#that's like. anyone who sets out now to colonize a planet or something

[thehardkandy]

I'm really glad I decided to finish Exordia this morning because it did lead to just about 7 hours of writing (+lunch break and dog walk) so that I was able to do a short story front to back ~3300 words.

Feels like a bit W because the last short I did was October, which is still much more recent than the one before it had been (though I've had a few abortive attempts at getting past the first 20k of a book in there)

I spent a lot of the winter depressed and struggling to find the joy in doing something for it's own sake, so I've been trying to really push myself toward the parts of writing that have me looking back on my own writing fondly. Because even without plans for publishing stuff there is so much of my writing that I think my life is better for having written

I feel very good about what I wrote today, so hopefully I'll keep doing this small stuff

I'll say an especial shout-out to the Penric novellas, the cemeteries of amalo books, and Exordia for really making me feel that extra fondness for books and writing lately

[racefortheironthrone]

Saving some Reddit comments about BOE to prevent linkrot

Feel free to ignore this if you’re just browsing through your tags. 

Comment the First:

I'll quote myself from another thread on the same subject:

So here's what I think the situation is:

New Rho is a city on a "steal"/"shepherd" planet, which the Cohort forcibly resettled with refugees from three flipped planets who themselves were "steal"/"shepherd" planets. Now, keep in mind that the planet that New Rho is on, as well as the three flipped planets, don't consider themselves part of the Empire and considers itself independent (remember the references to there being an old civic government and militias and the like), but the Cohort disagrees and that's the way colonialism works. Essentially, what we are dealing with is the frontier edge of the Empire - New Rho is probably on the border of Imperial-controlled space, and isn't really that important. Remember, Ianthe considers the nearby (planet?) Antioch to be the much more important theater of war and sees New Rho as something of an annoying chore.

BOE is active on New Rho, but does not control it. Not only is BOE internally divided between MERV and Ctesiphon Wings, but in general BOE does not operate as either a government or a standing military - they are a guerrilla movement, they prefer to use asymmetrical and indirect forms of combat, they are not universally supported by the local population (remember how Hot Sauce sees them as sellouts) and indeed seem to be primarily operating through catspaws - selling guns to the locals rather than using the guns themselves and other forms of deniable warfare. Instead, New Rho seems to be somewhat in a state of anarchy - there's seemingly an old civic government with little power, there are various militias running around blowing stuff up, there are mercenaries who'll fight for anyone who pays them, there are large criminal gangs, there seems to be a rather corrupt local police force, and then you have the dueling factions of BOE, and none of them have a monopoly on violence or is capable of organizing an actual government. The spaceport is busted as is the desalination plants, they can barely set up a public announcement, and the closest thing to public services seem to be carried out by totally overwhelmed volunteers (some of whom have BOE ties/resources, and others do not).

If we're talking about where the refugees/population of New Rho came from, I would agree that as people have said, we're dealing with settlers who are the descendants of the trillionaires who got away from John Gaius before the Resurrection ten thousand years ago. These settlers are being colonized by John's Empire, as part of his eternal strategy of revenge.

...So Merv Wing is the wing of BOE led by Unjust Hope, who form a faction of BOE that calls itself the Hopers. The Hopers are a more militant faction, and they have three main political objectives - first, they're part of the anti-negotiation faction and want to assault the barracks and wipe out the remaining Cohort forces on New Rho; second, they are opposed to the Lyctor project as an unacceptable dalliance with necromancy, so they want to disrupt it - hence why they seize and hide the Sixth Oversight Committee, hence why they attack Camilla, hence why they attack the school; third, they eventually want to purge the moderate faction of the BOE represented by Ctesiphon Wing.

By contrast, Ctesiphon Wing is the wing of BOE led by We Suffer, who form a faction of BOE that calls itself the Wakers. We Suffer follows the teachings of Commander Wake in an almost religious fashion, but ironically this makes her something of a moderate within BOE, because Wake was ultimately a pragmatist who was willing to work with rebel lyctors in order to bring down John Gaius. We Suffer's main political objective is the Lyctor project, an attempt to level the playing field between the Empire and BOE by acquiring a Lyctor who would be loyal to BOE - fighting fire with fire. We Suffer had a secondary political objective, which was the potential alliance between the House of the Sixth and BOE, another case of fighting fire with fire - this got disrupted by Merv Wing, but also by the arrival of Varun the Eater. And at the end of the book, We Suffer is willing to try again for Wake's original mission to open the Locked Tomb and use Alecto against John Gaius.

Comment the Second:

This is an interesting theory, but I don't think it's right. To begin with, I have a hard time with assuming that the entire non-Empire population of space outside of the solar system are the result of other colonization efforts that are never explained in the text. I don't think that would be good writing - for reasons that I'll get into a bit, I think that screws with some of the themes Muir is exploring; but more generally, it's kind of unfair to your audience to give them a whole bunch of text that points in one direction, but then have the answer be something else completely that you've never bothered to explain to them.

“But first, let’s start with the structure and the resources of BOE, and why I think it’s unlikely that they’re from a line of wealthy aristocrats.”

I think we need to carefully disaggregate who we're talking about when we say that the BOE are the descendants of the trillionaires:

First, we have to acknowledge that the passengers on the FTL ships were made up of a very small number of trillionaires (John describes them as a mere "half-dozen"), their staff, the larger number of "hand-picked guys" they hired as necessary experts for doing the actual work of terraforming and planetary colonization, and the two hundred internationals who got the golden ticket. The BOE are descendants of some of these people, but the odds are against them being descendants of the trillionaires personally.

Second, we don't know what happened to human culture and society once the FTL ships landed (assuming for the sake of argument that they did). One major question is whether the trillionaires were able to exert the same kind of political and economic power that they did back on Earth - after all, they'd already converted all of their wealth to natural resources, and they were now lightyears away from any government that would enforce their property rights, and they were now very outnumbered. Maybe they could use their staff and their "hand-picked guys" to stay on top of the heap and ward off revolution a la Jay Gould, but there really wouldn't be anything stopping their staff and "hand-picked guys" from going all Praetorian Guard on them, because at the end of the day we're talking about a half-dozen people who are disproportionately likely to be old men. Certainly, when we look at New Rho (our one example), we don't see any centralized power - there's a relatively powerless old civic government, there's multiple militias, there's a corrupt and violent police force, there are a lot of gangs, and there are a whole bunch of mercenaries runnign around, all of whom have power.

Third, BOE came about both relatively recently (5,000 years ago instead of 10,000) and quite some time after the Resurrection. It would be wildly unlikely for them to have received either cultural information or resources directly from the trillionaires, because it's highly unlikely that the trillionaires would have lasted that long as a going concern - the oldest continuous dynasty in human history is only 2681 years old, after all. I think the text has been pretty consistent that the BOE is a guerrilla movement, with the organizational form and level of power and resources that go along with that - although somehow they managed to get their hands on orbital nuclear strike capabilities at the beginning of HtN, so we shouldn't be too dismissive.

“What we don’t get from BOE is a sense of a centralized, powerful political structure. The planet that the narrative takes place on, Ur (in BOE terms) or New Rho (in House terms) seems primarily beholden to the Houses, as referenced by the 700 year contract that Ur/New Rho planet was under. All other forms of governance are seen as resistance and lumped together by the populace, if the comments from the crowd after the broadcast are any indication...

BOE doesn’t seem to be an entity with much power or many resources—they instead look like a very organized resistance movement. The cell, wing, and distributed power structure certainly point to this, since they’re ways of clandestine organization. This system is designed to minimize losses in case a cell is lost and to obscure lines of power so that high-level leadership can’t be directly traced back to a cell’s actions”

As I've discussed elsewhere, BOE doesn't actively attempt to govern New Rho/Ur, but instead infiltrates it clandestinely. It conducts various of its own operations (operations against the barracks, the negotiations, the lyctor project, etc.), it sells weapons to sympathetic parties who are having a go at the Imperials, but overall it follows its own strategic doctrine of not exposing BOE personnel to the Cohort's superior strength.

It also has to be acknowledged that, even though BOE seemingly lacks FTL technology, it manages to operate throughout a wide range of interplanetary space - it evacuated the AYU crew and Gideon's body from Earth, it attacked the Cohort fleet with radiation missiles somewhere "at the front," it's active on the nearby (and considerably more important) planet of Antioch, it's probably active in the Ur sector, it is able to set up a temporary base on that unnamed planet from AYU, and so on.

“it looks like humanity outside of the Dominicus system is confined to three planets, and relocation plans don’t seem to be coming.”

This is a conclusion I've seen a bunch of people on a bunch of threads come to, and I think it's an over-generalization. Keep in mind that the information about "everyone was crammed onto three planets" comes from a bunch of ex-refugees kibbitzing while waiting in a queue - they don't have access to universe-wide information, so it's much more likely that the "three planets in question" are the ones that the Cohort is resettling people onto in their local area (whether that area is a sector like the Ur sector is unclear). We also have to keep in mind that New Rho is something of a backwater, even by frontier standards - Ianthe describes it as a "a planet...that nobody really gives a shit about." So if it wasn't for certain unpredictable events (the arrival of Varun), it's likely that it would have avoided resettlement for some time while Imperial resources were tied up in Antioch and other more important sectors.

“So why keep all these people around? Now, none of the settle-and-resettle-over-10,000 years plan makes sense if you’re trying to destroy your worst enemies.”

This I really disagree with, especially if you keep in mind that the Imperial strategy was devised by a New Zealander of Maori heritage. John's revenge against his "worst enemies" is that, rather than simply kill them (which would be rather unsatisfying, especially for a necromancer like John), he enacts colonial imperialism on them over and over again: the Cohort (clad in uniforms that are basically the British Army but in reverse) conducts the initial invasion and enforces Imperial decrees after compliance has been achieved; the necromancers render the earth unhabitable so that the Empire can strip-mine it for material resources; the colonial governors and administrators enforce literal unequal treaties; and then when the planet can no longer support human life (again, thanks to the Empire), the inhabitants are shoved onto inter-planetary reservations along with strangers who they don't share a language or a culture with and the whole process starts all over again.

It's a universe-wide system of contrapasso justice, carried out in a way that has a cultural and political resonance very specific to indigenous survivors of colonial imperialism - John is doing unto the trillionaires as their ancestors did unto his ancestors, punishing them with the worst thing he could imagine because in his eyes it is the worst thing ever done to anyone in the past.

[gamerkats]

An update of WIPs for our wonderful small group of readers! Hopefully, these will be available this summer. We haven't decided on a platform yet. Maybe Kindle Vellas-bundled-into-KU reads when finished? Or maybe just AO3. (At some point we do need to start selling something... Like one of these at least.)

Gear Heart Sands

Set on a dystopian steampunk world, the city of Outlast is the sole remaining functioning piece of human civilization. Nearly 80% of the once massive terra-colonizing population died during a cataclysmic event known as, the Resonance. Those that survived splintered into two groups. The Engineers, a people possessing energy abilities, allowing them to interact with technology on a psionic level. And the Faceless, a people who believe the Resonance should have spared no one, and are hellbent on destroying Outlast by any means.

The story revolves around a misfit group of unlikely heroes, that suddenly one morning all have something in common. They can hear the Great Clock ticking. Something no one else in Outlast can hear, as the Great Clock hasn't worked since the Resonance; stopping on the exact second it happened. Only the depths of the Iron Temples in the sandwastes hold the answer to the question they're all asking; are they crazy? However, some things are better left alone, and Outlast may not be as civilized as they all believe. Perhaps the Faceless were right all along, and time is finally running out.

One World Ends

It's just another day at the local corner coffee shop, You're Grounded. Generic coffees under exotic labels, being served to people who couldn't tell a medium from a medium dark, any more than they could tell a wine vintage, all while avoiding the ravenous zombies. The zombie apocalypse isn't nearly as bad as advertised. It's rather normal at this point. Clock into work, clock out of work, and clock anyone trying to bite you on the way home. More of an annoyance than a world ending horror.

"Learn to live with them." That's the directive every government across the globe has given. Assuring people that a cure is being found. But, for the time being, you're pretty much on your own. That is, unless you're wealthy enough to procure the services of professional Zombie Hunters. And You're Grounded happens to be their favorite hangout spot for a good jolt of go-go juice before the day's undead work. When their favorite barista accidentally gets into a whole truckload of trouble, the Zombie Hunters are in over their deadly heads to get them out...alive.

Velocity One

Set in a very distant future, where humans live among the stars, and planets are for vacations, not staycations. Deep in a Civil Vessel, within the city of Astra, there exists a switchboard. It's old, outdated, and has been largely forgotten as it sits alone; untouched in a hallway most simply walk aimlessly by. In the early years of space colonizing, it was a tether to all major Civil Vessels--massive, city structure ships--working much like a lowkey proximity alarm. When a light on the switchboard is on, a Civil Vessel is nearby; revealed even if it's cloaked.

By now, the switchboard has been rendered obsolete from all kinds of new monitors, and systems, that do a far better job of alerting Astra to any nearby colonies. The relic is mostly for nostalgia sake, and clinging to their early space exploration roots. That is, until a new light shines upon the unpolished surface. One that hasn't glowed since its installment, as that Civil Vessel was destroyed. Velocity One. And it's close enough to Astra to cause the switchboard to light up, where no other monitoring system recognizes the ghost ship. Even in this distant future, revenge, it seems, is a dish best served deep space cold.

Thank you!

Thank you all so much for your support. As so many of you have different genre tastes, we're going to try to write to a wide range. Nocturne of Flowers is fantasy/modern, The Night Before Boxing Day is modern, Berrybottles' Travel Guide to Terra is fantasy, Gear Heart Sands is dystopian steampunk, One World Ends is modern zombies, and Velocity One is sci-fi.

We also have a fictional historic Victorian vampires in the works, along with a high fantasy adventure for the Saccharine in Nightmares series, and three more works for (what is unexpectedly) the Night Before Boxing Day series.

Thank you again! 😘

[lost-technology]

Take Me Out to the Black

Tri-Tober Fanfic shorts Prompt 10: Travel Setting: Trigun Maximum and / or Stampede Summary: "...tell 'em I ain't comin' back." Rem embarks on SEEDS.

Take Me Out to the Black   There was a tremor in her bones, a sense of adventure she hadn’t felt since childhood, but more so, a sense of anxiety.  It had taken years of study, years of training and staggering qualifications to qualify for this trip, particularly in her position on it.  Rem Saverem could have simply signed up for Settler Class, but she would have not been preferred, being a single woman.  Families were preferred to establish a foothold on any new world that Project SEEDS came to.  What was more was that she wanted to be a part of it all, not a mere traveler. She wanted to do something useful.  She had procured the coveted position of Navigation Officer on one of the great vessels, which, while not the highest rank on any of the ships, was one of the most important and required the peculiar skill of being able to tolerate long periods of isolation.  She’d wanted some time to think.  This was going to be a kind of travel unlike any she had known – unlike any that anyone had known, really.  There were people who had gone up in “probe-ships” before, staying within the solar system before returning to Earth to test theories and equipment.  The Moon and Mars colonization projects hadn’t been faring as well as initially hoped, but people had established footholds there.  Still, Humanity’s best shot for long term survival was out further.  Rem knew that “watching the stars go by” wasn’t as much of an option as the old science fiction films made it out to be.  Much of the view would go by imperceptibly, and that would be when she was awake.  It was going to be nothing like watching scenery change from mountains to valleys to beaches and deserts or up and back again from the window of a train or an automobile.  It was going to be nothing like those trips to the mountains that she took as a child, watching the world go by and stepping out to smell the green in some of the last semi-wild places.  She wasn’t even going to watch the world, her cradle, her home, become a pale blue dot in the expanse of black as the fleet launched above and away.  Rem was not a part of the First Watch.  As she settled in for her last checks – a monitor on her blood-pressure, engineers helping her get her arms and legs rested into position in her stasis-chamber, she thought about what she was leaving behind.  It was a good thing, Rem concluded, after all, that she would not say goodbye to the Earth in real time.  The instantaneous homesickness could make her long to get off the ship, to back out – and it was far too late to do that now.  She had decided that she did not want to live on this planet anymore and there was no space for regrets.  The unwanted mental image flashed through her of Alex’s pale face as she was identifying his body at the city morgue.  No…she couldn’t take another long goodbye, not one that she would see.  It was better to focus on the future – the unknown and to wonder what it might bring. 

[w-ht-w]

Some might say this article woobifies Elon Musk. Regardless, it present an interesting reading on the man.

Passage from the article that I’ve been thinking about lately:

I understand now that Musk didn’t have me over to talk about his projects and vision. There’s nothing to be gained from talking about the problems of science with someone who doesn’t understand them. At the end of the day, he just wants to unwind and laugh about the world he’s trying to improve.

Full article:

IT’S MID-AFTERNOON ON a Friday at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and three of Elon Musk’s children are gathered around him – one of his triplets, both of his twins.

Musk is wearing a gray T-shirt and sitting in a swivel chair at his desk, which is not in a private office behind a closed door, but in an accessible corner cubicle festooned with outer-space novelty items, photos of his rockets, and mementos from Tesla and his other companies.

Most tellingly, there’s a framed poster of a shooting star with a caption underneath it that reads, “When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteor hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you’re pretty much hosed, no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteorite.” To most people, this would be mere dark humor, but in this setting, it’s also a reminder of Musk’s master plan: to create habitats for humanity on other planets and moons. If we don’t send our civilization into another Dark Ages before Musk or one of his dream’s inheritors pull it off, then Musk will likely be remembered as one of the most seminal figures of this millennium. Kids on all the terraformed planets of the universe will look forward to Musk Day, when they get the day off to commemorate the birth of the Earthling who single-handedly ushered in the era of space colonization.

And that’s just one of Musk’s ambitions. Others include converting automobiles, households and as much industry as possible from fossil fuels to sustainable energy; implementing a new form of high-speed city-to-city transportation via vacuum tube; relieving traffic congestion with a honeycomb of underground tunnels fitted with electric skates for cars and commuters; creating a mind-computer interface to enhance human health and brainpower; and saving humanity from the future threat of an artificial intelligence that may one day run amok and decide, quite rationally, to eliminate the irrational human species.

So far, Musk, 46, has accomplished none of these goals.

But what he has done is something that very few living people can claim: Painstakingly bulldozed, with no experience whatsoever, into two fields with ridiculously high barriers to entry – car manufacturing (Tesla) and rocketry (SpaceX) – and created the best products in those industries, as measured by just about any meaningful metric you can think of. In the process, he’s managed to sell the world on his capability to achieve objectives so lofty that from the mouth of anyone else, they’d be called fantasies.

At least, most of the world. “I’m looking at the short losses,” Musk says, transfixed by CNBC on his iPhone. He speaks to his kids without looking up. “Guys, check this out: Tesla has the highest short position in the entire stock market. A $9 billion short position.”

His children lean over the phone, looking at a table full of numbers that I don’t understand. So his 13-year-old, Griffin, explains it to me: “They’re betting that the stock goes down, and they’re getting money off that. But it went up high, so they lost an insane amount of money.”

“They’re jerks who want us to die,” Musk elaborates. “They’re constantly trying to make up false rumors and amplify any negative rumors. It’s a really big incentive to lie and attack my integrity. It’s really awful. It’s…”

He trails off, as he often does when preoccupied by a thought. I try to help: “Unethical?”

“It’s…” He shakes his head and struggles for the right word, then says softly, “Hurtful.”

It is easy to confuse who someone is with what they do, and thus turn them into a caricature who fits neatly into a storybook view of the world. Our culture always needs villains and heroes, fools and geniuses, scapegoats and role models. However, despite opinions to the contrary, Elon Musk is not a robot sent from the future to save humanity. Nor is he a Silicon Valley savant whose emotional affect has been replaced with supercomputer-like intelligence. Over the course of nine months of reporting, watching Musk do everything from strategize Mars landings with his rocket-engineering team to plan the next breakthroughs with his artificial-intelligence experts, I learned he is someone far, far different from what his myth and reputation suggest.

The New York Times has called him “arguably the most successful and important entrepreneur in the world.” It’s an easy case to make: He’s probably the only person who has started four billion-dollar companies – PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. But at his core, Musk is not a businessman or entrepreneur. He’s an engineer, inventor and, as he puts it, “technologist.” And as a naturally gifted engineer, he’s able to find the design inefficiencies, flaws and complete oversights in the tools that power our civilization.

“He’s able to see things more clearly in a way that no one else I know of can understand,” says his brother, Kimbal. He discusses his brother’s love of chess in their earlier years, and adds, “There’s a thing in chess where you can see 12 moves ahead if you’re a grandmaster. And in any particular situation, Elon can see things 12 moves ahead.” 

His children soon leave for the home of their mother, Musk’s ex-wife Justine. “I wish we could be private with Tesla,” Musk murmurs as they exit. “It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.”

What follows is … silence. Musk sits at his desk, looking at his phone, but not typing or reading anything. He then lowers himself to the floor, and stretches his back on a foam roller. When he finishes, I attempt to start the interview by asking about the Tesla Model 3 launch a week earlier, and what it felt like to stand onstage and tell the world he’d just pulled off a plan 14 years in the making: to bootstrap, with luxury electric cars, a mass-market electric car.

The accomplishment, for Musk, is not just in making a $35,000 electric car; it’s in making a $35,000 electric car that’s so good, and so in-demand, that it forces other car manufacturers to phase out gas cars to compete. And sure enough, within two months of the launch, both GM and Jaguar Land Rover announced they were planning to eliminate gas cars and go all-electric.

Musk thinks for a while, begins to answer, then pauses. “Uh, actually, let me go to the restroom. Then I’ll ask you to repeat that question.” A longer pause. “I also have to unload other things from my mind.”

Five minutes later, Musk still hasn’t returned. Sam Teller, his chief of staff, says, “I’ll be right back.”

Several minutes after that, they both reappear and huddle nearby, whispering to each other. Then Musk returns to his desk.

“We can reschedule for another day if this is a bad time,” I offer.

Musk clasps his hands on the surface of the desk, composes himself, and declines.

“It might take me a little while to get into the rhythm of things.”

Then he heaves a sigh and ends his effort at composure. “I just broke up with my girlfriend,” he says hesitantly. “I was really in love, and it hurt bad.”

He pauses and corrects himself: “Well, she broke up with me more than I broke up with her, I think.”

Thus, the answer to the question posed earlier: It felt unexpectedly, disappointingly, uncontrollably horrible to launch the Model 3. “I’ve been in severe emotional pain for the last few weeks,” Musk elaborates. “Severe. It took every ounce of will to be able to do the Model 3 event and not look like the most depressed guy around. For most of that day, I was morbid. And then I had to psych myself up: drink a couple of Red Bulls, hang out with positive people and then, like, tell myself: ‘I have all these people depending on me. All right, do it!'”

Minutes before the event, after meditating for pretty much the first time in his life to get centered, Musk chose a very telling song to drive onstage to: “R U Mine?” by the Arctic Monkeys.

Musk discusses the breakup for a few more minutes, then asks, earnestly, deadpan, “Is there anybody you think I should date? It’s so hard for me to even meet people.” He swallows and clarifies, stammering softly, “I’m looking for a long-term relationship. I’m not looking for a one-night stand. I’m looking for a serious companion or soulmate, that kind of thing.”

I eventually tell him that it may not be a good idea to jump right into another relationship. He may want to take some time to himself and figure out why his previous relationships haven’t worked in the long run: his marriage to writer Justine Musk, his marriage to actress Talulah Riley, and this new breakup with actress Amber Heard.

Musk shakes his head and grimaces: “If I’m not in love, if I’m not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy.”

I explain that needing someone so badly that you feel like nothing without them is textbook codependence.

Musk disagrees. Strongly. “It’s not true,” he replies petulantly. “I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.” He hesitates, shakes his head, falters, continues. “It’s not like I don’t know what that feels like: Being in a big empty house, and the footsteps echoing through the hallway, no one there – and no one on the pillow next to you. Fuck. How do you make yourself happy in a situation like that?”

There’s truth to what Musk is saying. It is lonely at the top. But not for everyone. It’s lonely at the top for those who were lonely at the bottom.

“When I was a child, there’s one thing I said,” Musk continues. His demeanor is stiff, yet in the sheen of his eyes and the trembling of his lips, a high tide of emotion is visible, pushing against the retaining walls. “‘I never want to be alone.’ That’s what I would say.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t want to be alone.”

A ring of red forms around his eyes as he stares forward and sits frozen in silence. Musk is a titan, a visionary, a human-size lever pushing forward massive historical inevitabilities – the kind of person who comes around only a few times in a century – but in this moment, he seems like a child who is afraid of abandonment. And that may be the origin story of Musk’s superambitions, but more on that later. In the meantime, Musk has something he’d like to show me.

“If you say anything about what you’re about to see, it would cost us billions,” he says, rising from his desk. “And you would be put in jail.”

The most interesting tourist attraction in Los Angeles County is one that’s not in many guidebooks: It’s in the otherwise-untouristed southwestern city of Hawthorne, around SpaceX. If you walk along Crenshaw Boulevard from Jack Northrop Boulevard to 120th Street, what you will see is a city of the future that’s under construction. This is Musk city, an alternate reality, a triumph of futuristic imagination more thrilling than anything at a Disney park. On the west side of the street, a 156-foot-tall rocket towers above SpaceX headquarters, symbolizing Musk’s dream of relatively low-cost interplanetary travel. This particular rocket booster was the first in human history to be launched into space, then recovered intact on Earth after separating, and then fired back into space. On the east side of the street, an employee parking lot has been dug up and turned into the first-ever tunnel for the Boring Company, Musk’s underground-honeycomb solution to traffic jams and the future home of all his terrestrial transportation projects. Then, running for a mile beside Jack Northrop Boulevard, there’s a white vacuum tube along the shoulder of the road. This is the test track for the Hyperloop, Musk’s high-speed form of city-to-city travel. Taken together, the dreams of Musk city promise to connect the planet and the solar system in ways that will fundamentally change humanity’s relationship to two of the most important facets of its reality: distance and time.

But there is a particular building in Musk city that few have visited, and this is where Musk takes me. It is the Tesla Design Studio, where he’s slated to do a walkthrough of the Tesla Truck and other future vehicle prototypes with his team of designers and engineers.

Outside the door, a guard takes my phone and audio recorder, and I’m given an old-fashioned pen and paper to take notes on. Musk then continues into the building and reveals the Tesla Truck, which aims to help the trucking industry go green. (Musk has even been toying with creating a supersonic electric jet, with vertical takeoff and landing, in the future.) Four key members of the Tesla team are there – Doug Field, JB Straubel, Franz von Holzhausen, Jerome Guillen – and watch with anticipation as Musk explores a new configuration of the cab for the first time.

Guillen explains the idea behind the truck: “We just thought, ‘What do people want? They want reliability. They want the lowest cost. And they want driver comfort.’ So we reimagined the truck.”

This is a perfect example of the idea that Musk-inspired wannabe visionaries around the world worship like a religion: first principles thinking. In other words, if you want to create or innovate, start from a clean slate. Don’t accept any ideas, practices or standards just because everyone else is doing them. For instance, if you want to make a truck, then it must be able to reliably move cargo from one location to another, and you must follow existing laws of physics. Everything else is negotiable, including government regulations. As long as you remember that the goal isn’t to reinvent the truck, but to create the best one, whether or not it’s similar to past trucks.

As a result of this type of thinking, Musk is able to see an industry much more objectively than others who’ve been in the field their whole lives.

“I was literally told this is impossible and I’m a huge liar,” Musk says of the early days of Tesla. “But I have a car and you can drive it. This is not like a frigging unicorn. It’s real. Go for a drive. It’s amazing. How can you be in denial?”

An unfortunate fact of human nature is that when people make up their mind about something, they tend not to change it – even when confronted with facts to the contrary. “It’s very unscientific,” Musk says. “There’s this thing called physics, which is this scientific method that’s really quite effective for figuring out the truth.”

The scientific method is a phrase Musk uses often when asked how he came up with an idea, solved a problem or chose to start a business. Here’s how he defines it for his purposes, in mostly his own words:

1. Ask a question.

2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.


3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.

4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you’re probably right, but you’re not certainly right.

“That’s the scientific method,” Musk concludes. “It’s really helpful for figuring out the tricky things.”

But most people don’t use it, he says. They engage in wishful thinking. They ignore counterarguments. They form conclusions based on what others are doing and aren’t doing. The reasoning that results is “It’s true because I said it’s true,” but not because it’s objectively true.

“The fundamental intention of Tesla, at least my motivation,” Musk explains in his halting, stuttering voice, “was to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. That’s why I open-sourced the patents. It’s the only way to transition to sustainable energy better.

“Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI,” he continues. “I keep telling people this. I hate to be Cassandra here, but it’s all fun and games until somebody loses a fucking eye. This view [of climate change] is shared by almost everyone who’s not crazy in the scientific community.”

For the next 20 minutes, Musk examines the Tesla Truck. He comments first on the technical details, even ones as granular as the drawbacks and advantages of different types of welding. He then moves on to the design, specifically a driver-comfort feature that cannot be specified here, due to said threatened jail time.

“Probably no one will buy it because of this,” he tells his team. “But if you’re going to make a product, make it beautiful. Even if it doesn’t affect sales, I want it to be beautiful.”

According to Musk’s best guess, our personalities might be 80 percent nature and 20 percent nurture. Whatever that ratio actually is, if you want to understand the future that Musk is building, it’s essential to understand the past that built him, including his fears of human extinction and being alone.

For the first eight or so years of his life, Musk lived with his mother, Maye, a dietitian and model, and his father, Errol, an engineer, in Pretoria, South Africa. He rarely saw either of them.

“I didn’t really have a primary nanny or anything,” Musk recalls. “I just had a housekeeper who was there to make sure I didn’t break anything. She wasn’t, like, watching me. I was off making explosives and reading books and building rockets and doing things that could have gotten me killed. I’m shocked that I have all my fingers.” He raises his hands and examines them, then lowers his digits. “I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.”

Some of those books help explain the world Musk is building, particularly Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. The books are centered around the work of a visionary named Hari Seldon, who has invented a scientific method of predicting the future based on crowd behavior. He sees a 30,000-year Dark Ages waiting ahead for humankind, and creates a plan that involves sending scientific colonies to distant planets to help civilization mitigate this unavoidable cataclysm.

“Asimov certainly was influential because he was seriously paralleling Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but he applied that to a sort of modern galactic empire,” Musk explains. “The lesson I drew from that is you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one.”

Musk was around 10 at this time, and plunged in his own personal dark age. He’d recently made a move that would change his life. It was a wrong decision that came from the right place.

When his parents split up two years before, he and his younger siblings – Kimbal and Tosca – stayed with their mom. But, Musk recounts, “I felt sorry for my father, because my mother had all three kids. He seemed very sad and lonely by himself. So I thought, ‘I can be company.'” He pauses while a movie’s worth of images seem to flicker through his mind.

“Yeah, I was sad for my father. But I didn’t really understand at the time what kind of person he was.”

He lets out a long, sad sigh, then says flatly about moving in with Dad, “It was not a good idea.”

According to Elon, Errol has an extremely high IQ – “brilliant at engineering, brilliant” – and was supposedly the youngest person to get a professional engineer’s qualification in South Africa. When Elon came to live with him in Lone Hill, a suburb of Johannesburg, Errol was, by his own account, making money in the often dangerous worlds of construction and emerald mining –
at times so much that he claims he couldn’t close his safe.

“I’m naturally good at engineering that’s because I inherited it from my father,” Musk says. “What’s very difficult for others is easy for me. For a while, I thought things were so obvious that everyone must know this.”

Like what kinds of things?

“Well, like how the wiring in a house works. And a circuit breaker, and alternating current and direct current, what amps and volts were, how to mix a fuel and oxidizers to create an explosive. I thought everyone knew this.”

But there was another side to Musk’s father that was just as important to making Elon who he is. “He was such a terrible human being,” Musk shares. “You have no idea.” His voice trembles, and he discusses a few of those things, but doesn’t go into specifics. “My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil,” he says. “He will plan evil.”

Besides emotional abuse, did that include physical abuse?

“My dad was not physically violent with me. He was only physically violent when I was very young.” (Errol countered via email that he only “smacked” Elon once, “on the bottom.”)

Elon’s eyes turn red as he continues discussing his dad. “You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done. Um…”

There is clearly something Musk wants to share, but he can’t bring himself to utter the words, at least not on the record. “It’s so terrible, you can’t believe it.”

The tears run silently down his face. “I can’t remember the last time I cried.” He turns to Teller to confirm this. “You’ve never seen me cry.”

“No,” Teller says. “I’ve never seen you cry.”

The flow of tears stops as quickly as it began. And once more, Musk has the cold, impassive, but gentle stone face that is more familiar to the outside world.

Yet it’s now clear that this is not the face of someone without emotions, but the face of someone with a lot of emotions who had been forced to suppress them in order to survive a painful childhood.

When asked about committing crimes, Musk’s father said that he has never intentionally threatened or hurt anyone, or been charged with anything, except … in this one case, he says he shot and killed three out of five or six armed people who broke into his home, and was later cleared of all charges on self-defense.

In his e-mail, Errol wrote: “I’ve been accused of being a Gay, a Misogynist, a Paedophile, a Traitor, a Rat, a Shit (quite often), a Bastard (by many women whose attentions I did not return) and much more. My own (wonderful) mother told me I am ‘ruthless’ and should learn to be more ‘humane.'” But, he concluded, “I love my children and would readily do whatever for them.”

As an adult, Musk, with the same optimism with which he moved in with his father as a child, moved his dad, his father’s then-wife and their children to Malibu. He bought them a house, cars and a boat. But his father, Elon says, hadn’t changed, and Elon severed the relationship.

“In my experience, there is nothing you can do,” he says about finally learning the lesson that his dad will never change. “Nothing, nothing. I wish. I’ve tried everything. I tried threats, rewards, intellectual arguments, emotional arguments, everything to try to change my father for the better, and he… no way, it just got worse.”

Somewhere in this trauma bond is the key to Musk’s worldview – creation against destruction, of being useful versus harmful, of defending the world against evil.

Things at school weren’t much better than life at home. There, Musk was brutally bullied – until he was 15 years old.

“For the longest time, I was the youngest and the smallest kid in the class because my birthday just happens to fall on almost the last day that they will accept you into school, June 28th. And I was a late bloomer. So I was the youngest and the smallest kid in class for years and years. …The gangs at school would hunt me down – literally hunt me down!”

Musk put down the books and started learning to fight back – karate, judo, wrestling. That physical education, combined with a growth spurt that brought him to six feet by age 16, gave him some confidence and, as he puts it, “I started dishing it out as hard as they’d give it to me.”

When he got into a fight with the biggest bully at school and knocked him out with one punch, Musk noticed that the bully never picked on him again. “It taught me a lesson: If you’re fighting a bully, you cannot appease a bully.” Musk speaks the next words forcefully. “You punch the bully in the nose. Bullies are looking for targets that won’t fight back. If you make yourself a hard target and punch the bully in the nose, he’s going to beat the shit out of you, but he’s actually not going to hit you again.”

When he was 17, Musk left college and moved to his mother’s home country, Canada, later obtaining passports for his mother, brother and sister to join him there. His father did not wish him well, Musk recalls. “He said rather contentiously that I’d be back in three months, that I’m never going to make it, that I’m never going to make anything of myself. He called me an idiot all the time. That’s the tip of the iceberg, by the way.”

After Musk became successful, his father even took credit for helping him – to such a degree that it’s listed as fact in Elon’s Wikipedia entry. “One thing he claims is he gave us a whole bunch of money to start, my brother and I, to start up our first company [Zip2, which provided online city guides to newspapers]. This is not true,” Musk says. “He was irrelevant. He paid nothing for college. My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley.”

Musk’s career history decorates his desk. There’s an item from nearly all of his companies, even a mug for X.com, the early online bank he started, which became PayPal. The sale of Zip2 resulted in a $22 million check made out directly to Musk, which he used in part to start X.com. With the roughly $180 million post-tax amount he made from the sale of PayPal, he started SpaceX with $100 million, put $70 million into Tesla, invested $10 million into Solar City, and saved little for himself.

One of the misunderstandings that rankles Musk most is being pigeonholed and narrowcast, whether as the real-life Tony Stark or the second coming of Steve Jobs. When, at a photo shoot, he was asked to wear a black turtleneck, the trademark garb of Jobs, he bristled. “If I was dying and I had a turtleneck on,” he tells me, “with my last dying breath, I would take the turtleneck off and try to throw it as far away from my body as possible.”

So what is Musk about?

“I try to do useful things,” he explains. “That’s a nice aspiration. And useful means it is of value to the rest of society. Are they useful things that work and make people’s lives better, make the future seem better, and actually are better, too? I think we should try to make the future better.”

When asked to define “better,” Musk elaborates, “It would be better if we mitigated the effects of global warming and had cleaner air in our cities and weren’t drilling for vast amounts of coal, oil and gas in parts of the world that are problematic and will run out anyway.

“And if we were a multiplanetary species, that would reduce the possibility of some single event, man-made or natural, taking out civilization as we know it, as it did the dinosaurs. There have been five mass-extinction events in the fossil record. People have no comprehension of these things. Unless you’re a cockroach or a mushroom – or a sponge – you’re fucked.” He laughs sharply. “It’s insurance of life as we know it, and it makes the future far more inspiring if we are out there among the stars and you could move to another planet if you wanted to.”

This, then, is the ideology of Musk. And though basic, it’s actually very rare. Think of the other names that one associates with innovation this century: They’re people who built operating systems, devices, websites or social-media platforms. Even when it didn’t start out that way, the ideology in most cases soon became: How can I make my company the center of my users’ world? Consequently, social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter use a number of tricks to activate the addictive reward centers of a user’s brain.

If Musk’s employees suggested doing something like this, he’d probably look at them like they were crazy. This type of thinking doesn’t compute. “It’s really inconsistent to not be the way you want the world to be,” he says flatly, “and then through some means of trickery, operate according to one moral code while the rest of the world operates according to a different one. This is obviously not something that works. If everyone’s trying to trick everyone all the time, it’s a lot of noise and confusion. It’s better just to be straightforward and try to do useful things.”

He discusses building a permanent moon base, and further funding SpaceX by creating passenger rockets capable of traveling to any city in the world in less than an hour, a form of transport he calls “Earth-to-Earth.” I ask if there’s anything that he believes works that surprises people.

“I think being precise about the truth works. Truthful and precise. I try to tell people, ‘You don’t have to read between the lines with me. I’m saying the lines!'”

On another occasion, I watch Musk at a weekly SpaceX engineering-team meeting, where eight experts sit around a table in high-backed red chairs, showing Musk a PowerPoint with the latest updates to the Mars spaceship design. And while Musk keeps pace on technical details with some of the most brilliant minds in aerospace, he also adds an element that goes beyond logistics and engineering.

“Make sure it doesn’t look ugly or something,” he advises at one point. Then, later, “The aesthetics of this one are not so great. It looks like a scared lizard.” And, in a characteristically wry moment, “When you land on Mars, you want the list of what you have to worry about to be small enough that you’re not dead.”

Overall, there’s a theme to Musk’s feedback: First, things have to be useful, logical and scientifically possible.

Then he looks to improve efficiency on every level: What are people accepting as an industry standard when there’s room for significant improvement?

From there, Musk pushes for the end product to be aesthetically beautiful, simple, cool, sleek (“He hates seams,” says one staffer) and, as Musk puts it at one point in the meeting, “awesome.”

Throughout this process, there’s an additional element that very few companies indulge in: personalization. This usually involves Musk adding Easter eggs and personal references to the products, such as making the Tesla sound-system volume go to 11 (in homage to Spinal Tap) or sending a “secret payload” into space in his first Dragon launch that turned out to be a wheel of cheese (in homage to Monty Python).

Beyond all this, most maddening or exciting for Musk’s employees, depending on which one you ask, is the time scale on which he often expects work to be done. For example, one Friday when I was visiting, a few SpaceX staff members were frantically rushing back and forth from the office to the parking lot across the street. It turns out that during a meeting, he asked them how long it would take to remove staff cars from the lot and start digging the first hole for the Boring Company tunnel. The answer: two weeks.

Musk asked why, and when he gathered the necessary information, he concluded, “Let’s get started today and see what’s the biggest hole we can dig between now and Sunday afternoon, running 24 hours a day.” Within three hours, the cars were gone and there was a hole in the ground.

On the other hand, one thing Musk is notorious for is setting ambitious deadlines that he often can’t meet. The Roadster, the Model S and the Model X were all delayed from his original timeline, and now the Model 3 – with its nearly half-a-million-person-long waiting list – is experiencing its own production delays. There are many reasons for this, but Musk summarizes: “Better to do something good and be late than bad and be early.” So expect Musk to get it done, just not on time. Because if he can’t do it, he won’t pretend otherwise.

“I expect to lose,” Musk says. He’s in a three-story building in San Francisco that has only recently been furnished. It used to belong to Stripe, the credit-card payment processor, but now belongs to Musk, who’s housing two of his companies there: Neuralink and OpenAI.

These are visions of what Tesla or SpaceX may have looked like when they first began. A small group of excited people working with limited resources to hit a distant, ambitious target. But unlike Tesla and SpaceX, there aren’t anything close to road maps toward these goals, nor are they so clear-cut.

OpenAI is a nonprofit dedicated to minimizing the dangers of artificial intelligence, while Neuralink is working on ways to implant technology into our brains to create mind-computer interfaces.

If it sounds like those are contradictory ideas, think again. Neuralink allows our brains to keep up in the intelligence race. The machines can’t outsmart us if we have everything the machines have plus everything we have. At least, that is if you assume that what we have is actually an advantage.

It’s an unusual day at the office: Musk is showing a documentary about artificial intelligence to the Neuralink staff. He stands in front of them as they sit splayed on couches and chairs, and lays out the grim odds of his mission to make AI safe: “Maybe there’s a five to 10 percent chance of success,” he says.

The challenge he’s up against with OpenAI is twofold. First, the problem with building something that’s smarter than you is … that it’s smarter than you. Add to that the fact that AI has no remorse, no morality, no emotions – and humanity may be in deep shit. This is the good son’s second chance against the remorseless father he couldn’t change.

The other challenge is that OpenAI is a nonprofit, and it’s competing with the immense resources of Google’s DeepMind. Musk tells the group he in fact invested in DeepMind with the intention of keeping a watchful eye on Google’s AI development.

“Between Facebook, Google and Amazon – and arguably Apple, but they seem to care about privacy – they have more information about you than you can remember,” he elaborates to me. “There’s a lot of risk in concentration of power. So if AGI [artificial general intelligence] represents an extreme level of power, should that be controlled by a few people at Google with no oversight?”

“Sleep well,” Musk jokes when the movie ends. He then leads a discussion about it, writing down some ideas and bluntly dismissing others. As he’s speaking, he reaches into a bowl, grabs a piece of popcorn, drops it in his mouth and starts coughing.

“We’re talking about threats to humanity,” he mutters, “and I’m going to choke to death on popcorn.”

It is 9 p.m. on a Thursday night, and I’m waiting in the foyer of Musk’s Bel Air home for our final interview. He walks down the stairs a few minutes later, wearing a T-shirt depicting Mickey Mouse in space. A tall blond woman follows him down the stairs.

He is, true to his words, not alone.

The woman, it turns out, is Talulah Riley, his second wife. They met in 2008, and Musk proposed after 10 days together. They married in 2010, then divorced two years later, then remarried the following year, then filed for divorce again, then withdrew the filing, then re-filed for divorce and finally followed through with it.

Musk suggests doing something rare for him: drinking. “My alcohol tolerance is not very high,” he says. “But I tend to be a fuzzy bear when I drink. I go happy fuzzy.”

He pours two glasses of whiskey for us, and the three of us adjourn to his living room, where there’s a mechanical Edison phonograph, an Enigma machine and a short-wave radio from World War I on display.

During the interview, Riley lounges on the couch nearby, half paying attention to the conversation, half paying attention to her phone.

Musk is in a different mood than he was at SpaceX, and that’s something that those who’ve come to know Musk observe. One moment, he may be reciting favorite lines from an animated TV show he just saw, the next he may be curtly giving detailed instructions, the next he may be ignoring you while lost in a thought, the next he may be asking for your advice on a problem, the next he may be breathless with laughter while riffing on a humorous tangent for five minutes, the next he may be acting as if you’ve both never met. And through it all, you learn not to take it personally, because chances are that it has nothing to do with you.

We start off talking, or at least with me trying to talk, about AI, because a few weeks earlier, Musk had tweeted, “Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.”

But when I ask him about that, Musk gets testy. “I don’t have all the answers. I’m not saying that I have all the fucking answers. Let me be really clear about that. I’m trying to figure out the set of actions I can take that are more likely to result in a good future. If you have suggestions in that regard, please tell me what they are.”

Riley chimes in: “I think just the way it gets couched is that ‘Elon Musk says we’re all gonna die,’ as opposed to ‘Hey, let’s have some regulation.'”

Musk, it soon becomes clear, is not in the mood to talk about his work. Instead, he has some advice he’d like to offer to the world from his personal experience: “I find one learns lessons in the course of life,” he begins with a wry half-smile. “And one lesson I’ve learned is, don’t tweet on Ambien. That’s on the record: Tweeting on Ambien is unwise. You may regret it.”

Musk grabs a coffee-table book published by The Onion and starts leafing through it, laughing hysterically. “In order to understand the essential truth of things,” he theorizes, “I think you can find it in The Onion and occasionally on Reddit.”

Afterward, he asks excitedly, “Have you ever seen Rick and Morty?” And the conversation bounces from that animated show to South Park to The Simpsons to the book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

One of the lines from Hitchhiker’s, Musk says, ended up being Musk Family Rule Number One: “Don’t panic.”

“The boys were quite skittish about all kinds of things,” Riley explains.

“That’s our other rule,” Musk continues. “Safety third. There’s not even a Rule Number Two. But even though there’s nothing in second place, safety is not getting promoted to number two.”

We’re interrupted by Teller, Musk’s chief of staff, who informs him that as we were talking, the Hawthorne City Council ended an hours-long debate with a 4-to-1 vote allowing Musk to burrow his tunnel two miles into the city.

“Good,” Musk says. “Now we can dig past our own property line. Dig like fiends!”

He laughs at the expression, and I understand now that Musk didn’t have me over to talk about his projects and vision. There’s nothing to be gained from talking about the problems of science with someone who doesn’t understand them. At the end of the day, he just wants to unwind and laugh about the world he’s trying to improve.

I leave his home still hearing his chuckles in the doorway, and hoping that when the Mars colony builds its first statues of Musk, they’re not of a stiff man with a tight-lipped expression looking out into space, but of a fuzzy bear.

[thewildwaffle]

Shiny Rocks

This story idea was suggested by a user on ao3

Everyone in the Planetary Acquisition Requests Office was stumped. It wasn’t completely unheard of to get requests for planetary resource rights from two or three separate groups at a time for the same planet, but the current situation was barring on ridiculous! Planet AL-471 had been discovered fairly recently. Reports of it were made known publicly across the galactic community, as was standard procedure for a newly discovered planetoid. Since then, hundreds - that’s right- hundreds of resource rights requests have flooded in. After the first dozen or so, Liat thought it was some sort of joke. But the requests just kept coming. In almost no time, they were up to their lateral fins in request paperwork. “We just got three more requests for AL-471,” Makeenitee, a small, multi-legged teyer complained in a high squeaky voice from across the office. A choir of low growls, clicks, and groans quickly followed. “That’s it, this is getting ridiculous!” Bryeabar stood up from her workspace. With her long legs, she crossed the office to Makeenitee in no time. “Where are these even coming from?” The small teyer activated the holographic settings on their datapad to let Bryeabar see. “It looks like a third of them, oh wait,” Makeenitee looked at the data, “no another one just came in. About a third of them are from the Solis 26 Sector.” Half the room glanced at each other with a knowing look. Solis 26. One system in that area had a life-supporting star. Nine planetoids orbited that star. The third one being the infamous Earth.

“So humans.” Liat sighed, stating what everyone had already figured out. “Okay. Who else wants access to the planet?” Makeenitee opened up the files of all the previous requests and scanned through the information. “Looks like an engineering and development guild from the chiatoru home-world, as well as a few requests from the Tret 4 System.” Liat nodded, “So the kloxans and a few bookas. That at least makes sense. Anyone else?” “There are a few more scattered around, but it looks like most of them are from human colony worlds or organizations.” Everyone in the office shared a look again. The question on everyone’s mind was ‘why?’ Why were so many humans wanting access? Why this planet? Without having to be asked by anyone, Liat opened up a new holographic screen on the report of the planet in such high demand. Planet AL-471, thus named because no official name had been bestowed by caretakers as of yet, was one of the newly discovered planets on the far end of charted space. It had been explored by a Galactic Confederation ship. Their exploration crew had managed a planet-side of a small team who were able to take samples from the surface and run seismograph tests. According to their findings, the planet’s composition was approximately 86% carbon allotropes, with the other 14% being made up of a long list of different metals and minerals and trace amounts of gases. As such, it was not a likely candidate for colonization, as it was incapable of sustaining life. It was certainly an odd planet, but the galaxy was full of strange things. “Does anyone know much about humans, or why so many want access to the planet?” Liat finally broke the silence. Heads all around the office started swiveling around to see if anyone would have answers. A wispy form near the middle of the room spoke up. “I think humans are supposed to really like shiny things, right? The planet’s mostly made out of diamond. Maybe they just think it’s pretty?” A murmur of voices and quiet chuckles hummed throughout the office. Liat shook his head and took a closer look at the list of resource rights requests. There were a few names and descriptions of groups and companies that sounded like they could be after the diamond for industrial reasons. They weren’t the majority, certainly, but there was quite a collection of them. There were a lot of other names on the list that he was a bit more skeptical of their reasoning. Was that what they were after? Pretty rocks? It couldn’t be something so simple like that, right? Liat sighed. “First things first, we need to get someone in here that understands humans if we’re ever going to get through all these requests.” It took a while, but after a search through the entire bureau headquarters, an expert on humans was found. Human Roy wasn’t overly thrilled to be pulled away from whatever projects he had been working on back in his department, but he stood patiently enough in front of the office. Liat explained the situation to him briefly and showed him an extensive list of requests. "Can you help us make sense of this? Any insights or knowledge about why so many humans would want access to the planet so badly? It would help us make fair decisions as we accept or reject the requests." Human Roy scanned over the information a few more times. Everyone watched silently, not wanting to miss a word the human could help them with. After what felt like partecs, Human Roy scrunched up his face in an amusing expression. “What did you say this planet was made of again? Diamond?” “Among other things, yes.” “Then that’s why,” Human Roy straightened his posture and crossed his arms over his chest. “If that’s all you need, I have a deadline I need to make.” Liat and the others in the office looked at each other and Human Roy with perplexed expressions. “Wait,” Liat stopped Roy from leaving, “that’s it? That can’t be the only thing? Look at this list! There’s got to be something we’re not understanding here!” Human Roy huffed and turned back to the list. “Look,” he pointed at a few names on the list. “There are a few legitimate requests here. Not that I know all the ins and outs of your guy’s job, but I’d figure some of these are actually wanting the diamonds to use for construction or medical or engineering or whatever uses diamonds can be put to these days. The rest of these,” he ran his hand down to gesture at the remaining names, “Likely want access because it’s a freaking planet made out of diamond. They don’t want resources, they want status.” Liat blinked his stalk eyes slowly. “Status?” “Status. Diamonds have been a status symbol of wealth on Earth for, well, I don’t know, a long time. Personally, I never really saw the appeal. When it comes to fancy rocks, I think garnets and opals are pretty. I mean, sure, diamonds have some cool qualities and properties and whatnot. That’s why there are a few legitimate requests on this list,” Roy gestured to the names he had mentioned before, “But honestly, I’d really scrutinize the rest of these. I’d be interested in what the legit requesters would do with that much diamond.” “So, you’re saying that most of these just want…” Liat paused, trying to process all this. “They don’t even need the diamond?” “Mmmm, no. I’d say a lot of them just want to be able to say that they control giant diamonds on some far-flung planet somewhere.” Makeenitee spoke up from her seat, “But I don’t understand. If diamonds are so important to humans, wouldn’t this planet throw off supply and demand systems on Earth and human colony worlds?” “I have no idea. I’m in the communications bureau, not intergalactic economics.” Human Roy shifted his weight and sighed. “All I know is that back on Earth, diamonds have been marketed for - I don’t know, ever- that they are rare and super precious and everyone needs one and blah blah blah. They’re not rare though. Earth and pretty much all of the colony worlds have plenty of diamonds. Granted, none of them are the size of two continents, but hey,” Roy threw his hands up in what looked like a dismissive gesture, “humans like thinking the pretty rocks they’ve been told are super rare are really important.” He looked around at the office of blank alien faces. “Well, if that’s everything, I really do have stuff I need to finish. Good luck with your list.” And before anyone could ask another question, he was gone. Liat looked around at his coworkers then back to the impossibly long list that was still activated in the front of the room. He wished Roy had been able to give them more information that would help them weed through the “legit” requests and those that he said just wanted the diamonds for status. Still, the insight he gave was… interesting. Diamond was certainly a fairly common material across the galaxy, but it was very useful in many applications and often in demand. He hadn’t realized humans also coveted them so highly for purely aesthetic purposes. “Liat,” Makeenitee squeaked, “what do we do now?” Liat sighed and turned his attention back to the impossibly long list. It looked like it had grown a bit longer in all this. Each one of those organizations listed would need to be researched and be given a thorough background check. Then a series of shortlists would be composed and cross-referenced with each other according to resource requests and allocated resources available on the planet. “We’re going to do our jobs,” Liat finally broke the apprehensive silence. “Everyone, break up into teams of three and we’ll work our way down. Start from the top. The humans have made sure we’re going to be at this a while.”

[itwoodbeprefect]

decided to just compile a bunch of comments about my sga 1x01 rising rewatch into a single post because i don’t actually want to make a hundred posts in a row, so here, under the cut, many rambles:

announcer guy does, in fact, speak english upon a second attempt. well done on not forgetting to not speak german, announcer guy.

“i’m afraid of the thing” elizabeth says, about the drone chair, while standing next to it and looking like she wants to fuck it

rodney in that orange sweater! very orange! very warm!

john is on screen. john’s first words are helicopters he knows how to fly. john KINDA LIKES IT in antarctica. john has barely done anything and i already feel like crying a little bit about this guy who LIKES ANTARCTICA because he just wants to fly

POOR CARSON when he almost kills two people. “ai told ya ai was the wrong pursohn” :(

i really love how john sees the drone coming at the (landed) helicopter and yells “get out!” and they throw open their doors and john JUMPS and then it’s just “ugh.” and he’s belly-down on the floor and still like, almost under the helicopter. an attempt was made, for sure. just not a very succesful one.

the way john looks around like he’s never seen a ceiling before when he enters the base is just. very funny. and then some guy in particular is looking at him because he’s a bit of a weirdo and john looks back and the guy sort of looks him up and down and john looks away as if to check if anybody saw that. hmm.

john’s face of “oops” after he sits down in the chair and it ACTIVATES and carson RUNS OFF to go get literally everyone and john is realizing he MAY have just made a very giant big mistake. PRICELESS

teyla: my people have long believed the wraith will come if we venture into the ancient city. sumner, when the wraith come after he ventures into the ancient city: [surprised pikachu face]

gotta love how john insisting on saving his people is what wakes up the wraith, and saving his people is also what landed john in antarctica in the first place because he tried it in afghanistan once before. which wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an american war in afghanistan in the first place, which there wouldn’t have been if bush hadn’t thrown the us into it, which wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, so... bin laden woke the wraith?

on the other hand john would never have had to go on a rescue mission on his first day in pegasus if sumner hadn’t gone into that city against the wishes of the people that already lived there and had a history dating back thousands of years with the place, so more realistically, the expeditions’ colonizer mentality woke the wraith. and then they just kinda... kept going with that for the rest of the show, because it worked out so well on that first day.

anyway i’m not even there yet - puddlejumper! it jumps puddles!

have to love the moment john realizes the puddlejumper is pretty literally reading his mind and giving him anything he can think of that is within its power (so no turkey sandwiches, but that’s okay). john is already in love with it just based on the fact that IT CAN FLY AND GO FAST (“i kinda like it here”, restored) but then all the ancient technology just seems to know him and love him back and gives him way more than he even thinks to ask for. which, for john, who doesn’t really do well expressing desires? a FLYING SHIP that then READS HIS MIND? starstruck. love at first sight. john&puddlejumper, instant bffs. i bet it would have popped a compartment with some stray bits of wire if he’d asked for a friendship bracelet right then and there. ford sitting there witnessing this doesn’t even know how hard he’s thirdwheeling it in that moment.

now i am at the bit where sumner is taken from the wraith prison to see the actual wraith, and look, obviously they’re evil and feed on humans etc etc, but this particular wraith’s sense of dramatics? unparalleled. she has them bring her victims one by one to a large foggy room with a looong table set with a wonderful dinner and then she LEAVES a DEAD BODY sitting at the head of the table (implied to be the athosian that was taken before sumner?) and drops down from the ceiling while sumner has his back turned for no reason except the spectacle of it all, and dracula himself literally couldn’t have made a better display out of this. it’s maybe scary in the way that it makes clear she’s a cat toying with a helpless mouse before she eats it, but it’s also hilarious in the way that this is absolutely a very bored immortal being who had to stay up while the rest went to sleep and is inventing high school improv plays with her dinner for some diversion. don’t play with your food, wraith queen. you’re scaring your dinner.

life signs detector!!! ford didn’t get to name the puddlejumpers gateships, but that one stuck, no matter how much “we can name it later” john was trying to throw at it!!!

(god. there’s a ficlet somewhere in there about season 2 john having a moment where he realizes he’s on the hunt for ford using the thing they first discovered together and that ford gave its name.)

getting sidetracked here, but when john and ford find the group of humans caught by the wraith teyla goes “major!” and it makes me think that. well. how are the athosians supposed to know things like “major” and “colonel” are military ranks? what are the chances the pegasus galaxy uses the same designations? (don’t really know how the language thing works here - we’re hopefully not supposed to think they’re all speaking english, are they? i’ve never watched sg1, there’s probably lore about this, i assume. maybe alien titles somehow get perfect translations to earth ones and vice versa.) but i mean, teyla is too smart, she’d have it figured out already even if those words don’t exist in her galaxy, but some athosian somewhere is going to be very confused by this earth tendency to name way too many kids private and lieutenant, and then put all of them into the army. strange, to have your job decided for you at birth like that. earth people are weeeeird.

fjdkl john is like bye, gonna go find colonel sumner all on my own, run if you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, and ford’s like “you’re the only one who can fly these people out of here” and “i’m saying i should be the one to go, sir” and john, with his savior can’t-leave-anyone-behind-gotta-do-this-personally-or-i-will-literally-die-from-not-almost-dying complex DOES NOT LISTEN to ford’s EXTREMELY ACCURATE objection. which is his right, as ranking officer, but is also a perfect showcase of why john Should Not Ever be in charge of atlantis, and why sam saying he was totally on the shortlist when she takes over command in s4 is funny but frightening if you’re on atlantis and like being alive.

sumner: “we travel through the stargate as peaceful explorers.” FDJKFD. god, that line, from that character, hilarious.

rodney comes to elizabeth full of enthusiasm about all the interesting stuff they’re finding in the city only to find her staring at the empty gate and when she says she should never have let them (the rescue party) go, he sobers up and says awkwardly “for what it’s worth, you made the right decision” and that’s GOOD that’s KIND.

back on the planet with the wraith everyone is running to the jumper while there are wraith darts whizzing through the air and teyla turns back, catches up with ford who was told to cover their six, disarms him (because he was firing at illusions, revealing their position), hands him back his weapon, pulls him in the direction of the puddlejumper, and PUSHES HIM ASIDE when they’re almost scooped up by a wraith dart, and i’m so here for teyla being allowed a moment of heroics that saves specifically ford, guy with a gun, and not a random athosian damsel in distress. teyla is fully on their level. teyla is perhaps above their level. thank you.

that scene at the end of this episode!! in which there’s a sort of party on atlantis and it’s all buzzing and relaxed while the athosians are mingling freely with the expedition members and they’re talking of friendship and ugh. UGH. there’s a better version of sga in an alternate universe where the expedition didn’t decide atlantis was totally theirs, actually, and they cooperate with the people that were already in the galaxy when they came there and learn from sumner’s mistake to actually respect what they have to say and form a single front and teyla takes over as head of the expedition in s4 when there’s a void left by elizabeth’s absence.

final thought that has always haunted me a little: john suddenly becoming the ranking military member on atlantis after sumner’s death is ?? one of those things where i wonder what the sgc was thinking in their personnel assignments. john wasn’t even supposed to BE THERE. if john hadn’t gone and sumner had still died (which was something they should have considered as a possiblitiy! they didn’t know what they were walking into at all! sumner is apparently the type to lead his own missions!), then what exactly would they have done? i don’t know much about how the us military operates but i’ve watched enough mash to have figured out the order of the ranks and it just seems. very odd to me? to take one (1) colonel on this mission and then ZERO lieutenant colonels OR majors (if john hadn’t stumbled his way into it, that is). like, are there any captains on atlantis? (i think there are?) or would ford, a lieutenant, have ended up ranking military member? this is like the surely-they-only-need-a-single-medical-doctor-right thing. WHAT IS THE SGC THINKING.

anyway. this was good. i liked this. i hadn’t rewatched the pilot in a while, and i only just now figured out how much of a while, because there was a bunch in here i didn’t remember. ON TO EPISODE TWO.

[ab1tofsp1ce]

A Warmer Refuge

Chapter 5: Do You Trust Me?

Masterlist HERE

Pairing: Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

Words: 4.4K

Warnings: Violence, mild sexual harassment.

Description: If you want to get this ship fixed, you and the Mandalorian are going to have to make a deal that could put your safety in jeopardy - do you trust him?

The clouds had mostly cleared by the morning, and I found myself apologizing countless times for setting back our journey. Graciously, he reassured me that it was fine, but the pang of guilt ate away at my chest for the rest of the day. So, I decided that I would do the best damn repair job he had ever seen. I would work my ass off making sure his ship was perfect at as little extra cost to him as possible – this would be the only way I could make it right. Additionally, I tried my absolute best not to alert him towards how much pain I was in. It actually seemed to be working, as he seemed to have no cognizance of the pain I was in. I supposed for someone who deals with violence for a living, he had probably suffered a million injuries far worse than mine, and so I caulked up his indifference to this as opposed to my brilliant acting skills; I could barely hold back my moans and groans as we climbed up and over that mountain. Finally, the trees become sparser, and soon we left the forest behind us. We trekked through fields, most of which seemed to be untouched, but distantly I could see smoke rising in small puffs. We eventually came across a gravel road that seemed to separate the wild from the colonized; on the other side were well-kept fields of strange fruit trees and neatly plowed dirt. We stopped for a moment as we reached the road, the Mandalorian looking down at the small navigation device in the forearm of his suit while I took a moment to catch my breath. I’d definitely seen better days. It was fortunate I hadn’t had too much of a chance to look at my appearance, because I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked what I saw. Much of my clothing, particularly around my injured leg, was ripped or stained, and I was almost certain I still had grease on my face from my hasty repair work a couple of days ago. The small stream that banked the side of the road and the tended fields beckoned to me, and so while the Mandalorian busied himself, I went over and kneeled down at its edge to scoop up some water and splash my face down. It was freezing and fresh, reminding me again of the beauty of this planet. I took a moment to feel the mild sun on my back and the cool water drip down my chin, before standing up and turning back to the Mandalorian. “Before we go,” he said, when I reached him, “I want you to carry this.” Out of his utility belt he pulled a rather sharp dagger. It was nothing flashy, except for the way it shone in the afternoon sun, but it pricked something in my heart. “I – I wouldn’t know how to use it,” I admitted timidly. “Are you sure?” He held it out to me in the flat of his palm. “It would bring me some comfort,” he admitted, and so I took it. “Here,” he said, reaching down to my belt. My heart skipped a beat as he attached a sheath for me to keep it in. “Hide it. It will be the most useful if no one knows you have it.” I nodded, carefully sliding the dagger in.

We walked in relative silence, as we had for most of the day. But, unlike it was when we first met, it was a far more comfortable silence. A mutual understanding, of sorts, that we both had things we wished to mull over in our thoughts. I could only guess what he was thinking – he was still a mystery to me. But I thought about my plans on Kistern; where I would go, what I would… in truth, there wasn’t much use. I tried, desperately, over the whole course of the day to consider my plans. But I knew so little about the planet I would soon call home it was futile to try and pretend I did. I hated the uncertainty of my life at the moment (and of the past year), but I distracted myself by admiring the view around me and focusing on what I could manage in the near future; fixing this ship and getting off this planet in one piece. The sun was getting low in the afternoon sky by the time the once empty land began to become sparsely populated. But none of this planet’s loveliness could’ve prepared me for meeting its inhabitants. They were very similar to those back home on Yak’ish Temeen, in that they were a motley population of various races and species, but all equally unsettling. Roadside stalls and derelict houses intermittently spotted the side of the road, and we soon gained some unintentional company as more roads and paths began to diverge onto ours. By comparison to Yak’ish Temeen this was, on reflection, a far more diverse crowd – strange, large furry creatures towered over us, shepherding small and equally hairy creatures transporting goods on their backs, a group of Gungans manned a small cart of strange smelling purple fruit and humans at all wore equally unsettling expressions. They stared at us as we walked, glowering from a distance and occasionally whispering to each other. The Mandalorian must have noticed this, as he slowed down very suddenly to close the distance between us. “Walk near me,” he said quietly, not turning his head. “And don’t make eye contact. We’re not looking for trouble.” I slid my eyes down to the ground, trying to ignore the sensation of being watched. I felt my heart race in my chest. Eventually, we seemed to enter the settlement, marked by a higher density of houses and people. It was mostly one long street, flanked by various stalls selling strangely roasted animals, buckets of grains and other odd goods. Despite the fact I could hear children laughing in the distance, and that the general chatter of the place seemed civil, I followed the Mandalorian’s advice and stuck close by him. Although this was a new place to both of us, he walked with a confidence and direction that made him look like a seasoned local. By comparison, I was almost certain I looked frail and timid, shuffling along and intently staring at the ground. In times like this I was once again grateful for my peripheral vision. The Mandalorian veered off our straight course over to a stall on the right side of the road, where a man was talking to an Artiodac, both sitting on chairs under the cover of a low-hanging tarp. Under it and behind them I noticed a long table covered in various mechanical parts – all of which, I must admit, didn’t seem to be in the best condition. The Mandalorian conversed with the duo, who exchanged glances between each other, the Mandalorian and me. I shuffled uncomfortably under the weight of their stares, so I busied myself by trailing my eyes over the parts in the stall, scanning for anything I might be able to use. From this distance I could make out few bits that could be relevant – whether or not they were in usable condition was another question entirely. My heart stopped beating for a second, jumping out of my chest in shock as I felt a hand grab my arm gently. But it was just the Mandalorian, who was now facing in the opposite direction of me and the vendors as if to better prevent them from hearing what he was saying to me. “We’ll have to get the parts from here,” he said in a low, hushed tone. The baritone depth of his voice sent chills down my back. “Fill your bag with them. But don’t take long – I don’t trust these guys. Or anyone here.” I threw a glance at them; the man was murmuring something to his Artiodac colleague, both staring at us with dirty looks. I nodded in silent agreement with the Mandalorian, my arm still tingling as his grasp lingered on it, firm but tender. He let me get to work, scavenging through the piles of spare parts. As I did, he alternated between examining the pieces I presented to him and watching both the vendors and the general public. I tried my best not to let this creeping feeling disturb me, but it was hard to focus when I was acutely aware of the attraction we were drawing. I filled up my rucksack with the pieces we needed – although some of them were far rattier than I would’ve preferred, I figured it was better to clean and adjust them back at the safety of the ship than make any sort of complaint about it here. After about 20 minutes, I felt that I had truly ransacked the selection for all it was worth. What I had managed to collect wasn’t ideal, but I could definitely make it work, at least enough that we could get off this planet and to Kistern safely. Once I had informed the Mandalorian of this, he escorted me over to the two vendors. The human male gave me a look up and down, making me shuffle slightly – there was something almost hungry in his expression. He looked only a few years older than me and certainly didn’t look to be the muscle of the duo, but between his rugged facial hair and beady blue eyes, he felt threatening enough. Perhaps the Mandalorian saw this too, because he stepped forward rather pointedly, almost sizing up the man as he stood up. “Hand over the goods, lovely,” he said with a slick tongue. “Let’s see what you’ve picked out.” Turns out I didn’t need to hand over anything, as the Artiodac snatched the bag out of my hand with a low growl. “Watch it,” breathed the Mandalorian threateningly at him. The Artiodac took no notice, rummaging through my rucksack and conversing with the man in a foreign language as he occasionally gestured to certain parts. They seemed to be negotiating with each other, with the man occasionally spatting something at the Artiodac, who grumbled something back rather animatedly in return. Eventually, they seemed to come to an agreement, as they both turned back to me in unison. “You’ve got a good load here,” said the man, shifting his eyes slowly from me to the Mandalorian. “We’ve agreed it’ll set you back four thousand credits.” He exchanged a smirk with his colleague. “You’re overcharging,” said the Mandalorian in a gruff tone, which I could read as ‘I don’t have four thousand credits.’ “I can give you three thousand, no more.” The man raised an eyebrow, clearly bemused, and turned to the Artiodac to swap a few remarks in another language before turning back to him. “My friend and I agree four thousand is more than fair for a purchase of this size. However,” his gaze slid back over to me. “We’d be willing to compromise if you have something to offer that can… sweeten the deal.” The Mandalorian stiffened, seemingly understanding the implication of this statement. “Like what?” “My friend here,” said the man, shifting his weight to face me slightly, “is curious about what a Grat’anarian is doing in these parts. You see, he knows Yak’ish Temeen well, been there on a few business trips haven’t you, Uulog?” Uulog made a slurping sound as a reply. I shivered. “What’s your point?” The Mandalorian almost growled these words. “Well, if I’m correct, this one has a great bounty on her head… what with her refugee status, she has free entry onto all sorts of planets… planets me and my friend here, as well as many others, would love to gain access to. So, I’ll tell you what, you –” “I’m not bartering with her life,” said the Mandalorian, stepping even closer and slipping a hand silently onto his blaster. Uulog the Artiodac seemed to notice, as he reached for his blaster in the exact same manner, snarling. The man feigned a sympathetic smile, although the corners of his mouth remained sinisterly twisted. “Of course, of course! Such a pretty thing, I can understand how you wouldn’t want to part with her…” He looked at me and licked his lips. “However, I’m really not sure what else you have to offer that we’ll be interested in. Well, apart from…” he gestured with the silent tilt of his head to the Mandalorian himself. For a moment I was confused as to what he meant, but clearly the Mandalorian wasn’t, and his next words cleared it up. “My armor is not for sale.” “Hmm… what a shame. Well, then, neither are these parts.” The man studied the Mandalorian as if he knew this wouldn’t be the end of it; he was waiting for a better offer. The Mandalorian seemed stuck for a moment, and I could almost hear the cogs and wheels turning in his head. “Give us a moment,” he said to the man, who dismissed us in gratuitously generous gesture. Once again, the Mandalorian slipped his hand around my arm and escorted me to the side, shooting one last look at the vendors before turning to me. I could feel his gaze under the helmet and could sense his uncertainty. He had a plan, and I wasn’t going to like it. “Do you trust me?” I was taken aback dramatically by this question. My eyes, which had been trained in apprehension on the two conversing men, swiveled back to the Mandalorian in mild shock. His voice was almost a whisper, but I could once again hear what he was really saying – almost everything he said had another meaning, as I’d come to learn. I suppose a man of few words had to make the most of them. So, when he said, “do you trust me,” all I heard was “are you ready?” And despite my fear, despite the sinking feeling in my stomach, despite the hairs rising on the back of my neck and every instinct in my body telling me to run, I knew my answer to both questions. “Yes.” “Then play along,” he said quietly. We spared a moment, a split second to look at each other. I felt him squeeze my arm lightly, a small gesture that did a surprising amount to quell the rapid beating of my heart. Then, he turned back and walked over to the vendors. “Well, have we come to an agreement?” The man clapped his hands together enthusiastically, switching his gaze between the two of us. “You can take her,” said the Mandalorian. I’ll admit, I didn’t really have to feign shock at this statement. I knew, with the context of what he had just told me, that he wasn’t being serious, but his tone when he said it – so unbothered and emotionless – it fooled me for the few seconds it took to regain my senses. “What?!” I said, and he grabbed my arm with a force I was yet to feel from him, yanking me as if I was a bounty of his. “Ahh… an interesting development… I’m curious, what made you decide this?” The man’s voice was laced with civil suspicion; he seemed to find it hard to believe the Mandalorian would give me up so quickly. “Well, as you said,” said the Mandalorian, “she’s a very valuable bounty. But I need to get off this planet, so you can have her if that’s your price.” His grip tightened around my arm, and I took this as a silent signal; ‘you’ll have to sell this narrative’. “You bastard!” I yelled, and rather convincingly too. “You – you promised you’d help me! Over there you said – I’ll kill you!” I thrashed against his grip, but before I knew it, he was behind me, one hand tying mine together quickly with handcuffs and the other covering my mouth with his gloved hand. I knew this wasn’t the time or the place, but I couldn’t help my heart flutter at the feeling of my back pressed against the cold beskar breastplate behind me. The man’s smirk turned into a full grin, clearly entertained by our performances. “I have to say, you have not disappointed your reputation, Mandalorian. Cold both inside and out…” “There’s one condition,” said the Mandalorian, his hand still over my mouth. “I need her to repair my ship. You come with me, she repairs it, and then I’ll be on my way.” Once again, the two vendors exchanged brief and heated words in their language, before the man turned back to us. “You have yourself a deal. And, since we reached it so… amicably, I’m prepared to lower the credit portion of your price to just two thousand. As a symbol of… goodwill.” He smiled, that same twist at the corners of his mouth. I felt the Mandalorian nod in agreement behind me, and the Artiodac handed him back the rucksack, which he took with his now spare hand. “Perfect! Now, where is this ship of yours?” The Mandalorian slid his hand slowly off my mouth, faking a threatening glower at me before gesturing at the tall mountain we had recently climbed, which now loomed distantly behind the two men. Both of them turned around in unison, and the man made a sound of familiar acknowledgment. “Ahh, yes! The mountain of Pelesus! An important monument in Utaran history. I assume you hiked your way here, yes? Well, we do not mind in the slightest to give you a ride there… it would be in the best interest of all parties involved, no?” “Lead the way,” said the Mandalorian in return.

We were led further down the road before deviating off it and into what I can only describe as a shanty town, which proved this outpost was far bigger than we had initially noticed. Handmade lean-tos and shacks were piled haphazardly around, only making small alleys as paths between them. It was a strange and drastic contrast – the one between the beautiful, lush and rugged landscape around us with the squalors we were being led through. I wondered how this place could be so poor if it were so abundant with natural resources, and I sensed that something more sinister was probably at play on this planet. The man switched between conversing with the Artiodac in a hushed, foreign tongue to occasionally making cheery remarks to the Mandalorian, as if he were a tour guide showing us around the glorious city of Theed. Eventually, we made it to what almost appeared to be a junkyard on the outskirts of the town, where we were led to a landspeeder. “Wait aboard,” said the man, whose name we had learned on our walk over to be Raggard. I thought I may have a moment alone to ask the Mandalorian something, but the Artiodac stayed with us as we climbed onto the large and rusty landspeeder, eyeing us pointedly the entire time. I watched discreetly as Raggard waved over a few people who had been sitting around nearby and spoke to them in the same foreign language he had spoken to his colleague in. By the way they looked over Raggard’s shoulder at me hungrily, I could only assume they believed they would be getting their fair share of my worth when we returned. Which we wouldn’t, of course. I looked over at the Mandalorian, who sat next to me. He seemed unreadable at this moment, still as a statue and paying attention to nothing in particular. I hoped he knew what he was doing, because I certainly didn’t. His words, ‘do you trust me’, echoed distantly in my ears.

Soon we were off, the four of us in the landspeeder. The journey was only a few hours, and by far shorter than our hike here, but felt agonizingly long as I sat with anticipation and fear in the pit of my stomach. Finally, we arrived at the bottom of the other side of the mountain, and I could almost see the ship as I looked up its slope. We hiked the rest of the way up, the Mandalorian guiding me with a gentle hold on my arm, as my hands were still cuffed. Eventually, we reached the ship, by which time it was almost sunset. “You’d best get working,” said Raggard, walking slowly around the ship to admire it. “It’s clear you’ve got a lot of work to do before it gets dark.” As I collected and sorted the parts, I noticed the Artiodac grumble something at Raggard, who hissed something back in what seemed to be a low, yet heated argument. I tried to ignore it, focusing on my repairs and working as quickly as possible; the sooner we could do this, the sooner we could leave. The Mandalorian helped with repairs but no matter where we went, either inside or out of the ship, one or both of the duo followed us. Because of this, I had not a moment alone with him to ask what his plan was, although I had a strong feeling it would involve violence. Finally, not long after dark, we completed the repairs. The Mandalorian escorted me out of the ship to meet outside with the two men. I began to get nervous. “Well,” said Raggard, approaching us as we were followed out by the Artiodac. “It has been a pleasure, really. But I suppose now is the time to part ways.” The Mandalorian said nothing but didn’t let go of his grip on my arm – if anything, he tightened it. “It is a shame,” said Raggard, poetically, “that you must part ways with such a precious bounty.” He walked up to me, too close for my liking, reading over my face with a gleam in his eyes. “But I’m sure you’ll take comfort in knowing she’ll be of great use to us.” With a dirty, spindly finger he traced a line down the side of my cheek. I shuddered and bit down hard on my tongue to hide my disgust. “However,” he said, “although she will prove a most valuable asset, I just can’t stop thinking about that beautiful beskar armor of yours, I mean, how did you get it?” The Mandalorian didn’t indulge him with a response, but Raggard took his silence as one. “I know, I know, secrets of the Mandalorians. It has been exciting, really, to do business with you. But,” he said, slowly, exchanging a glance with his partner, “it will be even more exciting to kill you.” In the course of the next three seconds, I barely had time to do anything but fall to the ground in shock. As Raggard said these last words, the Mandalorian drew his blaster and simultaneously threw me to the ground. He shot over Raggard’s shoulder, and it was only then, when I looked up, that I noticed the figures drawing in from the forest around us. The men from back at the junkyard began firing at the Mandalorian, and from my position cowering on the ground I watched as he, one by one, meticulously shot them down. He didn’t even seem to look at them, he just knew where they were. When the Artiodac pounced it him from behind, I screamed in shock, but the Mandalorian shook him off in forward-roll drop to the ground, shooting him with a blaster shot straight to the head. I didn’t see what happened in the next few seconds and only heard the Mandalorian grunting as he spared in hand-to-hand combat with a few more goonies who had seemed to close the distance towards him. I was yanked up off the ground, and felt a cold blaster dig into my lower back, freezing me in fear as another arm wrapped around my throat tightly. I could feel Raggard’s hot breath on my neck and smell the sweat on his arm. I scrambled desperately at it, trying to pull it away so I could breathe, but it was no use. “STOP!” Raggard’s voice was shrill in my ear. My vision unclouded at last, and I was able to see the Mandalorian, standing only a few feet away from us, bodies sprawled around him. He turned to us, still holding his blaster in one hand and what appeared to be a spear in the other. “Let’s not – let’s not let this get more out of hand than it already is,” said Raggard, panting violently. I could feel him shaking with adrenaline. “I wouldn’t want anything nasty to come of this pretty little thing, but if we get too ahead of ourselves, I may have no choice.” But as he spoke, something strange happened. I felt the world fall away, and the sound of Raggard’s voice, the clench is arm had around my throat, the blaster in my back… I lost all sense that they were there. I felt my arms release from Raggard’s, falling to my side. Even though he was wearing a helmet, I knew he was looking at me. I could feel it, like I always did, the warmth of his gaze that, for once, seemed to slow down my heart as opposed to speeding it up. Right now, I could only feel him. Him, and… At my side, I slipped my hand into the folds of my shirt. In one swift movement, I unsheathed the dagger and plunged it into the arm that was so tightly constricting my throat. Raggard let out a yelp of pain, letting me go as he stumbled back. “Onto the ship!” The Mandalorian yelled, and I wasted no time scrambling aboard. Outside, I heard blaster shots and scuffling, but I didn’t give myself time to reflect on it. I ascended the ladder into the cockpit and, without even sitting down, began to start up the ship. My hands were shaking violently, and I tried so hard to keep my focus on the buttons I was pressing and not my concerns for the Mandalorian. Before I initiated take off, I almost jumped back down into the hull and watched in astonishment as the Mandalorian strode up the ramp, sheathing his blaster and spear in the process. With no hesitation he went right past me and into the cockpit, and only seconds later I felt the whole ship shake underneath me as we rose up from the ground and away from it all.

[meadow-roses]

aske time :) for the writing asks: A1, A2, A10, A12, A14, your choice of anything in B, C8 ( :^) ), C11, D6

A1: Introduce the characters from one of your current WIPs in one or two sentences each. 

Okay let's gooo,,, I'll do The Keepers cause I haven't talked about that one as much. These aren't gonna be the best descriptions but whatever 

Ketsler: Quirky, fun-loving, everyone's weird grandpa, but also the most powerful person to have ever lived. He's old- so very, very old- and he's seen so much over all the centuries he has been protecting the worlds from Chaos, but he still makes an effort to slow down and appreciate the little things around him, because he knows better than most how fleeting life is.

Skylar: Skylar is from a world where faerie circles are real and witches turn people into frogs and trolls live in great, big castles and are slain by talking cats, a world where there's too much adventure to stay in one place, too many people to meet, and too many monsters to slay to stop running. He may be only a human (ooo mystery!!) but he is proficient in Wind magic and carries around a good bit of rune stones he and his pet dragon have found along his adventures. 

Felix: Felix is just a normal human from a small town after the earth becomes united under one world power. He wasn't born with superpowers like most soldiers are, but he was still skilled enough to join a special force working behind enemy lines when the rebellion made its move to free the planet from the tyranny that built this dystopian reality. 

Betty: A very sweet young lady, she's from a planet that was colonized by humans centuries ago. She may seem naive, but Betty can read anyone like a book and uses her gift to help those who are lost find themselves again. 

There's more characters but I'll just stick with those main ones cause I really struggle with descriptions xD

A2: Who's your favorite character to write and why?

Probably Joden? I haven't written most of my characters, but I looove writing his dialogue. He also makes me think so I can keep him clever lol

A10: What’s your character development process like? (As in how you develop them, not necessarily their development in-story)

I roleplay them! The more developed they are, the more I've acted as them. It really gets me inside their head to try and think like how they think, and that results in me being more equipped to "discover" why they are like that. 

A12: What kind of internal conflict does your character go through (want versus need, personality complexes or strong personality flaws/”fatal flaw” kinda thing)? How does this affect them?

It really varies depending on the character? For example Joden has this need to always have a plan, always be in control, and a breaking moment for him comes in when he finally just,,, doesn't know what to do. He's in over his head and the only thing he can do is trust Jacer to do what he can- knowing Jacer doesn't have things under control. 

So that's an example of a flaw that the character gets to overcome, but there also characters whose flaws are part of who they are. Skylar wouldn't be Skylar if he weren't stubborn. Ketsler wouldn't be Ketsler if he weren't arrogant. They never grow out of these flaws, they just learn to control them. Or I guess not be controlled by the flaw. 

This is actually something I think I struggle with for my characters, giving them those visable flaws. I see other people's characters that start out "bad" and grow into heroes, but it kinda seems like all my characters start out as heroes. 😅 I mean, they have flaws, but in comparison to other people's characters they feel really bland in that aspect. Idk

A14: Ramble about your characters. Anything special you like about them? Random little details you’ve added that you enjoy? 

Uh,,, I don't even know where to start I just love all of them for so many various reasons. Joden is just a clever little genius but he still can be so naive. He just has simple pleasures and it's not hard to make him laugh or smile and practically impossible to discourage him. He starts off just,,, wanting his old life back and then he sees what the world is like outside his little bubble and the bubble pops. He sees the atrocities for what they are and to be able to settle down again, he has to fix it. He can't just smile and do as he's told, he can't let the bad guys win. It I just his mother and wife and son he's fighting for, it's the entire wood and the idea of being actually, truly, free.

Jacer is so savvy, he knows what to do and what to say to get into and out of any situation, but at the same time he's just clueless when it comes to genuine connection. He's a princeling who's really never had a friend and now he's saving the world with Joden who only knows how to make genuine connections. Why does he have to keep hugging me??  

And Twylla who's ready to fight anything so she can get her clever idiot husband back? 

Adric who's just doing his best to be a good leader but everything keeps going wrong. He wasn't born to be a king, he wasn't born to lead an army, he always had his big brother to help him do these things and he's gone- he's gone and he's not coming back he messed up again so bad and yet here he is with everyone looking to him for answers and he doesn't know what to tell them. But he's got his friends, and he's got a good heart, and he genuinely cares and they're going to figure it out.

Skylar just keeps running forward and he never looks back at the past he just jumps from one adventure to another stopping the monsters and saving the day. He's got Gigi what more does he need? 

Felix is just,,, he's just such a nice guy. Over and over he stepped into the gap because someone's gotta fly that fighter, someone's got to fire that gun, someone's got to stabilize the bomb, someone's going to lose their life to ensure the victory, why shouldn't it be him? But he never actually dies, somehow he always survives and lives to fight the next day, and the next day and the next day, and then they win the war- the world is free. And even though he's been through so much he still hasn't lost that kindness, that love for all life that makes him himself. He still falls in love and starts a family and has his own beloved children… and even when he loses them he still doesn't become cynical. He still stands in the gap and is the one to fire the gun, to hold the hand of the one who's mourning, to scoop up the orphan child and carry them home. He fights, so others don't have to. Father to the fatherless and hero for all. Also he puts up with Skylar's time traveling craziness lol

And Ketsler? Unlike everyone else he never chose to be a hero. What are you supposed to do when you're a four year old boy and everyone tells you you're the hero they've been waiting for, praying for, you have to save them. It wasn't at all his choice to be born with the power of the universe running through his veins. To hold the Inness in his hands and bend reality to his will. But he didn't run away. He never hid from his destiny. He took the world onto his shoulders and never set it down. Only once- and he's never going to do it again. Never going to ask someone to fill in his role for him, it is his burden to bear… Except not anymore. Despite being multi-millenniums old, all that time didn't dull his appreciation for the little things. A baby's smile, sunshine through the leaves, the change of the seasons. The union of two souls in marriage, or the colors of the sunset streaking a foreign sky. He still sees these things, loves these things, fights for these things. Cause it's the little things he's fighting for, not just the big things. The precious moments and precious lives that make up the worlds. One of his apprentices asked him once, he'd been fighting for so long, when was it going to end? It's not his job to strike the final blow, to end the suffering and bloodshed, just to help. He saves the world, so that he can save it again. 

I have… several more characters I'd love to ramble about but that answer's gotten pretty long so I'll cut it off there. XD

B3: Do you have any plot twists? No need to describe them, just think about what kind of reaction you want from your readers. 

Oh I was just talking to August about this the other day. XD There is one plot twist in the Keeper's story I'm reeaaally looking forward to hehe I want to make people confused and then really mad when the whole thing is stretched out. >:) 

C8: Does magic exist in your world? Who can use it? How does it work?

It really depends on which WIP, but in general I like to keep magic restricted with rules. Joden's story and the Keeper's story are in the same universe (along with ThRoG) and follows that magic system. It's too complicated to go in depth here, but "magic" exists in another plane of existence, and things in the material world have varying levels of connection with it. It's kinda the energy that holds all worlds together and sustains life. The magic realm- the Inness is not a place where physical matter should exist, only spirits can walk there. 

Wizards are creatures that stand with one foot in the physical realm and the other in the Inness. Tevlar is destroying the world basically by turning it inside out- pulling the Inness out.

C11: Have you developed historical figures? How do you develop them? How in-depth do you go?

Oh yes. I am a complete history nerd so if any world EXISTS it has history, and history only happens because people. 

Sometimes it's a thought through process of "somebody needs to go here" and sometimes it's an npc from a time travel rp that took on more importance than I originally intended. 

It really varies how in depth it will go? Sometimes it's just a name to fill a spot and other times it's like, man I could write a whole book about this guy!

One historical figure would be Ares of the Pegasus. He was a powerful warrior that won a bunch of wars and united the different pegasus clans under his leadership and became the first king. He's really famous and people like naming their kids after him in a kinda superstitious hope they'll grow into attributes of his character. Ares is the male form of the name, Aris is for girls. It's like, the most common Pegasian name. XD

D6: Are there any writing styles that inspire you?

Probably the first writing style I wanted to emulate was Tolkien's, but I also really liked Andrew Peterson's? Tolkien is so dramatic, and Peterson isn't heavy on location descriptions, so I'm kinda aiming for in between I guess. 

[volkswagonblues]

care to share more about a bolt of blue? i know i loved the earlier snippet and the one you just posted

OH BOY I AM SO EXCITED. Here’s Piandao and Jeong Jeong in 1993, sitting at Piandao’s shitty basement apartment kitchen table and bullshitting each other as they always do. JJ, a gay Berkeley dropout who’s watched Blade Runner exactly once on VHS, is about to invent something...

“Okay,” Piandao says. He’s ready to drop it there but Jeong Jeong steamrolls over him. 


“What it really is – it’s about kicking people out, not keeping them out. They’re not asking for a blood test for entry, those are just for aliens who want green cards. But all they’re going to do is drive people underground – Clinton, the CDC, they don’t get that we’re in a global gene pool now, right? International travel happens everywhere, all the time. They think they can protect this country by sealing it up? Man, that’s not going to work. They’re not protecting anyone.”


“Okay,” Piandao says again. “Is that what you’re writing about?”

“Sort of.” Jeong Jeong drops back into his chair. After that tirade he looks tired again; his head droops into his folded arms like the weight of thinking is too great for his beck. He’s silent for a long time, and his voice is muffled when he says, “Why is it always so depressing?”


“Depressing?”

“This! Everything! The news! Why is everything I do and think about so fucking depressing all the time?”

“I don’t—”

“Fuck!” Jeong Jeong screams. He turns his face up towards the ceiling like he’s addressing God or Piandao’s upstairs neighbour, or both, or neither. “Fuck!”

He refuses to say anything more about it. That night the typewriter stays still and silent.

The next day Jeong Jeong announces he’s not going to write an essay about Haiti after all. He’s going to write a story. A fictional one, set in the 22th century, in a futuristic world where humanity has taken to space. Asia has won the Space Race; countries do not exist anymore, but the peoples whose ancestors once inhabited places like South Korea, Hong Kong, whatever — they have spread across galaxies. They’ve invented faster-than-light travel; people warp from planet to planet in Mitsubishi rockets and Hyundai space shuttles as easily as we would drive from one city to another today. And what’s more, in the reaches of far space, the high levels of gamma radiation— 


“This would actually kill them,” Piandao says, baffled.

“Shut up.”

—the high levels of gamma radiation have caused mutations in these humans’ genetic codes. In this new space world, a collection of terraformed moons and colonized planets, children began to be born with superpowers: the ability to manipulate elemental forces through thought and gesture. Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Some people can create tornadoes; others can shoot boulders into the air, or light fires with their minds. The fire people —

“The fire people?”

“I’ll think of a better word for it later.”

“Why these four?”

“What?”

“Why not — the five elements?”

“What?”

“Like — wood. Fire. Metal. Water. Earth.”

Jeong Jeong pinches his nose. “Man, just let me finish.”

—anyways, the fire people banded together halfway through the 21th century. They were jealous of the air people for their vast amounts of power because they maintained the atmosphere of the new terraformed moons. The fire people knew their powers were at their peak during the passing of a rare comet, and on that day they united across the galaxies to slaughter all the air people, who offered no resistance because they were actually all peaceful nomads — monks, really.

“How can an entire race of people be monks?”

“Listen,” Jeong Jeong says with great haughtiness. “Why don’t you write your own story if you’re gonna keep complaining? Anyways, it’s a metaphor.”

“For what?”

Jeong Jeong waves a hand. “Asian America. A borderless world. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

[aricazorel]

"How ticklish are you?" suggested by @ljandersen

pairing: Kaidan Alenko x Kori Reese (my OC); set during ME1; 2115 words

The Normandy was once again docked at a port for resupply. Only this time it wasn't some backwater planet. This time it was a popular tourist spot established by human private investors. With a limited Alliance presence, Avalon was the perfect haven for some less than reputable people. But at the moment it was a location for the SR1 crew’s shore leave.

Shore leave that Doctor Chakwas insisted the crew needed to take. A 24 hour layover at Avalon fit the bill with little to no argument from Shepard much to Kaidan’s surprise. Of course that left 24 hours of free time for the crew to get into mischief. He had a feeling Kori might be one of those who ended up on report if she wasn't properly entertained. But she wouldn't appreciate a keeper. Maybe she'd be okay with someone who was more than friends.

There wasn't exactly a label for what they were. Their relationship wasn't something they wanted to advertise. It wasn't even something that should have occurred. Fraternization regs. His own personal rules. Reese’s tendencies to be exceedingly private because of her past. All of that was supposed to work against them. Somehow it hadn't.

After something finagling the two lieutenants had managed to sneak off to enjoy a day of shore leave without any other crew members present. Applying his habit of being thorough in his duties to researching the Avalon colony, Kaidan had discovered a little used beach some ways from the spaceport. Convincing Reece to trust him, they rented a skycar and headed to the beach. Slightly cooler temperature wise than the more popular beaches near the spaceport, it reminded him of the ones he visited near Vancouver on Earth in his youth.

Of course the first thing Reese had commented on was the temperature. How much cooler it was then at the spaceport, and he knew she hated being cold. He grinned at her as he casually took off his blue Alliance hoodie.

“Want to borrow this?” He offered nonchalantly. He'd worn it over his T-shirt having been prepared for the temperature. He suggested she take one as well, but Reese did as she wanted.

The younger Lieutenant glared at him as she snatched the hoodie from his hand and put it on. “You did this on purpose.”

“Me?” He said innocently, pointing at himself. “I suggested that you should bring one.”

“You didn't tell me why,” she accused as she pulled the too-long sleeves of the borrowed hoodie up to her elbows.

“You're a smart person. I thought you could figure it out,” Kaidan replied with a smirk as he began walking down the beach away from the skycar.

“Ass,” Reese grumbled as he stopped to glance back at her

Extending a hand behind him he said, “Don't be that way, Kori. I thought this could be …something just for us.”

“Just for us?” She echoed as she walked up to him, staring at his offered hand.

“Well yeah,” Alenko replied shyly. “I mean with everything else we've …done, I thought some time together off the ship would be nice …kind of like a date.”

“A date?” She repeated uncertainly.

Kaden nodded. “Maybe we aren't there yet but –“

“We shagged like rabbits in the back of the Mako, Kaidan,” Reese pointed out smugly.

Alenko arched an eyebrow as a satisfied grin spread across his face. “We did, didn't we?”

“Really? You are going to be smug –“

She was cut off when he took her hand and pulled her to his side. “Can we please just take a walk along this beach which reminds me at home and pretend we …could be a normal couple?”

His whiskey-colored eyes pleaded with her to indulge him this one time. He was well aware Reese thought he was a romantic at heart, a sentiment shared by Ashley. He had already gone way over the line concerning keeping things strictly professional with Reese anyhow. Walking down a remote beach acting as if they weren't on a life-or-death mission for a few hours wouldn’t do much more damage if anyone found out. At least it was more explainable than the Mako.

“I --we can do that,” Reese agreed as she slowly slid an arm around his waist.

Kaidan grinned as he mimicked her action with his arm around her shoulders. They walked in silence for a few minutes, listening to the waves gently crash against the shore. The sun shone brightly overhead as a cloud or two moved in front of it occasionally. It was comforting to just spend time with someone he cared about without any expectations. It was nice to be somewhere that reminded him of home. It was just nice to be with Reese.

“This beach reminds you of home?” The younger tech’s voice called up to him. Alenko glanced down to see grey eyes looking back at him with a curious expression.

“Well yeah. Even the temperature. Vancouver is along the coast, remember? My parents have some land in the countryside,” he explained. “We used to go whenever we could, not just in the to swim. Sometimes just to take a walk.”

“A beach is supposed to be warm,” Reese insisted.

“And how would you know?”

“Just 'cause I was a colony kid doesn't mean I've never been to a beach,” she answered indignantly. “Moirae was like Georgia. One of the reasons my parents chose it for colonization and terraforming …Georgia has beaches too.”

“That doesn't mean you've been to a beach. That's just show that you know what one is,” Kaidan observed with a teasing grin.

“Alenko –“

He kissed her quickly. “I'm teasing, Kori.”

She huffed as she said, “My grandma used to talk take us swimming during the summer. Trying to help me feel normal while learning how to cope with my biotics.”

“That's cool,” Alenko commented, using 20th century slang that both annoyed and endeared him to her more.

“Actually it was hot,” Reese said with a wink.

Kaidan chuckled as he hugged her to his side. “And that is why you hate being cold and why you have a stash of blankets in your bunk I suppose.”

“Do not mock the stash of blankets,” Reese said seriously. “They have kept me from climbing into your bunk. You're warm.”

Alenko shook his head. “I should thank the blanket stash for keeping us out of trouble then. As nice as it might be to go to sleep with you in my arms. “

“Are you getting all mushy on me, Alenko?”

“Maybe just a little. No one else is around so …”

Reese shook her head as they continued to walk down the deserted beach. “I haven't walked a beach in quite a while.”

Kaidan grinned, glad that his idea had been a good one. “Did you ever just take walks along the beach on Moirae?”

The Lieutenant regretted the question as soon as the words left his mouth. He stopped in his tracks and looked at her. “Kori, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to –“

“You probably don't know but colony kids have dances in high school. Just like you Earthborn kids do,” Reese interjected, ignoring his attempt to apologize. She went on as she gazed out at the ocean. “Granted my high school wasn't that big but we managed to still have dances. Our junior prom was supposed to be on the beach. Everyone was excited. It was going to be my first formal. I even had a dress picked out. No date of course but a few of us girls were just gonna go together in a group.

Kaidan watched as she paused, a wistful look on her face. She rarely talked about Moirae. She was more apt to talk about her time in Georgia but to be truthful she didn't often talk about her past at all. He probably knew more than anyone else on the SR-1 but even that was a smattering of whatever she let slip when her guard was down.

“The short version is that it didn't happen, and I never got to attend a formal dance,” the tech concluded with a shrug of the shoulders.

She began to walk again but was stopped by Kaidan’s hand on her arm. “You don't have to act like it isn't a big deal.”

“But that's just it. Missing a prom isn't a big deal. It was just a stupid dance.”

“Maybe but it was more to you. It was something you were looking forward to, something I think you were actually excited about,” Kaidan said as he brought her back to him. “I know the destruction of your colony took away your family and your home, but it also took away experiences that you could have had. Things you should have had. You can't get the exact experience back but maybe when this mission is over we can try to make up for that in some small way.”

“You mean arrange for me to go to prom?”

“Well no, not exactly, but definitely something requiring formal attire. A dress.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Now you just want to see me in a dress.”

“I’ve seen you in less,” he pointed out as he placed his hands on her hips.

As he absentmindedly made lazy circles with his thumbs, she huffed. “So that is where your mind is, techboy.”

“I think I’m allowed,” he replied as he noticed her beginning to fidget. Frowning he asked, “Something wrong?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

Not convinced he stopped his ministrations and watched her fidgeting cease. An idea began to form as a wicked grin spread across his face. He lightly caressed her hips again but this time working his way up the side of her ribcage. She wiggled and began giggling.

“Alenko! Stop!”

As she backed away, he stared at hie wide eyed. “Kori, how ticklish are you?”

“That is need to know information and you, Lt. Alenko, don’t need to know,” she replied holding her hands up in front of her as a makeshift barrier.

“Oh, but I think I do need to know, Lt. Reese,” he countered as he began walking towards her with purpose.

“Aw, hell no!” she yelled as she began running from him.

He laughed as the tech began sprinting back towards the skycar. He gave pursuit, sorely tempted to use his biotics to halt her retreat. But that would be cheating, and Reese would definitely not like that. In the end he settled for catching up with her and tackling her.

She let out a shriek as they fell unceremoniously to the sandy ground. Kaidan gave a roar of laughter as he declared, “Got ‘cha!”

With Reese already struggling to escape, he immediately began to tickle her again, determined to discover just how ticklish she was. Her laughter was music to his ears as they rolled along the beach. He’d only rarely heard her giggle let alone laugh as if nothing could stop her. As she twisted and turned underneath him, he discovered to his delight she was very ticklish nearly everywhere.

The wheels in Alenko’s head began turning as he stopped tickling her. That weakness was definitely something he could exploit later. Grey eyes looked at him as tears of laughter slide down her cheeks. He leaned down and kissed her sweetly.

As she hummed her contentment Kaidan murmured against her lips. “Take shore leave with me after this mission.”

Reese pulled back just a bit as she said, “You’re serious?”

Kaidan nodded even though he was surprised as she was that he had uttered the words to begin with. She blinked and cupped his cheek. “You’re serious enough about us you’d want to see more of me after this mission…oryou just want to tickle me some more?”

Alenko grinned. “Maybe it’s both. And maybe I can find more places where you are ticklish…Ones I need to remove certain articles of clothing to discover…”

“Are you coming onto me, Alenko?”

Kaidan smirked. “I thought I was already on you, Reese.”

The tech rolled her eyes as he leaned down and kissed her again. “Will you?”

Reese made an amused sound before asking, “If I say yes, are you going to stop kissing me?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

Kaidan grinned as he kept his word and continued kissing the Lt. Happy to have something to look forward to and happy that thing involved Reese. Happy to know she looked forward to it as well. As the waves crashed around them, he was once again reminded of home and how Kori now felt like that to him. And that he would never regret it. Ever.

[dgcatanisiri]

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

So I HAVE actually been working on my ongoing series of hypothetical DLC to games that I love over the last year (it was the end of January 2020 when my last one of these got posted, this is going up at the beginning of May 2021). Which, yes, some is pandemic related because *screams* but... I was looking over what I’ve been working on, and realized that I was at about the combined length of my first two of these in my present examination, and I was only about a third of the way through the ideas that I had. I could either keep going and do these all at once in a massive post in like another year or two, or I could break it up into chunks.

So instead of waiting, this is going to be Part 1 of (I hope) 3 in an examination at ideas and possibilities of what additional content could have been made for Mass Effect 2, which for some is considered the best of the series. Me, I’m a little more critical of it. To me, this game is a textbook example of bridge syndrome, of the plot spinning its wheels to hold off on the payoff until the third part of the trilogy - the Collectors are, in practice, an entirely separate threat from the Reapers, even acknowledging the connection in the plot. We see this in the impact that the ME2 characters have in the next game - most are in side missions, all perform roles in the plot that literally can have them swapped out, even if it’s to the ultimate detriment of your War Asset count.

So in my mind, there’s a lot of room to make these DLCs, these glimpses into further areas of the world of Mass Effect at large. Because for me, what ME2 SHOULD have been was about making the alliances with the galaxy at large, rather than the big set piece of the Suicide Mission. We got some of this in ME2 proper, but that’s where the core of my focus and attention is with these DLCs.

Admittedly, I am aware of the difficulties of working around ME2 having both optional companions (Thane, Samara, and Tali don’t have to be recruited at all, Zaeed and Kasumi are DLC, many missions are available before you necessarily pick up certain companions...) and the ability to hold off on doing the DLC until after the Suicide Mission, where any or all of your companions may end up dying. However, for simplicity’s sake (because these things are long enough as it is without having a dozen variations apiece), we will assume that all companions are recruited and alive for the sake of plot advancement. Minds greater than mine can figure out how these would work without a given character – me, I tend to clear out the quest log before the Suicide Mission (aside from Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival, both of which are minimal on the squadmates from the rest of the game) and rarely let myself lose someone on the Suicide Mission, and since these are my ideas, we’re working in my framework.

Also, timeline note: Like ME2′s actual DLC, the fact that these would unlock at certain points in the game’s timeline does not necessarily reflect when they would best be played in the in-game timeline. Like Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival are (as I mentioned above), at least in my personal timeline, post-Suicide Mision content. BUT, they both become available to play after Horizon. Just because they unlock at certain points in the plot, that doesn’t mean that they best fit the timeline in that point. It was just a convenient way to organize things in my notes. So there will be ones that unlock at plot point A, but probably play best after plot point B. Players would be able to decide where they fit as it works for them.

Ghost of the Machine

A phenomenon is spreading across colonies in Citadel space. Machine cultists are cropping up on planets. Shortly thereafter, these colonies go dead quiet – often overrun by husks. To Admiral Anderson, this sounds like Reaper tech, and there’s only one person who he trusts to investigate the truth of the machine cults...

(Post-Freedom’s Progress)

So back to the machine cultists. In our last installment, there was Evolution, which featured them. Here, though, we’re looking at something that kinda resolves this little storyline. Y’know, since ME3 isn’t really going to have the time for this sort of thing. Which, sure, I’m saying this becomes unlocked before you can unlock this game’s machine cultist sidequest, but shush – just because it unlocks at this point doesn’t mean it has to be played at this point. This time, it’s not just about learning about the problem, but we’re also going to see what we can do to understand it, especially since we’re now acknowledging that this is a recurring problem within the universe and maybe we want to find a proper solution to it before stumbling blindly into it gets more and more people killed.

So this takes Shepard to a planet that’s making its first steps at colonization, yet again (because I am trying to be cognizant of what practical realities exist in the game development, even acknowledging that this is a hypothetical thing anyway – early colonization means limited extras wandering around out in the open and a self-contained area to play around in). Those seem to be the places where these devices mainly get uncovered, so that’s why this is here.

Of course, we have a situation where the devices are known about, so there’s an immediate lockdown, and the reason that Shepard and crew are getting sent out is because Reaper experience is needed – in the event that this colony can have anyone saved, who is it and how do we get them out safely?

I kinda look at this as revealing the process – the previous encounters were the parts that told us the existence of the metaphorical monster of this story, here we’re getting to see the “monster” properly in action. And I feel like this should be about also introducing some of what will become ME3’s foot soldiers among the Reaper armies – we know about the husks from ME1, now we’re going to encounter another for the first time. Probably the marauders. Given that they and the cannibals (who are so numerous in part because of the batarian worlds being first in the invasion path) are the most numerous in ME3 aside from husks, we should at least get to see them be pre-established because of their involvement ahead of time – they don’t get any proper introduction as is in ME3, just accepted as being there.

The honest general idea in this one is tying off this thread that was seemingly built, by way of being a repeated thread in both ME1 and ME2, but goes entirely unmentioned in ME3. Obvious reasons are obvious, but that’s why these hypothetical DLCs “exist,” to address things that the games didn’t have time for. (And that’s a big part of a lot of these, so... buckle up.)

Obviously, we have some of the supplementary material to work off of here – I’m specifically thinking of the Illusive Man’s comic series, Evolution. (Side note, TIM’s involvement there should probably also be part of the reason he’s quick to send Shepard in here – he knows what these artifacts can do.) You can read the wiki page as easily as this, but to quickly detail the important part, we know what these are through them, artifacts meant to ease the way for the eventual arrival of the Reapers by doing the huskifying work ahead of time, without the need for things like the Dragon’s Teeth (which... I want to bring these into this in some fashion, considering they seemed to have importance in ME1, but as the numbers of husks increased in the later games, they fell by the wayside – ME3 claimed that they were basically just to increase a subject’s adrenaline and spread the Reaper tech through the victim’s body quicker from the fear of impalement, and that seems like a lot of effort for little reward, since nothing indicates a way to come back after infection anyway).

So why are these on far-flung colonies, especially when the husks definitely don’t have the mental capacity to control ships and spread out that way?

Since, again, there’s no way to come back after infection anyway, that’s going to be one of the core questions. This seems like a highly inefficient way to set about conquering the galaxy. Why spread this if there’s no reliable method of getting it to go beyond any singular world? (Obviously, the original idea seems to be a) BioWare shock value and b) something to horrify the audience with no reason attached – so it’s time to add that reason). What is the purpose?

So that’s going to be a running thread, probably the major subplot of the story. Obviously, though, the first priority is Shepard trying to escape getting caught up in this colony that is descending into Reaper control. Also, since I said we’re introducing the marauders here, I think we need a turian contact on the ground – I almost said make them a female turian, introduce them to the world of Mass Effect well ahead of the DLC for ME3 (a-HEM!), but I also think that we’ve got another situation of seeing them get infected and die as a result – it IS a consistent point in this series that coming back from Reaper infections Is Not Done. And repeating that here makes it a consistent theme, considering Nyreen.

So while I still say there should be female turians making their appearance among the turians of the colony, our turian buddy is going to be a guy, just for the sake of not stuffing another named female turian in the fridge. I’ll get to a more proper introduction of a female turian later, promise. (And, I like to imagine, with the number of DLCs I’m writing up here, there’s some kind of ability to retroactively introduce female turians into the crowds in the base game as a “patch” through at least one of them, as well as into ME3 proper... Hey, this is all fantasy as it is, let me have that one.)

Anyway, the turian contact is going to be frosty with Shepard – he (I don’t have a name for him at this point) not only doesn’t trust Cerberus, he was also friends with Saren, making him distrust Shepard. While Saren was a traitor, it’s got an element of ‘guilt by association’ to have had close ties to him, so Shepard’s kind of a living embodiment of the hit to his good name. Even if he didn’t do what he did because of Shepard specifically, they’re still associated. But he is still on a mission and Shepard is here and willing to assist him, so...

That said, he’s a Cerberus contact – Cerberus may be human first, but, given the ME2 crew, they can cultivate non-human contacts and aid, and under the circumstances of this colony, being a joint endeavor of humans and turians (probably throw in some callbacks to the last edition of these hypothetical DLCs and mention Ambassador Goyle and the Planet of Peace story). He’s been influenced by Cerberus operatives because hey, it’s good for humanity and turians to make peace if there’s a greater threat, right? Shepard meets with him on the outskirts of the colony proper – in order not to be influenced, they’re acting as much outside of the colony as possible. (Come to think about it, it might be a good idea to make recruiting Mordin a pre-req for this, at least handwave him having come up with a measure meant to protect from Indoctrination and the effects of these artifacts.)

The artifact is already influencing colonists, of course, and our turian friend is ready to write them off immediately – they’ve read the reports, and indoctrination can’t be reversed. I picture a brief discussion about how horrible indoctrination is as a weapon, making the Reapers enemies into their servants, and so warping their minds and perceptions that they’d never be able to trust that any thought they have afterwards is their own, even if they could be saved. Because seriously, that’s one of the most unsettling things for me in this franchise.

The idea is, of course, to get in to where this artifact is and destroy it unseen. That probably means a stealth segment through this colony – honestly, do it like the batarian base in Arrival, I don’t think that it would be so bad. That offered some nice variation, if a little spare on interactable things. Here are going to be some interactable things, things you can get to if you’re good, pay enough attention to the line of sights and such, but will still risk discovery.

Those interactable things are going to be some of the background of the artifact and what’s the whole deal – y’know, codex stuff, things that aren’t essential to the story but good background. Lay some groundwork for the idea of what the Reapers want out of these things being left behind.

Stealth section comes before the inevitable action section, of course. Here, the artifact is in underground caverns (like normal) and our turian buddy sets out to make some quick scans, get the information they need. And, of course, it activates at his approach, zapping him with energy. He tries to shake off any effects but... Well, I already said that he was gonna get infected and die.

So here’s where we start seeing the husks show up. It’d be really nifty if we could get them in varying states of their evolution (or devolution, depending how you look at it), some people just having glowing eyes, others being full on huskified.

And, of course, our turian contact is now in the process of becoming a marauder. I’m thinking we’re having something of the same thing as with Saren here – now that the Reapers made contact with him, they’re framing him as their “herald,” the one who’s going to act as their instrument. Shepard rightly gets to point out the comparison, which does at least get some hesitation – he’s being indoctrinated, is in the process of becoming a pure Reaper tool, but isn’t all the way there yet, the process isn’t 100% immediate.

Also I figure this is a good time to really establish (in terms of ME2’s plot) that the Reapers are so interested in Shepard and why. Like, yeah, sure, we do get Harbinger’s whole thing, but that’s not really a dialogue where we get to ask questions. It’s not even an interrogation where Harbinger demands information. Harbinger just spouts out dialogue of “this hurts you” and such. That’s not really telling us anything. So, yeah, there’s the basic “Shepard defeated a Reaper,” but hey, let’s just get a little more out of it.

I mean, we can intuit what Shepard means for the Reapers, sure, but if it’s important enough to be a major motivation, it’s important enough to say outright, you know? So Shepard is a pinnacle for this cycle – they killed a Reaper, delayed the advancement of the cycle for a few years, that’s a bit of a big deal when it comes before the harvest proper starts up – and the Reapers (like Leviathan will later) want to better understand what makes them tick. If this is unique to Shepard or the human condition, and, if it’s the later, how to break this down to its basic chemical composition and make it their own.

Turian buddy is also here to mouthpiece the explanation for what the Reapers even expect to gain from this. Slaves who can’t operate the mechanisms that they’ll be using are poor servants. I figure it’s as much an intimidation matter as anything – prompt the effective burning of a colony without deeper investigation, sow some fear about the unknown and keep people staying to the comfortable and familiar areas of the space that they live in, corral them in the familiar patterns. It’s a plan with the intent of intimidation – it isn’t until the harvest that they need the servants, so until then, they just want the borders firmly established.

Seems simple enough, sure, but this is still a mystery as far as the game proper is concerned, and I am trying to work within the established structure of the trilogy, rather than come up with some massive reveal that changes our understanding of everything – if I WERE just going to rewrite the franchise, I could do that, instead of writing up synopses of add-ons to the main game, y’know?

Of course Shepard’s gonna get free – I’m thinking that it’s a rescue effort by some of the other crew on the Normandy (because it really bugs me that, when the game is focused around Shepard gathering up the “Dirty Dozen” for their “Suicide Squad” (look, I had to get that out of my system), they only take two members out on missions at a time, so hey, look, they get up to something while Shepard’s busy doing the dirty work. This being ME2, we have to shoot our way out even further to get back to the artifact, which is where our turian ‘friend’ waits.

Paragon/Renegade choice here – do we try and reach out to him, get him to help us blow the artifact to hell, or just jump straight to the boss fight? By this point he has some additional help, by way of our introduction to a harvester – these were dropped into ME3, on Menae, with no exploration, and non-Reaper ones were meant to be enemies during the development of this game, so call this the natural evolution of matters. We’re introducing the marauders and the harvesters ahead of time, explaining the lack of fanfare that these enter the “proper” storyline with. The difference is if our turian friend is aiding us or the harvester, the harvester being our big end boss for this DLC.

The harvester gets killed, the artifact is blown up with the turian (he chooses to remain if Paragoned, a reminder of the permanent effects of the indoctrination process and how this is something that can’t be fixed – hammer home some of the fear and anguish that will be impacting those left behind from the inevitable fighting). Shepard returns to the Normandy for a debrief (I do kinda picture Miranda being involved in that, because, again, squadmates get additional dialogue here, and she IS the ranking Cerberus officer). Also some set up about discussing about Cerberus efforts to better understand indoctrination (foreshadowing for Henry Lawson’s experiments on Horizon next game).

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Indoctrination has seen further study, providing a war asset. Dialogue changes to reference Shepard having encountered marauders and harvesters before.

 Commander Shepard

The Suicide Mission is coming, and the Illusive Man has asked for all of Shepard’s companions to have their heads cleared. Now it’s Shepard’s turn. Their burdens have remained – the loss of the Normandy, the death on Virmire, and their death at the hands of the Collectors. The rest of the team has to clear their heads, and now so must Commander Shepard.

(Post-Horizon)

Yeah, why is it that, while we’re dealing with having to clear the heads of our crew, our PC, who has canonically been killed and resurrected, does NOT have to do this? So, yeah, Shepard needs a good head clearing. (For the record, I have written a fic of this: Lazarus Risen, and that’s effectively where I’m going with this, so if you’re so inclined, check it out instead of reading this, since while the recap is shorter, the fic itself is not too long.)

So, if you don’t want to read that, my idea when I made the fic was to explore both the idea of “Commander Shepard’s loyalty mission,” or the one where Shepard clears their head, AND the thought of just what the heck required Shepard to take all their companions on a mission and leave the Normandy vulnerable to the Collector attack after obtaining the IFF. Now, I’m saying that this mission unlocks after Horizon, but in my mind, that’s when and where this mission takes place. I just don’t know how to implement it within the game design that presently exists, so we’re gonna leave that open to player interpretation.

So the starting point of the fic (and thus, this DLC – like I said, that’s effectively where I’m going with this) is that Kelly Chambers, in her role as the Normandy’s official unofficial counselor/therapist, has recognized that Shepard has a lot of trauma associated with their death and resurrection they have not worked through, and so that’s gone into her reports to the Illusive Man. Mister Illusive contacts the Normandy, declaring that Shepard’s going in to a Cerberus facility, along with their crew, for a full psychiatric workup – the mission is too important to not have all these issues dealt with before going into things.

A bit of fun with this, on the basis of it being why Shepard is taking their whole squad off the ship, is that there’s the opportunity for some banter and genuine crew interaction, something that is sadly missing from the base game itself. Since I’m me, and this is about what I want from these, this is also an opportunity for some character stuff with Shepard, both playing referee (maybe getting a chance to recover some of the loyalty divisions from the confrontations if need be?) and getting to be able to better build and display the growth these characters are going through from seeing their loyalty missions resolved (cuz you DO resolve all the loyalty missions before activating the Reaper IFF, right?). The whole point of doing them was to clear their heads, encourage growth, and the thing is, we don’t get much of that forward arc in ME2, with ME3 just catching us up later. At least half the point of these is some retroactive continuity to smooth out the trilogy’s edges, after all.

Moving on. The arrival at the Cerberus Station (I am assuming this is the same one from the early part of the game, the one Miranda and Jacob take Shepard after they escape the Lazarus facility, though it doesn’t have to be, just a convenient use of model reuse) is uh... complicated. After all, Shepard’s motley crew is not exactly Cerberus approved (even if TIM authorized it – remember how Brooks in Citadel will mention that “Cerberus was a human organization bringing in aliens”?). There is a stir. A handful of situations have to be defused before everything properly gets under way.

This isn’t in my fic because that was focused on the one thing, while, as DLC, this would have to fill out some additional content to justify the time spent and the resultant price tag players spend to buy it, but I kinda figure this is where we can start seeing where the dissent is for Miranda in particular (probably Jacob too), given her Cerberus loyalties. This is a Shepard-focused mission, but I do see Miranda having a relatively decent role in any sidequests, character bits, and dialogue, given that we presently have in her a Cerberus loyalist right up to the point that she sees the human Reaper in the endgame. Especially if she isn’t part of the endgame squad, I feel we should have some material that connects those dots somewhat. I mean, I expect all the characters SHOULD get some, but Miranda in specific is the one with the almost explicit arc of taking her from Cerberus loyalist to her “consider this my resignation” remark to the Illusive Man at the endgame.

The Cerberus station director (my fic said her name is Doctor Nuwali, so we’ll be going with that) tries to organize the chaos that is Shepard’s squad (Shepard being as helpful or obstructionistic as the player chooses to allow, because Cerberus and authorities figures are always fun to poke at, and we’re getting both of those rolled up in one). Building off the above point with Miranda, there’s also clearly tension between her and Nuwali – Nuwali is, in many ways, a reflection of who she was at the start of the game, the pure, uncompromising believer to the cause and the results-driven focus without acknowledging the human cost, while Miranda has been in the position of growing and developing and questioning (Like I said, connective tissue for her character arc).

Nuwali directs Shepard into a private room for their psych evaluation, insisting on the separation of Shepard from the squad. (Just go with it, it’s for plot purposes.) Within is a prothean artifact, and it begins to react at Shepard’s arrival. It flashes-

-and Shepard finds they’re now in the Virmire facility. This is the requisite combat segment stuff that I can brush past during the recapping. The point is that they’re making their way through the geth to the area where the bomb was deployed, to find Ashley or Kaidan, whoever was left behind on Virmire (even if they were left with the distraction team and Shepard didn’t go back for the bomb, Shepard is guaranteed to have been at the bomb site, not the other area, so...).

They assist Shepard in clearing out the geth and then go into confrontation mode – “you’re working with Cerberus now, what the hell?” You know all the fan debates about why is Shepard working with Cerberus, given the horrors they uncover in ME1, especially if you roll a Sole Survivor (and, considering that is the default Shepard background, that’s clearly BioWare’s preference, so it’s not even like this shouldn’t come up – DLC is better than nothing, you know?).

Yes, we’re doing a “defending your life” style thing here. Hey, the game could use that, considering how Cerberus is the bad guy and we’re working with them. We deserve a more critical examination of this concept.

It’s a bit of a verbal joust – Ashley/Kaidan question what Shepard’s doing, their purpose in working with Cerberus, why they aren’t just leaving, how they could have tried to turn them in to the Alliance and the Council after they were given the Normandy and use the information in the ship’s databases as evidence of the Collector threat? There were ways for the story to progress that weren’t this deal with the devil. Shepard gets to acknowledge their points, struggle to justify what they’re doing. Emphasizing that this IS a deal with the devil, and if Shepard doesn’t find a loophole out of it, they’ll be condemned alongside Cerberus as well – not blowing them to hell in the here and now can make them culpable for their future activities, especially if Cerberus tries to bank on the idea of “Commander Shepard worked with us” (like they do with Conrad Verner in ME3).

Call it “preempting the ‘we should have been able to side with Cerberus’ discussion” that cropped up after ME3 – people, we ARE talking about a xenophobic terrorist group, how were they EVER gonna come out of this series looking like the good guys in the final analysis?

The ultimate point is that this is not a good situation – whatever good might come of Cerberus in general, Cerberus cannot be trusted. Ashley/Kaidan point blank ask can Shepard truly justify staying with them, doing the Illusive Man’s bidding, regardless of their good intentions. And I don’t really think there’s a good answer here – again, in my head, this plays as the mission Shepard’s on when the Collectors attack the Normandy, and, because I make sure to do all the loyalty missions before going to the Collector Base, Shepard is about to cut ties with Cerberus by way of a massive explosion (because I’d never trust the Illusive Man with the Collector Base), this is basically laying groundwork for that moment.

If you don’t do things that way... Well, sorry, but this is my hypothetical DLC, so we’re playing things my way.

Anyway, this sends Shepard on their way to the next installment of “defending your life.” Because we’re absolutely following the Rule of Three here, so there’s more than just the one segment. More requisite combat stuff happens, this time fighting through the Citadel tower again. At the end is Saren. Because why wouldn’t we have an encounter with him when Shepard is doing questionable things in the name of defending the galaxy?

He, of course, is rather smug about the fact that Shepard is allying with the devil in the name of fighting the Reapers – to him, it comes across as something of a victory, because here Shepard is, the person who came after him for his alliance with Sovereign, having made his own deal with the devil. If Ashley/Kaidan were the angel on Shepard’s shoulder, the voice of their conscience, telling them that they are making a mistake working with Cerberus, Saren is here to be the devil on the other shoulder, pointing out all the value there is in working with them, in doing whatever the mission calls for to put an end to the Collectors and the Reapers.

One would hope that this kind of rhetoric from the villain of the first game would make it very clear that Cerberus are the bad guys. As if to drive the point home, Saren also brings up that Shepard was rebuilt by them – with what is certainly Reaper tech. Shepard has begun the process of ascending to the Reapers level, what’s some more, melding more with their tech, bringing that melding, that joining, that unification of organic and machine, to the people of the galaxy, of doing the Reapers a favor and acting as their instrument in raising up galactic civilization?

Things of course descend into a firefight (because we’ve got to have our action quota). This time, Shepard gets to pull the trigger and personally kill Saren – sure, I get satisfaction out of persuading him to shoot himself, and I can always take the other options if I’m really pressed to face off against him, but I want the visceral satisfaction of having Shepard standing over Saren themselves and pulling the trigger.

It’s the little things, you know?

Anyway, because Rule of Three, this proceeds Shepard to the third point. They are back on Lazarus Station. No combat this time, just proceeding through the halls until they find themselves in the spot where they met Jacob in the prologue. Here, they see Miranda and Liara, discussing the act of giving Shepard to Cerberus to rebuild. While at first they’re talking to each other (whether or not you want to interpret this as Shepard somehow having heard the conversation or this just being Shepard’s interpretation, that’s up to you – we’re already in the center of Shepard’s mind here, does that really need explaining?), eventually, Shepard gets to speak, raise concerns, raise their voice.

Shepard gets options – do they understand and appreciate what was done to them, the resurrection and effective drafting into Cerberus? Or are they angry and pissed off – they were dead, and then someone else comes along and decides not to let them rest. For me, this has always been an issue of bodily autonomy, where, with Liara using the reasoning, and I quote, that she “couldn’t let [Shepard] go,” SHE is the one deciding what to do with Shepard’s body. Whatever you might say about what that did to make the galaxy a better place... Was it what Shepard would have wanted done with their corpse, to be handed off to a terrorist group culpable in acts of horrific deeds so that they could play Frankenstein with it? This is, in the games proper, just completely ignored – the one option to be angry is about Liara hiding this from them, not about her DOING it, and in ME3, Shepard – without player input – frames Miranda and the Lazarus Project as “giving them back their life.”

Yeah, no. I can forgive Miranda’s actions, given her characterization is actively about her going from looking at Shepard as a resource to be tapped to a friend (or possibly lover). It’s not perfect, but it’s still part of her arc, and she does at least make an apology (even if the writing doesn’t focus on the part I want it to, that ME3 conversation being focused on her wanting to implant Shepard with a control chip).

But I NEED to be able to express anger at Liara in some way just to like her, considering her canonical reason for doing this is all about HER – not that she considered Shepard the only one in the galaxy who could stand against the Reapers, but that SHE couldn’t let Shepard go. When in my games, she has no right to that. She’s not the one my Shepard’s are in a relationship with. So what those who romance her probably see as an act of love and devotion, I, not romancing her, can’t see it as anything but an act of obsession. And, even if I have to limit myself to a mental simulacrum of her, because there’s not a better place to include such a thing in these DLCs, it will help me, because it’s at least acknowledgement that hey, maybe Shepard is kinda pissed about people making decisions about them for them.

*ahem*

Right, so, where were we? Right, the reaction to Miranda and Liara discussing what to do with Shepard’s body. So as Shepard reacts, this prompts appearances from Ashley, Kaidan, and Saren, all of them playing Greek chorus about the decisions made about Shepard and how Shepard is reacting to them all. And yes, now we have both Ashley and Kaidan, regardless of who was left on Virmire, because why not – if we have one of them showing up for this DLC, why NOT include both of them? You’d have both actors in the studio anyway, so... Basically this is the big character confrontation where they all make the points that fans can debate and nitpick over when they bring up this topic, until finally the question gets put as, effectively, “well, however you feel about it, it has been done, so what are you going to do now?”

And to answer that, Shepard has to reenter the room they woke up in. Because we’re not quite done here yet.

Yeah, that whole conversation piece? THAT was the third “fight” or “combat” scene of this sequence, done in dialogue. Think the Atris confrontation in KOTOR 2, a verbal standoff. The actual interaction that Shepard has to face in the operating room... is themselves.

And their mirror image is offering similar questions, now wanting Shepard to respond, rather than having other characters voice opinions for them. How do you play Shepard’s reaction to their death and resurrection? To the fact that they are spending this game working with Cerberus, who is responsible for a traumatic event in roughly one third of all Shepard histories? Who Shepard uncovered multiple instances of their mad science in ME1 that crossed every ethical line? Who have it repeated rather consistently, is a humanity-first organization who will put human interests (and Cerberus interests, claiming they’re the same) ahead of galactic ones? If the Collector Base has (or is) a Reaper weapon, do they legitimately trust the Illusive Man with this power? Does Cerberus or the Illusive Man REALLY deserve any loyalty from Shepard?

Think of this as “stage two” of the verbal boss battle.

So, the confrontation with themselves concludes with, effectively, Shepard making their decision for going forward – the idea is that it has all been a mental debate, Shepard talking to themselves and coming to a conclusion that they needed to make. The general idea probably is one that, if you’re an obsessive fan with a penchant for filling in the gaps of canon (hey how are you?), you may have imagined these kinds of thoughts and discussions and conversations happening, but isn’t it more satisfying to actually have them take place on screen? And two, Shepard confronting themselves is, in and of itself, always a big deal. As I said at the beginning, this is Shepard’s loyalty mission, done to clear their head. How could it not result in Shepard facing themselves and asking themselves these big questions directly?

When Shepard officially makes their decision for the forward march, you know, figuring out how to handle Cerberus from here on in, which basically come to, effectively, use them for their resources and cut them loose at the end of the crisis or cut ties now and let the chips fall – since, after all, aside from Miranda and Jacob, whose loyalties to Cerberus are already wavering, Shepard has a squad full of the most dangerous people in the galaxy, so they could handle a mutiny of any kind (and, on the player end, there’s the knowledge that, while all this is taking place, EDI is getting unshackled and effectively is capable of running the ship) – they’re kicked back to reality.

And yes, those are the only two results of this, because, just to hammer it home, Cerberus is NOT. THE GOOD GUYS. The Illusive Man is not secretly good, he’s just using the “humanity needs protection” line to justify his actions and attitudes that are about seizing power. And anyone who thought that we would, should, or could side with Cerberus come ME3 was kidding themselves.

Granted, with this line of thinking, I’m not sure what the motivation would be to give Cerberus the Collector Base at the endgame (I mean, I never have, so...). Maybe the idea of “indoctrinate yourself, get taken in by the Reapers, you bastard,” but... That doesn’t seem right for Shepard’s characterization. Eh, like I said, much of this is based in how I play in the first place, so if you want to try and figure that out, feel free, but my list, we go by my way of approaching things. Because that’s just how I roll.

So I haven’t explained what, exactly, this prothean artifact is. Well, it’s effectively nothing more than a plot device, but let’s say there’s a note that becomes interactable, that basically talks up the artifact as being what I’ve called it so far, something that is meant to allow the user a chance to directly interact with themselves, face the truths they deny. Again, this really is a plot device meant to allow the circumstances of the plot, and while I could go into the details of how I assume it works, it really just needs to exist, but that’s my handwave excuse to justify how it worked. It works very well, thank you for asking. The reality is the how is less important than what it brings up.

So, Shepard is back in the physical world, and sets about putting the ideas into motion – the Illusive Man wanted them here? Yeah, no. Not doing that anymore. Shepard gets their crew out of there, upsetting doc Nuwali (giving the impression that there were some sketchy ideas in mind for Shepard’s companions when they were alone themselves, invasive procedures that they’d knock them out and see if they could take them apart and put them back together, now loyal to the Cerberus banner that sort of thing) and has a brief chat with Miranda as they fly back to the Normandy.

...You know, which, based on my time table, is currently under Collector attack. Fun times!

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The artifact as a war asset, reports about Nuwali being captured by Alliance officers while in the process of having attempted some of those ‘sketchy ideas’ she’d meant to enact on Shepard’s companions.

The Lights of Klencory

The planet Klencory is rumored to hold secrets regarding ‘the machine devils.’ Admiral Hackett of the Alliance has suspicions these are references to the Reapers, and has been secretly investigating these. Now, a team of Alliance soldiers have vanished out there, and he’s calling in Commander Shepard as a specialist, along with an old friend...

Bonus Companion: Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko

(Post-Horizon)

So back on the old days of the BSN, before Arrival came out, the speculation was, after Lair of the Shadow Broker, that the successive DLC would feature Ashley or Kaidan, give them the same treatment Liara got by featuring them in a DLC. One of my favorite ideas featured the concept of the “machine devils” of Klencory. You know, the planet blurb from ME1 where a volus is digging into a planet in search of evidence of “lost crypts of beings of light,” the indication being that he’d had his mind scrambled by a prothean beacon. So, hey, guess where we’re going?

I mean, obviously Illium, duh.

Actually, that’s not a bad starting point. Illium in general seems to be fairly neutral territory – sure, technically a planet in Citadel space, given its an asari world, but with many Citadel laws relaxed, it makes for a place where “an Alliance operative” will meet with Shepard (We’re starting by way of a letter from Hackett, for the record) without it being considered suspicious behavior by those looking in who are not in the know about the tacit support that both Hackett and Anderson are offering Shepard. There’s a lot of questions coming into this on Shepard’s part, given that, at this point in time, they’re not really an Alliance officer, and yet this is apparently something that is getting them called on? Probably means Reapers.

It gets complicated once Shepard arrives for the meeting and finds Ashley/Kaidan is their contact.

So, before we go further, I want to acknowledge, by the nature of having any real contact between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan between the encounter on Horizon and the opening of ME3, I am effectively breaking one of my cardinal rules for these, namely the idea of not screwing with the pre-existing structure of the games’ plots in allowing Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan SOME form of genuine contact and communication, to the point of a chance for a legitimate conversation about things and where they stand with one another (Yes, the previous entry was bending that rule, but this is an outright breaking of it).

Thing is, this is one thing that really SHOULD have existed in the games proper, I shouldn’t have to have built something up to include here, and I will 100% die mad about it. Ashley and Kaidan got shafted by BioWare’s handling of things, and I’m not willing to forgive it (if you follow my liveblogs of replaying the games, you’ll know I frequently complain that Arrival really was gift-wrapped to serve this function, and yet it doesn’t so much as mentioned Ashley/Kaidan). So yeah, we’re having an opportunity to address this stuff right off, it’s taking place in the game “proper” (for a given value, considering all of this is made up, but...). I’ll get into how this will impact their interactions come ME3 in the “Post Game Followups” section, for now, we’re just going with this.

Also on the “to note” element, I am mostly going to refer to Ashley/Kaidan in the sense of swapping them into place for one another, since, obviously, they are mutually exclusive at this point in the trilogy. But I do want it understood that I am not viewing them as interchangeable characters but as individuals. Just... If I stop to explain all the little differences of how they interact with Shepard in this, the variations of what they say and do on the character level, I’d basically be writing this out twice, which this is going to be long enough as it is, you don’t need to read the plot summary twice, and I certainly don’t need to write it twice. Assume that, even if not explicitly indicated, there ARE differences in behavior and dialogue that are reflective of them as separate characters and people, even if the overall plot must go forward regardless of how differently they’d react as individuals.

And you might want to pay close attention, since there will be a lot of use of “they” pronouns ahead, since Ashley/Kaidan is more awkward to write and I make it a point to not address the player character (in this case, Shepard) by one gender or the other in these write-ups, given that that’s variable, so things might get a little confusing if you’re not paying close enough attention to the context.

So... The meeting with Ashley/Kaidan begins... awkwardly. They’re uncertain how to really react to Shepard – sure, the encounter on Horizon means they know that Shepard is back, but now they’re really having to deal with this particular reality. So they’re going to aim to jump to business. Alliance intel has intercepted some messages from mercs hired out near Klencory, which got Admiral Hackett paying attention to things happening out there – like Shepard will acknowledge, between the circumstances of this meeting and the quick summary of the reason for the mercs all being out there, this sounds like it’s connected to the Reapers. Hackett wants to have Shepard as a “special consultant” as the Alliance has someone (re: Ashley/Kaidan) investigate (“consultant” since Shepard may not have had their Spectre status restored, so it gives them legitimacy either way). It could, potentially, just all be a massive coincidence. But since when are things ever “just” a coincidence?

Ashley/Kaidan are willing to use the Normandy as transport – Hackett figured that, between the stealth systems, and the lack of official Alliance authority in the area, the Normandy is the better option for getting there without being told to get lost. The bigger question is how they’ll be received – it’s not like merc gangs take well to outside interference, and the Alliance having any jurisdiction out there is questionable at best. But they should at least TRY to go in with civility. If this volus billionaire spending all this money on this (his name, for the record, is canonically given as Kumun Shol, so hey, less work for me, having to come up with a name!), then if he hears from someone who seems to be taking him seriously, it might get them invited in explicitly.

Obviously, though, if they’re hitching a ride on the Normandy, if things remain unspoken, the trip out there will be very awkward and seem longer than it is. So they have to address Horizon. They’re not going to apologize for not joining Shepard – Shepard is still operating on a ship flying Cerberus colors, even with good intentions, that is a betrayal of their oaths to the Alliance, Cerberus are terrorists and xenophobes, who want to secure human dominance. But they will acknowledge that they reacted to Shepard’s return in a way that wasn’t their best. I am not going all the way to “they admit that they were wrong,” because based solely on the information that they had, they handled things as best as they realistically could. But they will regret that things ended on the terms that they did.

Shepard gets to respond to that – are they accepting that it was a bad reaction to unexpected information, do they still hold a grudge, whatever. The conversation continues to a point of conclusion – Ashley/Kaidan don’t trust Cerberus, they want to trust Shepard, but the connection between the two at the moment makes that difficult, and they don’t know how to bridge that gap as things stand, but they’re going to try this.

We will be coming back to this, never you fear. But, of course, that’s more for the ending than it is the beginning, and this one conversation is far from the end.

Klencory is a world with a toxic atmosphere, so they first have to gain access to a semi-decent landing zone near where Shol has established himself. Because, naturally, he’s not interested in visitors – the brief communication we get with him is him effectively talking himself into the idea that Shepard is “the agent of the machine devils,” which... I mean, considering the prothean beacons and communications with the Reapers, it’s not crazy that he goes there, even if (by the rest of his actions), Shol’s gone a little nuts.

Shooty shooty bang bang, fight through the exterior guards and into the facility proper. Ashley/Kaidan are a little uncomfortable about what’s gone on – this really isn’t how they pictured things going, given the legitimate credentials they were supposed to be coming in with, and they can recognize the fighting is because of Shol not giving them an alternative, but it does still make them feel like they’re acting as little more than the thugs they’re dispatching.

Call this a reaction to the fact that Shepard doesn’t exactly get much of a differentiation in the game themselves. Particularly when they can call out looters on Omega while swiping whatever’s not nailed down.

This is another conversation that’s going to be part of that “coming back to” thing – assume there’s some kind of tracking metric for all of this in the same vein as how ME3 tracked how Ashley/Kaidan responded to Shepard as a lead in to the confrontation during the coup. Just, I’ll get to how that all plays out at the end.

Because a band of mercs aren’t enough to hold off Shepard, Ashley/Kaidan, and the third companion (yay party balance), they reach Shol’s central command. He’s a little batty, but it finally gets through to him that Shepard is not the agent of the machine devils. He is skeptical of Shepard being the savior from them, though. Instead, he wants Shepard and company to do something for him.

There is a vault. A vault none of his men have come back from. Shol declares that, if Shepard can enter, learn its secrets, and survive, then they will have proven themselves to be salvation from the machine devils. Since this is the advancement of the plot, Shepard will have to go ahead with this, even with the natural objections of Ashley/Kaidan (and, probably, Shepard themselves).

Another pause for a dialogue – Ashley/Kaidan are skeptical of Shol’s motives, and believe it may be too dangerous to just do what he says. Especially considering that he’s clearly not entirely stable. This is a situation that really calls for calling for backup. But there’s really not the option of waiting, because if they don’t do as Shol says, he’ll throw all his mercs at Shepard – even if we’re assuming that Shepard versus countless mercs ends well for Shepard (because, after all, it’s Shepard), it’s just a senseless loss of life.

Going in is a set piece of suspense. Think the Peragus mine, with a dash of Korriban for good measure, from KOTOR 2 – lot of littered corpses, this creeping and foreboding unease and feeling of being watched, this overbearing expectation of SOMETHING appearing down every dead end... Build the tension. This is a place that, the littered dead aside, no one has entered in thousands of years, it should absolutely be a place that could chill you to the bone. The examination of anything should feel like it’s disturbing the dead.

You know there’s some ancient security device active, right? I mean, something’s killing the people who trespass here. Obviously, it has to be something that will put up a fight as our end boss, and it needs to be something that is able to last a long time. I’m thinking an ancient robot (my mind is going in the direction of something similar in design to the ancient droids of KOTOR’s Star Forge), a last defense, left behind by a precursor to the protheans.

Yeah, it feels like an underwhelming result to me too, but it makes logical sense all the same – we have some evidence of things from prior cycles, not just the prothean cycle, making it through to the next ones, not the least of which is the plans for the Crucible. Seeing as how that bit of intel is just dropped into our laps come ME3, this is at least making it functionally foreshadowed, if indirectly, by actually showing us ancient technology that is still functional and viable even after more than fifty, a hundred thousand years. Plus the foreshadowing of things surviving to this cycle in the vein of Javik. Things lasting this long in forms beyond just ruins at least makes all of that happening in ME3 at least have some groundwork laid in these prior games – otherwise, we only have a few codex references to ancient civilizations, as opposed to it being an actual component of gameplay, things that the player MUST interact with.

But yeah, the threat may be underwhelming, but the payoff is what it guarded – the last remnants of this ancient culture. The corpses have been preserved, given that it’s a bunker into the planet’s mantle – the toxic nature of the atmosphere now came about because of the Reapers, though, of course, this is only spoken of in the material available as “the machine devils.” There could be a great wealth of information among this stuff.

Thing is, now that the threat’s dealt with, Shol wants his prize. He spent years of his life and a great deal of his money on this, and now he wants to use it – and, because he still is a paranoid bastard, he’s not particularly inclined to uphold his end of the bargain, having expected to have Shepard and the “guardian” of the tomb (for lack of a better term) kill each other. He just wants all of this to increase his own fortune – he’ll sell everything within to the highest bidder and damn what the Alliance, the Citadel, anyone might be able to get from the archives. Giving it to private collectors – like, say, the Illusive Man, or even any interested faction of capital-c Collectors (as in “the enemies we fight throughout ME2”) – will enrich him and it doesn’t matter what that information might do to help make the galaxy ready for war against the Reapers.

Now, normally you would think this would lead to a Paragon/Renegade choice. BUT, instead, we’re going to have a variation moment for Ashley and Kaidan. They’ll deal with Shol, but in unique ways. Ashley, having marine hand to hand combat skills (as she mentions in character discussion during the first game), manages to get close and disable the volus’s suit enough to render him unconscious, while Kaidan uses his biotics to get the same result. So they get to have a moment of protecting Shepard (not necessarily “saving” them, because a volus getting the drop on Shepard would certainly be an embarrassing way to go, but definitely helping them sidestep a situation).

NOW’S the time for the Paragon/Renegade choice, dealing with Shol himself. He is an obstacle, considering that dealing with the legal claim to this cache of information leaves the door open to some sticky situations as a result – the last thing they need is to have anything that might be useful be wrapped up in the legal battle. But he DOES have a valid claim. Just unilaterally taking this place from him is questionable at best – even if Shepard’s still a Spectre, are they REALLY able to just come in and declare the location to no longer be the property of the individual with the legal claim on it? Likewise, there’s a lot of sticky issues with the idea of killing him – after all, as mentioned above, he does have a bunch of trained mercenaries on hand, and it’s reasonable to try and walk out without adding to the bloodshed. But if it’s made clear that his madness has overtaken him (which, I mean... it kinda HAS), then there’s room for the Citadel to be able to legally seize his assets, including his claim on Klencory and its vault. But this still means institutionalizing a person because they’re inconvenient.

That’s the choice – institutionalize Shol and seize his assets, despite the subsequent legal battle that he and his kin can draw everyone in to, or cut through the red tape preemptively, kill him, and claim what amounts to squatter’s rights, since with him dead, no one else is there to take charge of the archive, whatever it contains. Ashley/Kaidan are going to say they have no intention of letting Shepard kill Shol (because that would certainly always be a line for them), but there will be a Renegade interrupt to take that choice out of their hands anyway, and Shepard can make an argument that, if they don’t do SOMETHING, Shol’s men will come in and try to kill them, while if he’s dead, that denies them their paycheck (because for one time ever, can we just have the mercs give up and run off once the source of their paycheck is dead?!). Shol certainly isn’t going to tell them to back down, and “survival instincts” have never been at the top of their hiring priorities.

Ashley/Kaidan will have some words about the decision Shepard is making, but they can be swayed to understand Shepard’s motivations, at least, in the moment, though any disagreements they have are more in the “waiting for a more opportune moment” than “what you say goes, Commander.” More on that shortly. With that matter resolved, Shepard calls for a pickup.

Back on the Normandy, Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan are having an informal debriefing in Shepard’s cabin (save the jokes for the end of the scene everyone, we’ll get to that). They do a brief discussion of what the likely followup will be – the fact is, the Reapers are probably already uncomfortably close at the moment already, so there’s not likely to be much opportunity to examine this place too much before they show. Still, every little bit is going to help.

The big thing is going to be how Shepard’s handled things through to this point. This was an accumulation metric (in the same style as Aria showing mercy on Petrovsky or not during Omega), so the various Paragon/Renegade decisions through to this point will lead to their reaction. Paragon Shepards get Ashley/Kaidan acknowledging that Shepard is still someone they respect, and that perhaps this whole Cerberus alliance was one of necessity. Renegade Shepards are leaving them questioning what Cerberus is doing to them, and are they really the person that they once were.

That leads to the question of where they stand if they’re a romance – like with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, this leads to a romance rekindling, but only for Paragon Shepard, because that’s the version that has shown that Shepard is still the person they followed to hell and back, still the person they loved.

Yes, while I try and offer reasonably similar options for both Paragon and Renegade versions of Shepard, this is dependent on that. Because it’s about setting their concerns at ease, about listening to them and allowing them to be angry and upset and come around. Renegade Shepard will have shown they don’t care about that, so why WOULD Ashley/Kaidan take them back?

Anyway, insert “debriefing” joke here.

And, y’know, a reminder that, in these DLCs I’m writing, we’re going with the assumption that Ashley and Kaidan both were bisexual romance options back in the first game, and it’s an option to rekindle for both gendered Shepards.

After the interlude (however it plays out), there’s the discussion of what’s coming next for Ashley/Kaidan. They’re returning to the Alliance, of course – with Shepard’s official ties still in limbo, taking them out of the official chain, Hackett has made them a floating troubleshooter at points where he suspects Reaper involvement in some fashion, be it machine cultists and husks, Collectors, or what have you. However they feel about Shepard, Hackett is still seeming inclined to trust them on this, so they expect that the intel will still reach Shepard as they do their work. They make it clear they expect this to be the calm before the storm, and when the fight starts, they know Shepard will be on the front line. Paragons get them promising to back Shepard up when the time comes, Renegades get them hoping that they’ll still be on the same side when that happens.

Post Game Followups:

So here’s the part where, typically, I’d talk about how this impacts War Assets for ME3. But this is giving the ability to resolve the major Ashley/Kaidan element of ME3 before we even get there (like we should have in the first place...) and that means we have to deal with that. To that end, I obviously have left the door open for the lack of trust by way of Renegade Shepard, and that’ll go through things as they are, the same as if this DLC didn’t exist (I mean, it doesn’t exist anyway, but... You know what I mean!). The alternative for a Paragon completion is that there will be a distinct lessening of the tension between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan in ME3, leading to some serious dialogue changes on Mars – more of an acceptance, instead of distrust.

I’m also thinking that, with the air cleared, there’s no moment of hesitation among them during the Citadel Coup, that it basically defaults them to trusting Shepard, regardless of how much they interact with them in Huerta and “clear the air” of Horizon. After all, Shepard already allayed their concerns with their practical involvement, gave them the chance to see them as the person they were, rather than the possibility that they were no longer the person they trusted. This changes the dynamics of their earlier interactions, and if you have rekindled the romance during the debriefing (no I’m not going to stop using that gag), then the dialogue will have more romantic undertones, the conversations more focused on matters of both them and the future together, trying to figure out if they even have a future, what with the invasion commencing, let alone where they stand with one another in that future.

I feel like I should have more done here, really, but I am really, genuinely TRYING to remain within the basic structures of the games as they are with this, because I totally could trash them and rebuild them from the start, but that’s defeating the purpose of this as additional material to the games, so that’s the most I’m offering on that. I want to do more, Ashley/Kaidan deserve a bigger and better role in ME3’s plot (which I’ll be trying to address further when we get to the ME3 hypothetical DLC, but that’s not here), but I’m trying not to totally rewrite ME3 as it is, that would probably be its own long involved project, and this is already ongoing. The original version of events can still be involved in the game proper, as the Renegade version, but that won’t be the only version any more.

Oh, and, we’re getting some war assets out of the place we discovered. That feels like an afterthought here, though. This has been about Ashley/Kaidan and their relationship with Shepard, more than anything, and we really did deserve this as much as Lair of the Shadow Broker.

 The Omega Heist

An old contact of Miranda and Jacob’s draws them – and Commander Shepard – back to Omega, where, with the merc bands decimated, an old threat they thought they’d dealt with long ago has reemerged. With Commander Shepard’s help, they must try their utmost to put this genie back in its bottle before it’s unleashed on the whole of Omega – and, potentially, the rest of the galaxy!

(Post-Horizon)

Considering Omega’s status as the dark reflection of the Citadel, the answer to it in the Terminus Systems, I just really want to explore it some more. Tie in to that, Miranda and Jacob have great prominence when they’re literally your only crewmates, but the second you start picking up the rest of the crew, they start falling off the map. Given that they’re our viewpoints into Cerberus as an organization, this feels like a mistake. Cerberus spends both the preceding and following game as enemies, and I think we need to spend some time at exploring why either of them would even fall under Cerberus and the Illusive Man’s sway.

It begins with Miranda asking to speak to Shepard. I’m gonna assume that, considering the unlock pattern of loyalty missions, this is most likely going to be played post-loyalty mission for both of them, since they’re both the first to unlock. Just to firmly establish where the characterization is going in to this. So both of them are at a point where they’re starting to question their loyalty to Cerberus (hence why I’m considering it a default that, in particular, Miranda’s loyalty has been obtained).

She’s heard from a contact on Omega about something that she wants to get Shepard involved in. The meeting moves to her office, where Jacob joins them. This concerns a mission they’d both undertaken shortly after their first mission together (see Mass Effect Galaxy, the mission Jacob talks to Shepard about having lost his faith in the Alliance over). They had an assignment to dispose of a biological sample – their assignment had been not to ‘get curious’ and investigate what it was, just get rid of it. The orders had come directly from the Illusive Man, so they were actually obeyed.

Jacob had been suspicious of the whole thing – when you’re moving something that you’re not supposed to investigate, it’s usually something that could blow up in your face. He opted for a little extra security monitoring, with Miranda agreeing and having kept track of it. That’s why this is now coming to her attention. They still don’t know what this was, but they can’t imagine that it getting let loose where any idiot could stumble across it would be a good thing.

So we’re returning to Omega. Personally, I’m disappointed that there’s no real change in Omega as ME2 carries on, even though you have to both clear out merc gangs and an active plague in the course of the game – recruiting Garrus and Mordin are mandatory quests, after all, so their joining the crew, their recruitment missions, these have to happen regardless of anything else Shepard may decide to do. So we’re getting another hub area on Omega besides Afterlife and the Gozu District market place. If Omega is the Citadel of the lawless Terminus Systems, then it can certainly fit in more of this (plus give more life to this place that, we know, will have people threatened come ME3 and the Omega DLC there).

Our central hub sector will be a safehouse established near the Kenzo District (picked because beyond existing as where Garrus had his run-in with Garm, we know nothing specific about it, so it can be used however the plot needs it to be). Under the circumstances – meaning “since we stored dangerous material on Omega without even speaking with Aria on the subject” – the idea here is stealth. Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob arrived via a transient shuttle rather than via the Normandy, and did so hopefully with some element of stealth. It’s not that Aria is going to be a threat here, just that she wouldn’t be happy learning about this going on under her nose and Cerberus is trying to cultivate some of her resources (sort of tie-in to the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3).

Their contact is my chance to get that female turian I mentioned a ways back into things – a turian trader who I’ll name Naevia (what, I’m a Spartacus fan and the reference makes me smile). The biological sample has fallen into the hands of a gang that’s trying to take up the space left by the biggest gangs of Omega losing their leadership (I’m thinking one of the gangs from our last edition of hypothetical DLCs, from “The Clean-Up,” because continuity!).

It’s around here that Shepard does ask the most important question on the subject that I think we’re all thinking – why the hell was this dangerous and hazardous sample kept rather than destroyed? Naevia admits she thought the same thing, but she was paid enough not to care, just to watch it. Miranda states that there was a possibility of using it for something in the future – this is a sign of her beginning to waver, because she can’t really justify the use of this sample, the fact that, though they’d been told to get rid of it, the “disposal team” had kept it, and were keeping it in a place with a population.

Granted this is a long standing tradition with dangerous science, but still, it needs to be called out.

The important thing is that it’s there, on Omega, and in particular when the station is already in the recovery process of a plague that targeted every race except humanity – there is still a lot of anti-human resentment on Omega, and the last thing that Cerberus should want is a human-spawned crisis breaking out (because no matter where the sample came from, a human organization, known to have a humans-first bent to it, was the group that stashed it here on Omega). Hence our presence.

We’re gonna have plenty of time to talk with Miranda and Jacob, so assume character conversations sprinkled here throughout (much as I cite it as reason that I don’t particularly care for their loyalty missions in comparison to others, that their loyalty missions also only have one ending, that once you start the mission, the only resolution is obtaining their loyalty, makes for a useful method of characterization trajectory here). This is here for the sake of exploring and deepening their character arcs, their division with Cerberus from the endgame, given that they’re both set against Cerberus come ME3, so we’re going with that.

We also get to spend some time with Naevia and getting a new perspective with the turians – she is a free agent, sort of like Vetra ended up being in Andromeda, in the sense that she’s a rebel to the status quo of turian military discipline. She’s looser and less rule-bound. She lives on the fringe of society and that shapes her reactions. She has no need for the turian rules of combat and prefers to take preemptive action – the rules of combat are a great idea in theory, when you have enemies who will respect them. But the Terminus is full of people who won’t. And, while she hasn’t been read into the Reaper matters, she is clearly picking up on the undercurrent between Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob.

Now if you’re assuming that this is leading to Naevia turning out to be involved in matters with this sample... Well, that’s definitely going to be a thing to follow, but let’s just keep going for now.

And yes, I have been cagey about what this sample even is. Remember, that’s because it’s a mystery even to Miranda and Jacob – they were still in a point where they were willing to listen to the Illusive Man’s orders without questioning them. The assumption was that the team they were giving it off to was a proper disposal team, and the failure of either of them to investigate it beyond his word. Y’know, the idea being they’re both starting to push themselves to look beyond the word they’re officially given by their boss and question him.

So… investigative work. We’ve already been over how in these summaries, that’s not where I focus on, not having a layout or anything to work with and such. So I’ve given the core ideas of character work and plot that plays out over the course of things, let’s cut to the climax.

The sample is being held by one of the gangs and a member of the Cerberus disposal squad. Because hey, look at that, a Cerberus agent went rogue and started killing all their guys, Commander Shepard, can you take care of that? He explains just what this sample is – a contaminant that can devastate a planetary atmosphere, hence why it was being kept on Omega, a space station. Of course, the problem with it is that it won’t discriminate and a rapid atmospheric dissolution will kill human lives as well. This is one of those things that it’s actually entirely justifiable that the Illusive Man didn’t want to use... y’know, if it weren’t for the fact that he still kept it, but...

Anyway, here’s where we come to Naevia’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, citing the profit to be earned – it’s easy enough to live on ships instead of a planet, so she’ll come out of this fine. Shepard gets the chance to shoot her with a Renegade interrupt, and look at that! She WASN’T betraying the team, just pretending to in order to slide a knife in the bad guy’s gut. It doesn’t kill him, and it still leads to a fight, but it’s easier if you don’t take the interrupt (because as much as I like the interrupt system, I think there should occasionally be consequences for taking a quick and reflexive response rather than the more considerate and thoughtful and examinative approach to a situation).

A multi-stage boss fight ensues – basic ground troops, interspersed with standard LOKI mechs, a YMIR mech joining the fight with reinforcements, and then a gunship. Maybe the gunship peels off midway and lets in another YMIR mech, just to really hammer the ‘boss fight’ element, or at the least let that be a higher level difficulty challenge. I mean you can only do so much with the mechanics of the game to create boss fights, right?

Anyway, Naevia is either dying, laughing at how her turncoat act was too effective, or she’s made it through with a few scratches and is patching them up as Miranda and Jacob are recovering the sample. Here’s the expected Paragon/Renegade choice of destroying the sample or storing it somewhere else – I can even see a reasoning for keeping in the idea of ‘once knowledge exists, it can’t just be destroyed, we need to study this to be able to devise a countermeasure.’ It’s a sucky one, for the record, but it’s a way to justify the Renegade stance.

This is where you see the culmination of Miranda and Jacob’s development. Jacob is open about wanting to correct their prior mistake of leaving this sample around to be used by anyone who might try to actually use it. No matter what, he sees no possible good coming from it and wants it destroyed. Miranda is conflicted. Her trust in the Illusive Man tells her that it would be right to hold on to this, it’s a weapon that could protect humanity if the aliens were to attack them – which is something that can’t be discounted as a possibility, considering the batarian hostility and the general aggravation of other races like the turians (see the previous Hypothetical DLC entry for more expansion on why I consider that a thing gets brought up). But she also knows that if this exists, then there’s a chance humanity can’t control it. She is looking to Shepard for guidance on this – she’s not turning to the Illusive Man’s standing orders here.

When the group returns to their safehouse, they find Aria there. Because this has been happening on Omega, and it’s her business to be fully aware of what’s happening on Omega. She thanks Shepard for disposing of that little business – if the sample was spared, she does imply that she knows about it, but, so long as it’s leaving Omega, she’s not going to be concerned about it. After all, she only cares about Omega’s interests. But, as a reward for what Shepard’s done for Omega, from the plague to Archangel to this (plus, potentially, dealing with Morinth, given that was the presence of an Ardat-Yakshi on Omega), she is offering a reward for Shepard – a penthouse suite.

Yes, I’m letting Shepard get an Omega apartment. I mean, okay, having one right before the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3 is not exactly the most prime real estate, but hey, Shepard deserves a place to relax, right? Plus it also comes with access to a special Omega market, a place where Shepard will be able to purchase any weapons or upgrades they might have been missed in the course of their missions (and any that get added through the DLC, including these). Because really, we should be able to have access to those things somehow, as in the game as is, if you miss it, it’s gone forever.

Anyway, Miranda and Jacob will also have follow up conversations when they return to the Normandy, discuss the way that things have played out and how they’ve evolved as people in the course of the game. Because as I said at the start, the two of them, in terms of their character development, kinda falls off the map in the course of the second half of the game. So they get a little additional content that helps fit them into the big picture of their character arcs.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If Naevia survived, she’s an available war asset in regards to her underworld connections and such to send help Shepard’s way. If it’s kept intact, the sample also has some benefit for Alliance scientists in the study of reversing its effects and how to restore ravaged worlds. Also some additional content in the Omega DLC, though I’m not sure about the details of that right now.

And, y’know, since Naevia’s existence means that we have a female turian model built and developed circa ME2, this SHOULD mean that there are female turians scattered throughout both further DLC (as in ‘assume their existence in further installments, even if it goes unsaid’) and (because now they’d “exist” prior to the release of ME3) there would be numerous turian females in ME3 as assorted extras and such. Should go without saying, but I’m saying it. There will still be a few important female turian NPCs I introduce in further installments, but these are now part the standard background NPC collection.

 Battle Scars

Alliance officers on shore leave have been disappearing from the Citadel with no trace. Ambassador Anderson suspects there’s more to this than the standard dangers of a space station that’s practically its own world. Though Shepard is in a questionable position among the Council, they’re the one person Anderson can trust to solve this.

(Post-Horizon)

The Citadel being so limited a space in ME2 always bothered me. Y’know, I get the thematic idea, that ME2 was about exploring the darker underside of the galaxy at large. But I liked the Citadel. There was a lot about it to explore, all things considered – we’re talking about the galactic hub of politics and commerce. This really should be a major location, no matter the game. And as I’ve said elsewhere, there could be a whole game set on the Citadel with room for more. So yeah, we’re doing this here, exploring an area of the Citadel that we never got to see before.

There are Alliance officers going missing and Anderson gets Shepard involved. Obviously, the synopsis covered that bit. The idea here is that we’re going into areas of the Citadel that normally, Shepard has no business in, and in areas that are more like vacation areas. You know what this means? It means we’re going to have non-combat segments, in the same vein as Kasumi’s mission. There’s gonna be an extended sequence of Shepard out of combat armor in this one, because Shepard is not being called on to be a soldier but to infiltrate and be seen as a civilian more than a combat fighter. (I’m thinking this is going to involve a new casual outfit as well.)

And we’re gonna say that this is happening at an exclusive resort, meant to be a location that’s relaxing – a resort on the Citadel, effectively. It’s primarily a place for Citadel-aligned soldiers (Alliance and other races) to recover after combat, a therapeutic place for soldiers to get treatment for their PTSD (think a place where they’d probably have sent the PTSD asari in ME3 to if there wasn’t an existential war on). It’s why it’s a popular place for these Alliance soldiers to be, and we’re also going to rate it as having the highest success rate as a psychological and therapeutic facility in the known galaxy (because, being on the Citadel, why wouldn’t a place like this have a reputation of being the best, given how the Citadel is effectively the metaphorical center of the galaxy) and it’s a bit of a mixing bowl of Citadel culture, which allows for the rest of the party to come along.

I’m going to stick with mandatory companions here for a handful of reasons – one, Shepard’s got an eclectic band, and I feel like if they walk around a Citadel resort with Grunt and Legion, for example, that’s probably going to blow their cover. For two, I like the idea of mandating some pairings and developing the relationships more. Last entry was about Miranda and Jacob. Here, I’m thinking... For a resort, I honestly lean towards Samara and Kasumi, characters who, respectively, can blend in with “high society” and can pass through unseen by others. Kasumi, of course, does her cloaking to accompany Shepard – she does prefer going unseen. Samara, though, is playing at being a Matriarch – given the setting, let’s say that she’s pretending to be looking for a facility for her rambunctious daughter who is ‘disgracing’ the family name – sort of playing on her own history with Morinth (because Samara’s method that way), while still being a role she plays.

Yes, I’m aware that Kasumi is a DLC character, not everyone necessarily has her, but hey. If you’re playing DLC in the first place, you’ve probably collected other DLC, particularly a new companion, we’re just gonna roll with it, because I’m not going to develop an alternative without her, so consider them connected – I don’t know, say they got packaged in a sale together or something. This is all hypothetical in the first place, remember, does it REALLY matter that she’s not in the base game?

Shepard, of course, is going in as what they’re looking for, an Alliance officer looking for leave. This way there can be a solo segment, and the tension of “will Shepard run into trouble they can’t handle on their own before their companions come to their rescue?” Obviously, there does have to be some addressing of Shepard’s fame and notoriety, but it’s not like Shepard’s not doing other things that are putting their famous mug in places they shouldn’t be, particularly when it comes to involving Kasumi (The Hock heist, anyone? How, exactly, was the most famous human in the galaxy supposed to keep a low profile there?). So we’re just gonna handwave that, like you do.

As always when these are investigative sequences, I’m just gonna gloss over that part for the sake of convenience – the basic facts are that we have a lot of suspects with no clear motive at the outset of things. You know, get your basic archetypes wandering around – look at any show that features a recovery center, you’ll find them, I’m not gonna go into detail on the incidental characters.

The trick is that Shepard is going to be doing their initial investigating solo – they have to get entrenched before their companions show up (given that Samara’s cover is going to have her supposedly only there to look the place over, rather than sign herself in as needing “treatment” and Kasumi is going to be cloaked, searching for the things that Shepard can’t get access to – yes, for the record, I’m setting up for a Big Damn Heroes moment, I would think that would be obvious). They’ll meet with the above mentioned archetypes, learning details.

The details are more for the flavor – how well does Shepard figure out the scheme (which I’m getting to) before the villain shows up to explain in a monologue? Because, y’know, what villain doesn’t love explaining their nefarious deeds with a monologue? Shepard figuring out more and more of the plot before they confront the bad guy will impact the way the end fight goes down – figure it all out, you can sidestep the big final confrontation, figure most of it out, the fight’s significantly easier, stick to the bare minimum, it’s the hardest it can be.

This of course gets Shepard caught by our villain of the piece. So, what’s going on? Well, it’s an attempt by one of the doctors at this facility at cooking up the same shady shit Cerberus has, in the form of cyborg soldiers – the soldiers who have been kidnapped have been converted into these cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Problem is, they’re mindless automatons – higher brain functions didn’t survive the implantation process. So while these six million credit men are superior soldiers for combat, able to shrug off the kind of injuries that would cripple any other organic soldier, probably even have like nano-tech that speeds up any kind of healing and recovery process, they’re ONLY for combat, there is no human mind, no individual still alive in these shells – they’ll do as ordered because of the computer control chips in their heads, but only because those chips fire off the impulses needed.

“No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever.”

This is a point that I wanted to bring up in Miranda’s chat about “disposable soldiers” – the concept of soldiers being disposable is the kind of thought that cleans up war, something that the very idea is MEANT to be “dirty.” When you have these disposable soldiers, something that replaces the flesh and blood troops, you’re now in a position where going to war is not a difficult choice – you’re not sacrificing anything in the fight, because your best and brightest are safely out of the line of fire. When you don’t fear war, you’re going to turn to it as the first option, not the last. And, as pointed out by the use of Mordin’s quote above, at some point, your “disposable soldiers” become exactly what the Collectors are, mindless automatons who perform the duties of their masters, and, because of that distance, their masters’ own humanity erodes, because they never have to get their own hands dirty, while their servants are incapable of arguing with the orders.

This is when we get the aforementioned Big Damn Heroes moment, where Samara and Kasumi rejoin the party – since I’m assuming Shepard is being restrained at the moment, we have Kasumi Overload the controls and get them loose while Samara covers her by biotically handling the guards (because there are always guards).

So we get to that ending of how the boss fight can go down – Shepard gets to argue about the whole “disposable soldier” thing, bringing up and expanding on the above argument. If they uncovered all the details of the plot prior to the point they’re found out and taken captive, they can talk the doctor out of the inevitable fight (they still can choose to fight, of course, but the option is there to avoid a fight altogether) and have them shut down the project, effectively take their “prototypes” of these cyborg soldiers off life support and let them all die out (because, again, it’s the cybernetics that are even keeping them alive at this point), they can try and fail because of a lack of information, or they can actually agree with the idea, just that this doctor isn’t the one to be controlling them – it’s a valid choice, after all, to have a viable standing army to face the Reapers with.

I did debate making that last an option, just because I am morally opposed to the idea, but I am trying to respect that the Paragon/Renegade division was meant to be more than “goody-two-shoes versus puppy-kicking-monster,” and approach it from a level of “win with morals versus ends justify the means” – if you’re looking for something that can face the Reapers, like Shepard is aiming for throughout the trilogy, then a pragmatic approach says “we can use this resource, and I’ll deal with the moral weight of it later.”

Thinking about it, this does kinda make a flaw of the Kasumi-Samara team, because I do struggle with seeing how they’d just casually go along with Shepard saying “zombie cyborg army? Sign me up!” But maybe the Justicar code says that, regardless of origin, their existence has purpose and use, while Kasumi is horrified at the idea of using – and defiling – the dead like this. Basically, I want there to be a shoulder angel-devil scenario here, but I may not have selected the right companion pairing for this. Still, I’m not going back and rewriting this to make that work, so we’re just going to acknowledge that and move on – they’re both on the team, and there are other Renegade choices Shepard has available that they both just accept, so we’ll accept that.

And, y’know, I have a personal preference for Paragon at these decision points, and would probably stick to choosing to wipe out the zombie cyborg soldiers myself, and these are my ideas so I roll with what works for my decision making process, so nyah.

This still leads to the question of what, exactly, should be done with this facility – this is the head of the place we’re talking about as being responsible, with them out of commission (either being killed by Shepard or taken into C-Sec custody, depending on your choice), it’s entirely possible the place will be shuttered, or at least in chaos for a time, and that means all of its current residents are going to be kicked out – this is one of those “well intentions doesn’t change negative results” scenarios. Of course, Anderson will try to step in and do something, but... He can only do so much. Especially with having to clear out the devices and secret lab material and such, there’s a lot in this that just... is not going to have this place in a condition to be what it’s meant to be. Especially if things turned into a fight with the doctor and trashed the place.

Shepard themselves can only do so much – they can make a recommendation, but ultimately, there will be a board decision. They can offer a suggestion, a way for the staff to try and focus going forward, but it’s going to mean downsizing their care in some fashion – either they focus only on the immediately at-risk patients, going in the way of ‘if you’re not an active threat to yourself or others, you have to find somewhere else to seek treatment,’ or they limit themselves to just the care of a single species, because the psychological experts for multiple species is a resource drain.

And this one is NOT a Paragon/Renegade choice. It’s player’s best take on the subject, because there is no “right” choice in this scenario. Either way, someone is getting screwed over. You can hope sending the not at-risk patients won’t exacerbate their conditions, but you can’t be sure of that – especially when it comes to people who have been there for some time, PTSD and other conditions won’t just go away, they need to be managed and treated, and if you go from one facility and one medical professional to another, that can throw off your recovery. And you can specialize in the treatment and wellness of a single species, but what about the members of the other species? What about the “melting pot” nature of the Citadel and how, realistically, reinforcing those barriers between species only makes it harder for these species to get along with one another?

It’s a “no good choice” scenario, and I think it’s worth a discussion with Anderson at the end (rather than back on the Normandy with all the companions, just because I don’t think the game can really account for everyone there having an opinion). Though let’s also give a follow-up conversation with Kelly – y’know, the therapist – and let her have more to do in this game.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If the doctor was taken in to custody, they’re among the Cerberus scientists during the mission on Gellix – Mister Illusive stepped in to get their work under his banner, and, like Gavin Archer, Shepard’s involvement eventually made them hesitate to do his bidding. If the cyborgs were kept on, they’re a decent strength war asset.

 The Batarian Connection

A Cerberus vessel goes missing out near the batarian border. While the Collectors are still the first priority for Commander Shepard and company, the Illusive Man is concerned this may be the first stage of a batarian incursion of Alliance space. He tasks Shepard and company with recovering the missing ship. The batarians, however, have other ideas...

(Post-Horizon)

We hear a lot of talk about the batarians making slave grabs throughout the first two games, and the Colonist background has this as a part of the things Shepard has been through. But we don’t actually see it. And we probably can’t manage to see the absolute worst horrors of the batarian slavers, but that’s not the full point of this.

No, the point is to start showing another face to the batarians. See, we’re going in with the idea of the batarians slavers we’re after handing off the captives they take – of various races, though krogan and turian are not likely, given their own, more aggressive nature (maybe useful in gladiatorial rings... We might be coming back to that before these DLC are done), and the quarians aren’t going to be as numerous, that still leaves humans, asari, salarians, and other batarians. And we know from Mass Effect 3, having the Cannibals being introduced in the first segment of the game, the Reapers have access to a lot of batarian genetic material, so they’ve already spent a lot of time developing how they intend to repurpose the batarians into the servants they need to wage war in this cycle.

Codex material speaks of how the Collectors want certain specific types of people to collect, and that is going to be what’s happening here – while the Collectors main focus in the game is to gather up humans to turn into Reaper slurry, we’re also looking at the other races, because there’s a history of the other races being taken by the Collectors for various unknown reasons. It wasn’t clear if there would have been an intent to build additional Reapers out of the other races – an asari Reaper, a turian Reaper, etc. - or if they’d just be left to rot, possibly slurried alongside the humans and just put in the same shell. To build off the idea of “organic preservation” of the species who consist of a cycle, I’m going to assume that they would be fused into a Reaper of their own, though there’s room to argue they were going to just be pulped into the same Reaper or left as the Collectors of the next cycle. But my ideas, my interpretation of things. And if BioWare wants to fight my interpretation, hey, should have included it in the game.

So yeah, the batarian slavers we’re coming across were going to offer the Collectors more of those captives of various races and such. The idea here is to not just have a look at the horrors of batarian slavery, but also an upfront acknowledgment that the batarians do this to their own people as well. The crappy situation for your average batarian is reduced to codex and one-liners, so we don’t actually have this knowledge available for the common players, and this is a thing that needs correcting.

We’re also going to have an encounter with a different Collector ship (just to avoid too much of the whole “small universe syndrome” of the same ship dogging Shepard for two years – it wasn’t until ME3 and James’s backstory that I got the impression that the Collectors had more than the one ship, since they made this one ship out to be this major force). Because, really, if the Collectors taking colonies was something of a plan B when the Citadel didn’t open, then they should be readying themselves for more than just humanity to be taken.

Among the batarians is a sense of distrust – batarian propaganda says the galaxy hates them, and, because we get the slavers and mercs running around in the games, the audience is probably not inclined to disprove that theory (particularly if there’s a Colonist Shepard doing the run – because I say so, there can be plenty of statements from them on the subject that fit the background specifically, because it’s nice that these are all theoretical and I can throw in whatever I like). Still, the general idea is that Shepard does feel a moral responsibility to save them, even if, as in the case of Renegade Shepard, it’s just in the name of preventing the Collectors get their claws on them.

But, thing is, ME2 offers no ship piloting mechanic, and I’m not bringing that in. And, y’know, I still get war flashbacks of getting ambushed by Sith fighters in KOTOR. So that means that the Normandy heads off, Shepard ordering them to find help (we’re gonna say that this is taking place somewhere near the batarian-turian border, so the Normandy can go find a few turian ships – going back to my idea of “shaking up companions” concept, I don’t have any particular choices to go with Shepard this time, but this makes it almost mandatory for a companion other than Garrus to come along, since Garrus can sway the turians to come to the rescue of alien nationals – and this ship ends up crashing, with Shepard and companions still on board – as are the freed slaves.

And we’re not crashing on a habitable planet. Because while there’s the helmets and all, I feel sometimes like the franchise as a whole underplays how much the atmosphere of planets being conducive to life as we know it is kind of rare. So while the cargo hold, settled in the heart of the ship and surrounded by the various additional decks of the ship, makes it through, there are portions of the ship that have been vented into space.

And the Collectors are coming.

Shepard gets to make a Paragon/Renegade “inspiration” speech to the captives, recommending that they get to trying to save themselves. Paragon will get a majority on their side, Renegade only a particularly brave soul. This one would be the Paragon’s contact/coordinator, just so that I can have a clearly identifiable person to turn to. And, yeah, we’re punishing Renegades here, but here’s the thing about this – we have stolen people, taken prisoner, made into slaves, about to be handed off to aliens who are only known to the galaxy as kidnapping and experimenting on people who never return, and then crashed on a deadly planet, with their only shelter pocked with holes letting out the valuable atmosphere that keeps them alive. I’m sorry, but being an asshole to these traumatized people? Even in the name of saving their asses from said kidnapping and experimenting aliens, they are NOT going to be ready to take up arms and fight. Read the room.

So, it becomes a game of causing enough losses to the Collectors for them to retreat for the Normandy to arrive with rescue vessels. Cat and mouse combat, with interspersed dialogue with our batarian coordinator (Making a name up on the spot... Kahvahr). That’s giving the expansion on both him as a character, talking about himself – a political exile, he spoke out against the Hegemony’s attitudes and practices, that they are so isolationistic that the necessary trade with the Citadel races, trade that could reduce their reliance on slavery, is killing them, which led to him attempting to leave, an attempt that ended up putting him into the hands of the slavers he argued against, and he’s certain that the Hegemony’s leaders basically gave him up. Talk about the beauty of Khar’shan, as a planet and place, something more tangible for us the audience of this place that we never get to go – he speaks longingly of these natural wonders he doesn’t expect he’ll ever see again.

The aid of the batarians Kahvahr leads can offer some combat segments getting avoided, but I do want to include some elements of the Collector faction from ME3 in combat segments all the same, the Collector Captain in specific. Because these things never appeared in ME2, so let’s remedy that.

And our end boss is going to be some variant of the Collector drones we see in Paragon Lost, which are these giant sized Collectors. So they get some additional tricks and are a clear case that Shepard is now facing the worst forces the Collectors can throw at them. Because I figure you can give them some interesting additional boss tricks.

The turians arrive and the Collectors withdraw, so Shepard gets to pass on what to do with these batarians – treat them as refugees who are seeking asylum in Citadel space or ship them back to batarian space. Because the thing is... batarians in Citadel space are probably not going to have things pretty well. Like there’s a reason we see batarians on Omega but not the Citadel. And a lot of these batarians still have families in the Hegemony. So there’s a very real argument to the idea that they’d be better off going back. It’s probably bull, considering the Hegemony’s leadership (and definitely bull on the basis of the Reapers being about to steamroll the batarians in between games), but... It can be made.

And it also speaks to how well Shepard is responding to Kahvahr – Kahvahr makes it clear, batarian slaves tend to be those who speak out. How much good can they really do going back to the Hegemony? Sure, you can argue that it’s in the name of encouraging rebellion against the Hegemony’s leadership, but realistically? It’s signing a death warrant – if this attempt at silencing him didn’t work, the Hegemony will likely just go straight to killing him.

And maybe Shepard’s okay with that – the whole reason we’re doing this is because the portrayal of batarians through the rest of the series is almost exclusively them as an always chaotic evil antagonistic force. What do they contribute to the galaxy, right? But this whole thing has been to help paint the batarians in a new light – now, shipping these batarians back to their people isn’t a mercy but a death sentence. What can I say, I like that script-flipping. But, as always, it is a choice for Shepard, for the players. Because apparently, people who play these games like the chance to play the asshole. Fine, you can, but you’re definitely getting judged for it.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If given asylum, a batarian militia will have formed, both the survivors of the crash and of batarian refugees, wanting to aid the Citadel forces, Kahvahr himself as an asset.

 Shadow Dance

Shepard’s connections to Cerberus have not gone unnoticed. A Spectre – Vexx Liranus – has decided that they are a key component to Cerberus plans (not untrue) and that their capture or death would be useful in combatting Cerberus (definitely untrue). With a fellow Spectre nipping at their heels, Shepard has to face what should be a comrade in arms in a deadly game of cat and mouse!

(Post-Horizon)

We meet three other Spectres in the trilogy, and only one of them, Jondum Bau, in ME3, is actually an ally. This is turning that on its head – all things considered, Vexx Liranus should be an ally. After all, we’re talking about a fellow Spectre, working for the Council, and Cerberus IS using Shepard for their plans, so taking Shepard out would make sense.

It’s just Shepard is a good guy, working with Cerberus as more an alliance of necessity, rather than any ideological alignment. And while I’m sure if you had a chance to sit down and talk to another Spectre, they’d probably eventually come around to the idea, well... Where’s the fun in that.

So Vexx. We had Naevia above in “The Omega Heist” as our “first” female turian for the trilogy, though she does potentially get killed. So we’re gonna have another female turian here, just to really sell the “no fridging female turians” concept. She is a badass turian soldier, like I want a planet with an “r” name to say she had a major incident on so that she can be “the Raptor of [wherever].” Because I love alliteration. I picture her being voiced by Claudia Christian (who was a favorite of mine to voice a female turian back before we knew anything about Mass Effect Andromeda, and while I’m absolutely a fan of Danielle Rayne’s performance as Vetra, I still regret that lack, so I’m making this happen here).

As for the actual plot, we’re gonna start on a small waystation location. It’s a standard resupply place, in the vein of like those Fuel Depots or something, a place like the Citadel but smaller. Because I think that space stations are an underdeveloped aspect of the Mass Effect universe. Like in Star Trek, there are Starbases and Deep Space Stations (such as DS9). Surely the various militaries of the Citadel races are doing the same, building their own stations that act as refuel and resupply, as well as standard rest and relaxation – Spacer Shepard will talk about living on ships, but I don’t see a child actually being raised on military vessels. But a space station that acts as a rallying point and home base for a vessel? That I’ll buy.

So this begins with the Normandy pulling in to one of these types of stations. You know, a little bit of a supply run, something simple. Things do not go according to plan, though, because, y’know, why would they, we wouldn’t have a plot if they did.

It begins simply. They settle in for a resupply, Miranda suggesting that the operational crew get a chance for some break time, Kelly adding that crew like Rolston and Hadley should have an opportunity to contact their families. That’s how we get here. As Shepard proceeds to look through the market, we get other angles of Vexx monitoring and observing Shepard. Shepard will begin to get that feeling of being watched, and that’s when she makes her first strike.

Now, yeah, I say right off in the synopsis that Vexx is a Spectre, but in the story proper? This is going to be kept quiet for a while. Sorta like how Vasir gets this intro that kinda clearly marks her as someone who we’re going to have to fight later, Vexx is getting the appearance of being a straight up antagonist. Because in her mind, she IS an antagonist to Shepard. She just believes that she’s the protagonist of the story, specifically because of Shepard’s ties to Cerberus, coming to this place in a vessel flying Cerberus colors, operating with a Cerberus crew. In her mind, she has discovered a threat to the Citadel and the Council.

While I’m still on the “give the companions more of a role” train, in this case, we’re going to see Shepard cut off from the crew – they come under fire from Vexx, they give the command to evacuate the station, return to the Normandy, and get out until they give the signal. Paragon Shepard wants to minimize casualties, Renegade Shepard wants to handle this themselves – Vexx interrupts their leave? It’s on now.

This leads to a chase through the station, and finding that she’s gotten things pretty well set up for this chase – I figure at some point, Shepard comes across like a secured bunker she’d been using as a command base, finds logs that have been tracking them since they landed on Omega at the start of the game. (Timeline being what it is, meaning as variable as it is, I’m gonna say that this is taking place functionally around, say, the Collector ship mission.)

That discovery is also when her Spectre status is made clear. Now, while there’s a good chance that Shepard’s had their Spectre status reinstated (thank you Dad!miral Anderson), well, we still need a plot here. Vexx doesn’t believe Shepard’s claim to have Council approval – after all, she certainly can’t just casually check this out while on a mission, Spectres are supposed to function independently of the Council. And she’s pretty good with the “better beg forgiveness than to ask permission” approach – Shepard helping Cerberus, even as a double agent, is a threat (for a less competent example of why, see how Shepard helping Cerberus in ME2 leads to Conrad Verner preaching Cerberus values in ME3).

The hunt continues. I’m basically picturing this functionally working a lot like a lower-levelled version of Arrival’s Project Base level, just with like security drones and such, and Vexx popping in and out of combat range. This is a hunting mission, on both sides, and the idea is that Shepard (and, by extension, the player) should feel like Vexx or her drones might show up around any corner. If nothing else, call it useful practice and experience.

Now, I said before I wanted to avoid stuffing our first female turian in the fridge. While Naevia could survive, she also could die. So I want to guarantee that at least one female turian of prominence is introduced without killing her off. That means that we’re going to have to find a peaceful resolution, as well as an alternative that allows the bloodthirsty playerbase to be satisfied.

That means an outside agent, a third party, getting in on this. I’m thinking a krogan merc with a grudge and a krantt and a blood oath against Vexx he’s more than willing to extend to Shepard, the Spectres, and the Council – with Vexx, it’s personal, having tangled with her before, with Shepard, they’re in the way, and with the Spectres, they work for the Council, and the Council gave the go-ahead on the genophage, so hey, it’s a good day to be him.

This eventually leads to, after some three-way combat, Shepard suggesting a truce for the time being – the krogan (Vargan, for want of a name) is a bigger threat to them both at the moment, since he’s distracting them and endangering the station as a whole. Vexx sees the wisdom in this and is willing to work with Shepard.

This gives a little more time to explore her, now that Shepard can talk to her. Vargan’s grudge stems from her disbanding his merc pack a while pack – they had ideas similar to the Blood Pack and Clan Weyrloc (re: Mordin’s loyalty mission), just without the aid of any salarian scientists. Maybe they’d sought out Okeer (possibly part of the reason that Okeer became a “very hated name,” as Wrex puts it? I don’t know, I’m spitballing here). Whatever the goal, however, she managed to put a stop to it, enough that Vargan was stripped of his clan name – given the structure of krogan society, I figure that in doing that, a krogan loses all right to even attempt to mate with the females, a big blow to a proud krogan leader, basically leading him to a voluntary exile from Tuchanka. That he still has a krantt after that still speaks to his skill and prowess, but also makes it clear that these are his only allies in the galaxy.

Shoot-y shoot-y stuff happens, yadda yadda... We’ve been over how writing about combat in these write-ups is boring. End result, we learn more about Vexx, develop and establish her further, give her this likeable air now that we’re on the same side, and get to Vargan, taking out his krantt in the process. Now that he’s alone, he is ready to die. He got everyone loyal to him killed, that means he’ll never regain a clan name now. He wants to die.

Typically, Paragon/Renegade decisions are a clear binary of “good means letting people live, bad means letting people die!” But here, Paragon is understanding the krogan mindset – he wants to die because he will never have a place in krogan society if he lives. He got his krantt killed, so he will never be able to gather a krantt again. He will never have that trust again, and so his death is the only way he can have an honorable ending. Meanwhile, Renegade is saying “no, I’m not going to grant you the mercy of death, live with your failure.” And doing that will likely mean he will strike out and go on some kind of suicide run (indeed, I picture that result being a news announcement overheard on the galactic news points).

Because I like the idea of twisting the Paragon/Renegade assumptions around – the idea behind it is supposed to be more nuanced than “good = blue, bad = red,” but in context, a lot of the use of the system through most of the series is a lot more binary. So this is showing the flip side of both ideas’ general attitudes – you are saving more lives and respecting his attitudes and beliefs by killing him, while knowingly leaving a threat to others that you KNOW he’ll act on by keeping him alive.

Vargan defeated, it comes back to Shepard and Vexx. She’s more impressed by Shepard at this point. Paragon Shepard showed an understanding of non-human mindsets, and that more than anything makes her hesitate to paint them with the same brush as Cerberus. Renegade Shepard showed enough martial skill that she’s concerned that things will only reach the point of a stalemate, and likely do too much damage to the station for it to continue operation.

So she offers Shepard what she’s going to call a deal – keep to the Terminus Systems, like they have been, and she’ll let things stand as they are, with the added note that, if their Council reinstatement is genuine, she’ll also send a letter with a fuller apology after the DLC concludes. Yeah, it’s basically going back to the status quo, but one, I’ve been clear that my goal is to make these slot in comfortably with the existing game, and two, back to the in-universe justifications, it also means that she can prevent other Spectres from coming after Shepard – after all, we learned with Saren, the only real way to respond to a Spectre going rogue is to send another Spectre after them. If Vexx is in Shepard’s corner, it prevents other Spectres from coming after them later.

Probably should lead to a line or two in reference to Vexx from Tela Vasir, depending on when Lair of the Shadow Broker is played – alternatively, I suppose Vexx should have some comments about Vasir’s death as well, but I did say above that I see this functionally being roughly around the point of the Collector Ship in the timeline, and I always view Lair of the Shadow Broker as taking place after the Suicide Mission, and my write-ups, my timeline. Moving on.

Shepard has to agree to this, because see above: not fridging female turians when the trilogy is so bereft of them in the first place. We don’t kill Vexx. Because, really, that would mean that Shepard would have killed three of the four fellow Spectres they encounter in the course of the trilogy, and their numbers are said to only go to about a hundred or so. That’s a three percent fatality rate for the Spectres, and a seventy-five percent fatality rate of meeting Shepard. Someone has to think those numbers look bad. So, in accepting the deal, Vexx walks away and Shepard calls the Normandy for a pick up.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Vexx has a sidequest on the post-Coup Citadel, regarding her work with the unifying of turian and krogan forces. Given Shepard having contributed, she’s asking them to join in her efforts. Complete that and she gets to be an asset and there’s a boost for both of those groups as well.

 Underworld

Illium is home to many elite in the galaxy. It’s called the gateway to the Terminus Systems. But it’s equally a warning that there is as much danger in Illium’s shadows as on Omega. And now a high-profile Alliance official goes missing there. Ambassador Anderson asks Shepard to investigate as he keeps the disappearance quiet, and Shepard gets drawn into a web of conspiracy...

(Post-Horizon)

Illium seems like it should be a bigger deal, don’t you think? I mean, in ME2 we get three hub worlds in Omega, the Citadel, and Illium, but Illium is introduced after Horizon, being locked to (on console) disc two, and, while Lair of the Shadow Broker gave us more of Illium in general... Hey. Let’s explore more. Cuz now we can open up some new areas that can stick around and still be explorable after the DLC ends.

We open with a message from Anderson – “one of our people went missing out on Illium, I’d like you to look into this as a favor to me,” that sort of thing. This official is an ambassadorial figure from the Alliance to the asari (so, for the sake of a name, I’m in a Power Rangers mood right now, I’m gonna call her Kimberly Hart). She’s been attempting to shore up some diplomatic ties – I’d figure this would include matters like getting stronger ties between the asari in the name of gaining access to teachers for Grissom Academy, better relations in the name of biotic rights, that sort of thing.

Illium, being a free trade world, is a place where these kinds of negotiations take place without government oversight – I figure, based on things like the asari on Noveria in ME1 who wants to protect asari patents by getting Shepard to help her engage in corporate espionage, the asari government is extremely strict about their “secrets” while humans, who are still struggling to get a handle on what to do with first and second gen biotics, are willing to take on free agents more than like the commandos and such. Also, don’t want a repeat of Vyrnnus, so the turians are definitely out. It’s “asari free agents” who they’re looking at bringing on for this.

But with her having gone missing, that’s concerning – again, we have the asari being fiercely protective of what they view as their copyrights (which I do want to have a running theme here surrounding the idea “how do you copyright something that has this melding with the life it is bonded to?” – amps working as they do, mapped to biological systems as they are, this seems like it borders on trying to patent people in the process, since they’ll gain full maps of the people those amps are implanted in). Anderson wants Shepard to go in, since they’re off the official books.

Now we return to that earlier concept of mandatory companions. Because of the matter of biotics, this feels like a mission that Jack pushes her way in to – both because she’s been the subject of biotic experimentation, and she wants to ensure that this doesn’t turn in to the Teltin facility all over again, and to help give some foreshadowing for her becoming one of Grissom Academy’s teachers next game. Additionally, I’ll go with Thane as the other companion for this – he’s done work in Illium’s criminal underworld.

Now then, to our central hub of Illium. We’re on a different city than Nos Astra, but it’s going to have a similar flavor to it, in the same way that Azure still felt like it wasn’t all that out of place alongside the trading center. Nos Vidia, I’ll call it (sounds suitably asari, anyway). It’s not as major a hub of intergalactic trade and commerce, meaning that Shepard and company are going to stand out in the crowd.

This is also one of the more “crime” areas, where the black market has moved in. We have Eclipse symbols on the wall and, while they’re not wearing the uniform, many of the people around here are obviously in the gang. Which also makes Shepard stand out. Thane, however, manages to bring up a former contact, someone who has been able to stay alive this long, meaning they’re skilled enough that they’ve survived.

The contact is an asari I’m gonna call Kassria. Kassria has picked up some Eclipse chatter that references our missing ambassador. That means Eclipse has her, but it’s not clear so much if her being taken is because of her getting in the way of Eclipse as a gang or if the Eclipse are working for some asari company.

We pause for some talk about the various asari copyrights, explore that conversation, with Jack having quite a few words on the subject of trying to make people property. That kind of thinking creates situations that create the same kind of science as Teltin. Thane offers something of the drell perspective – he’s the one who argues that he was raised and trained as a weapon for the hanar, and that he was not responsible for the lives he took. Who owns the abilities, the user or the one calling for their use? (I mean, there’s an obvious answer, but Thane’s bringing up the alternative to this – the people who are broken down and made into weapons at the hands of others.)

Like actually, let’s make that aside a point of having Jack and Thane – in Jack’s eyes, Thane’s attitude towards the people he’s killed is much how Cerberus would have wanted her to have ended up, as a weapon for them to point, pull the trigger, and give no concern for the ways that it impacts the person who acts because of that order.

It’s the same argument that we have with Miranda – the idea of “disposable troops” does not make it a matter of saving lives, just a matter of how war becomes easier, having these weapons to unleash upon others with no risk to the people who are supposedly being protected by them. It’s a way of absolving yourself for creating slaves by giving them some higher purpose.

This really is going to be a turning point with Jack’s arc proper, with how it leads to her being a teacher, because she wants to protect the young biotics. It’s not just about her protecting the kids at the Ascension Project from ending up tortured like the kidnapped victims at the Teltin facility. It’s also about reclaiming and maintaining personhood.

And while it’s hard for me to really give the separation theory Thane speaks of (we ARE going to come back to issues of the drell in general a few DLCs from here, so consider this to be foreshadowing and set up for that bit), I’m going to try and offer his point of view – that of “if you hone someone to only be a weapon, to only look at the world from that perspective, is it really on them as an individual that they proceed to see the world from that viewpoint?”

Of course, yes, I’m aware that the inherent flaw of ALL of this is that we’re not talking about drell youths giving themselves up to the hanar in the fulfillment of the Compact or with “different brain structures” to humans. It’s the tangent that they end up on because they’re along for the ride, and Shepard eventually has to get them back on track – finding Ambassador Hart. Whether or not the asari corporations are intending to use people as weapons, the Eclipse sisters presently have her held captive, and this means staging a rescue operation.

I want to take this chance to get a better idea of Eclipse’s organization (which, by extension, showcases the ideas that are moving the other merc gangs in the series). Like, what goals do they really have – Blood Pack are basically chaotic berserkers who want the world to burn (which, fitting, considering the general krogan mindset following the genophage and the vorcha having a complete lack of survival instincts because they never needed to evolve them), while Blue Suns have the veneer of respectability, acting as private security. But when we meet Jona Sedaris in ME3, she’s a raving psychopath, ready to kill anyone in her way. So what does the Eclipse gang want? I mean, besides the obvious of money.

Kassria is a former Eclipse sister, so she offers this insight – Eclipse doesn’t even really know itself. The non-asari members are almost leaning towards biotic extremism, given how the other races tend to mistreat and look down on the biotics among them, which makes them angry and want to lash out at those who’ve hurt them. Meanwhile, the asari who join in are often driven by other motivations, given that all asari have biotics – some are outcasts (purebloods, in pureblood relationships, or people with the Ardat-Yakshi mutation – let’s just assume Samara will have shared about her loyalty mission by the time this mission is unlocked so we don’t have to have the characters explain this to Shepard), others are maidens looking for glory (think Elnora the mercenary from Samara’s recruitment mission), some are obsessed with killing (like Sedaris), and some are just looking for a purpose.

She suggests that, if given something better, Eclipse might be a valuable asset for Shepard – not just in biotics, but also in their mechs. It’d be something to use when the Reapers come calling, not that she knows about the Reapers, just that she can figure that whatever Shepard’s up to, they’ll want an army at their back (because we’re still ME2 here, so this means we don’t know that Aria will be assembling the merc gangs under her banner).

This leads to an assault on the Eclipse base and trying to reach Hart before anyone proceeds to try and kill her or worse. As we continue, we find out that there is a high-ranking Eclipse member among this group – Jona Sedaris.

Yes, that’s right, we’re going to be responsible for her getting locked up come ME3. Obviously, this does mean she’ll survive the inevitable conflict and boss battle, but hey, we’re gonna have other things to deal with in the final analysis, so hold all questions to the end.

The Eclipse sisters and the techs with their mechs are heavy throughout the place, but eventually, we reach the place they’re holding Hart. She’s been roughed up a bit, but she’s alive. She’d made contact with an asari firm who’d claimed to be willing to trade some “asari patents” in the name of cross-cultural cooperation, but Hart got suspicious of what was happening. Turns out, she was being used – the company (a minor company, not one of our major equipment suppliers from the actual games, that she had gone to them in the name of avoiding those big names) was going to give her access, only to revoke it and claim that she had stolen these patents. That would give them an opening to start consolidating biotic patents in a human market, because humans would now be running amps and implants with copyrighted asari material, and, by extension, that would mean the company would own those human biotics.

That, of course, gets Jack’s ire up, and she’s ready to tear the place apart – people aren’t things to be owned. Even Thane’s ready to join in – even accepting his claims of lacking a responsibility for the lives that his employers hired him to take (again, we’ll be digging deeper into this in the future), this is trying to force people to be under the control of this company – based on his reaction when Shepard suggests that the Compact between the hanar and the drell constitutes slavery, Thane’s definitely not on board with that idea. And even on Illium, a planet with legalized “indentured servitude,” this contract is definitely sketchy – but it would be just legal enough that the company leadership would be able to get their foot in the door, and make it harder for human biotics to be able to exist without “company oversight,” giving them access to the human biotics before they have a chance to stabilize their position in human society.

It’s some further asari haughtiness, the idea of asari like Erinya, the lawyer who holds the contract to the Feros colonists, that the asari are “better” than the other races. The asari in charge of this company are of the belief that only the asari “deserve” biotics, and want to keep all biotics in the galaxy under their control. These asari in particular don’t see any race other than asari as even deserving of evolving out of the primordial muck. Not a mainstream view, but one that we do have foundation for existing in the universe proper, and, let’s be honest, it’s not hard to imagine this being a thing anyway based on our world (We’ll touch on these themes in more detail later). And this idea, especially combined with the asari willingness to indulge in “indentured servitude” on Illium, if no where else, gets taken to its natural endpoint – they see human biotics as little more than pack mules, livestock.

Short step from there to going along with batarian or Collector ideas, but really, it’s not like we don’t know exactly where that endpoint is from our history.

Obviously, Shepard is a walking contradiction to those ideas, so combat is the only way through. Sedaris might be an unrepentant murderer, but we do still have to take her into custody – this is where Kassria comes in, taking her down and intending to hand her over to the authorities in the name of getting a slice of the Eclipse pie with her out of the picture. It won’t be a clean takeover, which will justify why Sayn is running things for Sedaris outside of prison instead of Kassria (who would DEFINITELY just leave Sedaris to rot and probably arrange an ‘accident’ for her), but it’s getting her more power.

As for the company, they’re JUST on the side of legality – the efforts of Eclipse on their behalf were by way of verbal contracts, and no lawyer on Illium is going to take the word of a mercenary over those of these high-ranking business officials. Hart swears that she can make things hell for them, lose them some very lucrative contracts with the Alliance. Thing is, that also makes her job all the more difficult, now that she’s been found out having attempted to make these grey legality ties for the sake of “getting an edge” in the biotics market – they have the resources to make this a fight that, meanwhile, would set the cause of human biotics back. (Which, as we’ve been over in other write-ups, actually is a bit of a thing that has some deeper ties in to the overall universe that the people of this setting are still working on figuring out.)

The Paragon/Renegade choice here becomes the rather obvious “do we take the option that handles this cleanly but lets the bad guys escape responsibility, or the messy alternative that may not even get the result we want?” choice. Because the thing about asari litigation is that they can afford to tie things up for decades without concern for the “short term” consequences. So if this DOES go to courts, they can wrap things up and keep them there for a long time – which will impact how things go for the human biotics, the whole idea of ‘owning’ people because they have these abilities. Because then their legality, their agency, their right to choose for themselves would be being litigated, and being done so in the court of aliens.

It doesn’t feel GOOD to me to have it left like this, honestly, but I don’t really see this as something that is supposed to have a conclusion that feels good – we’re talking about issues of corporate ownership of individuals, and the truth is... that exploitation just goes on, it doesn’t resolve itself with a few showy displays of violence. It gets caught up in red tape and paperwork, and people lose, even as they win. And the point of this has basically been, at its heart, to show that the “underworld” isn’t the black and grey markets that scrounge a semblance of society. It’s the businesses who will crush people underfoot then complain about the mess they stepped in. The design of a lot of the locations introduced in ME2 had this cyberpunk dystopia look to them, but only really focused on the criminal gangs – the core of this is approaching the white collar criminal element that was not shown off as much, how it encourages both further street crime and the depersonalization that comes from treating humans as a commodity.

Jack is pissed either way because this is all kinds of bullshit – it’s Shepard who points out that as angry as Jack defaults to, this is, for once, her being pissed at something beyond herself, where it’s not just that she wants to cause mayhem, but that she wants to make things different for others. To do something to protect future human biotics, kids who are in need. It’s her actively wanting to find a way to make a different, not just chaos.

As for Thane, he is still drell, still a proponent of the Compact (again, we’ll be coming back to this issue), but he does understand how easy it is to see something ostensibly done to the benefit of people turns around and is used by malicious actors to take advantage of them. It’s one of those things that he certainly understood in the abstract, but it’s another thing to see in practice. He leaves it on the note that “this has given me much to consider.”

As for Ambassador Hart, she knows that either way, she’s tanked her chances for getting the instructors that she’d been hoping for. Basically, the diplomatic ties she’d wanted from the asari government are off the table, given the combination of asari tied to the company and just general political embarrassment at the fact that all of this even happened – they want to ignore it, paint things over in pastels, and she is a living embodiment of the event to the asari, able to bring up the reality at a time of her choosing. The asari would rather that this go away, rather than have this constant reminder. Still, she’s grateful for Shepard’s rescue – the Eclipse might not have actively been planning on her death, but it wasn’t a good position. And, at this point, she can at least salvage a career going forward. Maybe not with the asari, but there’s a chance that relations with the turians have thawed out some.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The fate of the company plays a part in War Assets – being tied up in legal red tape, they’re not able to contribute to the war effort, or, in a magnanimous show of “inter-species cooperation,” they’re sharing some patents with the other races. Additionally, Ambassador Hart shows up for a sidequest after the Cerberus Coup, making another go at the effort, now that Grissom is gone and the human biotics are here – might as well make the effort to get these asari instructors anyway, and she wants Shepard to help her out with smoothing the ruffled feathers (since this would still be in that period of time where the asari are still trying to avoid joining the active war effort).

Also, while this wouldn’t really impact anything via saved game import, I also figure this would at least tie in to Andromeda, that several human biotics joined the Initiative in the name of getting away from the corporations who want to hold them as “patented property” and such. Probably would be a way to help at least make Cora’s arc tighten up a little – it’s not just that she thought she’d only be a “useful freak” as a human biotic, as opposed to an asari commando or an Initiative Pathfinder, but that in getting away from Citadel space, she’d be allowed to just be, to find out who it is that she is beyond her biotics, rather than have to have her biotics “registered” with a corporation who’d exploit them and her. Not sure how to incorporate that into Andromeda proper, but it’s something that would be acknowledged.

End of Part 1, link to Part 2 forthcoming.

[a-student-out-of-time]

Rambling about V3 Again

Today I saw a really interesting quote from author Brandon Sanderson and it honestly got me thinking. He talked about what he considers the single worst thing you can do with critique in writing, and that’s if a critic “tries to make your story into one they would write, rather a better version of one you want to write.”

That got me thinking about V3.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that V3 is a very polarizing game, and I’ve seen many people talk about how they would’ve preferred to see the story play out, from character arcs to deaths to story conclusions. And while I do honestly enjoy seeing alternative perspectives and takes and AU’s, I feel like a lot about the game, what it’s trying to say and be, is skewed by those ideals.

I’m not saying that the critiques about the game are invalid, because there are a fair share of flaws with the game. What I am saying is that we end up talking so much about what we wish V3 could’ve been that what V3 was trying to be often ends up lost in that, and I want to talk about it.

It wasn’t until I really saw this quote that I was able to articulate all my likes and dislikes about the game and the reactions to it into a cohesive whole, which is what I’d like to do here.

So let’s ask this: what was V3 really trying to be?

Let’s start from the game’s theme: the relationship between truth and lies. This is best exemplified by the fact that you have the option to lie during trials, that you can use deception to find the truth. That’s a very different take from the previous games, where hope was associated with finding and confronting the truth.

Kokichi is another example, as he’s a self-admitted liar who claims to lead a criminal organization and it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s thinking or saying. Yet Kokichi actually helps bring the group to several truths: he helps find the culprit in trials, he reveals Maki’s identity as the Ultimate Assassin, tells the truth about Gonta murdering Miu and it’s thanks to his actions that the group later discovers the reality of their situation.

Throughout their journey, the group is confronted by numerous truths they don’t want to acknowledge, even refusing to do so and attacking people who continue to push them through. And with every revelation, there’s always those lingering details that don’t really make a lot of sense.

Let’s look at the game’s main narrative. At the start of the game, Kaede remembers she was kidnapped in broad daylight, thrown into a van, and brought to some abandoned school with a bunch of other people. She doesn’t act like a particularly nice person and is dressed differently, at least until the Monokubs arrive and give everyone their new clothes and memories. From that point, the narrative shifts considerably.

Kaede is suddenly an outgoing, optimistic leader and Shuichi is a sullen, withdrawn detective who serves as her deuteragonist for Chapter 1. She’s resolved to escape the Killing Game and tries to rally the group together. However, when her methods don’t prove successful and they start drifting away from her, she considers saving them by any means necessary and goes so far as to attempt murder against the mastermind. When that happens, she’s found guilty and executed, leaving Shuichi to take up her role as protagonist.

As you go through the game, using devices called flashback lights that apparently reawaken lost memories, you learn more and more about the reason that the group was brought here: the Gofer Project. When meteors began raining down on earth, all seemed lost until they established this project to send a group of survivors into space to colonize a new planet. A group of Ultimates.

They had established early on that Ultimates have even greater rights in this world: they’re the only ones allowed to vote and hold office. As the meteors came down and the news of this project got out, some people formed a cult that believed it was divine judgement and that mankind should be destroyed. That’s when they began the Ultimate Hunt, pursuing the candidates for the Gofer Project across the world. The Ultimates, with no other way out, decided to erase their memories of talent and live their last days as normal people.

To protect them, the people in charge spread a false story that the Ultimates had died, even holding a fake funeral for them and sent them into space secretly. However, while everyone was in cold sleep, one member of the cult- Kokichi- had sneaked aboard and piloted the ship back to the ruined and now inhospitable earth. They have no way back and no way to survive outside, and thanks to Kokichi’s claims to be the mastermind, they’ve been killing each for nothing. The group ultimately loses hope.

However, they’re resolved to continue on in their fight against the mastermind when they find a flashback light that reveals they weren’t just any ultimates: they were the next generation of ultimates from Hope’s Peak Academy. It wasn’t really the meteorites that got everyone, it was an alien virus that pushed mankind to the brink of extinction. That the cult that rose in the wake of this was Ultimate Despair.

That seems like a definitive way to link this game with its predecessors...until you really begin to stop and pick it apart. If this was about saving mankind, why did nobody have their memories right away? Why would you only bring 16 people? Why students who don’t make them suited to colonization? Why people like a death row inmate, a serial killer, a self-proclaimed liar and criminal, and an assassin?

Furthermore, going through many Fte’s highlights how much of the characters’ backstories seem very out there. Gonta wasn’t raised by wolves but a race of dinosaur people living in the woods, Kirumi is so hyper-competent that she became prime minister during the meteor crisis, Korekiyo’s killed almost 100 women and yet has never been caught, Maki can attend high school despite Japanese orphanages being too underfunded for kids to usually attend, Tenko’s neo-aikido breaks all the rules of traditional aikido and she's impulsive, has low pain tolerance, and disregards fair rules, none of which are very befitting of a martial artist.

And to conclude, even I thought that the reveal of their connection to Hope’s Peak felt very fanficy and out there, especially when the game had made no references or implications of it beforehand. But the reason for all of this is simple and effective:

None of this is real. It’s all staged.

Chapter 6 reveals that everything from their identities to the outside world they thought they knew was all just a fabrication. In truth, Tsumugi shows herself as the mastermind and that they’re actually in the 53rd season of an in-universe show called Danganronpa. Something alluded to even in the beginning of the game with the Team Danganronpa logo. This moment was very make or break for a lot of people, but let’s treat it fairly.

According to Tsumugi, the outside world has become a peaceful, boring place and Danganronpa is the only source of real entertainment the people have. A place where people literally come to have their identities replaced with those of Ultimates and then made to kill each other. This, as it turns out, was an outgrowth of the actual series we’d played before. A game that’s gone over 53 times.

This revelation is devastating for the characters. The lives and memories they’d known were all fabrications, which Tsumugi claims to have intentionally written. The Flashback lights were designed to implant fake memories to manipulate them, which is why that Hope’s Peak connection was set up after everyone gave up following the reveal of the outside world. A truth that could lead the world to despair, a lie that could lead the world to hope.

She even goes so far as to show everyone’s audition tapes, claiming that Kaede, Kaito, and Shuichi himself were willing to participate in the killings out of sheer misanthropy, popularity, and morbid excitement 

Kiibo is also revealed to be the audience’s means of interacting with the game, able to carry out their wishes and can even be hijacked and used as a way to fight against the characters’ decisions.

In the end, Tsumugi claims that the ongoing battle of hope vs despair needs to continue in perpetuity and that the survivors need to sacrifice someone, since only two people can survive Danganronpa. Shuichi, however, convinces Maki and Himiko not to vote for anyone and actually convinces the in-universe audience to give up on the series. Kiibo then blows the set to hell and allows Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko the chance to escape and see the world outside and what sort of influence they could have.

Now, let’s this break this down piece by piece here, because I feel like this part of the game is often conflated. Often I’ve seen people say that Chapter 6 is a giant middle finger to fans of the series, that nothing about the series really mattered, or that the flaws of the game can simply be attributed to bad writing on the creator’s part.

I honestly used to be in that camp myself, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I feel those statements don’t hold up to scrutiny. We often conflate writing and narrative decisions we don’t like with bad writing. However, if the creator deliberately wants the narrative to move in that direction and has made intentional foreshadowing, references, and motivations that match it, we can’t simply equate that with it being “badly written.”

It’s not bad simply because we would’ve preferred they do something different. There’s a lot of very acclaimed books out there that I’ll admit I don’t care for because of their narrative decisions, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re badly-written.

Furthermore, if something intentionally doesn’t make sense in-story, that is not bad writing. That is purposeful on the part of the creator, not a plot hole. The Gofer Project is not supposed to be a logical narrative, it’s meant to serve V3′s role: deconstruction of the nature of the series. It does this in many different ways:

Sequelization: 53 is a ridiculous amount of entries in a franchise and as I’m sure we’re all aware, as the number of entries goes up, the writing quality tends to go down. The Gofer Project story was purposefully meant to be nonsensical because it’s a story in an in-universe franchise that jumped the shark long ago.

A lot of people found it confusing or ridiculous that Shuichi and Kaede would have a romantic connection despite knowing each other barely a few days. That’s also the point; quick romances are a convenient narrative device to establish a means for character growth, followed by fridging her, a bad narrative trope designed to propel Shuichi toward development. Tsumugi even said as much during Chapter 6.

Similarly, Maki’s role in the story and her feelings for Kaito were reminiscent of that as well, with him helping her come out of her shell. 

When you go back, you can see Danganronpa is loaded with references to other series. Tsumugi is an obsessive otaku and went so far as to fill the entire story with deliberate references and callbacks to things she enjoys.

The Monokubs are deliberate references to executive decisions to add more marketable and merchandisable characters as the series drags on.

The fact that there are (supposedly) people willing to sign up for a killing game deconstructs the idea that some in the fandom may have had. That is, actually being in a killing game would not be fun or exciting, but horrific and traumatizing. Most of us wouldn’t be badass detectives or heroes, we’d be scared out of our minds, afraid, and want to find a way out.

Furthermore, Shuichi being repeatedly told that he’s just a fictional character and that his role is to be the protagonist, to go through hardships and come out stronger for the audience’s entertainment pisses him off so much that he wants no part of it. 

The climax is ultimately a deconstruction of what the series is famous for: the battle of hope vs. despair. In-universe, this has been reduced down to a simple narrative where the audience wants the same thing again and again: to see hope win in the end. Because hope keeps winning, the audience keeps wanting more. It’s become so formulaic that the audience doesn’t want to break out of its shell and just wants to see it over and over.

The final PTA against Kiibo is not meant to be an insult to the audience, but a representation of fighting against toxicity and entitlement in the fanbase, especially the ones that don’t want change. It’s not saying “you’re stupid for liking this series,” it’s saying “don’t be like these people.”

And how does the game? An unsatisfying ending that’s so bad that it drives the audience to give up on the show, finally allowing the killing to stop. Tsumugi decides she can’t live in a world without her favorite show and decides to die.

And that brings me to what I think is the ultimate thing that people conflate about the ending: that it’s all fiction, so nothing about it matters. That the entire franchise was fake, so it’s not worth your time.

That’s exactly the opposite of what V3 is trying to say.

First, Tsumugi is a completely unreliable narrator. The kind of person who let fiction consume her entire life, yet she believes it can’t change reality. She’s a liar and a hypocrite, and there’s no way of knowing if anything she says about the outside world is even true. It could be like she says or it might not be.

The fact that they have technology that can remove memories and add fake ones adds an entire dimension of ambiguity to everything she says, especially when you consider how the beginning of the game does not match up with what she says. We have no idea what the kids were really like before the killing game, so why should we believe anything she says?

And how can we be certain of her claims that she just wrote everything as planned? Kokichi and Kaito managed to put together a plan that completely threw her and Monokuma for a loop

Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko ultimately choosing to take the words of Kaede, Kaito, and Tenko to heart, even if they were part of a fictional narrative, is proof that they still had an influence on the trio. They choose to take something meaningful from their experiences regardless of the reality of their situation. And that’s something we all do.

The media we consume has an influence over who we are as people, and it’s part of why so many of us have such strong attachments to works we love. They were often influential in help shape who we are as people now, for good and for ill, and it’s important to take that into account.

V3′s message is that yes, that is important, and that you should read and enjoy stories and fiction, just as long as you don’t let it consume your life. They can influence you and even the world at large, and so it’s our responsibility as writers, artists, and creators to use that influence positively, to use the medium as a way to change the world for the better. That the only way for stale franchises that we’re tired of seeing over and over is to demand change, even if that means walking out on them. That the only way for things to change is for us to take action and demand change.

And by the end, we may not see immediate results, but we can at least work hard at trying to bring them about. V3 ends with Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko facing an uncertain future in a world they really know nothing about, but hopeful that their actions can and will change the world for the better. Real life doesn’t have solid, satisfying conclusions and it always doesn’t play out like a story, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on ever finding something satisfying or hopeful out there.

This, by no means, is me saying that V3 is a flawless story. I can point to numerous critiques that I still think hold water. However, Sanderson’s point is that we shouldn’t criticize a work based on what we wish it was rather than how it is and what it was trying to do.

I know there’s a lot about the story that bothers people, I know there’s a lot that wasn’t polished and a lot that feels uncomfortable and hard to swallow. Like Shuichi, coming out feeling confused, lost, unsure of what to do, but choosing to see merit and things to take to heart even in a story that turned out to be full of lies and uncomfortable truths.

If you didn’t enjoy V3, I wouldn’t force you to enjoy it. If you did love it, then you should love it. These are all just my thoughts on a story that, as time goes on, honestly feels more and more relevant to me.

[delaneytveit]

Satellites Part 16

Insomnia at its finest! wow, 3 chapters in one day, amazing! This has now turned into the How I Wish the Writers Handled Lance’s trauma. because lets be honest, we did not get that in the show, and I will mourn it until my dying breath! 

So what else will we learn about Project Leo and Lance’s time as a captive? Let’s find out! 

As always, here are my twitter handles if any of you want to follow me or yell at me or anything. 

Twitter - sfw -> @/spacemom_laney | nsfw -> @15_agentwash

and maybe buy me a coffee??

ko-fi - ko-fi.com/delaneym_15

oh, and before I forget! TW: blood, gore, death?, corpses

(part 15) (Masterpost) (part 17)

The mission had been approved an hour before they were to embark. As simple as it seemed on paper, there was nothing simple about it. They were to go to the exact facility that Lance had been held in.

Lance was to return to the place that had taken everything from him. The place that had broken him and made him into their own perfect image. It made him sick to even think about it. They thought they were helping him, making him stronger, better, faster. They thought that what they were doing was just and that their findings could be used by the very empire trying to colonize the entirety of the universe.

Lance had never believed anyone could be evil, not the pure kind in which they held absolutely no shred of humanity. He had never believed that anyone could be so deprived of morality. They had changed that.

His time in the lab, and in the prison before it, had changed that. He had been exposed to people who treated him as nothing more than an experiment, people who found enjoyment in his pain and torture. He had found people who would so easily deliver pain to anyone they deemed as below them, take power away from the already powerless.

He was going back.

But this time it was different.

This time it was on his own terms.

The argument over whether or not Lance should accompany the rest of the team on the mission was surprisingly brief. Allura had been very adamant about ensuring Lance’s dependability, regardless of his mental state. And frankly no one could really argue against her due to the fact that Lance was the only one who knew the layout of the facility.

He had been the only one able to escape after all.

The flight to the ship was brief. Allura had wormhole the castle to a neighboring gas planet that it was able to hide behind. Due to the Green Lion’s ability to remain undetected, the paladins each boarded it, and Pidge was the only one to pilot to the facility. In just under 20 dobashes, the Green Lion had made its way onto the ship.

Keith was the first out of the Green Lion, activating his bayard and plunging it into the steel outer wall of the ship. In a few ticks he had successfully cut a circular hole wide enough for the team to slip through individually.

Up until now, no one had really noticed the lack of security of the facility. No one except for Lance.

The last time he had been here, it had been hell to get out. Patrol ships were everywhere and the large ion cannon would have shot anything down within half a tick. It was weird how quiet the facility and the area around it was, and he most certainly didn’t like it.

“Keep your eyes open,” Lance called over the comms just as his feet touched the floor of a familiar hallway. “Something’s not right.”

“Lance is right.” Shiro announced, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

Once everyone had successfully boarded, Lance wasted no time in leading them down the ever winding hallways. He was honestly surprised he was able to remember the path. He had only walked it once, and it was more of a wild sprint than a walk, but the path came with ease.

He knew something wasn’t right from the very beginning. In no way should a team of five paladins be able to simply walk into a heavily guarded lab facility. They should have encountered at least a dozen sentries since they even stepped foot on the ship, and yet, nothing.

He didn’t like being back, the memories were much too overwhelming, but he needed to do this. He needed to put on a brave face for the team. He needed to get them to the people that needed them the most.

He could break down later. Until he turned down one specific hallway.

“Where are you taking me? Who are you?”

“Subject 7234, you are in distress. Please I need you to-”

“Stop calling me that! That’s not my name!”

“Subject 7234, I really must encourage you to calm down, you’ve already ripped your stitches.”

Lance looked down. He hadn’t even felt it. He should have felt it, the pain of it, filling his abdomen. It was only the thick dark blood that told him she was right.

“What are you doing to me?” he yelled, he couldn’t move his arms to wipe the tears from his eyes. He was tied to a bed again, at the mercy of Clipboard and her assistants. The squeak of the wheels was loud as they wheeled him down the hallway.

The vision evaporated almost immediately as Keith grasped Lance’s hand.

“Hey, you okay?” The red paladin scanned his face, searching for anything that could possibly give him an answer.

Lance took a second to breathe before he steeled himself. “I’m fine.” He turned and made his way to continue down the long hallway.

Not now.

It was much too quiet. It made him uneasy, and it was clear that the team was equally as confused and were likely thinking the same thing.

Where is everyone?

After a few more long hallways, a few more twists and turns, the armed paladins finally made it to the infamous lab itself.

Like the room he had been held in, the walls of the lab were made entirely out of glass, thick and at the time virtually unbreakable. And yet, shards were everywhere. The entire wall had been smashed and glass had spilt over the otherwise empty hallway.

Hunk cleared his throat, “What...happened?”

Lance had been thinking that exact same thing.

Shaking his head, Lance responded. “I-I don’t know.”

“...Mmmaybe we should head back?” Keith had placed his hand on Lance’s arm, apparently trying in some way to comfort the obviously affected paladin.

“No, we keep going.”

“Lance-”

“We owe it to them, Keith! We have to search for survivors.”

“Lance, do you really think that there is anyone still alive on this ship?” Pidge questioned. She was beyond skeptical. The destruction she could see of the room before her only fueled it.

There was a long silence before Lance moved out of Keith’s grip. With long legs, Lance stepped over the broken sill and into the destroyed lab.

“We have to try.”

As much as Shiro wanted to just turn back, there seemed no way to convince the Blue paladin of such. He was too focused, too determined. The only way to get him to leave prematurely would be to drag him out kicking and screaming. For the sake of Lance, and whoever would have to carry him out of the ship, he decided against the notion and instead turned to the remainder of his team.

“Alright guys, split up but keep you comms on. If you run into any trouble just say the word.” He announced. The group nodded and followed the suit of Lance, into the lab.

As much as Keith wanted to follow Lance, he knew that doing so could only do more harm than good. This was something Lance had to do on his own. So he made his way through the room, to the opposite side of where Lance was walking.

More glass littered the floor as it seemed that everything in the room had been completely destroyed. Test tubes and glassware were shattered. Debris was everywhere. Someone had done this on purpose. Someone had wanted to erase whatever work had been done here.

He couldn’t say he was sorry for it. All that they had done to Lance, in his mind they deserved it. He hated them for what they did to Lance.

The small amount of satisfaction had quickly dissipated once he walked closer to one of the aisles of lab tables. At the far end, staring back at him, was a corpse.

The body slouched against the wall, its chest ripped apart and blood was splattered everywhere.

“Holy shit.”

Shiro wasn’t doing any better. He had found three more bodies scattered throughout one of the storage rooms. Each with their chests ripped open, their mouths open in a silent scream.

Pidge and Hunk had set up working on one of the only non destroyed computers hopeful that they could somehow get some information out of it.

Lance had taken his own path, towards the back of the room. The place he called home for 5 months. The room stood no longer. The glass having been given the same fate as everything else. The only evidence that it had even stood was the foundation. The metal that kept the glass connected to the floor.

Without the frosted vision, he was able to make out 6 more foundations. Six more rooms. Six more patients. Five bodies discarded among the debris, now nothing more than nameless faces.

Six experiments.

Four successful trials.

Only one survivor.

It wasn’t until then that Lance noticed the archway behind the holding cells. It must have been obscured before. Or maybe he had just never chanced a look behind him. But it was there now, standing in front of a lightless hallway.

Slowly he made his way towards it. Crossing the threshold, Lance took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust.

The hallway was completely new territory, one he hadn’t even known existed, though he explored it all the same. The fluorescent light at the end of it flickered from where it hung haphazardly from the ceiling, giving off the only bright light in the area.

Lance took a step, then another before he heard something.

“Did you say something guys?” he asked over the comms and various negative responses answered him.

“You good, man?” Lance heard Hunk say.

“Y-yeah, just thought I heard something.”

“We should leave soon, there’s nothing here that can help us.” Keith had never been the one to call a retreat, though Lance assumed it was for his sake. Him being back in the facility put them all on edge.

Keith was right though, the only place that could have held prisoners was completely trashed. There was no one here.

They were too late.

He debated turning back when he heard it again. A high pitch sound that could obviously just be a machine, though no machines were down this way.

“Give me a sec.” he called, before muting his comms and continuing down the hall.

He was surprised to see the metal walls turn to clear glass, shattered but mostly intact. A glass door separated the rooms from the hall, one on each side of him, though both were wide open.

The sound came again, this time a bit clearer. He turned to the right room and stepped inside.

He was greeted by rows upon rows of open topped containers. Many of them tipped over but all of them empty. They almost resembled those plastic tubs his mother used to buy for organization, though the walls of them were much higher.

The ones that were still upright sat on little rolling carts, placards adorning the carts with various numbers.

7839

9846

4562

9843

There were multiples of numbers. Some having been printed on six or seven placards.

The sound came again from the far side of the room. Lance quickly transformed his bayard from its sniper configuration to a simple handgun, and made his way towards the muffled sound. For some reason it almost sounded familiar, as if he had heard it before. Though he couldn’t place his finger on it.

Up until then, the containers had been empty. Clearly though, he was wrong. They were empty, all except for one. As he got closer he understood what the sound was. And he cursed himself for not recognizing it sooner. There was no mistaking what was making it.

He walked to the singular container, the placard reading clearly.

7234

His breath caught in his throat as he approached the cart. What he had previously seen as just a lump was instead a blanket, thick and dark grey in the glowing purple of the emergency lights.

With a shaky hand, Lance reached out to the blanket and with one swift motion pulled it away revealing the one thing he never thought he’d find on this ship.

Large blue eyes stared up at him, as the owner of the cry ceased their noise almost instantly and suddenly everything became clear.

This was how they were going to make their soldiers.

With those bright, blue eyes.

[elliepassmore]

Dustborn review

3.5/5 stars Recommended for people who like: dystopia, survival, wastelands, end of the world, sci-fi TW: drug addiction, non-sexual human trafficking The setting for this book is about if you combine the Dust Bowl, dystopian sci-fi, and geo-storms. The gods have left the world and took the greenery and water with them, resulting in worldwide desertification. I liked the imagery of the small villages the packs lived in and trying to figure out what 'Old World' stuff was what (plas and Zuly's ark being some of the only obvious ones). Bowman executed well on the promise of a desert wasteland where everyone is struggling to survive and many don't. I especially think the setting throughout most of the book is juxtaposed well with the scenes involving Powder Town, the Barrel, and Bedrock. The concept of the Verdant as the only green space/safe haven is a bit overdone in my opinion. Every dystopic wasteland just has to have an untouched safe haven, right? No, but seriously, I think I would like it more if there was a haven, but not necessarily any promises of it being safe or less hard, just hard in a different way. At least Bowman put some interesting twists into the Verdant and I didn't actually mind how the concept ended up playing out throughout the novel. Character-wise, I think Delta is really the only character I liked throughout the entire novel. She's loyal to a fault (quite literally) and protective over her people, but that also means she makes rash decisions that aren't always smart if it means even a chance of taking care of them. She's already fairly hard in the beginning of the book and gets harder as it goes on, though she does end up softening up a bit toward the end. She doesn't always do stuff I agree with, but she's interesting to read. Asher was never really a character that I grew to like, let alone love. He's set up as Delta's childhood best friend and a love interest, but I don't think we really get enough of him for that to be something we as readers root for. He's a massive dick in the beginning, though I do get he's in a bad spot, still, and then he continuously lies, he tricks Delta more than once, etc., and I just feel that there's not enough good in between for me to start liking him. I don't dislike him by the end, but I also don't really care what happens to him. Reed is the same way, though he's set up to be distinctly villainous. Bowman wants us to care about him by the end of the book, and Delta clearly does (not in a love triangle way), but again I don't. By the time we get to Reed's good side, he's already done too much to fully come back. If the book were longer, I think maybe he could, but at the length it is now we're just not given enough time for that redemption arc. *SPOILER, SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH* Though I 100% would not have blamed him for going ape shit after what Delta does to Rune and I get good intentions, but I have no idea why he stuck around after that *SPOILER END* Kara the Prime is the same way, though she starts off in the 'distinctly good' (or at least 'distinctly Not Bad') category. By the of the book Delta, admires her and looks up to her, but other than being a good strategist, I don't really know why. We barely know this woman and while she has great potential as a character, I'm again running into the issue where there just wasn't enough of her in the book for me to care about her character. Aside from the characters, I will say that for once I did not guess the twist(s). At the same time, though, I....do not know how I feel about the major twist in the book. Not to be egotistical, but I think my version was better, even if it wasn't really a true 'twist.' What Bowman actually had revealed as the foundation-shaking secret kind of took me out of the book and broke that suspension of belief. Up until then I had been ready to believe what Delta and everyone else was saying about things, I was even ready to believe a different explanation, but something about the actual explanation felt kind of cheap to me. I'll talk more about it below the cut if anyone wants to read more, but I will mention what the twist is, so... The concept for the story was good and I liked Delta and a majority of the journey she goes on. However, I didn't really feel like we got to see any other character's full arc, both Asher and Reed felt underdeveloped for where they both ended up at the end of the book. Likewise, Kara the Prime didn't feel developed enough (nor anyone else in the Trinity) for Delta to regard them the way she does at the end. Combined with the twist...while I liked portions of this book and couldn't put it down, I did have issues with it.

So, as mentioned, I was 100% ready to believe the gods had walked among people of the Old World and when they left, they did so with a vengeance. Fine. It's an apocalyptic/dystopian sci-fi, so I came into it ready to believe whatever Bowman set up in worldbuilding. Then, as the book went on, I was also ready to accept the idea that the gods weren't real and some other kind of widespread disaster had befallen the planet, be it global warming or nuclear war or whatever. In both scenarios it seemed plausible that there was some kind of fantastical element to the 'gods touched.' So, either way, I was either ready to believe in the gods or, as the 'foundation shaking' secret, that there weren't gods and the wasteland was manmade.

...which it was. Sort of. The actual explanation for things is that Dustborn takes place on a different planet that an Earth federation/corporation colonized. The planet was strip-mined, then the prisoners with computer chips controlling them had the chips malfunction, rebelled, and the Federation not only fled, but dropped bombs in the process, and a really active solar cycle came early and basically nailed the whole thing shut. The survivors got amnesia and were left to be led by the one person who didn't have a chip, who made up literally everything to give them 'hope.' Hope? Bro, the planet is dead. It doesn't support life on a largescale. The whole thing just felt kind of purposeless at that point. Like??? There are no gods and this is just another story about Earth colonizing a planet and leaving people behind on it to create their own civilization? That is...not really in-line with the book up until that point. It also felt like a genre shift since it kind of went from being apocalyptic sci-fi to speculative fiction. Plus, the reveal doesn't even seem to matter? Like, yeah they now know more about the planet, but that could've been done without the Earth-colonizing aspect. There don't really seem to be any repercussions of this, other than that the gods don't exist, which again could've been done differently, and even that doesn't particularly seem to matter to anyone outside of the main characters. That is perhaps my main issue with the 'reveal': 1) it doesn't align with anything else in the story up to that point, and 2) it has no real repercussions.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #355

“despite all my rage, i am still just a rat in a cage”

Have you ever shared a shower or bath with someone as an adult? No, only as a kid. What kind of pizza toppings do you like? Meats or jalapenos. When did you first take a shot of alcohol? Never, and I'm not interested. Did you babysit for money when you were in middle school? No. Who is your favorite band? How long have they been? Ozzy Osbourne, since middle school. Has the last person you kissed ever been to your house? My old house, yes. Not the one I currently live in. Have you ever been to a spa? Only because my friend at the time took me. When talking on the phone, do you place it against your left or right ear? My right. What’s your favourite Lunchables meal? The nachos one. Do you like Bob Marley? NO. Omg his voice is awful. Have you ever eaten at Golden Corral? Yeah. I'm not a big fan. Do you sit and eat dinner at the same table with your family? We only ever do that if my sister is over (she comes for dinner once a week). Are you listening to any music right now? If so, what are you listening to? Yeah, Violet Orlandi's cover of "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" by The Smashing Pumpkins. God she's so beautiful and talented and asdfjkaljddkfjlwkee FUCK I'm gay for her. Who was the last person to make you genuinely smile? Watching Mark. :') Is there something you want to say to someone but can’t/won’t? Yeah. Do you like men who have a sensitive side? Yes. Please be in touch with your emotions, for the love of God. Have you ever tried to get someone into a certain band/artist? Not persistently, no, but Mini is a case where me mentioning them enough got her to listen to them. Metallica, by the way. They're her favorite band because of mwah, haha. Have you ever carved you and someone else’s initials into a tree? It's possible, but I don't believe so. Do you like Dairy Queen? Love it. They're Oreo Cupfection thing is BOMB. Is there anyone you know with an amazing personal success story? Yes. I have a friend Shannen who first was a widely-recognized photographer in the state, and now she's a fashion designer (or something like that) up in New York. Is there a song in a different language that you can sing? A number of Rammstein songs. How do you feel about bands that use pyrotechnics in live concerts? So long they're well-made for safety reasons, I don't care much. They do seem a bit unnecessary, though; like just look at James Hetfield's accident that burned half his body because of standing in the wrong place. It seems easy to fuck up and get in a dangerous range. Ever fallen down a hole? No. Do you like bananas? Yeah. How long do you normally spend in the shower? Not even 10 minutes, usually. I've never understood how people can take such long showers. Have you ever been a featured member on any website? Yeah, on a Silent Hill fansite. Have you ever had any weird pets? Not by my standards. A ball python morph is as "weird" as it gets. Are you currently talking to/texting/instant messaging anyone? Nope. Have you ever experienced insomnia? Ugh, yes. I went through a horrible insomnia spell, and I still have an awful time trying to fall asleep. Do you like egg nog? Nooo. Would you ever wear Converse with a prom/formal dress? I'm not opposed to it, but realistically I'd probably wear something more traditionally suiting just because. Do you prefer hot chocolate with or without marshmallows? Without. How many different people of the opposite sex have you cried over? I've cried all the oceans over just one lol. Would you rather be a surgeon or mortician? Being a mortician actually doesn't sound awful, weird as it sounds. It sounds almost relaxing if I could just be alone with some music doing my job. Would rather be a musician or a painter? A painter. Would you rather write your own book or make your own movie? I'd love to write a book. At home, do you have a trampoline? No. When you are about to go to bed, do you put on some sort of noise? No. What is your favorite Christmas movie? Jim Carrey's How The Grinch Stole Christmas. And what about your favorite Christmas song? Probably "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" or whatever it's called. "Carol of the Bells" too, of course. What is your ultimate favorite stocking stuffer? Haha, okay so it seems to be an unspoken rule that Mom always gets us Slim Jims for our stockings, and that's obviously the best considering my sisters and I loooove them yet still don't buy them much. You're making me ready for Christmas, lol. After Halloween, do you sort out all of your candy into little piles? I did as a kid, and then my sisters and I would trade what we preferred. When you listen to music with headphones, do you keep the volume low enough to hear surrounding noise faintly, or do you blast it? It's honestly pretty loud. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Cold pizza from dinner leftovers last night. What’s the largest animal you’ve ever had as a pet? Our late boxer mix, Cali. She was a big 'ole pup. Do you own any kind of helmet? No. Out of everything currently in your refrigerator, what food or drink is your favorite? Food: strawberries. Drink: Mountain Lightning. What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? Either when I skinned my knees so deep that pus was visible, or when I fainted onto my chin and got a short, but very deep cut. Do you like the taste of cough syrup? No. What is something you like to have conversations about? I like talking about deep stuff, like where we came from, our unique feelings and beliefs, conspiracy theories and cryptids, mysterious stuff like that, too. And don't forget animals. And Mark, haha. What all is in the trunk of your car? I don't have a car, and I don't remember what's in Mom's trunk, even though I helped bring in groceries just the other day. Do you ever put fruit on your cereal? Ew, no. Is your heat or air conditioning currently on? Our AC is currently on because it's too damn hot. The weather here has been so up and down, it's wild. Have you ever fallen off of a horse? No. Which do you value more, your appearance or your intelligence? Honestly? I'd be dumber than I already am if it meant being happy with how I look, because my appearance now is a key factor to my depression. When was the last time you drove something other than a car or truck? Oh jeez... I have no idea. I don't think since I've driven a golf cart at someone's b-day party as a kid. Were your grandparents present when you were born? No. If you drink/smoke, how often do you do these things? I don't smoke, and I only have a drink or two very rarely, usually just on special occasions. What do you think of fast food? I like it way more than I wish I did. What website do you spend the most time on and why? YouTube, because I'm always listening to and/or watching something. What’s the most amount of time you’ve spent online? Is this usual for you? In one non-stop setting, I don't want to know. I pretty much only exist on the computer. When it comes to travel, what kinds of places intrigue you most? Mountainous, loads of nature, cooler/cold, mysterious locations... stuff like that. Do you think humans colonizing Mars is a good idea? Would you go, if you could? If we learn from our goddamn mistakes and not fuck up its environment, it could be healthy or even life-saving for humanity, but I'd prefer to stay on Earth as long as possible. What is the farthest you’ve walked in one day and what made you do it? I dunno, maybe at Disney World or something like that as a kid. What is something important that’s often on your mind lately? Physical health stuff. I'm worried about a lot of things relating to that. What about something unimportant, but you can’t stop thinking about it? I don't know about "unimportant," at least to me. Do you like oatmeal? If so, what kinds of things do you like in it? Yeah. I only really eat the cinnamon apple ones; I always use milk and sprinkle some sugar in there, and it's delicious. What was going on the last time you felt nostalgic? When Mom and I stopped at Jason's house to bring the family some treats following his mother's death. I stayed in the car and couldn't even look towards the house, but yeah. So many memories just stampeded me. How much attention do you pay to the movements of the stars and planets, and do you believe they influence anything? I pay zero attention to it; I don't believe they have influence over people in any way. What is the most difficult or involved video game you’ve ever played? I guess you could say World of Warcraft. It's definitely the most involved, like I've been playing it almost consistently since 2014, and I used to be in a Heroic raid team, which certainly wasn't easy. Then there's some achievements I busted my ass to get. Which accent do you find most sexy, alluring or appealing? British is where it's at. Which accent do you find most annoying, disturbing, or bothersome? Extremely Southern ones. Can you cry on cue? Is it any kind of useful? No. Does it take you a while to actually get jokes? Embarrassingly, it frequently does. Can you wear socks to bed or does it annoy you? Ugh, I could never. I hate the feeling of socks. Have you ever bleached your hair? By myself, no, but a professional has to dye it. Do you like jelly beans? They're okay. It really depends on the flavor, and even then I can't eat a lot of them. Do you have trouble sleeping when it’s storming? Yes, but not because it scares me, but rather that I'm just jumpy. Subtle thunder isn't so bad, and I LOVE the drone of heavy rain, but once you add booming thunder and strong flashes of lightning, it's too disruptive for me to fall asleep easily. Who was the last person you know that graduated? (high school or college) My not-so-little sister is just about to finish her Master's lakdsjfakwe I'm so proud of her. Were you happy or sad when you found out your babysitter was coming? I think I was always kinda bummed out, even though I liked my babysitters. I had horrible separation anxiety from my mom. Did you have a boyfriend in kindergarten? No, but I did have this one guy who'd been like obsessed with me since pre-k and would always chase me to hug and kiss me. In pre-k it was awful, but he still did it sometimes in kindergarten, despite the teachers getting on him about it. It's actually a memory I forgot for a very long time, like I think my brain tried to oppress it, and I wonder if it has anything to do with my fear of people standing behind me, men specifically, and being raped. Did you ever read the Magic Treehouse series? Oh yes, I was obsessed! Who was your best friend in elementary school? It jumped between Brianna, Kim, and Quiata. Did you ever watch The Land Before Time movies? YESSSSS. I even had the computer game. Did you collect anything when you were a kid? Stickers. I'd put them on my dresser everywhere to the point it was absolutely covered. Did you get an allowance? No. Not because my parents didn't want to or anything, but rather they couldn't afford allowances to three kids. Were you into American Girl dolls? Nah. I got one, but I think it was mostly so my sisters and I each had our own. Nicole, however, was sooooo into them. Were you friends with your childhood neighbors? Some, yeah, especially the boy down my street named D'Andre. We would hang out ALL the time, be it at each other's houses or just riding our bikes. He actually got married very recently and I'm so happy for him, ahhhhh!! What was your biggest fear when you were a kid? Thunderstorms. Did you ever play the "Reader Rabbit" computer games? Oh my god, YES. The one where you were hosting a surprise birthday party was my absolute favorite. Did your parents let you drink soda growing up? Yes. .-. What was your favorite kind of cake as a kid? Chocolate, of course.