Two hours before the attack on Therum.
The atmosphere in the mess hall wasn’t going to improve Shepard’s mood, that was damn sure. She wasn’t hungry, either, but she was obliged to attend because there was no telling what would happen otherwise. Following Alenko’s advice, she had ordered all the officers to sit at the same table with all the aliens who had suddenly made themselves at home on the Normandy, but she was no longer sure it had been such a brilliant idea. The several meals they had all taken together during the two days of flight from the Citadel had been a study of intercultural screw-ups on so many levels that it was difficult to keep count even without the added angle of being constrained to a seat that granted a direct line of sight into Wrex’s mouth. He was sitting at the head of the ‘alien’ side of the table, to Shepard’s far right, and when he noticed human stares, he belched so loudly that the plates shook. Then he started picking his teeth with the three-inch talon of his index finger.
Continue reading Gates of Hell
Two hours before the attack on Therum
Shepard hated Therum long before she laid eyes on the desolate, maroon disk through the open viewports in the bridge. There was a nearly imperceptible tug in her gut as the Normandy fired the last thruster sequence to put them in orbit. The engines wound down, and time seemed to halt in the motionless silence.
And then, despite all her efforts, it started going backwards.
Continue reading Heads or Tails
Canon stuff:
- Mass Effect Wiki is great for looking up anything about characters, places and events from the games. But their book and comic summaries are questionable, and the science often inaccurate.
- The most reliable source of information is the Codex, which consists of ingame encyclopedic entries.
- The official ME site is good for pictures, news, and ads.
- Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 as movies. It’s a male Shepard with a different background from what I play and write and possibly very different choices during important missions, but it’s more than illustrative. Probably the best way to learn about ME short of playing the games themselves.
- An enlightening interview with the voice actors (especially part 2 and what Fred Tatasciore – who played Saren – has to say about the character).
Continue reading Further Reading
I wrote up an introduction to the setting of Mass Effect for people who have not played the games, but still wish to read my fanfiction. It’s riddled with links and pictures, which is by no means a guarantee that it’s not boring and even less, that it fulfills its purpose well. So I invite everyone who reads to help me improve it. Thanks, and have fun!
Mass Effect 2 and 3
The stories about Saren and Nihlus are all conveniently set before the beginning of the first game (well, with the exception of Ghost in the Machine), and therefore only loosely constrained by the actual events enacted in the second and third. These focus exclusively on the adventures of Commander Shepard as she strives to postpone and eventually repel the Reaper invasion. I won’t summarize the games here; suffice it to say that the basic assumption behind Mass Effect 1 and 2 is that the Council refuses to believe the Reapers are real and the invasion imminent, so when they do appear in force in Mass Effect 3, the galaxy is far from ready and, to make things worse, fragmented by internal conflicts.
Continue reading What Remains
There isn’t much we know about Saren and Nihlus from canon, and even less about their relationship, other than Saren’s declaration that “Nihlus was a fellow Spectre, and a friend,” and the deceptively relaxed tone of their encounter on Eden Prime before the fateful shot.
Continue reading Saren/Nihlus