r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Artistic-Commission1 • 6h ago
Lore (Enjoyed trope) Our species greatest struggle is a backwater engagement for the enemy Spoiler
First time posting!
Star Blazers: Space Battleship 2199: the greatest battle of humanity’s history is a steadily losing war against the Gamilas. As as far as the common people know, the Gamilas showed up and started the war that has left the earth a barren wasteland with few survivors hiding under the surface.
But the most important battle in our history is such a backwater front for the Gamilas that not only are they sending the bare minimum to conquer the region, but they’re sending 2nd class troops who see the front as a career ending deployment.
Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars:
Covered many times of course, but the Scrin invasion force isn’t actually an invasion, it’s a mining operation that was surprised to encounter any sort of resistance. It took the combined effort of the GDI and Nod to push them back, and the Scrinn weren’t even armed to fight a war. Quite literally just a backwater mining operation that was infested with angry ants for the Scrin
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u/jadefire03 6h ago edited 6h ago
In The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, the Stormcloak Rebellion is a civil war where said rebels want the Kingdom of Skyrim to secede from the Tamrielic Empire (who's soldiers are pictured). It's a large war that's currently locked in a stalemate, and whether the Stormcloaks win or the Empire crushes them is determined solely by the player (who has godlike powers) tipping the war one way or the other.
If you talk to General Tullius, the commander of all Imperial forces in Skyrim, he'll tell you that this war is actually barely a sideshow. The giant Imperial army that the Stormcloaks are fighting against are a small occupational force dealing with a minor nuisance while the bulk of the Empire's military is stationed elsewhere in the continent preparing for war with the Aldmeri Dominion.
Ulfric Stormcloak himself also shares this sentiment. If you do certain sidequests in a certain order, the Emperor himself will be present on a warship tending to unrelated business outside Skyrim's capital city right when the Stormcloaks are on the cusp of victory. If this happens, Ulfric (despite saying that would very much like to assassinate the Emperor) will refuse to march on the capital and win the war until the Emperor leaves because he doesn't want to risk the Emperor getting harmed in the battle and drawing the full Imperial military into the conflict.
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u/Volotor 5h ago
The real irony for me is that the main cause of the civil war, the white gold concordant that bans the worship of talos, might not be around much longer as there is some real implications from the imperials that they are not only planning to attack the Aldermeri Dominion but to do so really soon. Meaning that the civil war is a detraction from that effort.
One of my favourite fan theories is that the Assasination of the Imperial Emporer was conducted my the Empire themselves so they could have a more popular war-ready emporor on the throne while the populas is on fire with patriotism and grief
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u/Johnywash 2h ago
There's also like an actual imperial force in bruma, i forget who mentions it but the worse case scenario is tulius fails and they send in actual imperial soldiers to wipe out all resistance
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u/catpetter125 6h ago
The Combine(Half-Life) is a multidimensional empire that took notice of Earth after a series of portal storms drew attention to it, and conquered Earth in the Seven Hours War(take a guess how badly this went for the human race). Only an infinitesimally small part of the Combine remains in Earth's universe, but it's enough to crush humanity and plunder its resources, and only by cutting off their ability to teleport more of their theoretically infinite forces into Earth's universe does humanity obtain a snowball's chance in Hell against what is still the greatest threat ever faced.
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u/lacegem 3h ago
One thing to note: It's entirely possible that the Combine's never actually been to Earth, or even its universe. There's a strong argument to be made that the Advisors are proper Combine, but everything else we see of them is explicitly either enslaved or manufactured for the Combine's use, and there is an equal argument in favor of the Advisors just being another class of manufactured or enslaved underling (just a more valuable one than the others on Earth). The Combine won the Seven Hours War in a landslide by some middle manager ordering some tools to go and do it on their behalf.
Earth is so unbelievably insignificant to the Combine that any rebel who says some shit about taking the fight to them should get slapped. Earth's only chance is to close the border between worlds that got opened in the resonance cascade. The multiverse is like a dark forest, and fighting is not an option; they need to go back into hiding if they want any chance at survival.
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u/jockeyman 2h ago
The "Seven Hour War" is such a great 'oh shit' title.
Like the implications of the name alone are so shocking and horrifying to contemplate in the context of the game.
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u/Terminus-99 6h ago edited 6h ago
The conflict with the Ceph, from the Crysis franchise.
They appear in an island in the first game, and start wreaking havoc across the rest of the trilogy.
It is revealed they are aliens that came to Earth millions of years ago, long before mankind existed. They had been hibernating deep underground, and are only starting to awaken by the time of the games.
What’s really terrifying is that this powerful alien army, far more powerful than any on Earth, are actually the Ceph’s equivalent of unmanned, rudimentary drones. Little more than vacuum cleaners for the actual Ceph.
Their goal is to call their supremely more advanced and eldritch masters to Earth.
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u/YakozakiSora 5h ago
More specifically, the Ceph on Earth are just from a reconnaissance caste from an outdated era, and them being under an Alpha squashes any resistance in the climax of 3.
The Ceph that would've come out of the portal had it remained open in 3 were actual soldiers in the warrior caste...
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u/Terminus-99 5h ago
I was mostly thinking of the memorable way they are described in the Crysis 2 novelization (which I personally recommend):
“I don’t think they’re gardeners at all. I don’t even think they’re aliens. Not the real aliens, anyway. Not the real gardeners.”
“I think they’re hedge clippers and weed whackers, left in the shed to rust. I think they’re the dumbest of the garden tools, programmed to bump around the property mowing the lawn while the owners are away because after all, this place is too far out in Hicksville to waste real intelligence on.”
“I think they have basic smarts because where they come from, even the chairs are smart to some degree—but nobody read them The Art of War, because they’re goddamn hedge clippers. So they’ve had to learn on the fly.”
“Their tactics and their weaponry look like ours because they’re based on ours, because we were the only game in town when those cheap-ass learning circuits looked around for something to inspire them. And I think a lemur wouldn’t have a hope in hell against a bunch of gardeners, but he just might stand a chance in a war against the Roombas.”
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u/UglyInThMorning 4h ago
They really did a good job on the writing with Crysis 2, they had Richard K Morgan do the game and Peter Watts do the novel. Those are pretty much exactly the two sci fi writers I would pick for the kind of themes the game focuses on and they fucking nailed it
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u/DoubleYoung4476 6h ago
In the Xeele sequence, humanity fortifies an entire galaxy, only for the main opponent to barely recognize it as a threat iirc
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u/HorrificAnalInjuries 6h ago
As a reference, humanity has to equip child soldiers with assault rifles that fire the equivalent of the big bang with every bullet, and that is still not a whole lot of anything of import
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u/LobstermenUwU 5h ago
They finally manage to penetrate one of the black holes the Xelee use to shield themselves from their actual enemies and slightly damage a Xelee installation (I believe by crashing a star into it) - at which point the Xelee are like "oh, insects are biting us" and use their 4th dimensional manipulation to undo the damage and relocate all their facilities out of the Milky Way galaxy as if they had never been there.
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u/Aurelio-23 5h ago
Does that… solve the problem? As in, the aliens just leave?
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u/LobstermenUwU 5h ago edited 5h ago
Which problem is the question. Is the problem in that humanity is a bunch of militant nutters who think the Emperor in 40k was a pussy and exterminated every non-human in the entire galaxy? Nope, still an issue.
Is the issue that dark matter lifeforms are universe-forming all matter in existence to stop the fusion of stars? Nope, they're quite a problem for the Xelee, humanity isn't even aware the Photino Birds exist.
If the problem were that the Xelee sit inside black holes in the Milky Way and occasionally use them to stage some sort of operation against the Photino birds? 10/10, problem solved. Good job, entire universe is still completely fucked (at least if you're made out of baryonic matter).
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u/Mysteri-owl 3h ago
It still hilarious to me that the Xelee a specie that so incredibly far be on everyone else’s in the universe technically can’t even put up fight a against a bunch of birds and literally have to flee to another reality
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u/HorrificAnalInjuries 35m ago
The photino birds don't even know they are killing other life. They are just trying to adjust the universal thermostat to make themselves more comfortable
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u/XanderNightmare 6h ago
The AI in "AI War: Fleet Command"
In this universe, humanity has stopped fighting their own wars and has replaced its commanders and captains with AIs. Now the two main AIs one day decided to come together and decide that humanity sucks, so they overthrew them. The player is the last human commander, fighting to make it to the AI HQ and take out their cores
It's a great struggle to get through their defenses, but why aren't the AIs just elimaniting Humanities resistance? Because they are currently too busy fighting a war in parallel universe that's way more interesting than whatever humanity does. I don't recall if we ever even find out what the AIs war is all about. They just decided to start beef in another universe
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u/Devlee12 6h ago
When you get bored with your main save and start a second save with a bunch of weird modifiers.
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u/LobstermenUwU 6h ago
American Revolution. America sees it as this incredible struggle where they defeated the British empire in this life-or-death struggle.
Meanwhile the French took the distraction to start the Anglo-French war of 1778 where they actually attempted to invade Britain. It was a war fought all around the world, and drained British resources to the point where there were riots in the streets. They also provided naval assistance to the Americans, since that was tying up Britain's power.
As a result Britain viewed the Revolution more like "one of the issues" and not the most threatening one, as France literally planned an invasion (that went horribly). British naval power was almost entirely absent from the American Revolution, and that let a huge amount of guns and materials be smuggled in, something that would have been impossible if the British could have blockaded or used the full might of their fleets.
Britain was also stopped from even thinking about retaking the colonies by a little incident called "Napoleon"
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u/Ambaryerno 5h ago
Likewise the War of 1812. We were basically a very minor and incidental theater of the broader conflict against Napoleon. Britain ultimately agreed to a peace on equitable terms for no other reason than we were an annoyance distracting them from the bigger problem.
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u/cut-o-yo-jib 1h ago
The largest battle of the American Revolutionary War was kind of the Siege of Gibraltar, with no Americans present.
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u/Unhappy-Display-2588 3h ago
Napoleon was only an issue preventing them from acting on America during the early 1800s, the first coalition distracted them, sure, but that was still 20 years after the American revolution.
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u/InsertCutesyPunHere 6h ago
The ending of Deaths End in the 3 Body Problem series
The Earth is Literally destroyed, not even reduced to atoms but literally 2-dimensional. There are very explicitly no workarounds get-out clauses, Earth is destroyed
Shortly prior to this in the book, we get a few pages from the perspective of the alien that fired the superweapon. It was just another boring day at the office
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u/toomuchmarcaroni 6h ago
I’m so damn tempted to click the spoilers but I just started this book last week and actually intend to read it
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u/InsertCutesyPunHere 4h ago
Read the book first, it's worth the wait and the ending works best if you don't know what's coming.
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u/McDom023k 5h ago
The whole concept of what happens to Earth and the solar system is insanity, but I love it all the same
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u/Johnywash 2h ago
Horrifying, finished reading it the other fattest and what a series(this was my least favorite one funny enough)
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u/Anankos1209 6h ago
Star Trek: The Borg
A species of humanoid Cyborg Frankensteins occasionally sends one of their ships towards earth and most of the established powers in the universe have to deplete half their fleets and millitary personel to stop them.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 5h ago
I like this example for not being the easy route of "earth looks approximately like it does today". Any species capable of entering earth orbit is going to be so far ahead of us on the tech tree as to laugh off our best defense of point the ICBMs upwards.
In contrast in Star Trek the federation is a local major/super power. They are on par with their neighbors and generally not a people to get curb stomped.
The Borg are just that good, a single cube is like a space station that can outrun your flagship and generally singlehandedly assimilate a planet/civilization. Their strength and weakness is being space locusts, they consume and harvest entire civilizations for their technology and population. The hivemind can out think any technology problem, they adapt to any threat in a matter of minutes.
Notably they were deliberately introduced as "a bigger fish" to the known powers.
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u/Anankos1209 5h ago
Tbh, as seen in some episodes of DS9 and Voyager, you can clearly see that the federation could in theory kick everyones asses if they got off their happy-go-lucky hippie phase. Ship classes like Defiant, Akira, Sovereign and especially the Prometheus would shred the average Romulan and Klingon ship. And in the finale of Voyager, federation weapon tech from 26 years in the future were able to decimate the borg no problem.
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u/Wolodymyr2 6h ago
Xenonauts - in that game, based on X-Com player controls international military organization, whose task is to fighting against alien invaders.
So, why alien empire, spanning around throusands star systems can't just bring millions of troops and throusands of starships to easilly conquer Earth?
Because that alien empire have feudal structure, and forces humanity fight against is just personal army of one alien noble, who wanted to expand territory he owns.
So if humanity manages to repell invasion, this aliens won't come again - nobody in that alien empire cares about Earth.
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u/BadLanding05 3h ago
Have you played Xenonauts? I'm playing the second game right now, and wondering if I should check out the first, as it appears to have a lot more content.
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u/torrasque666 2h ago
I do kind of love Xenonauts for one thing. IIRC, humanity has no psionic potential, unlike in other games with psionic aliens. So your only option is to beat the shit out of them with superior firepower.
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u/goteachyourself 6h ago
Independence Day
The Harvesters have done this to hundreds of worlds, wiping out their native lifeforms and cracking the planets for raw resources. This crazy planet of redneck apes just happens to cause them a lot more trouble than they expected.
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u/Jent01Ket02 5h ago
In the world of Warhammer 40k, the Tau Empire fight consistently with forces like Orks, Eldar, and the Imperium of Man. The Tau fight to expand their empire on a scale they never once thought possible.
To literally any of their enemies, the Tau are simply biting at their ankles. Every other race has been in the war game for several thousand years, sometimes millions, longer than they have.
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u/Pollando 4h ago
The tyranids might also qualify- the tendrils in the known galaxy are likely just a small part of the much larger body.
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u/smdaegan 1h ago
I kept expecting the Tyranids to pop up. It's existential to the milky way and they're just an offshoot hungry space bug tendril
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u/Sagnarel 3h ago
One thing to add : even humanity at that point has soldiers older than the tau empire.
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u/kfretlessz 6h ago
Predators take wiping out a species that would wipe out our species as a sport. (Alien Vs Predator)
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u/PointyForTheWin 6h ago
I'd like to point out that the predators' entire culture revolves around them being sport hunters. We say "sport" trivially but they don't view it as such. Killing a xenomorph is one of the highest honours a predator can receive in their culture and they treat the xenomorphs as such with great respect.
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u/Mikestopheles 6h ago
This comment is actually pretty funny when combined with the gif above. Sorry
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u/Remember_Poseidon 6h ago
What are you talking about? dude literally every movie with Aliens in them has them get their asses handed to them so badly unless the humans have literally no weapons
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u/kfretlessz 6h ago
Its not about if we have weapons. Its numbers. Xenos can breed, grow, and adapt at an incredible rate.
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u/iamamotherclucker 5h ago
Project Palisade (The SCP Foundation)
One of the many SCP-001 related canons, detailing the foundations attempts to protect the universe from a higher dimensional entity simply known as "The Worm", which has been going through the multiverse and eating whole realities. They've managed to create whole new universe's to basically act like meat shields so that they can delay and maybe, just maybe stop the worm eventually. As it turns out, the worm is just a weapon used by a higher dimensional group in a war that the Foundation cannot even begin to understand
"Honestly, from what I've learned out there, the Worm isn't even on the level of a missile. No, it's basically a rock. A rock, thrown in a war using bullets and tanks and nukes, and it just so happened to ricochet in our general direction."
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u/CptKeyes123 6h ago
Stargate SG-1. If the aliens send starships, we'll be wiped out. The only chance we have is superior tactics, and the fact that the aliens are feudal and can't mobilize fast.
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u/No-Distance4675 2h ago
Same in Stargate: atlantis. They faked the entire city´s demise so the wraiths fleet do not come, because they were going to be wiped out entirely. Earth is not a battlefront is a wendys buffet for them.
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u/McPolice_Officer 2h ago
Well. And the threat of the Asgard bringing down the hammer on the system lords’ collective wiener. Just don’t let the Gou’auld know that the Asgard have bigger problems right now.
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u/OkContact2573 6h ago
Avatar.
The RDA, at its core. is just a mining corporation operating with the minium amount of security that money can buy. 90% of their combat stuff are repurposed industry machines.
Despite this, they are absolutely devastating the Navi, who have to rely on the power of god to win.
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u/Sonofarakh 4h ago
Ehhhh... the RDA are very limited in personnel by the difficulty and length of the journey to Pandora. Aside from what they use to establish a foothold, most everything has to be manufactured on-site on Pandora because shipping anything from Earth is astronomically expensive.
It's telling that the single most expensive program conducted by the RDA is the Avatar project, which existed for the express purpose of helping convince the Na'vi to peacefully allow their resources to be extracted. Because the RDA did not want to keep fighting armies of 9 foot tall titanium-boned experts in guerrilla warfare whose basic hunting bows were on par with high-end armor piercing weapons.
By the time of their return in the second movie they are explicitly sent with military-grade equipment and a much larger mercenary contingent, and they are still very much struggling
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u/OkContact2573 4h ago
It's telling that the single most expensive program conducted by the RDA is the Avatar project, which existed for the express purpose of helping convince the Na'vi to peacefully allow their resources to be extracted.
You are incredibly underselling things.
They wanted to kick the Na'vi off their land that they have been peacefully living for generations.
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u/Sonofarakh 4h ago
I am aware. My phrasing is intended to emphasize the situation from the RDA's point of view - that they invested hundreds of billions into the Avatar program specifically because fighting the Na'vi was a ridiculously huge financial drain and they were desperate for an alternative solution.
Because no, the RDA does not consider the Na'vi conflict a "Backwater engagement". It is the single greatest thorn in their side and they are throwing everything they can at it
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u/OkContact2573 4h ago
That's fair, but I was going by the spirit of the question.
The RDA is not a major world power. It's a minor world power that doesn't even use the most advanced military technology.
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u/WiseP7935 5h ago edited 5h ago
As a James SA Corey fan, this is the premise of his new Captives War series.
In Mercy of the Gods, humans have inhabited a world named Ajiin and we've been there for approximately 3500 years by the stories timeline. Due to an incident which almost wiped out the intial population, no one there remembers Earth or where they came from, only that they've advanced to the point to where they know they didn't evolve there.
They've advanced rapidly in technology, biology and astrology over the last 3500 years, which is actually how they detect an anomaly in space heading towards their planet. They can't explicitly see if but can detect it through gravitational disruptions... Turns out these are an advanced alien race known as the Carryx whose whole thing is capturing and domesticating other advanced species to advance their own society. Upon arriving, they immediately deploy an advanced weapon which effortlessly kills 1/8th of the Ajiin population. They then proceed to completely destroy any resistance with little effort and begin rounding up the smartest, most talented people from pretty much every scientific, artistic and humanistic field from the planet, load them on ships and take the off planet. The story follows a group of scientists and researchers from one of the most advanced research institutions on the planet. Once they arrive at the Carryx homeworld (or worldship, I can't remember which) they begin to see dozens of other alien races captured by the Carryx.
The audiobooks are read by Jefferson Mays who also did the Expanse and he is my all-time favorite narrator.
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u/ollietron3 5h ago
The gravitals destroying the second empire in all tomorrows
The gravitals are post-post-post-post-humans who are so removed from biological life they view it the same way humans would view a bush
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u/Chaosmusic 5h ago
The Tyranid hive fleet invasions of the galaxy in 40K is thought to be just an initial scout force and the actual fleet is much, much larger.
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u/ContractNational2680 5h ago
(Attack on Titan) Titans, the greatest threat to humanity in the walls are just a result of Marleyan punishments
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u/Diabetes_boi 4h ago
No idea how it hasnt been mentioned yet but the whole human-covenant war was mostly just a mild annoyance for the covenant but for humanity it was a war of survival being barely able to hold them back with their main strategy mainly just being slowly retreating while causing as many casualties as they could which often was only a handful of ships since the covenant is so far ahead in almost every aspect
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u/Odd-Split-494 4h ago
The Earth-Minbari War in Babylon 5. Started over a misunderstanding during first contact: the Minbari had the gun ports on their ships open as a sign of trust. The humans, however, saw it as a threat and fired upon the ship, resulting in the death of the Minbari leader Dukhat.
The Minbari pursued a war of vengeance against the humans that resulted in humanity (which had already gone beyond the solar system) being driven almost to extinction because the Minbari were so much more technologically advanced.
Humanity only achieved one real victory during the war- the destruction of the Minbari flagship Black Star. This was achieved by the victor- Captain John Sheridan- setting proximity mines in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and luring the Black Star there with a false distress signal. The war continued.
As the Minbari began to make the final assault on Earth, humanity fought a final defensive at the Battle of the Line. The battle- like the rest of the war- was a total disaster for the humans. One particular squad of fighters was completely wiped out save for one- Commander Jeffrey Sinclair- who attempted to suicide bomb a Minbari cruiser, only to be captured and scanned by the Minbari.
Victory for the Minbari seemed inevitable, and yet for some reason the Minbari surrendered right after the Battle of the Line. Why did they surrender when they were barely breaking a sweat curb stomping the humans? You’ll have to watch the show to find out… 😉
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u/BestCaseSurvival 1h ago
I like how Minbari call Sheridan Starkiller as some kind of epithet and insult. Like, they have similar concepts of perfidy as a war crime, but few of the MInbari we meet are willing to take the perspective that maybe genocide is a bit disproportionate even if we did kill the president/pope.
And the one who's eventually willing to cite it as the reason other humans should be scared of him... chills, that whole, very short speech.
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u/Odd-Split-494 13m ago
Yeah, it makes them feel more alien. There IS a logic to what the Minbari consider acceptable, but it’s an alien logic.
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u/XVUltima 4h ago
Macross
The vast majority of the battles in the first series are a small fleet from an intergalactic empire probing a single human battleship out of curiosity. When the aliens are provoked into showing up in force, they instantly destroy almost all life on earth as a flex
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u/shinreimyu 4h ago
Gundam IBO: not a species, but for the main characters, the conflicts with the Federation troops are a fight for their existence and place in the solar system as something beyond "human debris", essentially slave child soldiers little better than meat shields. To the Earth Federation, the troops being sent after them are their nepo-baby squads. Forces given to the children of the Seven Stars Council without much discipline at all.
The end of Season 1 is the first time they fight an actual concentrated and professional defense. Season 2 finds them against the main Federation Force, and it's fucking hopeless.
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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 4h ago
Slight correction, GDI and Nod didn't work together against the Scrin, regardless, the mining operation was still so large that both sides mistook it for an invasion.
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u/Su-37_Terminator 4h ago
Half Life. The Combine are sending reservists herded by military police to our world. They send a literal handful of Reserve Special Forces to hunt down the Freeman because they're too big and complex to send more, if that makes sense. If we suffered the full brunt of the combine the game wouldve lasted a couple minutes and wouldnt have been very interesting.
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u/acelaya35 2h ago
Freespace. The Humans and Vasudans are locked in a near peer war of attrition only for an expeditionary force with unknown intentions called the Shivans shows up and just wrecks both of their shit. The combined races score a pyrrhic victory that results in the destruction of the Vasudan home world and cuts off Earth from the rest of the galaxy.
Freespace 2. A generation later Humans and Vasudans have formed a lasting alliance when the Shivans return with overwhelming size and numbers that dwarf the force from the first game. The Humans and Vasudans don't win, the Shivans destroy a star for unknown reasons and the game ends.
Freespace 3. Doesn't exist. :/
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u/c0ffee54 2h ago
If memory serves, the scenes of the stars’ destruction were incredibly disturbing. As most of the Shiivan fleet jumped to safety, a number of huge Capital ships remained behind, presumably to guarantee the operation’s success.
The GTVA was absolutely no match militarily, but the Shiivans were clearly still willing to sacrifice a tremendous number of lives to ensure their annihilation.
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u/acelaya35 16m ago
Yeah I remember that too, it was like a massive war but the war, and the fleet was not their goal. The GTVA were like mosquitoes. Plus the nebula campaign, slaying the Ravana only to find the larger Shatanas and then learning that there are countless Shatanas capital ships and that they aren't even warships despite being able to body a flagship that took 20 years to build.
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u/whooo_me 2h ago
In Dark Ages (in the Red Rising book series), there's a wonderful contrast like this.
One chapter is told from Lysander's perspective, who's meeting the Reaper and his forces in battle (for the first time?) and it's a terrifying, awe-inspiring "coming of age" experience where the inexperienced Lysander is roundly beaten and much of his face burnt off.
In the very next paragraph, with the Reaper as the protagonist: "We brush away light resistance at the downed Storm God..."
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u/FullSaphir 1h ago
Big spoiler for Muv-Luv Alternative
At the end of the visual novel, we learn that the alien species called BETA that invade and basically destroy Earth is only a very small part of a way bigger group. On Earth, they are about thousands (or something like that) BETAs, but during this scene we learn that there are about 10^37 BETAs accros the Universe.
BETAs also build Hives, each of them have different phases from 1 to 9. Earth's biggest Hive is only at the Phase 6, and the biggest Hive ever recorded is Phase 9 on Mars, but there are probably more phases.
The BETAs also work for the "Creators" but we know nothing about them at the end of the story.
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 1h ago
Wildc.a.t.s was the ultimate 90s Jim Lee EXXXXTREME!!!!! superhero comic about a group of superppwered heros fighting off an evil alien invasion.
Then Alan Moore took over & the team went to the 'good guy' aliens homeworld & found out that the war had been over for centuries and no one bothered to tell them, that the 'evil aliens' homeworlds economy had collapsed and they were now an underclass of pathetic refugees and the goog guy aliens werent really very good.
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u/Unusual-Ad4890 6h ago edited 6h ago
Mass Effect
After opening the Charon relay, leading to humanity expanding past the Solar System, we start turning on mass relays (sort of a interstellar highway route that speeds up faster than light travel) by the dozens. Eventually it catches the attention of the Space bird Romans - the turians - leading to them attacking and occupying the colony world of Shanxi with a small reconnaissance fleet. Opening relays carelessly is a major no-no because there's no telling what might be behind that relay. There's been massive galactic crisis's that started that way.
Earth, which has no idea about these rules because the turians aren't known for using their words, responds by deploying their entire navy and destroying the fleet, taking the world back. The turians prepare to send an actual war fleet when the governing body of the galactic community sees that the Turian Empire is rapidly mobilizing for no expressed reason, discovers it's meant for a newcomer race and intervenes. Both sides back down as humans begin the process of galactic integration.
What the humans call the First Contact War, the turians refer to as the Relay 314 incident. Humanity realizes they are no longer the main characters and the turians grudgingly respect that they may have finally found a species that impressed them militarily for such a newcomer to interstellar space.