Fanfic / Exitium Eternal

Exitium Eternal is a Doom/Mass Effect/Quake crossover fic written by Desvenlafaxine.

Set in a very Alternate Universe, the people of the Citadel make contact with a civilization like no other. The 50,000-year-old, galaxy-spanning, multi-species empire called the Exitium Eternal. A civilization molded by DOOM!

Can also be found on Fanfiction.net and Spacebattles. Original version, entitled Exitium, can also be found on SB.

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Exitium Eternal provides examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Saren Arterius never descended into indoctrination in this universe.
• Ancient Tradition: The early Turian organizations that gave rise to the Spiritus Legatos are noted to have many similarities to how the Exitium functions. Abbess Shepard speculated that early Turian society may have suffered hellish incursions and these organizations formed to combat them.
• Body Horror: Most species of the Exitium, by Citadel standards. The Makron of Tongues' extensive cybernetics are extremely disturbing to the Council.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Exitium and the Citadel have no idea how to relate to each other. Diplomatic relations are cordial, but there is a deep gap between the mindsets of the two cultures. Not helping matters is that the Exitium has been at war longer than their government has existed and thus has no experience with diplomacy.
• Buffy Speak: Saren resorts to this while explaining the Exitium's technology without using the word 'magic'.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Downplayed. The Exitium is very condescending towards the Citadel regarding demons and magic, often completely unintentionally. Saren in particular chafes at being treated like a kid who's never been in a fight when he's the Citadel's best specter. However, the Exitium has no problem deferring to others who are more experienced than themselves, such as admitting that they've been at war for longer than their current government has existed and thus have no experience with diplomacy or peace-time politics.
• Chainsaw Good: The soldiers of the Exitium carry chainsaw-swords.
• Church Militant: The Exitium in a nutshell. The entire military structure is devoted to the Doomslayer.
• Consummate Professional: Saren.
  Saren: Of course I’m calm. It’s my job. Make no mistake, I’ve got no desire to get into a fight with whatever or whoever caused the incident on the Silverthread, but the Council employs me to solve problems, not to be afraid of them.
• Creepy Good: The Exitium is a strange and frightening society by Citadel standards, but considering their enemy is Hell itself...
• Evil Is Visceral: Much like in Doom, Hellish aesthetics and rituals place great emphasis on entrails.
  • The Silverthread is turned into a grotesque art display by the brainwashed crew members, who used their crewmates as materials.
• Eye Scream: The Makron of Tongues is able to remove his cybernetic eye from his face and use it as a projector.
• Fake-Out Opening: The first chapter reads like a Cosmic Horror Story meets Survival Horror. The majority of the story is about a peaceful-if-strange First Contact situation between the Citadel and the Exitium.
• Fictional Document: Occasionally appear to show how the Citadel is handling the First Contact situation beyond the viewpoint characters. Notably, most of Saren's chapters are opened with his current orders from the Council.
• Forever War: The War between the Exitium and the forces of Hell has been ongoing for 50,000 Years. It's been so long that the time before the War has essentially faded into mythology.
• Future Imperfect: The War against Hell has gone on for so long that records of earlier periods, especially ones from before the War, are very few and far between.
• Hegemonic Empire: Due to scepticism of the reality of demons, the Council speculates that the Exitium could be one of these, using the threat of demons to keep their subjects in line.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: The story is told from the Citadel viewpoint.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Saren and Rear Admiral Juturna after a very weird first contact, and explaining the very weird first contact to the disbelieving Council.
• Joke and Receive: Before First Contact, Juturna Atruus comments that the civilization behind Relay 314 has a technological base so different from the Citadels that it might as well be witchcraft.
• Kill It with Fire: The Exitium's recommended course of action for dealing with Mind Virus infectees.
• Large Ham: Lord Protector Alec Ryder of the Exitium, in spades.
• Magic A Is Magic A: The internal consistency of the Exitium's Magitech leads the Citadel races to assume that it is actually some kind of advanced possibly extradimensional technology.
• Magitek: The Exitium's technological base in a nutshell.
• Mercy Kill: Saren gives this to a quarian 'survivor' of the Silverthread incident.
  • Also given after much debate to what remains of Druso.
• Mind Virus: How the demonic influence infects the Silverthread and the team sent to investigate the incident.
• Morton's Fork: Saren notes that the Exitium is either a hegemony of religious zealots who are kept together by a lie that they have fought demons for 50,000 years, or the Exitium, a government with a massive population and incredible resources has been fighting literal demons from hell for 50,000 years and still hasn't won.
• Names to Run From Really Fast: Most of the Exitium, by Citadel standards.
• No Kill like Overkill: How Druso is mercy killed. First, his room is flooded with tranquillizer gas, then Saren shoots him twice in the head, then Saren throws an incendiary charge into the room, and finally, the room itself is ejected from the Citadel and destroyed.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Citadel and the Exitium to each other.
  • The Citadel has to deal with the existence of demons and magic.
  • The Exitium has to deal with a civilization at peace, compared to their 50,000 years of war.
• Paranoia Fuel: Gore nests can be easily built by a determined civilian and hidden in the vast architecture of the Citadel. The Turian Hierarchy specifically mentions this in their First Contact Threat Assessment, and it is later confirmed that the Makron, one of the Exitium's constituent species, was nearly wiped out by a single gore nest.
• Pet the Dog: Saren ignores a few soldiers making bets about the Exitium and even banters with them briefly.
• Person as Verb: For the Spectres, "Pulling a Saren", otherwise known as calling someone to negotiate, then killing them while they’re en-route.
• Primal Fear: Seems to be a common reaction to demonic influence.
  • The gate leading into Exitium territory causes shivers up the Turian patrol's spines. Saren notes that every time he thinks about the gate a tiny voice in the back of his head starts screaming at him to leave it alone.
  • What's left of Druso prompts the same reaction.
• Properly Paranoid: Saren. In spades.
• Sanity Slippage: Suffered by the survivors of the Silverthread. The Exitium confirms that close mental contact with hellish magicks can cause such effects. There is no cure.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Saren abuses his status as Spectre in order to shorten his commute.
• Shout-Out!:
  • Most of the Exitium's prayers reference the nonsensical Doom.
  • Saren is a Spectre, not a crazed gunman.
• Super Soldiers: An entire civilization of them. Word of God for the original was that your average Exitium citizen has gone through so many rounds of magitech cybernetics, runic tattoos on their internal organs, and Argent infusions, that the canon Systems Alliance (who already have some pretty loose standards) would not see them as human. As one commenter put it, they are a civilization of Space Marines.
• Survival Mantra: 'Think, Calculate, Kill" for Saren.
• Token Heroic Orc: The Exitium includes in their membership 'redeemed' demons who fight on their side. Faemoch Egi Xakha, one of the Exitium's ambassadors is a redeemed, as is one of their doctors.
  • Also, of course, the Wretch - the legendary hero to the Exitium, and vilified traitor to the demonic horde. Later, becoming also a kind of messiah, building and detonating a magic bomb that destroyed all demons caught in the blast during one of the Exitiums last stands - turning the Wretch into a martyr, because the bomb did not discriminate between "redeemed" demons and regular demons.
• Translator Microbes: The Exitium has Runes of Cognizance that provide this function.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Saren privately thinks this, both for First Contact in general, and explaining the Exitium to the disbelieving Council.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Alec Ryder and Saren wind up sharing a car on the way to the Citadel.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: Saren undergoes a simulated battle designed to test compatibility with magic and stress responses. Henry Lawson, the examiner, tells him that the simulation is designed to be "impossibly lethal" and that the current record for how long someone has lasted is only eight minutes. Saren himself lasted four minutes and twelve seconds, the last minute and four seconds of which was without his right arm, something that Lawson insists is outright exceptional.
• War God: The Doom Slayer is the central figure of worship in the Exitium, which naturally worries the Council as an advanced society that worships such a violent entity.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Aetna Druso. The real Druso explicitly died when he was infected with the Mind Virus on the Silverthread. Oddly, his brainwashed living corpse is a fixture of several chapters as the Citadel decides what to do with him.
• Why Won't You Die?: The brainwashed crew of the Silverthread continue to get up and fight even when it should be biologically impossible. Saren and his team resort to literally shooting them into paste. And they’re still twitching!
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The Council is horrified that ten million people dying of causes other than accidents and old age in a single day is nearly a record low for the Exalted Exitium. However, at the most conservative estimates, the Exitium contains a quadrillion sentient members. By the current standards of Earth's human population, that's less than one hundred deaths per day.
• Virtuous Character Copy: It's been noted by some readers that the Exitium is essentially a "nicer Imperium of Man." Both groups are theocracies cultivating the worship of a legendary warrior that engage in a Forever War against eldritch terrors — but while the Imperium is prone to internal power struggles stemming from the frequent purge of "heretics" and would shoot first and ask questions later, the Exitium is willing to let "redeemed demons" into its ranks and is quick to peacefully negotiate with other space-faring powers.
• Your Head Asplode: Saren does this to a brainwashed Asari on the Silverthread, only for her headless corpse to get back up and continue attacking.