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Dead Civilization Society

Many modern stories include a foray into the ruins of a lost civilization, a society whose technology or knowledge becomes an integral part of the plot and to the audiences experience. For this post, I’ll be concentrating on dead or disappeared civilizations rather than those who are re-awoken in the course of the journey. Why do we use this idea so often? What are we trying to communicate with it? What does it say about us?

Examples

First, to illustrate the idea, let’s start with a few examples.

Skyrim[1] provides a robust examination of the Dwemer civilization, a society that mysteriously disappeared leaving behind vast underground cities and advanced technologies. Interestingly, the plot of the game has nothing to do with the Dwemer or their artifacts making Skyrim a rare example this mechanic is not used for storytelling purposes.

Halo[2], one of the most popular console franchises of all time, is a particularly complex example (thanks to the wonders of extended universes). Initially, players learn about the Forerunners, a species who preceded humanity and had great technology, beyond the current day understanding. Much of their artifacts are used by existing species, but without true understanding of the mechanics behind them. The species Precursors is later revealed as the ‘grandparent’ species, creating the Forerunners who created the humans. Humanity itself had a great, interstellar empire before our current history, knowledge of which was lost only to later be regained. It’s ancient dead civilizations all the way down.

Mass Effect[3] represents a competent and slightly off-beat approach to this mechanic. While the discovery of lost societies and their technology is usually a crucial plot point leading into the central conflict or its solution, here we are placed in a universe already built on ancient artifacts that are not fully understood. The origin and purpose of the artifacts becomes central to the events where we find the creators have dark plans for the galaxy’s inhabitants.

In the Lord of the Rings[4], Moira is an underground dwarven empire that was abandoned when the inhabitants mined deeply into the mountains and awoke an ancient evil being. This creature, a Balrog, wiped out many of the dwarves and created a stronghold for ‘evil’ creatures. Interestingly, Moira does not provide any technology or real knowledge that is essential to the story line. From a plot perspective, Moira is a) ‘cool’ / ‘metal’ and b) acts as a way to ‘kill’ Gandalf and remove him from the party of protagonists. Here, the ancient civilization is the setting rather than a strong plot device, but it is used in a fairly well thought out and restrained manner.

Warcraft[5] is a franchise that is so long lasting, successful and extensive that it contains nearly every trope, plot device, fantasy (and even scifi) staples and archetypes imaginable. Some of the main examples are several insectoid races (Nerubians, Aqir, Qiraji) whose hive-like ruins can be found around Azeroth. While the civilizations are dead, some mindless insects still walk around these areas. These ruins generally provide convenient room for adding more back story, as one can dig up any kind of artifact or evil there which might generate new conflicts to resolve. The Nerubians in Northrend are fairly integrated into some main story lines but are not exactly essential from a storytelling perspective.

Lastly, I just want to mention that this trope is a staple for stories found in pulp magazines, the types of stories movies like Indiana Jones are modeled after.

General Uses

From the above examples, we can see a couple of themes forming. Ancient dead civilizations provide a great mechanic to add content into stories. In some instances, what we discover in the ruins is integral to the story, such as a lost power or evil that drives the central conflict. In others, story creators use the exploration of these sites as a means for exposition, explaining the basic structure and history of the universe they are building. In larger games, long standing franchises, or later books of a series, these lost cities act as a convenient place to suddenly introduce whole new things into the story line when all other plots have basically resolved and the story creator needs a means to engage the viewer in the story for another book, episode or game; it can be a black box of sorts to introduce things that had no previous reason to exist in the world of the story. In all these instances, execution is key. These mechanics can come off as hacky just as easily as engrossing.

A common element in both science fiction and fantasy is the existence in magical powers. In the case of fantasy, it can be literally magic. In scifi, the presence of technology sufficiently beyond the normal scope of the given universe can fill this role (the ‘mass effect’ in Mass Effect, for example). In these cases, the dead civilizations are often to origin of such magic, in the form of lost technologies, artifacts or creatures. And these are often ‘magic’ in the sense they are beyond the norm, even in worlds where magic is normal. In the real world, progress is often excruciatingly slow, so technology rarely outpaces our ability to control it (though its possibilities can get ahead of our moral judgment). So the introduction of ‘magic’ tools or powers allows authors to examine what happens when characters have access to powers they cannot truly understand or control.

Which leads us to the subject of antagonists. The presence of a ‘magical’ power gives storytellers an excuse to have unreasonably evil characters and action; when ‘phenomenal cosmic power’ is on the line, we can ask is any act justified in our efforts to control it? And ancient ruins can hide an evil force as often as it does treasure, providing another introduction point for unbelievably malevolent antagonist. The idea of ‘evil’ and characters who act incredibly antagonistically with little to no rationale is a topic I plan to cover in depth in the future, but suffice it to say that the ancient dead civilization allows story creators to provide an enemy that is so ‘evil’ that the audience and the protagonist can dismiss any moral qualms and abandon any efforts to sympathize with or understand their opponent. This tactic inevitably leaves stories feeling empty, meaningless and unfulfilling despite whatever initial rush other ‘cool’ universe elements we encounter.

Hiding story elements in lost ruins can also provide a convenient explanation why the protagonist is unaware of vital facts. If necromancy and the power to command biblical plagues a force in the world, should we expect Brendan Fraser be aware of that fact? Probably, but the fact that these powers are hidden in ancient ruins makes Fraser’s ignorance on the subject believable, no matter how unlikely it would be to keep such information hidden for thousands of years.

Lastly, ancient dead civilizations provide atmosphere in abundance. They can provide a sense of danger and creeping fear without the presence of antagonists. Horror stories can make liberal use of the darkness, mystery and the sense that anything could be around the corner. Ruins are perfect for introducing tension and fear into a plot. And because the lost cities can contain anything, they can be tailored to convey any type of ambience the storyteller wants. They can range for deep, dark, creepy places to noble, awe-inducing halls, contrasting their heavenly quality with the mundanity of the outside world.

The Good and the Bad

Storytellers can leverage ancient civilizations as great tools in their tales. Ruins and lost technology provide a powerful sense of atmosphere. They convey a sense of discovery, awe and scale. They can, at the same time, instill the audience with more negative sensations like aloneness, being confined and dread for what’s to come.

The discovery of powerful items or knowledge in these ruins also acts as a great point for shifts in the story. Upon finding something in the darkness, the audience gets a sudden sense of possibility. What can suddenly change for the protagonists and for the world? What new avenues could open? What new fears should we be harboring?

And as new possibilities open up and secrets are discovered, the audience gets to share in their feelings about the protagonist in this situation, the sense of being special for being present at a momentous discovery, of being party to world-changing secrets, of feeling the world make monumental, even alien shifts right before our eyes.

Each of these elements can give a universe a much richer sense of depth and meaning. The use of ancient societies is an opportunity for the storyteller to up the stakes, expound upon the consequences possible in their story and smoothly open up a mundane world to new and exciting possibilities.

But the use of this mechanic has its risks. Handled poorly, heading into the ruins can make stories feel flat, forced and false. Often, lost technology only operates as a Deus Ex Machina for a creator who only wanted to create a series of ‘cool’ images and did not bother to develop a cohesive story. Sometimes the use is not so extreme as to instantly resolve the central conflict, but still is abused to add in details and events to act as duct tape over various plot holes. But often, even when used well in every other sense, the dead civilization mechanic easily falls into social messages that we’d rather leave behind. The depiction of the now-gone society frequently paints the past as impossibly noble, sometimes while including social constructs that should have obvious social contradictions yet which cause none of the obvious moral dilemmas we might expect. An extrapolation of this problem arises when the protagonist is somehow linked to the civilization, often as a distant descendant. Such situations convey the message that one legitimate (or not) by birth, and thus by chance, rather than the protagonist having any true effect on the course of events.

Why is it meaningful to us

Why do we keep coming back to this idea of lost ruins and dead civilizations? One of the most likely reasons is merely because we’ve seen it before in many stories we’ve loved throughout the centuries. It can be used to create images and events that are just ‘cool’ and remind us our combined storytelling history. Secondly, the limitless potential of what can be discovered in a lost land makes it a compellingly convenient device for story creators. So much so that it is easily abused in ways that are sometimes more hurtful to the story we are trying to tell than helpful.

Also, in trying to explain why a society is lost to history, we touch on some very common and meaningful themes. Many depictions of dead societies are used to caution the audience on the dangers of hubris and excess. The civilizations depicted rise to impossible heights of power and wealth but are ultimately destroyed by the very means that brought them such glory. A related theme that more often used in science fiction is the examination of the potential dangers of technology and progress. Technology, either in the pursuit of a new field or just the general over emphasis on it, often becomes the doom of a society greater than our own.

As stated above, stories with ancient civilizations can lend themselves to other themes such as how we deal with excessive power, how we react in the face of impossibly powerful evil, and how we process the unknown.

Additionally, the idea of a great but gone society is a form of escapism, of fantasy. In many ways, this can be good. People often turn to stories for a moment’s relief from the real world. But it can easily devolve into simplified views of the world that reinforce the worst parts of ourselves.

We’ve seen this in our own, real history. The European view of Ancient Greece, starting from the Renaissance onward, created an almost fantastical romanticization of Greek history and Greek philosophers. The European Hellenism of the time (called Philhellenism later on) was used to justify the European sense of ‘civilization’ thereby allowing them to look down on societies they felt were ‘primitive’ including the Greeks of the time and their traditional culture. As in that example, having over idealized cultures enforces a viewpoint on the story’s audience, dictating what a good and bad society looks like. And when the society is long dead, a distance is created making that idealized society beyond reproach, criticism or realistic examination. When we cannot look too closely, we don’t see the hidden injustices and contradictions that are an inevitable part of having a society.

How

So if the ancient dead civilization mechanic (you’d think I’d have a better name for it by this point in the article) is powerful yet prone to story-killing flaws, how do we use it well? When does it work and when does it fail?

First of all, the existence of this civilization and its ruins should be relevant to the story. It should either change how the audience views the events of the story or progress the plot in key ways (think Gandalf dying at Moira). That said, the effects of the ruins should not be immediate as soon as the protagonists start exploring them. By giving the characters time to run away but making the choice not to, the storyteller creates a greater sense of tension during the exploration and payoff once a discovery is made.

Where significant details about the lost civilization are provided, relevance to the plot can be strengthened by making the dead society a means to better understand modern society, either for the characters or for the audience. Seeing the origins of their current life may reveal an injustice in day to day life that was previously hidden, for example. Or finding more facts about the past may break a powerful myth in the present, causing the central conflict to arise or plot points to roll forth.

It is also important to humanize the civilization in some way. Every society has its flaws and contradictions so any depiction of a long gone empire will ring false if it seems too good or evil to be true. This is especially true when the reason of the society’s demise is discussed. Saying some massive evil (see above) wiped them out or that they were simply undone by their own hubris or excess, if not explained in any depth, will seem too easy and too cliché to the audience. If the way the ancient society disappeared is not directly relevant to the story, it’s often best just to leave those details out.

As with all story creations, the key is making sure information is relevant and believable, even when its fantastical.

Conclusion

The use of ancient dead civilizations is so ubiquitous in storytelling that it would be a wonder that we all aren’t sick of it, if it weren’t for the powerful sense of wonder these settings and story lines impart on us. In many ways, they encapsulate the very magic of storytelling, the idea that anything can happen, that somewhere around the next corner are whole new worlds and ideas waiting to be discovered.

These ruins can be used in such precise and powerful ways that they are a great tool for every storyteller to try out. Sometimes they turn out clunky and can even encourage us to regressive, simplistic ways of thinking. But when a story creator takes their time and connects the exploration of these civilizations to the story in an integral and meaningful way, the audience gets to take part in a rich and memorable experience.

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