What is the Ruin? A very brief intro

The Ruin are a concept I developed as a result of my consistent frustration with the writing of space bug hordes in Halo, Starcraft, 40k, Starship Troopers, etc.

The Ruin are an invasive sentient ecosystem that have consumed countless worlds and civilizations. They incorporate the biological, technological, and even cultural distinctiveness in themselves. Their infrastructure is alive and every member is a drone engineered to kill or maintain the war machine. They do this in the pursuit of perfection, seeking to consume the universe in order to become omnipotent. 

Unlike other space bugs that are depicted as faceless forces of nature, the Ruin have characters in order to make their perspective interesting to a human audience. What makes these characters fundamentally different from humans is that they aren’t motivated by petty selfish desires like greed, vengeance, love, liberty or whatever other trivialities motivate humans. They have no internal strife because they share a single will honed by millions of years of evolution and ancestral memory. They all seek perfection, so why fight each other when they are stronger together?

It’s other species that are at fault. The Ruin don’t consider themselves vicious invaders. Early in their history they attempted diplomatic overtures, but most of the time they were rebuffed because “join us and become horrific genetically engineered monsters” isn’t convincing most civilizations. So they stopped making diplomatic overtures. They blame other species for resisting, seeing it as no different than a small child whining about the pain of the needle for a routine vaccination.

The Ruin are familiar yet alien characters. They possess enough qualities to be recognizable, even sympathetic, like love for their family, philosophical debate, internal monologues, and logical motivations. They contrast this with “inhuman” qualities like extreme callousness, social darwinism, world peace, and selflessness.

I’m looking forward to what I can do with them.

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