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Were the Talocan really human?

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#1 - 2017-01-16 23:17:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Teinyhr
I mean, if the Talocan could build pocket universes as implied by the "Inheritance" -chronicle, and they were ancient humans, why did the humans need a wormhole to travel to New Eden in the first place - couldn't they just build as many fake universes as they wanted?

Or, how would the Talocan, being cut off from the advanced technology of the ancient humans, be able to do something literally no one else managed to do in New Eden, and not only not regress technologically but advanced, clearly by leaps and bounds to mold the very fabric of reality itself?

Or does this mean that New Eden is in fact just one of the pocket universes cut off from its original source - and simply forgot all of its history?
#2 - 2017-01-17 15:38:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Elmund Egivand
Teinyhr wrote:
I mean, if the Talocan could build pocket universes as implied by the "Inheritance" -chronicle, and they were ancient humans, why did the humans need a wormhole to travel to New Eden in the first place - couldn't they just build as many fake universes as they wanted?

Or, how would the Talocan, being cut off from the advanced technology of the ancient humans, be able to do something literally no one else managed to do in New Eden, and not only not regress technologically but advanced, clearly by leaps and bounds to mold the very fabric of reality itself?

Or does this mean that New Eden is in fact just one of the pocket universes cut off from its original source - and simply forgot all of its history?


Because the Talocan were a different civilisation which had existed and presumably perished in isolation of other civilisations, so the other humans did not get their technology and only have scraps to work with. Scraps with fragments of theories they could barely comprehend, if even that. Just because everyone is the same species doesn't mean they will have the same perks. For example, while the Europeans were starting to shoot each other to death with static machine gun emplacements, the Africans were still using spears. Both humans, yet both having wildly differing technology advancements, at the same time period.

Who knows what the heck were the Talocan up to these days, or if their civilisation had persisted or had imploded.

New Eden is not a pocket universe.

A Minmatar warship is like a rusting Beetle with 500 horsepower Cardillac engines in the rear, armour plating bolted to chassis and a M2 Browning stuck on top.

Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2017-01-17 21:32:00 UTC
Have I been reading Inheritance wrong? I didn't get the impression that the Talocan made pocket universes. They connected systems that otherwise would not have connected naturally via wormholes. The systems did (and do) actually exist, they were not made by the Talocan. Just connected by them.

The specific paragraphs that mention this:

Quote:
“I would assert it. Here we come to that fact that shook the Third Jove Empire to its core. This is a fact that took many decades of exploration and investigation to establish. A fact that was not readily accepted by all but a fact, like all facts, that in the end we had to face. Anoikis is artificial.”

Raish involuntarily gasped. “Artificial? You mean to say that…”

“I mean to say that the stellar engineering swarm in orbit around W477-P is the least of the achievements of the Talocan civilization. I strongly suspect it is not the only such engine in existence for one. For another, it is itself only a component in the grand design that the Talocan made real. Think of it. They built a stable network of wormhole connections among star systems that would not ordinarily or readily support such connections with each other. They altered the very fabric of space-time in the network’s systems. They altered resonance points and so arranged matters so as to be able to move between the systems of the Anoikis network with the ease that you and I might move between rooms in a house.


In the same vein, I don't believe there's any evidence that New Eden is a pocket universe, just another part of the universe linked by a wormhole to the Milky Way.
#4 - 2017-01-18 00:04:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Teinyhr
Well I read the exact same bit and understood it quite literally, that Anoikis itself is artificial, which is something I would believe even the Jove would find utterly unbelievable and be extremely doubtful of (thus the decades of investigation) - and since if they made Anoikis, they could also simply "just" alter the "fabric of space time" as they wished to create easy passage between Anoikis' own systems. Veniel earlier in the story says constructing a similar stellar lattice might have been possible for the first empire, but in the bit you quote pretty much considers literal stellar engineering on the scale of what the Talocan appeared able to do would have been outside of their reach even in their empires prime.

Also the text itself seems to refer Anoikis in a roundabout way to me - like it is physically a separate entity from what even the Jove knew. "Uncontrolled breaches into Ainoikis" - that it was intended to be entered from single points - one of them W477-P, a point which also gathered immense amounts of energy and was also transmitting the energy to somewhere ("This was still a stellar-level power collection, conversion and quantum transmission network") in my mind feeds in to the theory that Anoikis itself is literally artificial, and that the Talocan who understood it better could browse it like home screens on a smartphone.

"Our worst fears had barely materialized so far as this cluster is concerned. The story was rather different in Anoikis." The story then leaves it open, that when the stellar lattice/engine collapsed under the supernova as predicted, it had dire consequences in Anoikis - certainly one would assume so, it being something like in a car battery a cell dying - it will not kill the whole battery and the car may still start, but it will struggle. And perhaps losing the W477-P "cell" caused something irreversible in Anoikis - something of which that caused the Sleepers to "wake up", make artificial intelligences start a war in an effort to look for refuge in New Eden as their artificial space is slowly but surely collapsing.




And somehow I managed to repeatedly miss that the story does hammer down that yeah, Talocan were really human, no aliens. In which case it is still extremely interesting how they were apparently, to paraphrase Elmund up there, so advanced that the super advanced humans of the past were those spear throwers while Talocans boasted AI-controlled laser sentry guns.
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2017-01-18 10:53:43 UTC
First, well, I won't say that the story can't be read the way you put it, but, personally, I think you're reading things into it that aren't there, based on what else we know, and what else is said/implied in the chronicle. And, also, based what makes sense in general writing/storytelling terms. Finally, whether one or the other is the truth ends up being kind of irrelevant for the effect of it.

Taken on its own, "Anoikis is artificial" does indeed imply that the entire network is artificial - made by the Talocan. However, in the context of the story, that is really not implied, in my opinion. Earlier, we have talk from Veniel about how it's easier to jump to Jove space from a certain point in a Geminate system due to the topology of spacetime. While perhaps interesting, this is really an irrelevant travelogue point if not for the fact that it sets up the scale of what the Talocan have done. The Jove, advanced as they are, are still largely subject to the nature of space. At least in some ways. The Talocan, evidently, were not. If "Anoikis is artificial" is -really- meant to make us think that the Talocan literally made a pocket universe, or arranged matter on a stellar scale so as to create thousands of systems, then that passage makes no sense from a storytelling point of view.

Regarding the point that it took decades for the Jove to establish the fact that Anoikis is artificial, as far as we're told, exploration was largely done with drones. It doesn't necessarily sound like a large-scale operation to me, though its left vague in the story. Considering that there are thousands of systems in Anoikis, too, I don't think it's unreasonable for a fairly low-key exploration to take decades.

Still, while "they made wormholes between systems that might not have had them otherwise" doesn't sound very impressive, the implications really are enormous. The Talocan could have engineered things to travel at a whim between hundreds or thousands of galaxies, making their home where they pleased. Really, they were no longer bound in the ways we, or even the Jove, are. That is pretty crazy.

Regarding the point of the Talocan capability to build these stellar engineering swarms and what that implies, again, I think you're taking a bit too much of a leap. We know that the Jove were not at all the most advanced of the groups to come through the New Eden wormhole, and they spent centuries in cryo-sleep while heading to Curse. The Talocan were not only probably more advanced, but probably didn't spend centuries asleep, either. The first Jovian empire lasted for 9000 years, too, plenty of time to, if you were more advanced than the Jove, put stellar engineering projects into place.

When it comes to uncontrolled breaches into Anoikis, that part strikes me as simple enough. Anoikis -is- physically separate. In terms of distance. The systems, too, for all we know, are too far from each other to make travel as we know it feasible between them. Yet, since they are connected with wormholes, they can still be seen as a network. A network that was intended to be entered through controlled gates. We know that the wormhole generators in the swarm were made to be activated by "human" hands, not the AI that keeps the swarm going. The randomly spawning wormholes are the uncontrolled breaches, since they are not made by any human hand, but rather due to malfunction.

Regarding the power collection, I interpreted it simply as power collection to power the wormhole generators in that, or other, swarms. Presumably these other swarms may also have had malfunctions when the Isogen-5 incident happened, and thus we continue to see wormholes spawn even though the W477-P swarm is now, presumably, useless and/or totally destroyed.

However, in the end, whether it is a collapsing pocket universe or a collapsing network of wormhole-connected systems, the conclusion is the same, as you say. The system is collapsing, and the Drifters are invading because they see the writing on the wall. Anoikis, the connected network, is going to collapse. They face either being spread among the stars (or winking out of existence if it is a pocket universe), possibly even in different galaxies, or they can make a place for themselves in the New Eden cluster.
Peruta Skorbi
#6 - 2017-01-19 20:19:07 UTC
I came to the same conclusion as Katja. Inheritance seems to imply that the Talocan had the ability to harness the power of stars in order to alter the topology of spacetime such that they were able to create wormhole networks that would otherwise have been impossible. The technology of the Jove and the Sansha, and even of the stargates of New Eden, simply take advantage of naturally-ocurring spacetime characteristics at those locations which are favorable for wormhole generation. The Talocan could apparently shape spacetime such that it becomes favorable for wormhole generation. Nothing about that sounds like a pocket universe.
#7 - 2017-01-22 09:21:12 UTC
So where they vanished? I think they found a way to create some kind od universe and went there. They left some trash behind and we think its advanced technology. Lol
#8 - 2017-01-22 18:42:05 UTC
I agree with what has been said above several times: The Talocan didn't create the solar systems that belong to Anoikis. They merely created the connections between them. They did this by arranging matter in a way that amplifies a perhaps natural tendency to form wormhole connections between certain points in the universe ("They altered resonance points and so arranged matters...").

(I like Peruta Skorbi's clear description above, it's so clear that he got kicked into Doomheim for that. Or maybe it was Dropbear who created and destroyed quickly an Alpha just for this post to help us out? Smile)

Even though it seems like an unbelievable achievement the Inheritance chronicle emphasizes that it is not completely beyond human comprehension: "All fancy except that the notion of a stellar swarm of very high density was at least conceivable as a project that could practically be achieved, within the limits of known science, given enough time and materials. The only question was why someone would build one."

The technology, although advanced and specialized ("The Talocan were masters of spatial manipulation and hypereuclidian mathematics...", says the ingame description), was human and so were the masters.

It is known that Anoikis is not a cluster of star systems like New Eden. The locus signature Jnnnnnn of a wormhole system designates the quasar that is closest to this system. Given the huge distance of quasars every wormhole system would be closest to one single particular quasar (or to very few quasars) and have the same locus signature if Anoikis would be a spatially bound cluster. The star systems of Anoikis are scattered through the whole universe and every jump through a wormhole crosses literally billions of light years. It may be an open question why the Talocan selected those around 2600 system for their network of connections. The universe has billions over billions of galaxies and stars. Why did they pick systems that are far more distant from each other than any alternative selection? I don't think that those systems by themselves are special in any way. In this news CreoDron scientist Lianda Burreau states that the first discovered wormhole system is "a system not unlike those familiar to us in New Eden, although it is far, far away" and that "everything about this system appears to be typical of our own". If the star systems themselves are not the point it might simply be their distance and their wide-spread distribution that made the Talocon choose them, the fact that those solar systems "cover" the whole universe - the ordinary universe, not a pocket universe.

As to the question why the Talocan created the Anoikis network (what Inheritance calls (a part of) their "Grand Design") I'm not sure if this is sufficiently answered by the chronicle. It doesn't paint a very likeable picture of their civilization, talks about their "astounding arrogance" and "hubris" (another rather human feature) "to focus the telos of the universe itself on their existence and needs" and that "we should be thankful that the Talocan ... are no longer present in New Eden or Anoikis". Perhaps the Talocan just created all this because they could, and they went megalomaniac.

Anyway, the Sleepers came later, discovered Anoikis and settled there, perhaps just to have a quiet and safe haven, away from the dangers of New Eden. With the Isogen-5 event this safety came to an end. The stability of the wormhole network in Anoikis was destroyed but I'm not convinced if that's the crucial point. Connections, although unstable and not under control of any technology anymore, are still there and we capsuleers prove every day that Anoikis is still habitable and logistics between systems is possible, albeit more difficult than with stable stargate connections. The real problem wasn't that the network had become unstable but that uncontrolled connections between known space and Anoikis opened up, allowing "foreigners" to breach into Anoikis. The chronicle calls those foreigners by name: Capsuleers and the Amarr Empire. Both started to plunder the Sleeper Hives. ("The very hives that have been plundered, along with the infrastructure of the enclave constructs, by wave upon wave of capsuleers. Not to forget, of course, the plundering carried out by the Empire under the direction of the Empress.") The Capsuleers to collect the materials for advanced T3 production, and the Amarr Empire, and then later the other Empires as well, to collect the implants for the First Generation DUST soldiers.

The Talocan ran away, probably before capsuleers and Amarr started to invade Anoikis on a larger scale. But maybe the Talocan saw the problems coming early enough (or they just felt that their "Grand Design" was screwed up by the Isogen-5 event), and defense was not their style or no option because masters of spatial manipulation are not necessarily masters of weapon systems. The Sleepers are somehow imprisoned in their enclaves and cannot easily flee. They are the civilization that has to suffer the most from an Anoikis that is open like a barn door for everyone. The "514" chronicle mentions that capsuleers and the Empires are committing "Genocide" against the Sleepers.

(Continued next post...)
#9 - 2017-01-22 18:42:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Kolmogorow
(...Continued)

Teinyhr and Katja Somni said above that "Anoikis is going to collapse" and that the Drifters invade New Eden in order to escape the collapse and to find a new home. I'm not convinced and don't see a collapse of Anoikis. Sure, logistics has become more difficult after the wormhole network is not stable anymore but that didn't make Anoikis inhabitable. The Sleepers might have a good reason to leave Anoikis but not because it is collapsing but because they are almost helpless against the invaders from K-Space. However, they wouldn't try to find a new home in the head quarter of their torturers.

I don't have a clear idea how the Drifters come into the picture but I have the feeling that Anoikis isn't their "home" at all. Although the description of their faction says that they are "emerging from the ruins of the Sleeper civilization spread throughout Anoikis" I believe this is rather meant in the sense that this is just the place where they have been born, or shall I say, "constructed" or "assembled". Anoikis is not and never has been the place where they wanted to live, not to mention peacefully, but just a staging universe (and perhaps a resource pool of Sleeper components they need for their own construction) for a war against K-Space.

Which brings the last piece into the mosaic: "The Other". The Inheritance chronicle confirms clearly that Empress Jamyl Sarum was under control of this entity that was possessing her when she gave the order to the Amarr Empire to invade Anoikis and collect Sleeper implants in order to build her army of immortal DUST soldiers (Veniel: "I think we can dispense with 'may have been' and be certain that it was under the direction, not mere influence, of that entity."). The DUST soldiers were supposed to be the private army of The Other. The project failed because Jamyl was strong enough to have her bright moments to be the master of her own mind, and in one of those moments she decided to destroy the First Generation soldiers with Sleeper implants and to persuade the other Empires to do the same (that's the story of the "514" chronicle mentioned above).

It might be possible that the Drifters are The Other's Plan B. When Hilen Tukoss was asking for those weird Jovian body parts to be delivered to him (he was somwhere in Anoikis) some people suspected it wasn't him who was talking, and in The Vitrauze Project he already seemed to be possessed by something that was called "it": "This time, there was no life in Hilen's eyes, and it was telling her to go". The Other? If so, those body parts were possibly the components (or catalysts or whatever) for the first built prototype Drifter and it happened all under The Other's direction. I don't think that the Drifters are seeking for a new home outside of Anoikis but are merely a tool for something bigger and more powerful.

That's my current half-baked theory about all that stuff, but I'm nowhere sure about it, and it changes every week.
#10 - 2017-01-22 19:43:19 UTC
But we still don't know much anything about Anoikis, or the Talocan. As for when the Talocan disappered, none were around the time the Third Empire of the Jove explored it, which is almost 400 years ago. Also to my knowledge the Talocan ruins in space imply they are at least several centuries if not millennia old, so they weren't around at least in the past few hundred years.

Also, there are Anoikis systems we cannot access, most obviously the Drifter systems - we do not know where they are, I think it is safe to assume there are then other systems we don't know of, which could number in hundreds of thousands. And these systems we don't know of could be the ones collapsing, which is why there are no wormhole connections there - and those massive hive structures along with their spatial anomalies that have been found could infact be stabilizing Anoikis to the best of the Drifters abilities, but they are not Anoikis' masters and cannot keep it aloft forever.

I consider my theory as valid as yours, until lorekeepers come to tell us the Truth.
#11 - 2017-01-22 22:27:29 UTC  |  Edited by: Nana Skalski
I have my image of Talocan in my mind and I completely made it up from ground basically.

Will post it when I finish working on it. I am in proces of writing an elaborate piece about them. It is just fan creation and extension of the universe. But for me it is EVE fiction piece stil.
#12 - 2017-01-23 10:10:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Nana Skalski
I think Talocan technology indicates, that they ended being the most developed and technologically advanced human civilization of those that survived after EVE Gate closed. But, were they still human?

Jove, still considered humans, have very distinct features in their culture and physicality. But we dont know as much about Talocan as about Jove.

In my theory, I divided their culture between 2 symbiotic casts. Casts of Headmasters and Proletarians. Both were genetically fairly different. Their role in society have been regulated by strict rules and religion and they both were bound to undertake tests before being asigned to their roles in coresponding cast.

Physicality of Headmasters was that of a very alien looking person, at least for us, with distinct facial features and great height. Overall they would be considered ugly in New Eden standards, with their elongated, oversized heads and prominent forehead, weirdly positioned eyes and nostrils. They were later in life modified for extending their already powerful mental capabilities. Their roles in society were all about knowledge, mathemathics, science, etc, managing starships and leading. Their brain functioned differently on many levels, and their technology exploited that by interfacing it to the machines and to other minds, mainly of Proletarians, when meditating. Both casts wore metalic bands alowing these telepathic like abilities, and they wore them at all times on their heads. It was medium thru which they communicated in meditation. All Talocans were feeling like it is part of their body. Headmasters mental capabilities dwarfed Proletarians minds while communicating in meditation. Fertility of Headmasters was really not strong.

Proletarians were considered soldiers and workers, with strong build and great fertility, buth lacking in mental capabilities in comparison to Headmasters, but still fairly capable even for Jove standards. Some were born true hermaphrodites capable of parthenogenesis. They were fairly normal looking for New Eden standards. They interfaced their minds to machinery mainly, but could also communicate with Headmasters thru the interface while in meditation.

Society rules were very rigid with many barriers for physical interaction, so that only formal titulature and formal ceremonies were bonding both casts while they were in the same ceremony. Meditation was the main conversatory medium bonding society, but it too had celebratory rules in it.

They had common religion, main theme was combining elements of gnosticism, with order based on multiverse thesis, where humans were creatures with different capabilities bonded by common goals. Bound to endlessly wander, moving thru whole universe, to know all there is to know, to be closer to the truth about themselves and truth about their home.

Religion was very prominent in Headmasters life, but to lesser extend for Proletarians who were of lesser intelectual prowess and their life was exploiting the down to earth part of the religion, with fertility celebrations. For Headmasters and Proletarians meditation was the daily routine and it involved ritualistic sharing thoughts about the life and seeking advice by Proletarians.
#13 - 2017-01-28 03:38:13 UTC  |  Edited by: DrysonBennington
Elmund Egivand wrote:
Teinyhr wrote:
I mean, if the Talocan could build pocket universes as implied by the "Inheritance" -chronicle, and they were ancient humans, why did the humans need a wormhole to travel to New Eden in the first place - couldn't they just build as many fake universes as they wanted?

Or, how would the Talocan, being cut off from the advanced technology of the ancient humans, be able to do something literally no one else managed to do in New Eden, and not only not regress technologically but advanced, clearly by leaps and bounds to mold the very fabric of reality itself?

Or does this mean that New Eden is in fact just one of the pocket universes cut off from its original source - and simply forgot all of its history?


Because the Talocan were a different civilisation which had existed and presumably perished in isolation of other civilisations, so the other humans did not get their technology and only have scraps to work with. Scraps with fragments of theories they could barely comprehend, if even that. Just because everyone is the same species doesn't mean they will have the same perks. For example, while the Europeans were starting to shoot each other to death with static machine gun emplacements, the Africans were still using spears. Both humans, yet both having wildly differing technology advancements, at the same time period.

Who knows what the heck were the Talocan up to these days, or if their civilisation had persisted or had imploded.

New Eden is not a pocket universe.


Scraps With Fragments Of Theories - Short story

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