Reapers!?  I ain't gonna get et!

Ok--a good grey goo scenario (imho)...

Vasari in their quest for perfection make communally intelligent nanites to serve as a boost to Vasari individual intelligence--like a giant interactive online library implanted in their heads that can see and be everywhere for them.  the Vasari programmed it as a servant and in their arrogance never considered that a servant created by them might question their lordship over it.

It's too intelligent and has a mind of its on--though it isn't immediately obvious.  Like a child, its developing intelligence and personality needs purpose and direction and it gets it from the victims of the Vasari empire.  All the men women and children the goo was used to consume had their aline, non-Vasari final emotions and thoughts imprinted  onto the young goo and taught it to hate and lust for vengeance 'cause it ain't experienced with alien emotion and the communal emotions of millions just pasted over its own personality.  The Vasari don't realize it at first 'cause they aren't experinced with alien emotion either.

The goo becomes consumed with the feeling of the victims and only wants to be avenged on the Vasari.

When the Vasari ancient homeworld is et by the goo, they send their entire fleet and it gets infected by sympathetic nanites in their heads.

The Vasari disable their remaining advanced nanites and the goo chases Vasari--killing most of them outright by networking with the nanites already in them--a few escape and run like heck.

The good doesn't bother other races 'cause it only wants the Vasari exterminated.  Maybe one day the Advent will learn to communicate with it.  The goo is--in essence--a ghost in the machine.

But now I ruined it 'cause it ain't a surprise no more.

Oh yeah...and the goo opens a portal to another universe and lets Sam Neill in.

I love this idea.Their own ships becoming sentinent kinda like in Event Horizon. Maybe the dark fleet is chasing the vasari,that could be very ironic.

edit:dont mind the link,it is because of my browser or so.

as long as it isnt bart simpson

Bart Simpson on a space pony?

I like the idea that it's the Dark Fleet chasing them.  Nice touch--and works with my grey goo scenario too. Makes sense why you can get dark fleet remnants as help in game--only the ones who escaped.

Adding in the Event Horizon factor, imagine if the Dark Fleet is possessed by grey goo that is infected with all the desire for hate and vengeance of Vasari victims.

Then imagine while transiting a wormhole, the goo  fleet encountered the sort of evil intelligence in Event Horizon which embraced it as a brother and joined it in it's hunt for the Vasari.

We call it, "Sam Neill".

Basically, the AI went insane, went to hell and fetched the devil and brought him back with them to find the Vasari so the devil can take them back to play---muwahahahaah!

the defeat and exile of the vasari was nothing more than a staged social experiment to discover how isolation and then exile from the empire would affect a vasari colony. the mysterious enemy is a small imperial research detachment destroying their beacons and monitoring their progress from afar.

I've always said the only truly mentally ill people are in fact - psychologists.

You win, sir, you win.

Re: Regarding the Vasari enemy.

I don't know what it could be.... but I do believe the instruction booklets actually gave us an hint in a structure shared by all races:

Phase inhibitors stations.

The Advent? Copied the stations from the TEC after capturing some.

The first TEC Phase Inhibitors? Clearly stated to have been reverse engineered from captured Vasari Inhibitors.

And how did the Vasari create the Phase Inhibitors? Here's the catch explained in the booklet.

They didn't.

The Vasari simply "found" them around in space. Once they figured their uses, they did begin to repurpose them, but even they didn't fully understant how to manually replicate the technology so used their advanced nanite techs to just reproduces the stations as perfect copies of the original.

But still... they didn't create it. And nor did -any- of the two other races who only captured them from each others.

So whatever IS chasing the Vasari, I bet is linked to whoever -first- made the phase inhibitor technology in the first place.

Think about it: Whole systems, disapearing without a trace with almost, nay, with NO ONE making it back to say what happened, except a -single- ship whose crew was rendered mad with terror after the rest of their whole dark fleet similarly was defeated/disapeared. And a technology -purposely- made to -prevent- someone from properly leaving a gravity well(or at least, slowing down their attempt)... of which no one know who is the original creator.

Start to get my drift?

These inhibitors where already there when the Vasari found them, unperturbed relics of an ancient time, of a forgotten creator.

My guess is, whatever the Vasari did, maybe related to that Kron Vasari Lab in the original video "1000 years ago", is that it woke up whatever race made these things in the first places and got to stare at it. And it stared back as it decided to take it's rightful place again. Probably annihilating anything in it's site, Reapers like actually though not neccessarily living space ships of doom either.

Also, judging by descriptions of systems just "blipping out" and losing all communication, I assume if this enemy is ever made into a race it will also have major communication jamming technology, maybe as a major weapon of it's own. The kind of thing where when it attack one of your system, it suddenly jam -all- communication. Your units will still be there. They'll still be fighting, trying to do everything they can to survive... but you'll be unable to give them order. Or even to -see- what is happening as everything becomes "dark"... and as the race spread, you'll thus be only able to see more and more systems just purely "blipping out" on the sector map, which should just literally give an idea of what the Vasari dealt with.

Well, I have always thought the Vasari were a little inhibited...

I really like danilelost/OriLord's neat angle that the Dark Fleet is chasing the Vasari. 

PBHead points to the grey goo which could be considered canon from the intro movie

Adding my own idea the artificial intelligence which in turn is possessed by or in league with a near-demonic evil from another dimension (as a result of the Vasari gravitic and phase experiments) gives us a twist that combines some great scifi ideas and symbolism and gives nod to several classic scfi stories.

Also, the angle that its not just an AI that has taken over the Dark Fleet and seeks to hunt down and infect all Vasari--but that something truly evil..bordering on the supernatural in its extra-dimensional alieness, gives us a place for the Advent to be in play as well.  Who else would be motivated to stop an evil intelligence trying to prowl the universe?  And the psionic angle could come into play here too...maybe its the reason why the Advent focused there.

Darn fine scifi film we got going here if you ask me and it all nicely fits within the Sins universe.

yes but will we get credit for the ideas.  besides i have changed my mind i think it is just frogboy on one of his rants.

They can call us developers now---muwahahahahaha!

More like Shivans!

Reapers don't have anything on the Shivans, they were the original "OH SH**" badass invading alien race. 

Reapers have some damn big shoes to fill if they ever want to scare me the way the Shivans did. 

Suul'ka.

Haha, there's another definite possibility. Can't wait to see what those guys look like either. 

It's gonna be a good year for epic space battle game fans, methinks!

It is not an enemy... some crazy guy inside the Vasari homeworld created super potent drug,

and everyone is sooooooo high that no one bothers to communicate with other Vasari planets.

Armada? They all went high too. And only one ship arrived with bad condition because basically

they are too high to drive it properly.

Drugs spreading all over the universe is why Vasari beacons keep turning off.

Edit: Okay, that was a joke but I think it could be somekind of contagion, not something one can

shoot at.

after reading this one.  maybe who ever made the inhibiters are using them to funnel the vasari  right through tec space.

Holy crap! You thought THAT much into it!!!???

Anywho, for some reason, I read it. You're post seems like it would be pretty accurate. Especially those space ponies....god. how I hate those space ponies.

now we know why the vasari enemy keeps catching up to them and why the enemy is able to hunt them down.  because the vasari dont know that the black fleet has gone bad, and keep calling them in to help.

Think?  I don't think...it's thevisions in my head.  They tell me things...bad things.  Yessssssss.

(that and rabidly reading scifi since I was six years old)

well i think that since the Vasari are focused on genetic augumentation even before they left there empire for good i think that since they controlled most of their galaxy of origen they thought that they could take the genetic mateirial of all the races they subjugated and tried to combine the best of the genetic make up of those races to their own in order to make a super Vasari unite touse as a common blue print for their entire race. but due to something the super Vasari when nuts and began to mulyiply and whiped out one of the inner colonies of the Vasari empire. Now at about this time the race that had left all those phase inhibitors lting around (i mean come on what are the chances of just finding one floating through space and it just so happens to float into your territory ) decided that they have let the Vasari reach the point of tecnological developent and move in and begin wiping them out and taking their tec and itergrating it with their own. however they were compleatly off guard by the uncharacteristic move by the Vasari to leave and run as far as they can. caught with their pants down they had to hurredly make chace and have been pursuing them ever since.

also my thoughts are if they make a sins 2  then they will have them come into the open and my gues is that it will be an intergalactic S*** fest when they come screaming into tracer space and go on a rampage

There just being culture bombed by the advent and loosing their colonies. Its an easy wipe out anyways with a fully upgraded advent fleet. The Dark fleet couldn't stand a chance: if its not the advent then its definitely the Borg.

Clever misdirection...Vorlon!

 Well whoever it is, they're going to die if the TEC come out of this alive. The TEC have already proven to learn very quickly how to combat their opponents, and it just seems like a staple of sci-fi for humanity to beat the sh** out of ancient bad guys.

This idea's already been taken, developed, and finished.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/411321

By me, in fact.

The race is made up of intelligent nanites.  The race is the Darkness.

Ludovsky: That is a very interesting idea.

I personally think though that the PJI's were artifacts just like those you can discover on planets.  I'm inclined to think that some super-race built them before either exiting the galaxy or universe.  If you ask me, the PJIs' ability to slow phase jumps is just a side-effect of it's true purpose.  The TEC don't get it;neither do the Advent.  The Vasari probably have some idea of it's nature, but cannot prove anything.  Let's say they are inter-dimensional gates?  If that's the case, it makes sense that on Kron, they accidentally turned one on and came face-to-face with the most powerful race to ever exist in this universe.  The energy released would explain the massive burst shown in the video.

If it isn't that, I still vote grey goo.  Sure, it isn't as complicated or awesome sounding, but it is far more realistic.  As they develop more advanced nanites, they ultimately lose control.  I'm not voting for intelligent goo.  As shown by pbhead, it has to be something subluminal (aka no phase drive for you) which is perfectly in line for a slowly growing goo.

While the first option is more epic, there's no way a race that unimaginably advanced would be subluminal.  PJI's are incredibly advanced.  The idea of them being uberweapons or interdimensional gates makes a lot more sense than just being PJI's.  The Vasari probably just started hitting random buttons when they found them and most of the combinations probably resulted in booms, but one at least resulted in phase lane distortion.

The Kostura and RC also support the idea of GG.  If you have a weapon that damages everything in orbit from long range, that's a pretty dang good way to slow the spread of nanites.  RC if you think about it is wildly wasteful.  You are dumping teraliters of nanites into deep space for repairs.  Nanites really aren't that good at repair.  They can do it better than anything else, but also slower.  What they would be suited for is defense against EMP resistant deconstruction nanites, aka grey goo.  It's effectively a barrier designed to prevent the nanites from landing on the hull, because once they get on, nothing's getting them off until the whole ship is dissolved.

In other words:

Ancient awakened super race: Awesome but illogical

Grey Goo: less awesome, but still nearly impossible to stop and logical