Sadly, the Mass Effect Premiseverse is a deeply horrifying place on numerous levels. Spoilers off. You've been warned.
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Systems Alliance
- Humans in the Premiseverse are not quite at the top of the food chain. Almost every other race has some kind of advantage over humanity. The High Lords of Sol's response? A project called NOVENSILES, a scheme to introduce those advantages into the human genome. Included in the package are ways to keep the populace under control - for example, adding in the drell's perfect recall and a mechanism for the Commissariat to directly view and alter people's memories. Luckily or unluckily, the project isn't going too well. The first test subject developed sixty-four different teratomas and very quickly died. The High Lords' response was to ask the batarians for assistance. The Eldfells opened a bunch of "free clinics," and the poor souls that visited them either ended up sold into slavery or experimented on to make sure the gene mods worked. Millions of people died or were sold into slavery for this project, and it's still nowhere near completion, which means millions more innocent people could be sacrificed for this Orwellian project.
- Other projects they pursued and abandoned: OSIRIS (the 99%+ conversion that Richard Williams underwent), HERCULES (a human augmentation project using anomalous tech), and ACHILLES (straight up Grey Goo).
- The reason why they considered such insane ideas in the first place? The Commissariat wrote a paper called Ramifications, predicting that if humanity didn't develop some kind of 'stand off' power, they would be sabotaged and subjugated within fifty years, with a mean loss of population of more than 65%. In short, the leaders of the major galactic species were so power-hungry and ruthless that decency would have been suicidal.
- The fact that Victor Manswell was behind Days of Iron. Apparently, Lethath, one of Ascended High Council influenced him for his unknown plans.
Asari Republics
Salarian Union
Turian Hierarchy
Batarian Empire
- Starting at the top, the revolting state of the Empire of Batar can be laid at the feet of one man. A humble mystic stumbled across the Lake of Black one day, noticing that nothing swam in it, nothing flew over it. He decided to find out why, waded into the not-quite-water, and met the Dark Gods face to face. They linked their minds to his, and he was shattered and reassembled into the Emperor we know today. Much of the malice of batarian society comes from the warped dreams of the Dark Gods, but the rest is from the Emperor himself. He was changed by the Dark Gods, yes, but he continues the cruelty and depravity of his empire entirely of his own free will. In a universe where good and evil are shades of grey, the Batarian Emperor is one of the few complete monsters.
- The personal military of the Emperor, the Imperial Guard, are outfitted with strange armor and weapons that far outclass anything in the galaxy (save the hanar) and tend to melt into goo whenever another race tries to analyze them. These are, in fact, biological weapons and armor, and are grown within slaves. Smaller things, like small arms and armor pieces, are grown within slaves, cancerous tumors consuming them and forming into whatever components the Guard needs. Larger things, like ships, are created by shoving slaves into a larger framework and converting them into massive colonies of flesh that are shifted into the correct form. This is what happened, by the way, to the humans sold into slavery by the High Lords: the Lords got gene mod tech for NOVENSILES, and the batarians got an injection, so to speak, of feedstock.
The Migrant Fleet
Krogan Clans
Hanar Ascendancy
- Hanar race is in fact a thrall race of Katha, military leader of Leviathans. He spent thousands of years to influence them into what they are now, and is their true ruler. While hanar as a whole are not malevolent (especially compared to batarians), the subtle, overwhelming control he has over them is chilling.
- One of his plans after defeating Reapers is to build more of them. Imagine all power of mechanical Hive Mind Eldritch Starship race under control of Eldritch Abomination!
The Reapers
- Unlike in canon, Reapers don't harvest only our galaxy, they do it at least to dozens. All to prevent Darkness from destroying galaxies and build up their numbers to banish Darkness to Below.
- This is not their only motivation, however. They became Drunk with Power like Leviathans and overthrew their creator, Catalyst, meaning defeat of Darkness is a secondary objective to them.
- Inusannon and Tho'ian did manage to defeat their Cycle... then Reapers decided to check what has happened and brought reinforcement from several dozen galaxies and finished their harvest. Or so they thought.
Fear Unrelenting, Seen Darkly
This fanfic describes origins of Leviathans, coming of Darkness, and in general explains why this universe is horrific, so there are quite a few moments here.
- The Leviathans. A race of Abusive Precursors who acquired godlike reality-warping powers and conqured the whole universe, then desired to become God (yes, with capital G), and only was stopped because of coming of the Darkness.
- The Darkness itself, which invasion destroyed multiple galaxies, and transformed them into dark matter. All to stop Leviathans from destruction of their reality by way of Godpower.
- The creation of Catalyst and Reapers. Leviathans needed a strategist, who recognized that all it can do is flee, and created Reapers from thrall races and betrayed Levianthans.
- The last chapter. Eezo was seeded as a trap by a mysterious being nicknamed Outsider, whose power eclipses even Darkness'es and Leviathans, and who ate multiple other universes. Both flee PV universe after learning this.
- How does the Outsider get to know which realities to enter? Using eezo for reality warping unravels universes, and creates doors. Even a small usage can do it.
- The end. The Outsider has found the Premiseverse, but can't enter because of the Crucible, which will inevitably fail about 5 thousand years. It's unclear, if the Council of 7 galaxies manage to do something.
Expanded Universe
While OSABC world is already deep in Cosmic Horror Story territory, revealed notes and answers from author make this world so much worse...
- There are multiple crossovers with assortment of Eldritch Abominations of different power, who regularly directly and indirectly cause The End of the World as We Know It on whole universes and realities. Such franchises as Star Control, Doctor Who, Naruto, and many, many others. All of them are interconnected in some way or another, and affect, usually in very bad ways.
- One of the scariest phenomena? The dimensional fatigue. When someone or something alters reality, a wound in all dimensions happens. This slowly unravels existence, creates various paradoxes... and allows all kinds of cosmic horrors to enter. Extreme levels of this phenomena can cause The End of the World as We Know It. On universal scale. And this can be done to ideas...
- What is the name of dimensional fatigue energy? Magic. Which means nearly every use of spells in megaverse slowly cause reality collapse.
- The Humanis United. An alternate reality MegaCorp behind United Nations, whose actions combine the worst excesses of Umbrella, Dark Eldar, Fabius Bile, Imperium of Man and Father. They are responsible for creation of Outsider, enslavement of countless xeno species (and using them as slaves and resources), colonization of multiple planets only to harvest them for fuel, and many, many others.
