Archive through August 01, 2008
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
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SELTORIAN RESURGENCE:
Archive through August 01, 2008
Joe Riggs,
You're playing what-if, right? You tweak the time of the 312th's arrival. The Hydrans are desperate for an edge against the klingons and don't have hellbores yet.
Fusions + web + hellbore is too good. Fighting such ships won't be any fun. Just fusion + web might be.
Quote:Fusions + web + hellbore is too good. Fighting such ships won't be any fun. Just fusion + web might be.
That's the whole point. I figured that this would make a good thing to post right around October 31.
:P
On a more serious note...
Gary, remember that the Iridani don't have any contact with the Alpha races at this point (other than, iirc, a fatal misunderstanding involving the Tholians). The Andromedans are technically involved in Operation Unity, and covert study of their ships passing through that region might provide more information. But their ships and systems are alien compared to the Galactics (who can get pretty far out there themselves at times - SFG for instance), and it's questionable how much information the Galactics could draw from secretly spying on the Andromedans entering the Milky Way.
Quote:Though I still think that there should be consideration given to putting Tribunal expeditons into one or more non-Alpha settings - I'd personally consider post-Unity the Cloud to be the best bet, though.
(Especially since while there, the Selts could learn who sent ships up to the LMC as part of Operation Unity...)
I would assume that the Seltorians would already be well aware of the source of those ships, since the Alpha Octant expedition had already sent messages home. It might, however, be possible that one of the various Seltorian expeditions scattered some outposts in the LMC just to keep an eye on things. At least one queen would be required at each of those, and given enough time and motivation (for instance, a Tholian vessel was spotted in the vicinity) they could probably build a new fleet.
The question, though, is time. They would need to basically start from scratch since the nest/hive/battlewagon ship that planted them there most likely either moved on when no Tholians turned up, or was more likely destroyed shortly after entering the LMC by a couple of Dominators. And that would mean that they would need to build a new covert shipyard (you can't do that before the Andromedans are destroyed because then there's too much of a risk that the Andros will spot the activity) that's big enough to build the mothership. And then you need to build the mothership. And then you can start working on the fleet. By that time you're probably talking at least several years after Operation Unity, if not longer. And that's just for the core fleet.
On top of the time issue, you've got to keep things covert for two reasons. The first is because the local powers might not be too happy to see a new race in an area that they previously claimed as their own. The second is that the Galactics might have been asking about any Seltorian sightings (even if they didn't, the Seltorians are going to need to assume that the Galactics did), and possibly spreading the word that the Seltorians should be killed on sight to the various local powers.
I'm not saying it's impossible. Merely pointing out that it's probably going to be quite a while before the "neo-Seltorians" can get up and running.
Joseph:
I was not being entirely serious with that last reply - although I have been hoping to find some means of getting an iridani explorer or few in certain parts of the Alpha Octant prior to Y219 (when they escort the GSX Sakharov back to the Federation) even in that idea I had called a halt to such missions during the course of the Invasions (since the Iridani woudl be too heavily focussed on the Grand Quest and Crusade).
However, another idea I had was to have a reason for the Iridani to send a post-Unity expedition to the Cloud - as a means of continuing their mission to hunt down the Andromedans.
Oh, and in terms of the Seltorians, what I had hoped to see was a Nest Ship (or maybe a Lair Ship) show up over Sleern, in the former Neutral Worlds, in the mid-Y200s - after the Unity forces had mostly gone home, and while the various Magellanic powers are still in the process of trying to reconquer their home provinces (which would still have Andromedan robot garrisons on them) and to re-establish their sedantary fleet infrastructures.
Thus, in the midst of a struggle within the Cloud to re-establish the various empires present (which may, or may not, include an effort by the Jumokians to take the chance to re-claim their old homeworld) the issue of trying to balance these growing pains with the need to keep tabs on the Seltorian presence in the former Neutral Worlds would become somewhat pressing.
(Indeed, that Iridani idea could be a counter-force - perhaps the Baduvai could cede the former Uthiki space to the Quest fleet, in exchange for a promise that the Iridani lead the effort to contain Seltorian ambitions further north.)
The message sent from the Seltorians in Y182 will not arrive in M81 until after the end of SFU recorded history. There cannot be any response to what is happening in the MWG by anyone in M81.
Any new Seltorian presense would have to be already sent two hundred years before and have a very good reason. The Seltorians that came to the VERY DISTANT Milky Way were following a group of Tholian renegades (the 312th). They had no way of knowing they would find an established sphere in the MWG. If they had, they would have sent much more than they did. The Hive ship is also an expiditionary unit, of course, since it did head towards parts unknown but the mission was to hunt down and destroy those Tholians they were following.
Consider that the 312th was not that big of a fleet and sending a Hive ship in the first place was a bit extreme; indicating the Seltorian drive to totally erradicate the Tholians. A mission to search the MWG would have been sent in any case but perhpas not as soon as it was without them having followed the 312th. In any case, that Hive Ship ended up with THE MWG mission.
Any new Seltorians arriving here would have to have had their own additional reasons for coming to the MWG. The MWG is VERY far away and there are Tholians being found MUCH closer. Efforts to find Tholians in the MWG, prior to recieving the HiveShip report on the Holdfast, would not take priority over those already found.
However, there is always possabilities. I hear you guys and I'm trying to find a solution. The article in CL38 will no doubt be a brow raiser. I was going for that and after SVC and SPP pulled me out of the clouds, the article will still be that.
Double post - oops...
Speaking of M81, I was flicking through a copy of Omega 4 I have here (just the rulebook - I brought the SSDs to Canada, since I have the OMRB there anyway) and I noticed something interesting about the Bolosco:
Quote:The Bolosco were forced to flee the M81 galaxy, freezing most of their people in blocks of ice for the centuries-long journey. As they travelled, they traded with other races they encountered, and soon became an almost nomadic people. Eventually a splinter group crossed to the Milky Way glaxy, in the hopes of establishing a trading empire there.
In other words - there are other groups of Bolosco in the universe...
...maybe one or more of them went to one of M81's own satellite galaxies (and was caught up in the midst of a Tholian-Seltorian snaggle) - though that would depend on how thorough a job the KoTanrho did in pursuing them.
(In that regard, would a post-Revolt Seltorian Suzerainty have any objections to protecting the Bolosco from KoTanrho attacks, in return for some of the Guilds taking up a role in developing the empire's economy? As you say, the Selts didn't know everything there was to know about running a galaxy, and the Bolosco like a good deal - plus, they could present a more friendly blob-ness to the populace of M81.)
Or, perhaps, maybe another group of Guildships set sail elsewhere, instead of the exodus force which went to Omega.
I can JUST see the Hydrans giving the NeoTholians directions.
"Well, you go that away. Past the Lyran battlestation, through Lyran and Klingon occupied space. If you have time, be sure to go by Hydra and give them our love. Watch out for the Vudar.
If you get to the LDR, you need to veer to the right, past the Seltoran planet, past the Klingon battlestation and there you are!"
Gary -
I think to answer any of those questions, we need more information on what happened in the Boloscos' past and more information on the state of M81 immediately following the success of the Seltorian revolt.
But I would hazard a guess that at least for the first few hundred years (how long do the sages and queens live?), the Seltorians are going to be VERY cautious about delegating any power or control (including administrative) to another race.
/quote{Any new Seltorian presense would have to be already sent two hundred years before and have a very good reason. The Seltorians that came to the VERY DISTANT Milky Way were following a group of Tholian renegades (the 312th). They had no way of knowing they would find an established sphere in the MWG. If they had, they would have sent much more than they did. The Hive ship is also an expiditionary unit, of course, since it did head towards parts unknown but the mission was to hunt down and destroy those Tholians they were following.}
Not that I'm debating what you say. But it does make me wonder how the Seltorians lost track of an entire sphere. Obviously the Seltorians were trying to run down all of their former masters, and the fact that they were able to successfully track the 312th (which I would assume was composed of a few dozen ships, including support vessels?) shows that they were probably doing a pretty thorough job. Did the fact that no one was keeping track of Tholia just get lost in the paperwork?
While the signal may not reach M81 itself for a long time, it would reach any other (if there are any) factory ships sent as Tribunal forces to the Miky Way group.
(Indeed, maybe they have to relay the message anyway?)
Oh, someone mentioned the building of larger Selt ships - I think that the key to that would be to try and use a Hive, Nest or Lair ship to construct a starbase.
For example, if a Selt force set up at Sleern, and spent a few years focussing on consolidation, the next step might be to ransack the Neutral Worlds (or, at least, whatever the Andromedans left to ransack) in order to gether materials required to build a starbase and/or shipyard.
Then, the Selts could start churning out dreadnoughts and whatnot.
(Unless such a force figured out how to build CAX ships instead - which would be a useful alternative, and one a factory ship could build.)
The Holdfast sphere escaped during the height of chaos of the revolution. It was known to be missing, among others, but was not tracked to start with.
The Seltorians were able to track the 312th because they never lost track of them. Mind you that the 312th also left M81 well after the Seltorians were in control of M81. They arrived at the MWG nearly 100 years later and while it took them longer to get here they also left later. This isn't new stuff I've written, just the conclusions I've come to from studying the published history. I've got a history written for the 312th and I haven't heard word against it from ADB.
Loren -
Like I said, I'm not doubting that it worked more or less the way that you stated. And I'm not really surprised that the Seltorians were able to track the 312th (which, as I mentioned, I'm pretty confident contained a lot more ships than just the Neo-Tholian ships that we eventually saw). I just find it rather amusing, particularly when I try and imagine the conversation between a Seltorian fleet commander and his superior as the commander tries to explain how he lost track of the provincial capital that he was sent to destroy (which, iirc, is what Tholia originally was).
"You did WHAT!?"
I've said this before, I'll say it again: Everyone is seeking a plausible way to have Seltorians post-Unity, I've seen a number of credible suggestions here. The main focus seems to be that there have to be queens to allow a resurgence.
Well, if you reject all scenarios that allow another contingent of Selts coming in then there is one way to allow Seltorians to launch more Tholian assaults:
Cloning.
Also genetic engineering. The gene structure of the queen is inherent in that of the drones. It might result in some rather profound changes in Seltorian culture if the hierarchy is disrupted in this manner. I won't suggest which direction they'd go but it would be interesting to follow that chain of logic.
I also still maintain that it's an open question whether there are other Tholians in the MWG. It may be that a separate contingent of Seltorians pursued a separate group of Tholians to this galaxy. Nothing in print I've seen so far preclude this.
I will point out as SVC has said the history is NEVER wrong, but sometimes the history thus far presented is not the WHOLE of what happened.
regards
Stacy
I'll bet you all will be able to guess what can happen when you read the CL38 article.
But what would you call tholians that settled elsewhere?
"neo" and "archeo" have been taken. Xenotholians?
Those tholians would be both disadvantaged and in a curious way advantaged because THEY wouldn't be likley to be carting a provincial capital around.
Which means they'd have to do for themselves. They'd backslide even further in technology but if given time to build it back up wouldn't be dependent on automated forges for ships.
Lets call them Far Reach Tholians because they'd presumably be in one of the farther reaches of the MWG. Or lets call them "Fred"! 
I guess it doesn't even really matter what they are called, it doesn't even matter if they actually EXIST what would be important is for the Seltorians to think they MIGHT exist.
They might be better off, perhaps lacking the natural defense of a sphere they formed alliances and relationships with their neighbors out of necessity.Perhaps they were more pragmatic than paranoid. Perhaps they made good their escape with even better goodies than the Alpha Quad Tholians.
It's a big galaxy lotsa room for speculation.
regards
Stacy
Xeno-tholians is cool as a general reference to Tholians elsewhere but any Tholian in a specific location would adopt that location. For instance, Tholians that survive somehow him Andromeda might be called M31-Tholians or better yet, named after whatever they named their location. Sometimes I use the term, Holdfast Tholians when talking about Tholians in multiple locations.
I suppose Free-Range Tholians could apply too.
Not all escapng Tholians are going to think alike either. A good many did meet their doom trying to regroup for a comeback.
You know, I guess that logic would apply to the Bolosco, too - the ones we see published so far would be the Omega-Bolosco, but there are other groups of them out there in the wider universe.
(By the way, if anyone has any ideas about what a Bolosco Guildship might look like, please pop over and let me know!)
With regards to the fate of any Tholians without a sphere, I think the first question that you have to ask is, "Were there any Seltorians following them?" If so, then I think it's safe to say that the Tholians died. The only thing that allowed the 312th to even have a fighting chance was the fact that they found Tholia. And Tholia had been in place for roughly 75 years, and thus had the chance to build up an infrastructure and fleet before the Seltorians arrived.
Even then, it was a near thing (though in fairness both sides in the fighting did have help). And that was just from the forces sent to bring in the 312th.
So one Nest Ship and its accompanying fleet was able to give an entire sphere that had been in place for decades a stiff fight (I can't say exactly how difficult of a fight because I'd need to be able to determine exactly how much help both sides received from their allies).
Based on that, I think it's safe to say that any Tholians that have Seltorians after them are in big trouble unless they can somehow manage to make nice with a local version of the Federation that is willing to provide them with protection.
Joe Riggs,
Depends, doesn't it?
No seltorans tracked the Archeo-Tholians. since they were towing a privincial capital, arguably they'd leave a much easier trail to follow than the 312th.
Any Refugee group that opted to get out of Dodge immidiately after All Was Lost (as the Archeos did) will probably leave a cold trail behind them.
One can infer that the 312th was probably involved in attempting to take back their galaxy and lost and ran and was tracked.
Or the 312th was part of the fleet "holding the line" so that the Tholian civilians could try and escape.
As I said, it's the first question you need to ask - whether or not the Seltorians were following that particular group.
...so we know they followed the 312th.
Did they follow the civilians?
The 312ths purpose was the keep that from happening, right?
Since we don't have a detailed history of M81, we don't know much about what happened - except of course that there was a successful revolt, followed by attempted genocide. Maybe the 312th was holding the line, as I suggested was possible. Maybe they did manage to screen a group of Tholian civilians long enough for them to clear the Galactic rim. Or maybe they had another reason for leaving as late as they did.
And even if the 312th was screening civilians, then maybe the Seltorians picked up the trail of those civilians anyway. Just because a given group of Tholians managed to clear the edge of the M81 galaxy with no bugs in hot pursuit doesn't mean that the Seltorians couldn't have picked up the trail once again shortly afterwards (the bugs would have had a rough idea of where the Tholians had left from, and might have been able to pick the trail back up before it got too cold).
Based on what Loren said earlier, it sounds as if...
1.) Groups fleeing earlier had a better chance of making it than groups that fled later, and
2.) There's something unusual about Tholia's escape that provided a greater than normal chance of the sphere getting clear without the Seltorians being able to pick up a trail.
Even so, Tholia came pretty close to getting overrun after having had a chance to reestablish itself simply because the Seltorian fleet sent after a much smaller group of Tholians happened to stumble across the sphere.
If the Selts chase you, then you're dead. No ifs, ands, or buts...
with the exception being if you manage to find someone who can give you a safe haven. There's no "let the technology slip for a generation or two and then start building new ships before the Seltorians arrive". You don't have the time. Your only chance is that you can find someone big enough to hold off the Seltorians, and friendly enough to do so (and that won't be too angry about the fact that you just led a major hostile fleet to their territory - and if you arrived in a sphere, then it's going to be a VERY big fleet).
If the Seltorians don't chase you, then your best chance is to find a nice quiet spot to regroup (given the rather unusual Tholian living environment, those types of spots probably aren't common unless you brought a sphere with you) and hope that a bug fleet doesn't eventually wander by and find you.
So far as I can tell, the Holdfast got very lucky. And the 312th was even luckier.
I'm sorry guy that I'm not really in the possition to answer questions. While I have most of this worked out the fine tooth comb work hasn't really been done by ADB so I don't know what parts of my work will be official and what will not.
An example of one of the more difficult things was what lead to SVC's article Tholia: The First Years (CL35). Petrick and I were into a considerable debate about those early years when SVC stepped in and said we were both wrong. The article incorporated bits of both out ideas but largely was what SVC had in mind all the time (but had never detailed).
Another was a situation where I was working with the box, a perfectly logical box, but Petrick had issues with it. Then one day I got an e-mail from him that showed me how to tie up that box in a nice bow that wrapped around other boxes (perfectly explaining why the Tholians lost their ability to make Particle Canons).
There are other examples of the core of my work being strong but the fine details need adjusting. (and a few were my non-military mind just has it wrong). So, I have a LOT of work done but where it comes to stratigic matters, it is hard for me to answer question definetively. That is, I won't know what is "official", even in my own work, until it is published and details are still in flux.
Besides, I can't be giving away the whole thing before the book comes out.
In the means time, here's one to stir the mystery pot [evil grin].
"The 312ths purpose was the keep that from happening, right?"
No.
SVC mentions PD Tholians in his recent schedule post. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it's Jean with a torch saying, "Over here! Come on." That is, I'm excited all over again about PDT.
I just don't think following warp powered ships years after they have passed is such an easy task. The Tribunal ships were several years behind the 312th and a lot can happen over years. What if the warp drive crosses a front of a super-nova? goes through a nebula? Crosses trade routes? Cuts across something like the Wyn star cluster?
Who says if a Seltorian fleet catches up with a Tholian one they automatically get slaughtered? There are a lot of assumptions here not backed up by anything thus far printed.
Also in the wake of the uprising there was a LOT of chaos. If they could get the sphere away large contingents of ships could too. Also such ships may not have come directly to MWG.
"We want to pass through your space, and we have these people following us we'd like you to slow them down please. We'll make it worth your while."
"What do you have to offer?"
"Web tech."(They don't care they aren't coming this way ever again)
"How many pieces you want these bugs in?"
"Use your own best judgment. Just slow or stop them."
I'd cut across an entire galaxy making that deal with EVERY race I met so the Seltorians had to go through EVERY ONE of them. Some might not honor the agreement but some will and each one slows and whittles the fleet down.
They may have OTHER resources to offer bribes with too.
As far as working with other races, I always thought the Tholians missed a bet by not settling in Hydran space and forming a union with them. They don't use the same types of planets and their weapons compliment each others needs VERY well.
As a Tholian I'd KILL for fusion beams, gatlings and Stinger II fighters.
regards
Stacy
If the Seltorians don't chase you, then your best chance is to find a nice quiet spot to regroup (given the rather unusual Tholian living environment, those types of spots probably aren't common unless you brought a sphere with you) and hope that a bug fleet doesn't eventually wander by and find you.
I don't know what tholians breathe, mind you (what DO they breathe, Loren? I suspect sulfides and the like--assuming they do breathe in the first place), but in the Sol System Mercury ought to be nice and balmy temperaturewise. An environment dome might be needed to hold some atmosphere. They might even like Venus, if Earth hasn't terraformed it.
Being a very different physiology means that Tholians can survive in many inhospitable places, such as possibly a brand new solar system. If they breathe sulfides and such a pre-life or early-life proto-earth might be ideal. Who cares if it will be a haven for carbon-based life a short hundred million years later?
Alternately a moon like IO might be the ticket.
Tholian refugees could provide a very vital service to an empire by extracting resrouces under conditions that would be hard on carbon-based life)
The chances of being found by a passin Seltoran group are not great. Space is too big. The Seltorans can afford to send out hunter-killer groups to track and kill refugees and that's one thing. I do NOT think they can afford to survey all the galaxies in the Local Group just on the off-chance of finding a tholian enclave that they missed.
Other powers would be the final arbiter of this than me, but it seems highly impractical.