Talk:Arilou Lalee'lay

Great work on the first contact section. A few things with it didn't sit right with me, though.

"The Human governments searched their ancient archives and found the resemblance too close to be coincidental..."

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.

"It was on the moon's surface where Human and Chenjesu delegates met the Arilou La'leelay..."

Another detail I'm not recalling. Sounds feasible, though.

"No other race had made contact with the Arilou before the beginning of the First War..."

Not so sure about the veritablilty of this statement. How about the Umgah, or even the Thraddash?

-Fadookie 07:28, 25 Nov 2004 (CET)

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".

Be Bold!

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.

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.

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.)

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).

Finally, I think I'm cutting out this stuff about Falayaliralfali looking like Earth, since in this screenshot:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,2/gameId,179/gameShotId,1743/

the resemblance is very superficial. For one thing, Falayaliralfali's continents don't match Earth's continents' shape. For another, the continents are purple.

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. -Fadookie 05:52, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/stylesheets/images/arispace.png

Where is the Arilou messing with the Thraddash for fun mentioned? I can't find it. -- SvdB 21:36, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

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."

I see. Thanks. I forgot all about that quote. Though "some fun" doesn't necessarilly mean "tamper with the development". -- SvdB 15:35, 24 Nov 2004 (CET)