The Guardian of Forever also said they can't time travel. Also the Preservers seeded the Galaxy with DNA to encourage beings lilke them to develop. Changelings are nothing like the humanoids we know about. While they do kind of look like preservers I seem to remember that changelings only had that form because it made Odo more comfortable.
The Changelings developed from solid form, making it likely they once were humanoid or humanoid-like. That is said multiple times in DS9 by the female founder.
Guinan specifically said the Borg were around for "thousands of centuries" in "Q, Who?". They are at least that old, if not more.
she may have said it, but does she really know? i dont know for sure but if Q identified her as some sort of cosmic enemy of his and some of her own insights have provided true but the one with the ent-c happaned in a no longer different reality which does not count.
still, did she have any proof to back up her own claim? there is no way to know for sure if the borg are really that old.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I see several good theories as to who The Others could be. I do not see the Borg as them as they would assume to assimilate than ally with anyone. Even when they do ally, as soon as the means are met, all bets are off. One that I have yet to see mentioned would be The Sphere Builders. We already know they can meddle through time. They convinced the Xindi of the past to attack Earth under a false pretense. Perhaps they contacted the Iconians in the past to warn them of the coming attack that bought them enough time for some to escape. What better way to get back at the ones who stopped your plans to begin with than to enlist an even more powerful foe.
Given how long El Aurians can live and their reputation as travelers and listeners, not to mention Picard's trust in her, I don't see why Guinan would be wrong.
i got the sense guinan was the mary sue of el-aurians, that she was a special case.
i mean you cant prove that the minority is representative of the majority, all you can prove is that 1 of 3 incidents where an el-aurian was present on screen out of Guinan, Mazur and Soren. only Guinen showed any significant awareness of these abilities she had and any further case on the el-aurians is speculative at best. i never saw Mazur gleening information of events just beyond his comprehension and Soren was obsessed with the energy ribbon more then he was for time based events and even then he was like Mazur, unaware of these abilities (perhaps i speak false on that as an assumption? but all we saw on screen is what we got, so i cant prove or disprove that either).
whatever the case there would need to be some proof to show the claim of all el-aurians are like guinan and they can live for a very long time and all have this ability. that would also case some doubt on guinan as well. is she really that old?
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Guinan was on Earth during 1800s/1900s so they can live for at least 500 years (TNG: Time's Arrow)
See, I find it interesting that she was on Earth and knew Mark Twain and yet, she was a refugee from the Borg on the Lakul and rescued from the Nexus by the Enterprise B.
"that would also case some doubt on guinan as well. is she really that old?"
That is what I should have put as a quote in my post. I was answering your last question, seeing as how you give no context: is she really that old compared to what? Picard? A Vulcan?
Guinan's longevity is the norm, not the exception.
"that would also case some doubt on guinan as well. is she really that old?"
That is what I should have put as a quote in my post. I was answering your last question, seeing as how you give no context: is she really that old compared to what? Picard? A Vulcan?
Guinan's longevity is the norm, not the exception.
the norm to what? thats the exact same thing your accusing me of.
i cant answer and you cant answer.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
well, i don't think that the others are the changelings. how they could save the iconians? they don't have powers; their military forces don't seem enough to fight against the iconians.
well, i don't think that the others are the changelings. how they could save the iconians? they don't have powers; their military forces don't seem enough to fight against the iconians.
also.... in the one mission the Iconian computer said that the Iconians are planning to invade the Dominion later.
Not buying the Dominion as "The Other." They just don't seem to have the mix of technological superiority and arrogant stagnation necessary to have been around and what they are for such a long time.
Plus, there's the surveillance and planned conquest. The Iconians are treating the Founders and their Dominion the same way as every other race in the galaxy and when it comes to a race that so intimately tied into your own species' history, you don't treat them the same as everyone else. You either treat them better or much worse, but you definitely treat them differently.
Organians make sense as "the Others." The Q Continuum makes sense too. That weird toga wearing Apollo maybe.
well, i don't think that the others are the changelings. how they could save the iconians? they don't have powers; their military forces don't seem enough to fight against the iconians.
I alluded to it ewarlier but I think what we have is pronoun confusion.
I don't think the "them" that were saved is the Iconians. I suppose on a certain level you can't expect the Prophets to position pronouns in a clear way chronologically.
Has nothing to do with Guinan's "special awareness". She's old. Very old from what we've seen and she's been shown to travel quite a lot. It stands to reason she's been around long enough, been around to enough places and heard and witnessed a lot for herself.
That's not speculation, it's what we've seen in canon.
We also saw her challenge an active Q (with a reciprocal response from that Q). Being well traveled could have given her special knowledge but there's evidently more going on besides being the Rick Steves of the star trek universe.
However I can only see this as mattering to the current plot arc if cryptic needs to write a place into the game for Whoopie (which isn't going to happen without MASSIVE charity on her part.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
i mean you cant prove that the minority is representative of the majority, all you can prove is that 1 of 3 incidents where an el-aurian was present on screen out of Guinan, Mazur and Soren. only Guinen showed any significant awareness of these abilities she had and any further case on the el-aurians is speculative at best.
Too be fair the Generations novelization did hint that Soren had freaky abilities too.
Preservers (First of the Galaxy, creator of most if not all other races)
Icoanins [First created, built with all or most of the knowledge of the preservers(very reminiscent of the Data/Lore saga) and charged with "policing" their siblings]
The Slaver Race(a group who ALSO controlled the galaxy at one point)
Apollo and the Greko-Roman Gods(Claimed to have existed before humanity, visiting them to bask in the power humanity's worship gave them)
Kukulkan's race (Who claimed to be the teacher of several Earthen races and the last of his own)
Saragon's race(Who's powers became god-like and claimed to be a possible Progenitor of the Vulcan race)
Changlings(Who called themselves explorers and who only founded The Dominion around earth's 8-4th century BCE meaning they could have existed far longer before that)
AND the most damning piece of it all for "the other"
God himself(Do I REALLY need to explain this? and how THIS is the most likely suspect?)
We don't want what the Feds have. We want the equivalent. We want fairer treatment. Concern, desire, greed to some extent, and passionate belief that the enough people would buy KDF items to make it worth Cryptic's while.
The Tkon supposedly died off 600,000 years ago - 400,000 before the Iconians were destroyed.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
The Tkon supposedly died off 600,000 years ago - 400,000 before the Iconians were destroyed.
Accuracy and antiquity are things that are not often complementary.... mostly because accurate records of any ancient period are hard to find and are usually just as hard to decipher(ancient "superiority" races seem to suffer from the "lulz our tech is so super, whoops! *dead*" syndrome) The only accurate account of anything would have been the Preservers and that library.. which is now gone... and the only race who would have a complete copy of said data, the Deferi, are now borg-encrusted.
We don't want what the Feds have. We want the equivalent. We want fairer treatment. Concern, desire, greed to some extent, and passionate belief that the enough people would buy KDF items to make it worth Cryptic's while.
Accuracy and antiquity are things that are not often complementary.... mostly because accurate records of any ancient period are hard to find and are usually just as hard to decipher(ancient "superiority" races seem to suffer from the "lulz our tech is so super, whoops! *dead*" syndrome) The only accurate account of anything would have been the Preservers and that library.. which is now gone... and the only race who would have a complete copy of said data, the Deferi, are now borg-encrusted.
Well, as the Tkon are one of the few ancient species anyone has been able to communicate with - and I assume many Federation scientists have returned to Delphi Ardu to try and speak with Portal 63 after Riker and the Enterprise left - I would think the Tkon are probably the best-known of all the ancient species by this point.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Well, as the Tkon are one of the few ancient species anyone has been able to communicate with - and I assume many Federation scientists have returned to Delphi Ardu to try and speak with Portal 63 after Riker and the Enterprise left - I would think the Tkon are probably the best-known of all the ancient species by this point.
Portal 63 may be the best communication but he's far from a collection of /all/ the knowledge of the Tkon. He may know ages and chart the passages of time... but that doesn't mean he was the Tkon News Network. He was employed as a means of granting passage into Tkon space and defending its borders. and if you're correct about their collapse... Then they couldn't have helped the Iconains escape anyway. He would have been dormant when the Iconians fled as he was last activated in the Age of Bastu, and eon before the Age of Makto which was still over 600 thousand years ago.
But now I see your point was "this is an ancient race." lol. :P
We don't want what the Feds have. We want the equivalent. We want fairer treatment. Concern, desire, greed to some extent, and passionate belief that the enough people would buy KDF items to make it worth Cryptic's while.
I really want an Iotia adventure zone or one based on one of the earth-like planets. (The Bread and Circuses Rome planet or TRIBBLE planet would be interesting as well.)
I too would like to see a Bread and Circuses Rome planet...
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Really you need to stop fast forwrding thougb the cut scenes then coming in here and opening your mouth. The Iconians can not do it not because they don't have the tech, they do, but because due to their make up and abilities travelling in time kills them.
Really if you are going to open your mouth, know the backstory or you just look like the dumbest poster in the game.
This more or less although I'd have put it nicer.
Iconians' brains already basically time travel in a way that allows them to think and react supernaturally fast. So time traveling fries their brains. They can physically do it but it kills them. They could send servitors to do it but they don't trust them enough to.
They clearly pitted the Vaadwaur against the Krenim to halt Krenim temporal research.
And if you wanted to get clever, maybe the Romulans became a priority target because we know that Singularity Cores (established on DS9 and TNG) can ACCIDENTALLY create time travel... and if I wanted to connect the dots, I'd guess T-cores are an advanced evolution of the S-core. Slingshotting is possible as well but sloppy and the Iconian Omega Particle research could be aimed at disrupting slingshotting. (Which would make a fun technobabble mission if we tried to slingshot and found that Iconians had permanently disabled slingshotting in Star Trek from the present going forward by using a very delicate omega detonation that disrupted subspace enough to to block any future attempts at slingshotting. That might make it so that ONLY T-cores could be used for time travel after 2410.)
The only accurate account of anything would have been the Preservers and that library.. which is now gone
The Archive is now gone, yes.
However, when it is first discovered, the Archivist is asked what the Preservers will do "now" (now that the Archive has been found and they can be awakened), and the Archivist states that some may travel, desiring to see what their children have made of the galaxy. The Deferi themselves from this point were definitely down there conducting research. The possibility of at least one Preserver still being alive is thus established.
In point of fact, I don't think the Other is an specie or galactic power past present of future.
The Other is always reffered to in the singular, not the plural.
The Phophets say "the Other saved them before, the other will save them again"
This is a very strange statement from a people that have only a theoretical understanding of linear time. It has a past and a future reference. I do believe it is being interpreted entirely wrong.
What if "the Other" were Sisco? WOuld that not be a proper term for the prophets to refer to him.. The Other. he is not one of them, but he lives with them now. And in a realm that allows him access to time..any time.. past, present, future. He is a creature of time, but is no longer limited by it.
I wouldn't all at all surprised if it is, and he is dealing with finding a "Golden Path" for not only the federation but the entire galaxy, and time space continuum that he was born in to keep the intelligent, and time travel capable species of this universe from throwing the entire universe into a predestination paradox that cannot be recovered from. The Iconians were created by the founders with the inability to safely travel in time.. by design!
As the prophets would say.. All is as it should be.
The Iconians are goal oriented to recovering their ancient home world and terraforming it so that it can once again support Iconian life.
The Iconians today are a refugee population. They fled to Andromeda have have been pretty much parked there for most of the last 200,000 years. It's possible the the reason for the Kelvin to have come to this galaxy in the first place may have been due to dealing with the Iconians in their home galaxy. They have constantly dabbled in the affairs of the races in this galaxy close to their old homeworld for millennia. They live in Dyson spheres. I can't really begin to understand what might be motivating them, but I don't consider them particularly sane at this point. They are militarily strong, but they have a weakness.. a fairly amazing one at that. They are susceptible to being personally challenged ((Thank you Khaless!)).
Perhaps this is because there are so very few of them. Oh millions of Heralds, not to mention their other servitor races, but actual Iconians...the impression is their population is very very small.
They have hit an evolutionary dead end in their own development. It is entirely possible that this is by design. They should have long ago reached singularity and gone beyond the need for physical bodies. Instead. And perhaps they did. And what we see now is the remnants... those that could not achive singularity. They have awesome technology that has not changed for 200 millenia. They concentrated on building a military of awe inspiring proportions for the last several centurys with the expressed intent of reconquering what they once held. And apparently to the exclusion of all else.
The Iconians are no longer growing, and likely are dying off as a specie. Recovering their homeworld is a forlorn home for them. The only way they can avoid destruction at the hands of the other races of the galaxy is to give up their dreams of empire and domination. If they do not, they will not survive what they have sewn. I don't see them doing that. Not really. An outbreak of sanity and rationality in the Iconian specie at this point just isn't going to happen. It may be possible after some time and a great deal of death has occurred.
Whom or what ever the "other" is, is immaterial. The Other may indeed save them again. I strongly suspect the "Other" has its own agenda. Just dealing with a war like specie that has been preparing specifically for the current war for at least the last thousand years is going to be messy.
They have manipulated the powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrant directly for all of that time. They have done everything they possible can to weaken the local polities. Honestly I would have to say it has horribly backfired apon them. The constant wars have driven the development of more and more advanced war fighting technologies. They have not managed to do anything more then improve the ability of the galactic powers to resist them.
They mave have awesome technologies... but as a specie.. they are dumber then a sack of rocks.
They truly are. They could have come back and reclaimed their homeworld centuries ago. No body would have, or likely could have stopped them had they done so. They could have come back and played "nicey nicey" with their "new" neighbors. and placed them selves to be the arbitor and superpower of half the galaxy with very little effort. They lack flexibility in their thinking, and their war fighting stratagems.
They should have stayed in their dyson spheres in Andromeda. Returning the milky way galaxy will be the end of them, and its their own damd fault. The "Other" has not stepped forward to save them from their own stupidity because its clearly not the right time for it.
They're going to have to have their teeth kicked in first. Thats our job.
"The other" are a part of the whole. In the mission House Pegh, where you have to activate 3 consoles for the Omega beam on T'Ket, there is a information console at the right with extra info about " the other"
But now I see your point was "this is an ancient race." lol. :P
Yeah, and even more-so an ancient race that was old before there were Iconians. Which makes me wonder why we are referring to Iconians as the "first created." All of the species which made up the Tkon empire were ancient compared to the Iconians.
It just feels like Cryptic is trying too hard to tie together things without giving much attention to how things are established within canon. But that is not unusual. That is basically what most of the Trek writers did for decades.
I am assuming the end of the Iconian War will send us into the Gamma Quadrant. The hints seem to be that the Dominion, or more specifically the Founders, are the next link. I would really prefer it to not go that way but apparently Cryptic feels like it needs a reason to send us someplace we have wanted to go for over 5 years.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Comments
But the Vaadwaur stated, that 900 years ago they had only claimed a small part of space and it was implied they werent a threat at that time.
The Changelings developed from solid form, making it likely they once were humanoid or humanoid-like. That is said multiple times in DS9 by the female founder.
she may have said it, but does she really know? i dont know for sure but if Q identified her as some sort of cosmic enemy of his and some of her own insights have provided true but the one with the ent-c happaned in a no longer different reality which does not count.
still, did she have any proof to back up her own claim? there is no way to know for sure if the borg are really that old.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
i got the sense guinan was the mary sue of el-aurians, that she was a special case.
i mean you cant prove that the minority is representative of the majority, all you can prove is that 1 of 3 incidents where an el-aurian was present on screen out of Guinan, Mazur and Soren. only Guinen showed any significant awareness of these abilities she had and any further case on the el-aurians is speculative at best. i never saw Mazur gleening information of events just beyond his comprehension and Soren was obsessed with the energy ribbon more then he was for time based events and even then he was like Mazur, unaware of these abilities (perhaps i speak false on that as an assumption? but all we saw on screen is what we got, so i cant prove or disprove that either).
whatever the case there would need to be some proof to show the claim of all el-aurians are like guinan and they can live for a very long time and all have this ability. that would also case some doubt on guinan as well. is she really that old?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
that hardly proves thousands of centuries..
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
See, I find it interesting that she was on Earth and knew Mark Twain and yet, she was a refugee from the Borg on the Lakul and rescued from the Nexus by the Enterprise B.
"that would also case some doubt on guinan as well. is she really that old?"
That is what I should have put as a quote in my post. I was answering your last question, seeing as how you give no context: is she really that old compared to what? Picard? A Vulcan?
Guinan's longevity is the norm, not the exception.
the norm to what? thats the exact same thing your accusing me of.
i cant answer and you cant answer.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Also, not sure of authenticity but Memory Alpha states that Soran, the el-Aurian from Generations, was born more than 300 years before 2371.
well, i don't think that the others are the changelings. how they could save the iconians? they don't have powers; their military forces don't seem enough to fight against the iconians.
My character Tsin'xing
Plus, there's the surveillance and planned conquest. The Iconians are treating the Founders and their Dominion the same way as every other race in the galaxy and when it comes to a race that so intimately tied into your own species' history, you don't treat them the same as everyone else. You either treat them better or much worse, but you definitely treat them differently.
Organians make sense as "the Others." The Q Continuum makes sense too. That weird toga wearing Apollo maybe.
I alluded to it ewarlier but I think what we have is pronoun confusion.
I don't think the "them" that were saved is the Iconians. I suppose on a certain level you can't expect the Prophets to position pronouns in a clear way chronologically.
We also saw her challenge an active Q (with a reciprocal response from that Q). Being well traveled could have given her special knowledge but there's evidently more going on besides being the Rick Steves of the star trek universe.
However I can only see this as mattering to the current plot arc if cryptic needs to write a place into the game for Whoopie (which isn't going to happen without MASSIVE charity on her part.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Too be fair the Generations novelization did hint that Soren had freaky abilities too.
Preservers (First of the Galaxy, creator of most if not all other races)
Icoanins [First created, built with all or most of the knowledge of the preservers(very reminiscent of the Data/Lore saga) and charged with "policing" their siblings]
The Slaver Race(a group who ALSO controlled the galaxy at one point)
Apollo and the Greko-Roman Gods(Claimed to have existed before humanity, visiting them to bask in the power humanity's worship gave them)
Kukulkan's race (Who claimed to be the teacher of several Earthen races and the last of his own)
Saragon's race(Who's powers became god-like and claimed to be a possible Progenitor of the Vulcan race)
The Builders of Shore Leave Planet(Ancient, mind-controly, rapid builders)
Changlings(Who called themselves explorers and who only founded The Dominion around earth's 8-4th century BCE meaning they could have existed far longer before that)
AND the most damning piece of it all for "the other"
God himself(Do I REALLY need to explain this? and how THIS is the most likely suspect?)
Accuracy and antiquity are things that are not often complementary.... mostly because accurate records of any ancient period are hard to find and are usually just as hard to decipher(ancient "superiority" races seem to suffer from the "lulz our tech is so super, whoops! *dead*" syndrome) The only accurate account of anything would have been the Preservers and that library.. which is now gone... and the only race who would have a complete copy of said data, the Deferi, are now borg-encrusted.
Portal 63 may be the best communication but he's far from a collection of /all/ the knowledge of the Tkon. He may know ages and chart the passages of time... but that doesn't mean he was the Tkon News Network. He was employed as a means of granting passage into Tkon space and defending its borders. and if you're correct about their collapse... Then they couldn't have helped the Iconains escape anyway. He would have been dormant when the Iconians fled as he was last activated in the Age of Bastu, and eon before the Age of Makto which was still over 600 thousand years ago.
But now I see your point was "this is an ancient race." lol. :P
I too would like to see a Bread and Circuses Rome planet...
This more or less although I'd have put it nicer.
Iconians' brains already basically time travel in a way that allows them to think and react supernaturally fast. So time traveling fries their brains. They can physically do it but it kills them. They could send servitors to do it but they don't trust them enough to.
They clearly pitted the Vaadwaur against the Krenim to halt Krenim temporal research.
And if you wanted to get clever, maybe the Romulans became a priority target because we know that Singularity Cores (established on DS9 and TNG) can ACCIDENTALLY create time travel... and if I wanted to connect the dots, I'd guess T-cores are an advanced evolution of the S-core. Slingshotting is possible as well but sloppy and the Iconian Omega Particle research could be aimed at disrupting slingshotting. (Which would make a fun technobabble mission if we tried to slingshot and found that Iconians had permanently disabled slingshotting in Star Trek from the present going forward by using a very delicate omega detonation that disrupted subspace enough to to block any future attempts at slingshotting. That might make it so that ONLY T-cores could be used for time travel after 2410.)
The Archive is now gone, yes.
However, when it is first discovered, the Archivist is asked what the Preservers will do "now" (now that the Archive has been found and they can be awakened), and the Archivist states that some may travel, desiring to see what their children have made of the galaxy. The Deferi themselves from this point were definitely down there conducting research. The possibility of at least one Preserver still being alive is thus established.
In point of fact, I don't think the Other is an specie or galactic power past present of future.
The Other is always reffered to in the singular, not the plural.
The Phophets say "the Other saved them before, the other will save them again"
This is a very strange statement from a people that have only a theoretical understanding of linear time. It has a past and a future reference. I do believe it is being interpreted entirely wrong.
What if "the Other" were Sisco? WOuld that not be a proper term for the prophets to refer to him.. The Other. he is not one of them, but he lives with them now. And in a realm that allows him access to time..any time.. past, present, future. He is a creature of time, but is no longer limited by it.
I wouldn't all at all surprised if it is, and he is dealing with finding a "Golden Path" for not only the federation but the entire galaxy, and time space continuum that he was born in to keep the intelligent, and time travel capable species of this universe from throwing the entire universe into a predestination paradox that cannot be recovered from. The Iconians were created by the founders with the inability to safely travel in time.. by design!
As the prophets would say.. All is as it should be.
The Iconians are goal oriented to recovering their ancient home world and terraforming it so that it can once again support Iconian life.
The Iconians today are a refugee population. They fled to Andromeda have have been pretty much parked there for most of the last 200,000 years. It's possible the the reason for the Kelvin to have come to this galaxy in the first place may have been due to dealing with the Iconians in their home galaxy. They have constantly dabbled in the affairs of the races in this galaxy close to their old homeworld for millennia. They live in Dyson spheres. I can't really begin to understand what might be motivating them, but I don't consider them particularly sane at this point. They are militarily strong, but they have a weakness.. a fairly amazing one at that. They are susceptible to being personally challenged ((Thank you Khaless!)).
Perhaps this is because there are so very few of them. Oh millions of Heralds, not to mention their other servitor races, but actual Iconians...the impression is their population is very very small.
They have hit an evolutionary dead end in their own development. It is entirely possible that this is by design. They should have long ago reached singularity and gone beyond the need for physical bodies. Instead. And perhaps they did. And what we see now is the remnants... those that could not achive singularity. They have awesome technology that has not changed for 200 millenia. They concentrated on building a military of awe inspiring proportions for the last several centurys with the expressed intent of reconquering what they once held. And apparently to the exclusion of all else.
The Iconians are no longer growing, and likely are dying off as a specie. Recovering their homeworld is a forlorn home for them. The only way they can avoid destruction at the hands of the other races of the galaxy is to give up their dreams of empire and domination. If they do not, they will not survive what they have sewn. I don't see them doing that. Not really. An outbreak of sanity and rationality in the Iconian specie at this point just isn't going to happen. It may be possible after some time and a great deal of death has occurred.
Whom or what ever the "other" is, is immaterial. The Other may indeed save them again. I strongly suspect the "Other" has its own agenda. Just dealing with a war like specie that has been preparing specifically for the current war for at least the last thousand years is going to be messy.
They have manipulated the powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrant directly for all of that time. They have done everything they possible can to weaken the local polities. Honestly I would have to say it has horribly backfired apon them. The constant wars have driven the development of more and more advanced war fighting technologies. They have not managed to do anything more then improve the ability of the galactic powers to resist them.
They mave have awesome technologies... but as a specie.. they are dumber then a sack of rocks.
They truly are. They could have come back and reclaimed their homeworld centuries ago. No body would have, or likely could have stopped them had they done so. They could have come back and played "nicey nicey" with their "new" neighbors. and placed them selves to be the arbitor and superpower of half the galaxy with very little effort. They lack flexibility in their thinking, and their war fighting stratagems.
They should have stayed in their dyson spheres in Andromeda. Returning the milky way galaxy will be the end of them, and its their own damd fault. The "Other" has not stepped forward to save them from their own stupidity because its clearly not the right time for it.
They're going to have to have their teeth kicked in first. Thats our job.
It just feels like Cryptic is trying too hard to tie together things without giving much attention to how things are established within canon. But that is not unusual. That is basically what most of the Trek writers did for decades.
I am assuming the end of the Iconian War will send us into the Gamma Quadrant. The hints seem to be that the Dominion, or more specifically the Founders, are the next link. I would really prefer it to not go that way but apparently Cryptic feels like it needs a reason to send us someplace we have wanted to go for over 5 years.