25 replies to this topic

[Breunor]

This thread is for developing the details of the Ammonites origins on earth. Specifically, the idea they created dinosaurs and then had to flee the planet, throwing a second moon into the earth and killing the dinosaurs is a bit silly, I just put it in there as filler I guess... so this whole area can be developed in any direction we see fit.

[JohnEvans]

Maybe they didn't HAVE to leave...maybe they were just so arrogant that they felt they should leave behind their terrestrial origins and live among the stars.

Or maybe they polluted the earth's seas so much that they did have to leave. (And this pollution eventually fell to the bottom of the sea and/or biodegraded, so we don't know about it. Or maybe it's just something common in the oceans that is only poisonous to Ammonites. There are all sorts of minerals and things dissolved in the sea.)

Or, back to Mountains of Madness, they created some servant race that rebelled against them. (Gillmen?)

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

Maybe the whole dinosaur/asteroid thing was an accident...they lost control of an asteroid mining complex (sabotage, internal manuvering, just bad luck, whatever).

The gillmen are a good idea....an ocean strike on their main (only?) city/spaceport.

[mikker]

hmmm.....yes... A gillmen attack would be great, and now the ammonites are back for revenge on their grand,grand,grand,grand,grand,grand........children, the homo sapien species.

The gillmen could have done something to an asteroid so it crashed down into the ammonite city, yes. They just thought that the city was the only thing that was damaged. Well, it was not.

hmm...that could also go to human psionic abilitys......some gillmen gets immune to psi control, and those rebels agenst the ammonites. The ammonites thinks: "OMG! That huge asteroid are going to destroy this planet!" and they leave it. Their "slaves" wakes up from PSI contro, and goes into a "safety cave", deep beneath the sea, going into a deep deep sleep.......

Some of the gillmen wakes up "early", and find out that the seas have moved. they develop lungs and such, and start to live on dry ground.

The ammonites, does not see the huge astorite smash into the planet, but they though that earth was doomed. Thousends of years later, they seek to build a city in the sun-system, mars, and finds out that the "gillmen" have survived, and evolved into land-based creatures. They also see that they posses great firepower, not only psi powers, and fears them. They brings some other slaves, and starts to invade the earth...

[LordT]

What are Ammonites, other than some tribe the Israelites conquered?

think its some one-cell lifeforms

[mikker]

Its ethernals

[mikker]

i think it was on an alien site, with aliens names, but i am not sure...

[LordT]

Its ethernals

Well i didnt read the thread
But i -think- i've heard the name in context with micro bioligy.

Edit: Ok, so they're some time of long extinct squid-like creature

Edited by LordT, 22 June 2003 - 12:55 PM.

[Fred the Goat]

Huh. I thought it was just something Breunor came up with? Maybe it has a biology background. I should know but I don't.

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

Maybe something reated to the findings in the Burgess Shale could be included? That's the fossils found in Western Canada that are totally unlike any lifeform ever found ( try a half meter shrimp with five eyes and an elephant's trunk tipped with a pincer).

check Here for more info.

[Fred the Goat]

I've SEEN those! Talk about a wicked little critter! Another one had a row of tubes coming off one side of their body, and a double row of spikes on the other side. I forget which ones they walked with. Evolution has produced some wierd shite. Evolution and ALIENS

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.

(I always loved that quote....it's proven true so often)

-The Captain

[Breunor]

Ammonite is the name of an extinct squid species. I thought it tied in several things to have the aliens originate in that manner, in that it's easy enough to say more of them survived and evolved to make TFTD aliens. The way I see it, there could really be 3 names for each alien in the game. The name they use for themselves, the human version/scientific name, and the soldiers' nickname for them. I used the names in the story post simply as placeholders, as virtually every member is going to have their own version for alien names, and we could spend as much time as we want to waste debating which to use.

The other names for the aliens are based on several different languages, piecing together syllables from words that represent the essence of the original alien.

[Devatar]

Here are a few points I'd like to adress: (ooh, official!)

First, dinosaurs and other tetrapods emerged from amphibians, right? And amphibians, along with other craniates, emerged from ostracoderms, which didn't evolve from ammonites. Besides, dinosaurs were rampant for more than a 100 million years, if they became a threat, the ammonites had a LOT of time to deal with them. Maybe we could just leave the dinosaurs alone? The story could still stand strongly without them. We can just say that the other moon collided with earth because the ammonites were doing something to the planet's core or something...

(i think an interesting story would be to say that the rapid cooling of earth during that time, which is true, was causing earth's magnetic fields to shift, changing the moon's orbit, and making it collide with earth.)

secondly, I don't think the part about the mutons maintaining peace is necessary, since everyone is already under psionic control.

A few suggestions on the wordings...

"a new Achidna emerging from the remains of its host"

correction: "a new Achidna emerging from the remains." -the original repeats the word "host" twice consecutively. I think this way looks better.

"Could the budding psionic powers the humans help spark it elsewhere, as it had occurred for the Ammonites many years before?" -huh?

"The humans increasing technological abilities were making it increasingly difficult to remain hidden during research."

correction... "human's"

"It looked like a marvelous weapon to use against the enemy, but there was a chance it could be used in self-defense here."

correction... remove "here"

NOW FIGHT!!!

[Tenebrae]

Errrm...Moon coliding with Earth? That would pulverize both celestial bodies into atomic particles leaving very little to nothing for our Ethereals/Ammonites/McDonald's franchises .
And why are we trying to make a big story out of these guys? It could be simpler...say, like. They came here some years ago, surveyed the untapped resources(justify stuff like those aztec stones, the piramids, George Bush Jr.'s last electoral victory ) , but had some sort of war with an enemy alien race(or maybe an Civil war of some sort that left them occupied for a while and almost completely wiped out their own race.) Now they're back, they've set an outpost on Mars and have a whole bunch of buddies to help hack into Earth's Resources. But some primate has a whole lot of firepower :alienmad:
Dang! Now we have to fight the damn primates to get to the resources...

End..or beggining...or uhh

[Breunor]

Well, the second moon was much smaller than the current one, it was just a fun way to explain why the dinosaurs died off. But there's nothing saying we have to use it, feel free to create a different write-up, and if everybody prefers it we can use that. Like I mentioned earlier, the current origins text was a combination of the various ideas the department had up to that time rolled into one.

[Tenebrae]

Hmm. I don't have the time to write a full text right now. But I'll leave some topics that seem logical to me:

1) Let's leave the dinosaurs out of this. They roamed the Earth a couple hundred million years ago. Let's face it. If the Ammonites already had the tech to travel to Earth back then, why would they still be using plasma rifles to shoot X-Corps soldiers nowadays(or in 2010 for that matter)?

2) There are some middle-ages references to UFO sightings. Those seem more plausible to me than trying to explain the extinction of dinossaurs with some ammonite pressing the wrong button. Anything before that would cause a big technological problem.(see 1)

3) We could even leave medieval UFO sightings out of the issue. Let's just use those from WWII onwards. Those are OK as I see it. 60 years are nothing when compared to millions of years.

4) The ammonites are, I think, the first and most powerful alien race. So..they would have to be the leaders of some movement...Let's say they are from a nearby galaxy with just a few races(the ones in our game, how convenient). They would be feared by their psionic powers, thus all other races obeyed them with no questions asked.

5)Overmind X(origin uknown) is the leader of an expeditionary party to conquer a new foothold in this yet untapped system of ours. Outpost is set on Mars due to its icey polar caps(yeah, if the aliens are all humanoid I suppose we could make them all carbon based, give them water)

6) Now that I think of it...they would be after Earth's immense resources of water given the depletion of that natural resource in their home system.

7)As water ran out a civil war broke out, keeping the most of their military occupied at home, dealing with the internal threats(hence the relative weakness of the expeditionary force)

Hmm...I think that's all of them

[Breunor]

OK everybody, I see this thread being near the top on the "let's settle this" list, so we can work on other texts that branch from here. I will start going through this thread, starting at this end, and write down each summary idea I find. So if anyone wants to tweak their original idea or add a new one just reply and I'll get it that way. I'm looking at the broader points here not the fine details, so those can still be worked out. The main idea is to settle how this would appear in the X-Net description, obviously a lot more detail (read:fan fiction) can go from there.

[Xer0]

I think the Ammonites, we could say, probably evolved into two directions. One land, and one sea. Hence, X-COM 1 and 2. Now while the sea creatures began a different evolutionary process into becoming Gillmen, Aquatoids, Tosoths, etc. the land Ammonites developed differently.

The Ammonites on land were not accustomed to the hot, dry atmosphere of prehistoric earth (before dinosaurs) and were a weak species. However, due to Darwinian theory, they adapted, and evolved with a large, extremely intelligent mind. Gradually, psionics came into use as well as superior technological advancements. Their technology would not be the computers, etc. we have now but rather a more organic concept.

During the age of the dinosaurs, the Ammonites were easily hunted due to their lack of physical strength. Eventually, they created a large "pod ship" in which they would leave the planet in, or something along the lines of that. The ship was miles wide and was organic, and run by psionics. At this point in evolution the Ammonites resembled something a bit humanoid, but a more squid-like neanderthal. In the pod ship they took off from the planet, and the mind energy that was used in launching the titanic craft basically liquified the brains of all the dinosaurs and small-brained animals with underdeveloped minds. The early mammals were not killed due to better developed brains, however this stimulated an extreme growth in mammalian evolution.

The pod ship reached Mars, and the planet's ice cap turned out to be the perfect living condition for the Ammonites. Here they began to develop further, and created better technology which would somehow lead to them going off to some other plotline...

Anyway that's just off the top of my head, so whatever. o.O

[Danny252]

They don't come from Mars though.
Liquiefeying brains? Why didn't the sea guys get liquified too? They aren't mammals, they're.. alien things from the sea. and, technically, the sea aliens were stored in sleeping chambers and I quote:
"As the trimumphant humans returned to earth, after destroying the heart of the alien invasion, all was not destroyed. A Tachyon beam shot from the rubble of the destroyed Martian base and Vast computers deep under the sea started, and aliens started the long reanimation cycles." Or something like that. Basically they're stored Cryogenically or something like that.. from TFTD intro.

[Afflicted]

I haven't posted here in a long time. I'm talking really really really long time, but I come back now and again to check up on you guys .

How about using the Atlantis mythos in this game? The Ammonites came to Earth because it was a natural paradise, no species had domanince over another and all was peacefull. The Ammonites came to this world because theirs was destroyed by <put anything you want here>. They saw later after a long time that Humans started to appear. The more intellegant Ammonites saw that the humans were supposed to be here, and it was their time to leave and explore the universe.

Now, millenia later, the children of the Ammonites come to take their Eden back, which held the advanced technology that could save their race today, too bad its all dead though. If they do/don't know this, why not just enslave humanity to help expand their empire, fight their war, prolong the existance of their race.

[Arky]

I would like to suggest another idea:

T'leth could be the alien name for Atlantis.The aliens lives peacefully, then something goes wrong (I.E. second moon collides with the earth), and makes room for humans. T'leth sank into the deepest of the abysses, but a small portion of the Ammonites were able to escape in space. They set themselves on mars as a remote colony to prepare a rescue mission, but only to discover that we're in the way.

In the end, they thought they could get rid of us to rescue T'leth, but because they failed they had no choice but to activate the tachyon beam, hoping that the T'leth aliens would have better luck against humanity.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Nice, but how does the alien brain fit into your idea, Afflicted?

(Hmm...Perhaps the brain isn't really sentient at all. Perhaps it is just a giant, organic computer that the aliens use to coordinate their forces?)

[Arky]

Nice, but how does the alien brain fit into your idea, Afflicted?

(Hmm...Perhaps the brain isn't really sentient at all. Perhaps it is just a giant, organic computer that the aliens use to coordinate their forces?)

The way I saw it, They were two entities, one being more powerfull than the other. The brain encountered on Mars is the weak one, although the T'leth one had been frozen in cryos for thousand of years, the Cydonian brain had ample time to develop itself.

First I thought about queen and king, but that didn't sound right . So let's think of it as Commander and Colonel.

Edit: Typo

Edited by Arky, 27 May 2004 - 08:14 AM.