Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Louella Dougans on 21 May 2011, 10:28
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From the timeline on the Eve wiki (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Timeline) and related articles:
22355 - First contact between Minmatar and Amarr. Slave raids begin. Day of Darkness ?
22480 - Day of Darkness ? Slave raids turn into a war. Matar system is conquered. Damius III is the emperor at the time. The Minmatar appear to be an Empire at this time, rather than a Republic.
????? - The Nefantar offer a surrender to Damius III.
????? - Starkman Prime conquered.
22762 - The Emperor Damius III dies, is succeeded by Heideran VII. (King Khanid secedes)
22821 - "The first Warp Drive" is developed. :s
????? - Saint Arzad begins the education of the Starkmanir. 10+years later, Saint Arzad is executed for "heresy" by Arkon Ardishapur. A young Drupar Maak receives vision of St. Arzad.
22947 - Starkmanir Rebellion inspired by Drupar Maak. Starkman Prime devastated.
23058 - The Amarr Jump drive is developed. :s
23146 - FTL communications are developed. :s
23216 - Eanna is the last planet to be conquered. The Minmatar Empire still has some kind of working political and military command structure, and a functional Fleet and shipbuilding capability.
23216 - The Minmatar Rebellion. The Minmatar Republic is formed, excluding the Thukkers, who depart to the Great Wildlands.
Blue - "The Empyrean Age"
Purple - "Theodicy"
Green - Minmatar epic arc
The rest is directly on the timeline
I don't understand a lot of this.
The Amarr fleet of the time were using far slower ships than exist today, without the benefit of FTL communication (meaning fast messenger boats are needed), or jump drives (limits travel speed).
The slow rate of conquering, and no apparent counter attacks baffle me. What is going on there ?
Were there no stargates in Minmatar space at the time? Were they destroyed by retreating Minmatar?
Any more things that people know about ?
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Some of the wording there doesn't mesh. I tried to tackle a lot of the pre-YC era stuff and weave inconsistencies (including how the Minmatar were subsumed by the empire and yet still had space forces available at Eanna) into something that made sense in this: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_New_Eden_v0.91.pdf Take a look! :)
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Wow, some of those dates really are off...hopefully CCP will fix this with their...wait for it...mega lore wiki.
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I had a thought, about slow rate of conquering.
I suspect that the retreating Minmatar may have destroyed any stargates as they left, and sown the areas around the dead gates with mines. Thousands of mines.
Then, without jump or warp drives, the Amarr would have required slow gate constructor ships (like the ones in the Old Man Star chronicle), to pursue them.
Those gate-constructor ships would have been very vulnerable to the minefields and a watchful Minmatar Fleet in the destination system ready to ambush them.
And then with no FTL communications, there would be little or no way to say what happened.
This would then mean further attempts by the Amarr fleet would require to be done in Huge overwhelming force, the expense of which may not be justified, esp. since at the time King Khanid was doing a lot of things.
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It's hard to tell what is original material and what is speculation or note-taking in the timeline shown in the OP. The timeline that is shown on Evelopedia is pretty much the same one that has been going around for years. It's also the same one that I used as a foundation for a very substantial effort (linked above) at creating a cohesive historical prose regarding these subjects. Have you had a chance to look at it?
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It's hard to tell what is original material and what is speculation or note-taking in the timeline shown in the OP. The timeline that is shown on Evelopedia is pretty much the same one that has been going around for years. It's also the same one that I used as a foundation for a very substantial effort (linked above) at creating a cohesive historical prose regarding these subjects. Have you had a chance to look at it?
I've edited in some colours where a source is given for some of the details. Everything else is stated on the timeline on the Evelopedia.
Everything with a ? is speculation. I've placed the conquest of Starkman Prime before Damius III dies, since the Nefantar apparently offered some kind of surrender to him (Empyrean age says that was a conspiracy to protect the Starkmanir).
I've been reading your thing, it's super :)
A lot to take in though, so i'll be rereading it a few times.
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I have always liked that the Amarrians began their conquest before they had jump drives or warp drives. It seems to suit that methodical grind the enemy to dust element of their national psyche. I also like the degree of plotting and planning that is implied. It is very "They looked at our planet with cold, jealous eyes. They carefully drew plans against us." I really hope that this doesn't get retconned out of existence.
ETA:
Oh, and the original timeline referred to the Minmatar empire. Empire with a small 'e' so it was never clear whether empire was used in a general sense to describe a large widespread civilisation or in the big 'E' sense of an autocratic Emperor governing his domains. I think this may have been tidied away at some point, though.
Edit of the edit:
OK, seems like the timeline is all in caps. Hmm. Maybe I'm misremembering, then. :/
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I have always liked that the Amarrians began their conquest before they had jump drives or warp drives. It seems to suit that methodical grind the enemy to dust element of their national psyche. I also like the degree of plotting and planning that is implied. It is very "They looked at our planet with cold, jealous eyes. They carefully drew plans against us." I really hope that this doesn't get retconned out of existence.
So you interpret this as saying that the Amarrians began with slowboat conquest of other interstellar nations?
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Of all the timelines, the amarr-minmatar is really the one most screwed up....
All PF mentioned the amarr were the first to attain space travel, but had a slow expansion rate.....so to cross half the cluster and find the Minmatar directly in their home systems (and 2 other neighboring ones) without the ability to rapidly cross space either with gates or jump drives or some other form of FTL propulsion is non-sense (given timeline dates)
Also most of the PF from the Minmatar side describe them to be just barely gaining a foothold in space by the time the Amarr arrive....non-sense again as how they achieved the capability to fight off the Amarr so rapidly in order to actually claim and secure 3 whole regions? i can't say the Gallente were able to do that with just monetary/tech help, the Federation was also quite strained by the war with the Caldari.
To me, the real eye opener in the timeline is the posibility that 80% of what is now "known" space in the map, was colonized shortly after the foundation of CONCORD....that of course would mean a diaspora of epic proportions and a frenzy by all 4 nations to claim as much as they can before having problems with rebels and insurgents, which of course could also explain the rise of such strong organizations as the Angels and Guristas.... but frankly i can't give in to that....is way to cliche.
I sincerely hope they properly review and retcon all dates and major events.
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Also most of the PF from the Minmatar side describe them to be just barely gaining a foothold in space by the time the Amarr arrive....non-sense again as how they achieved the capability to fight off the Amarr so rapidly in order to actually claim and secure 3 whole regions?
The Amarrians used Minmatar slaves from Pator (and their descendants over 9 centuries; that's a lot of people) to populate Imperial colonies in the regions that are today Heimatar, Metropolis, and Molden Heath. During the Great Rebellion, the Minmatar kicked the overlords out. I directly addressed these questions in the Hitchhiker's Guide (linked above) and did so (imo) in a convincing way. Have you had a chance to read it?
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I have always liked that the Amarrians began their conquest before they had jump drives or warp drives. It seems to suit that methodical grind the enemy to dust element of their national psyche. I also like the degree of plotting and planning that is implied. It is very "They looked at our planet with cold, jealous eyes. They carefully drew plans against us." I really hope that this doesn't get retconned out of existence.
So you interpret this as saying that the Amarrians began with slowboat conquest of other interstellar nations?
I think so, yes. With the caveat that they found a broken jumpgate in their home system and reverse-engineered it iirc. What happens next is open to speculation.
1. They slowboat all the way from Amarr Prime to Pator. This is highly unlikely, of course. It must be in the region of ~15 light years door-to-door, and even with the best conventional speeds available to Eve ships (say, 20 km/sec) it would take well over two hundred thousand years to cross that distance. As an aside, Voyager II is happily tootling along at something like 17 km/sec without the benefit of mwd or nanofiber hull mods... :P
2. After building their first gate, they spend the next 1000 years expanding until the actual distance between the borders of Amarrian space and the borders of the burgeoning Minmatar interstellar civilisation is actually relatively small. Perhaps a distance that can be crossed by a gate-building generational ship in a matter of ~2 centuries. Then, once that gate is in, all bets are off for the Minnies.
2b. Maybe they found gates that still worked, advancing their expansion considerably.
3. Maybe, just maybe, there was a drive before the modern warp drive that allowed faster travel. Maybe there were a series of stepping stones between bog-standard conventional drives and the 1AU/sec + warp drive. FTL travel is nice, but you'd settle for something that could propel you at a quarter of the speed of light and get you to Pator in ~60 years.
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sorry, i gave it a quick look, but didn't chew through it all to be honest, will review with more detail thanks for the heads up.
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Some of the wording there doesn't mesh. I tried to tackle a lot of the pre-YC era stuff and weave inconsistencies (including how the Minmatar were subsumed by the empire and yet still had space forces available at Eanna) into something that made sense in this: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_New_Eden_v0.91.pdf Take a look! :)
Had a quick look at this (will peruse more thoroughly later) and I have to say: good work! I like your writing style.
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The Republic of Metropolis, Heimatar and MH being formerly Amarrian territories where their presence was the strongest makes sense, yeah. I'd certainly go with that.
I'd be interested in the Federation's role, though I think CCP tries to hide the "fact" the Republic was formed with Gallentean help
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3. Maybe, just maybe, there was a drive before the modern warp drive that allowed faster travel.
had a thought relating to all this.
The warp drive mentioned in the time line is the first one developed by the locals. (Gallente/caldari, i think?). But what about the Jovians, who already had their space empires ? I think the Jovian warp drive predates the one mentioned in the timeline.
Also, the original colonists had warp drives. Several colony ships went to Amarr. They may have left some in a parking orbit. Or there may have been things around the moons.
And there are also The Scriptures. How much of the technical knowledge is from the original colonists, and how much was the later revelations ?
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I'd be interested in the Federation's role, though I think CCP tries to hide the "fact" the Republic was formed with Gallentean help
Gottii and I have been going dialectical on each other lately about Matari history: it's not always comfortable, but it's definitely fruitful. Here are some resulting snippets for you about the role of the Federation:
The Minmatar Republic was formed over a century ago when the Matari threw out their Amarrian overlords in what is known as the Minmatar Rebellion. The Matari had the support of the Gallente Federation and to this day, the two nations remain close allies.
"The Gallente had a dream, and they called this dream democracy," said the Ambassador in his speech. "This dream was given to the Republic in its infancy and held to be the right and true way for a civilized society to govern."
The Republic Military School (from which all Minmatar enlists graduate) was for a long time the bastard child of the Minmatar education system - it existed because it was perceived as needed but it had no support: most military personnel were Gallente trained. In recent years, however, as the Republic tries to ascertain [sic] its independence, efforts are being made to transform the RMS into a top-notch military school.
Edited to add an example that's less "official" but at least as "cultural":
The Republic University (from where future Minmatar industrialists graduate) was founded by Minmatar emigrates [sic] as a show of support for the fledging republic shortly after its inception. The school is modeled after the University of Caille and based on the Gallentean education system.
Around 30% of the population of the Federation is Matari. I'd be very interested in the timelines there and explanations of how that came to be the case.
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The Amarrians used Minmatar slaves from Pator (and their descendants over 9 centuries; that's a lot of people) to populate Imperial colonies in the regions that are today Heimatar, Metropolis, and Molden Heath. During the Great Rebellion, the Minmatar kicked the overlords out. I directly addressed these questions in the Hitchhiker's Guide (linked above) and did so (imo) in a convincing way. Have you had a chance to read it?
According to this (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Age_of_Expansion) the Minmatar had been colonising the systems around Pator for centuries before the first Amarr contact. The conquest of Matar, which is itself more than a century after the slave raids first began, still left other planets unconquered.
Given it was another five centuries for the Amarr to develop jump drives and another century or more after that for FTL communications, I think the slow pace of expansion makes sense.
Incidentally, Ken, you might want to up date the Vitoc/vitoxin information with the information on symptoms found here (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/The_Vitoc_Problem).
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Incidentally, Ken, you might want to up date the Vitoc/vitoxin information with the information on symptoms found here (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/The_Vitoc_Problem).
Hmm, yes. That's painfully detailed and I need to rewrite/expand the Vitoc paragraph. I will add it to the list of changes for the next future version.
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Do note that the jump drive is not the warp drive. I assume Amarr have had warp drive type faster-than-light or near-lightspeed drives before the first stargate to Hedion (i.e. before 21290).
As for systems around Pator, I understand that the canon is still that Minmatar had three systems, and were possibly preparing to do their own interstellar travel when Amarr appeared. I assume that this is the first interstellar nation found by the Amarr, and as such, they were unprepared to take on multiple planets at once, and proceeded to raid the main one. Slow Amarr advance may have allowed the Minmatar to finish their systems, possibly augmented with captured or scavenged Amarr technology.
Thus, the Minmatar have two avenues of expansion around the cluster: Primarily, being taken to other systems by the Amarr, and secondarily, flying there under their own power (or ships under new ownership), fighting a guerrilla war. Bigger warp-capable ships (such as cruisers) might be capable of interstellar travel without gates (not possible ingame to warp from system-to-system, of course).
On expansion of the empires: By some version of the fiction, the City of God was built into a central location in the Empire. Naturally, it might be that the Amarrians of that time considered all explored systems as their sovereign space (since there was no one else around to contest that sovereignty) and the actual colonized space was smaller. Aridia was explored (and the Ni-Kunni Reclaimed) around the same time as the Minmatar, so the Amarr seem to have been about at their current size (plus Minmatar regions) before CONCORD was founded. Caldari and Gallente had their blitz of colonizing systems during the war to keep the other empire from flanking the other.
Our surveys show that there are many planets capable of sustaining life in these systems, however the lack of a proper stargate network has drastically increased the travel time for our mission. I think it is worth it, I don't trust those Gallente further than I could throw one, and that isn't very far given their indulgences.
The initial speculation for a fall back position seems to be sustainable. However we have one potential problem, long range probes that we sent out have been reporting some strange readings. Our science teams think they are reading stargates and an adjoining region which is disturbing. I do not think it possible that the Gallente have yet moved that far and until we can confirm these readings and determine who or what these stargates belong to it would be ill advised to place ourselves in a position where we have our movement restricted on multiple fronts.
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1. They slowboat all the way from Amarr Prime to Pator. This is highly unlikely, of course. It must be in the region of ~15 light years door-to-door, and even with the best conventional speeds available to Eve ships (say, 20 km/sec) it would take well over two hundred thousand years to cross that distance. As an aside, Voyager II is happily tootling along at something like 17 km/sec without the benefit of mwd or nanofiber hull mods... :P
Remember the most common hand-wave for EVE's non-Newtonian physics in space is that warp drives cause a 'drag' of some kind. Pre-warp drive ships in such a situation could easily have far higher maximum speeds.