Intergalactic Summit

I just want to clarify upfront that this isn't anything major; many sightings like this have occurred since the Drifters showed up.

Earlier today I heard mention of a Drifter pilot with the Apollo designation, one whom has apparently been aimlessly wandering around a gate in a particular system for a few days now, not fighting, not doing anything but floating listlessly with the occasional scan of the adjacent Gallente star gate & the equally passive customs ships making their rounds. I passed by later on myself, and I've personally witnessed this behavior a number of times previously.

The Drifters are almost always observed only when performing their more active operations: dismantling the decaying observatories, defending said observatories, as well as their wormhole generators and Hive sites, the Hikanta designation defending the Hives themselves and the Vaults, and the Arithmos responding to attacks on Sleeper enclaves in Anoikis, the contents of which the Vigilant Tyrannos appear to claim as their own. It's not often we see one of their pilots not actively performing a task, but the fact that we do at all could be considered as evidence for the possibility that they're something more than the other external threats humanity often clashes with.

Rogue Drones are artificial and insect-like in both ambition and social structure; Sleeper drones are just AI wardens eternally guarding their enclaves; Sansha's nation, while human, is far from being the same as us because of the degree of control the superiors exert over their "Citizens". Drifters could potentially be something more, and a little closer to us than these others. Sightings like this, of Drifter pilots doing nothing in particular, off on their own, serve to set them apart, in a way.

An AI army (as some theorize the Drifters' pilots to be) wouldn't stop to be lazy or deviate from their purpose, as they simply lack that sort of function; and though they all refrain from communicating with us (with the sole exception of whatever they intended with Dr. Tukoss), there may be more to them than what's on the surface, when it comes to individuality and personality. Of course, I could be completely wrong & they could just be robots, but that's far less fun to think about.

-Uriel

I do not intend to speak as someone with experience in Drifters, but perhaps its pilot and/or crew have suffered some sort of damage? Rogue Drones are known to operate strangely when they are damaged in such a way that they cannot easily be repaired.

Dispatching a BS-class ship to do simple reconnaissance work seems a bit odd. Wouldn't a covert ops of some kind be a little more suited to that kind of work? And just because we haven't seen one, doesn't mean it doesn't exist, though I cannot rule out the possibility that it was performing recon.

Perhaps it was stranded and waiting for the return of a wormhole to the proper w-space system, and in the interim decided to do as suggested and scan all the things.

I have found myself wondering at the nature of the Drifters.

Here is a thought experiment for you all.

Imagine uploading your infomorph to a virtual construct to escape a genetic disease. This virtual construct is distributed across a vast series relays in star systems inaccessible by stargates and maintained and defended by self-repairing drones.

Centuries pass, then millennia. How would a consciousness evolve in such an environment? Would you still be human?

Suddenly a cataclysm occurs. The network infrastructure is now accessible via unstable wormholes. Strangers come and claim your space as their own and begin to attack and dismantle your drones and facilities, looting and pillaging your network infrastructure to develop weapons of war.

You would want to intervene somehow, no? The problem is you no longer have a body and, perhaps, your consciousness has grown and evolved in such a way that it is no longer compatible with human physiology. You would need to consctruct new bodies to serve as a vehicle for your infomorph consciousness. Maybe there are not many of you left (just a handul maybe) but the humans damaging your network are legion. Would you limit yourself to one body or a network of bodies?

Just some food for thought.

This has been kind of a possibility for a while.

It's one of the reasons the refusal to communicate is so absolutely, utterly, totally, and completely confounding and frustrating.

They can communicate. They've done it. They even pretended to be someone they'd apparently captured.

They don't anymore. We don't know why.

Wait. Is it possible that, for some reason, they could only emulate Hilen Tukoss while they still had Hilen Tukoss?

It seems strange that it would work that way, but almost everything about the Drifters is strange. Would that ... match available data?

I think they communicate fairly well; the message seems to be "this is ours, go away."

It might be briefly more shocking to some of us if it were actually spoken instead of expressed through violence, but I doubt it would be widely obeyed.



Well, Tukoss is dead, and they don't impersonate him anymore. One parsimonious explanation is they dictated a message while holding the Drifter equivalent of a pistol to his temple.

Slaves. The Drifters need our slaves. Feed them slaves. Stuff them full of slaves.

I would gladly volunteer if it meant that we could finally communicate with the Drifters; if it meant that there'd be an opportunity to establish some form of peace between our burgeoning nations.

I said this maybe a year or two ago, but I find it in a perverse way amusing how the Drifters have made the elite capsuleers experience how it feels like to be against us in a non-capsuleer vessel.

If the entity you call "Vigilant Tyrannos" is a network, perhaps, the aberrant scout was simply disconnected.