How do we refresh the concept of Ancient aliens?

They're still around, of course. UFOs ain't a joke. "Atlantis" has been here the whole time under a cloaking field.
Humanity is an ongoing experiment.

The ancient ayyums don't come from outer space; they come from inner space. They're fucking with us from the Center of the Earth!

The aliens aren' actually aliens but angels. Cast by God.

They aren't actually ancient nor did they influence human cultures, they just say they're that to give them more legitimacy than they really have

It's literally never done.

All plant life on Earth is actually aliens.

Ayylamos are suppressing latent human psychic powers because they're jealous

provide examples for this claim.

We discover a big old ship buried in the desert filled with technology we can't even decipher and records that we can about how these beings shaped human culture in the days before record keeping, but strangely it doesn't make any mention of where they came from.

Turns out there were no aliens, this ship belonged to Ra, and something sometime in the distant past shot it out of the sky.

Whenever Starfleet interacts with less developed lifeforms this scenario takes place.

Gaylo

Thats an awesome concept. Would Ra be a human? something like Atlantis, ancient advanced people who ruled over the more primitive continental types

> How do we refresh the concept of Ancient aliens?
There are actually aliens of two kinds - the ones we can relate to - whether they are friendly or not - that live in our galaxy, and the mysterious threat from the other galaxy.
It turns out that humanity went back to the past and created the aliens in our galaxy so that they act as meatshields against aliens from another galaxy.

It's not actually aliens but messengers to a real god figure. Make them think it's science fiction and then add in Strong religious notions.

Make them Phoenician Dwemer shit. Explorers with advanced technology but really they were explorers and just liked to create some colonies along the way to do some trade and whatnot.

They're not aliens, they're people from the true surface of the planet coming down to monitor the progress of the people on the inner planet.

They're not actually that advanced. They're a race of sentient rock creatures with geokinisis or a bunch of weird ethereal spirits.

They travel thrpugh space by being functionally immortal and just using their weird abilities to get off world.

Thus there's not really any fancy precursor or FTL tech to find

Dogs are the descendants of ancient aliens that were no match for human strength and decided that the only way for survival was to become our best friends.
Wolves are the descendants of aliens that dind't want to surrender.

Halo, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape (to an extent).

We are the ancient aliens.
>we actually developed into a powerful empire
>created countless races
>created a God
>ascended to being angels
>now there are no humans around

Soo evangelion?

No, Shin Megami Tensei.

In stargate, we're native to earth. We were taken abroad by various alien races. So we're not the aliens, exactly.

I assume he was referring to the Ancients with that one

Yeah, that works.

I am a really big fan of the "not really Ancient Aliens, but Earth is populated by a lost colony ship."

Anyone hung up on: "How do we make [thing] [relevant] again," or some other wording, is summary evidence that you're not actually writing a story, you're chaining together tropes and prepackaged thematic elements to try and make something that looks like a story.

we don't make them all that advanced

I've thought about doing that before
A game where all the players are aliens and know about the hyper advanced civilization at the edge of known space that basically ignores everyone else and fucks up anyone who gets too close to their territory
Eventually the players would come across a multi hundred kilometer long ship crewed by one of these aliens and discover they are humans, but they would be post singularity techno-biological organisms that blend the best of organic and synthetic life together

Never went through with it though

That could work. Just examples of differently constructed technology and visually alien architecture.

Ancient aliens are humans, but space-wizard humans no longer recognizably related to their lost and feral colonies.

Halo's ancient humanity sounded so damn stupid when I first heard about it but reading the background it's not actually too bad. Certainly doable in scifi, although frankly I'm still not convinced Halo needed it specifically.

Farscape's version was interesting. Certainly doable but a bit curious they had to go so far out of their way to collect a primitive species to elevate. But, okay, they didn't want any being connected to any government or anyone's territory whose peace they might be brokering.

the ancient alien is another human from another dimension named Rick.

Got you, senpai, thank me later:
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3113319/How-did-mummy-mummified-body-melting-ice-high-Mexican-mountain-ISN-T-wearing-climbing-gear.html

The obvious thing to do: immense steel-like dropships make a sudden descent all over the globe and looming menacingly over major cities, waiting until just after the heroes assemble and get their briefing before showing any signs of activity.

So instead of doing any of those things, do none of those things.

I'm not being obtuse. Write your own damn scenario, and then cross out anything that matches my paragraph. Dropships. Cities. Briefing. Anything.

Ages ago, a spacefaring race saw a primitive planet threatened by eldritch abominations. They came down, wrecked c'thulhu's shit, and set defenses to prevent it from happening again.

Minions of the original invasion and traitor/corrupted humans were still a threat, and the race had other people to protect, so they uplifted some of the locals to watch over the planet until they could return and clean it out properly.

PCs belong to a secret order of paladins/jedi/techno-wizards protecting the world from evil aliens, and occasionally get a visit from their teachers who are pretty cool guys, but overworked dealing with all the space monsters and evil empires out there.

Ancient aliens remains are not exactly that. They're actually from a stable time loop of your own civilization.

WHAT WILL BE WAS. WHAT WAS WILL BE.

Quinn doesn't get enough love here or /co/. Lot of fun species that otherwise tickle Veeky Forumss love of slimegirls/monstergirls.

>there was no ancient aliens
>no humans who were ancient aliens
>it was universe trying to communicate with humans
>approach has failed so bad that universe's "mind" gone awry, and it gone to sleep
>the mind of universe is universe itself and every creature born in it
>literally all of sapient beings are pieces of universe's schizophrenic "mind", death is returning to majority of it
>that's how you can explain magic and space magics: people argue with universe on it's language so it believes them
>like putting your finger in cup when you sleep will make you wet your bed
>and communication was so bad that sleeping mind of universe actually don't cares or hates every sapient being
>that's how you get eldritch enlightment right and make madmen blabber about death as salvation really matter something
I can go deeper if you wanna.

>Mentioning Cthulhu even though the Elder Tings created Humans and are the reason Cthulhu is sealed underwater
>implying Nyarlathotep or another Great Old One wouldn't be able to penetrate these defences

we're more of a sub species that the ancients developed/created.

Humans and Alterans are related, but Humans were either 'created' before the Asuran/Ancient split, or was a cause of it as the Asurans needed lesser species to worship them after ascension and the ancients rescued a few and took them with them when they fled Avalon to the milky way and then Pegasus

>Spaceship is literally dick&balls

1. They're actually future humans who traveled back in time.

2. They've never left and have been slowly aiding our development to make us ready to join interstellar society.

3. They've never left and have been blocking our development because they see us as a potential threat, but don't have the heart to wipe us out.

I actually preferred the old stuff with Humans being the forerunners rather than the 343 retcon.

You really need to brush up on your Stargate as Asurans were replicators built by the Ancients in the Pegasus galaxy millions of years after they first arrived in the Milky Way/Avalon.

The split you are referring to is the Ancient/Ori split and that occurred over 50 million years ago at which point none of them were ascended and both were the same species. The little evidence we have points to the Ancients achieving Ascension first as the Ori were oblivious to everything outside their own galaxy until Daniel and Vala fucked that up

The Ancient Aliens you discover we're themselves moulded by another race of Ancienter Aliens.

Humanity finally makes contact with another sapient alien race.
After initial diplomacy has begun someone half-jokingly tells the aliens about our old ufo/abduction and ancient alien conspiracies.
To humanity's surprise the response is equivalent to "Holy shit that happened to you guys as well!?".
Turns out the ancient aliens are still around and just enjoy fucking with everyone humanity was nothing special to them.

The main character (the pirate) is the worst kind of Mary Sue. Only the ancillary characters are actually likable.

>blending synthetic and organic life
>not being something entirely unique
>"synthetic" in the literal sense, but as far removed from flesh and blood as it is from plastic and metals
I like my posthumans to be physical thoughtforms, really fucking advanced nanobots, or other such hyperscience.
The only reason they look "human" at that point is because the surviving human culture that became posthuman likes the aesthetic.
Naturally, they all look like greco-roman ubermensch.

That happened? Hoi that's dumb. 343 plz stop

>The only reason they look "human" at that point is because the surviving human culture that became posthuman likes the aesthetic.
Naturally, they all look like greco-roman ubermensch.

Exactly, sure you can change your form to look like anything but in an effort to preserve classical human cultures many choose to look like idalized humans when not taking more specialized forms
I mean really they are just a sentient mass of quasicrystalline goo and force fields

I always liked the story of roadside picnic for salvaged alien tech. Aliens crash/land and then take off again, leaving some stuff that for them, is garbage, but to us is basically magic. If the story sounds familiar, it inspired the movie that inspired the game STALKER.

I like the idea of their specialized "warforms" being physically perfect humans at their core, but with dozens of extra arms like you would see in hindu mythology, along with orbiting halos of weapon platforms and the like, wings of levitating engines, etc.
A generally abstract, quasi-angelic looking form of a pure human at the center, surrounded by a swarm of varying, specialized modules and tools that look like they're being controlled by pure thought.

And to expound on this, not even warforms, but specialized forms in general.

At the core, every human is a pure human form, but depending on what they do, they can have any number of personalized and unique attache swarms based on the same substrate they themselves are made of.

Workers and engineers might be surrounded by disembodied hands, arms, claws and so forth, floating probes with an obscene number of degrees of freedom, etc and so forth for other positions.

In fact, it'd be cool if human space ships weren't actually "ships" at all, just humans linked with specially designed CnC modules that drastically increased the number of units they can control at once, their "ships" just being massive swarms of engines, power generators, weapons, shield projectors, etc and so forth, all linked together in some forcefield lattice controlled by the human.

THE WORM IS WAITING AND HE DEMANDS ANOTHER SCIENTIST. WHAT WAS WILL BE, WHAT WILL BE, WAS [\spoiler]

Ancient aliens actually seeded the dinosaurs, and they're upset that their experiments are no longer around. But they think that's our fault.

You might dig the Therians from AT-43.

Make them really dumb and incompentent ancient aliens part of larger interstellar community. Space Hillbillies who went out on a not completely sober abductin trip. Fucking with developing/primeval plants essentially there equivalent of mudding, stumping or equivalent reckless country folk sport.

I do like them, but my heart will forever belong to the UNA aesthetic.

Therians where the best part of that game

It's just a comic about fun and silly shit that isn't meant to be taken seriously or get too serious. I'm not really sure a Mary Sue makes sense in that context. It runs on rules of comedy 90% of the time. I mean if you don't like her antics, fine, but at least enjoy her lack of pants.

They are actually pretty radical dudes, they just like to sometimes pretend to be enigmatically pretentious for fun. They have a somewhat hedonistic culture thats all about enjoying your job while remaining as stylish and aesthetically pleasing as possible. Sometimes they like to play incredibly complicated pranks on primitives.

Post more space outsider aesthetics

Wut, I didn't spoil that.
Fucking gookmoot.

I'll try.

He knows when you're posting pics of someone pinching the universe's clit.

...

What if skeletons are the aliens?

Kind of sounds like the more active version of the "Enigmatic Observers" Fallen Empires from Stellaris. They are a archetype of randomly created, stagnant fallen empires that just kind of don't care about anything anymore, except that they observe the entire galaxy with mighty advanced technology to use the galaxy as a theater for them, from which they produce highly engaging reality tv shows. Those reality tv shows are basically the only thing they still care about, except for some vague semblence that they somehow represent xenophilia and diversity. Oh and if someone goes too much off the rails enslaving and purging xenos they occasionally teleport in, destroy all your warships, free all slaves, kill your leaders and teleport right back out again. If you try to interact they just tell you to fuck off and stop trying to break the fourth wall because you are but a puny little tv figure.

So "ancient aliens just do random shit to developing races with no semblence of decency".

>On one world they will just randomly kill every child and see what happens. On others they fly around anal probing random people.

>On others they just genetically engineer a few hundred plants that produce insanely strong hallucigenics.

>Sometimes they just plant all these obelisks, but in reality they just take random cooking receipts and jumble the words just to fuck with them when they read that on the obelisks wondering what it might mean.

>Elsewhere they act as these insane old gods with thousands of rules that make no sense.

>And sometimes they use their technology to make people belive magic is real; they just detect whenever someone is trying to do "magic" and use technology to make it happen; give it really detailed rules and put a lot of thought into it, making these people belive they are discovering real thruth about the world. When they finally "achive" interstellar travel with their "magic" they take the magic away and say "haha, gottcha, magic isn't even real!

WE'VE BEEN HIDING INSIDE OF YOU THE ENTIRE TIME HAHAHA JOKES ON YOU!!

But user, skeletons ARE aliens. They've been infected with meat, made slaves to muscles to ferry organs and other tissues and various fluids around. We think we're intelligent beings but really we're parasites built around an eternally yet silently screaming skeleton praying for the sweet release of our deaths so they can be free again.

AW SON OF A BITCH

Sometimes they give a younger empire one of their warships, watching as they go off the rails and conquer an opposing empire using what amounts to a normal destroyer for the ancients.

>humans being born are actually a nascent parasite drawing a skeleton from the spookiverse, manifesting it in corporeal reality where it can know only pain.

I prefer that the mommy's skeleton gives birth to a baby skeleton which is immediately infected with the meat.

The meat is without mercy.

They are just pic related but as aliens

>Dude what if we just shrunk everbody on that planet to a tenth of their size but make sure their brains are still as capable

>Haha, great idea, they will wake up like "what the fuck is this, why am I shrunk. They will have no idea what hit them!

>Yeah, haha, exctly dude

Drugs and post singularity tech make a hell of a combination.

Therians VS Cravers VS Silicon Life

Who wins?

What can Therians do?

Battlestar galactica

my b, yes, the asurans were the replicators. the Ori/Alteran split was idealogical,

how would the Ori know that worhisp increased their power if there were not lesser races around to worship them?

i always got the feel that the Ori got the bare bones basic asension first, made a massive shitstorm of it, caused the rift between the factions of spiritualists who got there without all the fancy tech and on pure soul power, and the Ancients, who went with a more science approach

actually, that makes sense. a few people figure out how to ascend, keep it to themselves, indoctrinate other humans/Alterans, got a cult around them, then did a coup to get more worship. those few that ascended chased out the Ancients, then they became Ori

Be /b/tards living life like it's an MMO with access to posthuman tech and the goal to turn all of existence into dyson spheres.

Is OP Peter Quill?

I want to say it is a close race between Silicon Life and Therians with Therians edging them out by sheer numbers but only barely since SL have a bunch of gravity weapons and other nonsense
But then again I don't know too much about the Cravers

What's the Silicon Life?

Writing a campaign is different then writing a novel.

It's more likely some guy just wants to talk about a thing he likes on Veeky Forums.

It is from BLAME!
Basically they are, if I remember right, the a.i./uploaded humans? for this giant city that after an indeterminate period of time went crazy and allowed the city to expand to stupid proportions

I don't really remember so just look it up the manga is pretty good, and so is everything else by Tsutomu Nihei

I was kinda under the impression that while individually rather strong Silicon Life don't have a lot of numbers (Comparatively in setting anyway).

The biggest threat in setting is easily Safeguard, they start out rather strong and at higher tiers become stupidly OP.

No, you're probably thinking of the Governors. Silicon Life are the loosely knit clans of hostile cyborgs that roam the City and fight with the Safe Guard/Authority.

Imagine raiders from Fallout or Mad Max, only except they passed the technological singularity so long ago that any attempt to quantify it would be meaningless.

F5