What are the Ancients? | Rain World Explained

if it seems the ancients may have practiced some form of foot binding and the iterators have nub feet, isn't it possible the ancients made the physical form of the iterators according to their culture's beauty standards, and they just found small feet attractive?

I love how most of the ancients in the tapestries have cloth wrapped around their feet or some kind of sandal and there's that one ancient who is just wearing sneakers.

In my personal head-cannon, the Ancients were the ancestors of scavengers, mostly because of the masks, but also because they are called 'scavengers'. they were likely the poor in the ancient society and couldn't afford to get housing above the clouds, and thus evolved after the rains came to be better climbers, with more ape-like body structures and they lost most of their technology, save for how to make explosives and structure shelters.

"Behold, the most solid evidence we have as to what the ancients looked like. Five pebble's r34 stash." This line actually killed me

If I've learnt anything from the ancients, it's that if humans are ever going extinct, the only evidence of our appearance we should leave behind must be exclusively porn.

It's kinda cool how the acients are like an anti humanity, while humanity IRL are obsessed with life and being able to live it as long as possible the ancients are obsessed with the opposite Why? Because the ancients universes rules are flipped What's the one thing that seems the most inevitable for all humans?? Dieing What's the one thing that seems the most inevitable for all ancients?? Eternal life It's only natural for us, the species that have rebeled the most against natural order by the grace of our inherent inventivness to want to push against this boundary till it cracks and we are successful Then perhaps we'd finally be satisfied

On the topic of how big they were: We can see various ladders throughout the game, and although they give a rather wide error of margin, we can assume from human ladders that they were about 6 rung segments high. Which means yes, they DID like building tiny robots.

Here a fun little idea I had while reading the lore from the dark violet pearl: I call it great cycle theory. Basically I think the things that get dissolved by void-fluid re appear in the sky as what the pearl calls dust and rain down, slowly burying everything. This leads to great cycles of the dust forming life, that life developing into an advanced species, that species discovering void fluid and ascending, leaving structures behind that then get dissolved by the void fluid, only for it all to become the new dust that will rain down and start a new great cycle. This theory is somewhat supported by the dialogue of two sprouts fifteen brackets, who claims that the ancients had to drill through the remains of an older society that presumably hasn’t been dissolved jet to reach the void fluid.

imagine if in a really far away itterator theres still an ancient alive because for some reason it doesnt want to die

Technically echos aren't meatball shaped, They just seem to be curled up in a ball with what i think are crossed legs. Kinda hard to notice since most of the time they're in an almost complete front view but from a side view it's noticeable. Not sure why they're armless tho. dunno if that's really important info but i wanted to mention it.

one thing I noticed is how the echoes tendrils are similar to the void worms you find in the ending of the game. could that be a half baked transformation?

13:37 Everyone seem to not fully know how big the ancients were but I think I might have found some proof of how big they were. In the dark subterranean we can see train carts along a train track. These carts have doors or what I think looks like doors to store items in them. These trains are about 6 or 7 times the height of the Slugcat and judging from how real life train carts are relative to humans, I'd guess the ancients were about the same size as Real life humans or at most 3 meters tall. I mean, if they made trains, it'd make sense to build them about 3 times the height of themselves to be able to store a good amount of stuff in there whilst still being able to operate it effectively.

I've always interpreted the third karma symbol as representing friendship and the like; the specific shape appears in achievements like The Friend, Chieftain or A New Friend (aka meeting moon without eating a neuron). Honestly ancient language could be a video on its own.

Actually I agree with the theory that the Echoes resemble a half-melted ancient, and the glittery parts are their jewelry, the elongated head-like tentacle could be due to the mask's shape, as they seem to often bear a long beak-like snout.

You know, the ancients supposedly "disappeared," and while yes, a lot of them probably drank void fluid, this is a time loop where one can only advance so far. The iterators don't perceive the time loop, so if they existed for long enough, they might have just existed past the point where the ancients were able to go in the time loop. If the slugcat was born after this event, considering the slugcat can only go so far backwards, if there were still ancients, you would never see them. It is entirely possible that some ancients are still alive, just back in time a bit.

LORE: bro rain world lore be wack LORE: we are led to believe that there is an infinite source of matter taking the form of... dust... i guess idk lol, it is said that when you leave a rock and come back after a long time it has dust and that the reason everything isnt covered in dust is because the void fluid slowly dissolves the world LORE: how do time loops work? is everyone in their own pocket dimension, if red slugcat dies and then respawns but blue slugcat lives what happens to blue slugcat does he keep living in his own reality while red wakes up in a new one? does red wake up in blues future? how does this work cause all we see is the perspective of one slugcat thats barely in contact with sentient beings LORE: why your videos so good LORE: its so weird how the ancients are living in a world that has magical rules in order to metaphorically represent Buddhist stuff but they also just sort of live normal lives like normal people even though their world is govereded by space magic with time loops and infinite dust and void fluid and half dead ghost people and they spent their time eating gravel and trying to ward off the catgirls they created LORE: ohgodwhy does anything LORE: this comment explains why i wish i could go take a void fluid bath because we have it worse then the ancients cause all they had to do was live and figure out how to die while we have to like explain stuff and we dont even have cat girls LORE: AND HOW THE HELL DID THEIR SOCEITY EVEN WORK HOW BIG ARE SLUGCATS WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO NAVIGATE THIER BUILDINGS UNLESS YOUR A GREASE SWEATING SLUG LORE: christmas hat lore was not included in video 9/10 LORE: ps good luck with the therapy after the hours you had to spend staring at ancient feet

the ancients seemed to be aware of their impact on the planet as they wore what looks like ornate breathing masks in the tapestries (see 11:45) you can see the breathing pipes below the 5 symbol also something worth mentioning is that the eyes are scratched out on all the tapestries the echoes probably look the way they do because they met with the voidworms and their gold masks fused with their skin as it dissolved (idk just a theory)

Dude, you gotta be the most underrated streamer/content creator on this site

for the love of GOD daszombes PLEASE tell me if you draw a mouth or a snout on slug cat because i am having a general life crisis over this cool video btw

I don't know about everyone else but the Echoes most remind me of the void worms. The long spindly arms, all they're missing is the full body shape and colour. Perhaps they're black and gold because of the Void Fluid being "stuck" in their system due to not fully ascending?