Ascendants Discussion (Soul Key Spoilers Alert)

[frkcd]

Just read through this thread. Great comments and speculation.

The Millennium trilogy is on my list of books to read in 2010. Given that I've not read them and how the plot might impact the Ascendant storyline, my interpretation of events in Warpath was that three cultures--Bajorans, Eav'oq, and Ascendant--were aware of these "greater beings" and projected their own conceptions on them based on their cultural history and how they interpreted what they deemed to be encounters with the "greater beings."

At the time I read Warpath, I thought this set up was--an allegory? symbolic of? not sure of the right term--of our own experience of, in my opinion, creating a god or gods in "our" own image, imbuing it/her/him/them with our own psychological strengths and deficits, etc. I assumed the plot taking shape was going partly examine how multiple groups of people or cultures can see the same thing/entity very differently.

Donnie

 

[DS9Continuing]

Well, you're right, that is the inspiration behind the whole storyline - I remember Marco saying as much himself.

We haven't actually hot to a great deal of exploration of those themes as far - we've been focusing on the Iliana / MU storyline - but yeah, you've got the gist of it.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

At the earliest, the Ascendants storyline can be dealt with in 2011. And, of course, this is not a sure thing - not even close.

In my opinion, the Ascendants will most likely be treated in an anthology, one covering the entire 5 year gap that recently appeared in the DS9 relaunch. I say that because at the end of "The Soul Key" they are gathered, they have a leader and they have a target - in other words, they are ready for war. No reason to wait 5+ years to fire the first shot - I guess one could be found by the writers, but it would be rather convoluted.

From what I remember about the end of that story, the Ascendants' numbers were very low and time was needed to replenish them.

And 5 years sounds like enough time to get the massive army Warpath illuded to together.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

In "The Soul Key", all the leaders of the ascendants were gathered together - and have, presumably, reached a decision after "The Fire"'s arrival. Gathering all the ascendants should take no longer than their travel time to some established coordinates - and, considering the advanced ascendant tech, the travel time should be short - certainly far less than 5+ years.

"The Soul Key" also establishes that the ascendant population decreased in numbers during the millenia - but, unless ascendants reach maturity (physical and intellectual) in 5+ years (and that's convoluted - "the ascendants decided to make pseudo jem'hadar babies"), there's not much one can do to increase their numbers.
I hope the ascendant war will not take place 15+ years after "the soul key" in order to make time for a new generation of ascendants to grow - this will mean the DS9 book dealing with them will be written in ~2020.