Sorry for not participating much. I promise to be more active this summer. And with Jurassic World out in now, I've decided to share this with all of you:
When I was very young, I could tell that I didn't fit in. I went through this phase where I hated being human and around this time I imagined a race of intelligent (and very huge) dinosaurs who I called the Tyrannians. They lived in the Bermuda Triangle, thus was the reason why ships and air plains disappeared). They hated humans, because the Tyrannians observed how they were destroying the planet and committing horrible atrocities against nature. The dinosaurs wanted to reclaim their planet and I imagined my Tyrannians taking back their world. The Tyrannians would be far larger, far more intelligent, have more advanced technology, be far wiser than us humans. These dinosaurs would be superior in every way.
For some reason I hung onto the ideas for these guys for the longest time. Their universe was refined over the years. I imagined that, instead of living in the Bermuda Triangle, they evolved on a parallel universe, and I devised a complex backstory to explain how these dinosaurs gained sentience. Their not as big as they used to be by default, but they can still increase their size quite a bit through nano-technology.
Their motives to conquering Earth was also change a bit. In the not-so-distant future, humans have really screwed up the Earth - way bad. The planet is way over populated and humans are at constant war with each other over resources. Eventually a portal device is created as a solution to this problem. The plan is for the portal to allow humans to instantly travel to other versions of Earth. People will be able to inhabit other worlds like Earth that are clean and ripe with resources. Their scientists don't think that doing any of this will be a problem, because they calculate that the evolution of sentience, or any complex life for that matter, is an extremely rare event and won't be likely to be found on the other Earths.
The portal is activated and a team is sent through it. On the other side they discover a world with very little in the way of continents but with numerous islands. Not encountering any civilized society of any sort, the humans begin exploiting this world like they did with their own. Animals are slaughtered and forests are burned to clear the way for cattle and vast strip mines. They are surprised to encounter dinosaurs, but these are just thought of as nothing more than mere animals and are quickly killed. However, these dinosaurs are more intelligent and more powerful than anyone has imagined. Their cities weren't discovered because the Tyrannians are very good at controlling their population, so their cities are very few and are clustered on the other side of the planet. The dinosaurs that were killed were just a hunting party. Tyrannians prefer to hunt their prey without the aid of technology.
The Tyrannians deliver their vengeance swiftly and ruthlessly. They follow the survivors back through the portal and force it open to send their invasion forces through. Humans are no match for them, and within days every human city crumbles.
A few hundred years later, nature has mostly reclaimed the human cities. Humans no lead a primitive tribal life and many worship the dinosaurs as gods. Many Tyrannians keep them around as servants and foot slaves. But not all Tyrannians hate humans, and there are their more benevolent cousins, the Ssarquoy. Therein lies humanity's hope and redemption.
I even paid to have a commission done of one of my characters, as I am not good enough of an artist to depict a Tyrannian properly:
http://d.facdn.net/art/storckroth/14341 ... _final.pngI just decided I'd post this to see what others would think about this concept. I thought about writing a story some day, but it's not likely I would have the time to do so any time soon.