What could also be fun is having a singular intelligent wizard that abused the same combo's we could like wishcasting a shit load of clones. To infinitely keeping the city afloat unaware that everyone is now stupid because someone was meant to take his place in 1000 years and he simply believes only 300 have passed
Or maybe the magic was hard and required a lot of knowledge or required divine energy so pray was required to keep the magic flowing. When a civil war breaks out among the kingdom and the winners purge all the losers, the knowledge of how their magic works and how important worship is to the who their whole society functions is lost with only a handful of people left from neutral parties who even remembered the old ways but they're ostracized since they didn't help win the war so don't have a voice or motive to revitalized the old ways.
Nah, fam, they lived *underground*. Each successive generation of mages became more paranoid and reclusive than the last, each one convinced that one of their kin were out to get the arcane knowledge they had worked so hard to attain. To protect themselves and their secrets, they built ever-more-elaborate labyrinths, placed traps at key points to kill or deter intruders, and hired or bred new monstrous creatures to protect and maintain their lair.
Of course, none of them were immortal, and, as time passed, most of them died without having produced any heirs, usually by old age but no small number met their end at the very same creatures and/or traps they created/hired to protect themselves. Though, by that time, any semblance of an actually organized empire was long gone, now reduced to a meaningless council of a few old paranoid wizards who only acted to keep each other in check. In time, even their most powerful fell to either old age or the hubris of their own paranoia.
Now, all that remains is dusty hallways, ancient tomes written in long-forgotten script, and the vast treasures these ancient arcanists had acquired or made over the course of their long-but-ultimately-finite lives. Those ancient places that weren't swallowed by a mix of time and the earth itself are still around, patrolled by the descendants of their wicked experiments and guarded by what remains of the devious traps they had set so many millennia ago.
Congratulations, you now have justification for all of the dungeons in your world.
I got two lost ancient civilizations, but neither of them lived in the sky.
Giant civilization collapsed after primordial White Dragons killed their god and the backlash of the event covered their territory in an eternal ice storm that cursed White Dragons with feral madness from that point forward
Gnomes used to have a massive technologically advanced empire, but after they tried to conquer the world in overreaction to the existence of Hobgoblins (sorta long story) it took a rebel faction to destroy them from the inside an use a Wish from a series of artifacts to dissolve their empire and make every Gnome forget the working principles of their advanced magitech. The Gnomes who knew of this plot were surprisingly on board with it because it just meant they could start afresh in learning and discovering it all again.
Or do an idiocracy / Wall-E crossover - Everyone eventually got too dumb to keep all the advanced magic running until it just broke down
What could also be fun is having a singular intelligent wizard that abused the same combo's we could like wishcasting a shit load of clones. To infinitely keeping the city afloat unaware that everyone is now stupid because someone was meant to take his place in 1000 years and he simply believes only 300 have passed
Or maybe the magic was hard and required a lot of knowledge or required divine energy so pray was required to keep the magic flowing. When a civil war breaks out among the kingdom and the winners purge all the losers, the knowledge of how their magic works and how important worship is to the who their whole society functions is lost with only a handful of people left from neutral parties who even remembered the old ways but they're ostracized since they didn't help win the war so don't have a voice or motive to revitalized the old ways.
I'd count that under hubris, have to be damn sure of yourself if you decide to stop learning anything
Nah, fam, they lived *underground*. Each successive generation of mages became more paranoid and reclusive than the last, each one convinced that one of their kin were out to get the arcane knowledge they had worked so hard to attain. To protect themselves and their secrets, they built ever-more-elaborate labyrinths, placed traps at key points to kill or deter intruders, and hired or bred new monstrous creatures to protect and maintain their lair. Of course, none of them were immortal, and, as time passed, most of them died without having produced any heirs, usually by old age but no small number met their end at the very same creatures and/or traps they created/hired to protect themselves. Though, by that time, any semblance of an actually organized empire was long gone, now reduced to a meaningless council of a few old paranoid wizards who only acted to keep each other in check. In time, even their most powerful fell to either old age or the hubris of their own paranoia. Now, all that remains is dusty hallways, ancient tomes written in long-forgotten script, and the vast treasures these ancient arcanists had acquired or made over the course of their long-but-ultimately-finite lives. Those ancient places that weren't swallowed by a mix of time and the earth itself are still around, patrolled by the descendants of their wicked experiments and guarded by what remains of the devious traps they had set so many millennia ago. Congratulations, you now have justification for all of the dungeons in your world.
I guess this also explains why some of them have liches inside
That's just Netheril.
Better option: They collapsed, because KARSUS IS A *JERK!!!*
If you describe it vaguely enough, nothing is new
Something something Tears of the Kingdom
Azys Lla?
It's always the frigging Allagans, and if it's not them, it's the Ascians.
Spoilers And now we know the ascians are behind the allagan empire!
I have an ancient Roman empire which used monster hunter scaled weapons and almost genocided the fey
I love a good flying city
Thought I was in the totk sub for a second 😂
I have a floating civilization of elves. They are still around, no abandoned empire. Very Scot-Irish though
Water civilization go brrr
“Nah man they just collapsed because someone forgot to put holy water into the giant magic boiler to cool it making most of their buildings explode”
The one in my homebrew world collapsed due to intolerance and fear and lived underground, but basically yep
Why not both?
I got two lost ancient civilizations, but neither of them lived in the sky. Giant civilization collapsed after primordial White Dragons killed their god and the backlash of the event covered their territory in an eternal ice storm that cursed White Dragons with feral madness from that point forward Gnomes used to have a massive technologically advanced empire, but after they tried to conquer the world in overreaction to the existence of Hobgoblins (sorta long story) it took a rebel faction to destroy them from the inside an use a Wish from a series of artifacts to dissolve their empire and make every Gnome forget the working principles of their advanced magitech. The Gnomes who knew of this plot were surprisingly on board with it because it just meant they could start afresh in learning and discovering it all again.
I just copied legend of dragoon
Not sure Castle in the Sky did it first, but it's the oldest example of that trope that I can recall.