO may be "less canon" than PC by your standards, but it's still canon.<br />
:You know, I'm royally sick of coming back here and finding someone who's done little-to-no research claiming something I spent a *hell* of a long time digging up is "fanfic" because he didn't actually go back and check the files, and then everyone praising him for "cleaning up fanfic". There *is no reference in the game* to the Kzer-Za finding the Sa-Matra during the first Doctrinal War. In fact, the only reference to how the Sa-Matra was found is in the conversation with the Talking Pet -- although much of what he says is unreliable, sure, the fact is it's the only place we find reference to where the Sa-Matra came from (the Kzer-Za, Kohr-Ah, Melnorme and Chmmr don't seem to say anything about it), and it's certainly believable it was found during the Slave Empire era rather than the Doctrinal War, when the Ur-Quan would've been far busier fighting than exploring.<br />
:Reverting, and *ask* first before you accuse me of making things up.<br />
<br />
== Crateris ==<br />
<br />
Hello. I read the article regarding the Sa-Matra and i noticed that it's missing informations about the place where Sa-Matra has been hidden by the Ur-Quan. I think it's an important historical information. Don't you think it should be specified? Thank you all for the great job in putting this site up.<br />
Marco</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Sa-Matra&diff=6735Talk:Sa-Matra2005-11-02T03:32:34Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
<hr />
<div>I think it's better to keep the "Precursor Artifacts" only for the things you can take with you in your cargo. That way, the "Alien Artifacts" category, of which "Precursor Artifacts" is a sub-category, will contain everything you can take with you, and nothing more. We could make a category "Precursor Technology" or something like that, which has "Precursor Artifacts", and "SIS Modules" as sub-categories, and also the topics Sa-Matra, SIS, and Mark II (which could together form a new category "Precursor Ships" if we want).<br />
Opinions? - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 11:31, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
== Categorization ==<br />
<br />
That's a good point. The Alien Artifact cat started as a collection of "things you can carry with you." And the Precursor Artifacts seemed like a natural subcat but contained things which, most certainly, were not being carried around. Perhaps a better solution would be to remove Precursor Artifacts from the Alien Artifacts cat (let them both be top level cats) and let things that fall into both (the clear spindle etc.) be both while things that are Precursor but not devices (the SIS, the factory on Unzervalt &mdash; it would probably be a good idea to change the name to "Precursor Technology" as you mentioned) be just that. I'm learning to have great respect for the people who make the Encyclopedia Brittanica; this is hard work! [[User:Mmrnmhrm|Mmrnmhrm]] 15:35, 11 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
== Sounds good ==<br />
<br />
I agree, your idea is better. -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 00:49, 12 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
== Yehat? ==<br />
<br />
The article claims the yehat reinforcements (along with pkunk) were crucial in defeating the sa-matra. But I never found the yehat to be of any use - certainly less use than the chmmr. [[User:Jdorje|Jdorje]] 02:01, 18 Feb 2005 (CET)<br />
<br />
== fanfic removal ==<br />
<br />
In view of the recent counter-fanfic rumblings, I removed some of the fanfic and actual historical errors from the article: The battleship was discovered during the first doctrinal conflict by the Kzer-Za, and the magellenic clouds retreat (where the frell did that come from?), and mobile electromagnetic fields and energy matrices. Sorry, I'm a stickler for physics terms except in the face of canon. Hopefully I didn't introduce my own fanfic musings, but if so, I gladly accept the corrections. [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 19:04, 2 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
:Yay you. - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]]<br />
<br />
:Thanks a lot for your hard work in keeping the content of the ultronomicon up to standard. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 06:39, 5 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
::Magellanic Clouds retreat is from the 3DO ending. 3DO may be "less canon" than PC by your standards, but it's still canon.<br />
<br />
== Crateris ==<br />
<br />
Hello. I read the article regarding the Sa-Matra and i noticed that it's missing informations about the place where Sa-Matra has been hidden by the Ur-Quan. I think it's an important historical information. Don't you think it should be specified? Thank you all for the great job in putting this site up.<br />
Marco</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talking_Pet_(device)&diff=6882Talking Pet (device)2005-11-02T03:20:40Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
<hr />
<div>The first and last of its kind, a new life form created by the [[Umgah]] gengineers, perhaps the most dangerous creature in the known galaxy. The [[Arilou Lalee'lay]] observed the crash of a [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za|Kzer-Za]] [[Dreadnought]] in the Alpha Pavonis system during the [[Doctrinal Conflict]]; seeing that the Dreadnought's self-destruct function had malfunctioned, for unknown reasons they chose to investigate the wreck and salvage it. The starboard [[Ur-Quan Warp Pod|warp pod]] from this wreck was used to build the [[QuasiSpace Portal Spawner|Portal Spawner]] they gave to [[The Captain|Captain Zelnick]], while the only surviving life form from the wreck, the Kzer-Za Lord's [[Talking Pet]], was taken by the Arilou for medical care. Since biology was not their field of expertise, the Arilou decided to take the Talking Pet to their Umgah friends to be treated.<br />
<br />
The Umgah, rather than merely healing the Talking Pet's physical wounds, grew curious about its genetic code, finding long sequences of apparently useful genes that had been deactivated by artificial processes. Not knowing about the process by which the [[Ur-Quan]] had enslaved the [[Dnyarri]] and devolved them into the Talking Pets, they repaired the Talking Pet's DNA, both reactivating the racial memory system stored naturally in Dnyarri genes and restoring the Talking Pet's full intelligence and use of its psychic powers. Indeed, speculation exists that the Umgah gengineers' work enhanced the creature's psychic range and sensitivity far beyond that of its Dnyarri ancestors, since the original Dnyarri had needed to station themselves one to a planet to maintain their Empire while the single neo-Dnyarri was able to exert dominance over the entire Umgah sphere of influence. However, this may have been a difference of subtlety in technique rather than increased power; it did not exert direct psychic control over all entities in the Umgah sphere of influence, since the [[SIS|Vindicator]] passed through Umgah space during the neo-Dnyarri's reign without its crew becoming possessed. Instead, it seems to have been able to implant post-hypnotic commands in its slaves that persisted for some time upon leaving its psychic field before wearing off; it was able to use this ability to fend off [[The Captain|Zelnick]]'s initial investigations by compelling him to fly to the Crateris constellation and attack the [[Sa-Matra]].<br />
<br />
Upon its awakening, the neo-Dnyarri, mentally taking stock of the events of the past 20,000 years, almost immediately embarked on a program of conquest and revenge. It quickly seized control of the Umgah homeworld, then began to send brainwashed Umgah slaves out of its sphere of psychic influence to search for information on the Ur-Quan and how they might be defeated. Unfortunately for its plans, the Umgah proved less than competent at deflecting the attentions of the nascent [[New Alliance of Free Stars]]. Observing the Umgah's strange behavior -- a deeply singleminded focus on their unnamed goal combined with generally decreased mental faculties and an utter lack of interest in the Umgah's usual obsession, wit and humor -- the human Captain Zelnick, armed with his [[Taalo Shield]] and his enormous [[Precursor]] starship, fought past the Umgah fleet and found the neo-Dnyarri on their homeworld. After he destroyed its defenses and threatened to take its life, the neo-Dnyarri agreed to release the Umgah and proposed to join the Zelnick's Alliance to defeat their common enemy, the Ur-Quan. Zelnick deeply distrusted the creature but found that, since his anti-psi Shield was not properly configured and the neo-Dnyarri's psychic powers incredibly strong -- particularly when it felt its safety was threatened -- it was able to coerce him into accepting this plan and take it into his protection on the Vindicator.<br />
<br />
Details about the neo-Dnyarri's nature were hard to come by during its residence on the Vindicator, since it was not above using minor psychic compulsions to turn aside inquiries about itself, particularly its psychology and its psi abilities; initial tests, before the neo-Dnyarri began openly manipulating its testers to falsify results, showed its measured IQ to be far above that of the greatest human geniuses and its personality to be classified in the category labeled "Furtive-Hateful" by human xenologists, due to its antisocial habits and its direct, sadistic desire for others' pain and suffering. Physically it appeared, like all Talking Pets, as a quadruped similar in size to a small dog, with small, atrophied limbs, a grossly bulging cranium, and a human-like face. Capable of communicating either by telepathy or speech as it chose, its recall of both ancient racial memories and of recent events was incredibly detailed, and it was able to learn both Umgah and human language, culture, and mannerisms at a prodigious rate.<br />
<br />
Its life on board the Vindicator was a constant series of petty demands that its handlers were incapable of refusing, and twisted mind games played by spreading gossip and false rumors based on its telepathic reading of the crew's thoughts. It constantly warred against the numbing influence of the Taalo Shield, trying to corrupt Zelnick's will and deactivate the Shield so it could take over the ship; luckily, Zelnick was able to resist, and its mind-control abilities were mostly muzzled during its stay in the Vindicator hold. It was well known for repeatedly attempting to deceive humans about the history of the Dnyarri Slave Empire to put itself in a better light; what humans have learned both from the Ur-Quan themselves and more apparently neutral parties like the [[Melnorme]] and the [[Chmmr]] indicate that almost no historical information obtained from the neo-Dnyarri can be considered reliable.<br />
<br />
The neo-Dnyarri, deeply familiar with the thought-patterns of its ancestors' favorite slaves, was able to send the Ur-Quan defenders of the Sa-Matra into mindless confusion even through the Taalo Shield's influence, allowing Zelnick to advance his bold scheme of using the Vindicator as a suicide bomb against the Sa-Matra. <br />
<br />
Records of the sequence of events during the hectic Battle of the Sa-Matra are extremely confused, but it seems that Zelnick was able to "accidentally forget" to include the neo-Dnyarri in the evacuation plan for his crew, leaving the neo-Dnyarri's storage bay door sealed as normal while the crew was abandoning ship. The neo-Dnayarri, sneering at Zelnick's apparent absent-minded, anxious emotions before the battle, failed to carefully consider this aspect of their attack plan before it was too late, desperately screaming to Zelnick that he had forgotten to bring it with him as Zelnick left the ship.<br />
<br />
The neo-Dnyarri is now presumed dead, though many urge continued vigilance; given the Dnyarri's deep intelligence and natural ability to multi-task and plan for contingencies, there is a possibility it was able to use its psychic abilities to wrangle a way off the Vindicator and telepathically hide his fate. If this is so, its vengeful, greedy and sadistic nature are likely to ignite the next great galactic conflict; its propensity toward voyeurism and cruel experimentation with other races indicate this conflict would be unnaturally rich in violence, emotional tension and gratuituous trans-species sexual interaction.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Game Characters]][[Category:Alien Artifacts]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:Yehat&diff=6750Talk:Yehat2005-11-02T03:05:03Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
<hr />
<div>In the game, if you wait long enough and follow the kohr-ah trail of devastation you can see the geography of each alien species homeworld. Druuge homeworld for example is quite barren and has no oceans.<br />
<br />
The Yehat homeworld on the other hand is covered almost entirely by water with only a few tiny islands, so it's more than likely that they can fly. --[[User:Dingus|Dingus]] 21:46, 14 Oct 2004 (CEST)<br />
<br />
The original manual mentioned that yehat individuals could surround themsleves with protective force fields, if I remember right.<br />
<br />
:I've looked at the SC2 manual, the SC2 hints book, and the SC1 manual, and haven't been able to find such a thing. - [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 14:19, 27 Jun 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
I'd just like to butt in for a moment and point out the humongous irony in the Yehat respect for humans, given the Arilou. --Kizor<br />
:: What irony? The Arilou, if anything, respect Humans even more than the Yehat -- they don't give a damn about *any* other race but the Humans, whom they seem to care a hell of a lot about.<br />
<br />
The Pkunk/Yehat connection is *far* more than "theoretical" -- it is pretty clearly shown to be actual, from both the Pkunk and the Yehat side, especially given the events at the end of the Yehat Civil War. Someone's been going just from information you get when you *start* playing the game.</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Arilou_Lalee%27lay&diff=6742Arilou Lalee'lay2005-11-02T03:03:02Z<p>130.58.236.123: /* Identifying Characteristics and Behavior */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{RaceBox|name=Arilou Lalee'lay|image=ArilouComm.png|caption=The enigmatic Arilou|homeworld=[[Falayalaralfali]]|coordinates=[[QuasiSpace]]|organizations=[[Alliance of Free Stars]],<br>[[New Alliance of Free Stars]]|ship=[[Skiff]]}}<br />
<br />
The '''Arilou Lalee'lay''', or '''Arilou''' for short, are an enigmatic and reclusive species. They first made themselves known to the Galaxy during the [[First War]], suddenly appearing and applying to join the [[Alliance of Free Stars]]. Their actions were equally mercurial at the end of the war, retreating and abandoning the other races as soon as the [[Humans]] were [[Slave Shield|slave-shield]]ed. The motives for their actions seem to be some mysterious connection they have with the Human race.<br />
<br />
==Name==<br />
<br />
As the original Arilou ambassadors explained to the Alliance leaders, "Arilou Lalee'lay" is the formal collective name for the species; "Lalee'lay" means something equivalent to "race" or "people", and therefore "Arilou" is the proper term for a specific individual or group of individuals, as well as a colloquial term for the race as a whole. The name is claimed to derive from the Celtic family of human languages, though this may be from a very old civilization or one separated from the main family of Celtic groups in Britain, as it bears little resemblance to any Celtic terms known today. However, an ancient legend of the Arilou Lalee'lay is probably the origin of the Irish Celtic myth of the analogously named Tuatha de Dannan ("People of Dannan") or faeries.<br />
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==Identifying Characteristics and Behavior==<br />
<br />
The Arilou are apparently very physically similar to Humans, with a build very close to that of a Human child, standing at about 1.5 meters tall with a disproportionately large head compared to a normal Human adult. They have almost no pigmentation to their skin, which appears extremely pale to a Human eye, with a hue that ranges from pale gray to green. Their faces appear inhumanly expressive, almost entirely thanks to their enormous almond-shaped eyes, since their features are otherwise shrunken and flat compared to Humans', with very small chins, tapered mouths, and a tiny, almost completely flat nose. Their eyes appear to contain a tapetum lucidum over the retina (like Earth cats, or the [[Syreen]])&mdash; the resulting internal reflections cause their eyes to appear to glow in dim light.<br />
<br />
In their dealings with the Alliance, the Arilou never spoke verbally. They appear to have an advanced degree of psionic ability, and communicated solely using telepathy. Many, especially Humans, found this unnerving because in most communications, they would appear completely motionless and wearing an enigmatic smile. They would also remain motionless while piloting their ships, manipulating the controls using psychokinesis, and periodically displayed their power to read others' thoughts and detect psychic activity. One of the courtesies they extended [[The Captain]], whom they seemed to hold in very high regard, was their condescending to speak to him in normal, audible speech, presumably to help put him at ease.<br />
<br />
This is only a description of the Arilou's visible, physical forms, and the Arilou themselves repeatedly implied that their true nature was more "solid" and "real" than physical matter. This seems to indicate that, like Human conceptions of faeries or gods, they are creatures who are at least partly composed of a spiritual or noncoporeal matter outside of their physical bodies.<br />
<br />
They claimed to lack the limitation of a typical biological lifespan, and the Arilou representatives who spoke to The Captain claimed to have personally participated in events many centuries ago. Their civilization as a whole is certainly very old, extending back hundreds of millennia and aware of events that took place in the time of the [[Sentient Milieu]]. Moreover, they did not seem to fear death, referring to it as "discorporation", and seemed to imply that a spirit or soul survived after the destruction of their physical selves. Objects like the [[Nnngn]] or features of [[Falayalaralfali]] they referred to as the "Singing Mountains of Thought" or "The Tangible Wish" appear to be similar entities that exist at a higher level or spirit level with which they can interact.<br />
<br />
The perception of Arilou as long-lived is distorted by their claim to not naturally perceive time sequentially as Humans do, and take some effort to order their perceptions of events into a coherent history. They appear able to directly perceive future events psionically and perceive several possible timelines at once, seeing which events are necessary to shift the mass of probabilities toward one outcome or another. They seem to perceive this as a quality attached to certain individuals who make certain signficant choices; this is eerily similar to the perceptions the [[Utwig]] claim to receive from the [[Ultron]] and lends credence to the Utwig concept of "destiny".<br />
<br />
Whether through technology or innate ability, the Arilou appeared able to travel individually over large distances, through defenses and without detection, without the use of their ships. The Arilou claimed to be able to directly visit The Captain and observe him without his knowledge during the war. They have never been directly observed doing this and certainly did not use this ability to any effect during the war, perhaps because it involves some form of astral or spirit projection rather than physical travel, though they claim to be able to touch and affect physical objects while traveling this way.<br />
<br />
The Arilou claim their internal thought processes are quite different from those of Humans or, in fact, most other sentient life forms. They claim to entirely lack what they call "instinct" or hardwired reactions to immediate environmental stimuli, in which they include all forms of emotional reaction and thought colored by prejudice as well as true instincts; by this definition Human thinking is, of course, almost entirely driven by "instinct". It is the "instinctive" tendencies of Humans that they claim to find most fascinating about Human activity and the developing Human mind. Though they might therefore seem to be entirely rational, they nonetheless admit that their core driving motivations and worldview are irrational and, in fact, involuntary, and claim that their basic nature as living things somehow drove them to formulate and implement their grand plan involving Humanity.<br />
<br />
==First Contact, Recent History==<br />
<br />
No Alliance race had made contact with the Arilou before the beginning of the First War of the Alliance against the [[Ur-Quan Hierarchy]]. Even as open hostilities began between the two coalitions, the Arilou remained absent and silent until the [[Chenjesu]] made first contact with the race of Humans in 2116. On the day August 2 on the Human calendar, the day after the Human United Nations formally ratified a treaty joining the Alliance, a fleet of small, disc-shaped vessels suddenly appeared orbiting the satellite moon, [[Luna]], of the human homeworld [[Earth]]. Landing on the moon, the ships transmitted a request to meet with Alliance representatives.<br />
<br />
It was on the moon's surface where Human and Chenjesu delegates met the Arilou La'leelay for the first time. Claiming that they, too, were under threat from the [[Ur-Quan Kzer-Za]] expansion, the Arilou asked for the Alliance's protection in return for its support. Alliance leaders quickly decided they needed any help they could get and welcomed the Arilou into the fold.<br />
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Even so, many Alliance members had reservations. The Arilou were extremely secretive, refusing to reveal any details about their civilization or their technology, even refusing to give the location of their homeworlds or the means by which they'd come to Luna. More disturbing, however, was the Humans' reaction. To their eyes, the Arilou appeared exactly like the stereotypical image of a legendary alien race long rumored to have secretly interfered in Human affairs, variously called "Martians", "Roswell Grays" or "Zeta Reticulans". Ancient archives kept by Human governments proved the resemblance too close to be coincidental, but the exigencies of war and the closedmouthness of the Arilou prevented them from examining the matter any further.<br />
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The Arilou fleet played a key role in the war; despite its small size, it had an amazingly fast travel time, disappearing and reappearing from combat sites at speeds far greater than the most advanced [[HyperSpace|Hyperdrive]]s known to the rest of the Alliance could allow. The Arilou [[Skiff]], though an apparently weak ship, employed many unique, exotic technologies, such as an inertialess [[TrueSpace]] propulsion system allowing it to hover in gravity wells and an incredibly powerful short-range Hyperdrive allowing it to "teleport", making it unmatched for scouting and harassing enemy ships.<br />
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However, the small and lightly-armed Arilou fleet took heavy casualties during the course of the war, as they were primarily engaged in the main fighting on the Coreward Front defending Human space. When the Alliance began to crumble and Hierarchy forces pushed rimward and took the [[Sol]] system, [[Slave Shield|slave-shielding]] the Humans, the remaining defenders of the Front understandably, if regrettably, scattered. As the [[Yehat]] and [[Shofixti]] retreated to the Gorno system, the Arilou and Syreen fleets were left huddled together; expecting help from the Arilou, the Syreen were shocked to see the Arilou wordlessly retreat and vanish into space, abandoning them to the Ur-Quan. The cowardice and treachery of the Arilou are still cursed by the Syreen to this day.<br />
<br />
==Current Events and Revelations==<br />
<br />
Though contact with the Arilou had been lost after the [[First War of the Alliance]], when The Captain used The Flagship to begin the anti-Hierarchy actions that became known as the [[Second War]], he inadvertently discovered the Arilou once more, reestablished contact with them on behalf of the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]], and became privy to many of their most closely held secrets.<br />
<br />
Unbeknownst to the Humans, the Arilou had long held a semipermanent base of operations in the Chandrasekhar constellation in [[HyperSpace]], establishing a small sphere of influence and an amicable relationship with the neighboring [[Umgah]]. Traveling to investigate various reports of a strange radiating body that appeared like a variable star in the area, The Captain discovered the area to be rife with Skiff starships piloted by Arilou.<br />
<br />
The Arilou explained that they were not native to this region of TrueSpace but resided in [[QuasiSpace]], an alternate dimensional space only reachable using their unique brand of [[Dimensional Fatigue]] technology. The local region of QuasiSpace contains a total of sixteen natural overlaps with or "portals" to HyperSpace, but fifteen of them are unidirectional from QuasiSpace to HyperSpace, so the Arilou found it most convenient to post the majority of their ships in the HyperSpace region immediately surrounding the single bidirectional portal.<br />
<br />
Since they carried on very little contact with other races and had very little business in TrueSpace at the time, their reasons for keeping detachments of ships in HyperSpace are unclear. They claim their primary purpose was hunting and trapping strange creatures called Nnngn for sport, apparently because the Nnngn frequented the areas around the portals or were easier to trap there. The Nnngn apparently hailed from QuasiSpace and were composed of a native QuasiSpatial form of matter that Humans could not perceive or interact with; the Arilou merely described Humans as "not solid enough" to interact with them or other forms native to QuasiSpace, and refused to describe the matter further.<br />
<br />
The Arilou seemed quite taken with The Captain's cause and offered him passage through the bidirectional portal into QuasiSpace, where he found the Arilou homeworld, Falayalaralfali, a single TrueSpace planet kept in an artificial pocket of TrueSpace within QuasiSpace. There, though they would not allow him to land, Arilou leaders spoke freely to The Captain from the surface. They informed him that their numbers and physical resources were too depleted from the previous war for them to provide material support to the Alliance, but they were willing to supply technology and information.<br />
<br />
The degree of their knowledge about local events was impressively widespread despite their cloistered appearance, and through unknown channels they were able to inform The Captain about the existence of the [[Slylandro]], the nature of the [[Mycon]] [[Deep Child|Deep Children]], and the history of the [[Ur-Quan]].<br />
<br />
Moreover, in one of their rare altruistic interventions into other races' affairs, they had discovered the wreck of an Ur-Quan [[Dreadnought]] on Alpha Pavonis VII, which had miraculously failed to self-destruct upon impact. This allowed them to rescue the single surviving life form, the ship Lord's [[Talking Pet]]. At the same time they discovered the powerful starboard [[Ur-Quan Warp Pod|warp pod]] was intact, and instructed The Captain to salvage it. Using the warp pod, the Arilou were able to construct a [[QuasiSpace Portal Spawner]] capable of generating artificial portals that allowed The Flagship to travel through QuasiSpace at will. This allowed The Flagship to share the immense reduction in travel time that had proven so useful to the Arilou during the First War; it was able to hop across local space much more quickly than it would have otherwise been able, given its great mass. The Arilou's provision of free passage through QuasiSpace proved to be one of the New Alliance's most critical advantages in carrying out its missions against the Hierarchy.<br />
<br />
They meanwhile entrusted the Talking Pet to the care of the Umgah, whose understanding of corporeal biology exceeded theirs, only for the Umgah to accidentally activate the creature's latent genetic abilities, transforming it into a powerful and malevolent [[Talking Pet (device)|neo-Dnyarri]]. However, The Captain, taking the Arilou's advice, was able to strike a deal with the neo-Dnyarri, and its psychic powers proved to be the crucial element in breaching the Ur-Quan defenses at the Battle of the [[Sa-Matra]] that finally defeated the Ur-Quan and ended the war. It was at around the time of this battle that the Arilou finally reentered TrueSpace contact with the Alliance races, as a flotilla of four Skiffs materialized at the Earth [[Starbase]] and offered their much-needed assistance for the assault on the Sa-Matra.<br />
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Interestingly this wreck represented a colossal and, as far as we know, unprecedented failure of Ur-Quan Kzer-Za technology, normally a benchmark for reliability. Not only did the Dreadnought crash in a safe, deserted area suspiciously far from the main battleground of the [[Doctrinal Conflict]] and suspiciously near the Arilou's base in Chandrasekhar, its self-destruct systems utterly failed and two incredibly valuable weapons, the warp pod and the Talking Pet, both survived intact. The Arilou gave many hints that their degree of knowledge and control was far greater than they let The Captain know, and many suspect that they engineered this wreck as well as other events within the war on humanity's behalf, including their fortuitous meeting with The Captain in the first place.<br />
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==Relations with Other Races==<br />
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===Humans===<br />
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====Early Speculations====<br />
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Upon initial examination most Humans quickly recognized the Arilou to be uncannily similar to popular depictions of a certain class of science-fictional extraterrestrial in the 20th and 21st century. Often called "Martians", "Zeta Reticulans", "Little Green Men", "Enochian Angels" and so on, the most common and neutral term for such aliens was "Grays" after their skin color. These depictions were based on a series of reported encounters between such beings and Humans, occurring primarily in Earth's period of rapid industrial development following the Second World War (the 1950s) and ending some time before the Small War and the creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Army and Star Control (the 2000s).<br />
<br />
In such encounters, Humans living in isolated locations were typically abducted by Grays using ships colloquially known as "UFOs" (Unidentified Flying Objects) or "flying saucers", after their disc-shaped bodies. Not only were these ships extremely similar in appearance to the Skiffs the Arilou piloted in the First War, but they exhibited similar capabilities of inertialess acceleration, indefinite hovering in gravity fields, and even short-range teleportation. Though most abductees' memories were hazy, possibly suppressed or modified, they did describe undergoing strange, high-tech medical procedures, often finding themselves with an unplanned pregnancy soon afterwards. These subjects usually reported one major operation or procedure being done on them in their first abduction, and one or more secondary abductions taking place afterwards, as though their captors were checking on the progress of their modifications.<br />
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The Grays were associated with other strange activities as well, including experimentation on non-Human animals, frequently experienced by farmers as mysteriously mutated livestock, and more bizarre behavior, like strange patterns of circular depressions left in crop fields.<br />
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====Before The War====<br />
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In their relationship with The Captain during the Second War, the Arilou confirmed what the Humans had long guessed, that they and the Grays were one and the same. They moreover intimated that their interference in Human culture went back far longer than Humans had surmised, dating millennia back to the dawn of Human civilization and, according to them, the very first beings identifiable as modern Humans, implying that, if they did not create or transplant Humans on Earth, they controlled Humans' early development to an astonishing degree.<br />
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Human religion and mythology had long had a near-universal fascination with supernatural beings known by various names -- elves, leprechauns, duendes, tengu, and so on. Universally depicted as humanoids diminutive in stature and slender in build, they were notorious in legends for being capricious and amoral, appearing sporadically to make odd and unreasonable demands from Humans and employing a bizarre array of magical powers to enforce their obedience.<br />
<br />
These legends were apparently based on early interventions of the Arilou, who nursed Humanity from its prehistoric origins and, acting as gods to some civilizations and devils to others, set the bounds for the growth of its civilizations. They claimed special credit for inspiring the pyramids of Egypt and the standing stones of the ancient Celts, a culture that had been their special favorite, and revealed that their favored name for themselves, Arilou Lalee'lay, was in actuality a descriptive phrase from a now lost Celtic tongue.<br />
<br />
The Arilou kept up a continuing program of steering Human cultural development while subtly tweaking Human physiology through periodic interventions, modifying the Human genome through gengineering and selective breeding, meanwhile performing side experiments on other animals and leaving the crop circles and other patterns as covert signals to each other during their missions. The Arilou's interventions had grown less prominent as the Human civilizations developed, until they suddenly accelerated to a staggering pace during the last half of the 20th century, not coincidentally a time of great conflict as Humans neared self-destruction multiple times, while at the same time their industrial development made contact with the nearby starfaring races increasingly likely. We can surmise Arilou intervention at the very least had the goal of preventing a nuclear holocaust, while most likely was also meant to prepare Humans for the inevitable first contact.<br />
<br />
The program of Human modification in the late 20th century was far more widespread than even the cultural impact of the "UFO craze" showed; the Arilou revealed to The Captain that those who reported their interventions had been purposely allowed to imperfectly retain parts of their memory while others simply had whole chunks of time completely excised from their minds -- giving rise to the unique Human psychological phenomenon of "missing days". Apparently the UFO craze itself was part of the effect the Arilou wished to have on Human society.<br />
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====During the War====<br />
<br />
In any case, the Arilou again retreated into obscurity during the days of the ascendant [[United Nations]] and [[Star Control (Organization)|Star Control]], until they suddenly revealed their presence and directly offered assistance in the First War. Their purpose in this war was first and foremost to prevent the wholesale destruction of Humanity; they appeared to be unprepared for the eventuality of Human conflict with the Hierarchy and uncertain of the Humans' fate should they face defeat. Once they saw that the slave-shielding process left the Human species intact and safe, they lost interest in the war and chose to cut their losses of physical materiel by returning to QuasiSpace, betraying their rather cavalier attitude to other Alliance species. However, the looming threat of the genocidal [[Kohr-Ah]] once more made it necessary for them to intervene to protect Humanity, this time with The Captain as their chosen liaison.<br />
<br />
The Captain, intriguingly, was more than simply chosen by the Arilou; the Arilou appear to have watched him from birth. The Arilou claimed to have traveled repeatedly to the Unzervalt colony during the interregnum between the two wars, overseeing the Humans' progress repairing the Precursor shipyard and building The Flagship. At that time the Arilou also began observing The Captain: Many claim that, far from merely assisting the New Alliance in the Second War, the Arilou were responsible for its existence and the beginning of the Second War in the first place, as the strange chance of a Human child being born with a natural affinity for ancient, complex Precursor computer equipment may be the result of Arilou tinkering.<br />
<br />
This is, of course, unconfirmed, but the Arilou maintained a deep fascination with the young boy who would become The Captain. They referred to him as the "focus" of history and said that they were purposely putting the responsibility of saving Humanity and all other sentient life from the Kohr-Ah on his shoulders, in striking similarity to the way The Captain was viewed by the Utwig Ultron-worshippers. They also kept covert observation on him all during the Second War; one Arilou captain once inadvertently referred to his habit of somehow invisibly penetrating The Flagship to monitor The Captain as he slept.<br />
<br />
They did not confine their attentions to The Captain; during the interregnum period when Earth was slave-shielded, the Arilou began covert operations aboard the Earth Starbase. How they successfully infiltrated the Starbase without detection is unclear &mdash; perhaps they used the aforementioned mysterious methods by which they infiltrated The Flagship &mdash; but the Arilou focused their attention on the Starbase crew, many of these served aboard The Flagship in some capacity, possibly modifying them in the process. We may never know the details, but can only assume that the Arilou's attention and possible modifications were intended for The Flagship's mission or something like it and that they played a key if invisible role in assuring The Flagship's success. Whatever the details, the Arilou's role in winning the war for the Alliance is far more extensive than they are usually given credit for.<br />
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====Current Speculations====<br />
<br />
The Arilou's purpose in all of this is unclear, but the Arilou claim to see their relationship to Humans as analogous to that between a parent and a child. They claim that they and Humans are but one example of many similar relationships between an elder and younger species throughout the universe, and that this relationship is basic to the nature of their form of life and cannot be morally judged by resentful Humans who do not understand their position. Interestingly they react to the common description of themselves as "invaders from space" by claiming that their goal is not to "invade" -- presumably, not to take the stereotypical role of conquerors and overlords often ascribed to them by Earth popular culture during the UFO craze -- but to "pervade", to become everywhere a part of Humanity. They see their intervention in Human nature as somehow an expression and extension of their own selves.<br />
<br />
There is an ultimate purpose they have for Humanity, and they seem to be working to tailor-fit the Human species to that ultimate destiny, protecting and nurturing them along the way, and meanwhile tolerating the suspicion thrown against them that is a natural result of their keeping Humans ignorant of that they deem Humans too undeveloped to understand. They seem to find this process itself a thing of beauty, frequently commenting on the aesthetic pleasure they received observing the development of the Human mind from its primitive roots.<br />
<br />
Intriguingly they often speak of Humans attaining a similar state to that of the Arilou, claiming that given time to evolve and develop Humans will eventually attain the same quasi-supernatural status, able to live very long lifespans, perceive the invisible and share fully in the Arilou's technology. The implication is that Humans may become the Arilou's peers and companions, or, as one popular theory has it, the Arilou's "heirs" as the Arilou pass away.<br />
<br />
An even bolder theory takes note of the Arilou's frequent use of an untranslated term that the Precursor's powerful translating computers rendered in English as "time" to describe dimensional spaces such as QuasiSpace. If the interface between dimensional spaces bears some special relationship to what we understand as time, then the interaction between Arilou from QuasiSpace with Humans may be a nonlinear causal loop; the Arilou may be a far-future, evolved version of Humanity causing their own existence by creating and manipulating their own ancestors. This theory is, while seemingly implausible, consistent with much of the observed evidence, but it bears disturbing implications and is still unaccepted by most.<br />
<br />
===Androsynth and Syreen===<br />
<br />
One much-remarked-upon fact was the fact that despite the obvious genetic connection of Humans to the Syreen and the known, documented genetic connection of Humans to the [[Androsynth]], the Arilou apparently showed no interest in either of them. The Androsynth do not appear to have been part of the Arilou's plan for Humanity and no Arilou interference has ever been confirmed with their civilization. Intriguingly, it was very soon after the Androsynth separated from the Humans -- and, therefore, from Arilou oversight -- that they discovered Dimensional Fatigue phenomena and subsequently disappeared (see the entry on the [[Orz]]). The Arilou seem to imply that this is a direct result of their not protecting the Androsynth; when they mention the Androsynth at all, it is to use them as a stern example and warning of the perils of meddling with interdimensional forces and entities.<br />
<br />
The Arilou similarly seem to bear no particular concern for the Syreen. They have never had any observed contact with them, and were certainly not concerned enough to intervene when [[Syra]] was destroyed. At the First War's end, once they confirmed the Humans were safe under the slave shield, they ceased their efforts and abandoned the Syreen, despite the fact that the Syreen fleet was far weaker and more vulnerable than the Human population they had initially set out to defend.<br />
<br />
This seems to pose a paradox, as Arilou claimed to have overseen Human development so closely that it is hard to explain why the closely genetically related Syreen would not be part of their project. Some surmise that the Humans are the Arilou's main experiment and the Syreen are some sort of discarded or unneeded relic, either a control group set up under standards of strict noninterference for comparison with Humans, or some sort of leftover of genetic breeding pools now unneeded, or, most intriguingly, an original population from which the Human genome was extracted and transplanted to Earth. Certainly there is compelling evidence from a Human point of view that the Syreen culture is a "natural" state for Humanity that Human society and culture seems to have been distorted away from, even perhaps the planet Syra being the template for the Eden stories in many human religions (as was hinted at by the Syreen), but without further information from the Arilou we can do no more than speculate.<br />
<br />
===Orz===<br />
<br />
Much of what little understanding we have of the Orz comes from the testimony of their enemies, the Arilou Lalee'lay; cryptic as the Arilou's references to them may be, their descriptions are far more revealing than the Precursor translator's garbled interpretation of the Orz language, and the Arilou's descriptions provide the model most scholars use for interpreting Orz terminology and concepts.<br />
<br />
Though the Arilou refused to elaborate on their final goals for the Human race, they did make clear that accomplishing such goals entails the long-term survival of Humanity, and therefore much of the Arilou's energy was bent toward guarding Humans from certain subtle threats, particularly extradimensional ones that only they could perceive.<br />
<br />
The Arilou described the existence of parasitic beings in other dimensional spaces that had intimate relationships with mortal races -- races dependent on TrueSpace matter -- as they did with Humans, but of a purely destructive and violent nature. They claimed that any awareness of the details of the beings' existence would make one vulnerable to their attack. The implication seems to be that these creatures exist in a sort of idea-space, so that merely thinking about them is the equivalent of making psychic contact with them. This resonates eerily with the garbled reports from The Flagship's Science Officer [[Bukowski]] of the references to [["They"|"Them"]] he discovered in the Androsynth computer core during his ill-fated expedition to Eta Vulpeculae.<br />
<br />
The Arilou seemed to identify the Orz as "Them" or perhaps the agents of "Them" within TrueSpace. They claimed that the Androsynth had drawn the parasites to themselves through their investigation into and growing understanding of Dimensional Fatigue and other dimensional spaces, and as a result, though they would not explain how, the Androsynth were now totally and irrevocably destroyed, replaced entirely by the Orz.<br />
<br />
The Arilou claimed a large portion of their biological and cultural modifications of the Human species were to give Humans a physical form and general psychological mindset that the parasites would find hard to detect. However, they continued to hide almost all details of their homeworld, their own nature, and the nature of their home dimension QuasiSpace from Humans so that Humans would be unlikely to begin the series of investigations and discoveries that would give them dangerous levels of knowledge.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the Arilou were forced to allow The Captain into QuasiSpace and trust him with many secrets during the Second War in order to fight the more immediate threat of the Ur-Quan; the Arilou openly complained that The Captain's high level of knowledge introduced a complication to their plans. Not only that, but in the course of the war The Captain was also forced to compromise and openly make treaty with the Orz and allow them access to the Alliance. The Arilou had strenuously warned against such an action; although they seemed to fear no immediate threat from the Orz in their current state, they felt them to be untrustworthy. What consequences will result from these actions, and how the Arilou and Humans will deal with them, remain to be seen.<br />
<br />
===Other Races===<br />
<br />
The Arilou had very few relationships with other races; they rarely spoke to or encountered anyone, though they were sensed from afar and found to be benign by the powerful [[Pkunk]] psychics. However, their long-term presence in the area surrounding the Chandrasekhar portal led them to develop a friendship with the nearby Umgah. The Umgah, focused on more corporeal pursuits than the Arilou, outstripped them greatly in the fields of biology, medicine and genetic engineering. It may be that many of the biological techniques used on the Humans by the Arilou were at some point learned or borrowed from the Umgah; the Umgah certainly seem accomodating to the Arilou's desires and would most likely find the large-scale manipulation of Humans to be a wildly funny joke.<br />
<br />
The Arilou and Umgah's relationship was interrupted when the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za attacked and laid waste to Umgah space, subjugating the Umgah as their [[Battle Thralls]] during the War. Afterwards when the Arilou joined the Alliance the two races were forced into combat with each other, but after hostilities ended the two races were able to reestablish normal relations.<br />
<br />
The Arilou also mentioned to Alliance members during the course of the war that there was a species none of them had yet discovered in the Draconis constellation, the [[Thraddash]]. They were able to say little about them and did not bring them up again in that war or in their dealings with The Captain, being naturally closed-mouthed and their time being at a premium. However, they did mention "having some fun" with them. One need only look at the extremely distorted, counterintuitive and maladaptive social mechanisms employed in Thraddash society to find it likely that their cultural development was somehow artificially tampered with. The Arilou may have done this, as they say, purely for sport, or it may have been an early experiment in covert social engineering, to perfect techniques that they would later use on Human society.<br />
<br />
The Arilou were also known to the shadowy, almost omniscient-seeming sources of the [[Melnorme]] traders. The Melnorme were not only aware of the presence of Arilou Skiffs at the portal regions but were also capable of tracing the Arilou's movements to and from Earth and were well aware of the Arilou's interventions in Human culture and even tracked their movements up to the Second War, detecting their actions at the Earth Starbase. This broad base of knowledge did not, however, extend to the Melnorme being willing or able to follow the Arilou into QuasiSpace, of which they presumably remain ignorant.<br />
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[[Category:Races]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Inter-Dimensional_Fatigue&diff=6755Inter-Dimensional Fatigue2005-11-02T03:01:43Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>'''Dimensional fatigue''' &mdash; also '''Inter-Dimensional Fatigue''', or '''(I)DF''' &mdash; is a catchall term for processes or forces that weaken the boundaries between "dimensions" or space-times, allowing information or objects to pass from one to the other. The form of DF most familiar to the races of the [[Alliance]] is the [[QuasiSpace Portal Spawner]], used to access [[QuasiSpace]] from [[HyperSpace]].<br />
<br />
The only race known to be familiar with DF is the [[Arilou La'leelay]], who provided the Portal Spawner for Alliance use during the war but otherwise strongly discourages DF research as incredibly dangerous. <br />
The last known race to have attempted such research, the [[Androsynth]], were destroyed utterly as a result. What records exist seem to indicate that acquiring knowledge such as images and other information obtained through experimental DF technology somehow made the Androsynth's minds visible to beings that exist in other dimensions. This led to a series of spontaneous DF events generated by those entities such as anomalous regions of high gravity ("mosquito mange"), spontaneously generated forces ("poltergeists") and sensory manifestations ("ghosts"), which in the end were somehow responsible for the race's disappearance and replacement by the [[Orz]]. The Arilou claim to have protected at least the race of [[Humans]] from a similar fate by unknown measures, but warn that any increased knowledge among Humans of DF phenomena would create similar vulnerabilities. Apparently the fate of the Androsynth was not unique; the Arilou claim that a DF event was also responsible for the disappearance of the star Alpha Corvi and its planetary system.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Androsynth]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=QuasiSpace&diff=6745QuasiSpace2005-11-02T02:53:01Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>[[Image:SC2_QuasiSpace_Screenshot.png|thumb|QuasiSpace portals transport your ship to predetermined locations in [[HyperSpace]].]]<br />
'''QuasiSpace''' is one of the "higher dimensions" that forms a space-time analogue to [[TrueSpace]], home to the [[Arilou Lalee'lay]] and only recently discovered by [[Humans]] during the events of the [[Second War]]. It is only accessible from [[HyperSpace]], having an analogous relationship to HyperSpace similar to that which HyperSpace has to TrueSpace. HyperSpatial distances are enormously compressed in QuasiSpace; however, HyperSpatial relationships in QuasiSpace are even more distorted than TrueSpatial relationships in HyperSpace. Unlike the vortices between HyperSpace and TrueSpace, there appears to be no correlation between the access points connecting QuasiSpace to HyperSpace and any natural phenomena like gravity wells.<br />
<br />
The only Human to travel extensively in QuasiSpace was [[The Captain]] of [[The Flagship]], who was given free passage through QuasiSpace during the War by the Arilou as part of their effort to assist the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]] in their struggle against the [[Ur-Quan]]. During that time a number of strange, seemingly inexplicable and self-contradictory observations were made about the properties of QuasiSpace. Superficial observations of QuasiSpace show it to be similar to HyperSpace, a four-dimensional space-time in which time passed at the same standard rate as in HyperSpace. Unlike HyperSpace, QuasiSpace was filled with broadband radiation that peaks in the green wavelengths of the visible spectrum rather than the red. Against the green background were sudden bursts and explosions, similar to those observed in HyperSpace but appearing black instead of bright white. It is unknown if the dark and bright bursts of energy in QuasiSpace and HyperSpace are related, but it should be noted that these phenomena in HyperSpace are theorized to be manifestations of objects which are moving quickly between adjacent dimensions such as HyperSpace and QuasiSpace. QuasiSpace also provides access to [[Falayalaralfali]], the home planet of the [[Arilou Lalee'lay]], which they describe as kept in a giant TrueSpace pocket embedded within QuasiSpace. <br />
<br />
More bizarre than this was the behavior of the Flagship's own systems in QuasiSpace. The Flagship's systems appeared to respond exactly as they did in HyperSpace, engaging the engines to thrust through the QuasiSpace and being dragged to a halt relative to the QuasiSpatial absolute reference frame when thrust ceased. However, although the starship's engines appeared to be firing, the Flagship was consuming none of its fuel.<br />
<br />
Suspicious observers soon realized that observations for a region of QuasiSpace were exactly identical to readings for a similar region of HyperSpace, only all visuals were inverted -- to the ''Human eye''. Humans' visual systems perceive the color green as an opposite to the color red, and QuasiSpace radiated a green color that complemented the red color of HyperSpace to the human eye perfectly; every observed "black hole" and "dark cloud" in QuasiSpace corresponded to a commonly observed energy flare in HyperSpace.<br />
<br />
These strange coincidences, along with repeated references by the Arilou to Humans' inability to fully perceive the nature of their home dimension (including the term "QuasiSpace" itself, meaning "that which is like space but is not"), support the possibility that QuasiSpace's appearance to the crew of the Vindicator may have been some kind of illusion or falsely generated set of perceptions obscuring a more bizarre reality.<br />
<br />
To create a QuasiSpace portal requires augmenting normal Hyperdrive with a more subtle form of manipulation of space-time known as [[Dimensional Fatigue]], a term also used by the [[Androsynth]] in their own research in this subject. It may be that Dimensional Fatigue is easier to achieve in QuasiSpace than HyperSpace. The local region of QuasiSpace features a very tight cluster of several portals into [[HyperSpace]], prossibly all close together because they were all formed by the same Dimensional Fatigue event. However, there is only one portal to QuasiSpace from [[HyperSpace]] in our region of space. This intermittent portal is located in the the Chandrasekhar constellation; it manifests as a large region of green-glowing space visible from HyperSpace and mistaken for a variable star by the [[Spathi]], as it only appears for a period of about three Human days on a roughly thirty-day cycle, such that its open times occur near the end of each month on the Human calendar -- a mnemonic the Captain's crew used to locate the natural portal in their first dealings with the Arilou. Apart from this portal, QuasiSpace can only be accessed via a [[QuasiSpace Portal Spawner]]. Only the Arilou are known to possess this technology; the only time they have created a Portal Spawner for another race's use was their donation of one to The Captain during the [[Second War]], which was subsequently destroyed along with the rest of The Flagship.<br />
<br />
<br />
== QuasiSpace Portals ==<br />
<br />
This table shows the QuasiSpace locations and [[HyperSpace]] endpoints of the 15 uni-directional portals and the single bi-directional portal.<br />
{|border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"<br />
|-<br />
!QS portal!!HS endpoint!!HS endpoint description<br />
|-<br />
|500.0 : 500.0||043.8 : 637.2||center of [[Arilou]] space; bi-directional; open monthly 17th - 20th<br />
|-<br />
|448.0 : 504.0||565.8 : 971.2||far north on the map, near [[Delta Lyncis]]<br />
|-<br />
|458.0 : 492.0||860.7 : 015.1||far southeast on the map<br />
|-<br />
|466.0 : 514.0||230.2 : 398.8||in the middle of [[Spathi]] space<br />
|-<br />
|468.0 : 464.0||921.1 : 610.4||far east on the map; near [[Arcturus]]<br />
|- <br />
|476.0 : 458.0||409.1 : 774.8||northwest edge of [[Ur-Quan]] space<br />
|-<br />
|476.0 : 496.0||611.7 : 413.1||south edge in [[Ur-Quan]] space<br />
|-<br />
|488.0 : 538.0||973.5 : 315.3||in the middle of [[Druuge]] space<br />
|-<br />
|492.0 : 492.0||005.0 : 164.7||in the middle of [[Ilwrath]] space<br />
|-<br />
|502.0 : 460.0||318.4 : 490.6||between [[Spathi]] and [[ZFP]] space<br />
|-<br />
|506.0 : 474.0||191.0 : 092.6||near [[Earth]]<br />
|-<br />
|516.0 : 466.0||567.3 : 120.7||between [[VUX]], [[Mycon]], and [[Yehat]] space<br />
|-<br />
|520.0 : 514.0||011.2 : 940.9||far northwest on the map, near the [[Slylandro]]<br />
|-<br />
|520.0 : 540.0||585.0 : 621.3||in the middle of [[Ur-Quan]] space<br />
|-<br />
|530.0 : 528.0||775.2 : 890.6||between [[Supox]] and [[Utwig]] space<br />
|-<br />
|544.0 : 532.0||036.8 : 633.2||in the middle of [[Arilou]] space<br />
|}<br />
<br />
[[Category: Dimensions]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=HyperSpace&diff=6797HyperSpace2005-11-02T02:52:23Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>[[Image:SC2_HyperSpace_Screenshot.png|thumb|The Vindicator navigating HyperSpace.]] <br />
'''HyperSpace''' is a "higher dimension" or set of dimensions that forms an alternate space-time adjacent to [[TrueSpace]]. Modern technology has allowed spacefaring civilizations to use HyperSpace as a medium for communication (Hyperwave) and transport (Hyperdrive). HyperSpace (literally meaning "above space" in English) was the first non-TrueSpace dimension to be discovered, and after the work of the [[Androsynth]] and the discovery of [[QuasiSpace]] by the [[Alliance]] is now known to be only one of many such dimensions.<br />
<br />
==HyperSpace Physics==<br />
The most striking feature of HyperSpace is the different properties electromagnetic radiation has within it; HyperSpace's different physical constants cause the speed of light to be much greater than the speed of light in TrueSpace. Observers in HyperSpace thus perceive electromagnetic radiation as "red-shifted", as the increased speed of propagation of light waves causes their wavelengths to become longer. Beyond this oddity, the physical laws in HyperSpace are similar enough to those in TrueSpace to allow vessels and their passengers safe passage. However, some humans entering HyperSpace have encountered intense feeling of disorientation and discomfort, effects of HyperSpace's unique attributes.<br />
<br />
While most of HyperSpace is cast in a blood red light, there are some regions that don't appear red. The majority of these regions are strong TrueSpace gravity wells, which under certain conditions create transdimensional vortices into HyperSpace. These vortices are regions of overlap with TrueSpace, creating natural exit points from HyperSpace to TrueSpace. There is also a constant display of bright explosions and bursts of light in HyperSpace. Though the nature of these energetic (but harmless) events is unknown, they are theorized to be "manifestations of objects moving quickly through HyperSpace into adjacent dimensions." Similar events have been observed in QuasiSpace.<br />
<br />
==Travel through HyperSpace==<br />
Hyperdrive ships operate by artificially generating interdimensional overlaps in TrueSpace, allowing ships to "push up" into HyperSpace. The independent development of Hyperdrive technology has been a near universal among modern civilizations, all of whom (with a few exceptions, like [[Humans]]) discovered Hyperdrive soon after achieving nuclear-level energy generation techniques. This is usually preceded by Hyperwave, a simpler process that involves transmitting information at seemingly superluminal speed via HyperSpace.<br />
<br />
A Hyperdrive field creates a delicately balanced region of exotic vacuum that allows TrueSpace vessels to travel through HyperSpace. The slightly different laws of physics withing HyperSpace however impose a constant drag force on a vessel, forcing Hyperdrive ships to constantly thrust and expend fuel in order to make headway. Similar to TrueSpace gravity wells, a ship contained in Hyperdrive fields creates a shadow, or "spoor", in HyperSpace that indicates its presence visually but also masks the identity of the ship. When the Hyperdrive fields of different ships collide, the fields interfere with each other, causing them to dissipate and return their contents to TrueSpace. Any interaction with a Hyperdrive field and a natural gravitational intrusion into Hyperspace has the same effect; thus, large local gravity sources prevent the formation of stable Hyperdrive fields (hence the impossibility of "pushing up" within a star system). This property of Hyperdrive is an important consideration in HyperSpatial manuevers and is the main difficulty in using Hyperdrive to escape pursuit. <br />
<br />
==Hyperspace Astrometry==<br />
The distance between any two stars in HyperSpace tends to be astoundingly shorter than in TrueSpace; the apparent travel time of voyages of thousands of light-years in TrueSpace is reduced to a matter of weeks from the reference frame of a HyperSpatial traveler. However, the correspondence between points in HyperSpace and TrueSpace may not be one-to-one and certainly does not preserve the geometric orientation of their TrueSpace relationships. Not all stars generate TrueSpace intrusions into HyperSpace, and, although all local HyperSpace gravity wells are clustered in a single galaxy that appears to be an analogue of the local TrueSpace galaxy (called the [[Milky Way galaxy|Milky Way Galaxy]] by [[Humans]]), the spatial relationship between the Hyperspatial locations of stars is often greatly distorted from their TrueSpace locations. These distortions may be due to the fact that HyperSpace appears much more responsive to gravitational distortion than TrueSpace. HyperSpace appears to closely cluster about gravitational sources in TrueSpace, such that all points in HyperSpace seem to correspond to some point near a TrueSpace gravitational source. Forced reentry caused by two interfering Hyperdrive field into TrueSpace from random points in HyperSpace far away from a natural overlap invariably causes the vessels to reappear near a star or rogue planetary body in TrueSpace.<br />
<br />
In mapping HyperSpace, [[Chenjesu]] astronomers have divided stars located in HyperSpace into groups or constellations, which Humans have freely named after notable stars and constellations from TrueSpace astronomy, even though most of these stars (whose TrueSpace labels are mostly just numbers) bear no relation to the TrueSpace stars for which they are named. This is rarely a problem, since the advent of HyperSpatial travel in Human civilization has reduced TrueSpace astronomy to primarily an academic concern (as no TrueSpace-based method of communication across the stars is commonly used or even possible). Constellations are grouped together in relatively dense concentrations with sparser concentrations of stars in between, similar to TrueSpace stellar groups. The Chenjesu standard coordinate system maps a certain set of groups of constellations that have been well-mapped and explored by their scientists; this map defines the safely traversable bounds of "known space" for most races. No races native to this region have had the resources to extend the boundaries of Chenjesu maps very far; only such races as the [[Ur-Quan]] or [[Melnorme]] are known to have extensively traveled and explored the galaxy outside the Chenjesu starmap.<br />
<br />
The speed of light being much higher in HyperSpace than TrueSpace, no ship, even traveling at what would be superluminal speeds in TrueSpace, has ever experienced relativistic effects. Travel at TrueSpace-superluminal velocities is common in HyperSpace. Even vessels only capable of subluminal speeds, when equipped with Hyperdrive, can be practically used for short-distance HyperSpace travel as evidenced by the [[Syreen]]'s migration from [[Syra]]. HyperSpace therefore forms a single inertial reference frame by which timekeeping for all known civilizations can be kept; since all communication and transport occurs through HyperSpace, this single timeframe is sufficient.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Star Control Music#HyperSpace|HyperSpace music]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: Dimensions]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=QuasiSpace&diff=6729QuasiSpace2005-11-02T02:51:02Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:SC2_QuasiSpace_Screenshot.png|thumb|QuasiSpace portals transport your ship to predetermined locations in [[HyperSpace]].]]<br />
'''QuasiSpace''' is one of the "higher dimensions" that forms a space-time analogue to [[TrueSpace]], home to the [[Arilou Lalee'lay]] and only recently discovered by [[Humans]] during the events of the [[Second War]]. It is only accessible from [[HyperSpace]], having an analogous relationship to HyperSpace similar to that which HyperSpace has to TrueSpace. HyperSpatial distances are enormously compressed in QuasiSpace; however, HyperSpatial relationships in QuasiSpace are even more distorted than TrueSpatial relationships in HyperSpace. Unlike the vortices between HyperSpace and TrueSpace, there appears to be no correlation between the access points connecting QuasiSpace to HyperSpace and any natural phenomena like gravity wells.<br />
<br />
The only Human to travel extensively in QuasiSpace was [[The Captain]] of [[The Flagship]], who was given free passage through QuasiSpace during the War by the Arilou as part of their effort to assist the [[New Alliance of Free Stars]] in their struggle against the [[Ur-Quan]]. During that time a number of strange, seemingly inexplicable and self-contradictory observations were made about the properties of QuasiSpace. Superficial observations of QuasiSpace show it to be similar to HyperSpace, a four-dimensional space-time in which time passed at the same standard rate as in HyperSpace. Unlike HyperSpace, QuasiSpace was filled with broadband radiation that peaks in the green wavelengths of the visible spectrum rather than the red. Against the green background were sudden bursts and explosions, similar to those observed in HyperSpace but appearing black instead of bright white. It is unknown if the dark and bright bursts of energy in QuasiSpace and HyperSpace are related, but it should be noted that these phenomena in HyperSpace are theorized to be manifestations of objects which are moving quickly between adjacent dimensions such as HyperSpace and QuasiSpace. QuasiSpace also provides access to [[Falayalaralfali]], the home planet of the [[Arilou Lalee'lay]], which they describe as kept in a giant TrueSpace pocket embedded within QuasiSpace. <br />
<br />
More bizarre than this was the behavior of the Flagship's own systems in QuasiSpace. The Flagship's systems appeared to respond exactly as they did in HyperSpace, engaging the engines to thrust through the QuasiSpace and being dragged to a halt relative to the QuasiSpatial absolute reference frame when thrust ceased. However, although the starship's engines appeared to be firing, the Flagship was consuming none of its fuel.<br />
<br />
Suspicious observers soon realized that observations for a region of QuasiSpace were exactly identical to readings for a similar region of HyperSpace, only all visuals were inverted -- to the ''Human eye''. Humans' visual systems perceive the color green as an opposite to the color red, and QuasiSpace radiated a green color that complemented the red color of HyperSpace to the human eye perfectly; every observed "black hole" and "dark cloud" in QuasiSpace corresponded to a commonly observed energy flare in HyperSpace.<br />
<br />
These strange coincidences, along with repeated references by the Arilou to Humans' inability to fully perceive the nature of their home dimension, support the possibility that QuasiSpace's appearance to the crew of the Vindicator may have been some kind of illusion or falsely generated set of perceptions obscuring a more bizarre reality.<br />
<br />
To create a QuasiSpace portal requires augmenting normal Hyperdrive with a more subtle form of manipulation of space-time known as [[Dimensional Fatigue]], a term also used by the [[Androsynth]] in their own research in this subject. It may be that Dimensional Fatigue is easier to achieve in QuasiSpace than HyperSpace. The local region of QuasiSpace features a very tight cluster of several portals into [[HyperSpace]], prossibly all close together because they were all formed by the same Dimensional Fatigue event. However, there is only one portal to QuasiSpace from [[HyperSpace]] in our region of space. This intermittent portal is located in the the Chandrasekhar constellation; it manifests as a large region of green-glowing space visible from HyperSpace and mistaken for a variable star by the [[Spathi]], as it only appears for a period of about three Human days on a roughly thirty-day cycle, such that its open times occur near the end of each month on the Human calendar -- a mnemonic the Captain's crew used to locate the natural portal in their first dealings with the Arilou. Apart from this portal, QuasiSpace can only be accessed via a [[QuasiSpace Portal Spawner]]. Only the Arilou are known to possess this technology; the only time they have created a Portal Spawner for another race's use was their donation of one to The Captain during the [[Second War]], which was subsequently destroyed along with the rest of The Flagship.<br />
<br />
<br />
== QuasiSpace Portals ==<br />
<br />
This table shows the QuasiSpace locations and [[HyperSpace]] endpoints of the 15 uni-directional portals and the single bi-directional portal.<br />
{|border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"<br />
|-<br />
!QS portal!!HS endpoint!!HS endpoint description<br />
|-<br />
|500.0 : 500.0||043.8 : 637.2||center of [[Arilou]] space; bi-directional; open monthly 17th - 20th<br />
|-<br />
|448.0 : 504.0||565.8 : 971.2||far north on the map, near [[Delta Lyncis]]<br />
|-<br />
|458.0 : 492.0||860.7 : 015.1||far southeast on the map<br />
|-<br />
|466.0 : 514.0||230.2 : 398.8||in the middle of [[Spathi]] space<br />
|-<br />
|468.0 : 464.0||921.1 : 610.4||far east on the map; near [[Arcturus]]<br />
|- <br />
|476.0 : 458.0||409.1 : 774.8||northwest edge of [[Ur-Quan]] space<br />
|-<br />
|476.0 : 496.0||611.7 : 413.1||south edge in [[Ur-Quan]] space<br />
|-<br />
|488.0 : 538.0||973.5 : 315.3||in the middle of [[Druuge]] space<br />
|-<br />
|492.0 : 492.0||005.0 : 164.7||in the middle of [[Ilwrath]] space<br />
|-<br />
|502.0 : 460.0||318.4 : 490.6||between [[Spathi]] and [[ZFP]] space<br />
|-<br />
|506.0 : 474.0||191.0 : 092.6||near [[Earth]]<br />
|-<br />
|516.0 : 466.0||567.3 : 120.7||between [[VUX]], [[Mycon]], and [[Yehat]] space<br />
|-<br />
|520.0 : 514.0||011.2 : 940.9||far northwest on the map, near the [[Slylandro]]<br />
|-<br />
|520.0 : 540.0||585.0 : 621.3||in the middle of [[Ur-Quan]] space<br />
|-<br />
|530.0 : 528.0||775.2 : 890.6||between [[Supox]] and [[Utwig]] space<br />
|-<br />
|544.0 : 532.0||036.8 : 633.2||in the middle of [[Arilou]] space<br />
|}<br />
<br />
[[Category: Dimensions]]</div>130.58.236.123https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:QuasiSpace&diff=6746Talk:QuasiSpace2005-11-02T02:49:18Z<p>130.58.236.123: </p>
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<div>"...QuasiSpace was an illusion, generated either by the minds of the Vindicator's crew or somehow created by the Arilou, and that the real structure of QuasiSpace obeys no physical laws and is some sort of purely "mental", "spiritual" or "pattern-based" dimension."<br />
<br />
The other contributions you've made to this article are excellent, but this particular assertion seems pretty unbased to me. I can see how one might comment on the subjective nature of physical perception (and how these factors limit our comprehension of QuasiSpace) but there doesn't seem to be enough evidence to support the hypothesis that QuasiSpace is a purely "mental" dimension. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]] 10:10, 22 Nov 2004 (CET)<br />
<br />
:I agree that this is pure fan-fiction. He '''again''' seems to be taking his own theories as fact. That's fine if you want to start a religion, but not if you're working on an encyclopedia. -- [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 15:35, 22 Nov 2004 (CET)<br />
<br />
Hey Fadookie, just to let you know why I reinserted some of the stuff you just took out. I agree that a good deal of it was fanfic, so I fixed the sentence before that text to be less speculation and reinserted a reworded form of the "objects travelling between dimensions" text. It still sounds a bit akward - probably needs to be reworked a bit. This is one of the few "canon" theories and not fanfic since it's found in the manual. A similar comment about the energy bursts should also probably be added over on the HyperSpace page. [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 06:31, 30 Sep 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
Okay, I have no problem with canon. However, the way that it was (and is) worded makes it sound more like speculation than anything. -[[User:Fadookie|Fadookie]]<br />
<br />
:Yeah, like I said the wording is still kinda' odd. I'm not sure how to make this sound more canon though because the original wording is "...it is theorized that these are manifestations of objects which are moving quickly through HyperSpace into adjacent dimensions." It is still speculation, just canon speculation instead of the fanfic speculation - hence this dilemma. Any ideas on better wording for this? [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 07:09, 30 Sep 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
When I wikified the table, I also made a few changes to the presentation of the data. I added in the leading zeroes on a few of the coordinates and used a colon to separate the coordinates (like in the game). I also changed the ordering a bit, placing them by increasing x coordinate with the exception of the "natural" QS portal. The other way (by increasing y) makes sense but isn't as easy to read - it took me a few seconds to see what the ordering scheme was. [[User:Fyzixfighter|Fyzixfighter]] 20:42, 22 Oct 2005 (CEST)<br />
<br />
The fact that the QuasiSpace screen is a perfect negative of the HyperSpace screen is *not* "speculation" or "fanfiction" -- it's demonstrably true, and seems much more likely to be intentional on the part of the creators rather than simply being too lazy to create a different screen. I'm putting it back in, since it *is* a major component in the "speculation" about the nature of QuasiSpace, which is *as or more important* to the game as the (much less well-founded) "speculation" about the Orz that people constantly indulge in.</div>130.58.236.123