Mass Effect: Andromeda/Nightmare Fuel

While it may be Lighter and Softer than the original trilogy, Mass Effect:Andromeda is not without its terrors.

• 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.
    • Actually, the Reapers did. When the Alpha relay is detonated in the Bahak system, it exploded with comparable power to a supernova and destroyed the system - star, planets and all. Given that the Reapers built the Mass relays, it's feasible that they could make supernova-level bombs if they wanted, they just chose not to. Fortunately, the Reapers were interested in harvesting, not total genocide. But that means the Jaardan are at least as powerful as the Reapers and will use bigger guns.
  • 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.

• 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, as an email from Lexi following a kett autopsy reveals they have no reproductive organs. 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. The story goes for the angle where 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." A datapad from the Moshae explicitly pointed out that with the kett's obvious expertise in genetic manipulation means they are more than capable of simply using cloning as a reproduction method. But 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.
  • An audio log of the Primus found in the "Dissension in the Ranks" mission suggests a tragic element to the kett themselves aside from those who are subjected to Exalation. The quote states "(Exaltation) lifted (the kett) out of tribulation and sorrow." This opens up two scenarios, the first begs the question "What were the kett going through that was so horrible, Exaltation seemed like a good idea?" The second would indicate that they didn't choose Exaltation but that it was forced on them; and then, like the Cybermen, decided everyone else better get on board the exaltation train or die, whether they wanted to or not.

• What happened 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 kett didn't stumble across them or hunt them down. 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 and vivisected with nothing to dull the pain! After discovering this, everyone on Ryder's squad goes ballistic.