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CAUSE AND EFFECT
Mass Effect 3 (http://bcove.me/06xghs9g) will be upon us soon (releasing in five short weeks on March 6th) and will bring to a close the story that began five years ago with a covert pick up on Eden Prime. With any luck, BioWare will deliver on the lofty promise of a "guns and conversation" choose-your-own-adventure concluded in grand and eminently replayable style. Thus far, simply by playing through the games, players have not only shaped Shepard's personal story but also modified the Mass Effect universe itself into a setting of their own making. By the advanced stage of this third and final act, many of the choices made have compounded and some have the potential to create rather different situations, opportunities, and outcomes. I wonder how many different endings and variations on each sub-plot and supporting character's epilogue will be possible in ME3. Hopefully at least as many as the difficult decisions Shepard has been forced to make in the proverbial "Story So Far"...
Which brings me to the subject of this thread. I am interested in your "Story So Far" and in how it ends. Plenty of folks have sat down for multiple play-throughs of the first two Mass Effect games, guiding several Shepards down different paths, be they Paragon, Renegade, or something in between. While exploring many possible roads across multiple runs, was there one play-through that you consider to tell your Mass Effect "canon" story? Or one that you intend to load into ME3 first for some particular reason? Will you be playing through ME1 and 2 again now with a new Commander in preparation for 3? If you have a personal "canon" Shepard, what background did they come from and what choices has he or she made? What sort of hero have they become? Was it a simple choice of taking one moral path to an extreme or something more nuanced? I've read that some players hold tightly to the idea of choosing as they think they themselves would in a given situation. How did you do it?
In addition to swapping stories, how about a challenge? For those that are interested, I invite you to join me in a marathon play-through of the entire series. If you don't have a personal "canon" Shepard or haven't played the series, there may be no better time to pick it up and start building one. As you play, post updates here as you encounter and resolve situations. Optionally, provide a first person narrator (Shep or another character) or a third person omniscient perspective to illuminate your Shepard's thoughts, motivations, and actions as the story progresses. I'm curious as to how you'd spin things to give the story the connective tissue that a narrator's reflection (omniscient or otherwise) provides. I think it adds important context that goes largely unspoken in some video games and which is sadly missing in the otherwise character-driven Mass Effect. If there's any group qualified to frame the pulp sci-fi saga of Commander Shepard in such a way, it's the roleplayers in this forum.
How about it?
Welcome to Alliance Military Database...
[spoiler]Should go without saying, but apply spoiler tags liberally when discussing plot details.[/spoiler]
I've decided to go with a FemShep. I've already played a few male Shepards over the years and everyone says Jennifer Hale's voice acting is superior anyway. So, an introduction...
Profile Reconstruction
(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9374/femshep2.png) (http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/5118/me2portrait.png)
Name: Alexis Shepard
Pre-Service History: Earthborn
Psychological Profile: War Hero
Military Specialization: Soldier/Commando (ME1), Vanguard (ME2)
Morality: 66% Paragon, 50% Renegade (ME1)
Born on Earth and raised in foster homes when not out on the streets of one of the planet's megacities (I like the idea of it being the Dallas-Houston-San Antonio Texas megalopolis), Shepard never knew her biological parents. Fearful of living the rest of her life in an underworld dominated by gang culture, at age 18 she ironically joined the largest gang around: the Systems Alliance military. As an infantry soldier she found herself on shore leave on Elysium during the Skyllian Blitz and earned honors and a commission for her heroism during the battle.
Pragmatist
Having enlisted in the Alliance military before becoming an officer, she has a realistic and practical view of military life and duty. She is certainly professional in her interactions with others, but harbors a cynical attitude toward brass and bureaucracy and gravitates towards peers and superiors who can get things done even if that requires bending the rules. She enjoys working in the special operations branch, but as an experienced combat vet disapproves of open displays of unseasoned bravado such as those put on by Corporal Jenkins.
Xenophobe
ME1: Biased by Alliance military culture and shaped by her harrowing trial by fire in the Skyllian Blitz, Shepard remains distrustful of most aliens (particularly Turians and Batarians) and doubtful of their intentions until she has found reason to trust them through first hand experience. She could hardly be defined as a racist of the sort that believes humanity is naturally superior, however, or as an extremist of the sort that would have the Alliance dominate the rest of the galaxy. If pressed, she might explain her attitude toward non-humans as "wait and see".
ME2: By the end of the first game, my Shepard had developed a refined understanding of aliens. Simple assumptions and a standard approach based on suspicion weren't useful to her. Too often early conclusions were turning out to be wrong and Shep found herself making choices during the hunt for Saren that would have surprised her only weeks before. Her feelings at the end of the first act are best described by Lt. Alenko's statement that aliens, like humans, are individuals. Just because one is an ass doesn't mean they all are.
Eden Prime
[spoiler](http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8507/prologue1o.png)(http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/3760/prologue2.png)(http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5804/prologue3.png)
So much for covert. Eden Prime was a mess. Surprise attack by Geth. Convenient timing for a race that's been nearly non-existent for hundreds of years. Jenkins didn't make it. Hotheaded kid ran right into enemy fire, but he didn't deserve what he got. Nilhus was killed too, possibly at the hands of another Spectre called Saren... and joining their ranks is supposed to be good for the Alliance? Most of the people who deserved saving were dead before we landed.
Linked up with a marine survivor from the garrison stationed on the colony. Gunnery Chief Williams, clearly an able enough soldier. Bitterly ironic that of the few other survivors we found, most seemed to be tied up in a smuggling ring. Helping themselves to the few safe places to hide no doubt. Thought the Chief was going to shoot one of them on the spot for skimming from the military shipments. Good woman.
We broke the Prothean beacon. Or I did. Don't remember much of what happened after we took the tram from the docks and my head is still pounding. Tried to talk things over with Alenko, get a sense for what happened before I blacked out. Pilot's bringing us in to the Citadel ASAP. Captain is running in full damage control mode and wants to take this straight to the Council through the Alliance ambassador.
[/spoiler]
The Citadel
[spoiler](http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/5999/saren.png)(http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/3553/ch11.png)(http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/5186/ch12u.png)
"Promoted" to Spectre. And we have our orders: find Saren before he finds the Conduit.
Council took a lot of convincing to decide that their favorite son Saren has gone rogue. (Eden Prime and the two assassins he sent after us on the Citadel were enough evidence for me.) We expected as much from the Council, however, and were ready to go after him ourselves, but the testimony of a Quarian expert on the Geth opened their eyes. Never met a Quarian before. Had to go through half of the seedy underbelly of the Wards to find her. In the process, we picked up a fairly straight-shooting Turian C-Sec officer who was working to build a case against Saren on his own. Name is Garrus. Amenable as Turians go. From what I gathered, he has a reputation in C-Sec for trying to save the world. Add to that a less amenable Krogan bounty hunter called Wrex. Could be a security risk, but Alenko thinks the merc could be useful against an army of synthetics. Fair enough. The Krogans beat back the Rachni, right? I'm bringing the Quarian as well. Closest thing to a subject matter expert on the Geth I'm likely to find.
The Normandy is now under my command, and our activities are backed by Spectre authority. I'm not sure who legally owns the ship anymore, Alliance or Council, but she's the best out there for running fast and quiet. We are now aweigh and outbound from the Citadel heading for Feros in the Theseus system. Reports coming in of a Geth attack on our colony there.[/spoiler]
Feros
[spoiler](http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5056/me1feros.png)(http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9852/me1shiala.png)(http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/6757/me1shepferos.png)
The Quarian, Tali, has proven useful quickly. She and Chief Engineer Adams managed to salvage a Prothean data disc from wreckage we detected orbiting Sharring in the Theseus system while inbound to Feros.
Of course, Saren had been here before us and the Geth were swarming Feros. Normandy's stealth systems got us in under their radar. Took Alenko and the Turian Garrus with me in the shore party once we landed. The planet was once a major Prothean world (their ruined megastructures still stand, making for ready-made colonial infrastructure), but it is now home to only a small ExoGeni corporate colony. Most of the colonists holding out seemed to be carrying on in a state of shock. Lots of thousand yard stares. Drove the Geth back from the tiny redoubt of Zhu's Hope, helping to restore basic life support to the colony in the process, and pushed our way toward ExoGeni headquarters.
Found ExoGeni staff holed up near the HQ after intercepting their comms from the Mako. Company rep was a man named Jeong. Combative and stupid. You'd think diplomatic skills would be valued in managerial staff. After we dug up what ExoGeni was really doing here on Feros, he drew down on me and I had to take him out. Mired in a world of corporate secrets, guess he valued them more than his own life. Or maybe he thought the ExoGeni guards held him in higher esteem than they really did. The secret he died to protect in this case was an alien being called the Thorian with mind control abilities. No surprise Saren might be after something like that.
Was surprising that the Thorian had already taken control of the colonists at Zhu's Hope. Fully in its thrall, they took every opportunity to shoot at us on the way to this creature's lair beneath the colony. Alenko was able to adapt our grenades to disperse a mild neural agent provided by the ExoGeni people. It worked and we managed to save many of the colonists by knocking them out until we could deal with the Thorian. The thing itself was a huge half plant/half mucus factory. It sent waves of mindless thralls and several clones of an Asari biotic at us before we put it down. The biotic turned out to be a living sacrifice, offered up by Saren in exchange for information -- a Prothean encryption or data processing protocol called the Cipher. Thankful to be released from the Thorian's control, this biotic, a disciple of Benezia named Shiala, provided me that information freely. And I provided her a chance at redemption. She will remain on at Zhu's Hope and help repair the damage done.
Shiala also shed light on what we're up against. Saren has command of an alien starship called Sovereign that allows him to exert some kind of influence over the thoughts and actions of others. Simply by being near Saren, people will fall under this spell. This may explain why even a powerful mind like Matriarch Benezia's could be swayed to his service. Getting at her could be the key to finding Saren or finding the Conduit itself. Alenko thinks we should follow up on Benezia's daughter, a scientist believed to be on an expedition in the Artemis Tau cluster.
We have other leads as well, however, based on information extracted from ExoGeni computers and the Geth themselves on Feros. A Geth invasion force may be massing in the Armstrong Nebula...[/spoiler]
Armstrong Nebula
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Outbound from Theseus, we received communication from Admiral Hackett on Arcturus Station. Alliance drone went down in the nearby Hercules system and the admiral was hoping we could recover its data modules before the Geth get there. Normandy was the closest human ship. Happy to oblige. We picked up the drone's beacon on the surface of Eletania and dropped in the Mako to make the recovery. Turned out the synths were thinking several moves ahead on this one and laid an ambush for us. Clever, but not fatal.
Acting on the intel gleaned from the Geth on Feros, we then plotted course for the Armstrong Nebula. Admiral Hackett was able to confirm through Alliance intel that the Geth are active in the nebula. Surveillance has identified at least four strongholds. Looking at the star charts I decided to hit Rayingri in the Gagarin system first. Geth attacked and wiped out a research colony on the surface, turning all the personnel there into the same terrible husk creatures we saw on Eden Prime. Disturbing. Feels like we're doing them a favor when we put them down... in case they're still "alive" somehow behind that freakish exterior. Of course to the Geth, people probably look like little more than collections of organic matter, easily rearranged into something more useful to them. Spare parts, basically.
Fucking monsters.
Next target was Antibaar in Tereshkova. Found evidence that a thresher maw had taken out a Geth unit that ambushed a human transport of some kind. Wreckage was too badly damaged to make any identifications. The Mako subsequently took out the maw. Hit the Geth outpost nearby with armor as well. Foot units and armatures; little match for the cannon. Third objective was a Geth outpost on Casbin. Something about the planet means it may be a very nice place to live in a few million years so the entire surface has sanctuary status under Citadel law. Handy to be a Spectre, I suppose. In any case, the Geth certainly weren't abiding by galactic prohibitions on landing there. Hit their outpost hard in the Mako and managed to damage one of their dropships as well.
Expecting to clear out the rest of the synth forces in the cluster, we hit Maji in the Vamshi system last. It turned out to be the penultimate target. Distress signal of some kind went off after clearing a colossal armature from the outpost on Maji, and we followed it to Grissom. Grissom's a massive blue giant roasting just about everything that bothers to orbit it. The Geth don't care apparently, and located their stronghold on the scorched surface of Solcrum, a moon of the gas giant Notanban. Once we cleared this last objective, the Normandy's sensors picked up a strange transmission being sent toward the Perseus Veil and presumably the Geth worlds beyond it. When decoded it depicted a Quarian singing or reciting some kind of poetry.[/spoiler]
Artemis Tau
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We affected the rescue of Matriarch Benezia's daughter, the Asari archaeologist Doctor Liara T'Soni, from Therum in the Knossos system. Landed on a contingent of Geth and Krogan mercs sent by Saren in mid-operation trying to capture or kill her. In the process of extracting the doctor, a major Prothean ruin was destroyed. The doctor seemed unaware of recent developments with the Geth and her own mother. Aboard the Normandy, she was able to add her deep understanding of the Protheans to my own using the same telepathic method as Shiala. Didn't work. The message contained in the Eden Prime beacon is still chaotic and unclear.
A lull in the mission gave me a chance to talk to the Normandy's crew (none of whom expected to be on a far-ranging deployment under Spectre command when we left port) and the collection of alien specialists we've taken on in the last few days. Navigator Pressly feels we don't need alien help to find and stop Saren, but I've begun to see the threat posed by the Geth and whatever the Reapers are as greater than any one planet or species can tackle alone. Prestley is stuck in the old ways of thinking and until just recently maybe I was too. Conversely, Engineer Adams couldn't be happier about having the Quarian Tali's mechanical expertise close at hand.
Williams is suspicious of Liara. Doesn't believe her story, and she also doesn't trust Garrus or the Krogan Wrex. I managed to get her to admit she doesn't trust them expressly because they are alien. Her politics are definitely self-reliant, maybe even leaning Terra Firma. The Normandy has the most advanced tech in the Alliance inventory (the Tantalus core, the IES stealth system, etc) and the Chief is concerned about compromising these military advantages. I don't necessarily disagree, but I think Williams is missing the point that while the Alliance military needs to keep classified technology safe, these particular aliens are value-added and this mission requires we break with standard operating procedures to get the job done. Thankfully, Spectre status means we actually can.
The one member of the team that sees this most clearly is Garrus. He told me he knew that working with a Spectre would be better than staying at C-Sec. No love for bureaucrats to be found in this Turian. As it turns out, he was once a candidate for the Spectres, but his father discouraged him from joining. Garrus thinks it shouldn't matter how a mission is accomplished as long as it is and he was more than happy to escape that world of red tape. I'm finding that I am too. That's why I decided to provide Tali with the encrypted Geth data we extracted from Feros when she asked for it. The Alliance probably considers it classified information, but I'm a Spectre now, and it could provide a key advantage in the fight against the Geth if the Quarians are able to decipher it in time to make a difference.
When I got Alenko aside to talk, he told me he was worried that we may start cutting corners. At first I wasn't sure why he was bringing this up, but I think he's worried about how the Alliance brass might react to bending the rules out here in pursuit of Saren and using Alliance hardware to do it. He told me about his experience in brain camp learning from trigger-happy Turian experts not long after the First Contact War ended, but I'm not sure I fully caught the moral of the story. I think maybe his concern is just personal. Loyalty to the captain or something more personal still. I tried to make it clear I'm not-not interested, but this isn't the best time for... fraternization.
Joker. Now here is a man who values a beard over medals and recognition. Clearly been underestimated in the past by both the service and previous commanders due to his medical condition. He's overconfident, probably a defense mechanism, but his record backs it up. At first glance I thought the was brash and maybe even dangerous at the controls, but this guy's flying lives up to what's on the tin. May be the best frigate pilot I've ever met. Whatever we're flying into next, I have a warm and fuzzy with him on the stick.
With Feros secure and the Geth forces in the Armstrong Nebula defeated, we are planning our next move. Saren's location and immediate intentions remain unknown. The corporate colony on Noveria has been floated as a flashpoint with reports of Geth activity in the area. This may be our next stop. In the interim, we've begun taking advantage of AGeS mineral bounties out here in the frontier to boost available funds. Its one solution and probably the best under the circumstances since Spectres don't draw cash from government coffers like typical military elements.[/spoiler]
Noveria
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Noveria was a game changer.
Before she died, Benezia gave us the coordinates of the Mu Relay provided by a Rachni queen. After she died, I let the queen go. My hands still tremble thinking about that decision. It... the queen took control of a dead Asari commando and spoke. She explained the warriors swarming through the Peak 15 complex were lost to reason, having been separated from her since birth. Her language was alien and poetic, a composition of colors and scents. But its message was clear. Mistakes were made. The Rachni Wars. Unleashing the Krogan. Binary Helix's hubris in reviving this queen and trying to breed an army of Rachni. Despite Alenko's misgivings, I knew there was only one right choice. With the matriarch slain, one great mother's lifeblood was enough. I couldn't add a second genocide to the list of mistakes. The queen said she would remember this act of faith. I hope so.
The deal-making and corporate subterfuge I had to navigate to get through Port Hanshan to Peak 15 seems like a distant and insignificant prelude to today's events. It was a mess of corruption and double dealing. Normandy is aweigh and outbound from that frozen rock. Painkillers and sleep. Then we plan our next move.[/spoiler]
The Citadel, Revisited
[spoiler](http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7024/me1warp.png)(http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/5189/me1wards.png)(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/4985/me1shepalenko.png)
Finding Saren and stopping whatever he has planned is paramount, but I knew we wouldn't get it done running the team ragged. We'd been out for too long and Noveria left everyone exhausted. Before catching the relay out of the Horse Head Nebula we swung through the Strenuus system. Picked up a signal from a derelict Kowloon-class near Xawin leaking drive emissions all the way from the planet. Landed and sniffed out a privateer base. The transport captain's body and effects were still inside. Geth tried to spring a trap on us on the way out. Nothing the Mako couldn't clean up quickly. With that done, the Normandy put in at the Citadel to resupply and give the crew a much needed break.
At least they got one. Looking for half a day of shore leave (or just a stiff drink and a long nap), I got half a dozen assignments and three debriefs. Rear Admiral Mikhailovich from Fifth Fleet, the officer to whose unit the Normandy was originally slated for assignment, hot dropped on me right at the docking berth asking to conduct an immediate inspection of the ship. Normandy may be an Alliance vessel but she's on loan to the Citadel, and I was in no mood to have a flag officer poking around in my house. Pretty much blew him off. Sure as hell didn't let him set foot on deck. Figured I'll catch a heat round for it later, but, eh...
Second surprise attack of the hour came from the Fourth Estate. Reporter named al-Jilani pulled me in to an impromptu interview right outside the elevator from the docks in the middle of C-Sec headquarters. Thought the Q&A went alright. She clearly had an agenda, but there's nothing a little "It's Classified" can't solve. Threw the diplomats a line by mentioning the Normandy was a joint Alliance-Turian project. Admiral Hackett called later to say the report played well on Earth, but the Council was livid that I outed Saren as the actor behind Eden Prime. Guess they'd been working hard to convince the galaxy the Geth got up and came charging into Citadel space all on their own. Allergic to bad press, I suppose.
Speaking of which, what happened on Noveria probably won't be a secret for long, if it even is right now. The Ambassador couldn't be bothered to listen to my reasons for letting the Rachni queen go, but Anderson backed me up. Bit surprised at that, actually, but it was good to get some validation. The Captain didn't have any extra intel for me on the Virmire situation. Halfway across the galaxy, but it seems like that might be our only solid lead on Saren right now.
Samesh Bhatia, the husband of a marine killed on Eden Prime asked me to follow up on why his wife's body hadn't been turned over by the military for burial. Asking a few questions, the line I got back from higher was that she had been hit by some kind of Geth weaponry using unknown tech and her body was being studied in the hopes of developing better defenses. Sucks. Bad news to deliver let alone receive, but Bhatia eventually came around to understanding why the study was important.
Got a desperate message from Admiral Kahoku, whose men we'd earlier found torn to bits by a thresher maw near a decoy distress beacon on Edolus, when back aboard the Normandy. The Admiral claimed he'd uncovered evidence that a group called Cerberus was behind the Edolus trap and that they'd gone completely off the reservation. He relayed the coordinates of their research base on Binthu, where the group is allegedly conducting dangerous genetic experiments, and said he though his life was in danger before signing off.
Oh, not to forget Helena Blake, who wants me to surgically remove the two bosses who took control of her criminal enterprise and turned it into a red sand-running slaver ring. And by "surgically", I'm fairly certain she meant "with a shotgun". Having nearly shot a Tenth Street Red named Finch who came up to me in the wards and tried to blackmail me into helping the goddamn gang spring some moron from Turian custody, I know I shouldn't be morally opposed to turning down her offer. Human slavers, like gangbanging mafia wanna-bes that get arrested by aliens, are bad press for the Alliance after all. Shepard, Commander, (Armed) Public Relations.
I'm sensing a pattern. Seems like everyone turns to the Spectre when they can't get things done through normal channels. Wonder if all Spectres run mercenary ops on the side or if its just something they try to foist on the new guys for as long as they'll bite? If I run into one of my new colleagues one of these days I'll have to remember to ask. Outbound from the Citadel before the other half of the Presidium's population calls asking for a discreet favor in some dark corner of space or another. Saren's still out there and the key to finding where he's headed next can probably be found with that Salarian team on Virmire.[/spoiler]
Uncharted Space
[spoiler](http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/8580/me1hostage.png)(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/4327/me1mercenary.png)(http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2341/me1drheart.png)
Underway once more, we soon received a distress call from an Alliance listening post overrun in the Erebus system. It was the Rachni. A few soldiers held out at their tiny station on Nepmos against waves and waves of the creatures. Another listening post on Altahe in the Acheron system was also hit and didn't fare as well. We cleaned the bugs out of both, but the icy dread that Noveria was already coming back to haunt me stung with every round fired. In Acheron we learned that these posts were supplied by deliveries from unmanned freighters and tracked the last such arrival to the Argos Rho cluster. There we discovered an unmarked and IFF-black space station built out of commercial off-the-shelf components. Inside computer records described the place as "Cerberus Commando Base Sigma-23", but it was abandoned by all but the Rachni. This Cerberus group somehow got their hands on Rachni samples from Binary Helix's Noveria labs and were attempting to weaponize the creatures as well. Set charges and destroyed the station. That these infestations weren't the doing of the queen I set free is little consolation for the lives of the troopers killed, but it was a great relief to me.
Quickly found the Cerberus labs on Binthu, as Admiral Kahoku said we would, and wiped them out. The things they were doing there. This group is definitely well connected, definitely well funded, and definitely dangerous beyond all reason. The same thrall creatures we saw under the Thorian's control on Feros. The Geth-created husk monstrosities. More Rachni. Evidence of their influence and experimentation kept cropping up. Whatever they are out to accomplish, whether it could make Earth stronger or not, it can't be good. After recovering Kahoku's body from Cerberus custody, I was contacted by an agent claiming to represent the Shadow Broker. He said Kahoku was provided with the location of these Cerberus labs in exchange for information extracted from the systems inside. I agreed to transmit the data, posthumously fulfilling the admiral's agreement... and perhaps earning some credit from the Shadow Broker in the future. A Spectre is supposed to build contacts, right? Seems smart to bank a few favors for calling in later.
Not everything out in these distant and uncharted systems was so grim, thankfully, but the course to Virmire seemed to grow increasingly long and complex and the galaxy ever more needful of intervention with every jump. I hit Helena Blake's former associates and she agreed to disband what remained of the syndicate rather than end up becoming formerly living crime boss number three. In her stead, that position went to Haliat, a pirate leader who claimed to have motivated the Skyllian Blitz and apparently took his grudges quite seriously. This guy hated me so much he went to the trouble of finding a lost wartime Alliance probe armed with a nuclear self-destruct and set it up as a trap. Lucky for me, I've got two of the best electronics and decryption experts you could ask for as my wingmen. Between Kaidan, Garrus, and myself, we defused the bomb. Then I shot Haliat.
Better still, we were able to deal with a sticky situation for the ever-calling Admiral Hackett. A retired Alliance officer named Kyle had gone off the reservation and holed up in deep space with a group of biotics. Made the idiotic choice to kill two negotiators the Alliance sent to meet with him. He saw the proverbial light when a Spectre came calling. The universe could use a few more bloodless resolutions like that... Of course this success made me Hackett's new go-to for hostage negotiation. With Alenko's help, we later talked down a group of L2 biotics holding a VIP hostage aboard the MSV Ontario in Farinata. Just before reaching Virmire, we detected the signal of a ship registered to one Dr. R. Heart. This "physician" was an old foil of Garrus' from his days in C-Sec. The Salarian ran an organ smuggling ring from the Citadel and escaped capture by taking hostages and fleeing into deep space. We boarded the Kowloon-class transport he had turned into a flying laboratory. At least this time there was no negotiation.[/spoiler]
Virmire
[spoiler](http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5793/me1wrexvirmire.png)(http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/8224/me1sarenslab.png)(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/2802/me1sarenvirmire.png)
Saren's base of operations was on Virmire. Was. This past tense cost us a lot. He was breeding an army of Krogan. Possibly had worked out a cure for the genophage that inhibits natural Krogan reproduction. This was the race that turned back the Rachni swarms. If the Geth and their horrors weren't enough, Saren at the head of a Krogan legion would have been unstoppable.
But that wasn't all. There was another beacon. A working Prothean beacon just like the one on Eden Prime. I was able to use it and... Sovereign... the ship. Saren's flagship... it isn't a ship. It's a Reaper. These things are alive. Impossibly old.
If I could have, I'd have taken off and nuked the site from orbit. Only way to be sure. AA defenses were too strong, so we had to do it from the ground. Even with the Salarian infiltration team under Captain Kirrahe, this was the fight of our lives. Geth at the base had the combined strength of all the forces we faced in the Armstrong Nebula. Chief Williams gave her life holding them back while we emplaced a tactical fusion weapon and prepared it for detonation. Saren himself hit us at the bomb site. We hit back. In one of those awkward pauses when neither side is shooting, he tried to convince me to help him. The Reapers are coming and he thinks he can somehow arrange for it that they won't wipe out all organic civilization this time. He's deluded or indoctrinated by Sovereign's power or both. The pause in fighting didn't last long. It came to close quarters. He waved off only when the nuke was about to blow.
It was a hot extract.
Aboard the Normandy, Liara asked to attempt a reading of the Prothean warning by joining our minds again. She thinks this second beacon may have helped to fill in the gaps left by the one from Eden Prime. Afterward she said she recognized places and landmarks in the vision from her research. Ilos. The Conduit is on Ilos and the Mu Relay is the only way to reach it. This is why Saren was after the location of the relay, but we couldn't be sure which of the numerous systems it connected to were the right one. Now we know.
Kaidan is upset about Ashley, but it wasn't his fault. Wasn't my fault even though I made the call to return to the bomb site and cover him rather than rescue her. The only one to blame is Saren. And he's going to get what's coming to him.[/spoiler]
Ilos
[spoiler](http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/212/me1ilos.png)(http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/4029/me1normandycitadel.png)(http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3154/me1sarenlives.png)
The Council recalled us to the Citadel and we came with the expectation that they would send a fleet after Saren now that we knew where the Conduit was and thus where he would be. Instead, they grounded the Normandy. The Mu Relay lies inside the Terminus Systems. The Council can't send a fleet without risking war so it's easier for them to do nothing. Captain Anderson risked his career and his life to get us off the station. No time to worry about dithering politicians. We jumped for Ilos as fast as possible. If the Council won't deal with their rogue son when there is no longer any excuse not to, we will. We were ready to do it from the beginning and we'll follow through with it now.
Add mutiny and theft of a prototype warship to my list of accomplishments. If we're right about this, it won't matter. If the Council is wrong, nothing will matter any longer. Gamble worth taking.
Joker really is the best pilot in the Alliance. He put the Mako down with only twenty meters of open ground and landed us right on top of Saren. We fought through his Geth amid a Prothean ruin. Found a working security console inside the ruins. Garrus and Kaidan couldn't understand it, but I could. The knowledge from the beacons must have enabled me to understand their language. Eerie to hear these last messages left fifty thousand years ago by the desperate holdouts of that ancient empire. Eerier still to hear in them a voice that for all its distance might as well be human. This wasn't the only working Prothean technology we found, however...
We met Vigil, a sort of VI left by the Protheans to monitor and control this facility. It told us that we must stop the Reapers' cycle of destruction and described the final decades of Prothean civilization in unbelievable detail. The mass relays are not Prothean constructions, but were put in place by the Reapers themselves to shape and channelize organic civilization. Worse still, the Citadel is actually a huge mass relay. It's the lynchpin of the Reaper extermination plan, but the Protheans in their final act managed to seal it off from Reaper control. The Conduit, a miniature relay linking Ilos to the Citadel can enable Saren to infiltrate the station and restore control to Sovereign. If we don't stop him, the Reapers will pour through... Feels like a tidal wave of sacrifices, Ashley, Anderson, the Protheans that built this final redoubt, all have been welling up to make this moment possible. This instant in time, a mere cosmological blink, fleeting in the perception of an impossibly ancient race like the Reapers, is pregnant with potential. The chance to break the cycle.
Saren has already jumped.
We're taking the Mako into the Conduit.[/spoiler]
Sovereign
[spoiler](http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/3125/me1thewalk.png)(http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/1163/me1sovereign.png)(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/4959/me1anderson.png)
Saren killed himself. After Virmire, Sovereign implanted him with cybernetics to reinforce the indoctrination. Somewhere deep within he was still alive. Still aware. Maybe it was what I said to him, maybe it was all within him, but before he turned control of the Citadel's relay over to Sovereign he put his own gun to his head and played that single-note dirge. Sovereign wasn't impressed. The grip on its servant was too strong. Saren's... husk tried to do what his body and mind refused to. We destroyed the thing.
Outside, the Citadel fleet met Sovereign itself and a swarm of Geth ships. Admiral Hackett brought the Fifth Fleet through in time to save the Destiny Ascension. The Council was on board, having evacuated the Citadel during the opening shots. Unable to open the station's relay and bring through its reinforcements, Sovereign fell to the combined guns of Alliance and Council fleets. Turian and human warships, fighters, and the Normandy herself pounded the monstrosity into oblivion. The debris from its death throes nearly did us in as well, but you can't keep a good soldier down.
Anderson is to serve as the first human representative to the Citadel Council. As for us, we've got work to do. The Reapers are still out there. We must be ready for them.[/spoiler]
And with that I wrapped up this fresh playthrough of Mass Effect at Veteran difficulty on a clean install at Level 48. Took Alenko and Garrus with me on all missions that didn't have a particular interest for one of the other party members. I thoroughly enjoyed Jennifer Hale's voice acting as FemShep. I've played through with a FemShep once before, but I wasn't paying as much attention to character and IC decision making as I was this time. Never experienced any strange disconnect between the lines and the character because of gender, as others have mentioned here. Shep seems just as "correct" as a woman as a man and is maybe even a bit more interesting as the former. One thing I definitely noticed this time around...
[spoiler]The choice to save Alenko and allow Ash to die on Virmire was easy. In almost a half dozen playthroughs of the game I never before realized that Ashley was a bigot. It may reflect on me and changes in my own personality since I first played ME1 in 2008, but I simply did not like her. Alenko is a much more interesting person. If I had the choice to hang out with either in real life, he is the obvious winner in my book. Of course, some of this may have been shaped by my choice to leave Ash on the Normandy since my Shep was a soldier and another full combat specialized character on the shore party was a redundancy. Consequently there was a lot more in-game interaction with Alenko.[/spoiler]
Although ME3 just released yesterday, I'm going to take things nice and easy and spend some time with ME2. For one, I have a bunch of business travel that's going to keep me away from the make-play-game-machine and I've enjoyed the slower, reflective experience of keeping an IC journal/log thing as Shep. When brought to that ultimate conclusion, I think the experience will be worth all the more for it. Looking out for other Mass Effect chronicles in this thread describing your 'canon' Shepard. Bloodbird promises a whopper. Looking forward to that. Don't forget to post it. ;)
Lazarus
[spoiler](http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/35/me2normandyfalls.png)(http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/5582/me2awakening.png)(http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/5192/me2castle.png)
They say that only the dead have seen the end of war.
Not even that holds, in this brave new world.
Recreate her as she was before.
Physical reconstruction complete.
Moved from simple reconstruction to biosynthetic fusion.
Cost of project: four billion credits.
Two years and twelve days since... I was killed in action. This isn't a dream. Waking nightmare hits closer to the mark. I remember, but I don't. Thinking about this is like... like being able to recall a series of impersonal facts with only faint detail but the facts are about intimate and intense personal experiences. I know I was there, but my gut lies and tells me I couldn't have been. My mind may still be cloudy but the events themselves are clear enough. The Normandy was attacked. Destroyed. It was a surprise attack, a catastrophic kill, but I'm told most of the crew abandoned ship and survived. Navigator Pressly and myself both KIA. I don't know if died quickly or not, but I must have been floating in space for quite a while. We were pretty far out when it happened. The Alliance's rescue efforts turned into a recovery mission and eventually they just went home. People are nearby and I can feel the buzz of this station underfoot, but this last thought chills me dreadfully. I think it and the words echo inside my head. It is a terrible and lonely emptiness. Lost to oblivion. A messy and informal burial in space.
Cerberus -- the same twisted group that ran so many dangerous experiments from their hideouts in the Traverse during the hunt for Saren -- that Cerberus is who found me. And it was not by accident, if I am to believe what they've told me. With my name safely engraved on a memorial plaque somewhere, their leader launched Project Lazarus, a program set up with one goal: to bring me back from the dead. And why? We are at war.
I awoke from my final rest in the middle of a firefight. Made my escape from the station where they rebuilt me with Jacob, a Cerberus hired gun, and Miranda, the officer charged with overseeing the project to bring me back. Miranda killed her chief medical expert right in front of me, claiming that he was responsible for the attack that propelled me to consciousness and put a gun back in my hands. Blood and fire saw me out of this universe. Fitting that they welcome me back into it.[/spoiler]
Freedom's Progress
[spoiler](http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/4351/me2theman.png)(http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/6707/me2meettali.png)(http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/184/me2meetedi.png)
Everything is moving so fast, but it feels like I'm standing still. Or maybe still floating. I met with Cerberus' leader, someone called simply "The Illusive Man". Even through a holographic image his influence was physically palpable. And he reeked of danger. Literally. I am told it's probably just a side effect of the procedures Miranda's team was conducting and will abate soon, but I've been experiencing mild synesthesia since waking up. They... somehow have made me a biotic. My head is full of L5 implants, apparently, which is interesting because I thought L3s were the best thing going just two years ago. Well, they've spared no expense on me. I don't think I'm fully mission capable as a combat biotic yet, but that was obviously the intent. Here's hoping this doesn't come with unpleasant side effects. Like Kaidan's migraines... Miranda claims she abstained from installing a control chip in my head as well when they were poking around rewiring things for biotic capability. Can't help thinking that telling me that either means she actually has put a chip in my brain or "At least we didn't completely zombify you when we brought you back to life," is Cerberus-speak for building rapport.
The Illusive Man sent Miranda, Jacob, and myself to Freedom's Progress, a typical settlement in strategically insignificant space, to look for evidence that the Reapers are connected to a series of recent mass abductions at human colonies. Freedom's Progress experienced a comms blackout just after some new military hardware was installed. Could have been pirates. Batarians maybe. What we actually found was nothing of the sort. First of all, we found Tali.
Tali'Zorah. For me it feels like it's only been a few days, maybe only hours, since I last saw her. For her it's been two years. Our reunion was chaotic, however, as the automated defenses installed at Freedom's Progress were out of control and firing on everything that moved. The human colonists were gone, having left their homes and lives eerily abandoned in mid-moment. Tali and a team of Quarian soldiers were the only others on the site, having landed not long before us in search of another Quarian named Veetor. There was serious and immediate tension between the Quarians and Miranda. Something to do with Cerberus infiltrating the Migrant Fleet. Killings. We had an interest in Veetor as well, being the only survivor left at the colony, but the Quarians with Tali weren't interested in cooperating and rushed ahead to secure him before we could ask questions. Their team got stuck in with a pair of heavy security mechs and were wiped out before we could back them up. Tali held out though, and together we found Veetor holed up in a control room surrounded by monitors.
Looking through the surveillance data, Miranda recognized figures moving through the colony during the "attack". They are called Collectors, an intelligent humanoid species thought to originate from beyond the presumably impassable Omega 4 mass relay. They are highly reclusive, rarely seen in Citadel space, and possess advanced technology. Veetor explained that the Collectors stunned the colonists at Freedom's Progress using a cloud of "Seekers", swarming machines or organisms that paralyze victims so they can be carried away by the Collectors. Miranda insisted we take Veetor for debriefing by Cerberus. Tali objected, but was in an obviously weaker bargaining position with the squad of escorts dead. I promised her Veetor would be unharmed, and we called in a larger Cerberus ship with on board medical facilities for extraction.
Unfortunately, Veetor's debrief yielded no further intel and the Illusive Man said he would be returned to the Migrant Fleet. The Man also filled in some of the gaps on the Collectors. They are known to occasionally travel in the Terminus, quietly "collecting" a few dozen people here or there. Now they've graduate to tens of thousands. Rounding up entire human colonies all at once and taking them off to... somewhere beyond the Omega 4 relay. What do they need with so many living human beings? Simple slavery doesn't seem to fit in this case. The whole thing stinks and if I wasn't currently working on this very problem for them, I'd think it was just sick enough to be a scheme cooked up by Cerberus. Ironic that the Man wants to take the fight to the Collectors.
To pull that off, we'll probably be going through the Omega 4 relay. Nobody survives that jump. Guess that's why they needed a dead woman. The Man has also suggested cultivating a team of specialists. My old crew is spread around the galaxy and it doesn't sound like I'll be able to find or recruit any of them. Kaidan was promoted and is working in a classified billet. Garrus disappeared a few months after the Normandy sank. Wrex is trying to reunite the Krogan clans. Liara is working for the Shadow Broker. Of course the Man has his own list of candidates. A Salarian scientist, a veteran merc, a master thief, a convict, an assassin. Exactly what I would have expected. What choice do I have though? If the Reapers really are motivating the Collector abductions as the Illusive Man thinks, we need to stop whatever it is they're doing, and it doesn't sound like the galaxy is going to come flying to the rescue. A few daggers in the dark are worth a million swords at dawn.
At least we'll have to hope they will be.[/spoiler]