Spoilers, the "Other Guys"

I'm suspecting that the "Other Guys" were/are the "memory-holed" founder of the Hegemony.

The other founders destroyed (or just attempted to destroy) them because they threatened the "stability" the other founders loved.

DrakBibliophile wrote:I'm suspecting that the "Other Guys" were/are the "memory-holed" founder of the Hegemony.

The other founders destroyed (or just attempted to destroy) them because they threatened the "stability" the other founders loved.

Or, more probably, there could be layers here.

The removal of the 5th race seems to take place in the distant history of the Hegemony. Given it's 70ish thousand year span, and the travel distance between member worlds, I would suspect that any such change is, literally, ancient history, or else it would be known by a majority of the mainline member races, and not need to be hidden.

Vlad's "modification" is around than 500 years old - or inside the OOD loop of the Scout ship viewing us, returning to it's Base, the Hegemony making the determination to exterminate us ASAP, and assign the work to the Shongari. All that is Hegemony "Modern" history, or more accurately, recent news.

If this is the work of the 5th race, either they still exist, hidden somewhere, or mechanisms they set in motion eons ago are still unfolding.

If the 5th race was related to the "other guys", I would think it is a descendant race, or a group that they deliberately hid, working toward an ancient goal, not the original group, which should be long dead.

I'm a bit up in the air about what happened to the 5th race.

1. They were killed off by the other 4 because they threatened to disturb the status quo. After that the other 4 decided to vanish them from history to hide what they've done. Since then they've 'forgotten' about the 5th race. (least likely imo)

2. The 5th race removed themselves from the equation once it helped set up the GH. They recognized that they wouldn't fit in (for whatever reasons) and decided to hare off on their own now that there was a way for the less fractious and energetic races to have relative peace and stability for themselves. (More likely)

3. The 5th race is really gone, they turned themselves in to nanos or died off and left tech behind. Such as what turned Vlad into a vampire.

4. The 5th race is still very much around, hiding behind the scenes and letting the GH do what it wants, for the most part. They're just puppeting things when they want/need to.

I suspect we'll find out more in the next book, of course. But I feel that it's possible that we're going to see humanity encountering the 5th race.

Theemile wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:I'm suspecting that the "Other Guys" were/are the "memory-holed" founder of the Hegemony.

The other founders destroyed (or just attempted to destroy) them because they threatened the "stability" the other founders loved.

Or, more probably, there could be layers here.

The removal of the 5th race seems to take place in the distant history of the Hegemony. Given it's 70ish thousand year span, and the travel distance between member worlds, I would suspect that any such change is, literally, ancient history, or else it would be known by a majority of the mainline member races, and not need to be hidden.

Vlad's "modification" is around than 500 years old - or inside the OOD loop of the Scout ship viewing us, returning to it's Base, the Hegemony making the determination to exterminate us ASAP, and assign the work to the Shongari. All that is Hegemony "Modern" history, or more accurately, recent news.

If this is the work of the 5th race, either they still exist, hidden somewhere, or mechanisms they set in motion eons ago are still unfolding.

If the 5th race was related to the "other guys", I would think it is a descendant race, or a group that they deliberately hid, working toward an ancient goal, not the original group, which should be long dead.

Now that we know about the 'Other Guys', we're looking at a timeline of: Original Survey Mission 1415, Vlad's Industrial Accident 1477. Enough time for a hidden '5th race' to find out about humans and decide to investigate, perhaps? Or are the Other Guys and the 5th race even the same thing?

If the Hegemony decided to destroy the 5th race, are we looking at a Safehold style scenario where one extremely hidden colony survived, or are we looking at more a 'resistance' movement of some members of the surviving other races - who were horrified at the genocide?

What I do find interesting is that RFC's original book places the survey mission just before the human acceleration of technological progress. It's also very heavily emphasised, over and over in both books. We are much too advanced. We shouldn't be progressing this fast. There is no way we should be this far ahead; plus, we took one look at Hegemony tech and made advances that no other race has even started to make.


The Hegemony has thousands upon thousands of years of studies of other races - is it a coincidence that their survey mission and The Other Guys arrive just before our technological advancement starts off on an abnormally steep learning curve?

This might not be a Malign type 'genetic uplift', btw - it could be 'the Other Guys' deciding that this race is never going to be allowed to survive - unless they get a helping hand.

One thought on your timeline, we have no idea how "old" that cave was when Vlad found it.

It may date to long before the Hegemony discovered Earth.

Theemile wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:I'm suspecting that the "Other Guys" were/are the "memory-holed" founder of the Hegemony.

The other founders destroyed (or just attempted to destroy) them because they threatened the "stability" the other founders loved.

Or, more probably, there could be layers here.

The removal of the 5th race seems to take place in the distant history of the Hegemony. Given it's 70ish thousand year span, and the travel distance between member worlds, I would suspect that any such change is, literally, ancient history, or else it would be known by a majority of the mainline member races, and not need to be hidden.

Vlad's "modification" is around than 500 years old - or inside the OOD loop of the Scout ship viewing us, returning to it's Base, the Hegemony making the determination to exterminate us ASAP, and assign the work to the Shongari. All that is Hegemony "Modern" history, or more accurately, recent news.

If this is the work of the 5th race, either they still exist, hidden somewhere, or mechanisms they set in motion eons ago are still unfolding.

If the 5th race was related to the "other guys", I would think it is a descendant race, or a group that they deliberately hid, working toward an ancient goal, not the original group, which should be long dead.

Yes, it could. Plot wise, that would mean either that we should find other ‘caves’ on other planets - or alternatively, the human race/vampires are the race that got picked as a possible time bomb to destroy the Hegemony.

In favour of your suggestion, the legends of vampires long predate Vlad Dracul.

DrakBibliophile wrote:One thought on your timeline, we have no idea how "old" that cave was when Vlad found it.

It may date to long before the Hegemony discovered Earth.

Theemile wrote:
Or, more probably, there could be layers here.

The removal of the 5th race seems to take place in the distant history of the Hegemony. Given it's 70ish thousand year span, and the travel distance between member worlds, I would suspect that any such change is, literally, ancient history, or else it would be known by a majority of the mainline member races, and not need to be hidden.

Vlad's "modification" is around than 500 years old - or inside the OOD loop of the Scout ship viewing us, returning to it's Base, the Hegemony making the determination to exterminate us ASAP, and assign the work to the Shongari. All that is Hegemony "Modern" history, or more accurately, recent news.

If this is the work of the 5th race, either they still exist, hidden somewhere, or mechanisms they set in motion eons ago are still unfolding.

If the 5th race was related to the "other guys", I would think it is a descendant race, or a group that they deliberately hid, working toward an ancient goal, not the original group, which should be long dead.

Theemile wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:I'm suspecting that the "Other Guys" were/are the "memory-holed" founder of the Hegemony.

The other founders destroyed (or just attempted to destroy) them because they threatened the "stability" the other founders loved.

Or, more probably, there could be layers here.

The removal of the 5th race seems to take place in the distant history of the Hegemony. Given it's 70ish thousand year span, and the travel distance between member worlds, I would suspect that any such change is, literally, ancient history, or else it would be known by a majority of the mainline member races, and not need to be hidden.

Vlad's "modification" is around than 500 years old - or inside the OOD loop of the Scout ship viewing us, returning to it's Base, the Hegemony making the determination to exterminate us ASAP, and assign the work to the Shongari. All that is Hegemony "Modern" history, or more accurately, recent news.

If this is the work of the 5th race, either they still exist, hidden somewhere, or mechanisms they set in motion eons ago are still unfolding.

If the 5th race was related to the "other guys", I would think it is a descendant race, or a group that they deliberately hid, working toward an ancient goal, not the original group, which should be long dead.

Emphasis in Drak's post is mine: When I read it, and when I thought about it... Why was I reminded of Asimov's Second Foundation?

Great observation, Drak. And IMHO, that paragraph in your post opens up a whole CAN of worms...

WeberFan wrote:
Emphasis in Drak's post is mine: When I read it, and when I thought about it... Why was I reminded of Asimov's Second Foundation?

Great observation, Drak. And IMHO, that paragraph in your post opens up a whole CAN of worms...

I was actually thinking of The Protector by Larry Niven.

Why does the remnant of the first rapidly developing interstellar species turn up on a planet populated by another rapidly developing technological species? I agree with Drak that the artifact is very likely many millennia old. My suspicion is that The Other Guys tinkered with humanity in some way to encourage ingenuity. The machine that zapped Vlad might have been left to do just what it did, nanitize a human.

I suspect that the initial nanitization was very traumatic and required a formidable mind to integrate the nanites into a coherent entity. As Ii recall every other of vlad's retinue did not remain coherent and simply disintegrated. The later transitions occurred after the nanites had a chance to adjust to their hosts more successfully. I wonder just how many individuals were transformed as Vlad was in the past or he was the first to succeed? If others were transformed successfully, the "Protectors" would have had to have means of eliminating them should they go too far rogue. Those myths about vampires Vlad knew about in his life had to have been started somewhere.

So, Earth is what the "Protectors" wondered would have happened if the Hegemony failed to pacify an emerging civilization. Maybe the Protectors just left those machines laying around on the off chance that it gave the species of that planet a chance when the Hegemony came calling. What the species did with their chance was up to them.

Fireflair wrote:2. The 5th race removed themselves from the equation once it helped set up the GH. They recognized that they wouldn't fit in (for whatever reasons) and decided to hare off on their own now that there was a way for the less fractious and energetic races to have relative peace and stability for themselves. (More likely)

I disagree. I don't think this is very likely.

If the 5th race was innovative and voluntarily removed themselves from the GH 100-150ky ago, they'd have outpaced the GH's technology (which they already had at the beginning anyway) and would have made a comeback. They'd have completely populated the Galaxy by now, displacing all the other races.

So it isn't likely that they voluntarily chose to hide because they were innovative. They might have chosen to hide for other reasons -- most likely because they were attacked and driven to the brink of extinction.

Your other options are more likely in my opinion:

3. The 5th race is really gone, they turned themselves in to nanos or died off and left tech behind. Such as what turned Vlad into a vampire.

4. The 5th race is still very much around, hiding behind the scenes and letting the GH do what it wants, for the most part. They're just puppeting things when they want/need to.

I suspect we'll find out more in the next book, of course. But I feel that it's possible that we're going to see humanity encountering the 5th race.

#3 is basically transcendence, ascendency, or technological singularity, as seen in other Sci-Fi works (I'm currently reading the Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas and that features prominently). Also note that #3 and #4 are not mutually exclusive.

I don't think we're going to find much out about the fifth race in the next book. I expect the next one to take us further to contact with the GH and some understanding of the nature of the vampires, but only deepen the mystery of the fifth founder race and the origin of the nanites.

I'm thinking that the 5th race could be humans and Earth was a lost colony or stranded ships crew that happened as a result of the removal from the hegemony.