The Terrormorph, the apex predator of the Settled Systems. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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- The ultimate fate of Earth: a once habitable planet left so damaged and destroyed by years of tests of flawed prototype Grav-Drives that it slowly died, bit by bit.
- Years worth of tests of flawed prototype Grav-Drives caused damage to Earth's core, destabilizing its magnetosphere. When humanity figured out it was happening, the damage was irreversible, and Earth's magnetic field began to collapse. Humanity had fifty years to escape before the planet became inhospitable. Despite the best efforts of governments to band together under the United Colonies banner and evacuate humanity, they barely scratched the surface, leaving billions of humans—along with virtually all other species—to perish as the atmosphere and water were slowly stripped off Earth by the solar wind.
- If you have a companion active during the UC Vanguard orientation or while walking around what remains of the NASA launch tower late in the main story, they may make a comment about how they can only imagine what it must have been like to be living on Earth during those last few decades, between the sheer magnitude of trying to coordinate an evacuation of an entire planet's population, dealing with the worsening planetary conditions, dying off each day...it goes on.
- The Terrormorphs.
- They combine the worst of the Reapers, the Shivans, and the Xenomorphs. A lifeform dedicated to killing anything in its path with extreme physical power and incredible agility.
- Their origins are unknown.
- They have a psychic aura they can use to turn people against each other or drive them into a panic.
- They can infect and control the minds of nearby wildlife and even humans, using them as their own pawns for who knows what.
- They are found on so many worlds across the Settled Systems, and their native place of origin is completely unknown. They somehow have managed to spread themselves amongst various worlds, threatening both humans and native species alike. What makes Terrormorphs even scarier is that they appear out of nowhere within 70 to 100 years after humans settle on a new world.
- They are so volatile that the United Colonies' Xenowarfare Division during the Colony War wrote them off. You can find the catastrophic events that led to that decision in the form of the "training dungeon" on Kreet done alongside Vasco during the early parts of a New Game.
- The UC Vanguard questline answers some of the questions, such as their likely place of origin and how they spread and appear seemingly out of nowhere, but it is also the questline that puts the most focus on how horrifying the Terrormorphs are, and features what is effectively a terrorist attack using an induced Terrormorph emergence.
- Finally finding out how Terrormorphs spread to human-settled worlds is a major turning point in the fight against them, but it's also a major Oh, Crap! moment for everyone involved, as it turns out they're the adult form of the annoying but otherwise harmless Heatleeches. Y'know, the snake-like pests that infest every spaceship, every spaceport and every single damn human colony in numbers beyond counting. In other words, imagine how the equivalent of ants or worms could mature into Xenomorphs with the psychic powers of Reapers. Armies of Terrormorphs growing unnoticed in every place humans have ever set foot, and even if the authorities managed to clear out the cities, countless leeches will already have escaped into the wilds. Finishing the UC questline does introduce effective countermeasures, mitigating this particular nightmare fuel somewhat, but it may take decades for them to fully take effect, during which Terrormorph attacks will remain a lethal threat. Plus there's always the proven threat of someone with the right knowledge to deliberately mature Heatleeches to Terrormorphs in seconds and use them as deniable bioweapons against unsuspecting settlements.
- You want to know how horrifying Terrormorphs are? Take a look at the "Terror of Londinion". Occurring 20 years prior to the Spacefarer's journey, this event saw a catastrophic Terrormorph outbreak in the titular city, which was one of the largest cities in the Systems, becoming so uncontrollable that the U.C. Government simply bombed the city's spaceport to keep the outbreak from spreading beyond the planet, abandoning the inhabitants to God knows what the Terrormorphs had planned for them. And the worst part? Even before the direct attack on New Atlantis, it's possible to find them in Jemison's wilds. As mercifully rare as they are on the planet, it goes to show that even the most well-developed city in the galaxy has these things potentially right outside their doorstep.
- The late-game quest Entangled starts out strangely - A distress signal leading you to a science facility that claims that they haven't sent out such a signal. As you're walking down a hall to explain yourself, you're suddenly wrenched into an alternate reality of the facility - A poorly lit, dingy imitation, covered in alien biomass and utterly overrun by extremely hostile scorpion-like aliens. This is where you find the one who sent the message - The sole survivor of the alien incursion, who happens to be dead in your original reality. You spend a good portion of the rest of the mission abruptly blinking from one reality to the other, jumping between dealing with the vicious aliens in one world and the security systems in the other. Eventually, you are forced to make a choice - You need to save one of the realities at the expense of the other, with no conclusive answer on what will happen to those in the latter reality. There is a way to save both realities that does make this less nightmarish, but the entire trip you need to take through both settings to reach this point is a frightening and stressful experience.
- The planet Arcturus II has a creature called a Hunting Landshark which is essentially a cross between a Shark and a Grasshopper. Imagine a Shark jumping around trying to eat you while you franctically shoot at it, missing over and over again because it's just that agile.
- Certain high-level planets have aggressive wildlife that is invisible. They'll still be detected by weapon mods, scanners, and Star Sense...but that's only if they don't find you first!
- Several of the derelict ships you come across fit this description.
- When you board The Colander, you come across the remains of a bloodbath. As you make your way through the vessel, you find tablets and computers that spell out what happened: the crew were experimenting on a native creature that they found on a world...and then it escaped its cage. Needless to say, when you finally come across the "Interloper", you find that regardless of your level, the creature will likely be 25 to 50 levels above you, even going above the level cap of 100! Oh, and if you happen to come across and Abandoned Mining Platform after this, you might find some very similar-looking creatures called "Swarmlings" which behaved in a very similar way to the Interloper, except some of them got bigger.
- Another ship you come across is a literal Ghost Ship, and that mission starts when you hail the derelict vessel. The connection immediately breaks and you are treated to bone-chilling laughter...from within your ship. Once you dock, you are then treated to a quick detour into the horror genre as you make your way through the vessel. Even worse one of the data slates you pick up has some disembodied laughter like what you heard when you hailed the ship...but it starts after the recording finishes! Oh, and if you take the slate with you and listen to it again, yeah, still laughs afterward. Hope you remember which system you found that ship in.
