Damn anti-necro policy. Tried to post this in Other Fandoms Plot Bunny thread, but got the "thread too old, fuck off" message. Anyway, back on topic.

The idea: AU. The Krogan Rebellions were a chaotic time. With billions of Krogan scattered across the galaxy, the full effects of the genophage were not instantaneous. One minor warlord had the forsight to attempt to save his race from the slow genocide the Turians had unleashed.

Cobbling together a fleet of freighters, colony ships, and outdated warships, he set off, packing his refugee fleet to the gills with as many uninfected Krogan as he could find. The plan? Find a world to start anew, rebuilding the crumbling Krogan Empire for a second push to conquer the galaxy and avenge those stricken by the genophage. Where it went wrong? After years of "island-hopping" from system to system, avoiding the Mass Relay network for fear of discovery, one final jump to a system with a possibly habitable world is too long, forcing them to drop to STL speeds before the static buildup from their Element Zero cores reaches fatal levels.

Finishing the journey at relativistic speeds, centuries pass in the outside galaxy while the krogan fleet trundles forth to their newest conquest. Finally, their destination is reached, and the increasingly agitated Krogan refugees rejoice at the discovery of a genuine garden world. At least until they realize it's already inhabited. Undaunted, the last genophage-less krogan army in the galaxy prepares to take their new home by force.

The Planet? Earth. The Year? 1977.

Humanity's strength, ingenuity, and resolve are put to the ultimate test as they face the wrath of the Krogan horde. The brightest human minds struggle to unravel the mysteries of the invaders' technology in a race against the clock as cities are sacked, civilians exterminated, and soldiers die by the millions in an increasingly desperate attempt to halt the alien onslaught.

Edit: As for characters, I've considered using young Marine lieutenant Paul Shepard (ancestor of Commander Shepard) and the ambitious Soviet Commissar Yaroslev Udina (yep, ancestor of THAT Udina) as the main characters in the overarching plot. Nods to other ME characters are a must, of course, but those two would be the big ones, with one or the other eventually taking the reigns of leadership over humanity as the war drags on.

 

Humanity's going to eat the fucking curb. The only reason the Krogan didn't dominate all the council races was the genophage. An ungenophaged Krogan army vs a pre-first contact Earth would just end with humanity's colon full of Krogan dick.

 

Even when a species is at the same technological level as Genophageless Krogan, there's nothing that can stop them.

They give birth in massive clutches, are impossible to paralyze, and have multiple copies of almost every organ.

Humanity wouldn't have won against the Turians, and the Turians wouldn't have won against the Krogan. And the first Turian example was at a point where humanity could use relays.

 

And had spent quite a bit of time and effort reverse-engineering everything they found at a Prothean laboratory on Mars.

 

Wasn't it stated in the game that the reason the Krogans were genophaged was because they were so violent that they were a threat to the entire galaxy, including themselves? And when the Salarians first gave them nuclear technology the immediately turned Tuchanka into a smoking wasteland? Not to mention that these guys are so focused on killing that they are killing themselves off faster than any other race can kill them?

Oh yes, humanity is so boned. Except, I cannot imagine the Krogans lasting for hundreds of years in an enclosed area like that. They couldn't share an entire galaxy, why would they be able to share a fleet? I guess its possible to say that massive overpopulation might counter the numerous clan wars, but its still pretty iffy.

But on the other hand, this fanfiction. It doesn't have to be perfectly logical, and watching the humans get totally owned by a badass Krogan army would be awesome.

 

No, they were genophaged because they posed a threat to everything else. The council had two choices: Destroy them before they could prepare for war, or cripple them genetically. They had the third, unmentioned choice of dying when the Krogan wiped them out, because they didn't stand a chance.

They already had nukes when the Salarians found them, and were dying off because they'd already had a nuclear war.

Yes, they were killing themselves off quickly, but that was post-genophage, when they believed that their species was fucked either way.

Lrn2research.

 

If they were a threat to life in the galaxy is subjective - I say that they were warmongering enough to kill all but the most resilient planets. You say otherwise. Kind of subjective.

Either way, they immediately obliterated themselves as soon as they could.

The Krogans always warred against themselves more than anyone else, it only became an extinction issue after the genophage, when there were limited numbers. Like on an enclosed fleet.

Basically my point is that Krogans are violent motherfuckers who will not hesitate to kill their own kind. Not what you want on a thousand year journey on a ship.

 

@rinsimyaldee: They also respect strength. If this Battlemaster was a good enough leader, he might be able to keep them in line.

On the story...

That. Humanity wouldn't stand a chance at all with 1977 level tech. We wouldn't stand a chance with today's tech. Maybe if it were in the future, but still before we discovered the Prothean tech on Mars it might be a little more believable. Or somehow the humans are given some kind of tech boost that would give them an edge, I don't know.

EDIT: Thought just occurred to me. What if another race intervened somehow and helped them fight back the Krogan? Say, the Quarians? I couldn't see any of the Council-affiliated races intervening, and the Quarians are the only ones with even a modicum of power besides the Batarians, who'd probably just come in and enslave everyone the Krogan didn't kill.

Though there is the issue of Sol's mass relay being frozen and inaccessible, so they'd have to get in with FTL drives... and you'd have to find some reason for anyone even knowing about this invasion in the first place.

... Just a thought. >_>

 

Quick thought maybe the Quarians and the Krogans get to earth around the same time. Both of them looking for a new planet to inhabit. They war with humans caught in the middle or helping the Quarians. Then the war eventually gets back to the council races.

 

Hmm, all good thoughts, and yes, I have considered how unlikely it is that humanity would win in that scenario. However, when I say "as many uninfected krogan as he could find", keep in mind that these figures are not very high. Maybe 10,000 males and a couple hundred females (the numbers would have to be small, in order to spread out as much as possible through the fleet to avoid civil war) up against a civilization of ~4 billion that, while primitive, is mobilized for a global war.

Plus, think of the Krogan technology level. If, in the modern day, kinetic barriers and even advanced armor are a rarity outside Citadel Space, how rare were they more than a millenium before? They have no medi-gel, because that was invented by a human corporation. Omni-tools would be in their infancy, and likely every bit as rare as kinetic barriers. The krogan would have next to no vehicle support until they established a manufacturing base on Earth (with the notable exception of a couple of rickety old frigates and an aerospace figher sqaudron or two).

The idea is that humanity's numerical advantage will last long enough for the tech gap to close some. In fact, I picked 1977 to give the krogan a chance at winning. I figured of all the presidents the U.S. has had in the 20th century, Jimmy Carter is the one least likely to react to an alien foothold situation on U.S. soil with an instant, overwhelming nuclear barrage. The Soviets, on the other hand, probably would, so they would do better in the first years of the conflict.

After a few years, the first wave of adolescent krogan would hit, and the war would begin in earnest.

 

Well, I thought that it might be plausible for the Quarians to be in the Arcturus system, or somewhere near Earth, and that they might pick up Krogan communications chatter and be alerted to a hidden fleet of unaltered Krogan.

Meh, I'm probably just vomiting out stupid crap. Ignore me. -_-

 

You guys don't get it. There is nothing in council space that can win in a straight-up fight with the Krogan. This is the species that were introduced late into a war against a hive insect species and fucking OUTBRED them. There's no way for any messages or survivors to reach council space at sublight speeds before the Krogan utterly wipe out humanity.

darklordcuddles: Quarians don't do sublight travel because it would take a generation just to get to the nearest star. They stick to the relays. Everyone does.

 

This is what I was trying to say before. It had been said multiple times in canon.

The Rachni were the greatest threat the council ever faced, and if that queen that Shepard did or did not save had wanted revenge, very little could have stopped it, despite millennia old tech levels.

...and The Krogan fucking destroyed them.

Maybe the Turians/Asari/Quarians/Salarians would be disadvantaged by millennia old tech, but The Krogan are walking biological warfare. In real life, how many shots in a conventional firefight are headshots? because those are what it takes to kill a Krogan. They have two hearts, four lungs, and are impossible to paralyze. They have three fucking spines. A single Krogan woman can give birth to a thousand children. The majority of their body is knife-resistant.

Even if the Krogan were using the same technology as 1977 Earth, they'd still win.

 

And they have a massive bone ridge right over their heads that would make even that difficult. Unless maybe you have an anti-tank rifle or something.

Just saying.

Okay, wait a moment. I have the Krogan page on the ME wiki open and it's not saying that. Only that 1/1000 births (not from one Krogan -- at least it's not what I'm reading) are viable.

Their birth rates are high, but I don't see any official information regarding exactly how high.

 

Just using the wiki

 

D'oh. :facepalm

 

And this isn't a straight-up fight. The krogan would be vastly outnumbered for quite a while before their rapid breeding made up the difference. And this is a world with weapons that are capable of killing krogan (if a .50 calibre round turns a human into red paste, I imagine it would still be more or less fatal to an unshielded krogan; the sheer destructive force of the round would be enough to outweigh the multiple organ redundancies). After all, the codex says that the krogan were killing each other with gunpowder weapons long before they descended into nuclear war, so we know that it is doable.

And they've invaded a world inhabited by a civilization ready to lay waste to their entire planet in a war of political ideology. This would be a war for our very survival, and if history teaches us anything, it's that humans can be vicious motherfuckers with our backs against the proverbial wall.

Yes, and when they entered that war, they already numbered in the millions/billions. This is a few thousand of them.

 

While this doesn't necessarily mean that a thousand come from the same mother at once, it does mean that Krogans give birth to a thousand times what is required for a viable population.

Othalan, the Krogan aren't fucking retarded. They're not going to land on the White House lawn and start blazing away. They'll land in third-world countries and start expanding their numbers. Given enough resources, the first Earthborn Krogan could be ready for battle within a decade - with an extremely conservative estimate of a hundred born per year per fertile female with a population of a mere thousand in this fleet, you're looking at them getting fifty thousand new troops per year from '87 onwards. If they continue breeding instead of fucking the world in the arse at that point, once that first year's worth of newborns starts breeding, they'll have two hundred and fifty million from that generation alone. The next year, another half a million. It'll just spiral from there. And these are all with bare fucking minimum figures.

As Fiat Piscis put it, the Krogan are biological warfare. Once they're landed, they're not going anywhere.

 

This might work if they did have the genophage, but it wasn't nearly as crippling as it is for the rest of the Krogan. They'd still have somewhat high breeding rates, but not enough to give them an overwhelming edge.

 

No, but they are a fractious bunch. All it would take it one attack on the wrong country (and do you think that after all the years of running, the krogan would be patient enough to assess the political situation before landing?), and they would bring the First and Second worlds down on their heads.

Your population figures are a good illustration of krogan expansion in a vacuum, but they fail to take into account the ever-increasing number of krogan deaths (both male and, more importantly, female) as resistance stiffens and new methods of killing them are devised by humans.

Not to mention that without a decent supply of element zero (which the krogan would lack the resources to mine and process on a large scale for quite some time), the krogan may be forced to revert to more primitive weaponry as their army grows too large to equip all their warriors with mass accellerator weapons, levelling the playing field even more.