Thargoids hu

Cmnd Fulsom

C
It's no secret that the world of Elite takes a very pessimistic view of the future, to the point that I honestly sometimes have a very hard time following the logic. But the point came up recently that humans are essentially the galactic bad guys. So let me pose a question, do you think there are any black thargoids? Are we going to see any evidence of divergent evolution among the 'goids at all? It seems unlikely, and it would be pretty out of genre.

Time and again, all through sifi, we see humanity as the only space fareing species that's managed to create a galactic civilization which exists in relative peace without needing to first cleanse our species of all genetic variation.

Food for thought.



Stay Frosty,



Cmnd Fulsom
 
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IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
They're semi-mythological bugs. I've never seen one. I have seen some strange manner of organic "facility" on some remote planets, and some strange flying things called "Scavengers" that don't look like anything I've ever seen, but that's it.
 

Smecca is BMFE

Smecca is BMFE
OP, ever wondered how animals such as penguins, who look absolutely identical to us as a species, can recognize their mates after extremely long separation? Yea thargoids might be like that

Others reading this, don't get hung up on the "black thargoid" thing. Not everything is racist, no matter how Anita Sarkeesian you think you are
 

Cmnd Fulsom

C
Miepit said:
What do you mean by that?
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I mean that despite being an ancient space fareing race there will probably be no racial distinction between thargoids.

Gully_Foyle said:
Doesn't the lore describe two types of thargoids one was hostile and one was friendly?
(Throws Skittles at Aunty)
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That could be meant as there are two distinct races of 'goid, but if that's the case, one is currently in the midst of trying to wipe out the other. So, yeah.

Smecca is BMFE said:
OP, ever wondered how animals such as penguins, who look absolutely identical to us as a species, can recognize their mates after extremely long separation? Yea thargoids might be like that

Others reading this, don't get hung up on the "black thargoid" thing. Not everything is racist, no matter how Anita Sarkeesian you think you are
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I have no doubt that thargoids can tell individuals of the species apart from one another. But, for instance, emperor penguins all look the same to us because they all live in a single geographically isolated area and thus have little genetic variation. There are no emperor penguin races, because emperor penguins are all adapted to a very specific environment.



Stay Frosty,



Cmnd Fulsom
 

Archduke

A
Gully_Foyle said:
Doesn't the lore describe two types of thargoids one was hostile and one was friendly?
(Throws Skittles at Aunty)
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When concerning alien contact where there are no cultural references nor commonalities, terms such as "friendly" are rather inappropriate.

There were supposedly some conflict between Thargoids, one side of which essentially allowed mankind to be used to combat the other side.
Whether the entire species or even sides of the conflict can be considered to encompass the capacities of individsuality of Tharogids is again, highly speculative.

As to the "colour" of the aliens, I suspect that with their presumably ammonia-based physiology, any equivalent (if need arise) for melanin and/or haemoglobin which are arguably the largest contributors to optical wavelength reflection in humans - m,ay result in widely disparate hues.
A less literal, more philosophical consideration as to whether there exists equivalent of genetic variety whilst not so great as to warrant different species, would seem extremely likely assuming an evolution resulting in optimisation for adaptive survivability. It should be tempered however, with the view that given the Thargoids are highly trechnologically advanced and, assuming they are responsible for the engineering of "Barnacles", could very possibly have a eugenics program and have over centuries or even millennia perfected their "genetics"*



*By which I refer to the equivalent self-replicating molecules that presumably underpin the encoding and geneality - as performed by DNA in all the singular Tree Of Life forms on Earth.

It should be noted that concepts of eugenics and the use of the word "perfected" above do not in any way signify an ideology nor personal advocacy, but instead was written from a potential perspective of Thargoids should they themselves have determined such as being beneficial.
 

CMDR Yates

C
Interesting point. It's worth noting that sci-fi always tends to feature intelligent alien species that have one monolithic culture and ethnicity. It's also the same thing with "desert planets", "forest planets", etc., where the whole world is a single biome, when in reality our own world is vastly diverse in topography, and even our barren, lifeless neighbour planets have different landscapes with planes and mountain ranges and polar regions and so forth.
 

metascrawl

metascrawl
CMDR Yates said:
Interesting point. It's worth noting that sci-fi always tends to feature intelligent alien species that have one monolithic culture and ethnicity. It's also the same thing with "desert planets", "forest planets", etc., where the whole world is a single biome, when in reality our own world is vastly diverse in topography, and even our barren, lifeless neighbour planets have different landscapes with planes and mountain ranges and polar regions and so forth.
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I think it may have been Jason Mantzoukas on the How Did This Get Made? podcast who said: "If we've learned anything from Star Wars, it's 'one planet = one type of terrain.'"
 
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Hadarmil

Hadarmil
Well, if you have constant free movement of people from one side of the bubble to the other unique genetic traits will dwindle over time. Thargoids are apparently ancient, so they might have lost the special traits unique to specific demographics. Maybe they evolve more slowly than water based life as they get less radiation in their home planet so there was a lot less diversity to begin with.

Or maybe to us they all look the same. :D
 

Straker

Straker
I guess we need to decide whether we want fiction to portray some connection with reality or not. This is the main reason why I can't watch many 'Hollywood' movies as I tend to like my fiction with more of a connection to reality, to the degree with which we define our moral judgements of character motivations and actions. The historical definition of cowboys and Indians along with hero and villain hasn't helped at all because reality does not neatly separate itself into the extreme categories of good vs evil. It's more about the immensely varied soup of biology, society, culture and history that defines our actions and attempting to pigeon hole them into the artificial terms of 'good guys' and 'bad guys' is just childish and pathetic.

My hope is that the narratives of Elite Dangerous help us to see that terms such as Good and Evil are obsolete in effectively defining the actions of all species within the galaxy.

I call it a 'trap of consciousness' how, with almost obsessive addiction, we attempt to distil reality and all its variety into simple meaningless words such as good/bad, simple/complex etc.
 

Cmnd Fulsom

C
Hadarmil said:
Well, if you have constant free movement of people from one side of the bubble to the other unique genetic traits will dwindle over time. Thargoids are apparently ancient, so they might have lost the special traits unique to specific demographics.
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Maybe, but realistically, how many individuals in a space fairing species actually travel through space, how many actually put down roots permanently across the bubble. The reality is, unless you're specifically and actively seeding a planet the majority of your population on any given planet in any given biome never leave simply because that's where their resources are.



Stay Frosty,



Cmnd Fulsom
 

Skyjack

S
there are no black or otherwise colour-coded thargoids. except maybe you could make a case for referring to the unexalted variety as yellow.
 
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Hadarmil

Hadarmil
Cmnd Fulsom said:
Maybe, but realistically, how many individuals in a space fairing species actually travel through space, how many actually put down roots permanently across the bubble. The reality is, unless you're specifically and actively seeding a planet the majority of your population on any given planet in any given biome never leave simply because that's where their resources are.



Stay Frosty,



Cmnd Fulsom
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It's a lot of factors. Already you can see it with family names - there are less and less as the more common ones become more common and the special ones dissapear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p-Jdjo7sSQ&t=242s - a cute video talking about it.

The same holds true for genetic traits. If the rate of interchange and loss of unique traits exceeds the rate in which new traits are formed populations eventually become more homogeneous. Once we know more about the thrgoids we'll be able to know if they all look alike and if so due to logical reasons or just sci fi tropes.
 

Dsign

Dsign
Cmnd Fulsom said:
... So let me pose a question, do you think there are any black thargoids? ...
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You got me there m8.
tenor.gif
 

John Stoutbeard

John Stoutbeard
Cmnd Fulsom said:
So let me pose a question, do you think there are any black thargoids? Are we going to see any evidence of divergent evolution among the 'goids at all?



Cmnd Fulsom
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It depends what you mean by that really.
There are two distinct groups of Thargoids.
- Oresrians
- Klaxians

And they have evolved differently.
There was also another race mentioned in “The Dark Wheel”, known as the Oresrians. These were portrayed as a peaceful offset of the Thargoids, but very similar in overall appearance, albeit with a warning to Commanders to “Check the thorax markings and the shape of the fourth joint on each hind leg before jumping to conclusions.”
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Zenith

Zenith
Gully_Foyle said:
Doesn't the lore describe two types of thargoids one was hostile and one was friendly?
(Throws Skittles at Aunty)
Click to expand...

Panzertard said:
It depends what you mean by that really.
There are two distinct groups of Thargoids.
- Oresrians
- Klaxians

And they have evolved differently.
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The Oresrians are the ones on the run from the Klaxians. For more details, read "Out Of The Darkness" by T.James, and "Elite: Premonition" by Drew Wagar.
 

Vasious

Vasious
Besides the two Dynasties of Thargoids, do not we already see Regional variations of the Guardians mentioned
 
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