Mass Effect: Andromeda/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Figures. The monsters in Andromeda are just as bad as the monsters back home.
—Drack

While Andromeda lacks the Cosmic Horror elements of the original trilogy, it's not without horrors and frightening moments of its own.

  • The Scourge. A massive cloud of dark energy that expands with no discernible pattern through the cluster destroys everything it touches. It's origins are unknown, it seems to defy the laws of physics and all known scientific knowledge and it's everywhere in the Heleus Cluster. The Scourge is later revealed to be a weapon of mass destruction created and used to fight the Jardaan centuries ago, and now it's essentially an interstellar minefield. This raises the idea that either The Scourge escaped its users control, they intended for it to spread this far or they didn't care if it did. This begs the questions who created The Scourge? What happened to them? Could they control it or unleash another?
  • The kett, mostly what they are and how they're made. They are a species formed from a DNA sequence used on other races and species, and is used to alter them into kett. They are made to be loyal to the kett cause through physical and psychological conditioning, as well as a bizarre cult centered around the assimilation process which has been ritualized and is worshiped. Furthermore, since one of the alterations into becoming a kett involves removing the subject's genitals - thus kett have none - the Exaltation process is the only way they can reproduce; there is no indicator that the kett's bodies have any way to reproduce sexually or asexually. A layer of cruelty is added to this when Ryder learns that the kett are skilled enough with genetics that they could reproduce through cloning but choose to use Exaltation instead. So far, the kett refuse to be negotiated with, refuse to be reasoned with - once they come for you, it is "kill, be killed or be converted." Then there are two tragic possibilities raised in an audio log from the Primus. This log states that "Exaltation lifted (the kett) out of tribulation and sorrow. Either the kett were enduring something so horrible Exaltation was considered the better choice, Exaltation was forced on the kett in a manner akin to the conversion of Kaleds into Daleks in Doctor Who, or both.
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