4Game

A basic lore rundown of what I've heard from both past and present events for anyone lost on the lore. Feel free to add points and further details / theories in the comments.

• Thargoids came before Guardians.

• Thargoids are environmentalist, and decide not to expand throughout the entire galaxy.

• Guardians pop up, and begin making crazy technology while colonizing and possibly terraforming other planets.

• Guardians (or some other race) come to Sol and leave behind technology on Mars.

• Guardians develop a very powerful AI, which is capable of independent thought and replication (essentially a grey goo).

• Thargoids don't like that, and tell the Guardians to chill, but the Guardians responds with the middle finger, and the Guardian-Thargoid war begins.

• AI kills off Guardians in a Skynet maneuver, and Thargoids are trying to stop it.

• AI is suppressed, and Thargoids will attempt to cease any further Guardian activity.

• Thargoids reverse-engineer Guardian technology, like the shutdown field (used against the AI), and Witchspace travel via artificial wormholes.

• Humanity pops up.

• Nuclear war occurs, and corporations overtake the government.

• Humanity begins space exploration, and construct Generation Ships in case something bad happens on Earth again (the 70,000 constructed point was actually a typo, but has become a widely distributed fact over the span of a millennium in Elite lore).

• Humanity discover the leftover alien technology on Mars, and use it to create hyperdrives.

• A bunch of political and corporate squabbles, where technology is made and lost (other Elite games).

• Humanity encounters first Thargoid, and encounters were mixed in response.

• Thargoid envoy is sent to New Africa for peace negotiations, but is killed by humans.

• First Human-Thargoid war begins.

• Azimuth captures Thargoid test subjects and create the mycoid virus.

• CMDR John Jameson (person you play as in previous Elite games) is sent by Salvation (the Witch) to deliver the mycoid payload to a Thargoid Hive Ship, effectively destroying it.

• Thargoid Hive Ships are either destroyed or grounded around human-occupied space, creating Thargoid surface sites.

• First Human-Thargoid war ends.

• The FSD is developed (or rediscovered, possibly reverse-engineered from Thargoids), and humanity begins rapid expansion (the Bubble).

• Humanity unknowingly trespass on Thargoid territory, and begins harvesting Thargoid barnacle sites without asking.

• Thargoids don't like that, and tell humanity to chill, but humanity responds with the middle finger, and the second Human-Thargoid war begins.

• Humanity discover Guardian weaponry, which is used to counter Thargoids.

• Salvation experiments with captured Thargoids, and creates a Human-Thargoid hybrid labeled as D-2 (Seo Jin-Ae), which may have aggravated the Thargoids into returning to humanity.

• Thargoids mainly attack human systems far outside of the Bubble, to try to keep humanity suppressed.

• Salvation uses stolen Guardian technology to lure Thargoids into human inhabited space, and test-fires the Proteus Wave, which is the original Guardian technology that they used to try to stop their own AI, and what Thargoids reverse-engineered.

• Salvation hooks up Proteus Wave to grounded Thargoid Hive Ship, and fires to destroy all Thargoids within the area.

• Hive Ship adapts and repurposes Proteus Wave to work against human technology, and sends out a distress call, which is answered.

• Thargoid surface sites begin accepting and repurposes inserted Guardian relics.

• UIA (Stargoids)s begin mobilizing towards Sol, using reverse-engineered Proteus Wave to lay waste to any humans in their path.

• D-2 is attempting to communicate with Thargoids to stop the conflict.