Trope-a-Day: Omnicidal Maniac

Omnicidal Maniac: Fortunately, very, very rare, and generally outnumbered by everyone else.  The best-known canonical example is the seed AI of the Charnel Cluster, discovered by a scouting lugger, which upon activation set about destroying all life within the said cluster – leading to a half-dozen systems of fragmented habitats and planets covered in decaying – but sterile – organic slush that used to be the systems’ sophonts, animals, plants, bacteria, viruses, and everything else that might even begin to qualify as living.  Fortunately, at this point, the perversion broke down before it could carry on with the rest of the galaxy.

In current time, the Charnel Cluster worlds have been bypassed by the stargate plexus (they’re to be found roughly in the mid-Expansion Regions, in zone terms) and are flagged on charts and by buoys as quarantined; while the Charnel perversion appears to be dead, no-one particularly wants to take a chance on that.