The Cause of the Second Thargoid War

The Second Thargoid War is central to Elite Dangerous, and in the nearly eight years we have been at war with them, the reasons for that war have faded into obscurity. Anyone asking will probably be given a variety of explanations: they're just automatically hostile, or revenge for the first war, or we just don't know. Most of what is said is wrong.

It's not just obscure because of the GalNets being buried eight years back, on an old website no one knows about. There's a lot of in-game context that is just no longer visible anywhere. You cannot see how Thargoids acted eight years ago, because there's been an entire war since then which has slightly changed their behaviour. An extremely critical factor of, you know, what the aliens were actually doing, is almost completely lost to time.

My knees hurt when I stand up, so I remember what happened. I've also spent a lot of time double-checking and forming the complete timeline, because memory is pretty unreliable especially with regards to exactly when and in what order things happened. A great example is how many people seem to think that the Thargoids started the war by attacking stations - but that happened months after humanity had already declared war. That was the response! But it was way more eyecatching than the months of GalNet prior, so that's what gets remembered and passed on.

So, that's why I'm writing this. That's the reason I made this entire website. I am SICK and TIRED of writing essays on this whenever I see some poor strangers on the internet discussing this. We're going to go through the entire buildup to the war, and then I can just throw this page at people and I will never have to speak on this topic again.

Since a lot of this happens outside of GalNet, it's a little trickier to cite. I'll do my best, but you may have just to trust me on some of this stuff. If you don't for some reason, or want something in particular clarified, let me know and I'll try and find a better source to back it up.

Alien Artefacts

The first hint of anything strange going on was the discovery of covert Federal convoys in the bubble, transporting strange organic alien artefacts. These would later be called Thargoid Sensors, but for now are just "Unknown Artefacts", on account of not knowing what the hell these things are.

So, the Federation has found what appears to be alien technology, and they are hiding this. They have never acknowledged these convoys, where they were coming from, where they were going. How suspicious. I'm sure the authorities have our best interests at heart, though.

If you wanted to try and find answers, you had to steal the artefacts from these heavily armed Federal convoys. By the way, this was before Engineering, so you couldn't just tank them with ubershields. Commanders managed to nick a few, and started performing Science on them, the usual protocols of chucking them into black holes, blowing them up, etc. But they eventually figured it out.

As indicated by their later name of "Sensor", these alien objects would scan nearby bodies and transmit some information about them. They'd also scan your ship, and send a picture of it back. In other words, if the creators of these mysterious sensors are still out there, they know who you are and where you are. The Federation is stealing spyware, you goddamn idiots-

The Sensors will be important later, but it's important to note that this is the first and last time the actual human Bubble of territory will be relevant. The Federation was bringing alien tech in, but the actual aliens themselves do not show up in human territory until long after humanity declares war. That's interesting, isn't it? I literally just wrote about how the Feds were bringing alien spyware in, it could be argued that this should have tipped the Thargoids off to the location of the bubble, if they didn't already know. Maybe they couldn't or wouldn't show up in human territory until things escalated. But, whatever the reason, we now have to leave the bubble and look to the real focus of all this - the Pleiades Nebula.

Alien Barnacles

The Federation had to be finding this alien tech somewhere, and that somewhere was the Pleiades. It's a nebula about 400LY from Sol, nearby in galactic terms but outside colonised human territory as of 3301.
It was later discovered that the Unknown Artefacts pointed directly to the Merope system within the Pleiades - and also that there was a huge "shell" of UAs surrounding the region. Clearly an important region to the aliens - and potentially under surveillance by them.

Naturally, people go and investigate. "Barnacles" are discovered in Merope and other systems within the Pleiades - organic constructs that produce a miracle material known as Meta-Alloys. These alloys are stronger and lighter than anything we can make, as well as self-repairing. A bunch more alien technology is found in the region too, including a couple of alien shipwrecks. Wow! So much cool stuff. All free for the taking...

What I'm trying to say here, is that humanity has just discovered space oil. Miracle materials and alien technology, with no one around to stop them taking it. So, obviously, there's a huge rush to drill for it, by smashing as many barnacles as possible to harvest the meta-alloys. Some stations are built in the Pleiades, and there's a big initiative to harvest as many Meta-Alloys as possible...which then vanish.

There's big money behind harvesting this space oil, enough that some massive megacorp just buys the entire supply through covert means. Further fueling the demand for meta-alloys is the discovery that they can be used to counter technological interference from Unknown Artefacts, which tend to cause stations to shut down when enough of them are sold to stations on the black market. So now we need to smash even more barnacles to try and fix those stations.

While all this is going on, a few people raise minor concerns that maybe we shouldn't be destroying all these unique alien barnacles to fuel black-market trade of their produce and other alien technology. Maybe that could cause problems later on, if we ran out of barnacles, or the creators of the barnacles are still around. These people are ignored, because money speaks louder than words. The space oil will surely never run dry.

Space America Liberates The Space Oil

While all of that barnacle stuff has been going on, a few other shady things happened. I'm skimming over them because it's not super important to the war, but much of it concerns Professor Palin, one of the main people researching the barnacles. His research gets terminated by the Feds under suspicious circumstances, then some people try to break into his labs after he goes independent, then he gets...kidnapped and interrogated and infected with a space plague and then dumped back out to infect people? Look, it doesn't matter, someone clearly doesn't want him researching this stuff.

Who? I dunno, but the sudden appearance of a goddamn Federal Farragut Battlecruiser over his base probably means the Federation is on that list. They're showing up a lot in this, aren't they? Crazy.

Point is, the authorities are here to fix everything. The Feds send their gargantuan military into the Pleiades, one capital ship to blockade Palin, several others to secure the meta-alloy sites. Naturally they are doing this to protect them. The Federation also denies claims that the deployment of eight massive military capital ships represents a "military agenda".

If you've seen how the Federation responded to the actual live Thargoids at any point, or just heard Hudson speak, you will understand how hilarious this is. Zachary "shoot everything" Hudson is miraculously transformed into a barnacle-hugger by the mere possibility they might be sentient, and also because they secrete extremely lucrative space oil.

It doesn't take long for the Empire to get involved, unconvinced that the Federation is trying to monopolise the barnacles with good intentions. As the Federation continues to expand into and occupy the Pleiades, constructing several new outposts in the region, the Empire also begins to expand into the region for the exact same reasons, they just don't bother to claim altruism. They also want the space oil. Conflict immediately ensues, with the Federation winning and further extending its control over the Pleiades.
But that's good news, right? The Federation said they'll protect the barnacles, and definitely not just immediately harvest them all for the delicious space oil! President Zachary Hudson himself promised me!

...

"It is not known why the Federation has acted inversely to its stated objectives"

...I'm going to lose my fucking mind. I don't want to derail this page further, it's meant to be about the war. Just, appreciate the beauty of that line for a second. Just sit with me here. I'm going to get to the actual aliens soon, trust me. I need you to understand this. I need you to understand the common theme behind all of this. It's money. "wHy wOuLd tHe FeDs lIe" it's money, it's always money!

Several more shady things happen, but you get the gist by now. Everyone wants the space oil, and why not? It's not like whoever put all this stuff here is still around to object to us taking it. It's free! Don't mind the surveillance equipment we've been enthusiastically grabbing.

It is into this situation, with humanity's biggest powers sending the military in to invade the Pleiades and loot all the barnacles, that the aliens return.

The Return