Yes, I've replaced the OTU explanation of the Ancients IMTU.
The Droyne aren't the core of it anymore (I never really did relate to them well).
There are clues to be found here and there. IMTU, I have an intermediate civilization, the Nithosians (whose homeworld has never been located), who existed in The Beyond, Vanguard Reaches area about -25,000. They fought among themselves until the achieved extinction, but they also pursued the history of the Ancients. There are indirect clues about the Ancients to be found by looking into the ruins of the Nithosians.
As for the full secret . . . heh, I'm keeping that to myself.
Known Facts:
1) The Ancients are still widely held to have been the mechanism behind the scattering of the races of humaniti, and the uplift of the vargr (and possibly a few other species, some unrelated to Terra, as well).
2) In 1102, a Imperial Ministory of Science study was released on Capital/Core. It was of Vilani, Solomani, Zhodani, and several minor human races. It covered mitochondrial DNA and descendent Enzyeme evolutionary analysis. The primary conclusion was that all the races shared a common ancestor, including the Solomani. The corallary was that the Terrans, despite having originated on their world, were not original unmodified stock. They were as altered as the other branches of humaniti. This, naturally, has created a firestorm of protests and denials from the Solomani Confederation.
3) In 1108 (the news of which has barely reached the far end of the Imperium by 1110), a Nithosian holographic memory crystal was located on Floria/Trojan Reaches. When it was decoded, it was found to contain a partial translation of one Ancient's script into the Nithosian language. This particular Ancient's script has been found on approximately nine other worlds in the Four Sectors area. The Florian League government has taken possession of the materials and has, so far, refused to share it with anyone.
4) The technology of the Ancients appears to be psionically related (which is one of the reasons for the Imperium's heavy Ancient's tech restrictions).
5) There appear to be approximately five separate technologies and styles of architecture and engineering extant from the -300,000 age, and these materials and civilizations, collectively, are known as the Ancients. So little is left of these materials that not much is known of their physical characteristics, one race, or many, no one knows. (In much the same way that Earth couldn't figure out what the Heechee looked like in Fredrick Pohl's books).
6) Some Ancients facilities appear destroyed by war, other appear abandoned and decayed by three hundred millennia's passage of time.
7) Ancients technology, even when found, isn't functioning 99% of the time. The number of known functioning artifacts ever located is less than five hundred.
8) Some Nithosian artifacts are mistaken for Ancients artifacts by the credulous or the uninitiated, especially if there is nothing written on the artifact.
Or, on the face of it, not too different from the standard story, only a few apparent tweaks off canon (not counting the Nithosian add-on).
