Revelation about the universe (SPOILERS)

[Enkidoh]

Part of the issue is the underlying theme that Meteion 'discovered' during their travels, that 'perfection' (as in, ascending to a higher plane of existence where the mind/soul no longer needs support of a physical body, and/or immortality) is actually fairly easy to attain. The problem is that in their haste to attain effective godhood, civilizations usually sacrificed something more tangeable in the process (as in, mental fortitude and wisdom to stave off boredom and apathy, and to comprehend the truths of the universe without slipping into despair and nihilism.). This was reflected in the Ea, a species who had attained perfection where their bodies became effectively just aether and immortal, and their minds hungered for knowledge at the expense of wisdom to make sense and effective use of that knowledge, hence they were ill-equipped to understand the 'revelation' about the universe's eventual demise by entropy.

Speaking with the Ea in Ultima Thule one gets the feeling they were effectively little more than vessels for information (much of it becoming eventually useless or trivial), information which they increasingly were unable to correlate or understand (look at how they treated 'eating', thinking it was simply an absorption of aether, having long forgotten what it was like to physically eat and could no longer understand the concept). No wonder that they were unable to comprehend the eventual heat death of the universe.

And it was not just the Ea who fell into that trap, the third civilization visited in the Dead Ends was also trapped in that way of thinking - having apparently sacrificed their actual planet to create a false Vauthry-like paradise where their every need was met and their lives fell into meaningless ennui, their lives stagnated to the point they became completely apathetic and the boredom soon drove them insane, only wishing for death, but apparently could not or would not euthanize themselves and so created a Primal-like false god to do it for them, probably just to "feel" something again.

The Elpis quests and FATEs actually hinted that even the Ancients were not immune to this and were starting to show signs of this way of thinking too (many of the researchers in Elpis lamented about a lack or stifling of creativity and that creation magics were reaching their limit about what they could do and so they were starting to despair over it - hence the WoL and their post-Sundering ways were considered a breath of fresh air (at least one researcher actually stated it in those exact words), injecting some much needed originality and inspiration into their work.

So one wonders if the Final Days hadn't occurred, that the Ancients too might have slipped eventually into a similar decadence and eventually, nihilism. It's a disturbing thought in any event.