Gunning for the most anticlimactic reason for Solution Nine at the moment. Just what a civilization designs when the aether is overwhelmingly electric. That there’s no Shards involved and it’s a lot younger than anyone, including my previous guess, has suggested. Not even an earlier Astral Era. Everything text or quasi glyph-based is red herrings. Going to set low - and thus reasonable- expectations. Because at this point a nonAscian/Ancient/Shard/Alien connection would be subverted expectations.