The Ancients

The Ancients were a once powerful civilization, now long gone from the world of Rain World. The Ancients were the driving force that created the most structures in the environment of Rain World.

## Society Of The Ancients

   The Ancients were a group of tall, bipedal creatures with an intelligence equal to, or even much greater than that of humans, and similar to many humans, The Ancients had an incredible sense of tradition. In Ancient society, even the slightest taboo would be considered extremely disrespectful if broken, and taboos being shown as possibly even more important than laws. The ancients also had a sort of “religion” similar to most humans. However instead of gods, the ancients main focus was a form of birth and rebirth known as cycles. The Ancients were believed to practice buddhism creating temples like the Shaded Citadel for making religious masks and also are believed to have practiced a chinese tradition called binding where one would disform a limb to make it into a particular shape.

### The Cycles

In Rain World, every intelligent creature, from Slugcats to The Ancients is trapped in an infinite cycle of birth and rebirth. Any time one of these creatures dies, whether it is from dehydration, or from being eaten, the creature simply wakes up at the beginning of the cycle in which they died, as if the entire cycle, along with the creatures death had all been simply a dream. The Ancients were well aware of this, and because of this their only goal was to find a way to escape these cycles. Any escape from the cycles was known as ascending. They did this by attempting to rid themselves of all earthly desires, as to reach a level of transcendence that would allow them to ascend, and finally be free from the infinite loop. The Ancients' religion is comparable to Buddhism in many ways. In the game, cycles are made up of only a few minutes, however it is theorized that most of the cycle is spent in hibernation, due to the constant torrential rains, and that the actual length of the cycles is closer to several days, or even weeks.

## Ascending

Finding a way to escape the infinite cycles was the main goal of The Ancients' society, with many fasting and meditating in an attempt to release themselves from all earthly desires and escape the cycles. However after tens of thousands of cycles no one was successful.

### The Void Sea

Desperate for an answer to their problem the ancients delved deep underground, eventually finding a giant sea of golden liquid that they named The Void Sea. The Void Sea is a presumably infinite expanse of acid, slowly dissolving the world from the bottom up. It is confirmed that this does indeed happen, however the effects are not visible until the events of Saint’s campaign. When The Ancients discovered the void sea, many Ancients stumbled into the deadly super acid, expecting to appear again in a few cycles. However this never happened. The Ancients realized that they had finally found a way to ascend from the infinite cycles. However this was not without its flaws. In Saints campaign and from the speech of the Iterators it can be discovered that there was an ancient civilization before the ancients that might have discovered the void sea and ascension.

### The Echoes

The discovery of The Void Sea led to a mass pilgrimage, with hundreds of Ancients ascending at once, and huge drills being constructed, along with a mass of pipes and filters to bring the precious void fluid directly to the Ancients, leading to even Ancients who could not make the pilgrimage to the void sea to start ascending. However this had some very unexpected consequences. When an overly greedy, or materialistic Ancient, who was too tethered to their past life to escape the cycles attempted to ascend, they would become an echo, a strange being trapped in an eternal torment between life and death, unable to die, and unable to receive the escape from the cycles that they so desperately wanted. When the first echoes were discovered by the Ancients they were terrified of the fact that if they tried to ascend there was a possibility that all that they wanted could be denied from them, and they could be trapped in this torment forever. This led them to create the Iterators. Not all ancients wanted to ascend and that is how some of the echos that you can find in game came to be, since it all happened so quick many were forced to swiftly ascend leaving behind a decayed ruined civilization.

## The Great Problem

The great problem is finding a way to ascend the lesser beings such as the lizards and slug cats and it is what the iterators were created to do, but since all the creatures are fighting for their survival each cycle the great problem has been harder to solve. As the Iterators continue to decay and break down there could be a chance that the solution to the great problem will never be created. It is believed that Sliver of Straw and iterator found the triple affirmative a solution that is portable and easy for the great problem but shortly after broadcasting this message they died.