Very interesting rationale. I think there's a lot of big questions overlooked by our community.Good question, AFAIK it was giving us the hint that led to the newer sites? The galnet article that accompanied it said:
The placement of the Cete is very interesting IMO, it seems to suggest that either it jumped through the Regor sector, or around it, but I'm not sure why:
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I've made this graphic of the Guardian data from Canonn's 3D maps. As with all things, nuances are lost when making a diagram of data, so reference the original, but the diagram is a quick & dirty visual guide.
It's extremely clear to see (on the orignal data) that the big pointy spike heading towards Sol-ways is by far the most dense, the smaller spikes are very sparse by comparison. The Regor sector is clearly an 'origin' point of the Guardian Expansion. Along the largest spike there's clearly a layering addition of the Structures and later the Beacons, assuming that it physically represents a chronological progression - as Ram Tah and Melville suggest.
According to this data, the Guardians’ homeworld served as a powerbase for this new religious order, which eventually succeeded in ostracizing or exiling all of its opponents. I can find no other reference to these exiles in the historical record. This development should have resulted in peace, but a further division arose over the fate of the AIs. At that time, the AIs were virtual entities, and so were reliant on the monolith network to exist. Because this made them vulnerable, they searched for a way to achieve independence from the network. Their research aroused the fear of the abolitionists, who used violent methods to prevent the AIs from achieving independence, and even to combat those Guardians who accepted the AIs.
The Guardians had a deep veneration of nature, and many of them saw the development of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, as a perversion of the natural order. A schism emerged between the nature-worshipping traditionalists and the technologically minded progressives – a divide that widened with alarming speed. Efforts where made to defuse the rising tension, but the traditionalists felt alienated by the rapid rate of change. Artificial intelligence and the development of the monolith network became scapegoats for all manner of social ills, and the traditionalists began to clamour for a return to simpler times. Ultimately the ideological divergence proved insurmountable, a second civil war erupted, quickly engulfing most of the Guardians’ star systems.
In its early stages, the war was fought primarily by soldiers, but within a decade – and after significant loss of life – most of the fighting was conducted remotely. The progressives fought with automated combat machines. These engines of war took various forms, from autonomous drones to vast, lumbering dreadnoughts imbued with limited artificial intelligence. On the other side, the traditionalists relied mostly on biological weapons. They used germ warfare alongside long-range missiles loaded with corrosive enzymes, which could target the enemy’s war machines from a great distance.
The war was ostensibly fought between the people of the homeworld and the colonies, but in truth there were divisions even among individual city-states... The war raged for many years and eventually destroyed the Guardians’ habitats, forcing them to retreat into ‘sacred’ domes protected by powerful shields. Eventually even the domes were destroyed, or their shields failed, and ultimately the population died out. Their predilection for expending resources on honouring the dead – a key tenet of their religion – only served to accelerate their extinction.
The main issue was the internecine nature of the conflict, which raged for over one hundred years and brought the Guardians’ civilisation to its knees, retarding any further social development. But the challenges facing the traditionalists were exacerbated by the fact that they devoted most of their resources to honouring the dead. From what I can gather, they regarded the departed in much the same way as the primitive cultures of Sol, constructing vast shrines to honour the deceased. As their situation worsened, they became increasingly obsessed with these practices. With so much of their resources dedicated to these rites, it is little wonder that their enemies’ war machines were able to overwhelm them.
... The war raged for over a hundred years, and Guardian populations fell dramatically during this time. Fertility rates dropped due to increased radiation levels and because the Guardians considered it blasphemous to use technology to address a biological issue. Eventually, one of the competing forces triumphed, but by that point, all the Guardians other than those who had been exiled a century earlier were dying.
The big 'expansion path' really does point almost exactly at Sol, it's even more clear on the 3D maps where you can rotate it around and very clearly see it's like an arrow (of course it might not be directly "at" Sol, but it's certainly running very, very close).
Given proximity, compatibility between Guardian and Human tech and biological needs, and how similar in all major ways Guardians and Humans are, and given this arrangement of ruins, I think this really strongly suggests that Humanity may have been at least influenced by the Guardians.
It's certainly entirely possible that the Martian artefact could be Guardian, given the proximity and 'directional' travel.
If we assume that the Martian Relic is Guardian, then it means that very, very early on in Humanities space-expansion we knew of technological sophisticated ancient aliens, and the timeline (as we've discussed previously) for the discovery of the Martian Relic does come a few years earlier than the first recorded mention of Raxxla. We've discussed the idea that the Relic itself may have given hints towards Raxxla, enough to start people searching...
Possible links to Raxxla Coverup (speculation):
On the Hesperus expedition of 3113 the scientists aboard the Proteus discovered the ancient Thargoid-Guardian battleground, but they were deliberately heading that way, out towards Barnard's Loop. They were apparently following readings from FTL probes:
Azimuth was powerful and wealthy, yet they sent two ships considerably far out of the bubble in an era where going that far was very difficult - chasing ghosts on the offchance they might find some alien tech "Azimuth wants to be the first corporation selling alien weaponry, which will make them bigger than Sirius.".
FTL Probes capable of reporting on the Thargoid-Guardian battle were being used in the early 3100s. We know from the Lore that FTL probes were used right from the very, very start of human expansion, Tau Ceti was colonised because FTL probes showed a human-compatible world there - presumably some probes at some point must have picked up the relatively close Guardian ruins, which are very nearly on our doorstep. Going all the way to the Regor Sector, presumably the most dense collection of Guardian worlds is only about 1000ly from Sol.
Yet, apparently not, Guardian ruins weren't officially found until just a few years back.
Given proximity to us, and the fact we categorically know that probe-based detection at very long ranges was possible, and that explorers have always been pushing out the boundaries of exploration, I wonder if this is direct evidence for:
It would presumably take a very powerful group retaining that power over a thousand years to successfully conceal/remove/discredit every discovery of the Guardian ruins by every one of the scattered Corporations and random explorers that push out beyond the Frontier. As the Frontier expanded over time, and spaceship tech got cheaper, easier and more prevalent, it must have required an incredible levels of power and control to keep the Guardians secret.
I remember that at the time of Halsey's recovery there was speculation in the community that her "visions" were actually made up by her to 'leak' the Guardian secret, or her damaged mind confused secret reports of the extinct aliens with reality - and of course, she was Federal President so presumably would have had access to the Martian Relic info, and generally all the secrets of the Federation.
Why keep Guardians secret though?
Maybe it was necessary to keep the Guardian ruins secret to preserve the secret of this "power" to "dominate humanity"? Maybe that secret is in the Regor sector and until Permit Locks it simply wasn't possible to keep people out of there, now, of course, the only people that can get in there are those not using FSD or possessing the permits?
I would say it's obviously to retain technological advantage, but it seems like that wasn't leveraged, since we've used Guardian tech to improve our tech in the last few years...?
Why would Guardians be named this way by the writters, what are they guarding?
After exterminating the Guardians, what did their AI do/where did it go?
Why are we "unable" to jump into the Regor Sector/Hen 2-333?
This doesn't seem to be a permit lock by the Pilot's Federation but rather a technical limitation:
I think a jump is necessary (thus a FSD) to reach their home systems because my squad has performed experiments trying to reach this sector and although we were able to get into the location, the game mechanics would not load the system itself.
