39,327
edits
Abusive Precursors: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Remove useless categories) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 9:
[[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]].
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
Line 19:
* The Dark Kingdom and Dead Moon Kingdom from ''[[Sailor Moon]]''
* At the smallest end of the scale, {{spoiler|Rozen}} from ''[[Rozen Maiden]].'' {{spoiler|He created a race of thinking, sentient creatures, made them blindly loyal, and ''commanded them to fight to the death until only one survives.'' Why? To ''earn his love.'' Only centuries later, after a pretender triggers a fake Alice Game, does he deign to show his face again ... to restore the status quo and reset the game back to start. With a grudging admission that "there are other ways to win besides battle.}} On the other hand, can a force, however mysterious, who {{spoiler|creates a "race" with less than ten members}} really be considered a [[Precursor]]?
* The Mu of ''[[Rah Xephon]]'', 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 By a Forsaken Child]], meaning that every Dolem killed was an innocent human life suddenly ending.}}
** {{spoiler|Except for those few like Largo which were powered by knowledgeable Mulians.}}
* The case of [[Humans Are Bastards|Humanity]] vs ''[[Nausicaa of the Valley of The 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 willingly [[Omnicidal Maniac|destroying the current mankind]].
Line 26:
* The Celestials in ''[[Earth X]]'' created superheroes in order to act as an "immune system" against Galactus, in order for the baby Celestial gestating in the Earth's core to come to maturity. The thing is, when it matures, [[Earthshattering Kaboom|we die]]. We'd die ''sooner'' if [[Planet Eater|the Earth was eaten]] by Galactus.
** 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|Sue Storm]] managed to ''[[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|temporarily kill]]'' one of them. They also used our Sun [[Sealed Evil in A 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.}}
* The Merk Drizripool is definitely one in ''Nexus''; the rest of the Merk are merely [[Neglectful Precursors]].
Line 51:
* [[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|The Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax]], the most violent race in galactic history (Their army was named something even more horrific), built the supercomputer Hactar for the sole purpose of designing a bomb that would destroy the Universe. Also were indirectly responsible for the people of Krikkit launching their millennia-long genocidal galactic war. Estimated casualties: Approximately two ''Grillion''.
* The Shaddill from [[The League of Peoples Verse]] travelled around "uplifting" deserving species by granting them wonderful gifts of sufficiently advanced technology... gifts which would destroy the species' culture, stagnate their development, and slowly drive them into decay and extinction.
* The [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]] from [[
* ''[[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 The Olympians (Literature)|Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'', especially Kronos.
Line 57:
* There are four major races of precursors in the ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'', all of whom fit this to a greater or lesser degree:
** 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
** The Forkrul Assail are the most clear-cut examplel; a race of [[Knight Templars]] obsessed with purity, they killed ''their own god'' when it didn't live up to their standards, and {{spoiler|come back in the last couple of books to give humanity the same treatment}}.
** The T'lan Imass are an undead Neanderthal-type race who are dedicated to destroying the Jaghut to prevent any more Tyrants from arising. They don't have much to do with modern humans (except for the Logros T'lan Imass, who got recruited by [[The Emperor|Kellanved]] as shock troops), but historically they ''have'' been known to wipe out whole nations if they see a need.
Line 108:
** [[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 feats.
** The ending of that game sheds more light on what the Reapers actually want: {{spoiler|they were created by a being (probably a powerful AI) known as the Catalyst to prevent races from advancing enough to create synthetic life: if they did, it was believed the synthetics would eventually rebel and wipe out all organic life. The Reapers would invade every once in a while, harvesting any sufficiently-advanced races and turning them into Reapers while leaving the lower species alone. Given that they're preventing [[Apocalypse How|the death of ''all'' organics]] (for a bit), this ''might'' just redeem them very slightly. [[Eldritch Abomination|Maybe.]] [[Complete Monster|Not really.]]}}
*** 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
* The Dnyarri in ''[[Star Control]]''/''[[Star Control|Star Control 2]]'' are the primary cause of the Ur-Quan's actions, both Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah. And no, they were not nice people. For a better perpective, they were inspired by the Thrint in Literature above... and then were made '''even worse'''.
** If you want to consider ''[[Star Control|Star Control 3]]'', let's put up the Eternal Ones. Seeding the universe with sentient life so you can eat all of it? Considering that one such sentient population managed to [[Take a Third Option|figure out a way to make sure that no one has to die]] in their iteration, while the Eternal Ones went through who knows how many iterations committing universe-scale xenocide...
Line 142:
* The followers of the [[Eldritch Abomination|Old Ones]], ancient space gods from another dimension, were the first lifeforms to colonize a primordial Earth of the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]''. A series of wars begin with the Old Ones on one side and U'tua the Gardener, the war-fleets of five of the Progenitor Races, and at least thirty of the Progenitors' more advanced client species, on the other. Eighteen centuries of constant warfare culminated in the banishment and imprisonment of the Old Ones to places outside the universe. The victory came at a great price, as the entire H'ch'wee and Krang species, along with every member of their various participating client species, were exterminated in the fighting. Unknown to the victors, a small number of servants of the Old Ones survived on Earth. They went into hiding deep underground.
* The [[Eldritch Abomination|Great Old Ones]] (yes, ''[[
** The court would like to bring to evidence the precedent set in [[Neglectful Precursors|previous issues]]. One, that the Great Old Ones plead guilty, except [[Blue and Orange Morality|they have no concept of guilt]]. Two, they would like permission to eat the buffet, also known as the jury.
Line 149:
* The Titans from ''[[Erfworld]]'' built the eponymous universe with laws of physics which seem designed to make peace impossible. However, recent events indicate they may be still active.
* 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
== Western Animation ==
| |||