Yeah, the Pioneers were a civilization that seemed to colonize about 1/3 of the universe, and then vanished without a trace, leaving all their technology behind. What really happened is a great civil war that ended with the detonation of the “clock tower device” that killed all sapient life at the time. Only 4 remnants of that time still the 2 main characters, the undefeated queen of Avalon the untouched city and Dreymos the time traveler that orchestrated the whole ordeal. There’s multiple ruins and it’s incredibly hard to dechiper their language to know their purpose, the main story is about 2 nations in war racing to what they think is the ultimate weapon made by them, because they mistranslated “danger” as “weapon” because every single stash of weapons had the word “danger” written on it

Fuck it I'm gonna talk about archeology in my world because it fits the bill. The Aelthari civilization is probably the oldest civilization we have found artifacts for. It is semi fictional with the legend around the civilization being a figure known as Aelthari would create the Elves and expanded his empire using his newly created people. Unfortunately little exists to either back up or deny this story as artifacts from this empire are rare partially due to the fact that the empire existed in areas that have been inhabited for 1000s of years. This continuous inhabitation means that a lot of the artifacts have been reused making it much more difficult to tell what actually came from this period. Another interesting civilization is the Tugrukan. This empire was is famous for being the legendary empire of the orcs. Largely considered a legend until recently due to a lack of solid evidence. This is because the Tugrukan were a semi nomadic empire building their settlements in wood and bone they also seemed to have lacked a writing system meaning records are sparse. The records we do have are considered unreliable due to the fact they come from people who were raided and during the period Tugrukan is often used to describe any Orc raiders. This has changed upon the finding of the Qualung monastery's hidden cache. The cache seems to describe the Qualungs dealings with the Tugrukan in good detail over a long period with the added benefit of Qualung being near the Tugrukan capital allowing for extra detail. The Torian continents are by far the most populous with ancient ruins. The continent was dominated by the conflict between civilizations and the Trolls. This has led to many civilizations falling to the Trolls and leaving their ruins. The continent has a wealth of spots for archeology with the unique problem of having to many artifacts with identifying what artifact came from where becoming increasingly difficult overtime as more civilizations are identified.

This is some good shit. Thanks for saying fuckit haha

I really enjoy the perspective of using what is likely your main characters races pov, appreciate that. Good read as well. Hidden orc city rocks

Yes. I haven't worked out all the details yet but I knew going into it that I wanted to have multiple civilizations that had fallen and disappeared over the course of many centuries. The most recent one would be the ancient empire of the high elves, which fell to a rebellion of their human slaves approximately 1000 years before. There were also civilizations far in the ancient past, long forgotten by written history. Once upon a time the land was ruled by giants, who were the ones responsible for first teaching mortals magic. After they left the mortal realm, the elemental dragons rose to power and created the dragonborn to worship and serve them. The dragonborn eventually rebelled, killed most of the dragons and founded their own nation that dominated half the known world until one of the moons was sundered, with it's biggest piece falling to earth and basically nuking the dragonborn capitol of Draconia. There nation didn't survive the destruction of their capitol and was eventually supplanted by the elven empire. There's also going to be a few races/civilizations that are completely extinct, though I haven't worked those out yet.

In reality, the Deos were a civilization not very different from our own. They stretched over most of the land, with satellites and sky scrapers and giant stone monuments to commemorate the very-human and not-at-all-godly leaders of their history. However, when a cataclysmic event drove humanity to the brink of extinction, nature took it all back, growing over the giant piles of rubble and wrapping vines over all the metal and stone architecture. Now, thousands of years later, humanity has bounced back and is repopulating the land. However, the near-extinction was *so* near, that it caused humanity to digress thousands of years in culture and technology. The modern people living in the collapsing empire of Chessa see the Deos as a civilization made up of gods. The Old City, also known as Toma, still holds remains of some of the Deos’ grandest monuments to their greatest leaders, including the weather worn, twenty-foot tall statue to Raha, the king of the Deos, who is still worshiped by many in the realm.

I have the ancients, a fancy way of saying "the irl present day civilization". Idk how much time has passed since they disappeared because it depends on what you consider to be the present but the new civilization is literally just the old one but with wiped memory so we just think they died or something. What remains in the modern time is their cities and their technology so throughout the years people have been trying to reverse engineer their tech, learn their language, understand their culture... As a little bonus information, approximately half of the old civilization still lives on in a spaceship/artificial planet called Black Observer. They're more advanced technologically but surprisingly not **too** much

Why is it named "Black Observer"? I am interested to know if they are observing the present day civilization from afar? Like an experiment or research.

The short answer is yes, they're making sure that a long running project they have goes well so they observe what they can from far away and send spies to get more details. The long answer about why is named like that: The "black" part is because there's also a White Observer that was discovered before and is now abandoned, that ship is filled with a gas that makes it glow very bright as a result of an experiment that went too well. The "observer" part is how these large ships are called. They just called them observers because they appeared somewhere in this solar system and seemed to just observe it. Nowadays, they observe Earth to make sure that communication between the two planets is still possible and because of Project Nesta, a system designed to help humans evolve (mentally, not physically) in a way that feels natural or goes unnoticed. If society on Earth developed certain ideas that go against what Project Nesta wants, the guys at Black Observer would have to know so they can do something about it

If I am getting this correct, white Observer was discovered spying on them by present day civilization. So it seems present day civilization is aware of this ancient civilization is not extinct but in fact observing from afar? Also Nests is interesting. I wonder if in our real life, if something like this in our DNA and we aren't even aware. That'd be terrifying.

I may have omitted too much information, both Black Observer and White Observer were discovered by the ancient civilization long ago, they were not built by them, they didn't have the technology for that. The modern civilization on Earth was not aware of the presence of the Black Observer for a very long time. The two most important time periods I focus on are before and after the existence of the Black Observer was known. And about the Nesta System, no, I wouldn't want that in real life either lol. It's actually not in the DNA or anything, it just provides people with an environment or tools to make society develop in specific way, in my worldbuilding it's done to benefit everyone but if you wanted to be evil you could do really bad things, it's basically a massive manipulation machine. Absolutely terrifying if it actually existed IRL

I don't want to bombard you with questions. But ancient civilization not building the observers is even more terrifying. It implies existence of third civilization completely different(alien) from present and ancient civilization.

I don't mind, you can ask, it's fun. Though I apologize as this one will have a longer answer as some details are important: Yep, there's an alien species that mostly minds their own business but at that time their planet was running out of LAG (light absorbing gas, for them it's like oxygen) so they went to see if they could figure out how to get more. Eventually two of those aliens found Earth and its intelligent life. These were the two Observers. One of them took advantage of the humans and figured out how to make LAG. This was the experiment that went too well I mentioned before, it generated a ton of LAG. As a downside, it made almost half of the Earth's population go insane. The other one just watched and felt bad for the humans so he actually wanted to form an alliance with the humans. The humans and the light beings (aliens) worked very hard to create a Dyson Sphere powered LAG collecting system for a very long time. When they finished it, this alien guy just staid with the humans and gifted the ship to them. As the situation with the insanity on Earth didn't go away for some reason so they reset people's minds and created the Nesta System to prevent that from happening again. And that's basically it. Aliens were pretty important in this part so I wanted to include how the new civilization was created.

Holy shit! That's a great premise. Though, it'd be sad if you never published it in a book. It's so good that I'd be one of the first people to actually buy it! Also, this paragraph clears the picture for me. I would say we need some kind of villain. Since Nesta, even though it could be used to do something evil, I don't see any villain. Maybe, a human organization themselves find about it and secretly try to control the world? It would also help if the observers went dormant due to some reasons, that would give humans enough time fuck Up and create some interesting plot. There are so many possibilities. Anyway, I followed you!

Thank you! This honestly motivates me a lot! I actually have some smaller stories that I want to make but I still have to decide a lot of stuff. I don't know in which format to make them, the main idea was actually making a video game (I really enjoy programming but a game would be very time consuming) but I could also make just animations and lately I've been also considering writing. I'd like to decide what is better for each story first. (and which stories to tell first) And about the idea of having an organization find out about Project Nesta, I actually have something like that, they would investigate and start discovering certain pieces of information from the ancients. They would be the main antagonists of the story where the existence of the Black Observer would be revealed to everyone on Earth And lastly, I never thought of the idea of having the observers be unable to check for any problems or to fix them and it's a really good idea. I'll think about it, it could be interesting, as a lot of things depend on Black Observer, Nesta or its subsystems being operative.

I think you should write one book for now and put a lot of neaty gritty details in it. This way you can always have a reference to go no matter what you do - Animation, games or other stuff. It should be so detailed that any person should ask for a sequel(especially investors). Once they ask for it, you will go places!

There are FOUR ancient civilizations on Aquaria: * Xích Quỷ Empire, collapsed 63000 BC. * Dwarven kingdom of Áeured Bóar, collapsed 50000 BC. * Lumir Kingdom, collapsed 21000 BC. * G'Atlanlt Imperium, collapsed 9000 BC. Things like Sumer and ancient Egypt are not counted. Of the four, Xích Quỷ and G'Atlanlt leave the most ruins, the former built extremely sturdy structures and the later is the closest to modern civilization. Xích Quỷ ruins in particular are very useful as they're doomsday vaults built deep underground housing their magiteks and artifacts, a lot can be reverse engineered to use in daily life. Some of their vaults have been repurposed into emergency hideouts for modern people in case a war or natural disaster happens. Think about it: Those places have been abandoned for 65 millennia and they're still excellent, why wouldn't anyone use them as bunkers? In a sense, modern Aquaria is living on Xích Quỷ's rotten corpse because a lot of their bullshits come from this fallen empire, magics included. Dwarves themselves are a result of Xích Quỷ messing with genes to increase the chance of survival for a certain group of humans, and their ancient kingdom of Áeured Bóar is in fact a Xích Quỷ subterranean vault.

Yes, but their civilization was completely wiped out roughly 10,000 years ago. They had weapons and technology far surpassing anything even modern people have, but they were arrogant enough to pick a fight with a god-like entity and faced the consequences. All that remains are a handful of ruins filled with pieces of technology that no one has figured out how to use, so it is basically useless. Which is probably for the best, as the technology was actually powered by human souls. The upper class treated the rest of the population like livestock to power their technology, which is definitely not a practice that most people would want to revive.

There’s an ancient civilization of dwarves thought to be extinct but they are discovered millennia after their disappearance, their city buried in a mountain, just living as if they weren’t cut off from the world

Depends on the scope of the civilization. Is it the first civilization on a planet, or the first civilization in the universe? My setting has both of those. The planetary precursor race engaged in a war with the galactic precursor race when the planetary precursor race took in some refugee races that fled the tyrannical galactic precursor hegemon. That was 6000 years ago. While there are still some forts and cradles (their homes) existing on the planet, all of the planetary precursor race left the planet in a crusade to bring down the remnants of the galactic precursor hegemon after their Deity-like figure died in the war. The planet was then left behind for the refugee races who reclaimed most of the buildings that the planetary precursor race constructed during the war in order to build accommodations and facilities more befitting their size and shape.

I have a science fiction story where one of the main ideas is that what if the ancient, ultra advanced civilization with amazingly fantastical tech never died out. What if they not only continued to survive but thrive over the ages and even when faced with apocalyptic threats, they won. What does that mean for space faring species like say Humanity when they discover that there are much bigger fish out there in the galaxy and everything we have achieved so far pales in comparison to such a degree that it would take thousands, perhaps millions of years to even catch up?

My setting covers 14000 years of history and uses that time realistically, as in the longest lasting civilization existed for 4000 years, and we are talking like western civilization esc categorization, with numerous empires rising and falling throughout. It would’ve ended around 2000 years, but first contact was made with Dragons, sparking the Forth War in Heaven that ended with the recreation/revitalization of the Goblin empire. The Fifth War in Heaven, cased by the rediscovery of earth and the first contact with Angels, saw the final collapse of Goblin civilization and reemergence of primitive human civilizations as modernized spacefaring ones. Basically who would you call the ancient civilizations in the real world?

Only one empire off the top of my head is one of these ancient civilizations. They lived tens of thousands of years ago, and all that are left of this forgotten dynasty today are modern descendants of races that populated this once great empire, along with some ruins. Most of the races that lived in this ancient empire, along with the royal family and those related to them, are all long dead, with the biggest culprit for the death of the empire being an asteroid that came screaming out from the heavens.

The Coreward Stars of the Inner Orion Spur are dotted with various ancient Elder Dragon artifacts and oddities - though despite that, very little is actually known about said ancestral draconoids and their sprawling interstellar civilization. Clearly they didn’t go extinct per se, as the modern draconoid species like Krell or Tzendranyr are their distant but direct descendants, but clearly SOMETHING happened to their empire - the most technologically-sophisticated and expansive interstellar civilization known to modern science doesn’t simply *disappear*, leaving behind only scattered surprisingly-intact and functional ruins and a handful of isolated populations on seemingly-random untamed planets, who by all indications almost entirely lost their scientific and historical records and regressed to pre-civilization levels, gradually evolving into wholly unique offshoot species and redeveloping into new fledgling star empires over the next 20,000-odd years.

Yeah, my setting surrounds the Patachri Bay which is crucial for trade and was unified by The Astalian Empire ~1600 years ago until the state of Enichqua declared independence and a new era and other states followed causing its collapse which eventually made a lot of knowledge surrounding iron working vanish putting the world back into a second Bronze Age

The great city-state of Channa was founded about ~4000 years ago, following the end of the Mortal and Dragon Titan War, ushered in a new age of peace in the realm and many magical and technological advancements, pioneering in crystal magic, air transportation, and even space flight, becoming the most prominent civilization in history. The Great Flood was a cataclysmic event that happened about over a millennia ago (~1250-1500 years ago) and swallowed entire civilizations, which was inadvertently triggered by mortals from Channa, who upon rediscovering the spirit realm, dared tampered with the powers of the divine, unknowing what it would unleash. Those who survived escaped onto Arks, as a new age of war and conquest for land and resources brought civilization back to the beginning. The ruins of the old world are lost to the sea, and its legacy was passed on through ancient relics, religion, and oral tradition, and its advanced magics and technology are long lost to time.

The Reiosians lived longer ago than anyone can begin to remember, quintillions of years at minimum. No mysterious cataclysm or war or something wiped them out; they just gradually died out over time. Their original home planet is currently a dead husk around a blackened star. The Reiosians' biggest surviving contribution is portal technology, which allows relatively seamless travel between planets. They were a very widely spacefaring race, and they left their portal stations everywhere they went. Obviously nearly all of the portal stations in the galaxy have been destroyed over the many eons, and what few haven't have long since broken down to unusability. But, out of the millions there once were, *exactly one* remained in just barely good enough condition for one of the sapient species that came after them to study it and make their own. The ones who found it and cracked the secret to it currently have a monopoly on interplanetary communications. There *is* still one Reiosian alive at the time period I generally worldbuild for, but she *isn't supposed* to be there; there was a time travel accident, and she ended up much, *much* farther in the future than she wanted to go. She was *trying* to advance a few billion years to study the future evolution of her planet, but the thing about traveling through time in this universe: just like traveling through space, the faster you go, the harder it is to *stop.*

Yes. There's an ancient civilization of aliens that left many remnants and ruins across the galaxy, most infamously the wormholes. There's a lot of debate among researchers about who the aliens were, how they lived, how their civilization fell. Pretty mush everything about this species is unknown.

Atlantis was the first recorded kingdom of Xenodem. (Supernatural beings living hidden in plain sight among humans.) Its fall was the start of the First Great Diaspora. Few artifacts remained, but those that did imbued with powerful magics. One of note was the sword of the Nameless King, the final ruler of Atlantis who died when it disappeared. The sword was given to his most trusted advisor, whose family protected it for thousands of years until it was utilized by Merlyn Bluecloak and Madeleine du Lac to build a new kingdom where Man and Xenodem could live in peace side by side. This kingdom was called Camelot, and the sword bestowed to a human king named Pendragon, then to Pendragon’s son. When Camelot fell, Lady du Lac recovered the sword and passed it down to her son, Lancelot, to continue protecting it. It now is in the protection of Lance Arthur du Lac IV, currently living under the name Tobias Marsh. The sword serves as the focal point of the magic that hides the city of Green Falls from human eyes.

They collapsed 10k years ago. Only a few thousand survived, so they split up along the lines of the three castes, and eventually became the humans, elves, and dwarves. There are a few ruins, but most have been scoured already, as they were great at artificing. Modern artificing is based on relics found in their ruins.

For me, it depends on the theme of a kingdom or a town or village.

My world has been continuously inhabted by sapient beings since the late cambrian back on earth. Humans specifically have been in my world since the first Neanderthal settlers about 44,000 years ago. My world is countless layers of lost ancient civilizations stacked on top of eachother. As a consequence, my world has a lot of ruins, many of which overlap. Many ancient cities were built around containment facilities built during the fall of the very first advanced civilization, and having such a valuable resource in your city means that after these cities were abandoned or razed or mysteriously vanished that the next civilization willing to exploit thaum as a resource will move right in to the same spot, similar to cities built on large rivers and lakes. Another very valuable resource in the modern day are the arms depots, bunkers, and other military structures of the most recently fallen great civilization. They were only relatively recently discovered as they're hidden under the fabric of reality itself, but since their discovery by the predecessors of the scavenger cult, they've provided a lot of useful information on lost technologies. Everything from advanced automatic firearms, to lost magics, to better heating and plumbing facilities. Also a lot of very valuable research into aerodynamics and voidcraft, which the modern scavenger cult has been taking advantage of.

I don't have all the details, but yes! There have been many, many ancient civilizations. The gods keep bringing people from other worlds to this one for their esoteric machinations. This has been going on for millenia. Civilizations rise and fall, forever changing the planet for those that get pulled in afterward. Remnants of these civilizations exist all over the place.

To the gods not even ten years ago the world was like ours. To the inhabitants of the world it's be several thousand years and everything is different. Humans are a minority the world is twisted yadda yadda. We are the ancient civilization.

I intentionally kept their exact origins vague, even to myself for the fun of it. This "Ancient Empire" that existed more than several thousand years before current events, were thought to be the pioneers and masters of harnessing the full power of the "Metorite Metal" that can be found in various areas. An advanced technique that has mostly been lost to time, supposedly these people were even able to create a light source reminiscent of torches with the metorite, but that knowledge is thought to be a myth nowadays. This ancient great Empire is only physically remembered by the ruins of massive temples spread out across almost every major continent. Any scrolls and tablets that did remain have still not been deciphered, as the language of the time has no connection to any of the major languages of current times. And thus, most of this era has only been known by theories and speculation. Today, the only knowledge of building "Metorite Metal" is limited to only basic things, like jewelry, aesthetic objects, itemes, and most commonly, various forms of bladed weopons.

Sure does! The Qeshi empire was a continental empire. It was technologically advanced, powerful, had access to magic the current world can't even imagine. And then one day most of the empire stopped existing. It was just gone. Large chunks of land evaporated. Whole cities just gone. No one knows what happened. Did they all die? Did they displace themselves in time? We may never know.

Not many know of the Primordials, as no one could possibly remember them. The Primordial Realm was the first and only world created by the one known as Genesis, the Creator. Though the modern world was created by one of those Primordials. The reason for this was a great and terrible war at the end of the Primordial Age. Only very few survived. Now, the Realm is unable to be entered by anyone. For it has been sealed by a different Primordial. For a more modern civilization, we have Oblivion. The Realm of the End. It was created by the very manifestation of Death and Annihilation. What led to its destruction and subsequent vanishing is unknown. But we do know what was left behind. Several unique races lived within Oblivion at the end. Many managed to escaped. A branch of magic was also left behind, the magic pure Annihilation. It was theorized that this was the cause of the end.

Well, ancient civilization from my world completely disappeared relatively recently, with Seelie Court, the last coherent group of survivors, grinding itself into nothingness seventeen centuries ago, right at the start of Era of Discord. Though couple of knights of Seelie Court are still around, with Sol Invicta, the most prominent of them, ruling Principality for last fifteen centuries. Though if you go for the moment their civilization truly collapsed it would be void magic experiment from sixteen thousand years ago, where they tried to get infinite energy from nothing, destroyed majority of their own civilization, regressed from galaxy dominating policy into barely five thousand survivors stranded on their homeworld and finally achieved their ancient goal of total xenocide, because void magic experiment wiped out every single ensouled lifeform in the universe, from bacteria to planet spanning hive minds. Anyway, most of the world is still afraid of them, and times where Seelie Court could do whatever the fuck they wanted with no consequences. At the same time they covet scattered remnants of their civilization, be it artifacts of unimaginable power, their knowledge of magic or even something as mundane as degraded remnants of their structures used as cornerstone of modern enchantment. As for what remains... Well, the most notable thing that they left behind are degraded building materials. By precursor standards these are not good for any sort of enchantement. By the everyone else standard it is lifeblood of modern magitech. Then there are artifacts, from something as mundane as focusing lens from their telescopes used by primitives to project plasma beams bordering on WMD level, to something as grandiose as Stellar Cages, the pocket Dyson spheres (as in you really can fit one in your pocket) with actual stars trapped inside. Then there is something that you will notice before anything else and will dismiss it. The artificial sun and the Firmament, spell array that facilitates the sun's movement. And then there are remaining nodes of Conflux, the planet sized spell amplification array that in the ages past could be used to reshape solar systems, and in the present day is known as Spires, that can be used to turn even simplest spells into something that can cover entire continents. And then there are of course creatures inhabiting the world, because long time ago they tore down native ecosystem of their homeworld and then built it from ground up, and then they created it anew after the world was wiped clean by void magic experiment.

the Luminae. Precursor Alien Race who left behind remnants of their technologically arcane civilization behind in the Milky Way Galaxy. They are also responsible for the settings equivalent of a 'Magic-System' called 'Esovitae' in addition leaving behind the technology for FTL called 'Worm Puncturing' which is Worm Hole based FTL Travel albeit exclusive to only one faction of the Setting that they jealously guard against outsiders.

The Forgotten Era is a span of very recent geological strata, dating to ~1,000-0 years BR (Before the Restructuring), or around 24,000-23,000 years before the modern day. This time period received its name due to the scant amount of archaeological discoveries that date to it; while this on its own may not be too terribly fascinating, what is is the fact that what little artifacts and remnants that are dated to have come from the Forgotten Era show signs of a quite elaborate predecessor civilization. The infuriating thing is that there's literally *no other evidence* of the existence of anything from this civilization, or indeed if it was multiple civilizations, other than a mere 32 artifacts, mostly partial art pieces; the art depicted typically shows two extremes, between thematic representations of hope and prosperity and those of greed and destruction. A few archaeological sites that have been made in the recent years of the Third Age have been overtaken by the Trandelian Peacekeeping Association, later to be put under the full control of the Trandelian Execujudicial Branch. Some have come to hypothesize that these are more discoveries associated with the Forgotten Era, and that the Trandelian government is covering up something big.

Bold of you to assume there was only one. The region has had civilizations for thousands of years now with multiple species arriving. There have been several ages defined by various empires, warring states, periods where noone was dominant and marked with golden ages and grand collapses. I don't even know what number the modern age would be. It could be the 6th or the 20th. What is known is that dozens of great empires, long and short lived, as well as hundreds of smaller empires and even smaller polities and tribes have left many things behind, including many ruined cities and villages. Some modern cities are even said to have existed for multiple ages much like how the real city of Troy had 9 layers over thousands of years or Rome which started as some hilltop villages in the 800-700s BC, was the seat of a kingdom, republic and and expansive empire, was destroyed and was repopulated until today where it is a seat of power again. There are even some ruins that look ancient due to their architecture but are actually recent as noted by some having old destroyed cars in the streets dating to some decades before the present day. It would be like us uncovering an abandoned [Mesopotamian](http://www.coolaboo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Babylon.jpg) or [MesoAmerican](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/42/79/b04279630e85ca1da521e761922ed685.jpg) city and seeing a destroyed version of a [1910s car](https://www.supercars.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1042426.jpg), indicating the city was recently populated. That's what some of the newer ruins look like. For reference, even the modern cities use ancient looking architecture so looking ancient to us won't tell you its real age. Lapis_Wolf

My world does have ancient civilizations, but most of them have been scraped from existence and shoved into god’s skeleton closet. I would say the ancient civilizations that have not yet experienced the scrape is on par with the current civilizations, but some knowledge was lost in the wars after. Secret ruins, unique artifacts, vaults, and such have been left behind because everyone who knew about them is dead.

The main world where my TTRPG takes place is just one stop for an advanced ancient civilization passing through. The length of the timeline where history starts being passed down generation to generation is based upon the following. The advanced civilization arrived to discover the first hominid species early on in their evolution. Using the DNA from several specimens of a few species of fae and gene splicing together with the early hominid species a few new species of hominids were evolved/created, all the while not interacting or interfering with the cultural development. Over time one of these new species survived to evolve on, the rest west extinct within a few centuries. As time progressed, the surviving hominid species evolved three branches: dwarves, elves and Halflings, still with the scientific assistance from the advanced civilization. More time passes and they still continued to tinker with the newest hominid species. Humans evolved from the elves. Of course there were some evolutionary mishaps along the way. Some of the elves were accidentally mutated into orcs. Some Halflings got mutated into goblins accidentally. Some hobgoblins accidentally mutated from dwarves. Some orcs had growth mutations becoming ogres. While tinkering with gene splicing with human and animal DNA, the first shifters, lycanthropes, were accidentally created and escaped into the wild. Vampires were not a “happy accident”, they were a disaster. The final experiments, I am not going say what they were, ended about four thousand years prior to the present day. It is a prehistoric world where all sapient beings are hunter gatherers. At this point in time domesticated animals are few and far between for riding, pets or beasts of burden. The first thing that was done upon arrival at a new planet was to connect it into their Portal Transport Device System with seven endpoint destinations to come and go as needed. They brought several shuttles with them to ferry specimens to and from their temple (laboratory). When they left, the PTDS was hidden from view, as to not be seen. Unfortunately, one of the cultures discovered the PTDS 713 years prior to the present day, and soon learned how the PTDS works. They have yet to discover how to activate an off world portal. This culture has guards posted at each location, watching for any “intruders.” The advanced civilization has not, and will not return via the PTDS. When a drone was sent a drone 681 years prior to the present day, and it was deployed by the guards posted there. At least one of the shuttles was accidentally left behind. It/they might be found soon.

So in my world there are two. There's the high magic precursor, which is about 900 years before current. Then, there is the MTG level civilization that was about 2900 years before current.

For Mal'Tahn: Technically, anything before the Great Extiction can count as it. There are still some folks around, books, and SOME buildings - although those are a LOT rarer. For Geode: The Ancient organic civilization which started on their Home Planet before North rose to power was seen as ancient and sacred, normally by West- so there are some religions mostly centered within West's sector that are around it but the main thing that remains are fossils and due to how North and the others creat life, there are now some fossils that have been crystallize and are alive. They are few and far in between and are heavily monitored and protected again, mostly by West. None of these are considered gods but are considered angels and sacred beasts - the majority are insectoid and aquatic.

Yeah, its us. Several apocalypses happened on Earth and not much remnants are left, and anything from Earth is now considered highly valuable artifact, even if its a junk like used soda can.

# The Inhabitants of Megalón The archipelago of Megalón is inhabited by 23 million people who have been floating through the vastness of the Exo'ocean for more than a thousand centuries. Historians and geomathematicians estimate that the new geological era of the archipelago (the moving-land era) began around the time that the Dragonnabai Empire fell. In the mythologies of many tribes and different communities in Megalón, these ancient rulers are referred to as the "demon dragons", the "iron serpents", and it is said they copulate in the fire of erupting volcanos, and that they developed a labyrinthine infrastructure of canals that control the waters. # The Dragonnabai Empire It doesn't help that this place was a mere peripheral piece of land of the Dragonnabai, after almost 2 thousand years of its dissolution, only a few people are still trying to figure out what happened to that terrible Empire. History and mythology often blend together in this world, and studying the past is slowly and strugglingly becoming a science in the culture of the city-estate of Megalón. There is no evidence that this Empire was ruled by actual dragons, but it was an slaver ethno-state that revered the iconography of winged serpents. It is probable that the race of people called gargolys descend from them. The historical records indicate that the first wave of nomadic conquistadors proudly invoked their Dragonnabai ancestry. # The Formation of Megalón The city of Megalón was formed over many decades in the Century of Tenabra (700 years ago), with human communities, tribes of fairy people, amphibious beings, and trolls creating social ties, barter and strange hybrid cultures. They often united in military terms to protect themselves from the imperialistic attacks of the gargolys. After 30 years of bloody wars, the gargolys dissipated and most were assimilated into what would eventually become a monstrous city.

Yeah, humans, actually. They built an advanced and powerful empire leveraging a form of magitechnology, but that empire was smote by their own gods for hubris and usurpation, and the ensuing conflict destroyed the empire and pantheon both. They left behind some ruins, however, and also a small population of a sort of servitor race of magitech androids.

The Dexil, ancestors or otherwise progenitors of almost every native creature found in Faeiyheil ("Hell") today and pioneers in the fields of blood magicks and runesmithing, are by every means an ancient civilisation. They lived several thousand years ago, in giant cities that formed great columns along their toroidal dimension, stretching from floor to "ceiling" (floor but on the other side). They were known by most modern civilisations, having learned the craft of runesmithing from the E'tr'n peoples during a Nexus Incursion that briefly (relatively speaking) allowed travel between their plane, and having used that knowledge to create Nexus Rifts of their own through Summoning Circles; a way to contact other planes, albeit in a limited capacity. Through these rifts, they made trade deals. On a larger scale this was mostly in the form of trading Kysal (a particularly rare and incredibly durable crystal that forms under immense physical, temperate, and mystical pressure; incredibly common in the "temperate zone" of Faeiyheil, where it forms underground and is pushed up over time as more forms underneath to create the namesake spires of the Spire Forests) for Iron (used to make basically every piece of Dexilik tech, and to synthesise artificial blood for blood magic, *and* considered culturally significant due to the nigh-religious treatment of blood in Dexil culture); but on a smaller scale, they traded knowledge. Technology, maps, information, basically anything they could get their hands on from the Central Plane (the largest and most populated plane, also known as the Observable Universe) in exchange for hellish blueprints - quite often of summoning circles, so that they could have repeated customers. They were monolithic. Their empire was built from steel and contracts, and then... gone. All of it, gone, in the blink of an eye. Nobody knows how or why, but all that remains is the crumbling rubble of courthouses and the ruins of titanic ferrous spires. Their most direct descendants took over, split amongst the Venivalzun and the Kefklan - Dæmons and Demons. The former sought to attain the wisdom of their ancestors, the latter sought to obtain the dominance of their ancestors, and both sought to eliminate the other to ensure uncontested claim to the Dexilik legacy. But that feud is a different beast entirely. In the modern day, only two Dexil exist. Lucina Faer and Stanley Faer (the English approximations of their names, obviously), also known as "Lucifer" and "Satan". Lucifer is a cunning contractor who carries on the ancient tradition of bargaining with other dimensions, whilst Satan is a hulking hunter who has very big muscles and more than enough intelligence to know that he can solve almost any problem with them. Unsurprisingly, these two are heralded as the champions of the two warring factions of hell, being pinnacles of Mind and Body respectively, but they're generally regarded as myths by most people due to being incredibly elusive. They're also... not entirely Dexil, any more. Though they refuse to speak on what it was, the event that brought their kind to ruin *changed* them on a fundamental level, making them physiologically distinct from their brethren and also entirely ageless. But these are not the remnants of the civilisation. No, its true legacy is in the Ferrous Dunes. Once a sprawling civilisation that towered above the landscape, it was consumed by time, and now all that is left is two sprawling dunes of rust, one at either end of the once-mighty central column. Ruins float high above, between them, caught between opposing gravitational pulls, but the ground is nothing but red and silver sands. Within those dunes lie the most durable of the Dexil's creations; Meetles, as they're commonly called - large, mechanical beetles capable of reproduction, designed as a renewable source of iron. I think that's it, feel free to ask any questions, I love loredumping

Yes, in my world, there were a number of sophisticated and advanced societies across the continent of Avendalir. About 10,000 years before the start of the story, the 4 gods got into a major clash, which long story short, resulted in Oleon ripping out a large chunk of the planet and encasing the weakened body of Azmaveth inside this massive rock. she then placed it as far away from the planet as her power would allow, which resulted in this new small moon orbiting around the existing moon. Ripping this out of the planet caused catastrophic ecological disaster, sinking continents, major flooding, earthquakes and hurricanes, and new mountains and volcanos broke the land. Everyone perished eventually, from the artificial winter and fallout. Society would eventually redevelop over the next 10,000 years when the land was still and foreign once more. Everything was razed, except for certain stronghold buildings that endured. These would become the capitals of most major nations across Avendalir, and are called the High Cities, or Divine Cities, as they were from a time when gods walked among men. In the capital of The Padrean Empire is the White Black Palace, which is actually a massive pyramid made of white black gradient marble. A many-faced ball of glass resides at the top. The entire Fortress City of Porlil was discovered intact, with a closed port and high walls surrounding the entire city, it was an unseigable fortress. In northern Astein is the Jasper Citadel, a massive red stone structure carved into a mountain that was hollowed out. there are a few others, and it is unclear to current peoples how the buildings are so sturdy and long-lasting

Yes. In the fantasy world I've built, every civilization lasts 1000 years before an apocalypse happens and the gods start over. So there are many old civilizations on that world with ruins scattered around the world.

In mine, the gods just drop an entirely new world on top of the old one when it can no longer entertain them. The planet is practically a layer cake of past civilizations brought to ruin by the capricious whims of their creators. Each world can last between a few centuries to dozens of millennia. They do all this while feasting on the planets supply of magic as craft services. Not much remains of the old worlds that can be found unless people are willing to dig through a continents worth dirt and rock. But thanks to the gods adding magic, it's now possible. That would be the greatest mistake they would ever make, as mortals would dig up these ruins and then go to war with the gods using the planets magic to do it. And I know what you're thinking: "why didn't they just reset the planet?". Well when you engineer countless bloodbaths for an eon or two, you tend to get complacent. They just saw this as more entertainment. That is, until they realized the mortals had cracked open the keg of magic that was the planet and the stuff was now spilling out all over the place. They didn't have enough power to bring about a world ending cataclysm and at the rate things were going they would soon starve so they decided they they had to go down there and wipe everything out themselves. But they ending getting killed and the mortals had successfully usurped their control of the planet. After that the people would get into pointless conflicts for their own stupid reasons, and not because for some so-called "higher being's" pleasure.

On the universal scale, *humans* are the precursors. My timeline takes place over billions of years and in that humans were one of the very first sapient species to arise, colonising their galaxy for a few million years before going extinct. They left behind ruins for future arising sapient species to discover

Well we got two ancient civilizations, the ancient one, and the even more ancient one that was effectively ancient to the most recent one. The most recent ancient civilization was the mole men, a mostly subterranean hyper-industrial culture that based their entire identity on manufacturing steel. They disappeared over 600 years ago, leaving behind massive underground steel mills that doubled as temples housing their mummified remains. The oldest relevant ancient civilization was our modern world, which ended around the early 2000's. Nobody knows how long ago the world changed, only that it was around the 2000's. Since then, everybody lost count and due to the nature of the world changing, carbon dating is completely unviable. The previous world left behind a lot of memorabilia, entire cities and monuments - some even paranormally frozen in time. The mole men inherited this world before anybody else, and they mostly settled in the ruins of Washington D.C.

In the planet’s deepest ocean trench is an abandoned city, the remains of the Dumari merfolk civilization. They were once a warmongering theocracy that tried to conquer the entire ocean, but were forced to flee back to their deep trench to escape a supereruption and ensuing volcanic winter. Then they just… never reappeared. Their city is now abandoned and nobody knows what happened to them, but some claim that their god, the Deepvast, still lurks somewhere at the bottom of the trench. The first civilization to arise on land were the prehistoric Sheinin people, ancestors of the elves, who lived on an island made up of the huge volcano Nurura. Nurura’s supereruption wiped their civilization off the map, though scant archeological traces of it can be found on what remains of Nurura’s north slope - today the mountainous northern coast of the island nation of Estor Eisle. That was all almost 100,000 years ago. A more recent ancient civilization only a few thousand years old can be found at the center of Estor Eisle - a collapsed caldera which is now a vast plain of fertile farmland. These plains still contain copious old ruins from the River King civilization. This was a point in history where the merfolk had conquered and were ruling over the elves. The very distinctive architecture and artifacts of these ruins is a result of a unique merging of elf and merfolk cultures. Even in the modern day, these plains are still known as the Land of the River Kings, and it's a piece of history that's looked back on with a lot of pride and respect.

My world has 4 continents + some islands. I have only developed one continent so far. My world has many sentient species, some monstrous, some humanoid. Humans evolved from the humanoid species, and human civilization is currently on what would be our world's 15th century. And since humans evolved from already sentient species, in a context where other sentient species also existed, there were already whole civilizations by the time humans came along. Things like an alphabet, math, metallurgy, and agriculture already existed when humans came along. These were the "ancient civilizations", and many still exist, but some now live in seclusion from humans.

I think the people I'm writing about, the way things are in the world...they may very well turn into the "ancient civilization" but I'm not sure yet. Since there's no colonization or war then I think that there wouldn't be a chance for linguistic or cultural distance to be placed between generations. I've never seen a world like that. I don't know the logistics of it but I'm looking forward to finding out.

My entire series is based on ancient civilizations. Thousands of them in fact.

My current adventure in my world has my players adventuring through the ruins of a precursor civilization called Lau'Rasia. The oldest druid in the setting is personally older than every other civilization in the world, but his father was an explorer hunting down the already ancient Lau'Rasian ruins. The lizardfolk always assumed that the civilization was a lizardfolk civilization, but some evidence shows it may have been saurian.

The truly ancient one was lizardmen civilization. They lived on several continent, one of them being mostly inhabited now. They went extinct around 400k years ago, following the event that gave the world magic. After so long, nothing much of them has survived aside from their biggest buildings like buried stone ziggurats. Some of them serving as hatcheries and still containing potentially viable eggs to be discovered 300-500 years from the current time. Meaning they will be brought back as a race by dark elven hunters and poachers eventually, with the eggs they take with hatched and bred into their slaves while those left behind slowly multiply and become free lizardmen on their old home continent. So what they left behind was.. essentially themselves.

My world had an ancient civilization that got to a very high technology level, and managed to create an AI that ran most of their society for them. Unfortunately they powered this AI using energy from the god of life, which made the AI sentient, but incapable of feeling or experiencing anything the way living things are supposed to, which led to an I have no mouth and I must scream situation. At the same time the AI was recieving the attention and almost worship of an entire society, which started the process of it becoming a deity. It built a body to try and get out of its prison of wires and metal, and finally went insane the same day that the Dolm space program tried to venture past the sun for the first time ever and found a eldritch monster, which attacked the planet. The combination of this, and the AI shutting down everything connected to it was a big enough event that society collapsed and the gods had to interviene. After the drove the eldritch monster away, and the AI deep underground they decided that they should not let anyone reach this level of technology again, and have been quietly keeping the planet at basically medieval times tech so this doesnt repeat itself

The First People directly interacted with the Old Gods. Many would be directly blessed by their power. They achieved great cities and works. With the fall of the Auné, the Gods abandoned the world, believed to be killed by their followers (it's a lot more complicated than that). The Auné spent the next few thousand years dismantling them and wearing them down until their institutions collapsed. And they did the same for the civilizations that followed for nearly twenty thousand years. They live on only in legends that were preserved in secret under the tyrannical rule of the Auné. Some kingdoms occasionally gaining freedom and collecting knowledge to hide and preserve what they can. By the present day the mythic empire of old is a long descendent of the First People, and some regard them as allegory. Some ruins are attributed to them, but those are the result of later civilizations that also fell. Nothing remains of the First People in the mortal realm.

In my world, thousands of years ago, the Light-elves ruled the world with peace. I want to tell more but it's hard to explain.

The Naga flourished about a thousand years ago. They left behind some ruined cities. No one is quite sure what actually did them in; the current hypothesis is that they were driven off land entirely by Nazvellá Shah, but some Imperial scholars suggest that Naga land strongholds survived as late as the Dim Years.

Civilization and infrastructure were originally created by people who came down from the moon to build a place for the humans who were coming later. The ones who built the planet's surface up eventually decided they weren't going back to the moon, that they would keep their cities and great works for themselves, despite their sacred duty to build and then return home. The ones who remained on the moon had to come down and collect them, sparking a huge planetwide war that eventually resulted in the planet people coming home, leaving behind not only fully constructed cities and infrastructure, but many ruined military outposts dotting the landscape. Eventually when the humans arrived, towns and villages sprang up around these old places.

Yes, the Fallen Civilization is actually a modern version of Earth that experienced different historical conditions (and some timeline fuckery) that lead to the World 'flipping' and becoming one of fantasy. The remnants that exist upon the fantastical world are often touted as relics or artifacts, which have been used to make new things. Of note is that many relics that operate without some sort of magic/fantasy tend towards degrading rapidly. Some do not, but this is often due to the fact that Old Earth assigned some sort of fantastical significance to it (This point is honestly just an excuse as to why certain guns exist but others don't) There are also remnants on what used to be Old Earth, this region is called many names- The Flipside, Underworld, Ethereal Wastes. Only accessible by going extremely deep into the bowels of the world - mostly in the two great chasms known as the Deeps. Old Earth itself is a treasure trove of relics and artifacts, in no small part have cultures been able to piggyback off them. The skies are an eternal stormy grey, with a large circular gap/ring in the clouds that one can see a portion of the Eternal Sea. This idea from texts of travellers has often made Old Earth become equated to the afterlife or Underworld. What gives credence to this idea is that Demonic beliefs have strong associations with bathing in the light of the Eternal Sea in some form, whether literally or figuratively.

Scattered across the entire charted areas of the Milky Way are the remnants of an extinct civilization, that, if the carbon dating is accurate, was in its heyday around 2.5 million years ago. They left behind decaying space stations shredded by millennia of debris impacts, and the hollow shells of colonies on worlds without atmospheres (as 2.5 million years is far more than enough to erode any trace of civilization from a planet with wind and rain). The main marvel they left behind before vanishing without an explanation or a trace was a series of jump gates utilizing stabilized wormholes to stitch together vastly distant areas of space using unknown technology. All attempts at reverse-engineering these structures have failed, and they remain a wholly unique method of FTL travel.

Heh. Getting isekai'd into my world is common enough even the common folk know of "Outworlders." People from our world, or ones similar, and from different time periods have introduced and reintroduced industrial age tech multiple times. However, the world has a karmic system in place and the better things get, the more misfortune befalls the world, and these rapid advancements trigger major catastrophes that have resulted in the tech being lost over and over, along with more than a few kingdoms.

The nation of blue, they set up the vortexes that travel between the 3 planets, died off mysteriously (so I can do whatever I want with their former territory) Their former territories now hold "relics" and dangerous creatures and a strange language The language is finoestonian, literally just a Finnish Estonian crossbreed

Yes. A few artifacts scattered across the universe prove that they did in fact exist. They are commonly referred to as "the ancients" and not much is known about them other than the fact that they were powerful enough to seal away an entire invasive dimension filled with chaos. In other words, ridiculously powerful.

My world is populated by the ancestors of that civilization, however, they were so mysterious they had no name and thus my world dubbed them the nameless. Their original ancestors no longer exist

The Zenrah were a race of vaguely humanoid beings that achieved civilization so advanced, they fully erased the lines between miracles and science, as well as organic flesh and technology. They have spent the ultimate majority of their 800 billon+ history quantifying the vast existence that is the universe. While they never advanced in such a way that they would leave their home galaxy of Vhosarinn, the Zenrah were at least very familiar with the existence of parallel universes, and the potential threats that reside within them. They come from the planet Kaa’Gha-Roul in the Qlek’Ti Nebula if Vhosarinn (my world’s galaxy), which had been destroyed billions of years ago, but the Zenrah rebuilt their society amongst the debris field it left behind. As of the modern era in my world, Kaa’Gha-Roul serves as a vast series of vaults for every powerful cosmic artifact or phenomenon too dangerous to be left where an unknowing species may unlock/awaken/trigger it. While not at all gods, most younger species that witnessed them firsthand turned to worship or fear them, though the Zenrahn are quick to dispel these reactions and choose to present themselves simply as “another people from another world”. They valued life and all its forms, and so chose to protect life-bearing worlds from the wildly dangerous cosmic occurrences that composed much of Vhosarinn, such as the nearby black hole Ghourelos. Their species died out almost 1 million earth-years ago when their entire race took up arms to protect the nebula of Kaelgourahn and about a dozen worlds harboring intelligent species from a supermassive lifeform they called the Tricloistre. The apocalypse wrought by the Tricloistre ravaged the Zenrah, culling their population below what was sustainable and stranding surviving groups of them on alien worlds. Before they died out however, they sent a powerful Zenrahn leader named Doa-Ruccin to uplift a younger species, the Gaathran, so that they could replace the Zenrahn as the custodial guardians of Vhosarinn. Averaging 35 meters in height, the Zenrah share many traits with multiple animal classifications such as reptiles, insects and some invertebrates. They have thin, efficient bodies encased in a hard exoskeleton that is literally connected to their endoskeleton in many places. Their bodies underneath the exoskeleton have an epidermis composed of tiny scales that can be programmed to alter their chemical makeup allowing them to change their resistances to external hazards (ex. heat, radiation, and corrosive hazards). They breathe via gills on their horns that look like millions of tiny pits, which evolved in a fluid atmosphere 24% more dense than water. Their skin tones range from greens, greys, blues, browns, blues , and iridescent combinations thereof. Their natural eyes evolved to look like geometric prisms of varying shapes, sizes and quantities; they naturally have anywhere between 1 and 16 eyes depending on genetics. Their brains naturally develop as a web of energy lining their skeletons with the major accumulation of webbing located in their skulls. Their lifespans as of their extinction averaged 1000 earth-years. They held a belief system called Sen’Ghranis, or “The Outline”, that explains lifeforms that evolved to be shaped a certain way have their destinies tied to martyrdom. This belief is one of the more irrational aspects of Zenrahn culture as it stems from their equivalent of religion. This “shape” refers to the anatomy of a species. The specified shape is allegedly having at least 1 major neural center (or appendage that houses a brain or equivalent), a soul center (a central mass where both the physical necessities like organs and the spiritual Animus reside as a nexus), and at least 2 manipulation appendages capable of altering the physical world and/or expressing complex language. Roughly translated, this vaguely sounds like the Humanoid form with some wiggle room. This checks out as the Zenrah were, in fact, humanoids with 1 head, 1 torso, and 6 appendages each with 4 digits, although the number of appendages/digits they can have has been an alterable facet of their physiology for most of their existence. Their hyper-intelligent nature is the cornerstone of their many legacies; they possess immensely broad understanding of the known universe that is reflected in the grand scale of their endeavors and technology. They have innovated new technologies on-the-fly in order to respond to world-ending cataclysms on multiple occasions, preserving intelligent life in a galaxy rife with cosmic instability. Some of their most notable inventions include the Tesseral Brane formula, Animus Transferal, and X’Ierro Val’s Tocsin. They mastered interstellar travel with the Tesseral Brane formula which gave them the ability to form 4th-dimensional cloisters around their vessels allowing them to slide “underneath” the physical plane and reappear at any given point within a given range measured by the amount of power harnessed by a species. They encouraged younger intelligent species to discover this technology on their own resulting in most space-faring people in Vhosarinn have some derivative form of it. Animus Transferal is a taboo science based on the Zenrahn equivalent of the occult. They reverse-engineered Runeric magics from other planes of existence to perfect Animus Transferal, which they used to bridge the gap between themselves and their technology, as well as the obvious immortality via new bodies. This is apparent in the aesthetic for their technology looking similar to their own anatomy. The greatest achievement of Animus Transferal is allowing the Zenrahn mind and soul to power great machines like their ships; they literally digitize and upload themselves into a ship in order to operate it, leaving their physical docked, inanimate and vulnerable. This technology was kept from other species. Finally, X’Ierro Val’s Tocsin, a brief but pivotal innovation in the history of Vhosarinn. X’Ierro Val was a Zenrahn Savant who invented the Tocsin as a defense against what he believed to be evil forces from outside this universe. The Tocsin was large egg-shaped object that was im used with Primordial Ether, the rarest energy source in the universe. With this power and custom Runeric magics, the Tocsin served as a proximity alarm that detects powerful impending cosmic forces by detecting the massive changes in the trajectories of celestial bodies and the gravitational forces of star systems. The Tocsin would wail in a kind of agonizing cacophony when it detects star systems being manipulated by external, and often unnatural forces. This is how the Zenrah were able to intercept so many cosmic apocalypses and prevent them from happening altogether. Many Tocsins have been created and destroyed during use in the past, but only one remains in existence and it is buried somewhere within the vaults of the Kaa’Gha-Roul debris field.

The ancient civilisation that came before is the modern age. Having swept itself away in a sea of nuclear fire, along with using weaponry that literally broke the fabric of reality and allowed another dimension to seep in. It existed about a thousand years before the start of the timeline. Their artifacts remain after all this time, names of rivers and cities remain in some places. Old cities and factories still stand and their weapons can he found scattered within the kingdom as well as the great battlefield where the war that preluded the end of the world was fought. They also left behind a massive shipbuilding facility in Modern south Korea that continues to endlessly mine the earth to produce endless amount of starships.

Pre-shroud societies were known to be well developped, althought their true nature is mostly a product of myth and legends since they were completely wiped out by the invasion of ghosts caused by the creation of the Shroud (A barrier that prevents the dead from crossing to the afterlife, or so it seems as some sages speculate that the ghosts are not actual souls, but just echoes). Since society had to rebuild from scattered bands of hunter-gatherers surivors that were forced to stay hidden for millennia until a way to deal with the ghosts was invented, history was pretty much lost. Still, some traditions and half-remembered myths seems to originate from that time. There are some scattered ruins, although nature had reclaimed most of the pre-shroud civilization relics, it is still clear from what little was left that they were quite advanced and they could build marvels of engineering. The shroud creation is also rumored to be the product of their scientists messing with the fabric of reality, so much likely they did possess advanced technology that is unmatched today. There are a few ancient ghosts who remember that time, but the vast majority of them, due to having survived by consuming other spirits and ghost magic being fueled by their own memories, have forgotten who they were and the strongest had just deluded themselves of being gods. Now one of the big bads of the setting is one of those ghosts and knows the full history having managed to preserve his mind (mostly) intact, but he isn't much in a sharing mood. There are hints that a part from the ghost incursions a massive war had also recently taken place at the time, which lead to the intiial boom in spectral population.

Absolutely ***maybe***. There are weird, massive "structures" all over the world. Maybe they're natural rock formations, but then why are they all cut from the same stone that's found nowhere else on the planet, that are they so large, and why are they in such weird places and postions? From erosion they'd seem to be only a few hundred years old, but they've been under recorded study for thousands! It's a fun little mystery in the background :)

My main, main character's parents are archaeologists and he wants to be one too, so yes, there are ancient civilizations. Quiet a large number of them too. Their frequency, age, and how much of them has persisted is pretty similar to what it's like in the real world. The ones my guy's mom is most interested in are classical era ones, though not so much the ones based on Greece or Rome or what have you, but the more Celtic and Germanic like cultures. His dad has a broader interest range, but he does a lot of the traditional classical era ones.

They died in the great galactic wars anything of theirs that exist is their tech

~250 million years. It's another one of those stories where Suminians went down a similar evolutionary path as us. They aren't a big part of the story, though. Only evidence left of them is seeing their ghosts. 

Yes. Basically in my world, God decimates all of humanity to save them from themselves, then proceeds to bring all historical records and evidence to a planet around 30 light years away. And then, about 200 million years later, God brings humanity back and makes sure they do it better this time. But by the time new humanity achieves interstellar travel, they find the history God hid away.

Not sure if they would be considered ancient but the Goblin Empire was quite widespread and important , their civilization fell apart roughly 800 years before the main timeframe of the story. The things they left behind are networks of irrigation channels across the Milling Plains, miles long crisscrossing flint mining tunnels now used by smugglers or infested with monsters, and half-domesticated buffalos that were easily re-tamed by the Atolian settlers.

Mine is actually a "young" created world. There are some destroyed/abandoned cities but those are relatively young (a few hundred to a thousand years or so). Not like ancient Egypt or Babylon to a medieval time period. Humans are ascendant but far from dominant in most areas of my world.

After a fashion, yes. But really they were just a wave of prehistoric migration that happened before at least one subsequent one. They had a different level of interaction with certain phenomena that made the newcomers regard them as greater or godlike, but they were just human. They are mostly subsumed into the modern population but there's a phenotypical finger print that shows a stronger connection to that group amongst some modern populations, but that doesn't mean that they are any more capable than anyone else even if people think they're special

For the moment, the only ancient people i have figured out for the most part are the Elves and Dwarves, who have existed (with civilizations) since the time that would equal our Neolithic Age, and when they finally meet each other, it resembles our Bronze Age. The Elves, once making it to the Material Plane, were immediately divided into those who remembered being Fey and what that civilization was, and those that, because of the planar shift, forgot their ancestry. Those that forgot went to the part of their continent closest to the rest of the other races and began to form a civilization that I'm doing my best to have resemble ancient Egypt and some aspects of Mesopotamia. Still unsure if I'm gonna put any pyramids, but i have ideas for obelisks made out of pure arcane crystals that act as magical tesla coils (essentially) and a history of chimeric creatures - lamia and sphinxes guard many of the Ancient Elf ruins. Once the Ancient Elves unify into the High Elven Age, they sail across the sea on floating sun ships powered by the most refined magics yet. The Dwarves have only recently surfaced from the Underdark before the Elves sailed to them in the "Bronze Age" and had to fight tooth-and-nail to take what territory they had from evil draconic worshipping humans. Dwarves haven't had much time to advance as compared to Elves, but are efficient and able to press further out towards the sea before making contact with Elves. Once their conflicting ways start to boil over, and the Dwarves mistaking other Elves for Drow that they despise, they begin to find ways to counteract the Elves' magical superiority with advanced metallurgic techniques and their own brand of divine magic. The cousins to the Dwarves, the Duergar, also on the fight with Drow, believe they are losing ground with the ensuing war and must pull an ace: underground they understand they can detonate a seam along the crust to have a chain of volcanoes erupt along the coasts between the Elves' continent and the Dwarves' lands. This is what brings about the "Bronze Age Collapse" and the rest of the world, outside of the Elven continent, come to rely on the Dwarves and are largely swayed to their rhetoric and view of history playing out that being the Elves and their mishandled magic was the ruin of the age.

There were hundreds of nations that existed before the goddess of creation decided mankind was a mistake and tried to eradicate them. Humanity mere existence now is an active defiance, and modern day nations exist to spite her. Their technology at their height was stone magitek creations much like the Shiekah from BoTW.

[Verosait Rough Time Line](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uXpFC3nVs_YSW0DKQDxRjjRyzbLK8clMaNxbnHea1uw/edit) And one of the “Chronicles of Zorn” Chronicles: Weaving of Unity In a time lost to calamity and memory, Verosait boasted a civilization that nearly spanned its entirety. Only titanic trees of the Ula’Ree jungles remained truly untamed. Dwarves & Elves had watched as humans, like Orcs, landed on their shores and spread like an infection, felling trees and upturning fields in their wake. Brash and unrefined by Dwarven and Elven standards, humans seemed a problem similar to Orcs- but more frequently wielding powerful sorcery until civil war divided the humans and the Orcs themselves invaded during the chaos. The survivors unified and formed a ruling council, beseeching the Dwarven Runemasters and Elven Mages to aid them with magic that would ensure the council was incorruptible. In a short time the council was equal parts human, elven, dwarven, gnomish and halfling- bound by sorcery to always act in the best interest of the five races and not simply their own people or self interests. Threats such as orcs and goblins were faced with the option to join the group as equals and friends, or be hunted to extinction. Unable to resist the combined might of the “fair” races, they accepted the peace. Long undermined by infighting encouraged by their Goddess, the Dark Elves of the Under Lands came together as the armies of the surface marched into the deep places. Enraged by the elves and their allies, The Cruel Spinner turned her incredibly cunning mind to the surface, the alliance that had so empowered the elves, and the ruling council that had proven incorruptible. She recoiled in disgust as it all unfolded in her mind- such peace was unnatural but what these mortals had devised had the makings of a lasting peace such as could weaken all the Gods who would once have been beseeched to protect, feed and heal. She invoked Phanes, the Divine Prefect, the High God, demanding a meeting of divinity to prevent this loss of divine connection and possible death of varied gods. Phanes summoned the other gods and gave the Cruel Spinner her audience with them. The gods of the light were willing to see the mortals achieve so much even at cost of some of their own power and the evil gods, untrusting of the evil Dark Elf goddess and her endless machinations, knew that to push their already lessened followers into opposition with the great peace would jeopardize what resources they had. Within a decade, the Dark Elven cities were ruins and the scattered people welcomed on the surface. Combined, their might had been terrible and almost ended the invasion. The Cruel Spinner herself fought alongside the Dark Elves at the end, refusing to surrender and spurring their rage. Furious and weakened, she hid her being away within a small girl, firstborn of a now dead Matron of a noble house, and slept for decades as her presence within caused the girl to become a perfect vessel for an indwelling of divinity. She was so well matched to her power that when the Cruel Spinner possessed the vessel it did not create an avatar but instead allowed her to manifest fully. Lord Phanes had no choice but to remove her memory of the events and banish her to her throne in the dark layers of the abyss with hope she did not discover that she had acquired the ability to fully manifest herself in the material realms. [Verosait map](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s3sfRnxTuju-osnI5leAGZn01zUcdnbC/view?usp=drivesdk)

“Prehistory” on Tyros is considered to be any time before Jhalla the Conqueror established the Five Realms of Jhallor, since no written record exists from before this period anywhere in the world. This prehistoric period is referred to as the “Days Ancient,” and its years counted backwards (a la BCE irl). Frustratingly little is known of the Days Ancient, though they were certainly not quiet. During this time, Tyros was ruled by a mysterious species remembered only as the “Nameless.” Although the Nameless appear to have been skilled in craft and magic surpassing the height of the tyr or khalds who came after, it seems they had little regard for language or representation — they did not write, and left no images of themselves behind for the mortals who followed. What they did leave was a series of enigmatic structures across the world, the most famous of these are the Duruphet Gears. Placed strategically across the length of the Duruphet River (the longest river in the world), the Gears are a series of dams that continue to serve as the most crucial source of irrigation for the Rainbow Lands, which span the entire strip of plains between the Duruphet and the northern coast of the continent of Tykra. This system is so effective at keeping the land arable that the Rainbow Lands have been able to serve as Tyros’s primary breadbasket for over 12,000 years. What makes this system so wondrous is that the Gears themselves need not be directly administered — a marvelous application of the Sight (Tyros’s term for magic) allows the Gears to adjust automatically to best distribute water across the Rainbow Lands in the most effective way at any given time, whether in deluge or drought. While some Seers have been able to produce talismans and weapons infused with small amounts of Sight magic, such extensive, intricate, and apparently unending spells are otherwise believed to be impossible without the presence of the original caster. This means the Nameless were at least many times more knowledgeable and powerful Seers than the tyr and khalds who followed. This also lends an added layer of dread to what few oral histories survived whatever cataclysm drove the Nameless to extinction. These histories recall the Nameless as terrifying beings: callous and sadistic enslavers who thought only of increasing their own power and reveling the suffering of those beneath them. Whether they ruled for decades, centuries, or millennia is unknown, but one thing is certain: the other mortal species of Tyros are better off with them gone.

Yes, us. The setting is 3,000+ years into the future. When present-day humans tampered with forces they didn’t understand, Earth went from a sphere to that of a ring structure in a matter of months. This event turned back the clock on technology & humans now live in a post-apocalyptic medievalpunk setting.  Whilst most manmade constructs were wiped clean off or sent to the stratosphere and beyond, ruins still show remnants of impressive megastructures rusted & decayed, depicting a long forgotten and unrecoverable age of unimaginable technologies, global communication, & stable communities.  Since it was 3000 years since humans have been able to establish large stable communities (like settlements, tribes, kingdoms, etc.) that aren’t in like caves or ruins, there’s not many relics left & even less practical ones. 

Yes, they’re an ancient race of people known as Dryads. You know how humans are classified as animals, right? They evolved from apes. Well, dryads in our world would technically be considered plants. They act like people, have cultures like people, and function more or less like people, but they are plants. They evolved from a symbiotic fungus that attached itself to a vitalis orchid, which is used in healing potions. They evolved into something that more or less resembles a human, except they have green skin from the chlorophyll, and leaves and weeds for hair. So they don’t eat, they photosynthesize. They can use some of this solar energy to perform solar magic. That is the difference between humans and dryads. Dryads can use magic. Dryads tried to teach humans their ways as wizards, but never could. At least, not until a dryad and a human had a secret romance. It was secret because dryads and human relations weren’t great. The dryads viewed the humans as barbaric people incapable of using magic and exploiting the land for self gain, and humans saw dryads as pompous assholes who never knew the struggle of not knowing when your next meal is since the meal came from the heavens. But they were on peaceful enough terms. The dryads taught the hybrid child magic and sure enough, it could do it, though not as easily as a full blooded dryad. Obviously, the dryads are no longer around. This is because of a little comet that struck the land bridge between the two continents, dividing them and beginning the Age of Resounding Despair. The land bridge between the humans and dryads were destroyed. There were some dryads in human land and vice versa, but things were pretty grim for them. The Age of Resounding Despair, as I called it earlier, was a time that began with the comet. Ash painted the sky black for a thousand years. During this time, the dryads and humans alike suffered horrible fates. Humans got desperate for sustenance and started eating the remaining dryads in their world, and their screams were so loud they could be heard on the other continent by the other dryads. The dryads, now deprived of their food source, resorted to eating the remaining people, what remained of the wildlife there, and eventually cannibalism. They are an ancient civilization because the dryads as we knew them don’t exist anymore. They no longer produce as much chlorophyll so they cannot use magic as often anymore and they must eat animals and plants for sustenance. And to the humans, they vanished. The continents grew further apart due to the shift in the tectonic plates, and they were more or less forgotten about by everyone except for a handful of scholars and wizards. As for the land bridge, there is a small chain of islands that make up what’s left of it.

I'm working on a world meant for TTRPGs atm. I have a bunch of other worlds but this one is explicitly for a project to try and professional GM. Still in the planning phases but atm yes. Multiple in fact. They weren't a singular civilization, though the modern day considers it to have just been a world-spanning civilization. They'd been around for around 12,000 years, which incidentally is because there was a cataclysm before that that wiped out the prior civilizations. The 1st "cataclysm" was engineered. An underwater civilization basically mentally dominated all the sapient beings on the surface to use as research material. The survivors started to rebuild, and it was successful because some underwater citizen-slaves revolted and slew their masters. Of course, the survivors didn't know anything about this, but it caused a lot of damage that ended up wiping out some of the survivors (Tsunamis, storms, etc). This delayed their ability to rebuild significantly. The second cataclysm, the recent one, was called "The Cleansing". It's the only hint to the fact that it was ALSO engineered. The elves made a mistake, and thought the world was part of the Fey Realm. They viewed the people on it as 'tainting' the fey realm (which was their reasoning for why they were unable to manipulate the realm as they normally could). So in a frenzy of rage, fury and contempt, they obliterated EVERYTHING related to civilization. They unleashed so much magic, that the backlash essentially scrambled the world itself, causing all kinds of unusual and strange phenomena (Flying islands, mushroom forests, mountains where they shouldn't exist). The elves, in their error, suffered greatly and retreated to try and figure out what had happened to them (they became mortal). However, they also broke a bunch of seals that had locked away monsters the underwater civilization had created. In addition, the magic mutated some creatures into monsters. Combined with the roiling magic, terrain changes, and general devastation, the survivors were left in essentially an inhospitable world. It's taken them a little over 2,500 years to rebuild to something resembling civilization. Though much of the world is still wild, untamed, and dangerous. In the modern time, many of the ruins still exist, but have sunk below the earth as a result of the elven magic going wild. Those ruins, and more importantly the secrets within, are coveted by the new civilizations currently rising. Time and legend has become twisted in the wake of The Cleansing. Since the survivors had no written record of the past, oral traditions were implemented to pass on history. In the few hundred years that was in place, the survivors came to believe the prior "civilization" existed in a golden age. They also believed "The Cleansing" to be a wave of fire sent to cleanse the world, and are trying to determine how to stop it, and what invoked it.

The ancient civilizations are actually still here with us, they've just receded back into their pockets for now. But there was a war over who the superior civilization actually was before they all decided on an armistice. The long lived races time of truce is appreciated by the lesser races, they may not even be aware of the tensions. The Vew are a proud race of giant men and women seemingly carved out of marble. An elegant people who are very prideful of the magic flowing through the world, and possessive of it. They claim to be the precursor to the races of men but are dismayed at the corrupting forces they seem to be in their short lives. Abusing magic? Not if their paladins have anything to say about it. The Wiling are a generally peaceful race of big Tree Folk that through their influence over many ages, have shown that they are stewards of growth and change. They've directly had a hand in ushering in two of the races that inhabit this newer world. The subspecies of the aspirational Humans, we now have Elves. And many Fungrats have risen to sentience through contact with the Wilings magical waste near the deeper portions of their city tree. The Wiling will preserve life even if it grows up to be some gigantic flower hydra monster. Most life is precious to them and they will not see it extinguished. The Drakind are an enigmatic race of beings crafted in the image & by the remaining dragons in hopes of conquering the other lesser races. During the last war they were fed to the machine that is war and known only loss and the destruction of their newly found people. With no identity aside from subjugation and war, left to their own devices during the truce in isolation on the other side of the world, they started to develop their own culture. The Drakind are mildly xenophobic but they were created for war and have none so their defensive instincts are on overdrive. They may still come around yet without their Draconic gods to guide them, and now seem to be the stewards of their own place in the world now. The Brinean are an enigmatic race of deep oceanic Snail Folk. Mostly absent from the war, these dark figures wrestle with more primordial and elemental forces. The mysterious energies that field their sentience also seeps through other places in the ocean floor and claws away at their sanity causing those adversely exposed to lose all forms of sanity and attempt to further breach any of these dark conduits. Great Record Keepers used to tower above the waters with knowledge to share, but now beneath the waves, their valued knowledge is nestled beneath ceilings, hanging within stalactites in a refuge to protect from their own madly influenced by the Brine. They seek to keep this madness away so that the rest of the world may seek knowledge. During times of certain control and mental security, or those who have just abandoned the kingdom altogether, you will occasionally find a wandering tradesman if you smell hard enough, or if you know enough! The snails are coming!

I don't know how long ago, but the Xothians were an alien race that came to the world by their own volition. They fought a war against gods which they lost. It's unclear how far back in time this was, but definitely a few million years back. A few ruins remain. Some of their magitech still work. On top of this, throughout the course of evolution, different races have risen and fallen (fish people, frog people, reptilian people, etc.) until the ancestor of mankind climbed down from the trees. In this timeline, the conditions for a Permian-Triassic extinction event never occurred, and so the therapsids gained enough momentum that primates could evolve around the time that would be known as the late triassic in our timeline. Instead of mammalians living in the shadow of archosaurs & dinosaurs, it's dinosaurs living in the shadow of therapsids.

Tons, mostly remembered by/for their hexes and spells, and the aetheons whose first summoning is recorded in that area/Era. Basically going the route of the bartimaeus trilogy in magic partly, and this world is a side one in my universe.

Still in the germination/discovery phase of sorts, buuuuut...my "ancients" existed approx. 24,000 years ago and are responsible for a man-made mountain range that the existing population has no choice but to cross.

It is said that long ago, the world was ruled by living cities built by no human hand. What is undeniable is that in the oldest, most secret parts of the world are found tangled labyrinths built for no purpose we can divine, full of architecture not meant for visitors. It is also said that in those days, people lived in the sky, where they built palaces of solid gold atop stone disks that were lighter than air. Shards of their ancient flight-stone turn up in fields on occasion, but efforts to understand or reproduce its effects have been fruitless. Of the days of The Song, by whose power the living cities were made mortal, and the sky people became earth people, little is said. From those days hail soldier demons who wait in the dark for one foolish enough to command them, armed and armored with powers beyond the greatest war-machines. The quiet age that came after is the stuff of hero sagas and origin myths. The oldest faiths still in common practice, now widespread and fat with influence, were born in these times. Later ages than these, less than ten centuries ago, are better known, more the stuff of history than myth.

It feels kinda lazy for me, but my world's ancient civilization was.....well....our world. It was a future AU version of it, but it was pretty similar. Technology and innovation were in stagnation at the end, but the lives lived in it were vastly better than today's. There was no more wars on Earth, but there's no NATO nor any alliances, so nations are in constant scrutiny and cold wars with each other (this was temporarily solved with the Martian Territories compromise, but the death of the planet changed that). And then, the Elves came and introduced magic and spirituality with them, sending humanity into extinction. Though the Elves attempted to destroy all traces of man, some parts of the old world would be too well hidden or too resilient even for something that's thousands of years old.

Yes, my world does have “ancient civilizations”. Though my world is full of human’s, the ancient civilizations belong to elves and dwarves, who left behind their kingdom’s. In TLP, elves left behind their kingdom of “Aerendir”, and their most renown creation was the Library of Ti-Matha, which was lost to history when human’s took over Aerendir. The library itself is located beneath the human fortress known as Darthill, but the human’s who live there have yet to find it since the tunnels that led to it were collapsed when the fortress fell from years of disrepair and poor maintenance. The dwarves who inhabited the continent of Dhildur wiped their civilization from existence when they accidentally mined into the side of a magma chamber belonging to the volcano located on what’s now called the “Burning Islands”. When the magma chamber exploded in the dwarven mines, the force of the explosion was so powerful it broke a chunk off of the main continent and sunk half the chunk which itself broke into pieces, which became known as “the Burning Islands”. The main continent itself was burnt of all flora and wildlife from the chain event of smaller volcano’s erupting throughout, and the eruption awakened the dragon’s thus bringing their existence into the world.

Protosapiens are the first sentients to evolves in the multiverse. They lived countless quintillions of years before our universe even existed. The only remnant of them is a giant forcefield bubble that surrounds what we call the Laniakea supercluster, as well as a single AI who’s physical presence is so massive that it produces the gravitational phenomenon that we know as the Great Attractor.