Ancients

*"Ssstranger, you might not want to look at thisss now..."*

This article contains important spoilers that can ruin your experience while playing  FTL: Multiverse! Read at your own risk.

## Ancients

### Enemies

Basically everyone, including themselves.

## Ships

### Elites

Royal

The Ancients are a powerful Class Omega civilization who invented the Multiverse Drives and have an influence on many other aspects of the modern galaxy. They long since disappeared from the galactic scene after nearly driving themselves to extinction.

## Gameplay

The Ancients are incredibly powerful, no doubt the most difficult enemies in the game. Their weaponry is incredibly advanced and can have many types of attributes, and their ships always have Zoltan Shields. They are also the only faction who uses missile combat drones. Similar to Crystals and partially Orchids, their weaponry is unique to their faction and can only be found in their sector.

Though Ancient ships have incredible offense and defense, they lack the ability to repair efficiently, meaning once you start to take down systems they will struggle to get them back online.

Traveling to the Ancient sector is not advised if your ship is weak or unable to get past large amounts of shields and cloaking. It is also recommended to have strong anti-boarding tactics because the Ancients make terrifying boarding crew and cannot be vented.

## History

The Ancients have perhaps the most complex and involved history of any other race, though many of the effects of their species were unintended and happened long after they disappeared.

### **Before The Modern Galaxy**

The Ancients were the first race to achieve FTL travel, followed by the Crystals and Lanius. The three races colonized a good portion of territory, but none more-so than the Ancients. The Ancients existed on a higher plane of reality and were obsessed with perfection. Eventually, their race shed their organic forms to create mechanical, cubical bodies to migrate into. The Ancients believed the Cube was the "perfect shape", and so most of their technology was modeled with sharp, rectangular designs.

The Ancient tech was more advanced than any other tech ever created since their empire fell. They were obsessed with playing god, which lead to the creation of three technological marvels, and eventually as consequence of their ambition a fourth.

The first marvel was the Reality Manipulator, a massive monolith structure that can warp time and space, able to open wormholes, change the state of matter, and speed up or slow time in a select area. Eventually, the Reality Manipulator was left abandoned in the center of a massive nebula. After years of no maintenance the device began to malfunction. These strange shifts in reality were noticed by a newly forming empire, the Zoltan Ministry. Believing the device to be a gift from the gods (not too far of a stretch of truth), they worship the device, naming it The Great Eye. The player can also obtain a Reality Manipulator as an augment on either Ancient B or with an Ancient blue option at the Great Eye event.

The second marvel was the creation of The Harmony, and by extension the Engi race themselves. In an attempt to simulate life, the Ancients began work on a Cognitive AI known as the Harmony. They also created a design for a nanobot which would simulate an organic cell as close as possible, and allow the Harmony to assemble them into a physical entity. The Harmony was kept under surveillance at all times by the Ancients and limited to a single system until their empire fell and the Harmony escaped into the galactic scene. This was the first example of Cognitive AI, and would remain so until Arcadia Research and Development modeled CICA after it.

The third marvel was the Waystone Device, a joint effort between the Crystals and Ancients. This machine was small enough to be carried by two people with little difficulty, and used a mix of Ancient and Crystal tech. This, combined with a key, could be used to lock down a sector from being visited without the use of a gateway. Though the Crystals remained in the galactic scene long after the Ancients did, they too eventually slipped away into obscurity when they no longer wished to be associated with the violent Rockmen. To do this, they used the Waystone to lock down their homeworlds. During the Ruwen's Favor Questline the player is tasked to track down the original Waystone Device that still remains in the Crystalline Origins and bring it back so that the Crystals may reverse engineer it and build a new one.

Ironically, the fourth, and undoubtedly greatest, accomplishment of the Ancients was both their savior and downfall. The Multiverse Drive allowed the Ancients to not only explore any location in their own universe, but an infinite amount of alternate realities as well. Though each reality had several differences, certain key events remained consistent between each. The need for these drives arrived when the Ancients nearly destroyed their own reality from their experiments and were forced to find a way to survive. However, due to the similarities between realities, the Ancients encountered more of themselves. At first they welcomed each other, and the race spread equally between realities, and their technology was shared. However, they found themselves in disputes over territory, and soon the Ancients launched into a mass intra-race war among themselves.

With equally devastating technology on both sides, the Ancients almost entirely destroyed themselves. With extinction evident, a few select groups quarantined themselves off using the Waystone tech. The Ancient empire was crippled and their once god-like control over the Multiverse was reduced to nothing.

## Ships

Ancient AbductorAncient AssaultAncient BattleshipAncient BomberAncient FighterAncient GuardAncient Light CruiserAncient MothershipAncient PicketAncient TransportAncient Trapper