[ Well that explains a lot. It wasn't unexpected, as intelligent civilizations always had periods of war and conquest, no matter where you went in the cosmos. It was rarer to find a civilization that hadn't engaged in any than it was the reverse. ]

It's fairly typical for any civilization to have self-destructive periods. There are quite a number of planets and star systems that I know to be the same, and many failed to recover from it. Take, for instance, Salsotto. It was a planet whose rotation eventually came to a halt due to a constant hail of celestial bodies at a particular angle. This caused the only habitable region on the planet to be the thin band separating day and night, which moved across the surface at a constant rate. The planet's inhabitants built floating cities that moved along with that habitable region, dubbed the terminator line. Unfortunately, the cities ended up in a clash that would finally decimate the remaining population on the planet. Now, it is a ruined planet devoid of life.

[ He wouldn't normally ramble this much, but it's in service of keeping himself awake. Hopefully Ratchet will find stories of his home universe entertaining. ]