The Club learned about how the Oresrians are planning to use us as a meat shield - what if that's the old plan?



Thargoids embroil us in a war in 3125 with the intention of getting us used to fighting Thargoids, and then passing us by when the Klaxians caught up to them, we'd see "more Thargoids" without realising that these are a different hive and attack them with everything we had, thereby slowing down the Klaxians, as the Oresrians intended. This explains why the Oresrians never actually wiped out humanity and instead engaged in an extended hide-and-seek war over 25 years - they were essentially waiting for the Klaxians to show up while keeping humanity primed.



That plan failed because we accidentally invented a bio-weapon and forced them to retreat prematurely while they developed an antidote.



During this time too, they discovered Guardian sites and found ways to use the ancient technology to engineer weapons that they used to fight the Klaxians, giving them time to heal from the Mycoid. This explains the crashed flower ships discovered in a few places around the Pleiades (klaxian scouts), but the Oresrians knew that there was no way this tactic would be effective in winning the war, it was just a delaying tactic.



Oresrians ultimately abandoned the Pleiades bases because they were too far gone with Mycoid infection to heal, and after abandoning the plan to use Humanity as a meat shield they no-longer needed to be so near to us, and the new Mycoid-resistant generations set up new bases elsewhere (col70 maybe).



120 years later (3250-60's) (cured of the Mycoid, and with the Klaxians advancing again) they try a different approach to defeat the Klaxians once and for all. Impressed with how well humans fought them, they strike a deal with Linnaeus to develop elite super pilots to help them fight the Klaxians. This plan fails, and the "research group" in the Peregrina system are defeated without being able to report back. Presumably the rest of the Oresrians assumed the project failed (I can't imagine that was all the Oresrians in the galaxy in that one space station?!)



15-20 years later (3280-90's) the Oresrians try another plan since Humans keep defeating them, they realise we could do the same to the Klaxians. They approach human leaders directly and engage in diplomacy with the Humans (maybe just the Alliance at first since the whole thing with Mic Turner, they might remember him and approach his successors), asking them for aid against the Klaxians in exchange for advanced technology. Humanity gains the secrets of FSD and various other technologies. Humanity then starts researching better weapons, but as usual, we're unwilling to sink too much into it until we know for sure the Klaxians are going to show up. - Obviously this is known only to a few at the very highest level, probably even the scientists working on FSD didn't know where it came from exactly, etc. Hence why Bill Turner knows it's of Thargoid origin, but assumes we stole it.



(around 3300-ish) Klaxian Probes arrive in our Galaxy/part of the galaxy (depending where Thargoids originate) and set up a shell 300ly across centred on Merope (an arbritrary centre point for the sphere) because early indications are that this is a concentration of Oresrian bases, the probes scan Ammonia worlds inside the shell and other likely sites looking for Oresrians. Klaxians seed a few Barnacles in the area to act as network nodes, the centre point for which is the Barnacles in Merope. Barnacles are organic assemblers - essentially Klaxian nano-factories. They can mine resources and build anything the Klaxians need (and even build themselves into bases, etc), so the first thing Klaxians do is seed these all over an area they intend to use in the future.



The first Barnacle (seeded at the centre point of the sphere) sprouts, and acts as a carrier relay for the probe signals. The probes reveal that the bases are abandoned. Klaxians deploy thousands more probes to scan the whole area, every planet, looking for any clues as to where the Oresrians went next. They rapidly discover the bases are infected with an alien pathogen, and deploy ground probes (Scavengers) to inspect this damage and report back on the Mycoid.



3300-ish Probes are discovered by scouts. They are shipped to the Oresrians in human space for analysis - this explains why the first UA's were found being shipped through Federation space. They are Thargoid, but not Oresrian. The Klaxians have finally arrived...



At this time, only a few Klaxian scout ships are in the area. After a time, they start to detect Thargoid-like Hyperdrive signatures, and pluck these ships out of Witchspace and scan them... discovering some odd-looking space-monkeys flying around in metal boxes... but using Oresrian-derived Hyperdrive technology.



Klaxians puzzle over this, but realise that these space-monkeys must have had contact with the Oresrians - this info is relayed back to Klaxian command and a whole wave of newly hatched scout ships is dispatched from bases in the Col70 area.* (I'll come back to this later).



After the news of Thargoid hyperdictions confirms the Klaxians have actually arrived, the Human superpowers enact the protocols they developed years ago, increasing weapons production, scrapping the London Treaty, ramping up weapons, they start offering civilians military ships. etc. Only the people at the very, very top know why this is happening. There are some assassinations since some people at the top are having second thoughts about taking humanity into a war... (Early Galnet articles that detail assassinations of the Emperor, "accidental drive malfunction" intended to kill Halsey, etc. etc.).



The Club sets about "distracting" people with various schemes so that not too many independent pilots pile into the Pleiades before Humanity is ready - those that do are important to the plan because they need to publicly make "the discoveries" that will allow the Superpowers to "react" appropriately (but in reality the supoerpowers already have a full plan, they just need a public reason to pull the trigger). The Jaques station was retrofitted by The Club (covertly) and the idea of a trip to Beagle Point was floated to Jaques. The misjump was unfortunate, but still took the station far enough away to provide the lifeboat The Club wanted since they now realise the old Dynasty expeditions didn't get far enough away, and the new FSD technology (and knowledge of the Thargoid hyperdrive capabilities) means the lifeboat needs to be as far away as possible. Colonia has provided a great escape plan to appease people who are worried humanity might not win.



Flower ships arrive en mass (Klaxian scouts prepping the area, trying to figure out what's going on, why there's Oresrian stuff all over the place but no Oresrians), the superpowers pull the trigger and form AEGIS, to the public it's set up to "investigate Thargoids", the real objective is to set up defences and use the weapons and equipment developed to defend against the Klaxians. AEGIS waste little time pretending to be all about the science (the science is pointless since Oresrians are already helping!).



During this time the Oresrians attack empty ships in and around the Pleiades at the request of the superpowers to help spin the media campaigns and make it easier to get the public behind forming AEGIS and ultimately going to war. That's why we never saw a flower ship attack anything. They didn't (at first anyway). The wrecked ships were the the Fed and Imperial capital ships Salome saw being built on the edge of Col70 a year or so ago along with a fleet of Thargoid ships - clear signs of the alliance between the Oresrians and Human leadership.



Since then, the Oresrians have been attacking these decoy ships specifically to attract the attention of the Klaxian drone scouts (the scouts are detecting Oresrian presences, but arriving too late and finding wrecked monkey ships, and scanning them for clues). AEGIS seeds the decoy ships with Thargoid items (probes etc) occasionally to make the Klaxian drones more interested and also laces them with fake "military plans" and similar fake human documents in the hopes that Klaxians will learn to read them. They also put prisoners or slaves into escape pods infected with variations on the Mycoid, allowing them to be taken by the Klaxians in the hopes they can repeat the victory of 3150.



The Oresrians know the Klaxians will review the scout data and the extra scanning and investigating is slowing the Klaxians down and confusing them, buying Humanity time to a) learn to kill them, and b) Get those better weapons into mass production and into the hands of as many people as possible.



Independent commands take Guardian tech to the old Oresrian Ground bases and discover a strong "negative reaction" - a system programmed in by the Oresrians as a way for humanity to publicly discover that Guardian Tech can be used as an effective weapon. Using the designs developed years before, Engineers like Ram Tah and Palin "Discover" how to make Guardian tech into weapons - but since the superpowers can't just immediately reveal a whole lineup of new weapons only a few days after this discovery, they instead drip-feed these new designs to the public.



Independent pilots are publicly broadcasting everything they find, and this was always the plan to allow the superpowers to move the plan forward - because what we're mostly finding is evidence of a widespread and hostile Thargoid presence.



The Klaxian scouts are figuring out where the space-monkeys are coming from, and are extending their hyperdictions in the direction of the bubble, seeking human space without going too far from the designated search zones (Thargoids are slow to adapt). Any scouts that are getting too close to the bubble are intercepted by Oresrians or AX-equipped Navy pilots - this is why the Federation and Empire pulled out of the Pleiades and the fleets vanished - they are patrolling the border systems using the Oresrian ability to scan Witchspace.



AEGIS places more stations in the Pleaides - providing services for independent pilots to rally from, but ultimately designed to be sacrificed as the Klaxians finally decide Humanity is a threat - and again further slowing the Klaxians down and keeping them in the Pleiades.



Human-Oresrian developed AX weaponry is proving effective, forcing the Klaxians to send in more experienced (older), tougher, scout ships. This signals the start of the point at which Klaxians are seeing Humanity as a threat. Eventually the Klaxian motherships will arrive, at which point Humanity will be engaged in full scale war, fighting alongside the Oresrians against the Klaxians.



Meanwhile, the Klaxian Barnacles seeded years before continue to develop. Fed the "cure" for mycoid by the Scavengers/visiting Klaxian flower ships the larger ones are developing into full Klaxian ground bases. All Barnacles act as relay nodes for the Klaxian sensor grid, but they are essentially organic assemblers and can be grown into any type of support structure necessary. Some act as refuelling points, some bases, some will grow new ships, etc. The 300ly wide Barnacle sensor grid gives the Klaxians a huge base to scan surrounding space, once the Barnacles are fully grown they will be able to scan the entire galaxy (in much the same way humans build huge clusters of radio telescopes to increase resolution).



The barnacle sites in With Head and Californa are likely backup bases, or other forward bases under development. The Alliance set up facilities in California, working with the Oresrians to attempt to "hack" the barnacles - but they're doing it well away from the Pleiades and the bubble in case something goes wrong.



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*Col70 - The Oresrians retreated after the 3150's to their bases in the Col70 area - not the homeworld, but just another colony or outpost - Pilots have noted that there are Guardian ruins pretty close to the edges of Col70, and this is likely when the Oresrians discovered the Guardian tech and used it to hold back the Klaxians and develop a cure for the Mycoid. Eventually the Klaxians found the bases in Col70 and did exactly what they're doing now with the Pleaides bases - surrounding them with a sensor shell, seeding Barnacles and ultimately sending in fleets of ships.



The Oresrians withdrew as this happened (probably to other bases, and some of them into human space) - Salome ultimately ran into the Klaxians who were scouting the area and only just managed to escape, as I've talked about above. This is why Col70 is permit locked to civilians - it's dangerous and the superpowers don't want any independent pilots to accidentally give the Klaxians any info before necessary.



But, this is why the Klaxian probes we found beam signals to a system in the Col70 and Merope. As I've mentioned above, Merope is the centre point of the current search area and Col70 was the previous area the Oresrians withdrew from - so the signals keep the local Klaxians up to date and the Klaxians located in Col70 (presumably the bulk of the fleet in this region of the Galaxy).



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- and that brings us to here, near the end of 3303.