Arachi's Drak - TheGiraffe3/Endless-Sky-Creators-Handbook GitHub Wiki
Original text, by Arachi, AKA fgnt
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Introduction
In this doc, I’ll lay out my thoughts on the Drak and Archons, and give what ideas I had on them for a while, which could all still work with some of what was detailed on MZ’s doc. I don’t expect this to become canon, but it is best I let these ideas be known so that I don’t become frustrated and lash out at someone, however much I try and prevent that from happening.
In many of the following topics, I will essentially just paste some bits of trivia I had written for fun about the Drak or Archons, for the purpose of explaining the ideas.
My Problems with the Doc
I’ll admit I am disappointed in the Drak being effectively extinct, as I always saw that as the easiest way out of their whole mystery, but I can make peace with that. What I find more annoying however is the idea that the Archons can be killed by the Pug, but aren’t because of Pug morals. The whole concept of Tier 5 Pug and Tier 4 Drak doesn’t make sense to me, as that just makes it very clear which side is strongest in this “Cold War,” at least on terms of tech level, which I don’t think is appropriate for ES where the idea with campaigns and such is to have morally gray factions, so that no answer is the definitive right answer.
In terms of Tier, having a ceiling with two evenly matched factions is what allows for the Cold War scenario in the first place, where the Pug have tech that even the Drak don’t possess, wormhole technology, but the Drak have developed the Archons, which are unlike anything else we see, and with the all but confirmed ability to destroy stars themselves. If the ceiling is Tier 5, with only the Pug there, and they have the ability to kill all Archons if they wanted to, there is no Cold War, because while the Pug technically can’t make Archons, as that would require living Drak to achieve the same “type” of Archon, the implication that they know what Archons are, perhaps even how they came to be (which are things that the Archons would tell nobody if they didn’t tell the truth to the Quarg of all people), and on top of that having their own supertech, wormhole creation and with it extragalactic travel, the whole conflict becomes one-sided, with the Drak clearly getting the short end of the stick.
“But Arachi,” you ask, “what about the Quarg? They balance out the conflict by siding with the Drak.” To which I respond that the Quarg serving as a balancing tool, if we were to be honest about it, would mean the Pug would just die, because the numbers advantage the Quarg hold is so incomprehensible they would have no issue having thousands of ships per system, at which point an advantage of two tiers would not matter. The Quarg serving as a balancing point is inconsistent, for if they were to be consistent with there being trillions of them, they would be indisputably the mightiest force in the game when angered, who would also be able of killing Archons, the “artificial gods,” by virtue of numbers alone, and the Pug have certainly angered them. In short, taking the Quarg’s numbers into the equation doesn’t balance things, it just makes the Quarg skyrocket the “Pug bad” team’s power level, which, again, wouldn’t be a Cold War.
If, however, the Archons had something that the Pug don’t understand, something that allowed them to survive whatever weapon the Pug have, or however many numbers the Quarg have, then they would still hold legitimacy as the “strongest” of the galaxy, for they could outlast the Quarg by virtue of a few, truly unkillable ship-beings (the Archons), and if the Pug don’t have that technology, that sets it back to each side having something unique, their own “Tier 4 license.”
As a closing note on the Cold War comparison, let’s say the Pug are the USSR. Could the USSR wipe Cyprus off the map? Yes, definetly. There wouldn’t be any good reason to, but they could. Could the USSR wipe the US off the map? In theory, possibly, in practice, it would be MAD.
What would the Archons have?
As said their big trump card would be true immortality, basically a “retreat to another dimension to heal whenever injured” ability that always activated when they took enough damage. Basically the lore version of that idea to make Archons “respawn” in the game, via missions that reset their positions whenever they died.
What Became of the Drak
My original idea with this is that “Nox” would be the only system with Drak in it, and could still work with the Drak being extinct.
The idea for this system would be one that isn’t visible normally, and would only be accessible under exceptional circumstances. Guarded by two Archons, it would also be one of very high security, the “your weapons will not work” part being something I thought could be neat there, with a mechanic that made it so that the inputs for firing any weapons simply didn’t work on the system, justified with the Archons manipulating your weapon systems in that manner.
The names of the Archons allude to parts of the system, Golden Sun meaning the star, and Requiem of Wisps the nebula-esque fog.