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roseembolism) wrote2009-03-20 02:36 pm
roseembolism) wrote2009-03-20 02:36 pm
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UTGM: Past Great Civiliziations
Now that we've touched on Cosmology, let's take a look at history. One of the concepts I want to deal with in UTGM is the layers of history: once someone finds a nice spot to build, civilizations will be built on the runs of earlier civilizations. Civilizations will wax and wane, be conquered or simply disappear outright, but people will tend to stay in the same places. In UTGM this is not only due to geography, but to the necessity to scavenge materials from ruins. Quite a few resources are either exhausted or in hard to work states so scavenging has long been a respected and highly technical occupation.
Also, please remember these are still rough notes, so comments and criticisms are very welcome.
There have been several world-spanning civilizations, and hundreds of smaller regional powers that have left their imprint on the Earth. It is in fact very difficult to find any area where some ruin or sign of past humanity is not visible; even the oceans are not free of their ruins. The great civilizations are notable for having dominated the world in their eras, with ruins found on all known continents, developing into great heights of power and dominance, and then abruptly vanishing. Naturally, the more recent the civilization, the more we know of them, but even in the case of the Lifemakers, the most recent vanished civilization, there is much that remains a mystery.
Dealing only with the Great Civilizations, from most recent to most early we have:
The Lifemakers
Many civilizations have tinkered with altering plants and animals, but the Lifemakers are known to have been the undisputed masters of creating and altering life. Most of the surviving breeds of mankind are their creations, and many more wondrous plants and animals are attributed to them. The Lifemakers in fact, used living plants and animals as substitutes for many of the machines that previous cultures used, possibly due to the difficulty in finding resources in easy-to-use forms. Creating animals that secreted ceramics harder than steel, or plants that sifted the oceans for minerals was merely the beginning; they crafted plants that grew entire devices,and living war machines that could destroy cities. Their cities themselves were often single organisms made out of coral or plants, supplying all the needs of their inhabitants, and the few remaining living cities are some of the most impressive artifacts of the age. And of course the Daemons claim that the Lifemakers were the first culture to develop magic, and that they themselves were created to harness that power more effectively.
It is known that the Lifemakers took longer to develop than other Great Civilizations, and that they were originally divided into seven great houses with intricate politics between them. The Old and New Empires and in fact many "civilized" Daemons take much of their political systems, class structure and formal attire from the Lifemakers.
Despite all the knowledge of the Lifemakers, it is still not quite certain what happened to them, and numerous legends and theories have sprung up over their end. Records are scattered from that time, and old stories seem to speak of a war of expansion (where? They covered the earth), a metaphorical plague (vs. the masters of life?), or the Lifemakers simply taking their leave (to go where?). The notion that the Lifemakers could have simply have abandoned their empire and disappeared into their carefully engineered forests or jungles has kept many philosophical rulers and scholars awake at night.
The Unity:
For a long time it was not known that this was a world culture. The cities of the Unity are fairly small, built in accordance with the lay of the land. However, they have a united design aesthetic, with a central government/temple building, and civic buildings leading out from it in a radial pattern, as well as an extensive network of tunnels and underground chambers that often extend past the city limits. The fragmented writings and artwork left suggest a highly rigid caste culture with dozens of different classes matching primary occupations. The nobility evidently maintained control over a resource variously translated as "Breath", "Mana" or "Light". It is not exactly known what this resource was, and it may have been entirely metaphorical. They also appear to have been highly conservative and cautious people, with an extensive cosmology of warring gods and monsters, whose influence could only be avoided only through correct thought and meditation. Their circumspect nature however does not appear to have kept them from a quick disappearence, leavign theri cities crumbling.
The Bulders:
They are primarily known for their extravagantly huge engineering works. Using huge stone blocks that were treated to be as strong and durable as the best ceramics, they were responsible for some of the largest scale construction on earth. Some of their engineering feats are still in use, such as the Never-ending Tunnel and the gigantic city-bridge spanning the channel from the Green Islands to the Western Continent; others, such as the thousand-mile long Great Canal or the broken dam between the Western sea and the great Inland ocean are disused, merely collecting dust. Much of what is known about the Builders comes from their works themselves: any surface that wasn't required to be smooth was covered in carved artwork, ranging from written and pictorial representations in the earliest structures, to delicate abstract patterns in the most refined of their works, that are baffling in their complexity. Some scholars using specialized sensory magics have stated that they have felt traces of devices of some sort in many of the blocks but if so, their function is unknown.
The Hive:
All hive cities so far found have been identical, differing only in size. They all consist of hexagonal layers of identical hexagonal buildings extending out from a central core. The actual function of these buildings is unknown, as no script or pictures of any sort have been found. Nor is anything actually known about the people that inhabited them; no smaller artifacts remain, whether of writing, artwork, too
There is one other consistent characteristic of all Hive cities: all of them have suffered severe damage in the past. Some of them have canyons slashed through them, others have craters covering part or all of the central core, or are partially vitrified. It is even speculated that some of the craters, glass plains or circular bays around the world are former sites of Hive cities. It is not known who the enemies of the Hive culture were, but it is hoped they are no longer around.
The Great Machine
It's not actually certain if the Great Machine was a civilization at all, nor is the actual purposes of the remnant artifacts known. This is partially because all of the parts of the great machines have long ago been stripped of any usable materials, leaving only the shells of their devices, made out of ceramic, concrete, or the apparently unbreakable Starmetal. What is left is mysterious: even in the towns built around and under remnants such as gigantic cylinders, tangles of pipes and conduits, or the frames of giant geometric shapes on pillars, it is unkown what purpose the Great Machines were for.
The Star People
The furthest removed in time, and most mysterious culture; the name comes from an early Lifemaker legend about early gods who left Earth to create the stars, and erected the great sky arch. The remains are scattered, with little in common except their age; a concrete and stone platform here, ancient mine workings there, a slab with incomprehensible writings unearthed in a salvage mine, a stone village in a desert cliff. Any more intact ruins or artifacts would have to be sheltered in extremely remote places.
Also, please remember these are still rough notes, so comments and criticisms are very welcome.
There have been several world-spanning civilizations, and hundreds of smaller regional powers that have left their imprint on the Earth. It is in fact very difficult to find any area where some ruin or sign of past humanity is not visible; even the oceans are not free of their ruins. The great civilizations are notable for having dominated the world in their eras, with ruins found on all known continents, developing into great heights of power and dominance, and then abruptly vanishing. Naturally, the more recent the civilization, the more we know of them, but even in the case of the Lifemakers, the most recent vanished civilization, there is much that remains a mystery.
Dealing only with the Great Civilizations, from most recent to most early we have:
The Lifemakers
Many civilizations have tinkered with altering plants and animals, but the Lifemakers are known to have been the undisputed masters of creating and altering life. Most of the surviving breeds of mankind are their creations, and many more wondrous plants and animals are attributed to them. The Lifemakers in fact, used living plants and animals as substitutes for many of the machines that previous cultures used, possibly due to the difficulty in finding resources in easy-to-use forms. Creating animals that secreted ceramics harder than steel, or plants that sifted the oceans for minerals was merely the beginning; they crafted plants that grew entire devices,and living war machines that could destroy cities. Their cities themselves were often single organisms made out of coral or plants, supplying all the needs of their inhabitants, and the few remaining living cities are some of the most impressive artifacts of the age. And of course the Daemons claim that the Lifemakers were the first culture to develop magic, and that they themselves were created to harness that power more effectively.
It is known that the Lifemakers took longer to develop than other Great Civilizations, and that they were originally divided into seven great houses with intricate politics between them. The Old and New Empires and in fact many "civilized" Daemons take much of their political systems, class structure and formal attire from the Lifemakers.
Despite all the knowledge of the Lifemakers, it is still not quite certain what happened to them, and numerous legends and theories have sprung up over their end. Records are scattered from that time, and old stories seem to speak of a war of expansion (where? They covered the earth), a metaphorical plague (vs. the masters of life?), or the Lifemakers simply taking their leave (to go where?). The notion that the Lifemakers could have simply have abandoned their empire and disappeared into their carefully engineered forests or jungles has kept many philosophical rulers and scholars awake at night.
The Unity:
For a long time it was not known that this was a world culture. The cities of the Unity are fairly small, built in accordance with the lay of the land. However, they have a united design aesthetic, with a central government/temple building, and civic buildings leading out from it in a radial pattern, as well as an extensive network of tunnels and underground chambers that often extend past the city limits. The fragmented writings and artwork left suggest a highly rigid caste culture with dozens of different classes matching primary occupations. The nobility evidently maintained control over a resource variously translated as "Breath", "Mana" or "Light". It is not exactly known what this resource was, and it may have been entirely metaphorical. They also appear to have been highly conservative and cautious people, with an extensive cosmology of warring gods and monsters, whose influence could only be avoided only through correct thought and meditation. Their circumspect nature however does not appear to have kept them from a quick disappearence, leavign theri cities crumbling.
The Bulders:
They are primarily known for their extravagantly huge engineering works. Using huge stone blocks that were treated to be as strong and durable as the best ceramics, they were responsible for some of the largest scale construction on earth. Some of their engineering feats are still in use, such as the Never-ending Tunnel and the gigantic city-bridge spanning the channel from the Green Islands to the Western Continent; others, such as the thousand-mile long Great Canal or the broken dam between the Western sea and the great Inland ocean are disused, merely collecting dust. Much of what is known about the Builders comes from their works themselves: any surface that wasn't required to be smooth was covered in carved artwork, ranging from written and pictorial representations in the earliest structures, to delicate abstract patterns in the most refined of their works, that are baffling in their complexity. Some scholars using specialized sensory magics have stated that they have felt traces of devices of some sort in many of the blocks but if so, their function is unknown.
The Hive:
All hive cities so far found have been identical, differing only in size. They all consist of hexagonal layers of identical hexagonal buildings extending out from a central core. The actual function of these buildings is unknown, as no script or pictures of any sort have been found. Nor is anything actually known about the people that inhabited them; no smaller artifacts remain, whether of writing, artwork, too
There is one other consistent characteristic of all Hive cities: all of them have suffered severe damage in the past. Some of them have canyons slashed through them, others have craters covering part or all of the central core, or are partially vitrified. It is even speculated that some of the craters, glass plains or circular bays around the world are former sites of Hive cities. It is not known who the enemies of the Hive culture were, but it is hoped they are no longer around.
The Great Machine
It's not actually certain if the Great Machine was a civilization at all, nor is the actual purposes of the remnant artifacts known. This is partially because all of the parts of the great machines have long ago been stripped of any usable materials, leaving only the shells of their devices, made out of ceramic, concrete, or the apparently unbreakable Starmetal. What is left is mysterious: even in the towns built around and under remnants such as gigantic cylinders, tangles of pipes and conduits, or the frames of giant geometric shapes on pillars, it is unkown what purpose the Great Machines were for.
The Star People
The furthest removed in time, and most mysterious culture; the name comes from an early Lifemaker legend about early gods who left Earth to create the stars, and erected the great sky arch. The remains are scattered, with little in common except their age; a concrete and stone platform here, ancient mine workings there, a slab with incomprehensible writings unearthed in a salvage mine, a stone village in a desert cliff. Any more intact ruins or artifacts would have to be sheltered in extremely remote places.
no subject
no subject
And...corrected.
no subject
no subject
If this is Earth, seems you might as well use standard big geographic names, at least for reference.
If all civilization are human derived, I'd think there should be more in the way of relic writing, even if it's not readable. Orion's Arm plays the mysterious mysteriousness card several too many times for my taste. Diversity is great, but at some point there's a common unity, like Roman "Kilroyus was here" graffiti in Egypt.
...having said that, I guess a high tech civilization might not be using visible writing. Digital augmented reality and all.
no subject
Part of the reason I am being vague, is I haven't really settled on the locations of my major empires. I'm also determined not to use standard geographic names; the continents should tip people off, even with the shaping that's been done to some of them.
I am definitely conscious of the improbability of making all writing illegible, balanced by the need to keep the past civilizations mysterious to an extent. The Lifemakers for example, have much more documentation available, though paradoxically, the later materials are harder to understand, due to the weirdness of the terms.
Other civilizations had a tendency to put records on items that decay over a few tens of thousands of years, or move away from hardcopy records at all. And there's always the possibility of a disjunction; a civilization "Goes away" so quickly that no keys to its language is left.
no subject
A question for any deep-future Earth building: is the Roman alphabet still around? Or Arabic script? Or Chinese characters (though those seem more mutable, by government fiat if nothing else.) Hindu numerals? Spoken languages have changed but the raw writing systems have a couple of millennia to them already. Of course, Egyptian hieroglyphic knowledge faded, and that was a major empire... still, not widespread per se, and complicated, vs. a global and relatively simple system. You'd need a total literacy break, or a series of "rationalizations" and authoritarian purging, or something, I think.
(Vs. Deepness in the Sky, or Psychohistorical Crisis, where 8000 or 80,000 years still has continuity, in language or computer code.)
Sorry: I have a tendency to sound more opinionated that I can justify. Not like anyone knows what 30,000 years would be like. Still, I find the ambition of "hard fantasy" cool, and wanted to encourage thinking about mechanisms of change, not just handwaving in "stuff happens".