I hear a lot of talk and hope for peace with the Thargoids. This may be possible but I do not think so. Why? Because I believe that what we call the Thargoids are not simply another race like Humans or the Guardians. The Thargoids are a fundamentally different form of life from us and what we are seeing is merely the immune system of this larger organism.
First, what are Humans and Guardians? Humans and Guardians are an individual collective. We are a race of beings that is a collective made up of many individuals. You can figure out what a human is by just taking any one human of the collective and looking at its features. All humans, generally speaking, have the same types of characteristics and all of those characteristics are present in every human, generally speaking. Humans have a head, a torso, arms, and legs, heart, lung, brains, etc. There are some deviations but generally speaking this claim holds. One stereotypical human can act as an archetype for all other humans and can act as a prototype for the human race as a whole. To figure out what the Human race is one need only bring all the humans together and you will have brought together the human race. You can then point to that collection of individuals and say "ah there, that is the Human race". Because our race is a collection of individuals, or an individual collective.
I believe that the Thargoids are not this form of life. Instead what we call the Thargoids are just a small part of a much larger organism. Not necessarily a hive mind but more like a single body. A single body that is the size of the galaxy itself. The Thargoid structures show an image of what we think is the galaxy. But I think this is a mistake. I don't think that is a map of the galaxy but rather it is a map of the larger body of the Thargoids.
We think that the Thargoids are coming from their home planet and have "colonized"/cultivated other planets by planting Barnacles to harvest Meta-Alloys, etc. But I don't think that is accurate. It assumes that the planets and the Barnacles are something separate from the Thargoids themselves.
Instead, I think the Thargoids are merely utilizing what they consider to be their own body. The planets are to the Thargoids what the cells of our bodies are to humans. The planets/cells process nutrients and then those nutrients go to helping the rest of the body to function. But the cells of your body were never colonized by you. You just are your body and you just are your cells. You grew as your cells grew and multiplied.
I don't think that the Interceptors that we know as Thargoids are a race of individuals like humans are. You cannot point to the features of any one individual Interceptor and say that this is a Thargoid and it is representative of all Thargoids. We already have evidence of this by the fact that the Scouts are fundamentally different from the Interceptors. Even if you collected all the Interceptors together you would not have brought together the entire Thargoid race.
Instead I believe the Interceptors are like an immune system. They are there to make sure that the "body" is running smoothly. We have many such cells in our bodies called Macrophages. They sort of scavenge around and eat up garbage (this is an over simplification but I hope you'll excuse me).
We also have many non-human cells in our bodies. Bacteria, viruses, etc. Most of these bacteria and foreign objects are benign or even helpful to the smooth functioning of the body. But there are some that are not. They can interfere with the functioning of the body directly by being parasitic or by releasing waste that is harmful to our cells. We also have cancers which are when our own body gets out of control.
When Macrophages encounter things they will probe them and check them out and see if they are harmful or foreign. They will be happy to eat and recycle material that is not conducive to the smooth functioning of the body. They clean up the junk. But they have another function, to alert the greater immune system if there is a larger bacterial/viral infection or a cancer. When that happens the Macrophages call in a Dendritic cell. This is like a tiny brain of the immune system. It will come and investigate. The Macrophages will show them the foreign objects and will rip them apart and look at all the pieces, be they bacteria or viruses etc, and will do a deeper analysis on the parts to see if they are harmful or foreign. If it determines that the foreign objects are a threat, the Dendritic cell will travel to the Thymus of the body and will find a T-Cell and a B-Cell that is specifically designed for seeking and destroying the specific type of invader. Once the T-Cells and B-Cells are active there is a major war inside our bodies. The T-Cells go out and actively murder all the invaders. The B-Cells produce massive amounts of Anti-bodies. These will attach onto the invaders and interfere with their ability to function and will also mark them for destruction by the T-Cells (again an oversimplification, please forgive).
OK, enough about the human immune system. How does this relate to the Thargoids?
Well, they have been happily cultivating their "body" for millions of years. Then we come along and start spreading like some bacteria. So far so good, we don't really bother the "body" and the Thargoids leave us be. When we encounter them they probe us to see if we are dangerous and generally only attack us if we present as hostile to them. They hang around space junk and will scan it and using caustic damage will try to break it apart. Clearing up the junk inside their body.
Then we land on their planets and start messing with their Barnacles, stealing meta-alloys. Now we are entering their "cells" and like a parasite we are stealing the resources of their cells. The Macrophages/Interceptors start to "eat us" in response by burning our stations in an effort to make the bacteria less efficient and slow the spread of the invaders.
In response to this we initiate the Proteus wave. We launch an attack that could cripple the Thargoid immune system entirely. This threatens not only the nearby "cells"/planets, which are likely only a small fraction of the overall Thargoid body, but it also threatens the smooth functioning of the entire body. This is a serious problem. As a response the Macrophages/Interceptors send out the roar. They're calling in the Dendritic cells. That's what these Stargoids are. They are the Dendritic cells that will come and analyze humanity at its source, Sol. They are going to go to Sol and rip apart the infected "cells"/planets by killing all the humans and looking at the technology we use (they will not literally tear apart the planet) and analyze the nature of the foreign invaders. There is evidence of this since the Macrophages/Interceptors have already been collecting Human specimens for the Stargoids to look at when they arrive.
After a short analysis, the Stargoids will then create T-Cells, I believe these are the Thargoid Titans we have already seen evidence of. These Titans will act as the killers who will seek out and cleanse any infected "cells"/planets that have human invaders on them. To aid the T-Cells in their fight the B-Cells (as of now unknown but I have a theory) will produce "anti-bodies" to attach onto the "infected cells"/Human planetary settlements to reduce the functioning of the invaders and to mark them for destruction by the T-Cells/Titans. These "B-Cells" will create on-foot troops whose function will be to glum up the efficiency of the human invaders and to eventually markout and destroy the source of the humans – the planets that they live and breed on.
My theory is that the B-Cells are the Thargoid installations we have already encountered. They are left over from previous "infections" the Thargoid immune system has had to deal with. They are on maintenence mode and are waiting for further instructions. They lie dormant in case a previous foe re-emerges or a new foe poses a threat. The Stargoids will release the Titans and the Titans will reactivate the B-Cells with new instructions to start pushing out trillions of "anti-bodies"/ground troops specifically created to combat humanity.
So is there hope for peace? If I am right, then it is not likely.
Bacteria cannot communicate with our T-Cells/Dendritic cells. Our immune system doesn't care if a bacteria tries to reason with it. Their function is to destroy these trouble making invaders. Bacteria are too stupid to talk to the human that they are occupying and even if they could its not like a human can communicate with its own immune system to call it off. Bacteria do not even understand the being they are occupying. They look at our bodies as an environment and not as a living being. Bacteria are just too simple for us to have any meaningful communication and our immune systems are set up in such a way as to function without our direct conscious control. Even if we could communicate with the harmful bacteria, why go through the trouble of compromising? I wouldn't choose to live with a harmful bacteria in my body if I could instead remove it.
I believe the same can be said for the Thargoids and Humans. We are just some inconvenient bacteria in their body. We went under the radar and things were fine but now we've woken up the larger immune system. We are too stupid to even realize that the galaxy is a living body and not just dead matter. I believe there was some in fighting among the Thargoids in the past, I believe that this is like a cancer in the body of the Thargoids. It may be that they were busy with their internal strife before but now either they have dealt with their cancerous parts or our infection has gotten too serious to ignore and now their attention is fully on us. The immune system will try to wipe us out without the major consciousness of the Thargoid body even really knowing about it and I do not think there is any hope for peace through communication.
There may be some hope for humanity, however. Humanity might survive by fighting so hard as to destroy the force sent to wipe us out. But we will have to fight wave after wave until the entire Thargoid body is exhausted to death. Who knows if humanity can manage this. Or we might trick the immune system into believing that we are a part of the body. Perhaps a human/thargoid hybrid is the only way to survive. Salvation was doing these types of experiments long ago but I think that humanity en masse will reject this route as being abhorrent and an affront to human nature. So, I think it is likely going to be a fight to the death.
Personally, I believe we will lose this battle and the bubble will be destroyed. However, humanity has already "metastasized" by spreading to Colonia. So humanity is not going to be completely eliminated and perhaps more little pockets of humanity will start to form all over the Galaxy, like a cancer spreading all over the body. Perhaps the Thargoids will try to seek us out in every location and eliminate us like the immune system does. This would open up the potential for base building within the game, with player owned settlements out in the black (there are building scematics in Odyssey afterall that serve no purpose as of now, so fingers crossed).
These are my thoughts. All are pure speculation based on my personal observations and my personal understanding of how Thargoids seem to operate and how it seems similar to how a human immune system functions.
Feel free to disagree or to add to these thoughts.
o7
