Nightmare Fuel / Mass Effect: Andromeda

Figures. The monsters in Andromeda are just as bad as the monsters back home.

— Drack

New galaxy. New hopes. New wonders. New bowel-clenching terrors.

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• The Scourge. A massive cloud of dark energy that destroys everything it touches. No one knows where it came from, everyone who studies it says it contravenes known science, and it is everywhere in the Heleus Cluster. Finding out its origins makes it even worse. The Scourge is a weapon of mass destruction created to fight the jardaan centuries ago, and now it's essentially an interstellar minefield. Who the hell created this thing, and what happened to them?
  • It gets even worse. At some point, you'll wind up at the Remav system, the location of Habitat 5 and the ideal turian homeworld, the only dextro planet the Intiative knew about before leaving. The Scourge SMASHED IT INTO PIECES. Not even the REAPERS had the power to shatter a planet to bits. And it is implied that Habitat 5 isn't the only world this has happened to; all those asteroid fields found throughout the cluster are much thicker than they should be, and there is a conspicuous lack of dwarf planets that would be expected to be present in a naturally occurring asteroid belt.
  • About the Scourge's creators. The Codex raises an alarming suggestion: It might not have been an alien attack, but the work of some other Jaardan.
  • Another alarming thing that's raised by Cora: If the Scourge is a weapon, what the hell was going on where something like that was actually considered a viable option?
• The kett, once you realize just exactly what they are. All kett are victims of one of two things. First, a bizarre cult that views every other form of sapient life as animals in comparison to themselves (Even going so far as to refer individuals that are non-kett as "it"). Second, a species-wide enforced mutation that relies on brainwashing and racism and has become ritualized and worshiped. In a very twisted way, they seek to "help" these "lesser beings" by applying their LEGO Genetics to any race the kett encounter, turning them into more kett. These new kett retain their mind and memories of their lives as their previous species, but they are so fanatically devoted to the kett empire they don't care. As numerous characters, especially Jaal, will tell you, the kett aren't just slavers or conquerors. They take everything that you are, break you down into nothing, corrupt everything you believe in, and you don't care about any of it in the end. The kett are pure evil, even if they don't recognize it.
  • What is worse is that the kett most likely can't reproduce, sexually or asexually. Converting other life forms into kett is the only way they can propagate their species. This means that once they've turned all life in a particular sector into kett, they can't just settle down there - they must then move on somewhere else to find life to convert, to replace kett that probably naturally die. Like locusts, they must devour an area, then move on. They have no other choice. So, you can't negotiate with them, you can't reason with them, you can't coexist with them - once they come for you, it truly is "kill, be killed or be converted."
    • An email from Lexi late in the game confirms that the kett do NOT have reproductive organs of any kind. Worse is to come: in a datapad from the Moshae, it's explicitly pointed out that the kett's obvious expertise in genetic manipulation means they are more than capable of simply using cloning as a reproduction method. They chose this. These master genetic engineers deliberately castrated themselves on a species-wide scale and then chose to turn themselves into a galactic virus by embracing exaltation.
    • Adding to the horror, an audio log of the Primus found in one quest suggests the kett didn't choose exaltation, but were initially forced into it somehow. And then, like the Cybermen, decided everyone else deserved a ride on the exaltation train, whether they wanted it or not. Worse is to come: the kett Primus said "Exaltation lifted (the kett) out of tribulation and sorrow." What were the kett going through that was so terrible it made them think Exaltation was a good choice?
• Ryder themself is a truly terrifying enemy to go up against, if you are a kett or outlaw. Imagine if this person you are fighting seems to be just a regular soldier, and then wait, where did they go? Did this soldier just cloak? Oh, Crap! are we fighting an infiltrator here? Quick, find cover!! Don't let them snipe you. So you scramble behind a rock, where there is only one place to snipe at you. You prepare for the eventual decloaking, but then wait!! Did they just flash step charge and nova my buddies there? Oh, Crap!, were we wrong? Is Ryder a vanguard? Okay, focus fire, focus fire now!! But hey, they cloaked again. Ryder has to decloaking somewhere right? But wait, where did that turret come from? Crap, it's setting us on fire!! And Oh, Crap!, it's one of those Remnant observer hovering drones. And it's firing missiles at us. Goddamn, Ryder is an engineer too? And whoaa something just lifted me off my feet and is spinning me around. Is that a biotic singularity? Is Ryder an adept too? Oh, Crap!, here comes a shockwave. BOOM!! That is what these interchangeable profiles can do to a person, and woe betide you if you have to fight someone with that capability.
  • Some people probably signed up for the Initiative to get away from Shepard. Only now there's someone even deadlier than them!
• On Kadara, there is a sidequest that requires searching for a woman who had been exiled to the Badlands by mistake. As the quest progresses, you learn that the woman was taken in by a particularly unpleasant outlaw gang. But then, when you reach their base you find the inside of the building splattered with blood, and recently-used kitchen utensils out in the open. Upon scanning, SAM reveals the horrifying truth of this outlaw gang: they're cannibals, and the missing woman was going to be their next meal.
  • The missing woman is found in a cell physically unharmed, but one has to wonder what horrors she was forced to witness as their captive.
• What happens to the salarian ark. Imagine it: You go into stasis, expecting to wake up on a new world to explore. Instead, you wake up strapped to a table, with either scientists picking you to pieces to see what happens, or their leader screaming in your face about something you don't know about. That was the fate for too many on that ship.
  • The worst part about it? The ark's leaders sold out their own people to try and learn about exaltation.
  • Another horrifying part: You can actually see a pair of kett scientists experimenting on one salarian. If you get their attention, one just strolls over to a console and darkens the screen. There's nothing that can be done to save them. If Jaal's there, he'll scream in anger, and it's not hard to blame him...
  • Scanning the salarians reveals what the kett were doing to them. The salarians were being dissected while they were still alive! After discovering this, everyone on Ryder's squad goes ballistic.
• The fate of the Leusinia, the asari ark. Where the Hyperion just ran into the Scourge, the Leusinia ran into the kett right on day one. They loose their Pathfinder in their first and only attempt at negotiations, they try running, and these aliens send a group of elite hunter after them, who keep attacking, over and over and over again. No attempt to throw them off works, and by the time Cora learns where they are, the Leusinia is beaten all to hell. Pretty much all the command crew is gone, either dead or evacuated, the ship is creepily underlit, and worse... the kett are still on board.
  • The situation for the asari ark is bad enough as is, but it gets worse when you explore the crew quarters: There were children on board. Children who either haven't been told what's going, or are just too young to even understand.
    Child's scribbling: Mommy says I have to be brave agan. I don't want to be brave, i want to be a farmar (sic)
    • Just after finding out there were children out and about during the kett attacks, Ryder runs into some wraiths. Cora says what everyone's probably thinking.
    Cora: Really hope those things didn't get on this ship until after the children evacuated.
• Life as the pathfinder for the quarian ark must be pure nightmare fuel. Think about it, you are a quarian and your experience with AI is the geth, as far as you are concerned AI needs to be destroyed or extremely controled. Now as a Pathfinder you have an AI in your head, and if the AI dies, you die. Plus to top it all off, more then likely the rest of the ark isn't aware, and if they find out, will probably kill you on sight.
  • Mitigated by the fact that there are sympathizers who realize that the Quarians overreacted and the Geth just wanted to survive. If a Quarian is going on this journey with AI, they probably fall in that camp.
• The message from the quarian ark is scrambled, with them refusing to give their location and telling anyone who receives it to stay the hell away. Given that even with their Delicate and Sickly status, quarians are still scrappers... what the hell did they run into that's scared them so badly?
  • Promotional materials for the tie in novel Mass Effect: Annihilation reveal what exactly has them spooked - a deadly infection that afflicts multiple species and has already killed quite a few drell in cryo.
• While you explore the two abandoned outposts on Eos, Ryder comes across a secret project being researched on the second outpost. Once they're there, they come across a shack that's been locked. Not a standard lock, either; one that was forced into place when outpost power was deactivated. Once you access a terminal inside, you get this:
  SAM: Pathfinder, a maintenance bulletin was issued at the time of shutdown.
  Ryder: What does it say?
  SAM: (audibly fearful) Run.
  • Then the shack opens, revealing a fiend. And then the kett arrive. Not a good day for Ryder.
• While on the Archon's ship, after escaping the labs, you start hearing horrific screaming coming from somewhere. And then you stumble on a wraith feeding on an escaped salarian it found.
• Jien Garson's fate is all kinds of unsettling, murdered by someone in an then-unfinished section of the Nexus. And this person, whoever they are? You don't find out who it was or what happened to them. They may well still be on the Nexus, or on one of the colonies, doing goodness knows what...
  • And for an added point, just imagine what Garson had to go through just before she died. Sneaking through a completely dead and powered-down giant space-station, with almost everyone still in cryo and nobody around to help. Hiding behind fake walls, jumping at every odd noise that could mean someone just came to end you and you probably won't even see it coming. Every unsettling feeling you had while going through the darkened and ruined corridors of Leusinia, Paarchero or Natanus? Well, now try and imagine having no weapons, no squadmates, no SAM, with something actively hunting you there.
  • Making it worse is the coroner's report: Garson's body was burnt. They could've just made it look like she asphyxiated or was killed by an accident, but apparently that wasn't enough.
• If the player leaves the mission "Dissention in the Ranks" till last (or deliberately passes it over), then investigating it after defeating the Archon has it play out differently. On arrival at the source of the Primus' transmission, Ryder finds no kett. None living at any rate. Several kett, including several Ascendents have been executed and left there. Investigating the base finds messages from the Primus detailing how she's going to deal with all the Archon's loyalists, and with him gone, she's able to call for back-up. Uh-oh...
• Wandering near Site 2 if Peebee is in the party will have her comment on the kett attack. She mentions that while she was out exploring the Remnant sites, she'd still see the lights from Site 1 and Site 2. Then one night, the lights just... went out.
  • Exploring around Site 1 has audio recordings from the settlers, who occasionally caught glimpses of the kett, who'd disappear before they could get a good look. Not a good combination with people who were already on edge to begin with.
• The Roekaar. Think Cerberus, only without people like Jacob or Miranda, without the Illusive Man's charm and persuasiveness, or even the pretense of doing what they do for the betterment of their species. They're just driven by complete psychopathic hatred of any and all aliens. Hatred so extreme they're totally willing to poison entire planets just to get rid of the Milky Way species.
  • The mission "Contagion" is already alarming enough, a woman managed to get past all the Initiative's medical screenings with a disease that can spread across multiple species, and drives whoever it's infected with into paranoid frenzies. Then she's caught by the Roekaar, who plan to weaponize the virus. Notes found in their lair have them describe the poor woman as a "weapon", who tries to "self-destruct". Ryder will even point out to the guy leading them he's talking exactly like a kett.
  • The Zoe Kennedy mission has a bunch of them trying to kill a pregnant woman, simply as a message to the Initiative.
  • Their hatred is so extreme that Akksul had to step in and tell them not to kill Jaal or Paran Shie just for talking to Ryder. And as shown by one mission on Kadara, this isn't enough to stop some of them. Merely talking to any of the Initiative species can put an angara in their crosshairs.
• The mission "Firefighters" has a moment that adds a horrific bit of detail to a certain storyline from Mass Effect 2: David Archer wasn't the first person Cerberus tried to use for Project: Overlord.
• The Initiative's "Benefactor". Whoever they are, they knew enough to have found evidence of the galactic extinction cycle years before Shepard gave it the name "Reaper", and rich enough to help bankroll the Initiative after Jien's funds ran out. They communicate only via some kind of digital construct that cycles through six different faces, all while speaking with the same voice. The sheer level of secrecy around their nature, goals and resources is unsettling.
• An alarming possibility is raised in an email post-game: Two Initiative scientists are wondering about the implication of the angaran reincarnation, and whether it means they could receive information. Like commands, or instructions. Whether they could serve as sleeper agents... can't blame them for immediately stopping right there.
• It's only sheer dumb luck that Dr. Zoe Jean Kennedy didn't get herself, her child, and everyone she associates with killed or worse. Leaving aside her decision to have a baby in an environment where most people who made the trip to Andromeda are still in cryo because there's not enough food to feed them, is dependent on stealing from a station she deliberately left because she didn't want to wait for better conditions even as the Nexus was experiencing an open mutiny, and entering an unknown, alien environment with no way to support herself in any capacity should her ability to steal from the Nexus be cut off. Even if she hadn't been killed by the Roekarr:
  • She knew what the Nexus Exiles were like. As the only human woman proven to be off the birth control and capable of pregnancy, there's a decent chance she'd have been enslaved as a brood mare, and/or forced to use her medical knowledge to enslave women less able to protect themselves as broodmares for the human populace.
  • If she'd been found by the kett, she would have been subjected to experiments. If she were really unlucky, she'd still be pregnant, and there's no reason to expect the kett would treat her any differently than the nazi scientists who performed vivisections on pregnant Jewish women.
  • There's element zero in Andromeda, in significant quantities which could have caused horrible birth defects if she were unknowingly exposed.
  • There's no way of knowing at that point, similar to element zero, if simply being around the scourge or other previously unknown elements could cause in-utero side effects.