Were they?
Out of the Darkness by T. James deals with Thargoids - Oresrians and Klaxians come from that novel.
Thargoids are a theme in John Harper's And here the Wheel too.
The Quest To Find Raxxla
- Thread starter Macros Black
- Start date
Out of the Darkness by T. James deals with Thargoids - Oresrians and Klaxians come from that novel.
Thargoids are a theme in John Harper's And here the Wheel too.
You’ll have to search Drew Wagar’s posts, either this thread or his lore thread. He was the one who spoke of FD’s stipulation, my memory is not good, and IRL I need to get a move on, breakfast time has been too long already!
Edit: sorry, that sounds a bit terse. I’m in a bit of pain at the moment-left hip playing up since mid December and sat for half an hour typing on iPad is getting to me. You are quite right re Thargoids! Han_Zen May remember Drew’s exact phrasing, or best to find Drew’s original posting.
Last edited:
Nah, can't be arxed.
But "stay away from the topic" could of course mean to not develop further in case of Thargoids, as to not spoil/contradict later in game development.
Yes, maybe they had specific Thargoid lore for the authors who wrote specifically about them? I’m getting confused because this cropped up in the IRH Discord recently & Scytale (remember him?) was there and corrected me. He said the restriction was “Raxxla, Thargs and antigravity” and it was on Drew's twitch channel. Which may also be why I’m getting confused as I can’t stand twitch (& rapidly going off Facebook!) so must have got the quote either second or third hand. Just did a search for drew’s posts re this on the forum & only got “Raxxla”Nah, can't be arxed.
But "stay away from the topic" could of course mean to not develop further in case of Thargoids, as to not spoil/contradict later in game development.
The Quest To Find Raxxla
Hello Commanders, I'm sharing this with you in the case you missed it: http://www.drewwagar.com/progress-report/raxxla-the-definitive-guide/ From the wording chosen by Drew I'd bet that he doesn't know the location, only DB. Then I have an idea, if you remove all filters from the map, you can...
All I remember is that Raxxla was absolutely of limits. That was the reason for the creation of Soontil.
I believe the off limits subjects for all the authors were/are Raxxla, Time Travel, and Artificial* Gravity.Yes, maybe they had specific Thargoid lore for the authors who wrote specifically about them? I’m getting confused because this cropped up in the IRH Discord recently & Scytale (remember him?) was there and corrected me. He said the restriction was “Raxxla, Thargs and antigravity” and it was on Drew's twitch channel. Which may also be why I’m getting confused as I can’t stand twitch (& rapidly going off Facebook!) so must have got the quote either second or third hand. Just did a search for drew’s posts re this on the forum & only got “Raxxla”
The Quest To Find Raxxla
Hello Commanders, I'm sharing this with you in the case you missed it: http://www.drewwagar.com/progress-report/raxxla-the-definitive-guide/ From the wording chosen by Drew I'd bet that he doesn't know the location, only DB. Then I have an idea, if you remove all filters from the map, you can...forums.frontier.co.uk
*In the sense of ‘magical’ Artificial Gravity. AG through an accelerating frame of reference is fine.
Anti-gravity and Artificial Gravity often get conflated, but they’re two different things. The latter is definitely a ‘no’ for the ED universe. The former I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors were told to stay away from it as well though.
I would have thought Sentient AI would also have been made off limits, but I don’t think I’ve seen it specifically mentioned.
I suspect the Thargs was more under strict FD control as opposed to being absolutely off-limits.
Maybe Drew can clarify at some point, but I think the above is fairly accurate. (Or accurate enough for the purposes of this thread anyway.)
Mmm, I thought time travel was in there, but Scytale called me out & said it was anti-gravity.
Just for you guys to perform a short excersise regarding "secret bases/stations" then we can imagine what we would be actually looking for or maybe some better ways to tackle the problem:
1. Choose an engineer you have no knowledge yet nor have received any invitation;
2. Go pay such engineer a visit;
3. Even using advanced surface scanner you won't be able to locate its base;
4. Unless you know in advance its location and fly there;
5. Believe me, you won't be treated with a welcome hail.
So, does come to mind any other secretive base/station we'd need an invitation to get to its location?
Maybe we need to rethink our approach on the subject...
1. Choose an engineer you have no knowledge yet nor have received any invitation;
2. Go pay such engineer a visit;
3. Even using advanced surface scanner you won't be able to locate its base;
4. Unless you know in advance its location and fly there;
5. Believe me, you won't be treated with a welcome hail.
So, does come to mind any other secretive base/station we'd need an invitation to get to its location?
Maybe we need to rethink our approach on the subject...
I think there’s a combo of hearing things 3rd and 4th hand, people getting the wrong end of the stick, and various language barriers that go on.Mmm, I thought time travel was in there, but Scytale called me out & said it was anti-gravity.
The mix up of the two AG’s is a classic example. One is definitely out and I’m pretty sure DB has said it explicitly. That IIRC correctly was said as a general rule/principle for the ED universe, and not just as a 'it's there but you can't write about it' restriction for the authors.
The other one, well, I’m not personally sure they’ve actually explicitly said that one is out in the same way.
It could certainly be argued that SC and wormholes involve a spacetime curvature that’s opposite to that which we experience as gravity, and is therefore anti-gravity.
On the other hand, humanity (at least publicly) in ED doesn’t have what anti-gravity tech classically is in sci-fi; something that provides a propellant-less thrust in the opposite direction to gravity (in a gravitational field).
It's very likely they told the authors to stay away from that type of anti-gravity, even if it's not a hard restriction on the ED universe, because it just opens up a huge can of worms for them if one of the authors were to feature it in their books when it doesn't feature otherwise in the ED universe.
Same principle for Time Travel - it's a huge can of worms. So even if it's not an absolute hard restriction on the ED universe, it would almost certainly nevertheless be a no-go topic.
Having said all that, I'm sure there must be a definitive version of the no-go topics somewhere.
![[PS4] Filthymick420](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/201/201444.jpg?1555738739){kind=avatar}
Ya last week I was playing around with trying to identify a station in orbit using just the old mark 1 eyeballs.... very tricky. Assuming nothing comes up on scanners finding these things without clues could be very tricky. Maybe geostationary orbits or polar orbits... could be found by giving coordinates.... but ya coming up with a search pattern would be beneficial.
It would be funny if the real Dark Wheel turned out to be just another engineer..
They're always a shiny blue speck that, unlike the stars in the sky box, will move based on your relative position to them.
They had internal lore guides (written prior to launch, so changes occurred by the time the game arrived also) that summarized the do's and don'ts and forbidden topics as well. All under NDA of course so even now I think official authors have to be careful what they say and how they say it. But apparently the game content/story has moved away from those internal guides in recent years per Drew (IIRC) so the original guides are likely outdated. End result there are some things referenced in the books that aren't in game (i.e. misjumps, dark systems) and vice versa, plus things that are referenced differently (i.e. Soontill).
Last edited:
Good old parallax. I miss those days.
Mmm, the way the Thargoids harvest at barnacles sucking everything up, including rocks and SRVs etc, looks a lot like anti-gravity to me!
Or perhaps it’s a tractor beam? What’s the difference between tractor beam and anti-gravity?? I must have fallen asleep during that lecture in my Physics course!
Maybe they create a vacuum to suck it up out of the, err, already existing vacuum. Or electromagnetic attraction. Or handwavium.Mmm, the way the Thargoids harvest at barnacles sucking everything up, including rocks and SRVs etc, looks a lot like anti-gravity to me!
Or perhaps it’s a tractor beam? What’s the difference between tractor beam and anti-gravity?? I must have fallen asleep during that lecture in my Physics course!
Midichlorians..... maybe the Thargoids are Jedi
One moves the ship. The other's the ship moving other things.Mmm, the way the Thargoids harvest at barnacles sucking everything up, including rocks and SRVs etc, looks a lot like anti-gravity to me!
Or perhaps it’s a tractor beam? What’s the difference between tractor beam and anti-gravity?? I must have fallen asleep during that lecture in my Physics course!
The Thargoid ship's movement itself is one of those things that does look very anti-gravity in style. Is it the same tech that then also does the tractor beam effect? Quite possibly. (Equally, it might not be!
)Anyway, found the DB thing on artificial gravity:
"the only artificial gravity will be that created by centripetal force from rotation of (for example) a large space station."
Source: Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_braben_cocreator_of_elite_creator_of/c7qds39/
Maybe we should be looking for Raxxla here then. Equally (more?) problematic canonical lore issues though