The Gateways race column

Many people have already picked up on this topic, but for the people who havent, let me explain. When travelling to the outpost, you have to go through the ¨Ancient Gateway¨, This is a portal-like gateway that is opened using 20 core fragments. The important detail to do with the gate, is the pillars on either side of where the portal appears. On either side of the gate there is a pillar, both of which have the same patterns on them; an engraved head of each of the 7 races. All of the races are there, although here lies the mystery.

There is a missing head. The eighth race head slot, is empty. In its place is a cracked indentation in the shape of a head. So this brings us to question; What does this mean? Is there going to be a new eighth race? was there an original eighth race that was wiped out? Is there going to be more story released revealing the answer?

As of now I have no idea what the missing head means, I will be looking into this more to try my hardest to find an answer, and for reference here is the link to the starbound wiki page for the gateway which even mentions the missing head: https://starbounder.org/Ancient_Gateway

Please leave a reply to this post if you have any useful info on this as I am certainly not the best theorist out there.

 

I think it's the cultivator's race. There's too much evidence saying his race will become big.
Something's going to happen when the big update comes out.
Bounty Hunting won't be the only new concept.

 

Yeah that would make a lot of sense, seeing as the first appearence of him is in the release out of beta theres bound to be more in store for the cultivator and his race in the future.

 

The ancients referred to the cultivator as the great kind one. He was probably the leader. It could foresee the destruction. It was intelligent enough to prepare in the event that it would die. It saw that all 6 races were equivalent to itself. It gifted them with the keys. Each one has a name in “Ancient Language”. The ancients could not fight as they were builders. The cultivator knew how to fight. That is why it is leader. The ancients could change time and space as demonstrated in the vaults. They are called vaults because they protect all biomes and planets in the event the ruin succeeded. They all knew of their deaths and that is why they took it as their duty to protect all other life. They mentioned remnant. In video games, remnant means what's left over when something dies. When it says remnant, it doesn’t mean the 6 keys, the novakids aren’t in the story because they didn’t exist at the time. They ARE the cultivator’s remnants. That is why no one knows where they come from. It is said they have a small attention span, but if they have a long lifespan and have the same attention span as humans, then they would be considered to have a small attention span. I bet the ancients also constructed the Glitch. For what reason, no one knows. They were powerful. It says they would die but it never said when. Everyone dies so that could mean, they are still around. They could possibly BE the novakids.
I wrote this a while ago.

 

This all seems to make sense bar evidence, we´ll have to see what happens in the new update to be sure. the only flaw I see here is that the novakid head IS in the pillar as all of the 7 races appear on the pillar, this will probably rule out the novakids as the ancients.

 

A long long time ago, during the Koala beta, there was an eighth carving on the gate's base for a short period of time. I could not find an original image of the gate with the eighth head so I improvised and made a close replica based on my memory. The chipped slot had an image of an eye much like the Ruin's "eye-conic" feature (yes eye just made that horrid pun, eye could not help it.) Rumors about Starbound's "Eighth Race" flew all over the place.

(Do not go taking this for granted, this is an entirely groundless theory that could be wildly incorrect!)

This could have meant that there was to be some race with connections to the Ruin. Although the Cultivator is only ever spoken of in the 1.0 release it has been a thing for a very long time, the holograms prove that. I think that just as the Novakids came from the Cultivator, this eight etching is depicting something born from the Ruin that was likely spread about the galaxy as it was being sealed in the black hole. It is just a little far-fetched but it may very well be possible.

One codex from the old lore implies that the Tentacle Beast was something that the Starbound beta lore villain "Greenfinger" created in his lab, which would disprove my idea. This could have been an attempt by the developers to throw players of the scent of some unknown forces who may see an introduction on a later time.

Once again this is all speculation. Perhaps what I have said is something that may have been in concept once, something that never was in concept, or it could be something really big that is still being worked on in secret.


I put a little signature on the depiction if you wish to use it elsewhere. It is there to let any one who sees it know that this is not the original thing, and to let them know who made it in case there is something incorrect about this illustration.

 

Wouldn't it be cool if the Ancients ever became a playable race, with their own unique storyline? Maybe unlockable after beating the game with any race?

 

Yeah that would be a very interesting theory to be seen proven true or disproven, I guess for now all we can do is wait for clarity in the coming update. Great theory by the way.

 

i had a thread about this way back in the day. due to the single eye, and some interesting coincidences, i presumed that perhaps the unknown species found in the "??? fossil" was the 8th race.

These guys.
In addition to only having one eye, you never see them alive ingame, nor do you ever hear their name, suggesting they've been wiped out/removed from history.
Also, as the only fossil holding something, that's rather curious too. Of note, is that in earlier versions of the game, the artifacts were depicted as small spheres suspiciously similar in shape to this.

Which suggested that perhaps that was the 8th race.
Of course, much of this has to do with coincidence, and it's rather likely it has zero correlation, especially after they butchered the old lore, and this, if it does have any relevance, is likely just an easter egg left in as acknowledgement of the old gate eye in the 8th slot.

 

I think you're absolutely on to something. Maybe they could add some kind of an update where if you have the unknown fossil completed, it can give you a quest as to the sphere it's holding which turns into discovering the ancients and allowing you to play as them as a secret unlockable species, which has its own separate story which has to do with unlocking the ark and instead of finding your way to the ruin, maybe you can find your way to the Cultivator and put him back together with enough ancient essence you find. Then there's all kinds of things they could do with reviving the Cultivator, up to and including adding his revival to Starbound 2 if they ever release it.

I think there definitely needs to be side stories released past 1.0, it can't all just be The Ruin main story.

 

I agree, there needs to be side story quests. And if they made it so that you could get an extra race, lore and gameplay fans would go NUTS. The idea of getting free DLC comes to mind as well, because I doubt that "Starbound 2" will ever come to existance. But the possiblity for more updates and DLC that adds in new items and races would be amazing.