Fanfic / Remnants (General Rage)

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Remnants is the sequel to Guilty Sparks and the third entry in the Halo/Mass Effect crossover series The Wormhole Chronicles by General Rage.

After their harrowing escape from Halo's destruction, Commander Shepard, Master Chief, and the other survivors from the Normandy and the Pillar of Autumn are now lost in space, with only three ships to their name and no certainty of what to do next. Further complicating things is that a non-negligible cadre of Batarian and Kig-Yar deserters are now stuck with them in a tenuous alliance, with very few on either side happy about the situation. Shepard tries to keep the peace amongst the squabbling factions, but it's an uphill battle as everyone has a different idea as to what their ultimate goals should be. But they finally get some direction when a Covenant Assault Carrier happens upon them...

There are two companion stories, The Adventures of the Lucen: The VykurCorp Conspiracy, which covers Dr. Liara T'Soni and her own Ragtag Bunch of Misfits as they try to hinder the titular corporation's collusion with the Covenant, and Buzzard Buccaneer Radio, a collection of transcripts from the titular pirate radio station set up by the Kig-Yar deserters. Tropes for both side stories are at the bottom of the page. The Adventures of the Lucen was finished on February 11, 2024. Remnants itself concluded on March 27, 2025. Buzzard Buccaneer Radio rounded off the effective trilogy by ending on March 28, 2025.

This stories have a sequel: A Monument To All Your Sins.

Remnants provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: Goes even further than the last two stories did. While nominally following the events of Halo: First Strike, it adds on sub-plots about an artifact hunt (expanding the importance of the Forerunner Crystal from the source material by turning it into one of four plot coupons) and a conflict with Kig-Yar pirate leader Snarlbeak, as well as continuing plot threads set up by the previous story.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • The Prometheans appear aboard the Forerunner derelict where the team finds the Amplifier. This is five years before the Master Chief and Cortana encounter them in Halo 4.
  • In a strange way, Pure Flood forms. While Chief and Cortana would canonically meet them in Halo 3, several months from the "present day" which is set during First Strike, which is set between the first and second Halo games, that's only from their perspective. In the place they've been, the Bad Future that they and Shepard were sent to, they have been around for a while.
  • The main characters of Mass Effect: Andromeda show up in the Bad Future to fight against forces of the Reapers and Flood, centuries before they were defrosted in the Andromeda Galaxy.
  • An Enforcer-class Sentinel shows up to fight the Spartans who try to shut down the offsite Forerunner security grid. They would be encountered first in canon in Halo 2.
  • In the Bad Future, Harbinger possesses a Praetorian to attack Shepard and Chief. While Praetorians were seen and fought multiple times in Mass Effect 2 as part of Collector forces, Harbinger possessing the ability to possess them (as well as other non-baseline Collector forces) was something that originated in Mass Effect 3.
  • While they don't make a direct appearance in the story, a group of rogue Banished mercs are working under Zhoc as extra guards for his slaves in return for helping facilitate the planned ransom of a female Sangheili back to her Covenant warlord father and the final chapter has the Prophet of Truth reveal that the Banished proper have begun to get involved in the war after taking notice of the civil unrest occurring in the Covenant as a result of the loss of Halo and the Syndicate's betrayal. In canon, the Banished did not make an official canon appearance until Halo Wars 2, which takes place seven in-game years after the time of this fanfic.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Mind's Eye, the Forerunner AI residing inside of the artifact on New Teteocan, and the perpetrator behind the memory illusion anomaly. Its goal is to use the illusions to merge everyone on the colony into a gestalt intelligence to put organics on equal footing against the Flood, not even caring that its traumatizing and potentially damaging the characters in the process, nor that its past attempts led to the deaths of over a hundred test subjects.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated:
  • The Kig-Yar, and Zek in particular, take a strong fondness to human film and music. They take a special liking to Jaws 1 and Gremlins in particular. Jaws because it calls to mind old sea shanties from their native Eayn, and Gremlins, because they find the titular monsters highly relatable. They also enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean for obvious reasons. However, it turns out that Zek and Retz, at least, strongly dislike Shakespeare's works.
  • Eventually, Boz adds some traditional Quarian and Batarian music in, donated by Varvok's troops and Tali. Both are well received.
  • This trope is deconstructed, though. The reason why the alien music is so popular among the Kig-Yar is because the Covenant brutally suppresses all forms of entertainment that are not about the glorification of the Covenant or the Forerunners... which includes much of the Kig-Yar's pirate culture. This includes traditional pirate songs and sea shanties. They love the alien music because they don't have much culture of their own left.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Action Prologue focuses mainly on a female Kig-Yar tomb raider named Taq, a never-before-seen Original Character, to set up the events of the main story.
• And Then What?: A slowly growing sticking point for many in the Flotilla Alliance is that Zek doesn't really have a plan past getting the Astral Cutlass aside from something along the lines of "run off to a dark corner of space, take over a planet, get a shitload of money and booze, and let all the problems in the galaxy sort themselves out." Even the ever-loyal Retz as the hunt reaches a conclusion and he's forced to confront several truths he tried to turn a blind eye to starts trying to get through to Zek that "maybe" they should be thinking of ways to more properly contribute to the war spanning alternate universes, but Zek keeps deliberately trying to avoid the point. When things go to pot, Zek brought to his emotional low point finally admits that he was too scared to take a stand after all the other times he screwed himself over in the past.
• Apologetic Attacker: Subverted at the "parley" scene at New Teteocan goes awry when the heroes make it clear they're not letting Snarlbeak have the relic or turn the colony into a bunch of slaves. Zhoc "apologizes" that they've made the wrong choice and he'll now have to shed blood to get it, even if that means incinerating the whole colony in the crossfire.
  Zek: You're not fucking sorry for shit.
  Zhoc: *his face morphing from hurt to smug grin* You know Zek... you're right. I'm not. *cue the hologram turning off as plasma mortars fire their payload*
• Becoming the Mask:
  • Retz actually grew to care about Zek, and after a lifetime of working for the Syndicate, turned on them rather than betray his friend.
  • Caleb. After a while with the Colonists, he'd pretty much given up on Cerberus... only for Shepard to show up and all his old feelings to come rushing back. In the end, he performs a Heroic Sacrifice and affirms his loyalty to his new family before he passes.
• Bait-and-Switch: Maisey initially can't believe it when Zek offers to trade Covenant weapons... for sugar.
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • In addition to the Covenant, who, for the moment, lack any sort of of focus character, a third faction enters the fray in the form of a Kig-Yar pirate fleet lead by one of Zek's former business partners, Snarlbeak.
  • Special mention also goes to the "Chronicler", the preserved essence of a Precursor who terrorizes Tali after she inadvertently frees it from a Forerunner artifact it was trapped inside of.
  • The New Teteocan act introduces the Mind's Eye, a possibly rampant Forerunner AI that creates a series of illusions around New Teteocan that forces the characters to revisit difficult moments in their life. And it has no intention of letting them out of it.
  • As of the Minds Eye arc, Cerberus is now in the game, and they've been infiltrating ONI for decades thanks to an error with the Time Crystal.
• Brick Joke: In Chapter 4, after stealing Joker's collection of movies and music, the very first movie Zek and Retz find while browsing is Muppet Treasure Island. Thirty-three chapters and eight real life years later, Zek gets his whole crew to sing A Professional Pirate to persuade Kasumi to take part in his seccession from the Flotilla.
• The Bus Came Back: In Shepard and Chief's trip to the Bad Future, Harbinger possesses a Praetorian, making his first appearance to Shepard since Shepard blew up the Collector Base.
• Call-Back: Boz's first song played on his pirate station is Twisted Sister's song "I Wanna Rock." This is called back twice- the prologue of "Buzzard Buccaneer Radio" has him confirm his desire to run said radio to Retz by proclaiming that "I Wanna Rock," and makes the same announcement when he's broken free of the Mind's Eye.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Snarlbeak compared to Thel 'Vadamee in Guilty Sparks. Both are leaders of their own military factions that are menacing the characters in their respective stories, Thel leading the Fleet of Particular Justice and Snarlbeak his pirate army. However, Thel was a character taken from canon who was a Proud Warrior Race Guy devoted to the Covenant dogma and who never once acted in his own personal interests. He also never directly encountered any of the main characters except for Zek and Varvok. In addition, while powerful, he's also The Dragon to those above him, like the High Council or the Prophets. Snarlbeak, by contrast, is a self-serving pirate warlord who serves no one but himself. He shows open contempt for the Covenant but is willing to get on their good graces for his own benefit. He also has multiple in-person confrontations with multiple members of the cast.
• Crapsack World: After a mishap with the Amplifier, Shepard, the Master Chief, and Cortana were all transported a year and half into the future, where everything has gone to literal hell. After the three of them disappeared, Zek and his crew abandoned the group, who rushed to the Halo Earth to defend it from the Covenant, but without Shepard or the Chief's heroism, the UNSC was utterly curbstomped by an alliance between the Covenant and the Reapers. Shepard's crew attempted to return back to their home universe through the wormhole, but the Covenant and the Reapers followed them back and launched a massive offensive against the galaxy. All of Shepard's companions except for Tali, Miranda, Liara, Wrex, Grunt, and Zaeed were killed in the early stages, and things got worse when the Flood unexpectedly entered the scene. The Quarian Migrant Fleet was wiped out by Flood-controlled Geth, all of the Council homeworlds fell, Tali ended up going insane from both the enormous personal loss and the lingering presence of the Gravemind eroding at her sanity, all of the major space fleets were decimated in an attack against Harbinger, and by the time Shepard and the Chief arrive, Earth is a war torn wasteland caught in the middle of an apocalyptic grudge match between the Flood and the Covenant/Reaper alliance.
• Demoted to Extra: Corporal Locklear was a major supporting character in Halo: First Strike, but since he's not the only surviving ODST in this version of the story, he's only mentioned in a single line listing some of the ODSTs who support McKay.
• Double Agent: Retz is a Syndicate agent and an experienced one, at that, but he's long ago transferred his true loyalties to Zek. The first crack in his armor was after he killed a Kig-Yar target who grew to see him as a son, and the facade completely fell apart when he realized his newest cover with Zek was fast repeating the same story and he couldn't take it. The Syndicate at least suspected he was "too close", which is why the team that assembled to kill Taq didn't keep him in the know and kept full details of the mission from him, but clearly they overestimated just how much of a hold they really had on him since they even kept him in the loop at all.
• The Dragon: Lurz is one to Snarlbeak. He will gleefully kill any who his master says to kill, and he's capable of overpowering Zek in a one-on-one fight. The fact that he's an Ibie'shan, AKA a Jackal from Halo 4/5, and an unusually large and strong one at that, only adds to his menace.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: While Zek starts his final confrontation with Snarlbeak wielding The Astral Cutlass, he's using only the bare minimum of its power because he's fully aware of how badly it will damage his psyche if he uses too much of it. Snarlbeak, being a better trained swordsman, is able to keep him on the backfoot despite the power Zek does dare to use. On the opposite token, when Snarlbeak snatches the Cutlass from Zek, he's far more willing to draw on its powers, and is only stopped from killing Zek due to the latter's Combat Pragmatism giving him an edge over the increasingly unhinged pirate leader.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Demonstrated in how Zek and Snarlbeak treat unggoy in similar circumstances. When an unggoy servant screws up Zek's drink order, he is content to give him a tongue-lashing for his failings and simply dismiss him. When another unggoy servant screws up Snarlbeak's order, Snarlbeak has his right-hand man, Lurz, take him out back and kill him. The latter event freaks out Zek so badly that he starts to second-guess his own Fantastic Racism.
  • Zek invokes this further during his rant about Shakespeare. Upon watching Henry IV, he points out that betrayal is acceptable in Kig-Yar society if it's a spur-of-the-moment decision brought on by a change in circumstances. Starting a working relationship with the intent of betraying someone to begin with, however, is considered exceptionally heinous.
  • Zek is horrified at what he said to Taq while drunk, and knows he just torpedoed any attempt at future reconciliation.
  • The Syndicate as whole is a largely corrupt and zealous criminal entity, but its reigning queens are hugely against Snarlbeak's plan to induct their species privateer status with the Covenant, and are actively working to stop him from acquiring the Astral Cutlass through Zix.
• Evil Counterpart: Snarlbeak/Zhoc to Zek, both of them being Kig-Yar related to greater and more infamous pirate family members (Zek's father Dread Feather and Zhoc's older sister Zvaz) that try to live up to and surpass their dead family through some combination of wanting to prove themselves and yet paradoxically trying to find a reason to live for in the pirate life. The difference is that Zhoc has allowed the journey to completely consume him to the point he'll throw everyone and everything else away to get what he feels he deserves, a path Zek finds himself falling down himself in his quest for the Astral Cutlass. Seeing Dread Feather's last message to Zhoc as well as Zvaz's last message to her brother (both of which detailed their regrets about their lives, how all the infamy and plunder never filled the holes in their hearts, and their hopes for Zek in Dread Feather's case and Zhoc for both of them to be better people) is the final nail alongside his earlier Humble Pie and Break the Haughty that allows Zek to break away from the cycle of legacy and live as his own person as Dread Feather hoped for him. Zhoc meanwhile is in too deep to want to break loose and dies unwilling to let go of the dream he believes Zvaz deserves despite knowing she never wanted this life for him.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Zek, a Kig-Yar, cares little for the unggoy aboard his ship and is quick to chew them out for any failings in their service. To Shepard's dismay, his first mate, Retz, who is otherwise the Only Sane Man in Zek's crew, agrees with him. To be fair, Zek draws the line at brutally murdering them for their screwups, something that Snarlbeak has no qualms about and actually disturbs Zek.
  • The Batarians aren't shy about how they consider humans a blight... but after fighting alongside them and listening to their music, they admit that they aren't as bad as the Covenant.
  • As per the last two stories in the series, plenty of the Halo-universe humans are this towards aliens... although given that the only aliens they've ever met have spent the better part of the last three decades trying to kill them all specifically, it's at least understandable.
• Field Promotion: Lieutenant Haverson and Colonel Holland decide to give McKay a Rank Up to Captain to recognize her status as the leader of the ODSTs and to congratulate her on her success in leading the troops during the battle in the Forerunner cargo ship against the Promethean Crawlers. Haverson notes they can't make it official yet (as he's not allowed to promote someone over his rank and Holland is Army, not Navy), but they are allowed to deputize her through emergency provisions (which falls under their current circumstances quite well). Getting Vice-Admiral Whitcomb to officially recognize it once they pick him up from Reach helps matters of legitimacy as well.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Slowly, very slowly, the Flotilla Alliance begins to work past their Teeth-Clenched Teamwork and Fantastic Racism as they forge bonds in the fires of battle. That's why Zek and his crew attempting to run off is taken so personally (though conversely, it's partially why both sides are able to avoid shooting each other with lethal intent), and why the Jackals realize they've become far more invested in the cause of saving humanity than they ever were to the Covenant to the point they charge in to save the Alliance from Snarlbeak's fleet when almost everyone had written them off.
• Ghost Ship: The multi-group alliance ends up finding and exploring the wreck of a long-crashed Forerunner cargo ship. Unfortunately, it's not quite vacant; it's filled to the brim with hostile Promethean Crawlers.
• G-Rated Drug: Sugar has a much stronger effect on Kig-Yar than humans, to the point where Zek and Retz consider marketing it to further finance their pirate operations. This is later expanded upon- Sugar is a nearly perfect drug for Kig-Yar. It has absolutely no physical side effects to the recipient, other than a brief period of hyperactivity and desire for more sugar. Yes, there is a major crash at the end, but the "drug" is utterly non-toxic and with no ability to screw up the taker (unlike, for example, tar in the lungs of smokers).
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Grunt and Zek get stuck in one over the course of six hours thanks to a mishap with the Amplifier and the Time Crystal. Shout Outs to Groundhog Day abound.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Boz. While he seems like a typical obnoxious Kig-Yar pirate at first, he has a deep love of music of all varieties, is open-minded enough to congratulate the Unggoy he fights alongside, and regularly sends his mother letters about how he's doing and how much he loves her.
  • Ramirez reveals that he's in a relationship with another member of the fleet during the Mind's Eye segment. When the other members of his squad ask him why he didn't tell them, he points out that he was brought in as a replacement for a lost squad member and always felt like an outsider looking in on a pre-established dynamic.
  • Retz is asexual, which a Syndicate member throws at him as an insult by claiming she would at least understand his loyalty to Zek if he wanted to screw him. Kasumi offers him comfort over this.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Tali in the middle of being Mind Raped by a Precursor into getting incredibly aggressive and unstable goes on an angry and envious rant at Miranda that she's always hated her for her looks and other attributes while shouting about how she'll never let her have Shepard. When Tali finally calms down and she and Miranda have a heart-to-heart, Tali admits deep down she really was always afraid Miranda was going to seduce Shepard away from her.
• Horrifying the Horror: Averted. The Inquisitor is fascinated by the Flood and would like a chance to study and potentially control it. Harbinger, present and future, does not share this sentiment.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: How Caleb gets outed- Shepard was already suspicious, but when Wade brings up his actions in the Blitz, Caleb specifically says that it was the Skyllian Blitz, which a) Shepard never mentioned, and b) an colonist not from the same dimension with no knowledge of the Alliance's history should have no idea about. This is because he's an undercover Cerberus Operative.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The true form of the Astral Cutlass is a Cool Sword that slots all four of the Forerunner relics and gives the user their combined power, making them a Physical God in all but name if they can handle the sheer mental strain able to singlehandedly crush armies and space fleets. Even the ever-cynical Snarlbeak admits a part of him really did hope it would actually be a sword, just to indulge in that Kig-Yar pirate spirit.
• It's All About Me: Snarlbeak is very much this. He has been in a position of power for so long that he cannot fathom the idea of not getting what he wants. When he attempts to broker a deal with the colonists in Chapter 27 so that he can get his hands on the Forerunner artifact they have coveted, he is shot down almost immediately, and promptly loses his shit.
• It's Personal:
  • The reason why Maisey and Haverson go at it hammer-and-tongs- Maisey's old colony was very personal for both of them.
  • For Maisey, not only was it her home, but she's trying to protect the truth- that the commandeering of a UNSC cargo hauler left one of those guilty of murder alive. It's her daughter, Asha, who killed the captain for mortally wounding her father.
  • Haverson has one because while working for ONI, as a way to break him to their way of thinking and snap him out of his idealism, his superiors told him that it was now his job to Triage which colonies get protected and which get abandoned. In the end, he chose Maisey's colony as the one to be protected, because of the Forerunner structures on it... and he got slammed for it by his superior, who told him that he didn't save anyone- it just changed the order in which they die. And for the most part, it was All for Nothing up until encountering the colonists again- Maisey's colony was glassed anyway.
  • This is Varvok's reason for joining the Swords, and why he hates Shepard- the Alliance's assault on Torfan killed both of his brothers. Even if they were slavers- which Varvok doesn't think is wrong and rejects insinuations that it is- he just saw it as the death of his two best friends, who took him to Heritage Fields, helped him with his math homework, and were always willing to lend him a sympathetic ear, and whose loss devastated his entire family.
• Master Swordsman: Snarlbeak may be an intentional Non-Action Big Bad thanks to being Afraid of Blood after his sister's death, but before that point he was a skilled swordfighter who even taught Zek's father Dread Feather. Even years on and only forced to put those skills to use again after Lurz is killed, he proves his body and reflexes haven't dulled that much.
• The Mole:
  • The Syndicate thrives on creating these, seeding various loyal agents in Kig-Yar pirate crews, criminal activities, and even the Covenant forces to watch out for potential threats to the Pirate Queens' power whose jobs are to wait in deep cover for decades if need be to fulfill their objectives of ensuring nobody crosses them (or worse, tries to overthrow them). Retz recounts how many of them will build up close relationships with their targets only to stab them in the back when they least expect it. Retz is one of the few that decided he actually valued his friendship over whatever power and wealth the queens could offer him, and he makes it clear from his stories he was as ruthless as any Syndicate agent once upon a time before he had a Heel Realization after one too many jobs.
  • Caleb, among other Cerberus operatives, infiltrated ONI to try to protect humanity and further their own xenophobic goals.
• Mole in Charge:
  • Chapter 27 reveals that Cerberus agents trapped in the Halo universe twenty years prior while investigating a Forerunner artifact joined ONI, as the latter agreed heavily with their views. Given the amount of time that has passed since they arrived, Shepards points out that this means said agents could now be very high ranking and might even be in charge of ONI.
  • For a time, this was true of the crew of the Serpent, until Retz had an attack of morality and confessed that he was a Syndicate Spy to Zek. From that point on, Retz' loyalty to Zek never waivered.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The scene where Haverson is about to execute a Huragok/Engineer is structured to be similar to a Paragon/Renegade Interrupt from Mass Effect, complete with Shepard having to make a split-second decision to stop someone from shooting someone else.
  • The scene where Chief asks Shepard to support his idea of a mission to go to Reach to search for his brothers and sisters is similarly structured to characters asking to go on Loyalty Missions in the second Mass Effect game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Chapter 27 reveals that the aforementioned time loop and subsequent time travel adventure that Shepard's team triggered with the artifact caused a temporary disruption in the timescale discrepancy of the wormhole linking the Mass Effect universe to the Halo universe. This happened at the same time Cerberus sent its agents through it, causing them to be sent back more than twenty years prior to when they planned. That being said, Shepard and his crew are inadvertently responsible for Cerberus infiltrating ONI.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Snarlbeak by choice, not because he can't fight, mind you, but because due to the trauma of his sister's death and the injuries he received avenging her he's now Afraid of Blood. Upon claiming the Astral Cutlass in chapter 50, that is no longer the case.
• The Only Way They Will Learn: Having failed to get Zek to take his concerns about the Astral Cutlass, their fracturing relationship with the flotilla, or taking a real stand against the Covenant seriously (or just getting them ignored), Retz finally decides to go along with his plan to steal the relics and go after the Cutlass because he knows only by letting Zek make this big mistake and letting it explode in his face will he finally be forced to confront his own insecurities and deeper problems. He did his best to try and mitigate things, even repeatedly trying to make Zek replan the whole operation when the ONI-Cerberus cell attacks, but he still did it because he couldn't see any other way to break through Zek's self-crafted excuses.
• OOC Is Serious Business: During the finale of the Time Loop arc, Grunt delivers several insights into the time loop, the nature of the energy, and quantum mechanics. To everyone else, this comes right out of nowhere, but to him, it actually makes sense- because he and Zek are the only ones who can remember the loops, and there wasn't a chance in hell that they could solve the problem without literal years in the loop, Grunt forces himself to learn science enough to aid in the completion of the Loop. From an outside perspective, though, Grunt seemed to go from Proud Warrior Race Guy to spouting technobabble like Spock in the span of six hours.
• Profound by Pop Song: When Zek and his crewmates try to convince Kasumi to help them steal the Relics of Power and escape the flotilla, they try to persuade her by singing a tweaked version of Professional Pirate from Muppet Treasure Island. An annoyed Kasumi points out that it failed to persuade Jim in the film as well, though she goes along with it anyway.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Retz is the son of the Syndicate Pirate Queen Zoth Gorb, a secret not even Taq and Zek knew about since he didn't want them to treat him any differently (and because he didn't want to deal with Zek trying to convince him to act on any pull he still has), which also helps explain his in-depth knowledge and connections in the Syndicate while adding an even deeper personal reason to his falling out with them. Zoth herself is embarrassed and angry enough at his refusal to fall in with Syndicate traditions that she tries to lamely claim she doesn't have a son when he outs it at the major meeting, but she gives up on that quick when she sees no one believes her. Retz notes he's not really a "prince" though, since even the title of Syndicate Queen isn't actually any form of royalty, and he also points out that in matriarchal Kig-Yar society he never would have had a chance to be a Syndicate leader, at most a top-ranked Shipmaster.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The time-displaced Cerberus Operatives now integrated into ONI still have the xenophobic and human-centric cause, but in the decades since the mission went awry their leaders have grown disillusioned with the Illusive Man's methods (particularly the "fuck-up" that was reviving and trying to rope Commander Shepard to the cause) and view themselves as the true champions of humanity, with their plan to bring UNSC resources back to the Mass Effect universe being in part to supplant Cerberus and their former boss in their mission.
• The Reveal:
  • A big one gets dropped in Chapter 27: Cerberus Operatives ended up in the Halo universe twenty years prior to the events of the story while investigating an anomaly in space. Since then, they've been worming their way into ONI, where they thrived due to the Human-Covenant war breeding massive xenophobia toward aliens. They intend to use its resources to defeat their enemies when they get back to the Mass Effect universe.
  • Zek finally finds the Astral Cutlass in Chapter 50, and it turns it its actually a reality warping superweapon created by the Precursors. Specifically, it belonged to the Chronicler, who tried to use it to impose dominion over the Kig-Yar and use them as its personal army in a revenge spree against the Forerunners, which directly influenced the rise of piracy in Kig-Yar society. Zek in particular is rather irked by this revelation.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Showing she's still not over what happened to her on Halo, Tali ends up getting the echo of a Precursor stuck in her head thanks to one of the Forerunner artifacts and the remaining scarring from her Flood spore infection, which slowly starts to drive her insane and against the crews as it manipulates her into helping it while disguising it under her trying to kill it. She's barely able to finally root it out and kill it for real once they convince her that she's being tricked.
  • Snarlbeak was never the picture of mental health, but after getting hit by the Mind's Eye on New Teteocan, reliving the memories of being with his beloved sister, and then having it all ripped away from him, his stability takes a nosedive as he becomes more and more obsessed with getting the relics. The alliance hitting his Central Hub World/The Plunder Nest to put the squeeze to his wallet and Lurz getting killed over the struggle for the last Relic just pushes him further to the breaking point, and by the time he snatches the Astral Cutlass, he dives straight into With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
• Sea Monster: The razorfins. Enormous alien fish-like creatures from the Kig-Yar homeworld that, like sharks, instinctively hunt and kill anything they can go after. Unlike sharks, they have more formidable traits like extra eyes, a retractable jaw, and greater aggression.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Chronicler, the living essence of a Precursor that Tali unwittingly releases from a Forerunner artifact. It proceeds to viciously Mind Rape her, tries to turn her against the crew, and nearly has her reroute the ship to an unknown location. Word of God states that it was attempting to send the cast to Installation 05, where the Gravemind is waiting.
• Shout-Out:
  • Snarlbeak's lieutenant, Lurz, is one letter short of Lurtz, the first of the Uruk Hai from The Lord Of The Rings. Both act as the right hand of their respective leaders.
  • The scene where the ODSTs are being interrogated for who gave grenades to the Syndicate Jackals that were used on Taq is very reminiscent of the similar scene in "The Hidden Enemy". And just in case you had any doubts, Sergeant Lendon is revealed much like one of the clones in that episode to be collecting body-part trophies from the enemy, though his are a bit more macabre given they're body parts of Jackals rather than droids (though like said clone he's innocent of the accused crime).
  • After Taq and Snarlbeak trigger the artifact at New Teteocan, it generates a dome-like field over the colony that induces illusions derived from a person's memories, thoughts, and turmoils to anyone inside of it. This situation is very similar to WandaVision.
  • During their final showdown, Zek goads Lurz into coming at him personally (and luring him into his trap) by taking a page from John Matrix's handbook with how he lured Bennett into a physical fight and throwing away his gun.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Snarlbeak "employs" slaves to work his drug and mining operations on the Central Hub. He mostly uses Grunts or Jackals, since they're easier to corral, and despite or even because of his hatred for Elites (plus their physical superiority to Jackals) he doesn't keep any around save for one female who he's planning to use as a bargaining chip against her Covenant Warlord father. He also keeps human slaves, but they don't work. Instead, he keeps them in good enough condition that he can sell them to the highest bidder (which is surprisingly lucrative as humans are treated like exotic endangered animals by certain non-Covenant groups).
• Spanner in the Works: Haverson receives an activation code for a deep-cover ONI sleeper cell to go into operation while the alliance flotilla is docked at the Insurrection base commanded by Governor Jiles for repairs, but he was never meant to get the code and simply got it because he happened to be an ONI agent close enough to receive it. This plus noticing several oddities in the message (the timing, its unusual aggressiveness, the unconventional Greek mythology reference that isn't standard ONI procedure) causes him to realize the asteroid has been infiltrated by the ONI-Cerberus splinter faction, causing him to raise the alarm to both Shepard and the rest of the flotilla command just as Agent Persys and her inflitrators start the attack, which may have saved Shepard's life from Persys's first shots.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Admiral Whitcomb, Corporal Locklear, Lieutenant Haverson, and the Ascendant Justice didn't survive the events of Halo: First Strike. Here, the three and the Cool Ship both make it through to the other side intact.
• Suddenly Shouting: Having an increasingly short temper, Snarlbeak is prone to this.
• Tempting Fate: The closing conversation between Harbinger and the Inquisitor shows that the latter, after the events at Installation 04, has taken an immense interest in the Flood and their origins, and implies it intends to subject them to indoctrination in an effort to use the parasite as a tool. As we know from the bad future that Shepard and the Chief saw, this is *extremely* unwise.
• There Are No Therapists: During Zek's talk with Chambers, he says that there aren't any among the Kig-yar because it'd be an incredibly obvious scam to steal secrets. Kelly rebukes this attitude, since she has taken an oath to not do... well, exactly that.
• Time Travel: This plays a very large role in the story, thanks to the oddities of the Forerunner artifacts that the characters are hunting for. Multiple categories come up in the story, with chaotic (and sometimes hilarious and/or horrific) results:
  • Zek and Grunt's "Groundhog Day" Loop experience is a mixture of this and Mental Time Travel as they are repeatedly sent back in time seven hours before Tali and Halsey first tamper with the Amplifier.
  • The same Amplifier sends Shepard, the Master Chief, and Cortana ahead one year into an Alternate Timeline where the Covenant and the Reapers "won" the war, only to now be bogged down in an apocalyptic grudge-match with a fully-released Flood, and both the Halo and Mass Effect universes are in ruins. Luckily, they are returned to their own time to set things straight.
    • We find out later that both of the aforementioned incidents triggered a timescale shift in the wormhole right at the moment the Illusive Man sent some of his forces through it. This caused Cerberus to be transported to the Halo universe twenty-three years before the Normandy arrives. Trapped with no way of returning, they took advantage of the situation and infiltrated ONI.
  • The third instance does something weird. After Taq and Snarlbeak tussle over the artifact on New Teteocan, a rampant artificial intelligence living inside of it generates an anomaly around the colony that traps multiple characters in a series of illusions where they revisit key moments in their past. For some, it has them reexploring happier times. For others, they range from Flashback Nightmares to Troubled Backstory Flashbacks.
• Towers of Hanoi: Discussed by some of the tech specialists while trying to solve a Forerunner puzzle. When Tali brings up Shepard having to solve this on Noveria, Halsey grimaces and then explains that when she made the various A.I. she's worked with do it, they all stopped speaking to her for days afterwards. Cortana challenged herself to it once, and got so sick of it that as soon as she finished, she deleted the program from Halsey's computer.
• Villain Cred: Zek's father Dread Feather was a well-respected pirate lord, even by other infamous pirates like Snarlbeak and groups like the Syndicate. What they truly respected about him, however, wasn't his power but his deeper ideals, his dream to bring back the romanticism of Kig-Yar pirate life that he saw as being smothered by not just the Covenant, but the Kig-Yar status quo that became more about preserving a false shadow of what the life was supposed to represent. While they deride him as idealistic fool who let those dreams drive him to self-destruction (something he admits to, but he would rather die for his ideals than continuing on with an empty life that couldn't fill the hole in his heart), they still admire his conviction on some level.
• Visionary Villain:
  • Snarlbeak is one, as he wants the Forerunner relics that possibly lead to the Astral Cutlass of Kig-Yar legend to forcibly tear control from the ruling Pirate Queen clans and name himself the first Pirate King, and dragging the entire Kig-Yar race into privateer status with the Covenant, as he intends to take advantage of the power vacuum he recognizes is quickly forming with the destruction of Halo shaking the Prophets' faith in the Sangheili to put his race on top.
  • Zek is a downplayed and eventually subverted example. He wants to use Sugar, an unknown commodity among Kig-Yar, to start a drug trade and put himself back on top of the Pirate game. However, everyone who looks any deeper points out that Zek's "vision" just revolves around getting money and infamy so he can run off and avoid the galaxy's problems. He has a similar idea about the Astral Cutlass. Zix mockingly points out to Retz this is ultimately why the Syndicate doesn't have any real worries if Zek actually gets the Astral Cutlass compared to if Zhoc gets it or even if his father Dread Feather had. He doesn't have the ideals or ambitions to rock the status quo even with ultimate power in his claws. Zek's character arc is realizing he does have ideals beyond worldly desires, thankfully without any villainous designs.
  • In the Bad Future, Harbinger wants to acquire the Crystal so as to manipulate time and make Harvests more efficient.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • Shepard is faced with an extremely unenviable helping of this. The humans don't trust Zek's pirates or Varvok due to their prior hatred of humans, and for Varvok, the feeling is mutual. Zek has no ill will towards humans, but isn't above leaving out crucial details to further his own hidden agendas, and some of the Jackals are willing to play with tensions if they can profit off the side. Between the humans themselves, the Marines and Army hate the ODSTs due to the latter's mutiny attempt at the end of the previous fic, while many ODSTs (i.e. the ones that were more loyal to Silva) see the rest of the UNSC soldiers and Marines as traitors and sellouts for willingly cooperating with aliens. Most of said ODSTs in turn have a rather frosty relationship with their new CO, Lieutenant McKay, who tried to reason with Major Silva and then sided with the anti-mutiny Marines when he blew her off.
  • Another helping of this happens when the Halo survivors try to get the third Forerunner MacGuffin from a planet inhabited by people who fled the UNSC after the Covenant destroyed their world. Turns out they clashed with and killed a bunch of military personnel and hijacked their cargo transport to do it, and Haverson is legally obligated to take their leadership back to Earth to face prosecution, pushing Shepard's Guile Hero cred to its limits.
  • Things have come to a head come Chapter 46, with the fallout of the mission to recover the final piece of the artifact having driven a huge wedge between Zek's pirates and the humans. Many, even some of Zek's own men, have begun to seriously question his reliability. And Zek himself is not doing much to help curb their concerns.
• Wretched Hive: The Hollow, a hollowed out moon inhabited by all sorts of Kig-Yar pirates, criminals, and similarly disreputable folk.

The Adventures of the Lucen: The VykurCorp Conspiracy and Buzzard Buccaneer Radio provide examples of the following tropes:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Singular is the end result of what remains of the heretical Geth (who allied with Sovereign and slaughtered thousands, if not millions of organics) and a Covenant AI (already in late-stage rampancy and just as dedicated to the mission of killing anything that doesn't follow the Covenant, but especially humanity) merging their damaged programming together into a singular being. There was little hope of it being anything other than an organic-hating AI out to enact mass genocide across the galaxy.
• Bait-and-Switch: Sergeant Major Avery Johnson Junior calls in to Boz's radio show to let him know that he's not happy... that they haven't played the hardest Rock Music yet. He's actually a fan of the show and loves that Jackals are playing music he likes.
• Big Bad: Spadvius Orukuri, the CEO of VykurCorp.
• The Bus Came Back: The heretical Geth return in the form of The Singular, which are the fusion of what remained of the heretical Geth after Shepard destroyed them all that managed to escape the virus and merged with a Covenant AI.
• Call-Back:
  • Remember that Covenant raid on a Salarian lab back in Guilty Sparks mentioned by Major Kirrahe? Well, Liara and company finally get around to finding out just what they stole. It's a biological agent that was originally designed as a pesticide against a special type of invasive insect, but what the creators didn't expect it to do was attack the insect's amino acids. Said amino acids were dextro-based, meaning the salarians inadvertently created a possible bioweapon against turians and quarians that would only target them.
  • Varvok's memory is set in Heritage Fields, where Liara and her crew went on a mission in Guilty Sparks. Varvok happily points out an arcade game he had the high score on, and it's full of anti-human propaganda.
• Call-Forward: Chapter five of Conspiracy has STG analysts examining trends among the Blood Pack, which show Krogan heading back to Tuchanka in great numbers due to Wrex's reforms. They speculate that soon, the highest ranking members will be Vorcha... a scenario you see played out in one of Aria's quests in Mass Effect 3.
• The Cameo: Though Locklear is Demoted to Extra in the main story, he makes a couple of calls to the titular station in Buzzard Buccaneer Radio (being one of the first humans to do so, in fact).
• Colonel Badass: Nel's father, Colonel Tiveriux Hygilius Catonis, admits that he prefers being a scientist with a test tube rather than a soldier with a gun, but he proves he has Nerves of Steel on the battlefield and in the interrogation room and can hold his own in a firefight.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In regards to Liara's story arc from Guilty Sparks, Orukuri is this to Vorsa 'Judamai; while Liara's arc featured many significant villains, Vorsa was the Lucen crew's most recurring enemy and the only one they actually fought in person. While Vorsa was a Fantastically Racist Proud Warrior Race Guy and Blood Knight with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, Orukuri is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who's alliance with the Covenant is largely out of dissatisfaction with the Turian Hierarchy's structure and a urge to avenge the death of his son, making him something of a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: While it's really more of a spin-off, The VykurCorp Conspiracy shifts its focus away from Shepard's crew completely in favor of Liara's, and they are much less organized and more dysfunctional than Shepard's crew since Liara is not quite yet The Leader that Shepard is.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Orukuri is this, albeit a more sympathetic version of the trope. He was a true patriot to the turians but learning the truth about his son's death that the Hierarchy covered up caused him to denounce the current leadership and he now schemes to use his various connections to bring it down in such a way that it strokes turian nationalism and xenophobia to cause the turians to turn against the Galactic Council, genuinely believing he's doing the turians a favor.
• Cultured Badass: In addition to his takedown of the UNSC to Shepard using Starship Troopers as an example just before Snarlbeak attacks, Zek has proven to be a surprisingly adept film critic. Once per chapter, Boz will play a prerecorded segment from Zek about a piece of human media, analyzing it from both a movie-watcher's perspective as well as one from his own species and profession. For example, he rates GoodFellas as being extremely good... but should be taken as a cautionary tale for young Kig-yar.
• False Flag Operation: Orukuri's big plan. On Unification Day in the city of Ciptrine on Palaven, the Colonial Liberation Coalition will pull off a simultaneous assassination of Primarch Fedorian and unleash the S3 biological bomb. At the same time, the CLC will attack the city alongside the Blood Pack, Eclipse Sisters, and human mercenaries pretending to be Cerberus (thus fulfilling the quota of inciting xenophobia alongside terrorism) while wielding Covenant weaponry. When the chaos hits its peak, VykurCorp PMC Forces will step in to restore order and eliminate the CLC and the fake Cerberus while the Blood Pack and Eclipse Sisters leave their "allies" out to dry, plus providing the vaccine for the plague. Then they'll break the news that the S3 strain was stolen by Cerberus from the salarians who developed it as a weapon to kill turians, who in turn gave it to the CLC that joined forces with krogan and asari-led criminal gangs to spread chaos on the most "sacred and hallowed of days". With this, the turians will be swept up in a race-wide flood of nationalism and xenophobia against the old Hierarchy and Galactic Council that made all this possible with their goals of "integration", while VykurCorp is posed as the heroes that will lead the turians to a brighter future of "turians first".
• Gambit Pile Up: By the climax of the fic, multiple agendas are piling against each other and all sides come out guns blazing to get what they came for. The attack on Ciptrine on Unification Day follows the agendas of Liara and company (who want to stop Orukuri's False Flag Operation and prevent the bio-weapon from going off, as well as pin Orukuri for his crimes so they can learn more about the Covenant's top-secret operations), Orukuri representing his corrupt interests in VykurCorp (who wants the False Flag Operation to go through so he can spin up xenophobia and turian nationalism to overthrow the current Hierarchy), the Colonial Liberation Front spearheaded by Hanilex (who wants to make his statement against the Hierarchy and correctly suspects Orukuri is going to hang them out to dry, so he has his own dirt prepared), the actual Cerberus (who want the bio-weapon at all costs and intend to hijack the operation to cause chaos among the turians for their own ends), and the Singular (who just wants the bio-weapon so he can use it against the quarians and kill anyone in his way because he can, with a particular hope he can get Liara and company and especially Vik).
• I Call It "Vera": In-Universe discussed and averted by one of the Kig-yar call-ins to Boz's show. Said caller considers it stupid and immature when people do that... then says that he sleeps with his gun because it keeps him warm at night.
• Idiot Plot: In-Universe. When Zek is reviewing the Friday the Thirteenth series, he admits that there's some that are pretty dumb or have some questionable plot points, though the series is overall enjoyable. However, when he gets to Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, he thinks the plot point of someone eating Jason's heart is so stupid he turns off the movie, believing that there's no saving it after that. He instead turned on The Land Before Time, which he did like.
• Insistent Terminology: When Saya volunteers to infiltrate STG Headquarters on Sur'Kesh, Liara reminds him that what he's doing is functionally treason to the Salarian Union. Through his Omni-Tool, Saya clarifies that it's actually sedition, since the Union isn't at war with the Shadow Broker. ^note Which is specifically a requirement to be considered treason under American Law in real life.
• Irony: As it turns out, the reason Nel's father was so insistent on convincing her not to join the military or turn her off the idea of it was because his father forced him to join, ignoring his desires to be a scientist rather than a soldier because he had to live up to the family's legacy of military service. He believed that he was doing for her what his father wouldn't do for him, giving her a free choice to be whatever she wanted to be, that she didn't have to be a soldier because that's what the family had always been. As he sorrowfully notes looking back now, he really was no different, forcing what he wanted on her rather than letting her be what she wanted to be after all.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Buzzard Buccaneer Radio focuses more on how the ordinary UNSC soldiers, Kig-Yar pirates, and batarians feel about the events involving their small joint fleet.
• MegaCorp: The titular VykurCorp, which is a turian conglomerate whose majority of leadership (which does not include the actual president) has joined up with the Covenant to overthrow the current turian hierarchy.
• Never My Fault: Part of Nel's Character Development carrying over from the previous fic is coming to terms with how, while plenty of people in her life have screwed her over whether intentionally or not, she's not blameless in how her life has gone and she freely admits she has been a selfish bitch many times. During her reconciliation with her father, she tearfully doesn't deny she's played her part in how distant and hostile their relationship has become and wants to be fix things.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Cerberus and the Singular aren't in on the VkyurCorp conspiracy headed by Orukuri, but they see his potent bio-weapon that kills turians and quarians as a nifty little thing to have for their own agendas going forward and want to claim it for themselves.
• Parents as People: Hearing it from Nel, her father Colonel Catonis sounds like a flat-out Abusive Parent, but when he finally has a chance to explain his side of the story it's shown, while certainly not perfect and freely admitting he was a much shittier father than she deserved, he genuinely loves her and never wanted to hurt her, but his own baggage regarding his familial issues, his work life, and his personality meant he couldn't show her how he truly felt and he does want to be better for her and mend the rift between them.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • As it turns out, Nel's father has a bad case of this, unable to get across his actual feelings for Nel due to his own issues and how broken their relationship has gotten. One of the most noticeable points is when Nel recounts how he never showed up to her court-martial, which she believes is because he was ashamed of her and allowed her to get thrown out of the service with a dishonorable discharge. As it turns out, he didn't show up because his colleagues in the War Spirit Blood program wanted him to testify against her and throw her under the bus so the program could go forward, which he refused to do.
  • One of Zek's stated goals in setting up the Radio station is to prevent this- if the humans, Kig-Yar, Batarians, and more have things they can relate to, or at least understand, about Kig-Yar culture, they might be more willing to work together in the future. Surprisingly, it seems to be working- at least one Batarian called in to say that the Humans might be a Blight, but he'd still fight with them against the Covenant, and more than one Human (who the Jackals have been helping to exterminate for years) has called in to tell them that these aliens, at least, aren't so bad.
• Pragmatic Villainy: This is basically how Haverson and Mordin describe Kig-Yar attitudes towards violence. They like violence, that much is true, but it's because they're a naturally competitive species, and there actually needs to be a purpose for the violence. They aren't savagely cruel like the Brutes or obsessed with honor as a reason to fight, like the Elites. Zek and Retz espoused this view personally on viewing Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, deriding both as incredibly stupid for not having a reason for the bloodshed.
• Shout-Out: Saya's infiltration of STG headquarters is reminiscent of the Splinter Cell games.
• Spotting the Thread: Liara and the team receive a transmission from an unknown source concerning a Covenant ship carrying armaments for the Hegemony and CLC terrorists. They board the ship in question and realize the sender was a heavily-damaged Geth forcibly hooked up to the systems that asks to be freed. Vik is instantly suspicious of it, and while Liara shares his concerns learning about Legion makes her willing to give it a chance, especially when it offers to help them further. When she frees it, everything looks fine and dandy and the Geth even thanks her...and then Liara realizes what it just said.
  Liara: Repeat what you just said.
  Geth: (in monotone) We said we are free.
  Liara: No, you said 'I am free', you referred to yourself as an individual. I have it on good authority Geth don't see themselves like that.
  Geth: (drops the montone and takes up a harsh robotic accent) I really wished you hadn't noticed that.
• Villain Has a Point: Hanilex and Orukuri bring up very decent points in their Freudian Excuses for why they've allied with the Separatists with the former dealing with the stigma of being a Turian biotic and having his whole life be a lie due to his father using his money and connections to hide this, while the latter has to deal with how the government lied about the circumstances under which his son died (he died protecting a human colony in the Terminus as part of a joint-Species Taskforce by the Council, and the matter was kept hush-hush since the Council isn't technically allowed to operate there) because they knew there would be backlash. Nel, her father, even Liara all note the Hierarchy has problems with how it runs and it's not blameless or flawless. However, it all comes back to how bombing civilians isn't the right way to force change and make things "right".
• War Is Hell: Something that Nel's father believed and tried to force into her head as a child to discourage her from joining the service. It didn't quite take, both because she genuinely loved the adrenaline of combat and because she wanted to spite him.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Joker calls in twice, both times to do this. The first is because the music they're using is basically all stolen- from him, specifically. The second time is because while Joker has a wide variety of music, all the Jackals are doing is playing Rock, as opposed to the wide variety he had in his playlist. He even offers up more stuff from his private collection if they shake it up a little.
  • Sergeant Johnson does this to Boz as well, but its Played for Laughs in that he wants harder music than the stuff that Boz has been playing so far.
• You No Take Candle: Zapap, the temporary host of Buccaneer Radio while Boz is on the ground, talks like this, as do most Unggoy.