'Legion of the Damned' is a crossover fic by Welcome To Estalia, featuring characters from Mass Effect, Halo, Star Wars, RWBY, Fallout and Metal Gear, with characters from Red vs. Blue, Destiny, StarCraft, Warhammer, and Dragon Age also making appearances.
Commander Jane Shepard sacrificed her life on a gamble. After being absorbed by the light of the Crucible, she wakes up in a strange forest, greeted by a familiar face. Now trapped in the afterlife with warriors from across the dimensions, Shepard must face a new foe that threatens not only her galaxy, but the entire multiverse.
Can be found on Archive Of Our Own here.
Legion of the Damned contains the following examples:
- Big Bad: The Amalgamation, a fusion of Darth Nihilus, Aldrich, and Kairos Fateweaver.
- Boring, but Practical: How the Forces of Chaos eventually locate the Legion's base; simply by sending out probe droids en masse across the Final Destination until they eventually find them. Acknowledged as such by Thrawn, who finds the tactic rather boorish, but can't deny its effectiveness.
- Crossover Power Acquisition: On both sides of the conflict. Among the forces of Chaos, Skull-Face, Kai Leng and Tartarus get their natural abilities enhanced with Force sensitivity by the Scepter of Ragnos. Meanwhile, the Legion of the Damned eventually get their Auras unlocked and most discover their Semblances thanks to Pyrrha.
- Deadpan Snarker: Pretty much everyone, though special mention goes to Epsilon-Church.
- Death by Adaptation: Sev. Although the last he's heard from he's under attack from multiple hostiles and trapped,
Word of God says that the sequel would've revealed he not only survived, but ended up joining the rebellion. Here, it's all but confirmed he died at the hands of the Trandoshans.- The Grimm Wyvern was never explicitly confirmed to have been killed by Ruby's silver eyes, as it's still frozen on top of Beacon while summoning Grimm on the grounds. Here, its presence in the Final Destination indicates it was killed.
- Double Take: This is basically Six's response when Church tells him that one of the Meta's armor enhancements includes time distortion.
- Drives Like Crazy: Apparently, not even dying could improve Shepard's driving skills. As Sarah Lyons puts it following a ride in the Mako:
- Sarah: The hour we rode in there more terrifying than my entire living life!
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Sort of, given that all the characters involved are dead, but the sentiment is there once the Amalgamation has been defeated:
- Thane and Gray Fox are finally allowed to rest after getting tired of having to constantly fight and kill. Both assassins fade away content that their long life of war is finally over.
- Epsilon-Church, who sacrificed his life without knowing whether or not his actions made a difference to save his friends, is able to see that his work has paid off this time before he fades away.
- Wynne is content to return to the Fade after having her rest denied to her.
- Pyrrha is the most prominent example of this, as after dying at the hands of Cinder Fall and wondering whether or not she truly deserved to be called a hero, delivered the final blow to destroy the Amalgamation, thus saving the multiverse from the chaos it would have unleashed.
- Evil vs. Evil: The state of the Final Destination at the start of the story, with the Covenant, Grimm, Imperials, Geth, and Super Mutants all fighting against each other.
- Face Death with Dignity: Every member of the Legion of the Damned has this attitude, given that they all died to get to the Final Destination in the first place.
- Fantastic Racism: Kai Leng is the most prominent example of this, as his xenophobia most prominently manifests as insults with fellow Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, and this extends even to a Faunus like Adam Taurus. The Covenant in general are also prejudiced against the humans of the Empire, with Tartarus barely tolerating working alongside them.
- Surprisingly averted for the most part with Rylanor. While he's initially prepared to gun down the alien members of the Legion of the Damned when he's first revived, and derides the Elven Goddess Lileath as a weak deity, once the situation regarding their circumstances and the fight with Chaos is explained to him, the Dreadnought works alongside the Legion, Thane and Tassadar included, with no issues. Even when he's put under Tassadar's direct command during the final battle, Rylanor follows the orders of the Protoss with zero hesitation or complaints, treating him respectfully as he would the rest of his comrades.
- God Guise: When he first arrived, Church had managed to convince a group of Super Mutants that he was a god. Unfortunately it got boring rather quick, and he's rather thankful Sergeant Johnson arrives to rescue him.
- Church: Being a god for a bunch of brain damaged mutants isn't as fun as the movies make it out to be.
- Heel–Face Turn: The Geth army in the Final Destination spend a good chunk of the fic as enemies to the Legion, but with the help of Church and T3's hacking, plus the destruction of the Reaper Destroyer controlling them, the Geth eventually switch sides to help the Legion fight off the Forces of Chaos.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Snake detonates Metal Gear Zeke in a nuclear explosion when the forces of Chaos ambush Mother Base. The end result kills him, but also kills Skull-Face, and wipes out a large amount of Imperial troopers, Covenant Warriors and Creatures of Grimm in the process.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Forces of Chaos choose to integrate the Grimm into their ranks, which they let loose during the final battle with the Legion and the Geth. This works well initially, but as the battle continues and any Force-user on the side of Chaos capable of directing the Grimm becomes otherwise preoccupied, the creatures of darkness eventually fall back on their usual method of zeroing in on negative emotions. Which means the fear-filled Covenant and Imperial troopers in the Chaos army become much more enticing targets for the Grimm than the emotionless Geth.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: When Church meets Johnson (and later Noble Six), they all believe that Church is a native of the Halo universe due to the shared presence of elements like the UNSC and Elites. However, the author confirms that the events of Red vs Blue happened in a separate universe from the one Six and Johnson came from, which none of them ever realize.
- Internal Reveal: Happens to a few characters, who eventually learn of events in their worlds from later arrivals who showed up after they died.
- Thane learns from Shepard that the Reapers were defeated.
- Galen is informed offscreen from Snake's interrogation with Bacara that Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were killed and the Empire collapsed into multiple Remnant factions.
- Gray Fox tells Venom Snake of the events that happened after the Big Boss's death.
- Johnson informs Noble Six that the war with the Covenant is basically over and it more or less ended in humanity's favor.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Church is snarky with every single member of the Legion of the Damned, but he quickly comes to care for them just as much as he did the Blood Gulch Crew, and becomes more and more morose during the final battle as the casualties start increasing. Special mention goes to when the Amalgamation is defeated and they all start fading away, as Church expresses eagerness to see their fallen comrades again after their deaths during the battle.Church: I'll see you all later. You can catch me chillin 'with T3, Six, and Johnson!
- Know When to Fold 'Em: This is the response of Meredith and the Meta after watching the Amalgamation torture Dominous Ghaul and Adam Taurus into compliance. Someone powerful enough to revive them from death is obviously no one they want to cross.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Cayde-6 and Gray Fox initially fight amongst the Capital Wasteland when they first arrive in the Final Destination, though Tassadar eventually interrupts to clarify that they're all on the same side.
- To a different extent, the Forces of Chaos are initially this. Despite all being summoned to the Final Destination by the Amalgamation to serve as his army, the forces of the Empire, Covenant, Grimm, Super Mutants and Geth are all at each other's throats. This ended with Skull-Face convincing Tartarus to ally the Covenant with the Empire, and the Amalgamation mind-controlling the Grimm to serve it. Meanwhile, the Legion ends up crippling the Super Mutants and eventually turn the Geth to their side.
- Mistaken Identity: Church initially mistakes Pyrrha for Carolina upon meeting her, noting that she looks and sounds just like the ex-Freelancer when realizing his mistake.
- Motivational Lie: In previous cycles, the forces of Order were told that stopping the Masters of Chaos was necessary to ensure the safety of the multiverse. When the Legion meets up with Lileath in the current cycle, she admits that that was a lie, correctly figuring that the heroes would be more inspired to fight if they believed their actions were actually for a purpose beyond the twisted games of gods. Lileath also admits that in this current cycle, the situation has changed, and defeating the Amalgamation is actually necessary to keep the multiverse from being ravaged by it.
- Mythology Gag: Noble Six's fight with the Meta takes elements of the latter's Death Battle with Carolina, most noticeably the part where the Meta freezes time and slashes his opponent with his Brute Shot blade while they can't do anything about it.
- Near-Villain Victory: Thrawn and Kai Leng's ambush at the Temple of Order drains the Goddess of Order and cripples a good chunk of the Legion and ends with them at their mercy. If not for Lileath recovering her strength enough to banish them back to Korriban, the Forces of Chaos would likely have won right then and there.
- No Ontological Inertia: The death of the Amalgamation causes the Final Destination to fade away and each of the surviving members of the Legion to return to their respective afterlives.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Discussed: At one point, Sarah notes that she's been feeling that her experience among the Wasteland doesn't match up to all the other fighters in the Final Destination, feeling out of her depth when dealing with all the threats from multiple universes. Shepard commiserates with her and admits to feeling similarly out of place at times, noting that psychic space wizards wielding laser swords and soulless magic monsters were not the kind of thing she ever expected to deal with.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Mid-way through the final battle, the Grimm Wyvern grabs Rylanor and flies him away, removing both of them from the fight. When they come back, Rylanor is damaged and missing a leg, but is the victorious one as he tears the Wyvern's head apart with his assault cannon.
- Oh, Crap!: Church when he accesses the Geth mainframe and realizes that something else is in there with them.
- Church: The Geth aren't the only thing in here.
- One-Winged Angel: The Amalgamation spends most of its scenes in the form of Darth Nihilus, but it turns into a twisted and mutated abomination during the final battle.
- Patch Work World: Final Destination, the setting for the story, is this. It's made up of parts of Kabul, The Capital Wasteland, Ilos, Reach, Forever Fall Forest, and Korriban.
- The Strategist: Thrawn, as per usual. His presence among the Forces of Chaos is a major reason for their eventual unity, and his plans and operations come perilously close to crippling the Legion on more than one occasion.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The servants of Chaos barely tolerate each other even when joining forcing forces, with only their fear of the Amalgamation keeping them all in line.
- To a lesser extent, Johnson and Church don't exactly hit it off when they first meet, with Johnson quickly getting fed up with Church's abrasive personality.
- Torture Always Works: Discussed by Venom Snake, who acknowledges that this isn't always the case, but in the end it's played straight with his interrogation of Bacara, who ultimately breaks down and reveals everything Snake wanted to know about the Empire.
- Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: The entire fic is basically this.
- Villainous Friendship: Downplayed, but of all the servants of Chaos, most of whom barely tolerate each other, Thrawn and Skull-Face being cordial and respectful to each other is quite noticeable. It even gets to the point where Thrawn puts Skull-Face in charge of ambushing the Legion's HQ instead of doing it himself, thus giving him the honor of wiping out their enemies. While Skull-Face ends up dying in that battle, there's nothing to suggest that Thrawn deliberately planned for that outcome to happen.
