M Fnord Wrote:I don't think that the actual discovery of the network needs to be put off, after a point you've got to fire Chekhov's Gun, right? A good bit of what I want to use the gate network to explore would be helped with a decent-sized timeskip. (I've got some awesome ideas, but I can't quite articulate them, argh.) Of course the timeskip brings its own frustrations to bear and its... I don't know.
Issue is, the sheer discovery alone is suspicious as the Mass Relays in ME, and would send up all sorts of alarm bells. That alone would warp the setting as much as the Boskone War as people try to figure out WTF. Dozens, hundreds of gates with mysteriously terraformed worlds? That's so far into Admiral Ackbar's territory that I shouldn't even need to suggest it.
Ultimately, my problem is something about three or fourfold:
One: For the purposes of storytelling, the gates don't offer any use yet due to the stated population of the fen, and would require a significantly massive warping of the tone of the series to really exploit it, with either a massive danelaw backed exploration and colonisation push, or something else to force the issue.
Two: Where the potential fridge-horror of fen engines is easy to wave away (heh), it's basically impossible not to draw disturbing conclusions from 'for at least 2000 ly from earth somebody terraformed and left a giant gate network without ANY markers or contact attempts'. As I said, this just screams 'trap'. Navigational beacons, a message saying. 'All these worlds are open, you're welcome', something. There is an implication that either a force is screwing with humanity, or that whoever built the gates went away very suddenly.
Three:The KISS principle. It doesn't really add to any story or storyline that I think of other than the squiddies (which could be solved by them activating a single gate near their own world instead). It's a big distraction, and adds dozens of new potential wrinkles for people to need to address or solve.
I know why you want to include it, but... I just don't think that your broad implimentation will do anything good for the setting. It's plot kudzu.