Alternate title: "What happens when Colonel Mustard reads too much Lovecraft."

The Obsidian God

I

I had at one point in my life resolved that I would not speak of the truth behind my ill-fated and somewhat infamous expedition to Taria-07.4. I had vowed that I would spend the rest of my years attributing the demise of my unfortunate colleagues on the expedition to an attack from Batarian corsairs and keep the truth of the matter, however shocking and terrible it may be, from the wider galaxy. However, recent claims made by Commander Shepard following the foiling of Saren Arterius have a most disturbing correlation with what happened on that misguided attempt I once made to understand the history of the galaxy. While Shepard's claims have been met with derision so far, I feel compelled to break a decade's silence in order to add weight to the Commander's testimony, however horrific a reliving of the horrors I witnessed upon Taria-07.4 may be.

There are some who, upon reading the words you see upon the screen before you, will call me mad for what I now recount, yet I assure you that I am not mad; in fact, I am not a woman of great spirituality, yet I have even prayed to the Goddess that what happened to me was a madness of sorts, but always I come to the conclusion that what happened upon that orb was the truth. A terrible truth that destroyed my already weak faith, and lead me to the conclusion that there can be any divine benevolence that would allow the existence of the horror that lurks beyond the galaxy, where the light of stars is nought but a distant memory, but truth nonetheless.

For those of you who are unaware of what is reported to have transpired upon Taria-07.4, I shall provide you with a brief summary of what is reported to have been the official story of my expedition's end, as I am aware that such a report will earn little remark from the galaxy as a whole. During a dig of what we believed at the time to be ruins of Prothean origin, we suffered an assault of most singular viciousness from Batarian pirates. I was the sole survivor of those upon the moon's surface, while Captain Tharrix's ship, the doughty Apien Strider, was badly damaged during the attack by the freebooters' vessel. Both the good Turian and I, along with the remaining crew of the Strider, swore by this account, and Captain Tharrix had his ship repaired before any questions could be asked about the highly unusual damage it had sustained.

It was clear to any who spoke to me in the months following the incident that I had suffered a great shock, one not unreasonably attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder. When I made it clear that I wished to have an early retirement from my career in archaeology and make a general retreat from Thessia's capital, Ayara, no questions were asked as to why. But the truth is far more horrific than a mere corsair attack; it is what has caused me, over the last ten years, to lose entire nights of sleep or to have them consumed by nightmares. It is something that my team and I discovered through simple misfortune, and a promise of a most terrible fate for the entire galaxy, one that will bring the entirety of civilisation as we know it crashing down upon us in a cacophony of fire, bloodshed and death.

The tale of what lead us to the benighted globe of Taria-07.4 began approximately three months before we launched the expedition, and was sparked by the donation of an artefact to University of Ayara's archaeology department. The donor, an Alliance Captain by the name of Daniel Creek, had discovered it whilst in pursuit of a pirate vessel that his ship had damaged some days earlier; in desperation, the corsairs had attempted to go to ground in the barely charted Taria-2045 system, but the good Captain tracked them down to a moon of the system's seventh and most far-flung planet, Taria-07. In the lee of a gas giant that was once a failed star, he and his crew of marines despatched the pirates who chose to fight to the death rather than surrender, and whilst there he found an object of most curious nature half buried in the reddish sand of the moon, one which in his limited archaeological experience he guessed to be of Prothean origin. Unsure of what to make of it, he resolved to convey it to the University of Ayara where it might be better examined, impelled to take it to us thanks to a past acquaintance with one of my colleagues.

The artefact itself was a most curious thing; made from a dark metal of an alloying hitherto unseen, it stood approximately a foot in height, was of a cylindrical shape around its base. Its top split into four quarters that formed a rough petal shape around its top, making a basin of sorts that was topped by a metal of brassy colour. Scans for energy signals or radiation found that it was entirely inert, and it was impossible to ascertain what it was; theories ranged from it being a holographic projector to a mere ornament, each of them equally credible given that we knew so little of its origin and purpose, and we were unwilling to attempt to dismantle it considering its age and value. In no short order, it was decided that an expedition to Taria-07.4 was to be undertaken, and I volunteered to lead it; it had been some time since I had taken part in such an endeavour, and while my desire for a more relaxed position as a tutor had grown with my age and advance into my Matron years, a good measure of my youthful passion for adventure still remained.

In no short order, I had several contacted several old friends and colleagues from various academic establishments across the galaxy who I knew would be interested in such work. Soon enough, I had gathered myself a small cadre of volunteers from relevant fields of academia; Professor Joren Kallos, an expert in geology and excavation hailing from Sur'Kesh, Doctor Kettil Halstein of Elysium, a specialist in archeo-technology and Doctor Ralla T'Korey from my own department in the University of Ayara, one of the finest linguists and translators the university had. I had also hoped to recruit the young Liara T'Soni for our dig, but she declined, citing several promising leads on other Prothean sites in the Artemis Tau cluster; at the time, I was somewhat irritated that I would not be able to have such a brilliant archaeologist accompanying us, but in retrospect I am glad that those other leads spared an intelligent young woman the soul-crushing revelations of the horror beyond magnitude we uncovered upon that moon.

Once I had gathered our small band of academics, we procured the equipment that would be needed for our dig, funded by a generous stipend from the university. We acquired means to cut and bore through rock of various types, along with a decent amount of medium-yield explosives should any blasting become necessary. Along with that, we also managed to get hold of a powerful, heavy-duty scanner usually used in mining operations; such a device would enable us to see through several hundred metres of rock in order to determine whether there was anything of worth beneath. We also managed to purchase a second-hand shuttle that was in good condition and worthy of flight both in and out of atmosphere, in order to convey both equipment and ourselves to and from the moon's surface; both Professor Kallos and myself were qualified to fly such vehicles, and we agreed that where possible we would work separately on any risky endeavours, meaning that if one or the other of us were injured then it would still be possible for us to return to the safety of a ship and seek medical treatment.

Another essential piece of equipment that I obtained were half a dozen rebreather masks along with supplies of air; according to what Captain Creek had said of the moon during his battle with the cornered corsairs, Taria-07.4 had a breathable atmosphere but a lower ratio of oxygen than on more habitable planets such as Thessia. While he and his brave soldiers had done battle with helmets on in order to avoid risking any blackouts due to overexertion in combat, the air was safe to breath provided that one supplemented their respiration with puffs from an oxygen tank every few minutes to avoid faintness.

I managed to obtain permission to bring along the artefact that Captain Creek of the Alliance had donated to the university, on the chance that it might be some kind of dormant technology that we might find useful. The idea was met with a little resistance from my peers, which was unsurprising considering its incalculable value; not only this, but a Doctor T'Ravey was quite insistent on her theory that it was merely an ornamental burner of some kind for oils, and had even gone so far as to fashion a duplicate out of clay. I have it on good authority that the design became quite popular amongst the citizenry of Thessia as a decoration not long after we departed; indeed, I received one made from painted ceramics just a few years ago, but as soon as I could I smashed it. Knowing the awfulness of the design's origin, and the horror that we inadvertently unleashed with the artefact it was modelled from, I could no more bear to keep it in my home than I could think to live with a rabid Varren.

Along with our equipment, we also had need of a ship to convey us to Taria-07.4. After a few enquiries as to whether a private vessel could be chartered, I came into contact with a Captain Tharrix, a Turian who had retired from service in the Hierarchy's Navy to hire out his ship for private ventures. His vessel, the aforementioned Apien Strider, was a now-defunct frigate that had had a good number of its mass-driver batteries removed in favour of more space for passengers and cargo; nevertheless, he assured me that its profile as a military ship alone had been more than enough to deter several would-be attackers, and that his small crew, mostly Turians, were some of the finest sailors in the galaxy. I will admit that I took a great liking to him on our first meeting, and upon making a few checks to make certain that he might not simply take the highly valuable Prothean artefacts we could find for himself, found that he had been honourably discharged after serving the mandatory time in the Hierarchy with no black marks to his name and even a minor decoration for valour; my instincts of his singularly trustworthy nature were, vindicated, and it is thanks to this same vindication that I am able to give this account today. I like to think that I might well have pursued an acquaintance with him that went beyond this one professional meeting after our work had been concluded, were it not the case that things had ended as shockingly as they did. As it is, I believe he did as I did and retired once we returned to civilised space, where we try to fools ourselves into thinking that the horrors that we encountered do not seem to loom quite so colossal.

The Taria-2045 system was situated almost on the opposite side of the galaxy to Thessia, in the Maroon Sea cluster, and our journey time, between relay-hopping and short-ranged FTL jumps, was estimated to be a good seven days. The journey on the Strider was not unpleasant, with the former frigate being retrofitted for greater comfort than a military vessel. Captain Tharrix's crew were of a generally agreeable nature even if the galley's chef, a Turian, was much more used to preparing food for dextro-amino crewmembers and thus the catering was somewhat lacking. Nonetheless, I enjoyed conversing with the crew, who were willing to treat my amateurish interest in the workings of their ship with good humour, and the flirting between Doctor Halstein and Doctor T'Korey made for an entertaining diversion.

Soon enough, we found our way to the Taria system. As far as we knew at the time, we were the fourth group of visitors to that star system, the first being Taria T'Hari, the Asari explorer who mapped it, the second being the pirates Captain Creek had pursued, who were followed shortly by the captain himself. In truth, the system had had a visitation far more terrible than could be imagined in ancient aeons long past, but were blind to such revelations, their nature of such antipathy to our naïve ways of thinking that we could not even give them consideration.

Taria-07.4 was easy to locate; the gas giant was the seventh planet from the system's sun, and finding the fourth of its five moons was a simple task. As soon as the Apien Strider had fallen into a comfortable orbit over the coordinates that Captain Creek had provided as to the locations of his artefact, we prepared our shuttle and set out. The journey from ship to moon was swift, taking only a few minutes with the able hand of Professor Kallos at the controls. Soon enough, the innards of our shuttle shuddered with the shock of impact, and the sense of trepidation and excitement shared between the four of us was palpable. With a hiss of air as the pressure within our shuttle matched that of the air without, the door opened and gave us a view of the surface of Taria-07's moon.

There is, in the mythos of an ancient civilisation of Earth's continent of Europe, a story of a place named Tartarus, a barren, abyssal wasteland of gloom where the souls of the dead depart to. Such a comparison is the only one I feel is adequate to describe the desolation of Taria-07.4, a barren and lifeless wasteland of greyish, sandy rock that stretched before us in such great emptiness that, simply by standing there, one felt utterly insignificant. Several miles away were hillocks of surprising uniformity in their composition, their forms difficult to discern in the gloom that surrounded the planet; the only light came from the weak glow of the planet the moon orbited, the muggy heat in the stale air coming from the failed star and not the planet's sun, hidden as it was by the bulk of Taria-07.4 itself. The brown dwarf loomed upon the moon's horizon like some great, viscera-gorged tyrant, a deep and bloody crimson despite its stellar classification, begrudgingly casting weak, hot light over the world.

Perhaps I was foolish and naïve to think that there could be nothing dangerous lurking within the abyssal depths of Taria-07.4. The truth was far, far worse, than that, and looking back upon the terrible events that would transpire in the next few days of our ill-fated dig, I wish most sincerely that our attempts to search the world for artefacts of value had yielded nothing whatsoever.