Double Helix

K

Kalfor

Spaceman
What is the info we got from games, books and manuals on the Double Helix?
all and any information, as, if I remember correctly, none has ever been seen
 
The species is named Double Helix because their ship design resembles such. The first contact with them resulted in the death of the crew. I also believe they communication through pheromones or something, I forget. LOAF is better at this crap than me.
 
Their first mention is in Claw Marks, near the beginning of the booklet.

IIRC, the madness bit wasn't mentioned there. With my memory, though, I could just be misremembering things, as I can't find my CM (KS version or otherwise) to check, and I'm too lazy to look for the online CM URL. :p
 
I can check CM for you, but I remember reading about them on another official source. Perhaps on inflight coms in WCP or WCSO.
 
I think they were first mentioned in Privateer. I think there's an entry or two in the Oxford library.

*edit*

Whoops, no, those were the Steltek. Silly me. I thought there might have been something about the double helix in there, too. Guess not.

Here's the link to the page from Claw Marks that Death mentioned: http://claw.solsector.net/3.html

*edit2*

I think the original question was where the Double Helix first appeared. I think they were referred to in the Prophecy manual, but that obviously wasn't the first reference.
 
The Double Helix appear in three sources - Claw Marks, the WCP Non-Human Historical Analysis and in the Secret Ops fiction.

Here's what we know:

The Double Helix are a sentient species of carbon-based arthropods possessing space technology. Their name originates from the unsual design standard of their spacecraft. The most famous aspect of the Double Helix is their method of communication: Double Helixes generate and interperet keyed streams of Freneli-Complex harmoic samples (commonly "info streams") via natural harmonic filters. Doube Helix info streams are transferred via scents and pheromones. It is also known that the Double Helix have very little sense of history in the human sense.

The Double Helix were discovered on 2654.072 when CIAI Proble Number H227 returned from an uncharted jump point carrying information and artifacts. The find was announced to the general public eight days later, in a statement by CIAI spokesman Iola Jonson. First contact was attempted by Dr. Justin Kling, using a modified holo-link transmission. Unfortunately, disaster ensued: the Double Helix representative inadvertently destroyed Dr. Kling's brain during its greeting attempt. Further attempts at communication were succesful, and by 2681 contact with the Double Helix is considered fairly common.
 
ah, didnt know they had contact with Confed in the 80's
is there any mention on where they are located (where the probe found them), and what sort of contact is it they have with confed

I wonder what it means that they dont see history in the same sense of humans
also, I didnt understand their communication (maybe its cause of language barrier)
"Harmonic samples"? "natural harmonic filters"? Eh? :)
 
I think it's mentioned somewhere that the Double Helix are located towards the galactic core; I think the Mantu or the Nephilim are supposed to be located out towards the galactic rim. I might have that backwards, though, or maybe they're both located coreward.

Their communication method is obviously supposed to be technobabble, and as technobabble it's not supposed to be understandable, but I think the basic gist of the idea is that it's supposed to be sorta musical, encoded into physical form (chemicals, rather than photons or sound waves like we use).

As for how they don't see history in the same way as humans, I think it's mentioned specifically somewhere that the Double Helix have no sense of history in the sense that one event leads to another (causality). Human beings have the idea that they move through time, but for the Double Helix, time simply exists, and it doesn't make sense to impose any sort of sequence of events on the past.

In science fiction, that sort of capability is often associated with an omniscience about past and future events (the timeline is fixed, it does not change, we simply perceive to be moving through it), but from reading LOAF's blurb, I don't think it's stated anywhere that the Double Helix know anything about the future. More likely, the Double Helix simply have a mentality that doesn't think about things that way; it's not a perfect comparison, but you could think of it like how lower animals don't really have a concept of the past, but only live in the here and now. Since the Double Helix are sentient, they probably know about past events, but just don't think of them as being in the past.
 
Mantu, Steltek and Nephilim (in that order) are supposed to be located coreward. I don't believe a location is ever given for the Double Helix.

I think you're pretty much right about the history part, though.
 
I think that the Double Helixes' view of time is a result of their method of communication. All wave-based communication (sound, light, radio, etc.) has its data encoded as a sequence of modulations in the carrier wave over time, thus the data in a sentence is spread out over time in a sequential order. The Double Helixes' chemical-based communication, however, is based on the chemical composition/mixture used, and thus all the data in a sentence is conveyed in one simultaneous burst. As a result, the Double Helixes retain memory of past events, but do not regard the order in which they occurred as relevant--all events are either "past" or "present", with no distinction as to which "past" events are farther away than others.
 
in a lame analogy, we may say that Double Helix talk in Parallel, while we talk in Serial.

But even if they convey the meaing of one sentence in one burst, doens't that still imply a timeline, in the sense that there is a dialogue? They probably take turns speaking, even though they talk in bursts.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Mantu, Steltek and Nephilim (in that order) are supposed to be located coreward. I don't believe a location is ever given for the Double Helix.
Click to expand...

Are the Mantu a race as ancient as the Steltek or the Nephilim?
 
The Double Helix give a whole new twist to the phrase: "This idea smells bad". :)

Sorry for the double post! Too many forum windows open!
 
One interesting question:
How do the three most feared races races in this side of the galaxy interact?
Does any of them have contact with the others? I believe the steltek would probably stay on their on, but the Nephs and Mantus seem to be quite aggresive... Didn't the Mantu retire from their war against the kilrathi to fight some greater menace? that could be the Neph.
 
Well, the Mantu have common border (?) with the Kilrathi, right? If the Nephilim were that near Confed, they wouldn't really need those big nasty gates. I think they are from far away or something.
 
If the neph and the mantu have a relation I would say it could be either that they are the same (and used the gate to make a surprise on kilrah, or to move troops in faster) or the nephs WERE that other threat, or connected to them. The gates were used to reach kilrah without having to deal with the mantu alone
what comes to my mind now that the hari sector is supposedly on the other side of the kiralthi empire, so...where are the mantu? on the other side of hari sector? or overlaping it?

also, I remember reading somewhere that the idea for prophecy and its games to follow (that never did), is that there were 3 races joined up against confed and the kats, and the nephilim were just the first, like a mindless wave of killer drones that go in first to slaughter the weaker enemies. If thats true, it could be there your conection with the mantu (or not at all!)
 
The Mantu are explained in the ICIS manual - they're a race (of 'insular explorers') that the Kilrathi demonized because they'd won a war...

also, I remember reading somewhere that the idea for prophecy and its games to follow (that never did), is that there were 3 races joined up against confed and the kats, and the nephilim were just the first, like a mindless wave of killer drones that go in first to slaughter the weaker enemies. If thats true, it could be there your conection with the mantu (or not at all!)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you didn't read that.
 
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