The Precursors

The Precursors were an ancient race of sapients who existed an unknown amount of time before humans, inhabiting various locations in the galaxy. They mastered substratics and were able to manipulate reality to their will with near god-like power, placing them far beyond Type III on the Kardashev scale. A hyper-advanced form of nanotechnology, based on galraite, formed the basis for Precursor technology, and even the Precursors themselves, who became one with the nanotech, embracing an unbounded form integrated with all minds.

The destruction of the Precursors was the result of The Erosion, an emergent substratic anti-pattern that spread throughout their networks shortly after they achieved transcendence and integration with reality. The speed at which it spread meant there was nearly no time for the civilisation to react: in less than the equivalent of a few human days, they ceased to exist, leaving nothing but their lifeless technology behind.

Legacy

Precursor technology has been found across the Solar System. These include geometry cubes, which acted as portable substratic supercomputers; soul matrices, a more powerful and specialised version of the former able to manipulate consciousness; and dark obelisks and lion statues, entropic energy stabilisers which played a role in Precursor abyssal power grids.

Many of the planets across the Milky Way, including Earth, Mars, and others feature subsurface Precursor installations, such as Herbert Point: nodes alongside many others in a vast system that operated in many roles, including the fabrication of various materials and structures, communication between points in the universe, performing complex calculations, and exerting control over reality.

Another type of Precursor installation is a Galvatron Array, an autonomous substratic supercomputer that is built around many of the stars in the Milky Way. Its purpose is to detect and remediate catastrophic corruption to substratic grids to, in theory, prevent the complete destabilisation and disintegration of base reality. The most powerful of all is the Null Driver, a direct interface to the Substrate.

The civilisation also knew about the existence of the Data Entities, and built specialised nanotechnology in order to communicate with them in order to further their own interests. It is unknown if any members of the race still exist, but none have ever been found. They appear to have possessed a somewhat ritualistic, esoteric culture.