Getting Rid of Precursors

[Edman]

Well, if the precursors issued a government statement a few millenia ago, and that statement read:

"For many years, AstroCorp has been home to the best and brightest minds of the galaxy and produced innumerable advancements in the fields of technology and science. Innovators of terraforming and various weapon technologies, they have been an asset to the Federation at large, despite unbreakable patents lobbied forth in previous administrations keeping most of these within the company. However, it is with a heavy heart that we, the Government, have found irrefutable proof that, despite the ban set in place since the Microbe Massacre on Turisaz Prime, Astrocorp have been using terraforming technology.

This, coupled with previous violations of Act 194725 (Prohibition against Unlicensed and Untested Technlogical Devices) forces our hand. The Government has decreed that AstroCorp and its employees are now Public Enemies, with access to dangerous, banned technology. So far, 95% of the personnel have been rounded up and await execution for potential Microbe Genocide as well as High Treason against the Federation and its peoples."

[Mookins]

How about the Stargate Asgard solution, even though they are not Precursors. The species you want to disappear relies on some sort of radical medical treatment, that simply stops working over time. Perhaps they rely on cloning to reproduce for some reason (they may have initially thought it better and now are locked in after generations), and their genes are finally having enough of the recycling. Perhaps they require treatment for something species wide, maybe they come from another plane/universe/whatever and need constant drugs to cure their allergy to this reality, maybe they used a vicious virus or genetic modifying weapon while they were still restricted to their homeworld and they all rely on specific medicine or cybernetics to simply survive. Whatever it is, the treatment stopped working, and the final generation knew they were the final generation and went all Children of Men societal collapse, while those with the tech and power pulled every crazy trick out of their hat to extend their species (or their own) lifespan.

[Flyndaran]

They may have hit a snag that humans would have used an obvious to us solution, but for them would have been unthinkable morally or literally.
Genetic engineering of themselves no matter how practical.
Cyborging / "uploading" themselves for some reason.
Dependent on a specific animal or plant, and that hits extinction through maybe mono-cultural problems.

[Lamech]

Self-Replicating Probes. The precursors are far, far away. But long ago they made probes to explore the universe. These probes copy themselves and reproduce far faster than the precursors. Now these probes, and all the infastructure for them to travel faster than light, and reproduce themselves are scattered all over the universe, while the precursors, are far, far away.

[Sindri]

I started a taxonomy of precursor-killers in the first post

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Mookins

maybe they come from another plane/universe/whatever and need constant drugs to cure their allergy to this reality,

Or perhaps the Precursors were refugees from "another hyperspatial rotation universe" (our favorite technobabble) that has slightly different physics. Either they failed to overcome the differences and died (possibly leaving many terraforming projects running on automatic until they completed and shut down), or they built up their resources and went back to their native universe to Deal With whatever sent them running in the first place. (But the local universe was either too hostile to have any "gone native" Precursors staying behind, or the group was small enough that none of them wanted to stay behind, or the alien mindset was such that staying behind was unthinkable due to alien psychology, religious dictates, psionic noise making them all a little twitchy, etc. "All that dark matter is so irritating! We just want to go home where it's nice.")

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The problem with all those withdrawing as a species ideas is that there will always be back to nature luddites.
Imagine trying to get every single human on earth to move somewhere, anywhere.

Or they evolved the technology to make themselves invisible?

In any case Precursors are incomprehensible. That is one of their points.

[Urban]

Briefly toyed with the idea that the Precursor Race (or races) died out due to war or anything that created rapid loss of civilization. The only remnants of tech and such are those within stasis fields. So you might encounter stasis field that are literally millions of years old and some might even be encased within asteroids, deep in planet core due to tectonic shift and so on.

Of course there is a method to turn them off so you can go treasure hunting. For sake of argument no living tissue might survive but robots etc might.

How to turn them off might depend on the game, radio signal, external control panel (unlikely to survive) or that you must use special suits that can sync with the stasis field and you have to literally move inside the stasis field to find the off switch.

[Edman]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

In any case Precursors are incomprehensible. That is one of their points.

Why must it be one of their points? If their points are to deliver quirky little artifacts and terraform planets, why can't they be just like us, but more advanced in some regards? It's a lot easier to explain why a select few individuals (say, Rocket scientists in our society) disappear, than it is to explain why an entire race of super-advanced, transcended beings simply up and left, or were killed? There were, most likely, precursor janitors too?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Or they evolved the technology to make themselves invisible

Oh. Hi there, Fwiffo, didn't recognize you.