Abusive Precursors: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''{{smallcaps|We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.}}''|'''{{spoiler|[[Eldritch Abomination|Sovereign]]}}''', ''[[Mass Effect (Video Game)|Mass Effect]]''}}

Abundance of [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]] with flimsy seals and easily found keys? They did it on purpose. They even labeled the can as ''[[Happy Fun Ball|Happy Fun Time For All!]]'' [[Schmuck Bait|to make sure you'd open it]] - or [[May Contain Evil|"Evil Inside!!"]] just relying on humanity's inability to ignore [[Shmuck Bait]]. There's even some odds that THEY are the evil in the can. [[The Plague|Plagues]]? [[Pointless Doomsday Device|Oh, they made it.]] Then even stored it with crates of candy to make sure you'd catch it. They did not just leave a [[Lost Superweapon]] for villains to acquire; they gave the villain a manual, tech support and a 10,000 millenium powertrain warranty for the superweapon.

In short, the [['''Abusive Precursors]]''' cause problems through more direct acts than their neglectful equivalent, [[Aliens Are Bastards|with the clear intent of doing so.]] To make it worse, it's likely they are still around and [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|powerful enough that you can't do a thing about it.]] If a setting has both Neglectful and Abusive Precursors, expect them to have been at war, and that the Abusive Precursors either won or ended up as [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]] or [[Only Mostly Dead]]. Now that their sworn enemies have become [[Energy Beings]] and [[Ascend to Aa Higher Plane of Existence|moved to another plane of existence]] they might be ready to come back. Also, there are very good odds that both types of precursors share origins somehow, with either one race creating the other, both races being offshoots of one another or of a third race, or both being different cultures of the same race. Just to compound the problem, while other surviving [[Precursors]] are likely to be Energy Beings as mentionned ''these'' are likelier to be [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]]s.

[[The Dark Times]] are a mythological period in the past when the [['''Abusive Precursors]]''' were at the height of their power. Sub-trope of [[Precursors]], with [[Benevolent Precursors]] as [[Inversion]].

* The Mu of ''[[Rah XephonRahXephon]]'', a race of literally blue-blooded humans who vanished off the Earth several ten thousands of years ago due to one of their own experiments failing (the reason for said experiment? {{spoiler|[[For Science!|The scientist just wanted to see if it would actually work]]}}). The story happens when they try to come back, and the end of the series makes it very clear that they could effortlessly wipe out humanity if they really wanted. {{spoiler|They don't, they only suppress the TERRA organization that is directly opposing them. Their real goal is to re-do that aforementioned failed experiment properly and [[Ret -Gone]] the entire human race, so that they can have Earth for themselves. Oh, and the [[Humongous Mecha]] they use are [[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child]], meaning that every Dolem killed was an innocent human life suddenly ending.}}

* The case of [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|Humanity]] vs ''[[Nausicaa of the Valley of Thethe Wind]]'' has been opened. It engineered a vast, ''vast'' number of [[Weapon of Mass Destruction|Weapons Of Mass Destruction]], which include the titanic [[Person of Mass Destruction|cyborg-like God Warriors]], destroyed the entire ecosystem of the whole world, and finally all but perished in the Seven Days Of Fire. But its greatest sin was to create {{spoiler|the Heart of Shuwa, a biological computer which contains a human-like consciousness}}, and which, when found by the few surviving humans, dispensed just enough scientific knowledge to enthrall them. Additionally, war technology pre-Seven Days Of Fire is still scattered across the planet, including the aforementioned God Warriors. And if that's not all, the {{spoiler|Heart deliberately created the Sea of Corruption and the Ohmu to cleanse the planet, so [[Utopia Justifies the Means|its creators could live again in a purified world]]}} --after—after willingly [[Omnicidal Maniac|destroying the current mankind]].

** The Celestials aren't any better in the standard 616 universe. The planets they [[Neglectful Precursors|abandon for millions of years]] are the ''lucky'' ones. The Celestials have a nasty habit of ''purging all life on a planet'' if they don't like what they see. To make things worse, the only standard they have is whether or not the planet's inhabitants ''might'' become a potential threat to the Celestials someday. Which is pretty bad for Earth since [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Sue Storm]] managed to ''[[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|temporarily kill]]'' one of them. They also used our Sun [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|to seal one of their own, considered a dangerous deviant]]. {{spoiler|It turns out his "deviancy" is thinking the rest of his race are dicks.}}

== [[Film]] ==

** Imaginatively known as "The Builders". It was shown that they made them to defeat another alien race and things went wrong. So less abusive and more technology has turned against us. Given the kitbashed and divergent technologies of Berzerkers over the millennia of endless killing, it in unknown if one race used them as the Final Option against another or if two or more different factions or races deployed these death machines against each other. (You could always ask a berserker--butberserker—but they don't care, and you wouldn't survive to share the answer...) No matter how you slice it, Berserkers are shining examples of ''[[Gone Horribly Right|Horribly Right]]'' as well as contenders for largest mass production ''[[Precursor Killers|Precursor Killer]]'' models.

* The Valheru from [[Raymond E. Feist]]'s ''[[The Riftwar Cycle|Riftwar]]'' books.

* The [[Snake People|serpent men]] from [[Robert E. Howard]]'s ''King [[Kull]]'' and ''[[Conan]]'' stories.

* The Wolves/Inhibitors from [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' novels ''seem'' to be this. They deliberately transformed themselves into (usually) nonsentient machines which act to prevent sentient life from spreading through the galaxy--typicallygalaxy—typically by way of genocide, though they're sometimes willing to overlook planetbound life-forms. They do have a noble-sounding motivation--{{spoiler|they're trying to ensure the collision with the Andromeda Galaxy doesn't wipe out intelligence permanently, and don't believe a multiple-species society can pull together to prevent the chaos ahead}}--but—but they've been slaughtering for billions of years, there are billions more to go, and it's questionable whether they really intended to end up this way.

* The [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]]s from [[HPH.P. Lovecraft (Creator)|HP Lovecraft]] (and several of the semi-related [[Starfish Alien]] species).

* ''[[The Stormlight Archive (Literature)|The Stormlight Archive]]'' has the Knights Radiant, who turned on humanity for an unknown reason. However, while they are definitely seen as this by most of the people in the series, they might not actually count.

* The Titans in ''[[Percy Jackson and& Thethe Olympians (Literature)|Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'', especially Kronos.

** Continued in the sequel series ''[[The Heroes of Olympus (Literature)|The Heroes of Olympus]]'' with the new [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|Gaia, aka Mother Earth}}.

** The K'chain Che'malle, the oldest race, were {{[[Lizard Folk |lizardmen}}]] who ruled the planet with an iron fist; when {{spoiler|Che'malle survivors}} show up in the last couple of books, though, they turn out to be [[Blue and Orange Morality|more coldly alien than evil]] and end up {{spoiler|allying with the protagonists, recognizing that humans are now the dominant race on the planet}}.

** The Jaghut were mostly a race of solitary, pacifist scholars and mages, but every so often one of them would go mad and become [[Evil Overlord|a Jaghut Tyrant]], effectively a [[God -Emperor]] to the younger races they enslaved.

* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[Hermetic Millenium (Literature)|Count to a Trillion]]'', the precursors left the Momument, so that we would meddle with it and reveal our existence, so they could come to enslave us.

* The Daemons from ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]''.

*** The Time War was not a positive influence on the Time Lords' disposition. They became so unpleasant and genocidal that the Doctor had to basically turn all of Gallifrey into a [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]].

* The {{spoiler|Vorlons and}} Shadows from ''[[Babylon 5 (TV)|Babylon 5]]'', who manipulate younger races to prove a point to one another. When that isn't going well enough, they start ''[[Earthshattering Kaboom|blowing up]]'' the races who don't agree with their point of view. Made worse by the fact neither of them can really remember why they are doing what they are doing anymore.

* [[The Greys]] of ''[[The X -Files]].'' Where to start? They manipulated some of the most powerful people on Earth into plotting against the rest of humanity (''turning us against each other''), abducted and performed medical experiments on us, plotted with their human allies to cover up their existence, leaving said abductees as social outcasts, planned to use the Black Oil to enslave us until we were no longer of use to them, at which point they planned to make us extinct, touched off a war with a rebel faction that was fought on Earth and resulted in tragedy for the families of their abductees, sent the [[Fan Nickname|Mighty Morphin' Bounty Hunter]] and the Supersoldiers after us, and by the way... their invasion date is still set for 2012. Even then the real villain is "Black Oil", the creature(s) who took over the originally-peaceful Greys.

* The Old Ones and other "pure" demons of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' and ''[[Angel (TV)|Angel]]''. These [[Eldritch Abomination|monstrous primal entities]] [[The Dark Times|ruled the Earth with an iron fist for untold millennia]] until humanity eventually supplanted them. Though all of the Old Ones still on Earth are either dormant or "dead", the return of even one to full power would likely bring [[Hell Onon Earth]] and/or [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|the Apocalypse]].

* ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'''s Iconian civilization was apparently so abusive even in their own time that the other races at the time banded together to ''wipe them out'', and are always referred to in leftover artifacts as "[[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|The Demons of Air and Darkness]]".

** In ''[[Star Trek Online (Video Game)|Star Trek Online]]'', the Iconians {{spoiler|Aren't so extinct}} and apparently have been involved in {{spoiler|The [[Star Trek (Filmfilm)|destruction of Romulus]], and the Undine and Borg issues plaguing the Alpha quadrant as of late.}}

* Humanity itself in ''[[Space: Above and Beyond]]'', having created not one, but ''two'' races for the purpose of servitude. [[Turned Against Their Masters|They both rebelled]].

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* The Rakshasas in the ''[[Eberron]]'' Campaign Setting of ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]''.

* The Illithids (Mind Flayers) in certain incarnations of ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]''. [[Cthulhumanoid|Squid-headed]] [[Brain Food|brain-eating]] power-hungry masters of a multidimensional empire brought down by their own slaves.

** At least one story suggests they are actually thrown out of time. In one source book dealing with different blood ancestry gifts (stuff like having dragon descendants, etc.), Illithid blood powers are in the people who are the Illthids' ancestors. Thus, [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|some humans are]] Abusive Precursors.

== [[Video Games]] ==

** [[Serial Escalation|The sequel shows that the Reapers are perhaps far more abusive than anyone realized.]] {{spoiler|The Collectors? They're the remnants of the Protheans, mutated beyond recognition and forced into mindless, torturous servitude. The deadly-to-everything-but-humans plague that Mordin was trying to cure? A weapon the Reapers were taking for a test drive to isolate humans.}} At this point, flat out annihilation is actually one of their nicer featstactics.

*** ''ME3'' also reveals that the {{spoiler|Protheans}} were pretty bad as well. They ran a galaxy-wide empire, subjugating other races (if they didn't exterminate them first) and absorbing them into their culture. Their reasoning was that, with the threat of synthetic life on the horizon (represented in their cycle by the Zha'til and the Metacon War), ''all'' organics had to stand together or perish. Once the Reapers came upon them, they tried nurturing primitive species, hoping that some {{spoiler|Protheans}} could sit out the destruction in stasis and emerge after the Reapers had left to lead these species against the next cycle. Their best hope were the [[Green -Skinned Space Babe|Asari]] (who, ironically, ended up running the galaxy themselves with wisdom, patience and diplomacy), but they also intervened upon the Hanar and at least studied some of the early humans. It's also memtionedmentioned that they served Salarian liver as a delicacy.

* The Sarrukh "Old Ones" in ''[[Neverwinter Nights (Video Game)|Neverwinter Nights]]''. Powerful magical humanoid reptiles forced into dormancy by a cooling climate... for now.

** Elaboration in the [[Forgotten Realms (Tabletop Game)|tabletop game]] revealed that the Sarrukh, one of five Creator Races, had begun fairly non-abusive, but (mostly) began to slide into evil as their god fractured and fell into somnolence and an excuse was made for sacrificing non-Sarrukh (sacrificing honored volunteers are one thing. Mass sacrifices of slave races, another).

* The Antarans of ''[[Master of Orion (Video Game)|Master of Orion]]'' started as [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]], sealed by the Orions, just waiting to break out and kick some ass.

* Considering the events in the ''[[StarcraftStarCraft|Starcraft II]]'' campaign, it seems that the Xel'naga, who were originally portrayed simply as [[Neglectful Precursors]] (for creating the Zerg and [[Turned Against Their Masters|getting destroyed by them]]), are probably still be around, and may have orchestrated {{spoiler|the entire Zerg invasion, implanting the [[Good All Along]] Overmind with an [[Obstructive Code of Conduct]] to assimilate the Protoss, thereby enabling the creation of the Zerg-Protoss Hybrids that the Xel'naga had originally wanted}}.

* The Suul'Ka in the ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' [[Backstory]], {{spoiler|corrupt, gone-mad-with power Liirian elders}} who enslaved the Liir, used their pawns to destroy the old Morrigi civilization and killed 90% of their male population, and created the Zuul, a genocidal race of religiously fanatic [[Super Soldier|Super Soldiers]]s. The Liir retro-plague wiped most of them out, but the sequel revealed that seven of them survived and recovered... And now they are back. And they are ''angry''. They're so bad, that isn't even [[Ultimate Evil|their actual]] ''[[Ultimate Evil|name]]'': It's the Liirian ''concept'' of "abominable", (lit. winterheart, sociopath).

* The Dread Lords of ''[[Galactic Civilisations]] II.'' There were two Precursor factions (the other called themselves the Arnor), one which wanted to befriend all the younger races and one which wanted to enslave them all. Guess [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|who's who]]. Guess which ended up as [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]].

* ''[[Utawarerumono]].'' [[Jerkass]] precursors: [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|humans]] that experimented with [[Unusual Ears|strangely-eared]] clones and the Ice Man.

* ''[[Skies of Arcadia (Video Game)|Skies of Arcadia]]'' has a civilization that decided [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|mankind]] was being [[In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves|too destructive]]. What do they do about it? [[Hypocrite|Destroy those civilizations]]. However, after [[And Man Grew Proud|the Valuans found out about the Gigas]], they decide they need to do it again.

* Done by humanity itself ''by accident'' in the ''[[MegamanMega Man Legends]]'' series. See, humanity made an [[Artificial Human|artificial]] slave race called the "Carbons", and to make sure they didn't [[Turned Against Their Masters|go rogue]], set up several failsafe systems to wipe out all the Carbons if there were any signs of acting outside usual parameters, or if Carbon population was suddenly much greater than the human population. Then the humans died off of natural causes, leaving behind the sapient carbons and several failsafe systems that thought the carbons had gone rogue, when they in fact were simply living.

* For millions of years in ''[[OtherspaceOtherSpace]]'', the god-like Kamir and Hivers fought each other with willful disregard for the destruction they were doing to the rest of the universe, often pulling players in as proxy warriors in their machinations. Eventually, all their destruction ended up breaking the universe.

** Most fans of the games are under the impression that the Forerunners were a noble society of peacekeepers that made a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to save the people of the galaxy, the only mistake made being their ability to keep the peace so effectively that nobody needed to evolve. '''Wrong!''' They were actually racist supremacists who ''de-evolved their enemies' children'', did everything they told everyone else ''not'' to do because they were the "[[Chosen One|Chosen Ones]]s", and ''tossed countless sentients to the Flood to see what would happen''. How many actually gave a crap about anyone else? So far, ''two''. ''Maybe''.

* The ''[[Free Space]]'' series has the [[Omnicidal Maniac|Shivans]], [[Blue and Orange Morality|though why they are so intent on destroying the Terrans and the Vasudans is a complete mystery]]. {{spoiler|That is, until the end of the first game, where it's revealed that they do it to protect other lifeforms in the galaxy, even though this is also merely a guess at their real intentions. The second game postulates that they're a race of [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]]s from another universe and are trying to get back home.}} The Ancient Ones were pretty bad too, either enslaving less advanced lifeforms or running rebellious/resisting races into extinction, which caused the Shivans to wipe them out entirely. It's also implied that the Ancient Ones had a hand in helping the Vasudans get off the ground, and that the Vasudans rebelled just as the Shivans began attacking, thus allowing them to continue to grow until they met the Terrans, who were probably ignored by the Ancient Ones because of the Shivans' wiping them out. {{spoiler|To give them credit, the Ancient Ones also left behind artifacts on their home planet in the Altair System that helped the newly founded Terran-Vasudan Alliance defeat the Shivans in the first game by destroying their super-destroyer, the ''Lucifer'', while in [[Subspace or Hyperspace|Subspace]] transit to the Solar System, to destroy Earth like it had Vasuda Prime before it.}}

* On balance, the ''[[X (Videovideo Gamegame)|X-Universe's]]'' Ancients are this. Theoretically they have good goals, such as preventing the heat death of the universe, and they consider the [[Portal Network]] they built a gift to the younger races. Unfortunately they have a tendency to think of the younger races as a single group, making them frighteningly willing to toy with them seemingly at random. Since their most direct method of manipulation is to switch gate pairs in the [[Portal Network]], this means they do things like start interplanetary wars, [[You Can't Go Home Again|separate colony ships from their home planets]] or lock fleets in deep space with nowhere to go, or even [[Inferred Holocaust|turn off the whole network]]. Then again, the network shutdown came partly in response to the [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot|Xenon]] gaining control over a sizable portion of the galaxy, so YMMV.

* The [[Eldritch Abomination|Great Old Ones]] (yes, ''[[HPH.P. Lovecraft (Creator)|those]]'' [[Cthulhu Mythos|Great Old Ones]]...) in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]''. They fought a war with the Sidhe that wiped out the Sidhe and got the Great Old Ones sealed out of this dimension. For now...

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Whatever created Sburb in ''[[Homestuck (Webcomic)|Homestuck]]'': the game in question seeds species' existence for the sole purpose of destroying it except for a limited group of ''children'' who are tested to see if they can win a difficult game. {{spoiler|And the children don't even come from that planet, they're created by the game itself. The trolls wanted to become this to Earth. Didn't quite work out.}}

* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'', it turns out the species that runs the galactic wormhole network have been running their operation for longer than galactic civilization has been around. {{spoiler|[[Cloning Blues|Every time someone goes through a wormhole, a gate clone is created.]] [[Moral Event Horizon|Gate clones are fully aware, sentient, and retain the original's memories. Each gate clone is interrogated, killed, and dissected, not necessarily in that order. The knowledge is leveraged to manipulate things behind the scenes]].}} Compared to the [[Eldritch Abomination|DMEs]] from Andromeda galaxy, they're quite pleasant. Sociopathic, amoral, and greedy, but at least the Gatekeepers aren't trying to destroy a galaxy (but they probably would if they had the technology to do it). To be fair, the Gatekeepers are a rare [[Well -Intentioned Extremist]] version of this trope, as the only reason they're manipulating galactic society is to keep the aforementioned [[Eldritch Abomination|DMEs]] from killing everything.