Line #10 Main/PrecursorKillers


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5	->''"Whatever built the gates and the protomolecule and all these ruins we're living in? They were wiped out. And the thing that wiped them out just took a shot at you."''
6	-->-- '''James Holden''', ''Literature/PersepolisRising''
7
8	Precursor Killers are the reason why the {{Precursors}} aren't around anymore. Typically they are a much more powerful (and evil) group and/or [[GenocideFromTheInside a rogue member or faction of the precursors]] that managed to wipe out the precursors despite their [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien advanced]] [[ClarkesThirdLaw technology/magic]]. Either it is because the Killers' own technology/magic was more advanced than the precursors, or they were just so numerous that the precursors couldn't keep them at bay forever. If the Precursor Killers are still around, expect them to be a ''[[TheDreaded big deal]]'' and the threat of another attack to be a looming threat. After all, if a more technologically advanced people couldn't beat these guys, what can ''we'' do?
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10	Sometimes the Precursors were able to FlingALightIntoTheFuture in the form of some sort of LostSuperweapon that they weren't able to finish in time to stop their enemy. Often the killers are a SealedEvilInACan that was somehow stopped by the last actions of their enemies. Compare AbusivePrecursors, TurnedAgainstTheirMasters, and TheOldGods.
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12	----
13	!!Examples:
14	[[foldercontrol]]
15	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
16	* The Ancients who built many of the underground structures in ''Manga/{{Helck}}'' are revealed to have been wiped out by [[spoiler:The Will of the World, a [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace hyperspace virus]] turned SentientCosmicForce. And there are still forces around that work for it.]]
17	* The Pillar Men of ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureBattleTendency'' were a race of powerful, intelligent, vampiric superbeings. When two of their number, [[BigBad Kars]] and [[CoDragons Esidisi]], invented the Stone Mask to give themselves powers and unlock their race's full potential, the rest of the Pillar Men perceived them as a threat and turned on them. This led to Kars and Esidisi slaughtering the rest of their race, including their own parents.
18	* The [[spoiler: Anti Spiral]] of ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann''. For untold eons they have [[spoiler: wiped out societies that use spiral energy. Mankind and the Spiral Empire they were once a part of were reduced to hiding underground and being hunted by beastmen in the aftermath of their defeat, their descendants having no memory of their past glory.]]
19	[[/folder]]
20
21	[[folder:Fan Works]]
22	* ''Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon'': [[Characters/AbraxasHrodvitnon Ghidorah]] is one. The alien AbusivePrecursors who [[spoiler:turned Ichi, Ni and San into Ghidorah]] eons ago were among Ghidorah's first ever victims.
23	* In ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached'', the four are told that the invading Tayhil wiped out most Baravadans hundreds of years ago, an event that gave rise to the current skahs/tirin anarchistic civilization.
24	** In a twist on the theme, the last known Tayhil were killed only about ten years ago, and the skahs want them back because they're going crazy with boredom now that they have nothing to fight.
25	* In the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'', it's revealed that [[spoiler:Lord Tirek]] is the reason the [[{{Precursors}} Centaurs]] aren't around anymore.
26	** Similarly in ''Fanfic/TheConversionBureauTheOtherSideOfTheSpectrum'', the same is responsible for the destruction of [[spoiler:the Alicorn civilization predating the time of the Princesses and Discord]].
27	* In ''Fanfic/TheBridge'', Terra's ancient civilizations prospered...until [[spoiler:[[BigBad Bagan]]]] became the [[GodOfEvil God of Extinction]] and caused a mass extinction event. While he was defeated and [[SealedEvilInACan sealed away]], the damage was done. They sacrificed most of their remaining mana to create [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture the Guardian Beasts to defeat]] [[spoiler:Bagan]] when he eventually escaped. The damage done to the biosphere by the draining of the last of Earth's mana led Battra to finish what [[spoiler: Bagan]] started.
28	[[/folder]]
29
30	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
31	* ''Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen'' has The Fallen as one of the first Transformers, the Primes. He killed his brothers in a mad quest for power, but they managed to hide the artifact he was looking for and seal The Fallen away for a time as they all died. As it turns out, one Prime escaped his view: Optimus.
32	* In ''Film/GodzillaAndMothraTheBattleForEarth'', Battra wiped out the Cosmos civilization that existed on Earth in ancient times for creating a weather manipulation machine and [[GaiasVengeance enraging the Earth]].
33	* It's implied the titular alien in ''Film/{{Alien}}'' is this as the dead Engineer pilot is found with his [[ChestBurster chest burst open]] in a ship full of their eggs. ''Film/AlienCovenant'' showed that the android David used it and similar bioweapons to wipe them out fairly recently.
34	[[/folder]]
35
36	[[folder:Literature]]
37	* One of the major plot twists of ''Literature/TheBeginningAfterTheEnd'' revolves around the Djinn, the aether-controlling race that created the Relictombs and left behind many ruins across both Dicathen and Alacrya. The reason they are no longer around in the present? It turns out that a long time ago, [[spoiler:the [[GodIsEvil Indrath]] [[LightIsNotGood Clan]] committed genocide on them out of petty jealousy for their ability to control the aether, and their attempts to cover up their crimes lead to the BigBad's StartOfDarkness as his fascination with the ruins the Djinn left behind lead to him uncovering the truth]].
38	* The entire tragic backstory of the elves in the ''{{Literature/Deverry}}'' series is originally based on a bunch of dimensionally travelling gauls entering a different world and setting off a chain of displacements the end results which brought down the elven civilization.
39	* In the ''Literature/PriscillaHutchins'' series of Creator/JackMcDevitt's novels, every major nonhuman society has disappeared but for a smattering of artifacts left around the galaxy. It turns out that regular waves of comet-like "Omega Clouds" from the galactic core spread out to find and impact with any collections of large, regular, non-naturally-occurring shapes they stumble across -- in other words, cities -- thereby ending any civilization they encounter.
40	** Two characters separately reach the same conclusion about the Omega Clouds' possible purpose, once it's discovered the clouds contain a device that can detonate them in a supernova-esque explosion. [[spoiler: They're '''art'''. And the galaxy is the canvas for a series of coordinate explosions that will all be visible simultaneously from someone looking down on the Milky Way due to the speed of light. Attacking alien civilizations is a bug, not a feature.]]
41	* In Frederik Pohl's ''Literature/HeecheeSaga'' series, [[spoiler:the Heechee had [[SealedGoodInACan hidden themselves away within Black Holes]] to avoid the attention of the Kugel (better known as [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "The Foe" or "The Assassins"]]), a race of {{energy being}}s that regularly wiped out emerging species. They eventually emerge because humanity is on the verge of getting the Assassins' attention.]]
42	* The Inhibitors of ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' were responsible for a ''lot'' of dead aliens. They specifically target any species that develops interstellar travel. However, the Inhibitors apparently [[spoiler: weren't designed for this, as its consciousness remarks that it has become far more brutal than needed over the last few million years, implying that it was mostly designed for ''containment'' rather than ''destruction'', as they were built to mitigate the damage of the approaching Milky Way - Andromeda collision. Their justification for genocide is that nobody can be allowed to interfere with the vital and delicate work they’ll be doing when it happens.]]
43	* It's sort of a toss-up who you'd call the precursor and the precursor killer in Creator/LarryNiven's "Literature/KnownSpace" series. The Slavers (aka the Thrint) were a species of beings capable of psychically forcing any other life form to do exactly what they wanted. They weren't total idiots, but neither were they terribly clever, since once they made contact with other species, they had those other species do the thinking ''for'' them. The tnunctipun were the master technologists, but most of the artifacts from the Thrint era of the galaxy belonged to the Thrint rather than their tnunctipun slaves. When the inevitable war broke out, the Slavers' final act was to use a psychic amplifier to project the command "DIE!" to everything in the galaxy, [[TakingYouWithMe killing everything sentient - including themselves]]. So even though the Slavers are often billed as the precursors, they are themselves technically the ones who pulled the trigger.
44	* The eponymous Literature/{{Berserker}}s obliterated both sides of the war they were created to end and continued to scour the galaxy of life.
45	* ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' has two examples, although they're not 100% true to this trope, since the actual Precursor races are still around, while their killers aren't (yet). The Forerunners are a race of non-sentient PlanetEaters made up of proto-matter ([[spoiler:in fact, they're biological machines created by an EnergyBeing whose "programming" got messed up by a nova]]) who are responsible for the complete destruction of the [[FishPeople Delphons]] (the only Precursor race to completely die out) 3 million years ago, forcing the [[TheInsectoids Insects]] and the [[StarfishAliens Logrians]] to flee their space (inadvertently causing their enslavement by the [[HumanAliens Harammins]]). The much more ancient Evolgs and Emulotti were attacked by an expansionist race called the Shvergs billions of years ago. The Evolgs, being {{Energy Being}}s, helped the [[HumanAliens Human Alien]] Emulotti AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, while their worlds were bombarded from orbit. The latest novels (going by the in-universe chronology) have the Evolgs, the restored Emulotti, the freed Logrians, and some of the Insects joining the human [[TheFederation Confederacy of Suns]] as equal members.
46	* ''Literature/TheExpanse'' features an alien civilization (the "Ringbuilders") who, among other things, wielded seemingly physics-breaking technology, could rewrite lifeforms to fulfill their whims, and networked the Milky Way galaxy with wormhole gates - and who were taken out by an even more mysterious and advanced force or entity billions of years ago. The weapon that they use seems to shut off cognitive abilities and also disables the protomolecule that the Ringbuilders use for construction and in their technology, and the aftereffect of the weapon used looks like a bright orb of light with a core of pure darkness.
47	** As of ''Tiamat's Wrath'', [[spoiler:the precursor killers are having a go at humanity, though they're not (yet) succeeding. One character suspects the precursor killers (the "Goths", after the ones that killed the UsefulNotes/RomanEmpire) still think the Ringbuilders have returned and are attacking using the weapons they used last time (which shuts off people's brains in entire solar systems at a time), but due to human and the Ringbuilders' brains being different it doesn't affect humans permanently. It's implied they're adapting, however, as subsequent attacks render humans unconscious for longer and a character who has been treated with Protomolecule was rendered permanently brain-damaged by a single attack.]]
48	** ''Leviathan Falls'' finally reveals [[spoiler:why they killed the Ringbuilders. The Slow Zone is a bubble in their universe which is then able to extract energy from their universe, angering them. They're attempting to collapse the Slow Zone and wipe out the cause, which is the Protomolecule and its users. They do that by subtly altering the laws of physics within an area temporarily, such as slightly accelerating light speed, and finally meet some success by making ionic bonds slightly "stickier", causing an entire system to die. However, we're as incomprehensible to them as they are to us so they don't realise they succeeded, resulting in them not deploying this attack across human inhabited systems. Because the Ringbuilders had a hivemind based on using light to communicate, they were much more vulnerable to these attacks.]]
49	* Done to a lesser extent in Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence. The precursors are the eponymous Xeelee, who are very much still around for most of the stories, yet they are in a losing war with the Photino Birds, and are eventually forced to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere abandon the universe]].
50	* In the ''Literature/GentlemanBastard'' series, the mere hint of this is terrifying enough that the [[MagicalSociety Bondsmages]], who are otherwise casual {{Super Supremacist}}s, take great pains to keep a low profile and avoid large-scale works of magic. The Eldren precursors got flashy, created magnificent structures of [[MadeOfIndestructium utterly indestructible]] Elderglass... and vanished without a trace, leaving only the suggestion that they caught the attention of something they shouldn't have.
51	[[/folder]]
52
53	[[folder:Live Action TV]]
54	* ''Series/ChouseishinGransazer'': What happened to the AdvancedAncientHumans the Gransazers are descended from? The [[AliensAreBastards Cosmic Alliance Uofu Manafu]] bombarded their civilization. [[spoiler:Actually it was the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Bosquito]] who wiped them all out. The Uofu Manafu only came to Earth to [[WellIntentionedExtremist destroy it]].]]
55	* In the {{Franchise/Whoniverse}}, though we have only scant details, the Time Lords have destroyed an EldritchAbomination known as the Fendhal ("Image of the Fendahl") the Great Vampires ("State of Decay"), the Old Ones and the Racnoss ("The Runaway Bride"). Post-2005 ''Series/DoctorWho'' regards the Time Lords themselves as something like Precursors who died out in the Last Great War against the Daleks, although really the Doctor destroyed them all [[spoiler:or so he thought for a long time]]. Thanks to JokerImmunity, the Daleks survived.
56	* The Ori of ''Series/StargateSG1'' were revealed to have actually been the reason the Ancients traveled to the Milky Way Galaxy in the first place and planted the seeds of our own evolution. The Ancients were then driven out of ''our'' galaxy by a seriously nasty plague eons later, before ultimately succumbing to the Wraith in [[Series/StargateAtlantis the Pegasus Galaxy.]] SG-1 speculates the Ori may have engineered that plague as well, though it's never definitviely answered.
57	* It seems that most ancient empires in ''Franchise/StarTrek'' were destroyed by an unidentified allegiance of LaResistance. The ancient Iconian empire in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' was destroyed this way. In a reversal in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', the ancient empire of the Vaadwaur were tyrants and they sealed themselves when their enemies attacked.
58	** In the Voyager episode ''Prototype'', two warring races (known collectively as the Builders) were wiped out by their own obsessive robot creations when they tried to end the war that they originally built the robots to fight for them. The robots couldn't allow that.
59	** Klingon Lore holds that they slew their gods because they were more trouble then they were worth. At a separate time (well after the origin-myth god killing, as the founder of modern Klingon spirituality, Kahless, had already passed by this point), the Klingons were invaded by the Hur'q, which is entirely extinct and unknown to the modern Galaxy because they were the Precursors foolish enough to invade a civilization that believed it had killed gods in the past. The invasion is much more historical fact, as it's the reason why Klingons got the technology to become a major Galactic power in the first place.
60	** ''Series/StarTrekPicard'' has the Higher Synthetics, an advanced robotic federation that wipes out all sentient life in galaxies where it detects robots being used as slaves. They're implied to have wiped out all spacefaring races in out galaxy hundreds of thousands of years ago.
61	[[/folder]]
62
63	[[folder:Mythology/Religion]]
64	* Zeus and the other Gods of [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greek Mythology]] waged war against the Titans and won, although they didn't kill them (You see two every time you look up at the sky)
65	* Several gods in Near-Eastern religions (and one {{God}} in particular) acted as this with a GreatFlood, destroying the world that came before and allowing only one family of humans to survive.
66	* The Maya believed that their Gods created three worlds before this one, but were unsatisfied with the creatures therein and wiped the slate clean.
67	[[/folder]]
68
69	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
70	* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', the world was terraformed and populated with crafted lifeforms by the Old Ones, who arrived using a PortalNetwork constructed at the planet's poles. The Old Ones would later disappear during an event called the Great Catastrophe, when these massive portals ruptured and [[EldritchAbomination the Gods of Chaos]] invaded the world through the breach, which remains to this day.
71	** Nehekhara, the earliest human civilization, stretched from the deserts of modern Araby all the way up to the lands of the modern Empire in the north. It was eventually destroyed by Nagash, the first {{necromancer}} and one of the setting's most prominent {{Predecessor Villain}}s. The [[{{Mummy}} Tomb Kings]] came about when Nagash tried (and failed) to raise and control the entirety of Nehekhara's deceased populace shortly after finishing them off.
72	* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', the Necrons (a race of undying skeletal androids) are the reason the Old Ones aren't around anymore, and the only reason the Necrons didn't end up ruling the galaxy was that they went to war against and defeated a ''second'' set of Precursors (the malevolent C'Tan this time, who had created the Necrons as weapons against the Old Ones) right afterward, and were too exhausted from the conflicts that they went into hibernation for millions of years.
73	** The Necrons were followed by the Eldar, who ruled the galaxy virtually unopposed for millennia. They were done in when their collective hedonism spawned [[GodOfEvil Slaanesh, the Chaos God of Pleasure and Excess]], who killed almost their entire pantheon, destroyed their empire, and left the remains a shattered remnant that is slowly going extinct.
74	* The job description of the TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}. There are ''some'' surviving Primordials, but that's because they surrendered when they realized how badly dead Primordials broke ''reality itself'', creating an entire world as a shadowy and dead mirror of Creation and damaging the formerly foolproof reincarnation system.
75	* In the TabletopGame/{{Alternity}} TabletopGame/StarDrive setting, the Stoneburners and Glassmakers were a faction of, respectively evil and good, precursors. The Stoneburners wiped out the Glassmakers in a massive war, but were themselves mostly killed off by the war. At which point, the I'krl, a servant race of the Stoneburners, took ''them'' out and became the new BigBad of the setting.
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77	[[/folder]]
78
79	[[folder:Video Games]]
80	* [[EldritchAbomination The Reapers]] of ''Franchise/MassEffect'' [[spoiler: and their [[TheManBehindTheMan master]], the Catalyst]] made this their ''profession''. They were Precursors to all the other Precursor races, [[AbusivePrecursors for the sole purpose of causing the genocide of them once they were advanced enough.]] Since they return during the games and can be killed, [[PlayerCharacter Shepard]] [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu qualifies as a Precursor Killer him/herself.]]
81	** The Leviathan DLC [[spoiler: reveals the original Precursors, the Leviathans, who created the Catalyst in the first place and had most of their species converted into the first Reaper as the price]].
82	* The [[spoiler: Brethren Moons]] of ''VideoGame/DeadSpace3'' are implied to be the reason why [[AbsentAliens space is]] [[TitleDrop dead]].
83	* The Dark Makers of ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxter'' are a dark eco corrupted faction of Precursors who mostly wiped out their own race far before the events of the series. The survivors fled into a subterranean station near the core of the planet to escape them.
84	* The player character gets to meet the wizard who nearly destroyed (accidentally) the Netherese Empire in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights: Shadows of Undrentide''. The guy who destroyed the rival Illefarn Empire is the main adversary in ''Neverwinter Nights II''. [[spoiler: The latter turns out to be largely self-inflicted; he basically just fought back against their increasingly grandiose attempts to assassinate him when they feared he would turn against them (which he never did). They essentially beat themselves to death against their own guardian.]]
85	* The Flood of ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' are a race of parasitic alien spores that latch onto any sentient life with sufficient biomass, becoming more intelligent as they grow. The Forerunners were forced to use the Halos, a series of [[DoomsdayDevice doomsday weapons]], to wipe the galaxy clean of anything the Flood could infect, including themselves.
86	** It turns out that the Forerunners had previously [[spoiler: all but wiped out their own Precursors as well]]. [[spoiler: And it turns out that the Flood is what results when said Precursors turn themselves into dust and ComeBackWrong, making ''Halo'' a rare recursive version of this trope.]]
87	* ''VideoGame/StarControl'':
88	** ''Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters'' has the Sentient Milieu being brought down by the Dnyarri, then the Dnyarri being brought down by their Ur-Quan slaves (and then one branch of the Ur-Quan exterminated at least some of the surviving Milieu species). The reason for the actual, Capital-P Precursors in the universe disappearing remains unknown, despite what [[FanonDiscontinuity some people claim]] happened in ''Star Control III''. For extra twist points, the Sentient Milieu's enslavement began when an Ur-Quan explorer stumbled upon the Dnyarri's homeworld.
89	** ''Star Control Origins'' has the [[BigBad Scryve themselves]], who brought down the Faction of Eight thousands of years ago. Interestingly, the Scryve were actually ''good'' when they did this: the Faction of Eight was an incredibly brutal and genocidal empire, and the Scryve didn't become evil themselves until much later.
90	** ''Origins'' also has ''[[NothingIsScarier something]]'' that destroyed [[ArtificialIntelligence Jeff's]] creators, billions of years ago. Jeff hints that whatever that thing is, it's the same thing, or at least related to, whatever the great offscreen threat is that the Scryve are fighting and the InvadingRefugees are fleeing from.
91	* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'':
92	** The Xel'Naga create universes as a means [[BizarreAlienReproduction to perpetuate themselves]], intending to leave evolution to do its thing after this initial kickstart and eventually create a species with PsychicPowers and a species of [[HollywoodEvolution biological adaptability]] which would then [[FusionDance join]] to become the new Xel'Naga. One of their number, Amon, threw a monkey wrench in their plans, gathering likeminded Xel'Naga with him, they actively waged a CivilWar amongst their kind, a war that wasn't going well for him and his allies, so they began meddling with two species on their way to fitting the bill in defiance of the Xel'Naga's AlienNonInterferenceClause. In particular for this trope, he turned the [[HollywoodEvolution Zerg]] into a {{Hive Mind}}ed HordeOfAlienLocusts, creating [[HiveQueen The Overmind]] to control them. The Zerg then promptly became Precursor Killers as he sicced them on his kind alongside his followers.
93	** The only Xel'naga left by the time of the games are [[spoiler: Amon, his servant Duran/Narud, and their prisoner Ouros]]. The former two working through proxies to continue their goals of {{Omnicidal Mania\|c}}. All three [[spoiler: are dead by the hands of the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts three]] [[HumansAreWarriors playable]] [[HigherTechSpecies species]] in the end]] thanks in part to [[spoiler: a ThanatosGambit by the Overmind itself, and in part because of Ouros' [[GodzillaThreshold breaking]] the AlienNonInterferenceClause himself to guide them]].
94	* The Terminus Beasts from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' were horrifying beings borne out of the negative emotions of the Ancients given form, which threatened to wipe out all life untill the Ancients did a collective HeroicSacrifice. However, the Terminus Beasts weren't the ''cause'', merely the tool used by the real precursor destroyers: [[spoiler:the Meteia, a race of familiars created by the Ancient Hermes to explore the cosmos and derive from it the meaning of life. After finding countless dead worlds and being corrupted by the despair of dying alien species, the Meteia reached the conclusion that non-existance was preferable to existance, and began the process to scour ''the entire universe'' of life using their power over the emotional-driven energy called Dynamis.]]
95	* The Shivans wiped out the Ancients in the ''VideoGame/FreeSpace'' backstory, and it's strongly implied that they've done the same to any other civilisation that spread too far throughout the galaxy and/or through Subspace.
96	* ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'':
97	** The Space Pirates are to blame for wiping out most of the remaining Chozo outside [=SR388=]. In the case of the ones who lived in Tallon IV, what the Space Pirates didn't get, Phazon did.
98	** The Chozo of planet [=SR388=], the Thoha tribe, were revealed in ''VideoGame/MetroidSamusReturns'' and ''VideoGame/MetroidDread'' to have been murdered by [[spoiler:another faction of Chozo, the Mawkin tribe, in an effort to claim the planet's Metroids (Thoha and Mawkin initially worked together to contain them, but the Thoha wanted to exterminate them, and the Mawkin wanted to weaponize them). The Mawkin in turn were consumed by the [[TheAssimilator X Parasites]] some time before the events of ''Dread'', with Samus herself finishing off their sole survivor and leader, Raven Beak.]]
99	** Gorea wiped out the Alimbics of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeHunters.''
100	* In the ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' series, it's revealed that the alien Kreegan (which the galaxy's less advanced races mistake for demons) were the ancient enemies of the Ancients (the term used for the most universally applicable Precursors in the setting), and at the very least destroyed the Ancients' domain across an entire galactic arm. ''VIII'' indicated that the Ancients still ''exist'' somewhere, but have been driven to such desperation that they are resorting to scorched earth policies on entire planets (and the one implementing it is a repurposed android over a thousand years old, not an actual Ancient).
101	* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'':
102	** The ancient deity Chaos was responsible for wiping out most of Knuckles Clan after being enraged by [[AbusivePrecursors them]], leading to the echidna race being extinct in the present day.
103	** It was also heavily implied that the fall of the Third Great Civilization was caused by [[KillerRobot Gizoid]].
104	** ''VideoGame/SonicFrontiers'' has Sonic explore the ruins of The Ancients and experience their digitally stored memories of ''something'' that came from the sky one day and wiped them out. [[spoiler:Said something was the voice guiding him, revealign itself to be a titanic energy being known as The End.]]
105	* ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI Assassin's Creed]]'' has an antagonist mentioning his belief that the "artifacts" are left over from "those who came before," but ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII''[='=]s ending reveals that [[spoiler:primitive humanity's sheer numbers were enough to overwhelm the precursor race]]. However, it's strongly implied that [[spoiler:the playable characters' bloodline is genetically descended from [[HalfHumanHybrid a human-Precursor hybrid]], and the Facebook game ''Project Legacy'' briefly implies that Giovanni Borgia is part of a hybrid line possibly going as far back as Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger. Yeah, ''[[EtTuBrute that one]]'']].
106	** It turns out that [[spoiler:a solar flare]] was the true Precursor Killer. [[spoiler:The surviving precursors were too few to repopulate their race, but they worked together with their former slaves/enemies to rebuild the world and took steps to ensure that it would survive the next inevitable solar flare. The existence of hybrids and humanity remembering the precursors as deities show that the precursors and humanity made peace with each other before the former died out.]]
107	* In ''VideoGame/BlueDragon'', [[spoiler:Nene's "pet" Deathroy aka [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Destroy]]]] was the biomechanical living weapon that wiped out the Ancients' civilization.
108	* An unusual SuicideByCop case-- in ''VideoGame/SolatoroboRedTheHunter'' (and the greater ''VideoGame/LittleTailBronx'' universe by proxy), it's revealed that [[spoiler:the Juno are this to [[EarthAllAlong humanity]]. As the Titano-Machina war was destroying the planet's biosphere, the Juno (via Yurlungur) suggested the "Reset" command to a group of researchers to give the planet a chance to recover without humanity or the Titano-Machina. The researchers accepted this proposal, and Juno erased humanity while terraforming the planet.]]
109	* In ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion'', the Orions and Antarans are the two main Precursors who fought a huge war well before the first game. The Orions won by trapping the Antarans in a bubble dimension, but the resulting disruption to FTL travel resulted in them becoming their own PrecursorKillers. The second game reveals that the Antarans survived and return to conquer the galaxy, but by the start of the third game they've nearly been wiped out by one of their own experiments - a sentient, parasitic biological weapon that would presumably have become a Precursor killer had the series continued. As it is, the most likely Precursor killer is the player, although this is not strictly necessary to win the game.
110	* In the backstory for ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'', the Suul'ka did this to the old Morrigi Empire and reduced them to TheRemnant before the Liir did the same to them. As of the sequel both these factions are back, in a heavily reduced form.
111	* The Rains of Destruction in ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'', which destroyed all the old Precursor civilizations. [[spoiler:It is eventually revealed to have been the work of the Silvite Gigas, Zelos.]]
112	* In ''Videogame/WorldOfWarcraft'', it is eventually revealed that [[spoiler:the reason the Titans haven't tried to help stop the Legion is because they already tried to stop Sargeras -- and ''lost''. The only Titans left are the recovering Sargeras himself and the unborn Titan within Azeroth.]]
113	* [[AliensAreBastards The Calamity, Jenova]], in ''Videogame/FinalFantasyVII'' was responsible for the extinction of [[{{Precursors}} the Cetra]], an ancient race that controlled the Planet long before humans ever did. Fast forward a few thousand years to the present, and only one person with Cetra blood is still alive. [[spoiler: And she's [[KilledOffForReal brutally murdered]] not halfway into your quest. By an incarnation of Jenova under the control of her "son" no less]].
114	* In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow'', the Agarthians were a super-advanced civilization that was destroyed by the eponymous villains, or more specifically Cornell, the Dark Lord of the Lycans, in a conflict known as [[TheGreatOffscreenWar the Necromantic Wars]]. Despite the Agarthians having powerful magic and titanic golems at their disposal, the werewolves' [[ZergRush sheer numbers]] were enough to overwhelm their enemies and wipe them away from existence.
115	* In ''Videogame/{{Warframe}}'', the [[PlayerCharacter Tenno]] were mighty SuperSoldier [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Space Ninja Wizards]] created by the Orokin to fight the Sentients, a species of adaptive self-aware machines that were at war with the Orokin. However, the Orokin were [[AbusivePrecursors horrifically evil monsters]] who abused and tortured and slaughtered anyone beneath them at will. When the Sentients were defeated, the Orokin gathered the Tenno for a great ceremony honoring them... at which point the Tenno slaughtered the Orokin leadership in seconds in vengeance and justice for their crimes, shattering their empire overnight. You play as one of them, just awakened from a multi-century nap to find the remnants of the Orokin Empire still ravaging the Solar System.
116	* Most iterations of the ''Franchise/{{Doom}}'' franchise's backstory have a Martian race being wiped out by the demons that are now fighting humanity. ''VideoGame/{{Doom 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' both also suggest that these Martians became the [[AncientAstronauts ancestors of modern humanity]], making them our literal precursors.
117	* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' has scores of examples in its background story. In fact, most of the game's lore is built around this trope one way or another, with the most notable example being the five[[note]]seven with DLC[[/note]] Precursor event chains your science ships can come across (although only one of them randomly spawns in any unmodded campaign). Some of these ancient civilizations collapsed under their own weight, others started wars that turned against them until they were wiped out by rival civilizations that are also long gone when the game starts. With the ''Ancient Relics'' DLC installed, numerous archaeological dig sites shed light on the fate of even more precursor empires that met violent ends. Last but not least, up to five Fallen Empires can be spawned during campaign setup. These [[VestigialEmpire once-great empires]] have existed for eons and are now mere shadows of their former glory, yet are still vastly superior to any newcomer on the galactic stage when the game begins. However, your own empire's technological and military might can eventually put you on equal footing with the Fallen, and depending on how your diplomatic relations with them develop, ''you'' might well turn into the galaxy's most recent Precursor Killer (although the species itself will usually survive as part of your empire unless you're of the xenocidal sort).
118	* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' has [[spoiler:the Faro Plague, a horde of machines consisting of Corruptors, Deathbringers, and Metal Devils made by [[AbusivePrecursors Ted Faro]] as self-replicating "[[InsistentTerminology peacekeeping]]" robots that ''[[EatingMachine ate the planet to death]]'' in an attempt to keep their bioreactors running through any means necessary, even by way of [[ImAHumanitarian using human carrion]]. It was only due to the efforts of Project: Zero Dawn that there's still life on the planet, and even then it's because it started from scratch rather than preserving any life prior to the Plague. And that's not getting into the fact that Faro erased the entire record of human knowledge [[ItsAllAboutMe just so no one can learn he was the one who doomed the world in the first place]].]]
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120
121	[[folder:Web Comics]]
122	* The Pa'anuri from ''WebComic/SchlockMercenary'' are implied to have wiped out at least [[RecursivePrecursors one earlier cycle of civilizations]] in the Milky Way, most likely either [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters the one that created them]] or the one that immediately followed. In the present cycle [[OmnicidalManiac they almost succeed again]], and in a (now) alternative timeline without the 'almost'. In the ''vast'' majority of cases, however, the Milky Way's {{Precursor\|s}} civilizations have gone extinct (or permanently into exile) [[EternalRecurrence due to other now-extinct Precursors civilizations going to war with them]].
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124
125	[[folder:Web Original]]
126	* In ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' the Foreclaimers are the ancestors of modern elves and once controlled a powerful and advanced empire until it was destroyed in a single night. The cause was Xanu, an artificial god created by the Foreclaimers which had suffered constant and excruciating torture at their hands. Xanu was able to use his power over souls to take control over the armies of soul-empowered constructs located in every Foreclaimer settlement and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turn them on their creators]]. While some Foreclaimers fled through a portal, Xanu remains committed to finding and exterminating what's left of their race.
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128
129	[[folder:Real Life]]
130	* The mysterious "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples Sea Peoples]]" are mentioned in various Bronze Age records from Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean as invaders from the sea who came to raid and pillage. There are various hypotheses about who they were, where they came from, and why they raided, but it's universally agreed that they were one of the reasons behind the [[EndOfAnEra Late Bronze Age Collapse]] which devastated the civilizations of the era, and greatly weakened Egypt. One hypothesis is that they were InvadingRefugees who were a ''result'' of the Bronze Age Collapse, not the actual ''cause''. The collapse led to a dark age of several centuries (lasting a whopping '''500''' years in Greece), and to the survivors, the old Bronze Age civilizations would certainly have looked like {{Precursors}}.
131	[[/folder]]

Context Main / PrecursorKillers