Admiral Hackett has asked you to negotiate a treaty with a man named Darius in the Plutus System system [sic]. The treaty concerns mining rights on an asteroid rich in Element Zero. You are authorized to make any financial or diplomatic concessions necessary to secure mining rights to the asteroid.
Acquisition[]
This assignment only becomes available when you have hit 80% Renegade, or 90% Renegade if you had attained 80% Paragon first. The rendezvous point is set on Nonuel, in the Plutus system of the Hades Gamma cluster.
Preparation[]
Although as the name indicates this assignment can be accomplished through negotiation rather than combat, if you decide to fight it out you'll be facing nine powerful enemies: three krogan, and six other organics armed variously with sniper rifles, shotguns, and assault rifles. The tight quarters of the fight will tend to favor shotguns over sniper rifles for your squad, and crowd control abilities to disable foes will be at a premium. If they're around, Wrex and Ashley are quite useful since they can go toe to toe with a krogan and walk out of it alive, and if Liara's around, the temptation of simply sucking everyone into a little group and then using an area of effect ability to damage them all at once is quite attractive.
Walkthrough[]
When you land on Nonuel, travel to the Warlord's Outpost on the planet. Watch out for lava veins on the terrain because if you even touch it the Mako will be destroyed (Legendary Edition: The lava veins are passable now, but the lake of lava is still a no-no). When you enter the base, head to center of the room to begin talking to 'Lord' Darius. Darius will begin the negotiations on the offensive, clearly angered by the Alliance's decision to send Shepard rather than a trained negotiator: he disparages Shepard as a lowly grunt if Shepard's a male, or thinks the Alliance wants to use Shepard's "assets" on him if the Commander's female. No matter your psychological profile, he will also find a way to twist it into something that sounds insulting.
Darius has four demands that you must agree to in order to arrive at an agreement: He wants you to call him a "Lord", he wants an Alliance apology for intruding and mining on his territory, he wants eezo, money, and equipment for making red sand in exchange for mining rights, and to seal the deal he wants you to swallow your military bravado, ask for his cooperation nicely, and say "please."
If you want to pursue a peaceful solution with no hassle, choose only the uppermost replies as they indicate you're willing to capitulate to his demands. If you object on any of his first three demands, he flaunts his Alliance-supplied weapons and warns you to show him some respect. You can then learn how the Alliance set him up in the region to stabilise it after the batarians were driven out. You must apologise at this point to continue negotiating; any more Renegade or neutral replies will devolve the negotiation into a firefight. For his final demand, if you don't want to say "please", a gunfight will start regardless of whether you played nice previously.
If you conclude the negotiations peacefully, Darius is surprisingly reasonable and lets you go without further incident, giving you an OSD containing details of the arrangement to show your superiors.
If you wish to fight, or if you have finally had enough of the warlord's attitude, select a lower dialogue option. When you regain control of Shepard, it's highly recommended to immediately use an Overload on Darius as it will detonate the power junction on his balcony which may immediately (and humourously) blast him off it and allow you to take him out quickly. The nine Darius Retainers and Darius himself will cut you and the squad down quickly if you dither about in the center of the very large room, so find some cover. There are three power junctions around the ground level, one even next to a salarian retainer, so mark them for destruction to inflict toxic damage once you see enemies go near them.
Although Darius' cronies are all generically labeled "Darius Retainers", they come in several races and weapon loadouts. There are 7 on the ground floor (1 turian, 1 krogan, 1 salarian, 4 humans), 1 on the balcony with Darius (krogan), and 1 on their living quarters (turian). Two use sniper rifles while the rest use shotguns and assault rifles depending on range, and the two krogan retainers will aggressively seek to close to point blank range. All of the enemies can regenerate health as well as shields, so your best bet is to concentrate overwhelming force to eliminate one enemy at a time, gradually simplifying the fight.
The base exit is locked if you resorted to violence. To get it open, you need to access a terminal in the upper room which only opens once you've eliminated all hostiles. One bold move is to head straight for the balcony, killing or disabling anyone in your way, then use the staircase as a bottleneck to take care of the rest. The doorway to the entry chamber can likewise serve as a choke point. Both the balcony and the entry chamber offer cover positions to fall back to. The corner opposite the entry door also offers cover, and indeed the main room is chock full of obstacles if you prefer a mobile defense, but you'll always need to be alert for flankers.
Once you've dealt with Lord Darius through either negotiation or violence, check around the room for crates. There's a Malfunctioning Object crate at the ground level, in the room off the main hall. There are two Upgrade Kits on the shelves on either side of where you conversed with Darius.
There's a Hardened Storage Locker (hard decryption), a Secure Storage Locker (average decryption), a Weapon Locker (easy decryption), and an Aid Station in the upper level room. Note: The upper areas are initially off-limits if you settled with Lord Darius peacefully. Saving then reloading the game or leaving then reentering the base will give you access to the upper areas.
You will receive morality points depending on how you dealt with the mission upon conclusion of the talk with Hackett.
If Shepard successfully negotiates a contract with Darius, during the debrief Hackett will reveal that he expected Shepard to kill Darius instead, but will follow through with the treaty anyway.
If you killed Darius, you can choose your responses to Hackett. It is obvious that this was a setup but Hackett and the Alliance cannot officially condone such actions. Given that an 80% Renegade score is needed to unlock this assignment, it is logical for Hackett to make this assumption.
Enemies[]
- Lord Darius (optional)
- Darius Retainer (optional)
Trivia[]
- News reports on the aftermath of the assignment exist in the original version of Mass Effect 2, but never aired in any of the news terminals. These lines have been made available in Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
- The quote "Millions for Defense, but not one cent in tribute" cited in the Renegade completion text of this assignment is attributed to Robert Goodloe Harper, a South Carolina Federalist and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, during the XYZ Affair in 1797 - when the French government demanded a bribe in exchange for negotiating a treaty.
- In Mass Effect 2, when asking Bailey about the Shepard VI, he will comment that when data is deleted the VI will say "I delete data like you on the way to real errors." One of the responses to Darius is "I've killed worse than you on my way to real problems". Garrus or Tali will jokingly note how extreme Shepard is.
- Even if Shepard lands on Nonuel and approaches the base, it will be impossible for Shepard to enter if the assignment has not been received from Hackett.