DomK'avash

[Stewgar]

Once in awhile I start to go down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out the story and lore of the DomK'avash. I'm curious to open this up to the community for information sharing. I'd like to start by noting a few things:

1. Yes, I know the game was rushed and incomplete at the end (which is why there is a planet of robots and monkey's in the Unknown systems in vanilla). Whatever intentions Chris Roberts has for the Dommies went down the drain when he started Star Citizen.

2. My second post will detail information that we know along with what it means (possible options). I'm not really going for doubtful possibilities as we can fill an entire forum up with just one item.

3. If a fact is contested, I would like for a source to be cited (rumor on Planet Manhattan etc)

4. Only vanilla content please - not Discovery mod information is to be used.

5. Please share!

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[Stewgar]

1. When humans settled in Sirius, most resources were left untapped. What this means is...

- The DomK'avash was so far advanced that resources that humans use are not important
- The DomK'avash entered Sirius and left briefly for some reason
- A cataclysmic event caused the immediate extinction of DomK'avash as soon as they landed

2. There is little to no infrastructure to show the DomK'avash were even here. What this means is...

- (my personal favorite) The DomK'avash were only in the beginning stages of exploring Sirius before they disappeared
- the lack of erosion that takes place in space means that there should be more infrastructure and artifacts located outside of planets. There is none except for the hypergate in Minor leading to the Dyson Sphere in Major.
- material used by the DomK'avash decays a lot faster

3. It's estimated that the DomK'avash were in Sirius around the time the dinosaurs roamed Earth. What this sadly means is...

- enough time has passed to allow the decay of all infrastructure on planets (doesn't explain artifacts)
- if they still exist, they may not exist in an energy that is comprehensible to human understanding
- they are extinct
- whatever means of them arriving in Sirius is no longer available to them

4. Omega-41 went supernova which is why it is a neutron star. What this means is...

-this event may have caused initial settlements of the DomK'avash to be erradicated.
- if the DomK'avash went extinct because of this event, their entire civilization and peoples must have been in or within 3-5 light years of O-41 at the time of the explosion
- nothing... supernova's may be powerful enough to impact neighboring star systems in a destructive manner, but reaching... say Honshu, unlikely.

5. No signs of war. What this means is...

- there was little to no conflict. What this means is...
- the force that the DomK'avash sent was an expeditionary force
- Nomads cleaned up any wreckage
- there was conflict but in a different part of Sirius not yet explored

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[Kauket]

I think it's probably important to remember when speculating, that in the campaign, you see the starmap for various places across the entire galaxy. Remember that they had a hypergate to jump across entire regions. There's no way that their entire species was in Sirius, it seemed Sirius was more of a sandboxing area for the fun of it

Also entirely possible that their physical form wasn't made out of matter but out of energy or anything else.


they could have been crab people too tbh

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[Chronicron]

easier to think of DKV being like the protheans with slightly more psychoesoteric chronozaza and existing billions of years prior. otherwise interpretations of them might create overlapping confusions. nomads already sometimes cause this enough.

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[The_Godslayer]

5. No signs of war. What this means is...

4. Only vanilla content please - not Discovery mod information is to be used.

How vanilla are we talking? A lot of the history K'Hara uses comes from the 7Crows document, 7Crows being Chris Todd, the one who wrote this stuff. If you're talking what made it into the game, you're limited to the gate to the Dyson Sphere, the ruins being studied by Sinclair and Quintane on Sprague, maybe Pygar, and that planet above the Dyson Sphere presumably. However, Monkeys also made it into the game, as well as endless pink sandwich. Freelancer was an unfinished game. Judging by the progression of ship strengths and the location of the two unfinished systems, the player may have had a "choose your own adventure" moment where they could join either the Outcasts or Corsairs to hunt down remaining Nomad incursions.

Sinclair: Look around you, Miss Zane. You are standing in the living history of the Daam-K’Vosh. A race that predates early man by over 10 million years!
Sinclair: Up until recently, relatively speaking, they were the inhabitants of much of our new home here in Sirius. I’ve been working for years to piece together fragments of their past: their culture, technology, language – anything! These panels here have been the core of my research. They’ve shed light on some of their writings, but thanks to this piece, I’m close to unlocking their code. Yes, I know quite a lot about this artefact, but not why anyone would want to kill for it.

Sinclair: As you know, Doctor Quintaine and I have pored through the translations from the panels, the Proteus Tome, and even the stolen data from the prison ship. It seems the Daam-K’Vosh had a vast empire long before man ever evolved.
Trent: So if these guys were so much more advanced than us, where are they now?
Quintaine: We don’t know, Mr Trent. There’s no evidence to suggest any kind of war or disease or natural disaster that may have done away with them. They just vanished, leaving behind the Nomads.
Sinclair: It seems Nomads, or whatever they were really called – we can’t pronounce the name yet – they were apparently created by the Daam-K’Vosh to, well, look after things.
Trent: We’re fighting the caretakers?
Sinclair: Well, in a manner of speaking. They are opportunistic parasites, not only of Human beings, but of technology, as well.
Quintaine: Which brings us to the artefact. The Daam-K’Vosh had an amazingly advanced technology that was only partially based in these delicate formations. They used them for power, shields, erm… this one is, a, erm… well, we’ll show you. Kendra?
Sinclair: I discovered that if the computer sounded out the phonetic representation of the glyphs in a particular order–
Jacobi: Please, Doctor, in deference to those for us who are simple politicians…
Sinclair: Very well.

[...]

Orillion: I’ll be damned.
Jacobi: It’s beautiful!
Trent: What’s that?
Sinclair: That would be us. The artefact knows where it is in space at all times. It’s a map!
Juni: But of what?
Sinclair: Well, it’s just a theory, but–
Orillion: Spit it out, Doctor!
Quintaine: From what we now know, with an empire as large as the Daam-K’Vosh, they couldn’t rely on simple jump-gates like we have today. They had to develop something more sophisticated. A vast array of hyper-gates linking the far corners of their empire via one incredibly fast system for travel. This device is not only the map, it’s the trigger. A key to reawakening the system!
Orillion: Are you suggesting we turn this thing on?
Quintaine: Yes. If we can reactivate the hyper-gates, we’ll break the hold of the Nomads on their power supply and cut them down to a more manageable size. In theory.

These are the only mentions of the Daam Kvosh by name in the Freelancer Campaign, outside of missions 5 and 6 establishing that its exceedingly rare to find an active artefact, that there was only one such artefact known to the team, and that it was stolen. Source.

I have an install of Vanilla freelancer, but I have no idea how to pull and list infocards, otherwise I'd scour that, too.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Stewgar]

...in the campaign, you see the starmap for various places across the entire galaxy. Remember that they had a hypergate to jump across entire regions. There's no way that their entire species was in Sirius, it seemed Sirius was more of a sandboxing area for the fun of it

Also entirely possible that their physical form wasn't made out of matter but out of energy or anything else.

That's a good point, I've added the star map to my notes. Re-watching the campaign, I JUST got to that part too. I'm tending to believe that they came from somewhere and were in Sirius in a minimal capacity. Your idea that they existed in a different energy than physical is also interesting. I prefer, and it's easier to, imagine them as physical intelligent entities. When I come up with my own head canon, that's probably what I'll do for the sake of simplicity. But it's something worth thinking about!

easier to think of DKV being like the protheans with slightly more psychoesoteric chronozaza and existing billions of years prior. otherwise interpretations of them might create overlapping confusions. nomads already sometimes cause this enough.

Yeah, it is kind of disappointing knowing that they existed hundreds of millions of years ago, if not billions. Any kind of hope of a DKV return is killed by that unless it's retconn'd through head canon or Discovery canon (which I hate). Story should match lore, not the other way around. Good point!

A lot of good shit

You are a godsend, Godslayer... heh. I have lost this document and I'm very glad you posted it. I've used this source in the past when explaining Valhalla 1 on Manhattan and my belief that the artifacts (the little gems) are more or less data cubes to store information. The finding on Planet Manhattan is what lead to Liberty accelerating it's technology so rapidly to have an edge over the other houses. So, to answer your question, I would use any source that is introduce by the creator, Chris Roberts, as canon. If something contradicts this document, or any other documents, with the singleplayer campaign, I think personal preference would be considered our own canon.

It's interesting that Sinclair mentioned "over 10 million years ago". I would have thought she'd make mention about "when we humans were barely single celled organisms" or something to that effect. 10 million feels a lot less than 100 or so on million years. I also struggle with a little bit of contradiction. Most of the artifacts and infrastructure has been found on planets. Besides the dyson sphere and hypergate, there's nothing found in space. For a seafaring race, this seems off. I would like to head canon think that Sinclair, excited about her research, wants to believe that there is so much to unravel in Sirius with the thought that this was home for them. I don't think this is the case, there's not enough evidence to support that Sirius was a major region for the DKV.

Thank you all for the information share so far! I have some things to chew on and think about.

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[jammi]

Most of the artifacts and infrastructure has been found on planets. Besides the dyson sphere and hypergate, there's nothing found in space. For a seafaring race, this seems off.

I'll probably respond to this thread another time with some more substantial thoughts, but this little bit jumped out at me. That's not necessarily true.

Artifacts are mined in space, in both Omicron Gamma and Theta. In Gamma's Malvada Field and Theta's Napo Field, they are free floating. Bothof them also use the same kind of asteroid asset.

If you look closely at those rocks, they don't exactly look like natural formations; there are patterned surfaces, what appear to be shatter lines, followed by an internal rockface on the other surfaces. There's also a suspicious visual similarity to some of the detailing found on Nomad hives. The Artifacts are also artificial objects, not things that could be mined from naturally occurring deposits.

What that says to me, is in vanilla at least, this specific pairing - strange "Nomad" asteroids, and freefloating Artifact drops - likely means these are actually ancient debris fields. Not naturally occurring asteroids at all.

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[Stewgar]

I'll probably respond to this thread another time with some more substantial thoughts, but this little bit jumped out at me. That's not necessarily true.

Artifacts are mined in space, in both Omicron Gamma and Theta. In Gamma's Malvada Field and Theta's Napo Field, they are free floating. Bothof them also use the same kind of asteroid asset.

If you look closely at those rocks, they don't exactly look like natural formations; there are patterned surfaces, what appear to be shatter lines, followed by an internal rockface on the other surfaces. There's also a suspicious visual similarity to some of the detailing found on Nomad hives. The Artifacts are also artificial objects, not things that could be mined from naturally occurring deposits.

What that says to me, is in vanilla at least, this specific pairing - strange "Nomad" asteroids, and freefloating Artifact drops - likely means these are actually ancient debris fields. Not naturally occurring asteroids at all.

The straightness of the lines also adds evidence that this was manufactured and not naturally occurring. Interesting... didn't even know this.

So I wonder then... the material is similar to that of a Nomad hive. What this means is...

- DMK material used to build structure is the same as what the Nomads use
- DMK built the structures that the Nomads use in their hives and similar structures
- Nomads were possible builders for the DMK and used this material

Could be other implications as well, but this is interesting!

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[Sombs]

There is a set piece from one of the unused cutscenes that gives us a little bit of insight on what Daam K'Vosh structures look like - the set piece is actually in the files and can be looked at with tools like LancerEdit or UTF Editor.



It is a shame that so much of the finished content didn't end up getting actively used in the game, but we all know that the campaign was supposed to be a lot more than it ended up being. There are tons of unused voice lines in the files. They simply needed to rush things in the end, which becomes horrible apparent in the later missions.

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[The_Godslayer]

It's interesting that Sinclair mentioned "over 10 million years ago". I would have thought she'd make mention about "when we humans were barely single celled organisms" or something to that effect. 10 million feels a lot less than 100 or so on million years.

I'm not sure how intentional this is from Mr Robber, but this is a somewhat common archaeologist thing that I see in papers. The "over X years ago" is a bottom line for theoretical history. It could be trillions of years, but what they're sure of is that it's 10 million at least. However, expecting a game storywriter from the early 2000s to be clued into that kind of convention from a completely different field is a bit of a stretch.

- DMK material used to build structure is the same as what the Nomads use
- DMK built the structures that the Nomads use in their hives and similar structures
- Nomads were possible builders for the DMK and used this material

Jammi brought up an astronomical point that has taken a background position in my brain. We included this into Discovery Nomad Lore, in the concept of Matterweave.

Complicated Discovery Nomad Science Fiction

Matterweave, as we rationalized it, is the primary building material for DKV and Nomad structures. It can be arranged in any shape, but is commonly arranged in hexagonal crystals, as hexagons have very high structural strength and incredible tessellation properties. Matterweave is made from macroquantum superpositioning, that is quantum superpositioning on a significantly larger scale than fundamental particles, specifically on the atomic scale. This allows two atoms to be joined in a way that makes them functionally one atom, resulting in a super-lightweight, super-strong material. Repeat this process, and every DKV structure and Nomad structure can be considered as one singular atom despite it's scale. This is where the term Matterweave comes from, as it is in its most literal sense matter that has been woven together. Decay in these structures takes millions of years in a state of complete abandonment, as the superposition eventually decays into its constituent atoms without a conscious observer to stimulate the quantum nature of the superposition. Scorpion Gunboats are also made of Matterweave, but look different because they're made from human sacrifices that are not completely and entirely converted to Matterweave.

tl;dr it's regular sci-fi unobtanium, but without infinite energy potential like it's peers.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"