No, no, Penguin, you got your critique of Knight's theory wrong
. If the bugs had arrived at Kilrah 4000 years ago and only got back now, then we're looking at 4000 years in both directions, not 2000. That's a total of 8000 years, which makes his theory much more implausible
.
Knight: I for one don't think the Nephilem were space-farers 8000 years ago. Unless their society has long stopped developing (which is clearly not the case, judging from the ship tweaks between WCP and SO), they would have some pretty fancy technology by now. And yet, they didn't have anything that advanced.
Penguin: That's an interesting theory. Indeed, there's something to it, considering the troubles Hernando Cortez had with the Aztecs (I highly recommend to anyone who can find it, that s/he ought to read a book by Diaz... Bernal Diaz, I think... I can't remember its title, but it was the memoirs of one of the soldiers who went along with Cortez, and on two earlier expeditions, too). Just because the Nephilem were so advanced doesn't mean that they wouldn't have found the Kilrathi intimidating - especially considering that they might have understood Kilrathi honour enough to know that the Felines will never surrender. Also, we may be looking at the element of surprise here. The Nephilem may not have expected the Kilrathi to assemble an army, being savages and all. Then, when the army had assembled, they looked at it, said "Eep!", and decided that they'd best get going.
At any rate, I like your explanation for the assembly of all the Clans, though I suspect that even in this scenario, it was just a small group of Kilrathi Clans - it would be insane to assume that the Kilrathi had means of planet-spanning communication back then. However, if we assume that the "Star Gods" religion had an effect on the Kilrathi similar to that of Islam on the Arabs, it does seem quite likely that the doctrine was later accepted by the rest of the Kilrathi society, once the Empire was formed. It would be interesting to see what Kilrathi religions
didn't survive the Empire.
However, your 4000-year-gap explanation still isn't adequate. It's true that they could have simply forgotten - or chosen to forget (wasn't that what happened with the Vikings in Vinland?). But why would they suddenly remember? I mean, even if it's just the sort of archaeological exploration of the past as we are doing now (we meaning humans, not us specifically)... well, yes. I mean, if you look at an ancient record and find that your race had found a noteworthy alien race, and then promised to come back and fight, you might feel a bit intimidated. You would assume that the aliens were also preparing, and if you don't strike first, they might get ya.
Nonetheless, this doesn't explain why
now. 4000 years is way too long. Given the technology levels the Nephilem must have had when they first found the Kilrathi, I do not see it to be possible that they went through a 4000-year-long process of destruction and rebuilding. The Dark Ages lasted roughly a thousand years, but in reality they lasted a lot less, and they didn't affect the entire civilisation. Even at the height of the Dark Ages, you would have found many a scholar in parts of Europe. Thus, it's not comparable to what would have had to be a 4000-year-long civilisation-wide blackout.
I've just come up with an interesting theory, though. I don't think it's quite worth posting here yet (haven't got it all clear), but it involves the fact that we've got no proof that the Nephilem are the Star Gods. I'm sure Shane (aka "The Man Who Claims There Were Two Alien Races"
) will be pleased with this one. Yes, he will be most pleased.
) and on the mission where you have to reconnoiter the 2nd ship killer I got a big surprise. I showed up at the nav point and there was the ship killer but something was awfully wrong. It had a huge growth sticking out of it's side! It looked like it had developed an enormous tumor! I checked the object camera and the tumor turns out to be an asteroid that somehow the game engine had placed in almost the same spot as the ship killer. After gawking for a bit I hit the autopilot to fly home and in the little scene where you see your wing do a flyby my wingman actually flew through an asteroid!
