The Rage War: A three part Alien / Predator epic by Tim Lebbon

[RakaiThwei]

'Yautja'.

Damn it, Lebbon...

The Yautja concept is being used here? Oh boy.. I was hoping he wouldn't touch that.

Someone let me know how they are portrayed either in PMs or put in spoilers. Also.. are the Super Predators involved in this in anyway?

[happypred]

Ugh, we have got Yautja in this after all. My interest has just nose dived.

And yes...

Spoiler

Chapter 1 opens up 300 years after the prologue. 2692.

[close]

Why? "Yautja" is just a term. What matters is how Lebbon handles the concept of Yautja/Predators/Hish/Hunters...whatever you want to call them

[RakaiThwei]

Why? "Yautja" is just a term. What matters is how Lebbon handles the concept of Yautja/Predators/Hish/Hunters...whatever you want to call them

I am not sure I like the idea of the fact that Predators and Humans are aware of each other, and by that I mean the whole.. idea of communicating with each other directly with universal translators. If anything, I would've thought that Predators keep themselves completely in the shadows, so to speak, keeping humans oblivious of their presence-- or at least major militant factions in the dark anyway. But shit, I suppose that was thrown out with Three World War.

What irks me is the whole universal translation and direct communication going on. That's some serious Trekking there if I may say so. It just doesn't strike me as something the Predators would do. Even in Three World War, they had Machiko serving as a liason but they never directly contacted with each other.

[happypred]

Yeah...

Do they still hunt humans? Do they seed planets with xenomorph eggs?

[RakaiThwei]

Do they still hunt humans? Do they seed planets with xenomorph eggs?

Or shifting pyramids for that matter?

[TheBATMAN]

Like I said, I haven't read the book and have just flicked through so I may be mistaken on some details, but it seems massively different from what I was expecting. Considering we've had so many stories about the Company trying to find a xenomorph specimen over a span of 300 years, within the opening chapter the marines have a dead Predator for study, and the way they reference it so casually implies this is not the first time they have had such a body.

The Predators are referred to as Yautja all throughout the book. Never once are they called Predators, or Hunters, always just Yautja. As I said; the humans have a translator that help them understand their language, so be prepared to see lots of Predator chat in this one. For example; "I am Hishori of the Widow Clan." I just can't take it seriously, and I mean no disrespect to those that like the Yautja concept, but I just don't want to see Predators talking and demystifying themselves. They should be silent, honorable and carry that air of mystery, just like the films.

The cold war aspect I referred to is essentially an uneasy truce between the human sphere and Yautja controlled space. Humans monitor Yautja communications and likewise the Yautja watch the humans.

Spoiler

The weaponised Aliens are all marked and are very reminiscent of General Spears and Nightmare Asylum. They seem to be controlled by a faction of Androids that are related to 'The Founders' and the way Liliya steals the research in the opening chapter is a foreshadowing of this. As far as I can tell, the Dog Aliens from Out of the Shadows have no involvement.

[close]

[Ultramorph]

Thanks for the info. I hate to badger you with questions, but have the Arcturians been mentioned at all?

[The Alien Predator]

Thanks for the info. It certainly sounds like this is going in an...interesting direction. Definitely more Star Trek-y than I was expecting, but I'll keep an open mind.

My guess is that

Spoiler

W-Y will come in with their own weaponized aliens and dog alien tech.

[close]

You know, I was actually thinking the exact same thing you put in the spoiler! Great minds think alike! 

As for all this new information, I am actually sorta liking the direction. It is 2692 afterall and humans are bound to catch up with Predators eventually. I was surprised to see them "monitoring Yautja communications", and be spied on in return. It looks like the Predators have lost their element of surprise, the number one advantage they had in all their appearances was because no one knew about them.

This story is in a sense exploring an idea of "what happens when we finally know about them?" and also how they react to this too. Do they finally recognize us as an intelligent race and not intelligent prey? I understand how some people are upset about this whole demystifying, I on the other hand appreciate mystery to an extent, but hate when things stay mysterious for so long. So I'm not too bothered about new directions being explored here.

Like Ultramorph, I'm gonna be hoarding any spoilerific answers that I can find as the wait for this book is too painful now.

I do hope we get to see the Dog-Aliens and the Arcturians eventually, as I remember hearing they might return or there were "plans" for them.

[TheBATMAN]

There's no mention of the Arcturians as of yet, but I've only been skimming the pages so there's every chance I may have missed a reference, but there's definitely no big link.

I'm not going to directly spoil the events of the book as I'll leave that for yourselves to enjoy, but here are some details about the 'universe-expanding' Tim Lebbon has done and a couple of other nuggets. I'm still not sure how I feel about this radical new direction, but I can't deny it is certainly interesting.

Spoiler

Humanity need Trimonite for FTL travel. They use 'Arrow' class ships for exploration purposes that can travel 15x the speed of light but only 1% of the Milky Way has been explored. The human sphere alone would take 200 years to circumnavigate and require almost a million tonnes of Trimonite for fuel. But at this point only half a million tonnes had ever been mined. The arrow class ships look for planets that may contain more of the fuel. But it is so staggeringly expensive, Weyland Yutani are pretty much the only corporation who can afford it, or so they believe.

Standard ships use Mass Effect style Mass Relays to jump from one point to another, called Drop holes in this universe.

The upper hierarchy of Weyland Yutani is run by 13 executives, known as 'the thirteen'. Not dissimilar to the 'original 11' from the BSAA for those who know their Resident Evil lore.

The Founders are some kind of religious sect and see themselves as pilgrims, seeking religious and philosophical freedom from the taint of the Human Sphere. They are comprised of former corporate employees, scientists and forward thinkers who are disillusioned with humanity. They developed their own secret, FTL drive more powerful than that of the company and were able to be the first humans to leave the Human Sphere behind. They took off in three ships named Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet. They were conceived by a man named Wordsworth and set off in the early 2400's.

They are looking to create their own utopia away from the sphere of human influence. They are aware of the dangers the galaxy poses, with the xenos and the Preds being just two of potentially hundreds of thousands of threats. We even get a small reference to Peter Weyland here – as it is said he went searching the galaxy and never returned and no one knows what became of him.

During their travels, the founders found an artificial planetoid with an unknown alien species that seem to grow their own technology. They bring one of the aliens on board the Macbeth, and over the course of a century, it re-builds and extends the ship, making it more faster and more efficient. The alien is described as a large slug and it is unknown if it is actually organic or machine, or both.

After Wordsworth died, the founders were taken over by someone named Beatrix Maloney and she changed them into 'The Rage' and began launching attacks on alien species. The Rage Elders build themselves an army of combat androids to protect themselves.

The Founders/Rage wish to harness and weaponise the xenomorphs as a defence against the unknown and to take revenge on humanity.

The events of the book concern Johnny Mains and his Void Lark marine unit. Predator attacks become more frequent as they are pushed towards the Human Sphere and there are a number of skirmishes before the inevitable team up to combat the xenomorph threat. We don't see things from the Preds' perspective until the second half of the book.

Some of the action takes place on LV-159, which contains a research base and is currently being terraformed with atmosphere processors. The team there study captured Predator tech and even had a live captured specimen they called Eve, but it killed itself by 'willing its own hearts to stop.' The base is run by 'ArmoTech' which is the company's branch for researching alien weapons and technology.

A Predator was confirmed to be hunting in Stalingrad in 1943 during World War 2.

[close]

[The Alien Predator]

Thank you so much for the new info!

This has just gotten so much more interesting for me.

I cannot wait to read this.

[Ultramorph]

That sounds both really weird and also really cool. Not at all what I was expecting. Very much looking forward to getting my hands on this.

[The Alien Predator]

I'm curious, are there space battles? If so, what are they like?

And what are the ground battles like? Do humans use the new introduced weaponry introduced in Sea of Sorrows such as the Plasma Rifle and the Plasma Warheads on their ships?

Do Predators use any unique war gear in the book?

Sorry for so many questions, this is something I am excited to learn about.

[TheBATMAN]

There are space battles which are pretty good and some ground battles too although I've yet to read too far. The marines have a cloaked ship which I assume was reverse-engineered from Pred tech. I don't have any specifics on what weapons are used but I assume they are quite advanced because the humans seem very evenly matched with the Preds with marines often going one on one and emerging victorious.

No new Pred weapons as of yet.

There doesn't seem to be any connections at all to the previous trilogy other than the The Founder's data is stolen from company data collated with alien samples taken from LV-178.

I think my biggest surprise is that the Preds seem already very well established in this universe which seems strange because this book is now the official introduction of Predators into the alien canon.

[RakaiThwei]

How is Predator society portrayed, if by any chance that we have a look into that? I know that some of the old EU material prior to the reboot had some ideas, such as Predators being governed by a Council of Ancients (which I felt was very fitting) as mentioned in AVP Extinction and presumably seen in Chain of Life and Death.

I know that the Hish continuity mentioned a Conclave where there was a Predator leader who was consulted by heads of different clan representatives.

So do these Predators in the new EU follow the Council of Ancients idea, or the Conclave or something else?

Also.. since these Predators are supposed to be Yautja, can we assume there are male and female gendered Predators? Cause after the whole Hish mess, that just got everything and eveyone confused.

[Xenomorphine]

So, basically, in the Perry era, Predators were worryingly close to being klingons. In the Lebbon era, they literally have become klingons...

And now it sounds like these 'Founders' are on the way to becoming the Borg.

In awe, I am not.