On the Ancients

Far back in the distant past there was a race, a race far older and far more advanced than any other sentient race before or since.

We know they existed, we’ve found their “footprints” all over the galaxy. Most of the time, these prints are subtle, a piece of space junk that was not made by any known race. Writing on cave walls of an asteroid in the middle of nowhere, in an unknown language.

Sometimes, not so much. The sentient races we all know as Solmani, Aslan and Vargar (the lost, the lion people and the wolf-men if you are so crass) are not natural results of evolution, or rather, not only evolution.

No one is sure exactly when, but sometime before 100,000 BCE, the Ancients visited Earth. (Sol 3) the homeworld of the human race. The humans they encountered would have been very primitive. How primitive we can’t be sure, some estimates put the time of their visit as early as 300,000 BCE. Either way, they would have been far too barbaric to be of much interest to the Ancients.

Even so, they took “samples” from Earth. We know they took lions, or one of their recent ancestors, as well as wolves, and early humans. These they seeded on other worlds. The humans, they genetically altered but slightly, and left them on a new world. The others, they did the same, but not until after ‘uplifting’ them. Giving them the benefit of another few hundred thousand, years of “instant” evolution. The Ancients left them on new worlds. Worlds that were biologically compatible with what they had been made.

Why? No one knows. Maybe it was just to see if they could, maybe it was because they were tired of being alone in the universe and wanted, eventually, other sentient races to talk to. Hell, maybe it was a bet between two factions about which race would make it to Alpha Centauri first (If that is the case, we lost ,the Solomani got there first, but not by much).

What we DO know is that we have never found ANY planet with life that some sign of their being there was not found. We have found precious few systems that they did not get there first. Most of the time what we find is little more than signs, hundreds of thousands of years old. Some much older. Will we find evidence of their presence on Avalon, or one of the other planets in the system? Almost certainly. The real question is not will we find something, but what we will find.


We have never encountered a member of the Ancients. All the signs we have found are old, hundreds of thousands of years old. They have either left our galaxy or have died out, or, well no one knows. Maybe they evolved into something we can no longer perceive.
Based on what we HAVE found though, we can surmise they were similar to us in many respects. We believe they were bipedal and possessed two hands or manipulators enough like hands that we can use their artifacts without too much trouble. We know they were a bit taller than us, averaging about two meters in height, but slimmer, indicating their homeworld likely had lower gravity than Earth. We also believe they could fly, but we are not sure based on what we have found if this was an innate ability (via wings, or psionics) or just advanced technology.