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Old 04-25-2017, 07:51 AM   #1
thrash
 
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Default Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

I cruise the arXiv fairly frequently, looking for papers of interest. Every so often, though, one jumps out as more than unusual:

Prior Indigenous Technological Species

The author (who seems to be a serious exoplanet researcher) speculates that not only might there be artifacts of non-human civilizations to be found in the Solar system, but some of those civilizations might have originated here in the distant past. He considers pre-greenhouse Venus and warm, wet Mars as possible locations and talks about the kinds of evidence that might persist.

Regardless of the scientific merit of his work, here is a ready-made basis for a campaign of discovery. It could be time travel, traditional archaeology, recovery of artifacts left in orbit, or Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.
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Old 04-25-2017, 08:48 AM   #2
johndallman
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

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Originally Posted by thrash View Post
He's stretching plausibility pretty hard with his criteria for previous technological species on Earth. His suggestions for further research on that front seem unlikely to attract funding. Creative design of a project about the history of isotope ratios in the Solar System might work.

It's certainly a fertile field for games, although we have enough imaging of major Solar System bodies that setting it in another system might work better. I played in a campaign where the first interstellar expedition turned into this, although sadly it did not endure.
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Old 04-25-2017, 08:56 AM   #3
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

Heck, the Halo game series is based on this - the Covenant hate humans because they worship the Forerunners, and it's blasphemy to alter Forerunner technology. And humans have this habit of adapting the old tech to meet their newer needs...

(There was a later retcon about an ancient technological human civilization that came into conflict with the Prometheans, the race later known as Forerunners, during the last Flood incursion, but I'm not sure I buy it.)
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Old 04-25-2017, 02:37 PM   #4
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash View Post
I cruise the arXiv fairly frequently, looking for papers of interest. Every so often, though, one jumps out as more than unusual:

Prior Indigenous Technological Species

The author (who seems to be a serious exoplanet researcher) speculates that not only might there be artifacts of non-human civilizations to be found in the Solar system, but some of those civilizations might have originated here in the distant past. He considers pre-greenhouse Venus and warm, wet Mars as possible locations and talks about the kinds of evidence that might persist.

Regardless of the scientific merit of his work, here is a ready-made basis for a campaign of discovery. It could be time travel, traditional archaeology, recovery of artifacts left in orbit, or Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.
Yeah that's very Golden Age of Science Fiction stuff.
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Old 04-27-2017, 03:33 PM   #5
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

The problem being, if it was in the first 2 billion years, we'd be entirely unlikely to find any evidence, and further, whatever was there is unlikely to be recognizably intelligent.

Then again, it WAS the premise behind the Chigs of Space: Above and Beyond...
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Old 04-27-2017, 06:24 PM   #6
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

Altered carbon had the same idea, the archeological remains were either biological, in space or required very high TL archeological tools to recover meaningful information.
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Old 04-27-2017, 08:23 PM   #7
dcarson
 
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

Boundary which is free as a get you into the series by Spoor and Flint has extraterrestrial colonists back at the time of the KT boundary found by a paleontologist. Since the didn't have FTL they were here for multiple generations.
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Old 04-27-2017, 08:26 PM   #8
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

I read that one artifact that would show for a long time from our civilization is old oil wells. When abandoned they get filled so you have a anomaly that reaches through many layers of rock and is found in clusters.
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Old 04-28-2017, 01:07 PM   #9
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

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I read that one artifact that would show for a long time from our civilization is old oil wells. When abandoned they get filled so you have a anomaly that reaches through many layers of rock and is found in clusters.
A prior civ might not have had access to oil to dig wells for it... And Alcohol makes a decent enough rocket fuel.
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Old 04-28-2017, 02:32 PM   #10
ericthered
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Default Re: Campaign seed: Prior Indigneous Technological Species

He sadly spends most of his time analyzing what places could preserve generic evidence of technology, rather than actually exploring what traces could be left, which is a shame.

Though if I'm being honest with myself, I'm actually more interested in what a modern city or town would look like after 10, 50, or even 200 Myr of abandonment (and accompanying erosion, burial, ect). Would the high iron content stand out? What would all the glass turn into? would the concrete look like normal limestone or would it be distinctive? would our mixture of building materials give us away as a technological species? Are there any objects that would survive long enough due to strength and resistance to corrosion.

Nuclear waste might leave a recognizable mark, particularly that which comes from Plutonium rather than uranium: Neptunium has a half life of 2.5 Myrs, and even after everything decays into stable forms, the exact ratio of elements and isotopes is unique to the starting product. At least I think its unique. And Plutonium doesn't occur in reasonable amounts in nature.
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