42 réponses à ce sujet

[AlleyD]

I'm not an expert in history or anything (relating to how long ago Cro-Magnons lived) but in ME3 Javik says that it took the Reapers several centuries to wipe out the Protheans because their civilization was huge (I'm guessing at least 10 times bigger than the current cycle's civilizations because the Reapers pretty much destroyed everyone in just a couple of months). After that, the Reapers had to go through and make sure they didn't leave any evidence of their existence which also could have lasted another couple of centuries. If these Protheans in Sol deactivated the relay during the Reaper invasion and stayed in the observation posts they could have survived a while, maybe even continued their civilization for the time it took for the Reapers to finish harvesting the universe before possibly attempting to leave through FTL drives or possibly creating another relay like the one on Ilos. While they waited all those centuries they could have been observing the primitives on Earth, possibly performing experiments on a couple of them because I'm sure they would get bored of just waiting for the Reapers to finish their harvest.

 

I had originally confused the dates myself, thought Cro Magnons had the same date range as Neanderthals (70,000BC)

 

We were told the Reapers wipe the galaxy clean, but we should have been able to challenge that. WE had previously been through several Prothean sites that contradicted Vigil's statement. Not least Feros, a planet sized Prothean city, let alone Therum, Eden Prime, Virmire  and the other Prothean sites we discovered.

 

That is my thinking now. The Protheans were in Sol for some significant period of time and I think the humans got a kick start by finding a Prothean supply network.

[DarthSliver]

I had originally confused the dates myself, thought Cro Magnons had the same date range as Neanderthals (70,000BC)

 

We were told the Reapers wipe the galaxy clean, but we should have been able to challenge that. WE had previously been through several Prothean sites that contradicted Vigil's statement. Not least Feros, a planet sized Prothean city, let alone Therum, Eden Prime, Virmire  and the other Prothean sites we discovered.

 

That is my thinking now. The Protheans were in Sol for some significant period of time and I think the humans got a kick start by finding a Prothean supply network.

 

Well I also think it was done on purpose but also because they didn't have access to Thesisa, at least that group of Protheans in that sector of the galaxy. Remember the Prothean Empire was shattered so one part didn't know what was going on in the other part of the Empire. They just knew it was bad, very bad for their Empire with what was going on. 

[The Twilight God]

What's the TL:DR?

[pkypereira]

What's the TL:DR?

 

OP speculates that the Prothean Archives on Mars were discovered long before 2148 and was covered up; that only when the scientists were able to translate and understand the database they informed the rest of humanity about it. He also thinks that there was a prothean beacon like the one on Eden Prime on Mars, that an employee from the Ashland Corporation (from Edfell-Ashland Energy) came in contact with the beacon and had knowledge of the pending Reaper invasion. He thinks that Edfell-Ashland built the arks because they had the idea of a "plan B" in case Shepard wouldn't be able to defeat the Reapers.

[pkypereira]

Personally, I agree with almost everything OP wrote except the part of Ashland Energy.

 

In Mass Effect: Revelation, in the prologue it says that Jon Grissom suspected that the archive on Mars was discovered way before 2148. I think it would have been anywhere 15 to 20 years prior to 2148; that would give scientists a very long time to study and understand the archives.

 

I actually think that Gagarin Station, which the codex entry says that it was built to test FTL technology far from Earth because of safety issues, was actually built to test any technology discovered in the archives but keep it far enough away that humans never suspected or could find out they were testing alien tech. Also, I think the station was used as a base for small ships to investigate Charon and start blasting away at the ice encasing the mass relay. (in this I'm assuming that humans still hadn't translated the archive but they saw a blueprint of Charon and the relay encased within, which the scientists recognized and wanted to see if there was another research station on Charon.)

 

Personally, I believe that the larger nations of Earth at the time would have agreed to keep the Mars archives a secret, but in 2148 someone high level politician must have gotten upset about their nation not getting fair treatment or fair access to the archive and blew the whistle, at which point they decided to go public with the Mars archive, which they would have preferred to keep secret for at least another 15 years, preferably after already having sent a team through the relay and starting a small research base on another planet.

 

But I don't think there was a prothean beacon on Mars. I think that Javik said that any other human would have been killed or would have gone insane by seeing the visions of the prothean beacon because they were made for protheans to understand.

[pkypereira]

I must say, OP really got me involved in this topic. I have been researching this for the past couple of months to see what I can find regarding Earth's discovery and uplifting.

[dielveio]

Op, that was an interesting read and I really like the "big Corporation greed" in it and it makes sense too.
How many things happen behind closed that we don't know?
The same is true here and in ME universe.
Let's hope some points of your theory makes into the game.

[AlanC9]

I'm sorry, BioWare writers are not that stupid in my mind. A quick WIKI check is all it takes to establish Cro-Magnon timeline. If they are indeed so inept, their product is at a worse standard of creative writing than many amateur fan fictions and not worthy of any respect

*shrug* What's the difference between a Cro-Magnon and whatever the Cro-Magnon evolved from, really, and would Shepard have known it off the top of her head? If I'd just had Shepard's experience I'd have been thinking Cro-Magnon too, until I got back to the ship and looked them up on Wikipedia.

[AlanC9]

There are a couple of problems with the premises here. I don't think these are fatal for the theory, necessarily, but they should be removed.

The Charon Relay is the only relay that was frozen over that we know of in lore. Other relays can survive in temperatures lower than -220⁰c when they operate, so it is unlikely that an active relay would freeze naturally.

This doesn't make any sense as written. Operating temperatures are irrelevant since the relay, like all relays, wasn't operating. The Reapers leave relays turned off when they depart. This is basic stuff; see, for instance, the cause of the FCW. This also knocks out the next two bullet points.

It would appear that organics can activate relays but can't deactivate them, which is the substance anyway. The Reapers can do both, if they're in possession of the Citadel.

Your description of the Ilos project as some sort of hacking project is supported by no evidence. What we actually see are two duplicate small-scale relays; the Citadel Relay Monument and the second terminal on Ilos. The only suggestion that the system depends on the existing relay network in any way is that one terminal is on the Citadel, and not very far from the control tower.
 
But it's not inconceivable that the Protheans could have achieved some degree of control over the Relay network. Hell, maybe they did it after they got to the Citadel; this would clear up a problem with ME3. So this should be revised:

I think that this shows that the Protheans may have fled to Mars at some point, deliberately shut down the Relay with their hack in a way that didn't alert the Reaper's. They then entombed - the now inert -relay  for an additional measure of security and used Mars to research their final solutions.

The scientists would have been turning the Mars relay on, not off, and then off again. It's also not obvious how ice provides any kind of security. It's trivial for Reapers to reach Sol from Arcturus; all ice would do is make it harder for humans to use the relay.

A beacon that gave Ashland Energy the knowledge to persude the Council to set aside hundreds of years of law regarding the opening of Relays and to enable an expanion that doubled the range of Council influence. Knowledge that was based on the ability of establishing colonies and moving large numbers of civilians into new galactic territories.

What's the evidence of any such policy shift?
 

Around 25% of the human linked planets mention Prothean and Ancient ruins. Far too many to be consistant with the MO described of the Reapers. Either the Reapers were exceptionally sloppy or we managed to have some form of map of the Prothean empire to build from that managed to point out surviving Prothean sites and precycle ruins.

But the Reapers are sloppy, deliberately so. They almost always leave something behind in a system with a race which might achieve technology in the next cycle. See the map entry for Verush; it's a point of pride for the batarians that, unlike the archives other races found, theirs was badly damaged, so they had to do more of the work themselves.

[ddraigcoch123]

Really fascinating read and lets face it the corporate control of knowledge, resources and research is pretty common... so that would work... not sure how wide the information would have spread.  Politicians are notorious for being leaky after they've left office so perhaps only the 'company' and perhaps elements of the scientific community had access and knowledge to much more than was ever released publicly.

 

I also like the idea that either the Protheans wanted to 'hedge' their bets or the guys in Sol had no idea the Asari were already being groomed/genetically engineered.  I mean even in the 'real world' human development of language and reasoning abilities are pretty 'miracle' even though we are a product of evolution.  I mean there is evidence that language has a genetic component, FOXP2 gene... maybe the Protes did a bit of gene editing to help us along so we could take advantage of their 'message in a bottle' that was probably meant to equip us to fight their own nemesis the Reapers...

[The Night Haunter]

This long post will be a speculative investigation of the Mars Archive and early timeline of Humans in the MEU. I hope to show that there might be some form of evidence that points towards the Protheans leaving more of a legacy on humans that in stated in the lore entries.

*snip*

Honestly I think we need less 'Humans are the messiah race!' bs, and even less 'Prothean device to save the day!'.

 

I think the inconsistent dates is just bioware making mistakes rather than indicative of anything else.

[Kabooooom]

Yeah, I still think this reads like an elaborate fanfic that is inaccurate in several key ways that Alan pointed out above, but after reading this again, I concede that the OP did make several good points that definitely warrant further investigation - but for their own merit as curiosities in the mass effect lore.

The most important one is that the Charon relay was encased in ice. We KNOW that this isn't normal after a relay is inactivated. Every other dormant relay that was found and activated required little more than remote activation - they were literally just floating there in space, waiting to be reactivated.

Which makes sense, of course, because the Reapers WANT civilizations to use the relay network. They don't make it hard for them. Hell, they even deliberately leave ruins of prior civilizations behind to ensure easy access to mass effect technology.

So why was the Charon relay encased in ice? We know that the Reapers shut down the entire relay network instantly from the Citadel, and then activated one at a time to invade systems in full force. So, the only logical conclusion is that the Protheans on Mars decided to somehow encase the Charon relay in ice after it was remotely shut down. They would have realized that the relay was shut down and that they couldn't reactivate it, and they probably also went to Arcturus via FTL and found the relays there shut down too. If any of their communication network still worked before it was shut down, they *might* have had some inkling of the Reaper threat, who knows.

So I think it is safe to conclude that the Protheans encased the Charon relay in ice after the Reapers already shut it down. This probably ensured that it couldn't be remotely reactivated until it was excavated, as the rings would be physically frozen in place.

But why do this? As was pointed out above, this does nothing to stop the Reapers - they would just jump to Arcturus and then fly 38 light years to Sol. Piece of cake. All freezing the Charon relay accomplishes is it makes it harder for humans to find and activate it in the future.

And maybe that was the point. If humans never found the relay or never succeeded in activating it, then maybe they would be spared in the next cycle as the Reapers might be unaware of their existence as a spacefaring species. And maybe, if they developed technologically without the relay network, they could evade the Reapers trap of following down their path of technology, and actually stand a fighting chance against them. Who knows, it's certainly interesting though.

[ddraigcoch123]

EDIT*

But why do this? As was pointed out above, this does nothing to stop the Reapers - they would just jump to Arcturus and then fly 38 light years to Sol. Piece of cake. All freezing the Charon relay accomplishes is it makes it harder for humans to find and activate it in the future.

And maybe that was the point. If humans never found the relay or never succeeded in activating it, then maybe they would be spared in the next cycle as the Reapers might be unaware of their existence as a spacefaring species. And maybe, if they developed technologically without the relay network, they could evade the Reapers trap of following down their path of technology, and actually stand a fighting chance against them. Who knows, it's certainly interesting though.

Now that's an interesting thought... so maybe giving humanity two cycles to be 'ready' for the harvest?

[Kabooooom]

Now that's an interesting thought... so maybe giving humanity two cycles to be 'ready' for the harvest?

It's the only thing I could come up with, and it would require the Mars Protheans to be aware of the Reaper cycle and how it all worked. But Vigil was (in intricate detail), so I don't think that's a stretch at all.

And it makes strategic sense too. It would force the humans not to play the Reapers game, and possibly circumvent the critical weakness in their strategy - that it only works in maximum efficiency if all species use the relay network and mass effect technology and are extinguished before advancing beyond a specific level of technology (like understanding how it all works).

[AlleyD]

There are a couple of problems with the premises here. I don't think these are fatal for the theory, necessarily, but they should be removed.


This doesn't make any sense as written. Operating temperatures are irrelevant since the relay, like all relays, wasn't operating. The Reapers leave relays turned off when they depart. This is basic stuff; see, for instance, the cause of the FCW. This also knocks out the next two bullet points.

It would appear that organics can activate relays but can't deactivate them, which is the substance anyway. The Reapers can do both, if they're in possession of the Citadel.

Your description of the Ilos project as some sort of hacking project is supported by no evidence. What we actually see are two duplicate small-scale relays; the Citadel Relay Monument and the second terminal on Ilos. The only suggestion that the system depends on the existing relay network in any way is that one terminal is on the Citadel, and not very far from the control tower.
 
But it's not inconceivable that the Protheans could have achieved some degree of control over the Relay network. Hell, maybe they did it after they got to the Citadel; this would clear up a problem with ME3. So this should be revised:


The scientists would have been turning the Mars relay on, not off, and then off again. It's also not obvious how ice provides any kind of security. It's trivial for Reapers to reach Sol from Arcturus; all ice would do is make it harder for humans to use the relay.


What's the evidence of any such policy shift?
 

But the Reapers are sloppy, deliberately so. They almost always leave something behind in a system with a race which might achieve technology in the next cycle. See the map entry for Verush; it's a point of pride for the batarians that, unlike the archives other races found, theirs was badly damaged, so they had to do more of the work themselves.

 

 I wasn't making a theory, just trying to encourage speculation on how an Intergalactic ARK was developed by humans within the timeframe of the MEU.  At the time I wrote the thread, I was imagining that the ARK required some form of Mass Effect drive core that was beyond the tech capability of all the Council races and I rooted that technology with the Ilos Protheans. The E3 trailer and comments from BioWare suggest their solution doesn't require such a drive core and I do not expect the Protheans will have any mention in ME:A

 

The main point of my post is that the Protheans were in Sol post Reaper Invasion. This is mostly supported by the Mars Archive containing the blueprints for the Crucible, the rest was speculating on unexplained, hard to believe or inconsistant lore

 

Thank you for clearing up some of the points where I was speculating in error. I wasn't sure if the Reapers left the Relay system inactive, I assumed they switched it back on after the Prothean Cycle. The only thing I recall of the Asari is that they discovered the Citadel,  I cannot recall if anything is mentioned about how they got there.

 

I couldn't think of a better term than "hacking" to describe what the Ilos Protheans did to the Citadel relay and I was wrong in how I wrote that part of the post. I'm not sure of how far the Ilos Protheans went with their sabotage of the Relay network, or what happened to them after they reached the Citadel.

 

 As far as I understand it, the Council races had adopted a policy of non-expansion after the Rachni Invasion/Krogan Rebellions. The evidence of the policy shift is the Human expansion and colonization that occurred after the FCW was resolved.

 

I assumed that the Prothean cycle was different from those before and that the Reapers retreated before they had completed the clean up.

[Big I]

...persude the Council to set aside hundreds of years of law regarding the opening of Relays and to enable an expanion that doubled the range of Council influence

 

The Council wanted humans to colonise the Attican Traverse, a lawless and contested region of space. The Alliance doing that would expand Citadel power and influence, without the risk of igniting a galactic war if things went sideways (as happened with the attack on Elysium and almost happened with Balak's attack on Terra Nova). That's all there was to it.

[Helios969]

Good job, OP.

 

The one thing I've been wondering about for awhile now (unrelated to the post) when is Bioware going to retcon the Charon Relay - since last summer the New Horizons probe completed its 10-year journey and made it's pass by Pluto.  Alas, no mass relay to jump start Human-kind's expansion across the stars.

 

EDIT:  I just now caught the "encased" in ice aspect to the relay so I guess that provides an out...even though with the various types of optics aboard the probe we'd probably ascertain something was encased in ice.  BTW we now know Pluto has 5 moons: Charon, Nix, Styx, Hydra, and Kerberos (Cerberus) if anyone gives two-sh*ts.

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

*shrug* What's the difference between a Cro-Magnon and whatever the Cro-Magnon evolved from, really, and would Shepard have known it off the top of her head? If I'd just had Shepard's experience I'd have been thinking Cro-Magnon too, until I got back to the ship and looked them up on Wikipedia.

 

Exactly this. They didn't just appear out of thin air 40,000 years ago. Shepards vision could just as easily been a Neanderthal for that matter.