Intergalactic Summit

Greetings IGS.

I recently attended the Seyllin Conference, as there was a presentation by an acquaintance, one Reinheart Novan, whose research had been inspired by my own, brilliant, research into the Aphi Labyrinth and the Takmahl civilisation.

In the course of Reinheart's presentation, he mentioned the similarity between the design of some of the Takmahl structures in the Labyrinth, such as the spatial rifts and the architecture of the Temple, and the design of some Talocan artifacts, who also constructed temples and spatial rifts.

Which raised a number of questions.

The similarity suggests contact, however, we know that this was not possible, due to the two civilisations being active in geographically widely separated areas, and separated by vast amounts of time.

But then why is the Labyrinth designed the way it is ? The use of spatial rifts to control access through the maze is certainly unusual.

A possible solution to this conundrum, which only revealed itself recently, was the discovery of what have been designated "Sleeper Data Caches", which contain artifacts and data from all over New Eden, including both Talocan and Takmahl.

These data caches are of unknown age, some think they are recent, others believe them to be as old as the Sleeper civilisation itself, given the extreme difficulty in determining the age of Sleeper artifacts.

IF, and it is a big if, these data caches had existed for thousands of years, it becomes possible that the Takmahl encountered one of them, containing the information on spatial rifts and Talocan architecture, that led to the construction of the Labyrinth.


Which means the ultimate fate of the Takmahl becomes of concern. They disappeared. Now, the Theology Council would have you believe that they "collapsed under the weight of their own religion".

However, I have an alternative explanation, one which causes some concern.

IF, the Takmahl encountered a Sleeper Data Cache by chance, that led to the design of the Labyrinth, and the Sleepers/Drifters noticed this, then, it is possible that the Takmahl were destroyed by the Drifters/Sleepers, over a thousand years ago. Which would have been quite easy, given the state of Takmahl ships and weapons at the time. Not quite as sophisticated as our own.


This possibility, that the Takmahl were destroyed by the Drifters, should at least be considered, and be a reason to be cautious about this latest intrusion by Drifters into New Eden.

What's the theory? Ahkam's Razor? Something like that? You two should like it; it involves a razor.

Apophenia, miss, is a terrible thing. Look it up some time.

That said, we simply do not know the extent of the technologies of the ancient peoples. We know they possessed certain specialties, and that we're able to use some of their artifacts for certain optimized forms of equipment, but the sequence of events proposed here relies on a number of assumptions. In the first place, it assumes that the caches are ancient, and predate the Takmahl; it assumes that these caches were detectable in ancient times, when we clearly weren't able to detect them until four months ago ourselves; it assumes that the technology was reverse-engineered, despite that we know of nothing resembling modern Sleeper architecture in Takmahl ruins.

Certainly, the presence of unknown spacial rifts in the Maze is of interest. Still, I wonder: what does the stabilization gear look like? How does it work? Or are these rifts free-standing in some way? Because there's also evidence of rogue drones stabilizing otherwise untraversable rifts that are free-standing, and also evidence of ancient stargates, acceleration gates, and, hell, we've even encountered what appear to be Talocan facilities generating wormholes; there are evidently no end of variations on FTL technology which differ from the Capsuleer trinity of warp drive, stargate, and jump drive.

Ultimately, your theory runs the risk of trying to connect data points when we simply lack the current ability to do so. After all, we may as well claim that the Feythabolians were subjected to Vigilant Tyrannos raids, or that the first Matari adventures to space were halted by slave raids by ancient Jovians, or-- really, we could go on with strange theories. Without any indication as to the actual fate of the Takmahl or any other of the ancient peoples, however, we simply can't know. Anything we propose has all the substance of a pipe dream.

In a cluster with human civilization spanning thousands of years, societies will rise and fall. While I understand your desire for the Takmahl to be at the center of things, they, too, likely simply rose and fell.

As for the Drifters, we don't need history to be wary of them. Their technology and lack of communication is reason enough to be.

Dr Valate, we did not get a chance to finish our discussion on this at Seyllin, but your thoughts do cause concern.

There are a number of possible theories as to who the Labyrinth came to be but this aspect of how that impacts on current event and the fate of the Takmahl is an intriguing one. As you point out the pinnacle of both civilisations is separated by thousands of years in time. This information that relics of both civilisations are being found in these sleeper caches is cause for concern.

I recall reading a paper, but can't find the file at the moment, that posited the Talocan and Sleeper civilisations went to war about the time they disappeared from K Space. It may equally be that earlier sleeper scouts found them using Talocan technology and responded with force thinking they were allied with their old foe.

This raises even more concern in the current events given the widespread use of salvaged sleeper technology in our three major civilisations and even in the tribal territories.

There is much work both scientific and defensive that needs to be done.

The only reliable data from wormhole space is that some sort of contagion was present, either of the Talocan or Sleepers, and the Talocan as we know them ceased to exist. They could have been wiped out, evacuated outside of the wormhole regions we have access to as part of the quarantine, or joined the Sleepers; we don't know.

For all we know, these newly-arrive Vigilant Tyrannos, coming from WH-space per CONCORD-cleared biographical summaries, may either be awakened Sleepers, returned Talocan, a lost Jove splinter group, or something else entirely. Either way, it's clear that Tyrannos ships do not definitively resemble any known ship designs or weapons technology, though the armor may be reminiscent of Jove armor in an at least superficial way.