The Weapons of the Space Occult Ancients?

Was reading some science fiction and space fantasy comics today:

God Country, about a man who is cured of his Alzheimer's but only when grasping the "God of Swords", a sentient techno-magic weapon that is also a Kirby New Gods kind of entity.

Prophet, which I was trying to think of how to summarize but I'll just quote Image:

"On distant future Earth, changed by time and alien influence, John Prophet awakens from cryosleep. His mission: to climb the the towers of Thauili Van and restart the Earth empire. But, news of the Empire's return brings old foes and allies out of the recesses of the vast cosmos."

Additionally looking through Fire on the Velvet Horizon and saw some entries that could work in a regular science-fiction setting and definitely work in a setting that is science-fiction + "space occultism".

All of it got me thinking about the wars that destroyed successive Golden Ages, which isn't to say it's always death and mayhem maybe sometimes it's a galaxy wide Sublime or something like that. Or maybe it's both - the best, compassionate and brightest aliens Transcend or at the least leave the galaxy, and the second tier of civilizations fights to take the top spot.

What this leads to in a Points of Light in Space setting is the ruins of precurosr civilizations both on planets but also in the Void, as well as the varied weapons - including sentient machines & biologicals - that serve as part of the dark wilderness ("wild space"). 

So you have these space gods and space empires and all their terrible wars. This helps explain the recursive Points of Light idea - Unhinged AI driven ships (and possibly other worse created or even conjured things) guard sections of now uncharted space for long disappeared (and likely dead) masters. Planets were long ago bombarded with biological weapons that ended up breeding and thus radically altering the ecology.

There was a Green Lantern story where the New Gods altered whole global populations to serve as living weapons in their wars. Post-Singularity civs at war could produce similar affects even without celestial power - think diseases that turn relatively peaceful peoples into blood thirsty hordes or dispassionate skilled torturers and normal animals into a varied menagerie of horrors. The higher tiered civs could then harvest from those altered populations and ship them where they were needed. (If only a small number of races/species have a gift for Psionics that might further explain why they were exploited to fight in the wars of the Ancients who many not have had such talents.)

Then, in the aftermath of that last great Cataclysm, you have points of relative safety that slowly emerge and interact. Rumors abound of what horrors lurk in the Void with an open question of whether what's described is Post-Singularity tech and what is actual sorcery (the PCs aren't necessarily in a position to make definitive claims one way or the other). A "safe" solar system may have a subset of planets that themselves house  city-states capable of driving back the maliciously edited wilderness. The space between these planets may have been largely cleared, or at least there are patrolled space-ways between them. 

From there you could have a network of safer-than-average systems made through a series of Jump Gates, or perhaps there are sets of safe-worlds connected by gates rather than all revolving around the same sun. Or maybe there are set lanes one follows while the FTL drive is running to minimize risk. So Testing Jump Gates,  assessing risk of FTL lanes, and just pushing back the wilderness around each recursive PoL level are all reasons the newly formed Corporations, Councils, Coalitions, Communes, Colonies, and so on need adventurers.

There's motivation for independent ("unpaid") exploration as well. Salvage may yield shelter away from the law, treasure enough to retire on, and possibly even weaponry that could, in time, make a lowly band of explorers into a galactic power. PCs may also be Uplifts or embodied AIs in search of their makers, seeking someone to answer questions concerning their origin stories or maybe just someone to answer for the crime of their creation/alteration.