#feros

[dataheights]

Attican Beta / Theseus / Feros Prothean ruins that blanket two-thirds of the planet's land mass. The atmosphere is fouled with dust. Terrestrial travel is hampered by crumbled debris dozens of meters deep.

[pawism]

are you my mama?

[swaps55]

Zhu's Hope

[n7cloacadestroyer]

Very true. I also have doubts that the thorian that Shepard fights on Feros is well and truly dead. Shiala and ExoGeni's recovery team are the only sources we have that confirm its apparent demise. ExoGeni has a vested interest (as well as a demonstrated willingness) to lie. They were willing to purge the colony to protect their secrets and probably would have if Shepard hadn't intervened. So we know that we can't trust them.

Shiala, on the other hand, seems trustworthy at first. She's vital to the plot of ME1, as the prothean cipher would be lost to Shepard after the thorian's supposed death had she not intervened. She wishes to stay with the colonists to atone for their suffering which she feels responsible for. Even if you take the renegade option to kill her, it still reflects well on her character.

But something we often overlook is that she was definitely indoctrinated by Sovereign, following Matriarch Benezia to join Saren. A reminder that Matriarch Benezia was so far gone that she couldn't stop herself from trying to murder her own daughter. Sovereign probably couldn't have exerted any more control over her without turning her brain into pudding.

Indoctrination is stated to be a degenerative condition by multiple characters throughout the series, but we hear about it first from Rana Thanoptis, who was studying the phenomenon at Saren's base on Virmire. We learn that Sovereign (and later, all reapers) emit a kind of energy field undetectable by contemporary technology that subtly alters brain waves and thought patterns, making organic minds more susceptible to suggestion by slowly removing the capacity for independent thought.

If we take the narrative at face value, Shiala remains the only character in the entirety of the Mass Effect series that has experienced any degree of remission in their level of reaper indoctrination. This isn't extremely suspicious on its own within the context of Mass Effect 1, but given what we learn about it going forward? Gigantic red flag.

It's also worth noting that Saren offers Shiala to the thorian in exchange for the cipher, a fate she willingly accepts as an indoctrinated slave. Saren then betrays the thorian, as he has a reputation for. No surprise there. What is surprising is his apparent lack of target priority.

If Saren/Sovereign wanted to breach the colony to destroy the main thorian node beneath it, why didn't they just bombard it from orbit? Instead, they send the geth to attack the humans in the colony and the nearby ExoGeni building. "Killing the flesh that would tend the next cycle," as the thorian says.

There is another creature within the Mass Effect continuity that reproduces via spores--the Thresher Maw. That's the reason we find them on so many different worlds in-game. Their microscopic spores are hardy enough to survive dormant within the vacuum of deep space and atmospheric reentry, so they are unwittingly spread by space travelers, both past and contemporary.

What if Saren was cutting off the thorian's vectors of propagation without directly attacking it? Because large-scale disturbances like bombardment risk throwing its spores into the atmosphere or worse--into orbit where it could cling to passing vessels along with other bits of magnetized space dust.

I also suspect that the geth platforms on Feros were so entrenched because they were never intended to leave. If the thorian's influence can indeed overpower reaper indoctrination, as it seems to be doing with Shiala, the machines have a very good reason to be concerned and act accordingly. They seemingly intend to starve it out/quarantine it--a smart move, all things considered. Especially if my suspicions are correct.

We meet Shiala again on Illium in Mass Effect 2. Her skin has turned green, and she seems fatigued, to put it mildly. We learn that the colonists continue to experience strange side effects and rudimentary linked nerve signals, even sharing sensations like heat and pain when near one another. In addition, they experience headaches and muscle spasms similar to when they were under thorian control seemingly at random. She also notes that her biotics have become 'unstable'.

The colonists contacted a Baria Frontiers survey group to perform some medical scans to diagnose and resolve their chronic issues and were offered a contract to get them for next to nothing. The problem was that they had unknowingly agreed to "invasive follow-up procedures" at the company's behest. With enough charm or intimidate points, Shepard can help Shiala by convincing the Baria Frontiers rep to revise the contract.

Now we're led to believe that these procedures are being forced on the colonists simply because an uncharacteristically racist asari just wants to see them suffer… but what if the initial scans showed some kind of anomaly? If there are parasitic spores within their bodies controlling (or at least influencing) their minds, discovery of this fact would certainly spell doom for the parasite in question. So would it not be in the parasite's best interest to avoid anyone looking at the colonists too closely?

Furthermore, it's strange that the symptoms result in biotic instability for Shiala, an asari commando who has been training her biotic abilities for at least a few hundred years. Unless the thorian spores have begun to sprout and grow throughout her central and periphery nervous systems, thereby disrupting/altering the path that nerve signals must take to reach the eezo nodules in her nerves?

In Mass Effect 3, we meet her on the Citadel presidium after the evacuation of Zhu's Hope. She confirms that she is indeed indoctrinated, but says that her connection to the colonists through the residual thorian spores "is louder" than the tell-tale whispers. She and the colonists have seemingly adapted to the presence of the thorian spores and can now "feel" one another, and "act with one mind" as they fight against the reapers, "ignoring pain when the need arises." They can share some degree of learned experience as well, as Shiala further elaborates, "with one mind, the untrained fight with the skill of veteran commandos."

She's also, notably, still green. So it seems like the colonists just abandoned the whole "let's get medical care" idea and just learned to live with their new hivemind? Yeah, that's extremely suspicious given everything we know about the thorian.

Conclusion: Shiala and the colonists are simply an extension of the thorian, and this is how the creature propagates itself. Feros was not the Thorian's home world, and it was likely carried there by the protheans or a space-faring civilization that predated them as spores within their bodies. When they die, their bodies will be consumed by the spores within them and begin a new "cycle" for the thorian. (got to thinking about this reply from @dragonflight203, but it got a little too big for the reply box.)

[illusivesoul]

N7 Month 2023 ‑ Day 17 Prompt: Thorian

Picture of the Thorian in Dr Bryson's lab in the Citadel.

[volpestarks]

FEROS

(ME atmospheres continued)

[nowandthane]

[innercherryblossomsoul]

[coreene]

I hate the shadow cursed lands. It's creepy and dark and it's making me look over my shoulder in my fucking room.

This is the bog in DAI, Taris in SWTOR, Feros in Mass Effect all over again.. Why are all my poor heroes (and as extension, me) have to go through these cursed lands?!!

[ravensa]

Feros jumping into action!

[mass-effect-anonymous]

Full Confession Under the cut due to length

CONFESSION

I'm realizing Feros' quest makes no sense. ExoGeni only knew about the Thorian for a little over a month before the start of ME1. Saren somehow knows of the Thorian's existence, somehow knows it has a connection to the Protheans, knows EXACTLY where it is, invades Zhu's Hope with a small army of Geth that none of the colonists sees, gets the Cipher, leaves, and THEN decides the Thorian needs to die and sends an army of Geth to the colony, but has the majority of the force in the ExoGeni HQ for no reason and not at the colony itself.

Somehow, despite smaller contingencies of Geth flanking the colony from either side, the Thorian manages to control unequipped farmers and very minimal security detail to fend off the Geth long enough until Shepard gets there, despite the fact the Geth have managed to completely wipe out an entire squad of trained soldiers multiple times.

If Saren got his information on it from Sovereign, that's even more headscratching. If they knew the Thorian was older than and had close ties to the Protheans and was extremely powerful, how come the Reapers didn't harvest it alongside the Protheans? It's all so contrived.

How did the Thorian even know Shepard learned of its existence? The main force of the Geth threat was in ExoGeni HQ. Shepard's entire goal was eliminating the Geth and only learned about the Thorian thanks to a Krogan speaking to a VI on a random staircase landing. The Thorian had no thralls in ExoGeni HQ, thus it had no reason to believe Shepard even knew of its existence unless they started asking colonists questions about it, which obviously never happens.

And then, on top of it all, the worst offender of this entire rant (/s), Lizbeth's mom learns about the Thorian and is confused about what it is until 0.00002 seconds later when she suddenly knows EXACTLY what it is and just happens to conveniently have an anti-Thorian gas grenade to non-lethally KO the colonists? The same colonists we haven't seen actually attack the player yet, and are just under the assumption that they'll shoot on sight because Joker said they're slapping the Normandy a little bit with their grimy little hands? It's... bad.

:

[ellydraws]

(24/09/22)

meme redraw (Feros from Bitfrost)

[swaps55]

You and me.

[shalalalalaw]

Side Eyes You So Hard

[dragonsfaeandwilde]

Got my Perfectionist Feros and Wild Berris!!! Today's dragons were good~♡

I was going for Classy on the Feros but I do actually like Perfectionist the most of all the auras so I definitely won't complain. :3

Let me know if u want eggs from any dragons~~♡ I'll make a post eventually with my invite code as well as what dragons I can offer eggs from :)

[mass-effect-galaxy]

Mass Effect 1 Arcane Style 5/8