The Guardian logs, and what they tell us about the Thargoids.

[Rainbro]

The topic of the Guardian-Thargoid war came up again in a Discord server I'm in, and as I was preparing to dive into this topic for the 838th time, I thought it'd be better to do it here and just refer back to this. It's kind of an interesting topic, given the somewhat tense relationship we currently have with the Thargoids. Kind of important too, as while we can draw a lot of possible conclusions from our observations of the Thargoids actions, we can't directly ask them what's up. But the Guardians met them, and even managed to talk to them! That's probably really useful information!

Would be more useful if the Guardians bothered to write down what they said, but fine, I guess that'd be too easy. Time to analyse every single line of information we have and see if I can reach a coherent conclusion by the end of this post.

I'm going to ignore the possibility that anyone is outright lying in this, there's little evidence of that. At worst some characters might just put a spin on bits of info or else none of this information matters and we may as well assume the Guardian King asked the Thargoid Queen out on a date and got rejected, causing him to make up the whole war in the logs out of spite. Speaking of, here's the relevant information from the logs (full text here):

Log 1: "The Thargoids seeded a number of planets with barnacles in what eventually became Guardian space, millions of years ago[...]seeding a planet with barnacles is an important process in preparing an area for occupation."

Analysis: Thargoid territory is where the barnacles are. This is backed up by several other bits of info I'll get onto, but we've already hit a snag - did it "become Guardian space" because the developing Guardian homeworld was within this region, or did the Guardians deliberately expand into barnacle-land like we did? It may not matter to the Thargoids, but it'll come up later.

Log 2: Several thousand years after they seeded planets in Guardian space with barnacles, the Thargoids returned. Of course, they discovered that the planets they had seeded were now occupied by the Guardians! The Thargoids immediately launched an assault, making no effort to communicate with the Guardians, which tallies with the Thargoids’ behaviour in human space.

Analysis: The last line of this is another snag. Our own experience of the Thargoid's return began with the Thargoids outright refusing to open fire, regardless of what we did, for months. Two Federal military convoys (occupying the Pleiades) apparently managed to get into a fight with Thargoids and ended up destroyed, but all other ships were ignored until humanity declared war on the Thargoids months after their return. We know a lot more about the circumstances of our own conflict, but either Ram Tah has a funny idea about what "immediately" means, or this account doesn't actually tally with our own experience.

It's also worth noting that Ram Tah refers to the Thargoids attacking "human space". As of the time of these logs, the Thargoids had just about begun attacking bubble systems, but that was still several months after war was declared and over a year since the Thargoids returned. The bulk of conflict had been in the Pleiades, where the barnacles are. Again, either he doesn't know what "immediately" means, or he holds some sort of view that means that the Thargoids don't get to claim territory if another race wants it instead. This could influence the interpretation of "Guardian space" in Log 1.

Log 3 (the big one): "At some point after the war with the Thargoids began, the Guardians were forced to make a partial retreat. It seems they were still trying to communicate with the Thargoids, and were reluctant to take up arms against them. Eventually they managed to develop sufficient understanding of the Thargoids’ language to communicate, but it did the Guardians little good. The Thargoids were determined to continue hostilities"

Analysis: Tell me what was said, Frontier, you cowards. Okay, we know they talked, and that this didn't end the war. I don't think this is the smoking gun it is sometimes made out to be - conflicts can still happen if communication is possible. Exhibit A: humans.

It is entirely possible that the Thargoids were "determined to continue hostilities" because their motive for the war - their territory being occupied - was not solved by the communication. There are many other possibilities, including that the Thargoids just hate everyone, but I feel that territory is the most likely because of the one other detail we get in this log - the Guardian retreat was partial. We still don't know exactly where they retreated from, or to, but that is a surprisingly conveniently placed detail given these logs are allergic to details. If the Guardians refused to fully leave Thargoid territory, this could explain why the communication didn't end the war.

Log 4: this one just gives details about how the Guardians fought the Thargoids, not super relevant. And finally:

Log 5: "It appears the Thargoids entered Guardian space unprepared for a protracted military campaign, and after facing a relentless onslaught from the Guardians’ war machines they were forced to retreat."

Analysis: You could maybe draw some conclusions from this, maybe their conflict did not involve Titans and was limited to our own pre-Proteus experience. Maybe that says something about the Thargoids motives and/or attitudes if they didn't even show up prepared for a proper fight. But it's vague, mainly I'm just noting another instance of Ram Tah referring to "Guardian space", even though at least part of that contained barnacles as we know.

And...that's all the information in the Guardian logs on the Thargoids. About ten sentences. Incredible.

A GalNet was also released shortly after the logs were discovered, containing a report from Ram Tah. This primarily rephrases the logs but additionally contains one more morsel of information:

Tah: “The Guardians attempted to communicate with the Thargoids, but these efforts ended in failure. They determined that the Thargoids’ survival instincts were so strong that they could not tolerate any potential threat, including the proximity of another space-faring civilisation.”

Analysis: I've seen a fair bit of discourse on this point, but I think this is just a really weird way of saying they're territorial and didn't like the Guardians taking their territory. Remember, by "proximity" he means "occupying barnacle worlds/Thargoid territory". If the Thargoids showed up one day and started taking all our essential crops, I think we too would not tolerate that "proximity" or the threat of starvation.

In this report, Alba Tesreau of Aegis comments on the report, which offers us a new perspective, albeit now a third-hand one.

Tesreau: "It is clear that our current situation echoes that of the Guardians. Our space, like theirs, was seeded with barnacles thousands of years ago, and now the Thargoids have arrived to reap the biomechanical harvest. We now know that the purpose of the Thargoids’ ongoing military offensive is to remove humanity from what they consider their territory. ”

Analysis: Another comparison between the Guardian conflict and our own, which as already mentioned, is a bit weird. More importantly, we have a direct reference to the idea that the Thargoid's motive is territorial...though Tesreau also doesn't seem to believe that Thargoid's can claim territory, and has very specific wording to avoid saying they can. Cool.

Tesreau: "If the Thargoids adopt the same modus operandi as with the Guardians, their next move will be to start aggressively mining mineral resources. There is no evidence this has yet begun, however.”"

Analysis: Finally, a concrete detail on the Thargoids approach to war, and...an explicit mention that this isn't happening. What. There are numerous interpretations of this. As a discrepancy, it could indicate that the Thargoids have changed over the millions of years, or that this is a different group of Thargoids, or just that the circumstances of the Guardian conflict were actually different to our own, regardless of Tah and Tesreau's claims otherwise. The only thing we've seen that comes close to this is the Spires, but that would imply Titans, and that would contrast with the claim that the Thargoids were unprepared for conflict. Mostly, this part just implies that there are details we're not being shown and that upsets me.

And...that's it, for real. So in an attempt to wrap this up, here is my interpretation of what the logs actually tell us:

1) The Thargoids are territorial, and will fight to defend their territory.
The logs open by defining Thargoid territory, and that by some means, the Guardians were occupying Thargoid territory. It's stated very plainly in the GalNet that the human war at least started as an attempt to remove us from the Pleiades. This motive also matches with early Thargoid behaviour.

2) The Guardian conflict, like the human one, was to retake their territory.
I'm not just rephrasing 1), this is an attempt to justify Tah's comments comparing the two. The line about how the Thargoids "immediately" attacked the Guardians, and how this mirrors our own experience, has frequently been used to suggest that the Thargoids just love war and will attack anything they see as their only universal response. But, as our own experience actually suggests, that isn't true - the references to "human space" and "Guardian space" actually refer to Thargoid territory in most instances, and Tah's comments on the timeframe is contradictory at face value. So I am led to believe that Tah's comment was vastly oversimplifying events. Tesreau's similar comment is more direct in referencing territory as the cause, and it does seem to be an actual common thread between the two conflicts.

3) The Guardians were able to communicate with the Thargoids, but...
Like I say, this isn't an "achieve galactic peace" button. Wars will continue even with communication so long as one or both sides still think they need to fight. Which brings me onto the final point:

4) The Thargoids will not negotiate over their territory.
The one key detail we get is that the Guardian retreat was partial. This is, literally, the only information we have on what the Guardians were doing at the time of talking to the Thargoids. Paired with the emphasis on the territorial aspect of the Thargoids, I think this is the intended takeaway of the logs. The mention of the communication itself is almost incidental, being given much less focus throughout the logs and a complete absence of detail about what was even said.

I think the logs were supposed to highlight that, yeah, maybe invading alien territory might be the cause of the alien attacks? But this was almost too obvious of an answer, it's extremely similar to how we would act in their place. We would not accept a partial retreat, even if the occupiers DM'd us after a bit to say "hey, can you stop shooting us? We just wanted your stuff, and look, we've given some of it back!". So over the years, discussion on this topic became fixated on the communication, and how it didn't end the war, because that's way more interesting. But it didn't end the war because why would the Thargoids just surrender even part of their territory?

As for what this practically means for our conflict - Tah claimed that understanding the Thargoid's motives would make a huge difference to the conflict. But evidently, nobody in power was willing to try the logical next step of "don't invade Thargoid territory". Hudson and Patreus, both famed diplomats, took the view that the logs just meant that the Thargoids could not be reasoned with - presumably agreeing with Tah and Tesreau that anything humans want is "human space", and it would be very unreasonable for any race to dispute that just because they've been there for a few thousand years longer. Aegis was criticised for not being transparent about how they would practically respond to these revelations on the reasons for the war. It turned out the response was to ignore it. The powers continued to invade Thargoid territory for the meta-alloys even after being explicitly told that it was the cause of the war.

TLDR: The logs have a severe lack of detail and the communication probably wasn't even all that important. Main takeaway is that the Thargoids don't like us taking their stuff, and they won't let us have it even if we ask nicely. This information would have best been acted on six years, two invasions, and one genocide attempt ago, but it'd still be cool to try leaving Thargoid territory, if only because the powers seem really really convinced that it's pointless and that we may as well just keep taking the profitable space oil. I am somewhat convinced this will never be an option because it would just end the war. Let me know if you disagree

 

[Louis Calvert]

That's a great post. Thanks for taking the time to do that

 

[Louis Calvert]

One thing that's always made me highly suspicious of the veracity of Ram Tah's logs relates to this idea:

Log 1: "The Thargoids seeded a number of planets with barnacles in what eventually became Guardian space, millions of years ago[...]seeding a planet with barnacles is an important process in preparing an area for occupation."

Tesreau: "It is clear that our current situation echoes that of the Guardians. Our space, like theirs, was seeded with barnacles thousands of years ago, and now the Thargoids have arrived to reap the biomechanical harvest. We now know that the purpose of the Thargoids’ ongoing military offensive is to remove humanity from what they consider their territory. ”

Does this mean that in the First Thargoid War in 3125-ish, the Thargoids were attacking human space because they had seeded barnacles in what became the bubble as humans expanded? FSD rapidly expanded the bubble, but even at the start of 3300 we were still pretty far from colonising the Pleiades, and that's 175 years after the first war.

All other sources seem to support the opposite - that humans didn't know about the Barnacles until long after the first war, and even then they weren't widely known until we (re)discovered them recently?

But... the only barnacles that have been found (AFAIK) are in Nebulae. I believe there was even some lore/Fdev comments about why that is. And there's no Nebula in the bubble, so I'm not sure how that all fits together with the idea of Thargoids having 'seeded our space with Barnacles'?

This comment in Glanet seems designed to plug that hole:

Tah: “...the Thargoids’ survival instincts were so strong that they could not tolerate any potential threat, including the proximity of another space-faring civilisation.”

But, there are accounts of humanity encountering Thargoids as much as 250+ years before the start of the first war. The Elite Encounters RPG contains some more lore on these early encounters (which is considered a canon source of lore):

Beginning in the 2810s and continuing into the 2840s, GalCop documents a significant number of ship disappearances within its space and near the Pleiades Nebula. Investigations find no evidence of foul-play, but the disappearances and other strange phenomena continue intermittently, stoking anxiety among pilots. These incidents are later believed to have been early encounters with Thargoids.

In 2849, the first grainy footage surfaces of one of these "encounters", with one blurry image appearing to show an alien ship with the word "THARG" on its hull. The media immediately coins the term "Thargoid" as a name for the aliens. However, no conclusive proof of the Thargoids' existence is obtained, and they fade into folklore.

It's not hard to imagine that maybe Thargoids weren't too bothered about Humans, occasionally swatted an explorer poking around the Pleiades, maybe responded occasionally to humans shooting at them, but otherwise left us alone - until some humans were detected reactivating Guardian devices in an old Guardian-Thargoid battle ground.

The Proteus in 3113 might well have alarmed the Thargoids when the crew of that ship found and activated Guardian technology, causing a (possibly detectable) energy pulse. It's not long from 3113 to the first confirmed Thargoid hyperdictions near human space reported in the 3120s, leading to the official start of the war in 3125.

The rumours of Thargoids sending what might have been an emissary to Epsilon Indi (Veliaze), which was destroyed by humans, also preceded the first war too. If accurate, this suggests that the Thargoids were the ones to attempt to communicate in some way.

Galnet: "...rumours surfaced that the interdictions might be a response to an earlier human attack. Leaked Federal intelligence indicated that colonists in the Veliaze system had encountered and assaulted an extraterrestrial deputation shortly before the Thargoid interdictions began. Suggestions that the Thargoid attacks were a reaction to this attack carried more than a hint of plausibility."

Also, given that we now know they clearly have the capability of launching Titans into human space at any time - and yet they didn't until after Humanity used the Proteus Wave to attempt total species genocide, that again seems to run contrary to Aegis/Ram Tah's explanation of an extremely aggressively hostile alien that was pre-emptively wiping out anyone even near their territory.

In fact, they seemed to withdraw almost entirely from all detectable regions after the Mycoid attack 150 years ago until humans started to aggressively colonise the Pleiades and move in full-scale Barnacle-mining operations recently. Even then their actions were extremely reserved and limited, it took them years to actually strike the bubble, and that always felt like they were essentially doing the equivalent of extremely reserved deterrent strikes, or attempting to recover stolen technology/resources.

The lore in the official novels (which are canon, despite what some say), and the deeper lore paints the Thargoids as much more nuanced than "Bug monster attack all that's not bug-monster".

Humans arming up with Guardian tech with the specific intention of using it to attack Thargoids seems to have provoked an increasingly aggressive reaction from the Thargoids - but it's just that, a reaction.

All this makes me feel very much like the Thargoids are actually less warlike and aggressive than Humans, and it seems like everything that's happened has been in reaction to humans farming Barnacles and/or using Guardian weapons technology in/near Thargoid territory. I wonder if that's basically what happened with the Guardians too.

 

[Rainbro]

One thing that's always made me highly suspicious of the veracity of Ram Tah's logs relates to this idea:


Does this mean that in the First Thargoid War in 3125-ish, the Thargoids were attacking human space because they had seeded barnacles in what became the bubble as humans expanded? FSD rapidly expanded the bubble, but even at the start of 3300 we were still pretty far from colonising the Pleiades, and that's 175 years after the first war.

All other sources seem to support the opposite - that humans didn't know about the Barnacles until long after the first war, and even then they weren't widely known until we (re)discovered them recently?

But... the only barnacles that have been found (AFAIK) are in Nebulae. I believe there was even some lore/Fdev comments about why that is. And there's no Nebula in the bubble, so I'm not sure how that all fits together with the idea of Thargoids having 'seeded our space with Barnacles'?

This comment in Glanet seems designed to plug that hole:

But, there are accounts of humanity encountering Thargoids as much as 250+ years before the start of the first war. The Elite Encounters RPG contains some more lore on these early encounters (which is considered a canon source of lore):



It's not hard to imagine that maybe Thargoids weren't too bothered about Humans, occasionally swatted an explorer poking around the Pleiades, maybe responded occasionally to humans shooting at them, but otherwise left us alone - until some humans were detected reactivating Guardian devices in an old Guardian-Thargoid battle ground.

The Proteus in 3113 might well have alarmed the Thargoids when the crew of that ship found and activated Guardian technology, causing a (possibly detectable) energy pulse. It's not long from 3113 to the first confirmed Thargoid hyperdictions near human space reported in the 3120s, leading to the official start of the war in 3125.

The rumours of Thargoids sending what might have been an emissary to Epsilon Indi (Veliaze), which was destroyed by humans, also preceded the first war too. If accurate, this suggests that the Thargoids were the ones to attempt to communicate in some way.



Also, given that we now know they clearly have the capability of launching Titans into human space at any time - and yet they didn't until after Humanity used the Proteus Wave to attempt total species genocide, that again seems to run contrary to Aegis/Ram Tah's explanation of an extremely aggressively hostile alien that was pre-emptively wiping out anyone even near their territory.

In fact, they seemed to withdraw almost entirely from all detectable regions after the Mycoid attack 150 years ago until humans started to aggressively colonise the Pleiades and move in full-scale Barnacle-mining operations recently. Even then their actions were extremely reserved and limited, it took them years to actually strike the bubble, and that always felt like they were essentially doing the equivalent of extremely reserved deterrent strikes, or attempting to recover stolen technology/resources.

The lore in the official novels (which are canon, despite what some say), and the deeper lore paints the Thargoids as much more nuanced than "Bug monster attack all that's not bug-monster".

Humans arming up with Guardian tech with the specific intention of using it to attack Thargoids seems to have provoked an increasingly aggressive reaction from the Thargoids - but it's just that, a reaction.

All this makes me feel very much like the Thargoids are actually less warlike and aggressive than Humans, and it seems like everything that's happened has been in reaction to humans farming Barnacles and/or using Guardian weapons technology in/near Thargoid territory. I wonder if that's basically what happened with the Guardians too.

I do not think these logs or the current conflict have much significant for the First Thargoid War - this war is over territory, but that doesn't mean the last one necessarily was. As you point out, it was likely the result of events in Veliaze. How exactly these events went down in ED canon is unclear, I'd be surprised if it involved direct communication like in FFE. But broadly, it probably follows the same themes - humans poking around on ammonia worlds, Thargoids show up to see what's going on, humans attack Thargoids, it all escalates from there. The bubble is not considered Thargoid territory.

Otherwise, yeah I agree with you.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

There's also the Sarasvati logs - https://canonn.science/codex/gcs-sarasvati/ - specifically

It was literally under our noses the entire time, the Thargoids didn’t leave. Not all of them, at least. If we had more time we might’ve been able to run a more detailed analysis but the data we have right now already paints a pretty grim picture as is: the Thargoids are sowing the seeds for their return. We couldn’t detect them before because the traces were so miniscule, but it’s clear that these new self-repairing alloys that are starting to pop up in labs everywhere share an alarming amount of physical characteristics with Thargoid bio-alloys pulled from their ships during the war.

This was 3172 - so was the first war an attempt by the Thargoids to extend their territory into the region of the bubble? Or did they leave the barnacles in the Pleiades, Witch Head, California, as a response to the first war? (From the Adamastor, we know they'd already established a presence at Coalsack before the first war started)

The only thing we've seen that comes close to this is the Spires, but that would imply Titans, and that would contrast with the claim that the Thargoids were unprepared for conflict

Maybe. We don't know for certain that a Titan is primarily designed as a war platform - they could be a more general industrial processing unit (analogous to a Dredger, perhaps, if considerably larger and more sophisticated?) that has enough shipyard functionality to be an effective forward base as well. They seem relatively under-protected for their size, unlike the "Thargoid motherships" mentioned in some first war logs don't seem to carry out a directly offensive role, and primarily rely on their fleets for both defense and operations.

It's also possible that the normal (i.e. non-wartime) Thargoid approach would proceed in a different order:
- establish barnacles to start extracting raw materials and carrying out basic refining to meta-alloys
- establish spires to start more sophisticated refining processes
- then send in a Titan to start making use of those materials once enough of a stockpile is built up.

 

[Kira Goto]

They seem relatively under-protected for their size, unlike the "Thargoid motherships" mentioned in some first war logs don't seem to carry out a directly offensive role, and primarily rely on their fleets for both defense and operations.

Yeah, at best, they resemble more of an aircraft carrier(the space equivalent thereof, that is). And their turrets might discourage a lightly armed/armored ship from poking around if discovered, but having made the experience of getting shot at by them myself... they're not particularly dangerous on their own, to a properly prepared ship(as a military would send in), and even a Glaive seems to do more damage than those things do.

Let me know if you disagree

I'm going to both agree and disagree... would it be a good idea to not stick around the nebula colonies the Thargoids have set up?

Yes. But at this point, I'm not entirely sure if leaving them would actually end the war immediately. And they've been oddly uninterested in shoving us out of there* while most defending forces would've been busy in the Bubble. So I'm not exactly convinced this assault is actually all about humanity even if we love to make it out as if we're always the center of attention of the universe. Spoiler alert, humans - we're not and I feel like the Thargoids still don't consider us as all that important. Although more so after the Proteus Wave, which probably - and understandably - upset them a little.

Yet I still don't get the impression they're at the point of "Let's just swat these annoying human flies away once and forever", or that there is a need for such an extreme urgency to start throwing torpedoes at the Titans without maybe trying to figure out what their real motives are. It isn't like they are on an active march through the Bubble to attempt total human extermination while leaving systems with totally destroyed and irrecoverable infrastructure behind. They've even been nice enough to leave it intact enough to repair after/if a human system is retaken.

*Ignoring Witch Head but even that was select systems and not all of them outright. Frontier also just... seemingly dropped whatever was going on over there, turned all systems except Shenve abandoned, and called it a day.

**California Nebula in the war seemed to obey those rules of "Mess with meta-alloys [Delaine plundering local barnacles to exhaustion within a day(what an idiot)] and the Thargoids get really upset". I sure don't see any evidence for the supposed ongoing Thargoid threat around there until he gave them a reason to be angry about local human presence(again, if you are to believe the pre-Titan arrival setup?).

 

[Kayvan]

Yeah, I concur with most of what has been said. Thargoids in general are somewhat territorial, enough to hyperdict you, but not aggressive enough to attack you even if they detect that you have taken some of their stuff. Most of them only defend themselves when attacked first. Not counting scouts of course, which are probably more like "trained attack dogs" patrolling a property, and not sapient beings.

I find it likely that there are separate Thargoid factions - kinda like Fed, Imp and Alli, except they don't seem to be infighting. So maybe the ones waging war on us now are one faction, and the ones inhabiting the Pleiades etc are a different faction. (The one weird thing about this is that 22460 is very close to the Pleiades, so that might mean there is a faction border right between those systems)

Anyway, yes... if they withdraw their Titans, I would be in favour of leaving them alone. It's not like we're going to run out of Galaxy in any other direction, after all.