Mass effect: what if?

[thethird]

So I have been pondering on this for about a week and I would appreciate an outsiders perspective.

Humans go from discovering the Charon relay to fighting the reapers in 30 years (aprox). And without humans (without Shepard) there is no warning against the reapers and the sovereign probably makes it to the citadel unimpeded and summons the other reapers. That would have crippled the central government as the reapers intended. And the war would have gone probably like in ME3 but pretty faster for the worse (specially without Shepard doing protagonist stuff). Also with the Charon relay blocked and effectively inhoperative there is no way to get to Mars, and there is no way to get the crucible, that's out of the equation. So let's assume that the reapers can clean the galaxy really fast (they weren't able during the prothean cycle due to dealing with an unified and militaristic enemy, that's not the case on the current cycle).

Let's assume that humanity doesn't learn about the protheans and the Charon relay and that the reapers don't bother checking too thoroughly at the other end of the Charon relay since it's inactive and obstructed. Let's assume too that the reapers clean the galaxy of sufficiently advanced life forms and leave. After that the human side of the plot advances as normal, they find prothean ruins, they find the Charon relay etc.

How does the galaxy look like?

Have the reaper wars obliterated all traces of civilization? Or are there plenty of recent ruins?

Are there survivors? Jarvik survived the reaper cycle and was put on ice, is he still alive and unfound? Any other stranglers? Liara during mass effect 1 was trapped, has she been forgotten and somehow alive for several years?

What about other species? The raloi wanted to bunker in their planet and make it appear like they hadn't invented space flight, since the reaper invasion is happening faster they haven't been contacted by the galaxy at large, are they fine? What about the yahg, they don't have space flight and seem to be left alone by the reapers? What about the vorcha, they don't have space flight (even if they are repeatedly kidnapped by the blood pack) and the reapers seem to have trouble integrating them? What about the collectors? Are they around?

[KillianHawkeye]

The Reapers leave alone any species who lack spaceflight or access to the mass effect relays, because their goal is to allow biological life forms to exist and flourish up until the point where they might create synthetic life forms which will inevitably destroy and replace them. They want sentient lifeforms to exist, but to be primitive.

As for ruins, I'm not sure how much the Reapers care about that. There were certainly plenty of ruins still being discovered in the story, and we were at the end of the current cycle rather than the start of the next one. The Reapers don't really strike me as people who clean up after themselves. Similarly, individual survivors don't bother them as long as there's not enough left to rekindle the destroyed societies.

[Lord Raziere]

as someone who is interested in Mass Effect lore and willing to look up stuff about canon on wikis, I will tackle answering this what if.

first order of business is figuring out what the status of the Geth is. the Reapers seem pretty keen on wiping out organic species, Geth are a different case- the Geth worship them but looking it up, the Reapers don't exactly respect the Geth in return, seeing their worship as pitiful and their actions over the course of the trilogy pretty much makes it clear that the Reapers see the Geth as nothing more than tools to be manipulated to their ends, getting rid of their freedom and whatnot as conflicts continue. The question is whether the Reapers would keep them around as a weapon in their arsenal against organic species or simply dispose of them like everyone else once their usefulness has ended. The idea that the Geth could become something like Collectors has precedence after all, and they are a quite flexible design that their other creations seem to lack. So its possible they could become Collectors 2.0 and the Collectors themselves simply get discarded as an outdated design. Now if the Reapers hold to their pattern....the reaperized Geth basically go into hiding with the Reapers, and they let humans discover the ruins of the Asari, Turians, and Salarians and so on. they left the prothean ruins out to be discovered after all.

Now here is the thing: this particular purge-cycle would be relatively recent. the humans would not be stupid and probably have the forensic/archaeological tech to figure out "oh all these ruins we discovered unlike these prothean ones show signs of being inhabited decades ago! and they all disappeared around the same time! within some of our lifetimes even! HM. Thats concerning. Something relatively recently made all these civilizations more powerful than us disappear! We better investigate that!". now if the Reapers truly don't know about humanity, the reason why the Reapers would make such a blunder despite their super-intelligence is simple: the Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago. the Asari who succeeded them, developed their automobiles 30,000 years ago and barely relics remain from that time period even as museum pieces. the time the Asari discovered the Citadel was 580 BCE- approximately 2700 years before humanity discovered their mass relay.

Meaning the Reapers are relying a lot vast stretches of time so that their repeated genocide fades into mystery and old ruins everyone is confused about. missing the humans suddenly going spaceworthy in an instant compared to the Asari and capable of discovering all these recent ruins right out of gate isn't something they're expecting. they're busy hibernating to await the next cycle.....when it has essentially already begun at super-speed. and its questionable that the Reapers no matter how powerful or godlike they are could wipe out all traces of their influence- after all the entire trilogy wouldn't work if they could, as there would be no clues to hunt that would allow Shepard to learn more about them. humans quite simply, are going to be aware that something happened and they are going to search and try to figure out what as fast as possible through this galaxy-wide post-apocalypse landscape they're looking at to get rid of it.

now as for a straggler like Liara uh....unfortunately if you take your time rescuing her she already starts see signs of going crazy and without any food she is probably dead if she in that thing for years and even if she did somehow manage to survive, I doubt being stuck alone for years in a cell, still aware would do anything good for her sanity or social skills. in this timeline, if the humans find Liara its either as this gibbering wreck or as a corpse.

Jarvik is a different case as he is in stasis. if Liara finds a way to stasis herself, cool she can join the "waking up to explain to humans about your lost civilization" club. Liara however would however would still be devastated at being essentially the last of her kind and having only a shred of a clue about what happened to them....Jarvik would have to explain to her what happened to her species and everyone would swear or be shocked about it. Jarvik of course would be angry that he is stuck working with a civilization of galactic newbs to bring down the reapers without other races to help them, but he is Jarvik he is always angry and would insist that any measure to destroy the Reapers and ensure the survival of the lives left behind is necessary. Now humanity would be stupid to ignore his warnings entirely even if he is a jerk, but the question of how much they'd listen to him depends on how Paragon or Renegade you believe them to be (or what version of Shepard you believe is listening to him) but his constant insistence on doing absolutely anything to win would be push people towards Renegade I believe. Liara if she survives being in alone in an isolated cell for years, finding out her species is dead and that there is a race of robo-cthulhu out there that can and will try to wipe out her rescuers, will probably be working to help them defeat the Reapers but also be put in a protected species kind of thing and have all the cute humans she wants to repopulate the Asari species after she explains how Asari reproduction works, and human-raised Asari probably become a noted minority within a few generations, though I doubt Liara surviving that long as likely. Jarvik will probably become the guy help the scientists figure out all the Prothean tech just because he can read the language and knows whether something is important or just an ancient prothean cafeteria.

the raloi if they survive.....well. they're birds who have to wear suits to prevent others from being infected so.....I guess they're this cycles quarians but they probably have a better chance a good deal than quarians given that they'd a civilization that would actually have met the previous ones that are dead and might have some information on the reapers to share, but then again they seem pretty afraid/cowardly? they'd probably join Humans with the Citadel but be looking to offload the work onto humans. the Yahg are basically this cycles Krogan: they're aggressive and obsessed with control we have on record that the Citadel Council tried to approach the Yahg as equals and the Yahg took this poorly and attacked them, thinking they should be subordinate despite only have 20th century tech so the Council decided against integrating them into the galactic community. the humans well, they know about the reapers and might want any forces they can especially Jarvik would be insisting upon it, the question is what could they possibly negotiate out with the Yahg to make them cooperate and be on the Citadel? considering other races subordinate is kind of a nonstarter. whatever the end result of humanity attempting to negotiate the Yahg, I doubt it'd be pretty and would take a while for the Yahg to understand that they're not the masters of everything.

The Vorcha is a special case. due to short lives, fast breeding, regeneration and super-adaptilibity the reapers had trouble with their usual tactics because they'd just adapt to things like....Reapers destroying water, and they can like adapt so they don't need air. this combined with the fact that their planet is resource thin given their own rapid consumption makes a good case for the humans to uplift not just out of necessity to fight the Reapers, but out of kindness and try to understand them. Some Asari were able to show that Vorcha are capable of not being aggressive by raising them in different circumstances, such Vorcha were even celebrities though understandably short-lived ones. Humans seeing their potential and the threat of the Reapers would probably be more amenable to allowing them to spread through the galaxy as their own spacefaring species. now is there potential for the Vorcha to out reproduce the humans and be a big threat or whatever yes but that reasoning is how you get the Krogan Genophage and any reason that leads to that probably isn't good reasoning, so I believe the Vorcha and humans can get along, they could be great friends with the hyper-adaptable space rats.

The Collectors are either kept around as weapons for the Reapers or replaced by the Geth.

Now there is something interesting to note: The Drell, canonically billions of them died while only a few of them managed to get off their dying world with the help of the Hanar in 1980 CE. its possible that maybe the Hanar and Drell figured out some way to preserve some of the Drell's lives in the face of the Reaper armageddon. or that some small tribes of Drell are somehow subsisting on what few resources are left on their home planet after that disastrous industrial expansion thing, and the Reapers simply thought they were all dead or the survivors were too primitive to be a problem so that humans could find some leftover Drell and help them.

Overall it would probably be humans trying to manage two aggressive species and the raloi while their endangered species guides try to help as long as they to prepare for the Reapers....but what exactly happens next depends on the Reapers themselves. If they just go to sleep for another 50,000 years or so, humanity has all the time in the world to come up with a solution for them before they make any moves. Shepard was able to find out all the things they needed to stop the Reaper threat forever within like what, a couple years? its possible for them to win, might be harder without the other races that came before them, but its not impossible. now if the Reapers have someone like Harbinger or Sovereign watching and decide to attack or screw with them that will only confirm what they suspected and hit their "KILL ALL REAPERS" protocols into overdrive. like, given Jarvik's presence it would probably end up being the Destroy ending, especially since no Geth will be around to make there being a downside to destroying all AI in the galaxy- well. if the humans don't make AIs themselves since there'd be no Citadel council to tell them no, but then again the whole reaper thing, Jarvik and the raloi might persuade them to only develop VI for Geth reasons.

But uh good news! Cerberus never comes into existence. why? because its entire reason for existing is because of the First contact War, the turians and the council not being respectful to humanity and humans seeing themselves as newcomer in a galaxy full of dangerous alien races more powerful than them with politics different from them and whatnot. in this timeline? humans are the ones in power. the Yahg, the raloi, the Vorcha all depend on the humans to uplift or let them into galactic politics. the conditions for Cerberus to form simply aren't there as humans wouldn't see their status or lives threatened by an outside militaristic force like the turians, as all the potential threats are confined to single planets with less tech than them and they can make sure that these species cooperate and work with them on humanity's terms. no stupid racist human terrorist group.

TLDR: humans catch on that something bad happened real quick, form a ragtag council with two warrior races and birds, Jarvik uses the crucible to blow up all the reapers and forcing everyone to build new relays for FTL travel and society continues on from there.

[Resileaf]

Now here is the thing: this particular purge-cycle would be relatively recent. the humans would not be stupid and probably have the forensic/archaeological tech to figure out "oh all these ruins we discovered unlike these prothean ones show signs of being inhabited decades ago! and they all disappeared around the same time! within some of our lifetimes even! HM. Thats concerning. Something relatively recently made all these civilizations more powerful than us disappear! We better investigate that!". now if the Reapers truly don't know about humanity, the reason why the Reapers would make such a blunder despite their super-intelligence is simple: the Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago. the Asari who succeeded them, developed their automobiles 30,000 years ago and barely relics remain from that time period even as museum pieces. the time the Asari discovered the Citadel was 580 BCE- approximately 2700 years before humanity discovered their mass relay.

Would like to make a remark concerning this.

The purging cycles usually take several centuries to be completed, so there is a very high likelyhood that if Sovereign hadn't been delayed in calling the usual signal, humanity would have discovered their mass relay in the middle of the purge and that would have made them target for certain.

[Lord Raziere]

Would like to make a remark concerning this.

The purging cycles usually take several centuries to be completed, so there is a very high likelyhood that if Sovereign hadn't been delayed in calling the usual signal, humanity would have discovered their mass relay in the middle of the purge and that would have made them target for certain.

I'm respectfully going along with the OP's premise that the Reapers do this particular purge incredibly fast for this, yes. canonically, humans just walk into a house on fire and its arsonists sigh and see a new witness they need to burn.

[Anonymouswizard]

First off, this premise makes two pretty big assumptions. The first is that humans (and by extension Shepard) are special and The Reason The War Was Won. The second is that Mars was the only place the plans for the Crucible was hidden.

Just among the nonhuman party members both Garrus and Wrex can easily serve as space opera heroes. Samara almost certainly can as well, whereas Tali and Thane change the tone somewhat. The most likely scenario is that a broadly similar series of events happens, most likely with a turian Spectre (let's say Garrus Vakarian) at the helm. Beacon is found somewhere, Garrus is sent to ensure it's escorted back safely, ends up getting Protheanised, blah blah sex with Liara race to the Citadel to stop Sovereign.

It's also likely that whoever worked on the Crucible left multiple copies in multiple systems, especially as multiple teams who couldn't communicate (due to Reapers shutting down the Mass Relay network) likely worked on it. Another version likely turns up within a few years at another site.

So my theory: mostly the same, but everybody has a different hat and humanity gets angry at being pretty solidly at the bottom of the galactic totem pole but unable to advance. I mean even the Volus fought the Reapers, humanity just hid behind their mass relay. Within a century or two humanity cuts ties with the Citadel and becomes isolationist.

On the plus side Mass Effect: Andromeda never happens (although I kinda liked that game, the people who planned the colonisation mission were idiots).

[Mechalich]

First off, this premise makes two pretty big assumptions. The first is that humans (and by extension Shepard) are special and The Reason The War Was Won.

The reason the war was won are the events of the first game - which force the Reapers to utilize significantly less optimal backup plans. The key to the first game is actually the Normandy/Joker, without which it is not possible to land on Ilos and Sovereign's seizure of the Citadel cannot be prevented. Leaving aside assessments of Joker's piloting savant status, the Normandy is special it's a hyper-advanced experimental vessel made to show off humanity's capabilities and show up the Council species. Another Spectre, from one of those species, would not be using such a highly advanced ship.

So it's not that humanity is special its that the circumstances involved - a relatively new species trying to give their first Spectre the very best chance to succeed - push the abilities of the investigation team outside 'standard issue' parameters and Sovereign's predictions.

[thethird]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I believe this is a more fun thought experiment than nothing changes, and if nothing else convinces you that's my last argument. That said some additional points to reinforce that.

Spoiler

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• The prothean cycle was unsually long and successful on the part of the prothean. Protheans were able to have a lasting impact into the current cycle. Prothean inheritors the asari aren't doing much with that knowledge (as of mass effect 3)
• Without humanity's new spectre then Saren is taking point into the whole thing. Saren has already been turned by that point and will basically easily succeed in every effort of mass effect 1.
• The Krogan aren't only out of the picture, they are working for the enemy. Remember Saren attempts to cure the genophage on Virmine and the effect they have on Wrex. Yes Kirrahe is there to blow it up, and they will most likely succeed but how will the Krogan react to that?
• Liara T'Soni resident expert on protheans has already been dealt with. She is the one that has the theory of the reapers reaping periodically. With her out of the picture the galaxy might not think about looking for clues about how the protheans dealt with these enemies. If anyone remembers her theories her mother a respected matriarch can discredit her. Liara also doesn't become the shadow broker so she doesn't have as many sources to do her research.
• The rachni queen is under control from the enemy sooner, and the indoctrinated rachni cause more trouble.
• As mechalich points out without the Normandy (and Joker) stopping the reapers proper attack is unlikely.
• Diplomacy with the geth is unlikely/impossible without the interpersonal . Even if the update with reaper code (from ME3) isn't necessary to override the consensus they are still under reaper thrall.
• The collectors aren't dealt with, their forces are at large.

First order of business is figuring out what the status of the Geth is. the Reapers seem pretty keen on wiping out organic species, Geth are a different case- the Geth worship them but looking it up, the Reapers don't exactly respect the Geth in return, seeing their worship as pitiful and their actions over the course of the trilogy pretty much makes it clear that the Reapers see the Geth as nothing more than tools to be manipulated to their ends, getting rid of their freedom and whatnot as conflicts continue. The question is whether the Reapers would keep them around as a weapon in their arsenal against organic species or simply dispose of them like everyone else once their usefulness has ended. The idea that the Geth could become something like Collectors has precedence after all, and they are a quite flexible design that their other creations seem to lack. So its possible they could become Collectors 2.0 and the Collectors themselves simply get discarded as an outdated design. Now if the Reapers hold to their pattern....the reaperized Geth basically go into hiding with the Reapers, and they let humans discover the ruins of the Asari, Turians, and Salarians and so on. they left the prothean ruins out to be discovered after all.

That's a good question. Have the geth reached consensus? They hadn't at the beginning of mass effect 1, but they might be forced into it if forced into attacking Ranoch. Do they have reaper code?
I wouldn't say that they replace the collectors. The collectors are useful and they seem to be the pet project of the harvester (while the geth would probably be the pet project of the sovereign). Also note that the collectors are at the galactic center beyond the omega relay, they aren't with the reapers.

the Reapers truly don't know about humanity, the reason why the Reapers would make such a blunder despite their super-intelligence is simple: the Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago. the Asari who succeeded them, developed their automobiles 30,000 years ago and barely relics remain from that time period even as museum pieces. the time the Asari discovered the Citadel was 580 BCE- approximately 2700 years before humanity discovered their mass relay.

That's more an issue of the Asari being incredibly slow than other thing. They had contact with the protheans. Perhaps the protheans tweaked their evolution into diplomats and lack of conflict and reliance on technology from the prothean beacon made them go way slower than humanity.

now as for a straggler like Liara uh....unfortunately if you take your time rescuing her she already starts see signs of going crazy and without any food she is probably dead if she in that thing for years and even if she did somehow manage to survive, I doubt being stuck alone for years in a cell, still aware would do anything good for her sanity or social skills. in this timeline, if the humans find Liara its either as this gibbering wreck or as a corpse.

[...]

Liara if she survives being in alone in an isolated cell for years, finding out her species is dead and that there is a race of robo-cthulhu out there that can and will try to wipe out her rescuers, will probably be working to help them defeat the Reapers but also be put in a protected species kind of thing and have all the cute humans she wants to repopulate the Asari species after she explains how Asari reproduction works, and human-raised Asari probably become a noted minority within a few generations, though I doubt Liara surviving that long as likely.

Well I would have liked to have Liara around for more Asari and info dump but if it doesn't work it doesn't work.

the raloi if they survive.....well. they're birds who have to wear suits to prevent others from being infected so...

Will they wear masks if they don't have a society pushing it on them? Perhaps it's humans that need to wear them if the raloi get first to the citadel and are the one setting the terms. Also how far back was the Asari diplomacy mission to their world? Maybe they have stowed some Asari stragglers?

the Yahg are basically this cycles Krogan: they're aggressive and obsessed with control we have on record that the Citadel Council tried to approach the Yahg as equals and the Yahg took this poorly and attacked them, thinking they should be subordinate despite only have 20th century tech so the Council decided against integrating them into the galactic community.

The yahg probably will be the slowest of human, raloi, yahg to get into space, but I would expect them to expand fast. They evolved from predators rather than prey (like Krogan) so they won't have numbers so big. They probably are harder to deal with. Given that humans canonically took their time activating inactive relays and exploring by the time they get to citadel space the yahg and the raloi might be fighting.

The Vorcha is a special case. due to short lives, fast breeding, regeneration and super-adaptilibity the reapers had trouble with their usual tactics because they'd just adapt to things like....Reapers destroying water, and they can like adapt so they don't need air.

Aren't the vorcha the ideal organic species from the perspective of the reapers? They aren't going to advance too much, nor they are going to develop synthetic life. Perhaps the vorcha were targetted by the reapers but the reapers eventually left their homeworld as they realized their normal tactics were ineffective and the vorcha weren't a threat. Would that make sense? If so vorcha society probably remembers the reapers even if it's two generations removed, but they are probably not the greatest communicating that. How might they have changed after the reapers?

Now there is something interesting to note: The Drell, canonically billions of them died while only a few of them managed to get off their dying world with the help of the Hanar in 1980 CE. its possible that maybe the Hanar and Drell figured out some way to preserve some of the Drell's lives in the face of the Reaper armageddon. or that some small tribes of Drell are somehow subsisting on what few resources are left on their home planet after that disastrous industrial expansion thing, and the Reapers simply thought they were all dead or the survivors were too primitive to be a problem so that humans could find some leftover Drell and help them.

Thanks a lot for that! I hadn't thought about the drell. That's great.

now if the Reapers have someone like Harbinger or Sovereign watching and decide to attack or screw with them that will only confirm what they suspected and hit their "KILL ALL REAPERS" protocols into overdrive.

My expectation would be that the reapers went back to recharge leaving some subvervient races to finish cleanup (geth, collectors). And one of the reapers set an alarm clock for soon (in cycle scale) to keep tabs into the galaxy and monitor just in case. But the rest of the reaper fleet is recharging.

if the humans don't make AIs themselves since there'd be no Citadel council to tell them no

Alec Ryder (Andromeda) is alive and well, his wife isn't. So he is going to work on AI. I would expect AI to be a thing.

[Eldan]

Would like to make a remark concerning this.

The purging cycles usually take several centuries to be completed, so there is a very high likelyhood that if Sovereign hadn't been delayed in calling the usual signal, humanity would have discovered their mass relay in the middle of the purge and that would have made them target for certain.

I think an argument can be made that the Protean Purge took longer than usual. The Proteans has a powerful galactic empire and subjugated most other races. They were strong enough to fight for a few centuries. The current galaxy, on the other hand, is quite frankly a mess. Basically every race in this galaxy is willing to backstab every other race. The Reapers alpha strike the citadel and take the council and the relay network down, they are going to be exploiting civil wars between the races all over. I mean, the Citadel vanishes and the relay network is going down? Who isn't going to be blaming the Salarians, Asari or Turians for this, roughly in that order?

I don't find it unrealistic that the purge takes a few decades instead of centuries.

[Resileaf]

I think an argument can be made that the Protean Purge took longer than usual. The Proteans has a powerful galactic empire and subjugated most other races. They were strong enough to fight for a few centuries. The current galaxy, on the other hand, is quite frankly a mess. Basically every race in this galaxy is willing to backstab every other race. The Reapers alpha strike the citadel and take the council and the relay network down, they are going to be exploiting civil wars between the races all over. I mean, the Citadel vanishes and the relay network is going down? Who isn't going to be blaming the Salarians, Asari or Turians for this, roughly in that order?

I don't find it unrealistic that the purge takes a few decades instead of centuries.

It's more a matter of scale than anything. Even for machines as big as the Reapers, it takes forever to scour an entire planet of life, especially since their main goal is to harvest it for Reaper building materials. The galaxy's ability to defend itself will be annihilated early in the war, it's the cleaning up that takes the majority of time.

[Eldonauran]

Only thing I have to inject is that, if humans had not discovered the Charon relay, it would likely have been the Batarians that found the beacon on Eden Prime. Why? Because, if it wasn't for the humans, the Batarians would have had many of the systems that the humans were granted settling right to. We might have ended up with the Batarians as a Shephard stand-in. At that point, who knows how things would have turned out?

[Lord Raziere]

Only thing I have to inject is that, if humans had not discovered the Charon relay, it would likely have been the Batarians that found the beacon on Eden Prime. Why? Because, if it wasn't for the humans, the Batarians would have had many of the systems that the humans were granted settling right to. We might have ended up with the Batarians as a Shephard stand-in. At that point, who knows how things would have turned out?

Not well for the Batarians regardless. their planet is the first to fall to the reapers in ME3 since its where they enter. Batarian shepard is at best defending whatever Batarian colonies remain.

[Thomas Cardew]

Not well for the Batarians regardless. their planet is the first to fall to the reapers in ME3 since its where they enter. Batarian shepard is at best defending whatever Batarian colonies remain.

There would be no Batarian Shepherd. The Batarians were reculsive and galatically anti social for over a century before the humans entered the galactic stage. Their whole culture wouldn't suddenly change absent human involvement. They might still have a citadel embassy but they wouldn't be pushing for a specter and council seat the way the humans did to get Shepherd.

[Lord Raziere]

There would be no Batarian Shepherd. The Batarians were reculsive and galatically anti social for over a century before the humans entered the galactic stage. Their whole culture wouldn't suddenly change absent human involvement. They might still have a citadel embassy but they wouldn't be pushing for a specter and council seat the way the humans did to get Shepherd.

Exactly. best case scenario is that there is a Batarian shepard there at all, there are a lot of more probable, worse scenarios. more probable is that Batarapard doesn't exist, any Batarian that had the potential to be Batarapard never gets the opportunity dies on their home planet and they're just screwed.

[Rater202]

Also, if you go digging in the lore, the Batarian Government transparently stole the remains of a living Star Ship called th Leviathan of Dis and the Leviathan was a dead reaper.

Every scientist and government official on the Batarian homeworld was fully indoctrinated by the time the series started.

Like, explicitly. If you let that one terrorist from the DLC with the asteroid go free he turns up in ME3 as a serial killer on the Citadel and depending on dialog choices he'll just flat out say all of this when you confront him

Also, considering that the Batarians don't let Civilians off-planet and literally every Batarian you encounter prior to the first game is a criminal, a slaver, a terrorist, a pirate or part of the batarian military doing an illegal blackops thing... I don't think there are any Batarian colonies. They have military outposts on occupied planets but the only time civilians have ever left the homeworld legally in at least decades was when refugees were evacuated to the Citadel after the planet fell.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, the Batarian society just kind exists to like.....suck.

they explicitly allow caste systems and slavery in their society anyone outside said society are evil criminals, no one likes them and they get destroyed first in ME3. the only sympathetic Batarian I remember is a wounded one you treat in space station mos eisley. they were explicitly isolationist, so you didn't see any of their common people. I can only imagine that the Batarians were screwed real hard by their rulers

[Rater202]

Yeah, the Batarian society just kind exists to like.....suck.

they explicitly allow caste systems and slavery in their society anyone outside said society are evil criminal, no one likes them and they get destroyed first in ME3. the only sympathetic Batarian I remember is a wounded one you treat in space station mos eisley. they were explicitly isolationist, so you didn't see any of their common people. I can only imagine that there was a Batarian underclass on their planet that screwed over real hard by their rulers and not allowed to go off planet.

Honestly, I'm surprised that Shepard gets in trouble for blowing up the system with the military outpost. Considering the sheer number of war crimes the Batarians have committed against the Systems alliance, the fact that it was a military outpost doing illegal crap with no civilians present, the fact that the casualties were statistically insignificant on an interstellar scale, and the fact that the Batarian Hegemony just doens't have the power to be a threat even if they did declare open war on the Systems Alliance...

And Shepard can easily be reinstated as a Spectre early on ME2 which means that they're literally above the law as long as they are making a genuine good faith effort to do things for the greater good.

(Also with the MAss Relay destroyed there should be no record that Sehapard was ever even in that system. There's no good reason for Shepard to be in trouble... Especially if you were Renegade in which case there's no reason to even turn yourself in.)

The typical Batarian is like the Typical Human in outlook. Decent enough people unless they believe something stupid. But the typical Batarian isn't allowed off-planet and is being fed propaganda about how evil the Humans and the Citadel are.

[Resileaf]

Honestly, I'm surprised that Shepard gets in trouble for blowing up the system with the military outpost. Considering the sheer number of war crimes the Batarians have committed against the Systems alliance, the fact that it was a military outpost doing illegal crap with no civilians present, the fact that the casualties were statistically insignificant on an interstellar scale, and the fact that the Batarian Hegemony just doens't have the power to be a threat even if they did declare open war on the Systems Alliance...

Because 100 000 deaths of a species you are not officially at war with is pretty goddamn serious, statistically significant or not.

[Rater202]

Because 100 000 deaths of a species you are not officially at war with is pretty goddamn serious, statistically significant or not.

The Batarians have caused several times that in deaths to the humans with no consequences. Not to mention what gets done to the humans who are taken as slaves...

The Batarian government encourages and directly benefits from the acts of the pirates and slavers, after all.

It's similar to how the citadel Council bent over backward to help and protect Saren up until you gave them what they considered hard proof of his crimes but then won't do **** to help Shepard beyond possibly reinstating them as a Spectre in 2: There's a double standard that makes it so that being Shepard is harder than being anyone else.

[Mechalich]

The Batarians have caused several times that in deaths to the humans with no consequences. Not to mention what gets done to the humans who are taken as slaves...

The interaction between statistics and psychology in the Human mind (and apparently in the minds of most species of this iteration of galactic civilization, which makes at least some sense because Reapers), discounts background rate events compared to large single incidents that penetrate the consciousness. So Shepard causing a single, massive, tragedy to the Batarians can cause far more political action than years of low-level raiding and slavery.

[Resileaf]

In any case, guilty or not, Shepard does need to be investigated by a military committee for the death of an entire system's population, if only to delay war. A paragon Shepard in particular would demand they be investigated, even if it was the right choice, because it's not going to be easy on the mind.

[Rater202]

Shepard does need to be investigated by a military committee for the death of an entire system's population, if only to delay war.

Why? Shepard was never supposed to be there in the first place, it was an off-the-books mission.

Furthermore, with the Mass Relay destroyed there'd be no record that Shepard was ever in the system.

Paragon Shepard would want to take responsibility, but a Renegade or even some neutrals would have told the Hegemony to go screw itself.

[Resileaf]

Why? Shepard was never supposed to be there in the first place, it was an off-the-books mission.

Furthermore, with the Mass Relay destroyed there'd be no record that Shepard was ever in the system.

Paragon Shepard would want to take responsibility, but a Renegade or even some neutrals would have told the Hegemony to go screw itself.

Because that's what militaries do. They investigate to check if you are at fault when 100,000 people die suddenly because of your involvement.

[Rater202]

Because that's what militaries do. They investigate to check if you are at fault when 100,000 people die suddenly because of your involvement.

Only one other person outside of Shepard's crew knew that Shepard was in the system at all and he explicitly said he'd cover for Shepard until Shepard figured out what they wanted to do next.

Unless Shepard confesses, there's literally zero evidence of their involvement. No evidence, no investigation. It'd just be written off as a freak accident or something the locals did.

The opening of ME3 only works if you assume full paragon Shepard who puts doing the right thing as being more important than having the time to prepare for the Reapers.

[Aeson]

Why? Shepard was never supposed to be there in the first place, it was an off-the-books mission.

Furthermore, with the Mass Relay destroyed there'd be no record that Shepard was ever in the system.

Paragon Shepard would want to take responsibility, but a Renegade or even some neutrals would have told the Hegemony to go screw itself.

You know the saying "three can keep a secret, but only if two of them are dead?" More people than just Shepard knew he was there and knew what his involvement in that incident was. It's pretty likely that at some point that secret's going to come out.

Beyond that, governments cannot have their agents - secret or not - taking actions like this on their own initiative without repercussion. Nobody is going to believe that dropping an asteroid on an inhabited world and killing a hundred thousand people wasn't an officially-sanctioned operation if Shepard's involvement in the incident comes out and he or she isn't punished for it, and quite frankly what happens in the game is a metaphorical slap on the wrist considering that this incident isn't that far removed from someone in the CIA taking a nuclear device over to Vladivostok and detonating it in the city center. Shepard's very lucky not to have been thrown into the deepest, darkest hole that the Systems Alliance or the Council could find and left there to rot, or even to have been thrown to the wolves and handed over to the Bataarians to do with as they pleased as a conciliatory gesture, because from the outside Shepard going more or less unpunished makes it look very much like the government at bare minimum condones Shepard's actions, and also because if Shepard is seen to have 'gotten away with it' then there is a risk that it will encourage other agents to take similar actions on their own initiative because, well, if it's okay for Shepard to do it then why wouldn't it be okay for them to do it, too?

[Rater202]

Beyond that, governments cannot have their agents - secret or not - taking actions like this on their own initiative without repercussion.

1: Shepard wasn't there on their own initiative. It was an off-the-books mission given to them by Admiral Hackett asked them to go there off the record to rescue an agent who was being detained in a Batarian Gulag.

He's the only person outside of Shepard's crew who know that Shepard was there, and he explicitly says that he'll cover for Shepard long enough for Shepard to sort things out and decide where they want to go from here.

...Honestly, his head should have been on the chopping block right next to Shepard. He's literally the only reason Shepard was there.

2: Having agents take actions like this on their own initiative is literally the entire point of having someone be a Spectre. Explicitly. Spectres are explicitly above the law of the Citadel and its member states, all of their actions are classified, and are given an extremely wide berth regarding how they operate with the Citadel Council explicitly stating that they don't care to know the details of how Spectres operate.

The moment The Council made Shepard a Sepctre, their membership in the alliance Navy effectively became a technicality. They're no longer part of the chain of command ad are no longer subject to Alliance Law as the Alliance is a Citadel Member State. Note how thy didn't get in trouble for stealing the Normandy after Undona acts like a jackass and the Council takes their stupid pills when, under normal circumstances, even the fact that Shepard was objectively correct to do so wouldn't have saved them from a court-martial.

3: As everyone else who knew of Shepard's involvement was part of Shepard's crew, the Arrival presumably happens after the final mission of the main game, and the only way to guarantee that they survive that mission is if everyone has absolute Loyalty to Shepard(and also half of them being criminals who have good reason not to talk to the Allaince) so they presumably could have kept their mouths shut fir the six months until the Reapers showed up.

[Anteros]

You think an entire crew is going to keep quiet about a mass genocide? What? Of course that's going to get out.

[Resileaf]

1: Shepard wasn't there on their own initiative. It was an off-the-books mission given to them by Admiral Hackett asked them to go there off the record to rescue an agent who was being detained in a Batarian Gulag.

He's the only person outside of Shepard's crew who know that Shepard was there, and he explicitly says that he'll cover for Shepard long enough for Shepard to sort things out and decide where they want to go from here.

...Honestly, his head should have been on the chopping block right next to Shepard. He's literally the only reason Shepard was there.

Hackett would probably be in as much trouble... But he's higher ranked and it's Shepard who destroyed the system themselves, so the investigation starts with them. If there wasn't a Reaper invasion just six months later, I'm sure we would have gotten more info on what happened to Hackett as well.

2: Having agents take actions like this on their own initiative is literally the entire point of having someone be a Spectre. Explicitly. Spectres are explicitly above the law of the Citadel and its member states, all of their actions are classified, and are given an extremely wide berth regarding how they operate with the Citadel Council explicitly stating that they don't care to know the details of how Spectres operate.

The moment The Council made Shepard a Sepctre, their membership in the alliance Navy effectively became a technicality. They're no longer part of the chain of command ad are no longer subject to Alliance Law as the Alliance is a Citadel Member State. Note how thy didn't get in trouble for stealing the Normandy after Undona acts like a jackass and the Council takes their stupid pills when, under normal circumstances, even the fact that Shepard was objectively correct to do so wouldn't have saved them from a court-martial.

Shepard's actions in Batarian space weren't done under Spectre authority and the Council is very much able to strip the Spectre rank if they believe Shepard acted out of bounds. Nonetheless, Shepard went into that mission as a personal favor to an Alliance admiral so the Council probably went "Well that wasn't a Spectre mission so not our problem" in case the Batarians complained at them, but the Batarians raged against the Alliance instead so they didn't have to get involved.

3: As everyone else who knew of Shepard's involvement was part of Shepard's crew, the Arrival presumably happens after the final mission of the main game, and the only way to guarantee that they survive that mission is if everyone has absolute Loyalty to Shepard(and also half of them being criminals who have good reason not to talk to the Allaince) so they presumably could have kept their mouths shut fir the six months until the Reapers showed up.

It's very possible for the Hegemony to learn of an Alliance operative in the system. They knew that they had captured a human spy there, and would most likely receive a report that the spy was rescued by another human soldier. And then... They lose contact with the system, and whatever investigation (probably long-range scanning of some sort) reveals that the entire system has been scoured of life and the Mass Relay is destroyed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out these two events are related.

[Rater202]

It's very possible for the Hegemony to learn of an Alliance operative in the system. They knew that they had captured a human spy there, and would most likely receive a report that the spy was rescued by another human soldier. And then... They lose contact with the system, and whatever investigation (probably long-range scanning of some sort) reveals that the entire system has been scoured of life and the Mass Relay is destroyed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out these two events are related.

1: Shepard entering the system to the relay being destroyed was like, less than 24 hours and if I recall you have to either kill every Batarian you encounter or not get caught once to actually succeed in the rescue. At most the Batarians would just know that the alliance operative they'd been illegally detaining in the Gulag of that military outpost escaped just before the relay exploded and they can't exactly admit that they had an alliance operative illegally detained in a gulag without undermining the legitimacy of their complaint or accusation against the Alliance

2: With that lack of evidence, it would be the Hegemony's word against Shepard's and the Hegemony has no credibility outside of their own borders.

[Resileaf]

I had things to say, but on second thought we've hijacked Thethird's thread and I feel bad having done so.