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Originally published on May 2016

New detailed topic, focused on the Elite Lore!

You will learn everything you need to know about the Lore. This mythical saga begun in 1984 with David Braben (CEO of Frontier) and Ian Bell who worked on Elite. It was then continued by David Braben on Frontier: Elite II, Frontier: First Encounters, and finally, Elite: Dangerous.

I realise that this is a big piece of Lore, and that all the players will not be interested in it, but I’m also certain that some Roleplayers will love it. Sooo, here you are!

Various verified sources are used such as Lore books (sorted canon or not), Galnet, Codex, discussions with many fans of the Elite: Dangerous Lore, etc.

Some points may no longer be accurate, due to changes in the Lore made by Frontier. Some pieces of the Lore may have been removed by the superpowers themselves or another group in the shadows. I’ll keep Elite lore as it is and will update it if points turn out to be wrong now. The sentences in italic might be non canonical at the moment.

The Elite Lore has developed from the world we know today. It is a future coming from today’s humanity and developed by the magic of science fiction! We will start the story about 70 years ago, during the first humanity’s steps in space; And then we will explore the dangerous world of Elite until today in 3303.

Hang on, put on some music, the story is not rosy and could be ours soon. Let’s dive into the timeline, take your time!

Elite-Dangerous-DivisionRace to Space

  • 1947, the pilot Chuck Yeager is the first to overcome the sound barrier, a very important point in the launch of rockets that will later bring the man into space. The X1, or Glamorous Glennis, is the machine that allowed this feat.
  • 1959, the X15 rocket reaches Mach 6.7 and promises great successes to the human civilisation.
  • Early 1960, the first human probes are launched in the solar system thanks to improved computing, integrated circuits and fission power.
  • 1961, Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space, a flight time of 1 hour and 48 minutes, thanks to the Vostok 1. It completed 1 Earth orbit.
  • 1969, scientific progress continues and Neil Amstrong is the first man to set foot on the moon.

  • 1970, while more probes scan our system and its stellar bodies, the nuclear race slowly begins… and brings disaster after disaster to the population of Earth.
  • 1980 to 1990, end of the nuclear race and first major environmental problems. Nuclear fusion remains highly controlled.
  • 1990 to 2010 sees the environmental problems continuously increasing. This creates wars between nations. The problems of the human population are growing on Earth.
  • 2020 sees the first environmental protection agency to be created as well as the first commercial space station! We start to crawl outside of Earth.

Third World War

  • 2030, major power crisis. The fossil energies disappear, religions disorders, the first baby born outside the Earth, in space.
  • 2040, after all these, the Third World War breaks out and proposes, as with every great war unfortunately, very great scientific advances. We lost a lot of lives and destroyed the environment that was so precious to us. Economic, environmental disaster, everything changes (when the fire nation attacked…)
  • 2050, war no longer makes sense, rebellions fight among themselves. The Fusion power trade begins.
  • 2060, the rebuilding of civilisation begins. However, the winning rebellions became corporations and remain dominant.
  • 2070 to 2080. Period of order and great technological advances “thanks” to the previous wars. We set foot on Mars and set up the first permanent base on the Moon. The orbital cities continue to develop and the first interstellar probes are launched in order to visit beyond the solar system.
  • 2090. Heavy industrialisation on the Moon, and trading increase on the latter. The first permanent base is installed on Mars.

New Lifeforms

  • 2100 to 2120, new fossil fuels are discovered on Mars, allowing the development of new technologies: a new breath for our space drives. The first four-dimensional drives will propel humans farther than ever, ever faster! We even discover life on Tau Ceti 3. The first space combats are raging: some groups want to take control of the best asteroid belts, to ensure a strong economy to its owner.
  • 2130, more powerful probes are sent ever deeper into space.
  • 2140 to 2150, we send men to Tau Ceti 3 in order to establish a colony and discover these new living species. Large corporations send many private colonisation ships. Economy and resources always prevail in the human being, thirsty for power.
  • 2160, mass exodus of the human civilisation towards new stars. Race to the stars, a new era of human territory expansion begins. Enormous efforts are being made to create ever more efficient spaceships.

  • 2170, first terraforming tests on Mars.
  • 2180 to 2200, a new lifeform is detected on Delta Parvonis… and it extincts the same year because of bacteriological infection with the human race. Again, lifeforms are found on Beta Hydri 4 and Altair 5: Human colonisation is out of control! The Earth wants to regain control, and starts its Renewal program in order to improve the Earth environments. This could help the population thinking about returning to the Solar system. The terraforming of Mars is abandoned in favour of the Earth.

Birth of the Federation and the Empire

  • 2220 to 2240, after several calls from the police forces on Tau Ceti 3, an ultimatum is launched so that Tau Ceti rejoins the population of Sol, 100 years after the beginning of the colonisation. The ultimatum is ignored… it is the first major space battle and also the formation of the Federation following the equality between the corporations. The Federation is made up of the Earth, Tau Ceti, Delta Pavonis, Altair and Beta Hydri: the first systems colonised by men.
  • 2260 to 2300. The Federation expands its influence and the second attempt at terraforming on Mars is resumed. This proves very effective and allows in 2280, the life onto the planet without an oxygen mask. An alien relic is found… however its origin will remain unknown until 3200. In the year 2300, the last forms of sentient lives on Tau Ceti 3 are kept in parks, in the manner of the native americans… We begin to understand the importance of these lives quite too late, and the Federation makes a strop to these abuses in order to protect the new lifeforms.
  • 2310 to 2340, news of a sentient life completely annihilated on Achenar 6D caused great disturbances to the Federation, strongly sermonising the Achenar settlers and asking the latter to join the Federation. They refuse and begin the terraforming of several planets in order to establish an independent and strong system. Dissatisfied with this outcome, the Federation sends warfleets to Achenar… where they are crushed by the coalition on the spot. The Empire is created and is now giving a merciless war to the Federation.

 

  • 2350, the economic Sirius corporation is created and benefits very much from the conveniences sold to the Empire and the Federation during the wars, growing rapidly and amassing gigantic wealth.
  • 2380, 50 years after the start of the war, a treaty was created, assuring the Empire and the Federation a time of peace… this is the beginning of the Cold War.
  • 2400 sees the creation of the Galactic Cooperation of the Worlds (GalCop). The latter is a group aspiring to maintain peace between the Federation, the Empire and independent systems. A very large budget is allocated to the initiative in order to create an army and a police so they can defend the systems attacked by another superpower. This is the beginning of a great era of peace and calm, which has not occurred for a long time.
  • 2650, TerraCorp is created and embarks on the production of earthly goods. They export creations from the Earth and improve the economy of the Earth. Many new vessels are emerging in human space.

Hyperspace and dangerous beginnings

  • 2663, Faraway Jump ! This is the very first type of hyperspace travel, also called hyperspace type 0. It took centuries for mankind to manage the many satellites used for the success of this process. With this, external ships were to help prepare the jump, very long calculations of jump lines, rescue stations had to be prepared in order to ensure success at these primitive jumps allowing hyperspace on some major roads . It was very dangerous to make an unsupervised jump. This could lead to time shifting and even atomic reorganisation at the molecular level on all jumping objects, including men. This jump was nicknamed the Witch-Space because of the rumours: this tunnel, this corridor, could have been haunted by the ships having entered this navigation mode, without ever leaving. This was the biggest pilots’ fear: jumps miscalculations.
  • 2700, the Inera system and its shipyard Whatt & Pritney develop the Python ship: the first cruiser.
  • 2850, an extremely important date: an alien race was detected traveling in human space. It is the first species with advanced technologies, even far more advanced than humans: the Thargoids. The latter were first detected by Lens Nikon on the Veliaze system, while he was working on his terraforming project in New Africa. The Thargon fleet was gigantic, and more ships appeared as the planet was altered by their presence.

The Thargons flew in linear formation, at a certain distance from the surrounding fleet. None of their action had been hostile… until the moment when mankind first shot by order of the fleet commander: “Destroy them!”. It resulted in the complete destruction of the first Thargons fleet, as well as their capital ship. 48 hours after this assault, the human fleet got hyperdicted (interdiction in hyperspace, believed impossible) and their ships got neutralised, unable to move while the Thargons ships got out of hyperspace… About thirty Thargons capital ships and a whole gigantic fleet surrounded them.

Only two humans came out alive from this hell, terrified by their terrible experience, but unscathed. According to their reports, the Thargoids master the hyperspace jump perfectly and can enter, exit and even “drag” in hyperspace without problem. They would have tried to communicate with humans several times, but without success, humans pulling the trigger at every diplomatic try, out of fear. It was done… we shot first and the war against the Thargons had just begun.

  • 2900, important date. The Empire and the Federation decide to create a mutual project in Research and Development after years of discussions and peaceful agreements. The Intergalactic Naval Reserve Branch, or INRA, is created. Remember this name. The latter ensures the development of advanced ships and technologies while studying other lifeforms and extraterrestrial technologies. According to our latest information, the INRA was the organization that developed the Mycoid virus. The latter is based on a young scientist’s research in agrology, who sought to eradicate famine in the world, using tissues of Thargoids ships and fungi. His project went well beyond his expectations and attracted the attention of senior military officers who were overseeing the twelve scientific projects of the INRA. After millions of credits were spent in the Mycoid field, the chemical weapon was finally ready and ought to be super efficient against the Thargoids. It didn’t take long to repel the Thargoids using this bacteriological weapon. Discovery of the Thargoids in 2850, development of the INRA in 2900, Mycoid in 3151, and end of the invasion in 3193. The great war against the Thargoids lasted 96 years with minor wars between the two civilizations during 343 long years. This compound attacked the chemical polymers of which the Thargoids are composed, this is a genocide.

 

 

  • 3055, The massive invasion by the Thargons fleets beging.Each of their capital ships carry very large fleets of combat drones as well as various other attacking ships.Alioth was the first point of this invasion and GalCop tried to retaliate immediately by all possible means.
  • 3123, GalCop fails in its riposte and now sees its troops halve… the other half having perished in the fight against the Thargoids. The existence of the INRA is officially unveiled to the population and an elite squadron is created. The citizens of the Empire and the Federation are invited to join the ranks in order to fight against the invasion. GalCop loses its power and now hides in the shadows.

 

  • 3125, The hyperspace Type 1 is created: Quirium. This new system allowed smaller ships to use this travelling mode without having to embark in large vessels. The system also made it possible to jump by oneself, without resorting to external help. Only seven light-years could be crossed, but this was already a giant leap in this field. Quirium is the name of the fuel synthesised by GalCop, thanks to the reverse engineering of recovered Thargons fuels. Unfortunately these plans were lost when GalCop lost its police monopoly by becoming Interpol. Rumours tell that the modified Quirium allowed to jump extremely far, and even on other galaxies.
  • 3127. The Federation and the Empire do not recognise the authority of Interpol, which is now assigned to independent systems. The two great powers form their own police forces in order to prepare the defenses against the invasions of the Thargoids. Ambushes and wars continue in more than 50 warzones. Note that the Thargon ships were not held by inertia and could move rapidly in the desired vector at very high speed. They attacked all human beings in order to destroy them, without preamble. Another race of Thargons is also detected at the same time, possessing different marks on their thoraxes at the level of the legs: the Oresrians tend to be peaceful, while the Klaxians are very hostile. They are two rival Thargon groups and it is the Oresrians that we met and fought (hence their diplomatic essays). The Thargoid breed is insectoid in shape and lives on planets based on ammonia, they are very tolerant to cold (-33°C is their 0°C to us). The Thargons possess 6 legs and 2 arms powerful enough to dismember us easily.

 

A two edges hope

  • 3193, The invasion of the Thargoids is stopped by the introduction of the Micoid virus created by the INRA. This virus destroys the machineries of the Thargoids vessels… however, even the extra-terrestrial race is affected, the composition of their ships being mainly organic. They fled from human space, finally leaving an era of peace after 343 years of wars and disasters, especially on the human side. The only remaining Thargon ship captured by humans is kept secret in highly secured bases. The Thargons disappeared purely and simply.
  • 3200, the hyperspace Cloud is born and leaves Quirium far behind as we don’t find this fuel anymore. The Cloud runs on conventional hydrogen fuel and leaves a trail of “cloud” where it is used and when the ship arrives. This system was terribly long to set up and was used to compress the time in the ship (small or large, the Cloud being manufactured in several sizes). Pilots thought that the journey is very fast… however it days or even weeks to travel. The trail left was scannable and the pirates could use this information to quickly jump thanks to another Hyperspace tech and wait for the ship on the other side. From time to time, Cloud used Wormholes to make travels quick: a 655 light-years jump has been made thanks to a judicious travel tracing.

The advent of the third major faction

  • 3230, This is the advent of Alioth. This system has been the main place of countless battles during the war between the Empire, the Federation and the Thargoids. They rebelled against the government in order to create the Alliance of Independent Systems. The main station, Oltiqu, is renamed Gateway and joins the Alliance.
  • At the same time, the Silver Amalgamated Aerodynamics group is created by Meredith Silver and Mic Turner. They clearly announce their position for the Alliance and become the main shipyard and shipbuilder for this new power. The shipyard is well known, it is New Rossyth.
  • 3231 sees the preparation of New Rossyth completed. This shipyard is the most advanced of all and has the latest technologies recently developed. They clearly aim at producing the best ships ever created.

  • 3226, the Alioth system stabilises economically and terraforms several planets in the neighboring systems, in order to take advantage of them. The New Rossyth shipyard also reaches a production peak and becomes the most popular and efficient of the galaxy. The Mantis, Wyvern and Griffin ships are created by the latter.
  • 3247. A show of force from the Federation unfortunately creates a battle of an important scale. Hundreds and hundreds of lives are lost on the Empire and Federation sides. It is one of the greatest military disasters of mankind. No one knows which side fired first, nor why. The hostilities between the two powers emerged anew.
  • 3250 sees the creation of the excellent class 4 military drives. The latter is so powerful and imposing that it can only be installed on Python or bigger ships.
  • A Python Mk II is secretly created using this new drives and new materials: more efficient & lightweight. This project attracted the INRA who attacked the station, but the ship could take off and flee right before activating its experimental FSD. It disappeared.

Alliance, science and rumours

  • 3252, Alioth tried to develop a Mycoid vaccine to save the Thargoids from a definite extinction. The Alliance judged INRA to have carried out a genocide of the Thargons and attempted a friendly approach to this allegedly agressive race, which had only responded to our repeated shots. The INRA attacked and stole the vaccine…
  • 3253, a year later, the Thargoids became aware of this possible vaccine and allied themselves with the Alliance. Thanks to their help, the vaccine was recovered in a secret database of INRA and then sent to the Thargoids, on the system Miacke. In return, the Thargons offered to the Alliance one of their warships that came handy to protect them against the other Superpowers.
  • 3255, the relations between the Thargoids and humanity became more friendly while the two species shared cultures and technologies. They were given the opportunity to visit the Merlin system to share their cultures and science knowledge. The academies, institutes and universities of the three major factions were invited in this first inter-species convention aboard a Thargon ship. We learn that the Thargons are all females, live in monarchy and indeed possess technologies much more advanced than ours. After this, the Thargons withdrew and disappeared again.
  • 3270, Many “Generation Ships” are sent in the void in an attempt to colonise and prepare new worlds for mankind, this is a secret project and it took many years to travel. They all perished in mysterious circumstances.
  • 3300, a rumour spread: The Thargoids are back, but why?
  • 3301, strange artefacts are discovered in space and emit strange sounds while redirecting themselves to one direction. Are they transmitting data?

 

Here are the main steps leading to the discovery:

  • March – First discovered artefact. We gave it the name of “Unknown Artefact”;
  • April – The artefact emit a sound. The galactic community investigate in order to understand its purpose;
  • Late April – We deduce that the sounds emitted looks like a very human code, the morse;
  • Early May – These artefacts can only be found in certain regions;
  • May – More and more artefacts are found, while the community keep researching its true purpose. President Halsey of the Federation announces a tour of the human civilisation frontier. A few days later, the whole expedition, which was largely protected for a president, disappeared mysteriously. We found her in February 3302, she  was in a coma state;
  • Early June – Felicia Winters became temporary president before Zachary was elected president of the Federation. Conspiracy theories are beginning to spread about the Federation trying to hide what actually happened to the expedition;
  • July to October – Long analysis continue and we finally discover the final code.
  • November to December – These artefacts are widely sold on black markets and cause great damage to the stations on which they were sold. Some stations must even close their services for security reasons. The Emperor Hengist is assassinated, the Empire must find a new Emperor: it is his daughter Arissa Lavigny-Duval who gains the throne and becomes the first woman emperor to win this title, to the jealousy of many senators of the Empire.

We quickly incriminated the Thargoid race, the fear of men taking over. What are these artefacts doing near our systems?

The final code was made of four distinct sounds: the horn, rattling, purring and ambient background sound. These were then translated into Morse, which was repeating every few minutes. The difficulty was that these codes were different depending on the artefacts found and their listening time. These sounds were less and less powerful as time passed.

The morse could be translated into another language allowing us to pinpoint locations on a graph… leading to this discovery: the representation of ships. There are clearly various types of vessels and these could be transmitted to the Thargoids directly in order to understand our technologies after all these years years without an encounter between our two races.

Elite: Dangerous, The Superpowers Era – 3302/3305

I briefly summarised the different branches of the Elite: Dangerous stories in 3302 and 3303. Feel free to take a look at our website GalnetNews. Cheers! 🙂

  • In January, Barnacles are found; They are living organic structures. Meta-alloys can be extracted from them when destroyed and are recognised for repairing damaged stations by unknown artefacts. This is very controversial, we have just discovered a new lifeform and we already massacre them to recover their precious resources.
  • In February

    • Human ships with bizarre behaviours are also detected around a few stations. These, however, have no human identification and move/jump extremely fast. We have never been able to get close to them or even capture one of them, they are way too fast.
    • The Emperor also announces the appointment of Denton Patreus to the Supreme Admiral of the Fleet in honor of his military success against the insurgent organisation known as Emperor’s Dawn, a dissident group of the Empire Which attempted to harm the interests of the Empire. He avoided in-extremis an assassination six months later, alledged perpetrated by SalomĂ© and her followers.
  • Professor Palin, a leader in research of unknown artefacts and Barnacles, mysteriously disappeared in March. His ship was under escort during a travel, but this one was attacked. The professor was mistreated during his capture, hundreds of questions were demanded to him, night and day, but for most of them he did not know the answers. He was released and then captured by pirates who sold him at a very good price to the Federation. After that, Palin was very much shocked and announced his semi-retreat in April, on Maia’s scientific base, where the Federation could protect him night and day with squadrons and even a capital ship Farragut. He continues to work as an engineer for the galactic community, but remains aloof from the events.
  • May 3302 until now

    • The famous Barman Cyborg Jaques wants to travel through the galaxy with his station. He targets Beagle Point as his destination, the furthest point away from Sol at the other end of the galaxy. Unfortunately his FSD was heavily damaged during the jump, and he got lost in the distant space. He is found in June 3302, in bad shape because of the Unknown artefacts sold onboard before his departure. The galactic community’s pilots did everything they could to repair the station-ship with meta-alloys. They were so numerous and successful that the area has slowly been colonised and named Colonia. Great migrations have been going on since, mainly from pilots who can’t bare anymore with the wars between the superpowers. Learn everything about Jaques Station & Colonia!
    • Former Federation President Jasmina Halsey is gradually joining Edmund Mahon‘s Alliance where she is welcomed by the Prime Minister himself. These statements about beings who could live outside the bubble of Sol are well received, and explorations are launched to prove her sayings; unfortunately, the results aren’t very conclusive. Li Yong-Rui does the same researches, with no results. The Children of Raxxla helped as well, without results… or is everything rigged?
  • July 3302 until now – Unknown Probes are found in Federation cargo ships, just like the Unknown Artefacts! After long studies and numerous robberies to extract them from the hands of the Federals, it is found that the probes transmit in Octal (The artefacts are in morse), strange. Scanning the probes temporarily disable our ships while delivering a message: A map.
  • August 3302 until now

    • Princess Kahina Tijani Loren, also known as SalomĂ©, is kidnapped on the Cemiess system. The latter has a long history with the Empire in which she is senator on the Prism system. She is suspected of leading an obscure group named Children of Raxxla. These dissidents are announced as wanting to disrupt the Empire and must be arrested. She escapes and later attempts an assassination on her long-time political enemy: Denton Patreus. The attempt fails and she is held captive pending her trial. Quickly delivered, the Denton removes all of SalomĂ©’s rights as a senator, she is dismissed and condemned to death. As she makes her way to a highly secured prison, the convoy is attacked and totally destroyed by its attackers; There are no survivors. Recently in 3303, a large theft of meta-alloys took place on the Maia system, at Darnielle’s Progress. This is a surface base industry synthesizing the meta-alloys in order to vastly reduce the amount of barnacles destroyed. SalomĂ© is identified as one of the thieves, as well as Raan Corsen and Tsu Annabelle Singh. She gave an appointment to the galactic community on April 29th 3303 at 6pm to reveal to the world what the superpowers have been hiding for a very long time: a buried truth. Learn more about SalomĂ© and the Children of Raxxla in our dedicated article (soon)
    • An unknown ship is discovered on the Planet 9A in the Pleiades Sector AB-W B2-4. The community quickly announce that this is a Thargoid ship. Two others are found, but there are no combat aftermath in the area.
  • October 3302 until now – The first Ancient Ruins are discovered on the system Synuyfe XR-H d11-102. It is the engineer Ram Tah and his great knowledge in decryption and scanners that allows us to make good progresses on these researches thanks to his inventions. He helped the community to decipher the numerous obelisks on the surfaces while we discover more and more Guardians’ ruins. A certain Professor Melville announced that he knows more than Ram Tah, and started a research with one of his acolytes, but the professor gone crazy during his frantic search. So far, no one knows what he has become. Ram Tah further improved his scanners to detect the Guardians’ ancient ruins (1000 ls around our ships), as well as the barnacles. Learn more about the Guardians’s Lore on our dedicated article.
  • January 3303 until now – Many pilots are hyperdicted by alien ships, this is the first non-human contact. The vessels are ripping commanders out of hyperspace, and our ships are disabled in the process. We believe that the mysterious ships are scanning us, but we don’t know why. They could be Thargoids scouts and it appears that they ships are unmanned.
  • March 3303 until now

    • We received a strange distress call from the mysterious and locked by permit Col 70 Sector. The latter is hardly intelligible. It is incredibly hard to get the permit to this system, no CMDR received it yet, and the pilots of the galactic community holds their breath: what’s in the system?
    • Meanwhile, the Empire also established some of their forces in the Pleiades for the same purpose as the Federation previously: to collect meta-alloys. Relations become more tense… will the war break out?
  • April 3303 until now
    • SalomĂ©, Raan, Tsu Annabelle and Yuri departed from 46 Eridani to the Tionisla/Teorge systems with one of the most powerful protections from the pilots of the galactic community. Around 4000 pilots sailed with these rebels in order to unveiled the untold secrets of the ongoing events. As a priority target, SalomĂ© fought hard but ultimately died because of numerous bounty hunters after her. Preferring a fate other than that rotting in prison, SalomĂ© preferred to flee and unfortunately the fighters submerged her, leading to her loss. Learn more about the Great Secret and SalomĂ©’s event in our dedicated article.
    • The Federation and the Empire are still fighting for the Pleiades and Maia, while the Alliance prefers expanding their forces to the California Nebula where they strangely grow Bark Mounds, mushrooms and keep some things secrets. It looks like we can’t rely on anyone.
    • Generation Ships are discovered, it all started with the Zurara in Formidine Rift. The whole population of the ship has been assassinated in order to keep the secret of these prepared new worlds.
  • May 3303
    • Reports have surfaced of mysterious attacks in the Maia system, where eyewitnesses claim to have found the remains of a number of Federal vessels. According to reports, the damage to the ships’ hulls was not consistent with any known form of weaponry. Furthermore, several observers claim to have seen the so-called unknown ships at the wreckage sites. Attempts to intercept the ships were unsuccessful.
    • SalomĂ©‘s last message is discovered, she warns us against the superpowers and their secret plans of escape that have cost the lives of thousands of civilians and scientists.
  • June 3303
    • Recent reports from the so-called Unknown Ships have begun interacting with the region’s barnacles. Eyewitnesses report that the ships have been seen targeting the barnacles with some kind of energy beam, apparently in order to extract matter from them. Pilots have also reported that their ships and SRVs spontaneously lose power while in proximity to the Unknown Ship. The news follows reports that the Unknown Ships have been seen at the locations of mysterious attacks in the Maia system.
    • Over the past few days, media streams have been abuzz with news that the so-called Unknown Ships are in fact Thargoid vessels, as many had speculated. The Federal Times, having spent several days confirming sources and authenticating reports, has now published an in-depth account of the events that led to the revelation. – Source
    • The Superpowers leaders address the Thargoid Discovery:
      • Federal President Zachary Hudson released a characteristically forthright statement. “Earlier this year, I said I would rather prepare for an attack that may not come than be met by an attack I did not prepare for. Well, the Federation has not been idle. For months, we have been expanding our Navy in preparation for just such a day. Some, such as Edmund Mahon, believe this is unnecessary. But perhaps Mr Mahon has not read the reports of Federal ships being attacked by Thargoid vessels. If the Thargoids want a fight, it’s a fight they’ll get.”
      • Addressing the media from the Imperial Palace on Capitol, Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval said: “The facts are these: the Thargoids have highly sophisticated starships, they have a relationship with the organic constructs, and they have the means to remotely disable human spacecraft. In some quarters, these facts have given rise to concern. But I urge you not to panic. The human race has surmounted countless challenges in the past, and created a civilisation that spans hundreds of star systems. Do not be too quick to discount the human race.”
      • Finally, Alliance Prime Minister Edmund Mahon released the following statement: “Our next steps must be taken with great care. Despite President Hudson’s claims to the contrary, there is no proof that the Thargoids have attacked Federal vessels. We must not assume the Thargoids are hostile. Theirs is clearly an intelligent and technologically sophisticated race. There is a great deal we could learn from them.”
  • July and August 3303
    • Ram Tah, the engineer leading research into the lost civilisation known as the Guardians, has commented on reports of interaction between Guardian and Thargoid technology: “The fact that Guardian artefacts react to the Thargoid device certainly seems to suggest some kind of prior contact, and although we know very little about Thargoid history, interaction between the two races is entirely possible. But the negative nature of the reaction could be a sign that the relationship was not entirely peaceful.”
    • Gigantic Thargoids bases are found on the surfaces of certain planets. They all seem connected by a complex network that we managed to decode after weeks of intensive analysis. There is a Thargoid Link there that matches with the Artefact and the Probe when placed on a Thargoid central Device. The Guardian Artefacts react violently when coupled with Thargoids technologies.
    • The creation of the Aegis research initiative includes the top scientists from the three superpowers on the Sol bubble. Alliance, Empire and Federation work hand in hand to learn more about Thargoids and science in general. – Dealing with the Thargoid bases
  • September 3303
      • The Reports from Maia indicate that the Federal ships have now withdrawn from Palin’s base, effectively ending the blockade of Maia A 3 A. Rici Stewart, writing for The Imperial Herald, offering the following evaluation: “The Federation knows that blockading Professor Palin was – at best – unethical, so I’m not surprised they chose not to comment on their withdrawal. They just slipped away in the night. As with their efforts to control meta-alloys, the Federation’s attempts to restrict access to Palin’s base were far from successful. I guess the Federation has realised it can’t control the galaxy. If you ask me, this is another sign that the Federal-Imperial cold war could be coming to an end.”
    • The Thargoids take down a Federal capital ship and continue their attacks against Federation ships. The latter becomes totally hostile to these aliens. Aden Tanner becomes admiral of the fleets of the Federation and has at his disposal all the resources from this very large fleet.
    • Aegis no longer sticks to research on extraterrestrial civilization, but also begins to develop weapons technologies to counter the Thargoids. The Federation is slowly taking a little more control of Aegis over the months. AX weapons, for Anti-Xeno, are developed.
    • Colonia increases its capacity to accommodate the waves of citizens fleeing the bubble of Sol.
  • October 3303
    • Numerous INRA installations, the Intergalactic Naval Research Branch, are discovered by the galactic community. Twelve projects are discovered, developed and researched on Thargoids to advance human civilization. But high-ranking military commanders soon got their hands on the INRA and recovered a Mycoid virus thanks to an agrology engineer who, thanks to mushrooms and Thargoids elements, thought he could solve the famine in many worlds. This Mycoid was weaponized and launched on a Thargoid hive ship by John Jameson. The latter will be betrayed by the INRA who did not reveal to him all the details of the weapon. This one would only make the Thargoids ships inoperable… however, they destroyed everything that was also biological, their engines, hyperdrive engines and even the Thargoids themselves decimating them. A real xenocide. – All the logs from the INRA bases.
    • Following these details, the powers react to the INRA in various ways. Aisling speaks of a threat invented by the governments of the day to sow their military powers. Denton and Li rely on the documents to justify the creation of Aegis: by working together, we can repel the threat. Arissa denounces the INRA indicating that even face Thargoids, we must not violate our ethical rules. Edmund Mahon reassures the community that Aegis will not follow in the footsteps of INRA.
  • November 3303
    • The first Federal assaults against the Thargoids begin with the operation Andronicus. AX weapons, Anti-Xeno, are effective in destroying small groups of Cyclops interceptors as well as new and powerful Basilisks.
  • December 3303
    • Several spaceports are attacked by the Thargoids near the Pleiades. The attacks continue over the weeks, all the stations contained Aegis laboratories: Thargoids attacks are therefore targeted. Rescuers are asked to evacuate survivors from the many assaults. We discover new Interceptors even more powerful and terrifying: the Medusas.

  • January 3304
    • Engineer Ram Tah continues his studies on the Guardians’ civilization, trying to uncover more secrets of the Ancient Sites. Meanwhile, the Thargoids Structures continue to be investigated: Professor Boden Tench, Director of Research aboard Titan’s Daughter, told the Universal Scientist: “We’re currently focusing on the Thargoid Probes and Sensors, and we’ve already learned a great deal about the way the Thargoids transmit and store information. We’ve also been studying the star maps found inside Thargoid structures. We still don’t know the precise purpose of these maps, but our analysis has revealed some intriguing details about how the Thargoids categorise geographical data. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that their concepts of territory differ dramatically from our own”
  • February 3304
    • The Alliance developped the Type 10 Defender and the Chieftain in order to help defend against the Thargoids. Other technologies and ships are Work In Progress.
    • The stations continue to be attacked by the Thargoids and these assaults follow a line to the Sol bubble. While all, or almost all, of the stations that contained Aegis Laboratories were destroyed by the Thargoids, new systems are beginning to be targeted in the Bubble, especially the region of the Sirius Corporation (Li Yong-Rui). Systems containing ammonia planets seem to be favoured. While humans are carbon-based, the thargoids themselves are ammonia-based. They could therefore restock on these planets. Operation Rempart is launched by the Federation to continue the destruction of the “Thargoid enemies”.
    • Thargoids scouts named “Marauders” had previously been discovered crashed on a few planets. Here they are now, acting in groups and attacking everything that passes in front of them. It looks like the Interceptors are living Thargoids while the Marauders are some kind of drones.

  • March 3304
    • Thanks to previous extensive studies and the help of the galactic community, Ram Tah discovers the existence of Guardian Structures. These contain many new secrets as well as weapon technologies, modules and Guardian ships. – Guide for the 28 Guardians Data.
    • The major powers are delighted with these discoveries that will help in the fight against the Thargoids. Edmund Mahon is more moderate and puts forward rather the knowledge that we could draw rather than the weapon that would ensue.
    • According to the last 28 Guardian data: The codices suggest that the Thargoids existed before the appearance of the Guardians. It is also the xenomorphs that are at the origin of the conflict between the two species. Indeed, they considered the regions of the galaxy where the Guardian civilization flourished as their own domain. The Guardians tried to communicate with their enemies, but to no avail. They concluded that the survival instinct of the Thargoids was so powerful that it forbade them to tolerate any threat, including that posed by the mere proximity of a species controlling interstellar travel. It is now clear that the Guardian’s sophisticated defensive drones and weapon systems have been primarily designed to repel the thargoid threat. If we still lack details, these machines would have finally put an end to the enemy assaults.
    • The major Federal and Imperial powers, who were already not very inclined to human-Thargoids diplomacy, announce that thanks to this information it is no longer useful to try to communicate with the Thargoids. We must fight them, repel them and “sweep them” in the words of Zachary Hudson. Denton Patreus wants to defend us against their aggression.
    • Installations “Eagle Eye” are set up in the Pleiades by Aegis. They are constantly analyzing six Thargoids Structures on nearly 300 discovered so far. This is enough to scan Structures and retrieve valuable information… about destinations pointed out by these Structures. It seems that they tell the Thargoids where and when to attack. The community relays each week to analyze their information and predict the next systems to be attacked. The Thargoids communicate with each other … or does a group manipulate the structures to their advantage in order to make the galactic community think these aliens are attacking us? What could be the purpose of this? The Structures point to systems like “INRA base where Jameson took off”, “Jameson Cobra Crash”, “Sirius Inc”, “Aegis”, …

 

 

  • April 3304
    • While the Thargoids keep on attacking a lot of human stations, many defenses projects are set up, the most famous are organized by the AXI and The Hive. Operation IDA aims to repair damaged stations.
    • Many new technologies are created thanks to recent experiments on the Guardian civilization. These recent techs allow us to better protect our ships while improving the jump range of our ships.
  • May 3304
    • Dozen of murders are being perpetrated during that time of the year, until October; Mainly descendants of senior figures who orchestrated the INRA and led to the murder of John Jameson. The League of Reparations is rampant and its murderers remains in the shadows, untouchable. A joint Alliance-Empire-Federation operation is conducted. the Imperial Internal Security Service, the Federal Intelligence Agency and Alliance Interpol join this initiative.
    • The League of Reparations killed a large number of people, including three personalities: Admiral Tulimaq Buchanan of the Alliance, Senator Nestor Cartesius, and Kay Kilbride Alliance Interpol inspector (replaced by Mara Klatt)
    • Admiral Tulimaq Buchanan is replaced by young Riri McAllister at the vacant Admiral position, in the Alliance forces.
    • It appears that the League of Reparations gets its orders from a person named the Nexus. Captain Niamh Seutonia of the Empire, Tanya Ramirez of the Federation and Mara Klatt of the Alliance will succeed in finding and imprisoning the Nexus and most of its supporters. The transport ship en route to Alliance Interpol’s medical facility (because Nestor’s daughter, Polly, attempted to assassinate Riri) is attacked and destroyed. The Nexus was Riri McAllister. It may be that the latter is still alive… but no survivors have been found in the attack of the convoy. The Alliance-Empire-Federation group has no purpose and is dismantled.
  • June and July 3304
    • Two groups “The Church of the Eternal Void” and “The Cult of the Far Gods” collide. The latter announce having privileged contacts with the Thargoids, but after a few months of investigations, no link are discovered and they are classified as fanatics. As a result of this classification, many members of the cult are missing, perhaps returning to their normal lives so as not to be discovered by the intelligence services.
  • August 3304
    • A report from Ram Tah indicates that large thermal signatures have been identified near NGC 2451A sector, the IC 2391 sector and the Synuefe EN-H region. Here, we found the Guardians Beacons. These helped us to triangulate positions of new Guardian Structures as well as to discover Guardians vessels plans.
    • Thanks to the numerous experiments led by Ram Tah and the scientists, three hybrid Guardian-Human fighters are developed: Lance, Javelin, Trident. [Guide to unlock the new techs]
  • September, October and November 3304
    • President of the Alliance, Gibson Kincaid is re-elected, with Edmund Mahon as prime minister. Two other contenders for the presidency, Elijah Beck and Fazia Silva competed against Gibson with a different policy and edicts. Fazia stood out and hoped to strengthen the Alliance’s economy, but she was assassinated before the elections, for no apparent reason.
    • The Gnosis (Cannon Interstellar’s megaship, a scientific group) tried an unauthorized jump on a permit system. They are certain to discover interesting things about the Thargoids in the Cone Sector FN-J b9-0, however the ship is forcely dragged out of hyperspace earlier than expected, in Outotz ST-I d9-6, and attacked by the Thargoids. A new class of interceptor far superior to the others is discovered: the Hydra. Many lives are lost, but the galactic community defended the Gnosis at all costs, allowing repairs and retreat of the megaship.
    • After months of investigations about robots, serving different services, it turned out that a very large number of them contained a hidden surveillance program. Despite threats to disclose more information, the Federation puts pressure on the journalists and no further information are filtered.
    • Sirius Inc., which had previously acquired the Meta-Drive Company, contacted Ram Tah to cooperate on the creation of new Guardian technologies. Ram Tah refuses this singular offer, and a few moment later, his laboratory is attacked in November by “Unknown” assailants, who turned out to be Sirius Inc. employees. Li Yong-Rui claims that he is not involved in this criminal assault, and the administration will judge these criminals.
    • Frederick Yamamoto replaces Riri McAllister as Admiral. He is a very close friend of Gibson Kincaid.
    • Aegis Core is relocated to the Sol system to protect the interests of humanity more effectively.
    • The fight against the Thargoids continues, and the story is always revealing more mysteries than we can solve.

  • Year 3305
    • After a recent race for the Meta-Alloys, humanity is now heading to the Witch Head Nebula, where a large amount of Barnacles have been discovered. The Barnacles indeed produce these Meta-Alloys, an important component to the development of technologies based on the Thargoids.
    • The Thargoids retreat from the human bubble, although some interceptors remain seen in the Pleiades. The Cyclops, Basilisks, Medusas, Hydra and the little Marauders remain the only Thargoids encountered, and although the Marauders are always hostile, we are still “confronted” with many cases where the interceptors are not initially hostile to our presence.
    • The Engineer Palin’s Thargoids Sciences Centre is attacked, and the latter must escape aboard his Megaship in orbit. Unfortunately, he is attacked and he barely escapes from the situation thanks to the support of independent pilots. He joined the Arque system where he settled.
    • A new Interceptor is discovered, the Orthrus. It seems to appear only near Palin’s old installation on Maia… and then it speeds up quickly runs away without ever attacking the pilots. The recovered samples indicate “Basilisk” and its hearts are named “drives”. The design of the Orthrus is strange, as if several technologies were mixed together… a secret creation from Palin?
    • Only a few updates in 3305, with Galnet plunging to its death. The “most important” news recently is that we discovered a new Generation Ship… with a still living population! We are in the process of supporting them… more to come.

 

Source
  • Space.com
  • Elite-timeline
  • DrewWagar.com, official Elite author
  • Discussion with Drew Wagar, one of the official Elite author.
  • Thargoids’ pictures are indeed from Star Wars, the Killiks. We don’t have any official image for the Thargoids, it is my attempt at picturing them for you.
  • A great number of details from the reliable source The Gazetter.
  • Galnet – All the News in English et en Français