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herpronuonsarefemslash · 2 years

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Black and Blue - Teaser (3/3)

A lightly horror-themed, mid-length (60,000 word) work setting up my "Blood and Treasure" story and introducing bits of my altered ME worldbuilding.

Chapter 1 to 5 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-1-58119478

Chapter 6 to 10 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-6-58262841

Chapter 11 to 13 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-58353145

Out of context teasers for Chapters 6 to 10: =====

Tally wipes the steam from the mirror’s screen. She has to hand it to the salarians; they know their showers.

Pain shoots up her ribcage, roiling under her skin on both sides. It’s like something wants out and is going to tear her skin to get it.

Next to the mirror, Kitty welded a shelf for medications, crest oil, and other bits and pieces for grooming on top of the DRAG-Zero insignia next to the on-wall computer terminal. Pushing aside Kitty’s lotion, Lola’s crest oil and–Terrific! Absolutely belongs there rather than in a drawer–Lola’s favorite biotic pulse dildo, she finds the painkiller-spiked Hallex, holds the mister under her nose, and gives a single twist to the dial to release a puff.

The face in the mirror is hers, but she doesn’t know what that means. She looks ‘human’, she is told. But she’s not so sure. Kitty looks human: Her skin a dusty brown in rest state, her figure very much that of a woman, her lips, her nose, her eyelashes…all look like the humans they pass. The fissures on the back of her head, where her asari crests are, would not even be extreme next to some of the body modifications and cosmetic surgery they’ve seen on Omega.

Tally doesn’t. She’s tall–not too much, but more than usual–her limbs a bit too long, body bit too muscular, hands broader and longer than they should be, and now, a sudden broadening to accompany this pain in her shoulders, her ribcage spanning out, her shoulders thickened like round rocks. She hopes it passes.

Her face is so pale and smooth that she hates looking at herself in bright light. In shadow, she has personality– the slant of her nose, the shape of her brow, her jaw, her chin–because the pure paleness is cast into relief.

In bright light, she’s just white, absolutely white. Her skin shimmers with an ever-shifting film of something damp, and smooth, and slightly slippery. Usually it’s an opalescent, shifting rainbow like oil on water, but today, it is bluish, thicker and glowing in the dimmed lights of the cabin.

The glow is new. Far too confusing before breakfast.

=====

“Morning, Tal!”

No sooner has Tally stepped off the ladder onto the bridge than Lola has gathered a palmful of her ass to give it a squeeze.

Kitty turns from her seat at the helm and looks her up and down.

“Ooh, new flavor of Tally. Clear your schedule ladies, we are having some fun tonight.”

Across the screens showing them the outside, blue and green swirl. Nitrogen and hydrogen. The planet is fat with the building blocks of starship fuel, yet small enough that keeping altitude in this layer doesn’t burn too much. Every day, the fuel indicators for helium for the reactor, and the indicator for the engine’s antiproton bottles climb another bar, sometimes two.

“Given any more thought to looking for the other triplets?”

“Nah,” Kitty replies. “One of you’s plenty sexy. If they’re anything like you, Tal, they’re safe.”

Lola turns to look at Tal.

“You miss them.”

“I never met them. Still frozen when we broke out, remember?”

“Yeah, but there’s what, fifty who are like me and Kitty? Just two like you. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Forget it. Maybe someday,” Tal sighs.

“You’re the captain,” Kitty mutters. “…fucking swear that dice was loaded.”

Tally climbs down the ramp into the depression in the deck where the captain’s chair is located. The walls around her wrap her entire field of vision in screens, haptic controls, and rotating three-dimensional holos rising from a ring of emitters. Her seat is actually probably welded to the next deck down, given how deep the station is sunk. She turns on her comms to video-to-video between their stations so no one has to shout.

“We were just discussing our pirate name,” Kitty tells her. “Now that we’ve actually captured a cargo.”

“Mmph!”

She gives a swift kick to the sleeping pod containing their batarian hostage.

“No one asked you. Since we named our ship Toad, I was voting for the Three Witches.”

Sara jams her foot into Scott’s uninjured thigh.

“Wake the fuck up, baby bro.”

“Please don’t kick my patient,” Greer grumbles, popping another plate off of Scott’s armor to create a larger area around the bare bone of his shattered leg. She grits her teeth and pushes harder–how the fuck do asari do this?–to spread her dome barrier around herself, her brother and the doc again.

Kirkland sits just outside, his rifle barking occasionally when he gets a bead on the varren.

“We are properly fucked if we do not deal with that signal,” he grumbles. “So is rescue, if they get our mayday.”

“You got any suggestions on shutting down ancient, ridiculously fancy tech with a control panel and labels written in a language no one in the galaxy has learned to read after thousands of years of trying? I’m all ears,” Sara huffs before putting a pinhole in her dome long enough to launch a singularity at a three varren that got too close together.

Kirkland chuckles and drops the beasts with three shots.

“Thanks, wizard.”

“Anytime, jarhead.”

=====

Tally trips over something just inside the airlock, bouncing herself off the deck with her biotics and then off the ceiling.

Really need to work on not overpowering it.

Turning back to look at the ramp, she sees a naked human girl–sixteen, probably younger–with muscular limbs, shaved head and pronounced ribs. Raised rough scars run circuits on her arms, legs, and outline her spine. Amp implant utility ports, Tally realizes. But seven, not one. Her feet are muddy and her legs sliced and scratched by the jungle’s thorns.

“Whoa!” Kitty exclaims when she looks up the ramp. “Why is there a naked small human on our ship?”

“She’s smart enough to want to be out of the rain, I suppose,” Lola grumbles, pushing her half-dome barrier farther over her head to try to do the same. “Must have crawled in.”

Tally bends down and puts her hand on the child’s neck–just above a barcode and a symbol with a black diamond flanked by two orange bars. She instantly regrets it when a lifetime of distilled trauma blasts into her mind, widening the meld.

“What have they done to you, little one?”

“NOT ZERO!” the girl shrieks, foaming at the mouth and thrashing. Nightmare?

Tally wonders.

“M’not Zero…” she moans. “My name is Jack.”

=====

David shoves a hand in the pocket of his dress blues and rubs the OSD he was given while he looks around. Just outside the tinted, jewel-faceted windows of the asari embassy, the lower Presidium gleams, and beyond Dilinga opera hall, Tayseri Ward sparkles with a thousand different tiny lights, each one an asari’s apartment celebrating the Days of Flowers after Janiris ends. Tomorrow night, each will be lit a different color, and neighbors will visit each other and catch up before they swap color swatches and reprogram their lights.

I wonder if we’d have packed it in and gone home, if it was just the turians out here? He wonders.

He doesn’t have to feel the same way young soldiers do about the asari to see that they’re the glue in all this. Turians could keep the lights on, but it’d be bloody. They wouldn’t put up with salarians without asari between them. Elcor would stay turtled up without the asari’s aid in colonizing and their eager defense of their old friends. Salarian dalatrasses would stab everyone in their sleep if they didn’t know that asari were just as sneaky as they were, but didn’t do it for fun. Smart enough to keep everyone else from ripping each other apart. Careful. Long-gamers. Everyone has enough citizens of the Republics in their borders to fall under the asari's mutual-assistance treaties and no race could survive letting Thessia bleed. Too much family wiring them in. Better to go to their aid than sit at home and wait for the uprising and be lynched from a flagpole.

What a gentle conquest they’ve managed.

“Quite the place to show up to work every day,” he says, mostly to himself. “Beautiful.”

“Goddess. It is, isn’t it?” the asari at the desk gushes. “When the the Ascension has Presidium duty, she fills the whole ring. Just a big, sparkling starburst that makes the streets twinkle when the nebula flares. I look at it and wave at my sister.”

“Oh? Maybe I’m just new,” he jokes. “But I don’t meet the sisters of many asari commandos.”

“Few humans have.”

=====

Shepard rolls the rubber ball that the guard gave her between her fingers, glances at a few points on her cell walls for her implants’ AI to mark and calculate, and throws it. Hard.

Seventeen ricochets later, it plops right back into her open hand.

The intercom lights up, and she hears slow clapping.

“I’ll be here all week,” Shepard jokes, twirling her hand at the camera in her cell like an actress taking a bow. “You know me, I just love being in lockup because fuck only knows what piece of Cerberus tech implanted in me phoned home. Good chow?”

“They say it’s chicken, beans and cornbread,” the guard tells her over the intercom. “…and they are liars.”

“Oof. Think I’ll waste away in my cell then, Bob.”

“You know damn well you’ll be out in the morning. Just need to talk to Counter-Intelligence like always.”

“Bob! You’re ruining it,” Shepard whines, waving a hand at her rumpled fatigues, messy hair and general sweatiness from the mission that triggered the emission. “Got a whole top-dog-bitch lesbian convict vibe going. Been in so long I know the guard rotation by heart. Just need a harmonica.”

“Well, if I get any doe-eyed petty officers sent in for stealing from the officer’s mess, I’ll send them right there for you to straighten out.”

He laughs a moment before Shepard does.

“So to speak.”

=====

(Attention, Zealot Nine. Stand by for mission parameters)

“Oh, hell no.”

She bashes her head on the bar of the bunk. Hope that hurt you too, you artificially evil bastard.

(Please rendezvous with Zealot Fourteen for debrief.)

“Oh, fuck no.”

The smell of lotus blossoms and rain fills her nose.

(Graybox user identified. Shepard, Elizabeth, Alliance Marine Corps. Citadel Council Medical Exemption 483-B for use of pre-existing illegal implanted technology, specifically artificial intelligence. Stand by. Copying from read-only storage and overriding unauthorized AI engrams…)

“Thanks, Amaterasu.” (You are prettier than the dreadnought I used to be installed in.) The AI teases. (Though the Fuji was less cramped.)

“Bob!” She screams at the camera.

“Shepard, what’s wro-oh, weird. We just went to backup power.”

“Bob, listen to me. Cerberus is sending another Zealot after me. Someone like me, but dumber, stronger and way too in love with his sword. He’s got more metal in him than I do. He will kill you to get to me with a smile on his face and brag to me when he gets here. Tell ICT to get some heavies here, and then you hide and clear a path to my cell. Please.”

“Shepard…”

“This isn’t about you being a good soldier. I’m the best the project made. He’s probably second. Higher strength, harder skin. But shitty field generators to emulate biotics, rather than the real thing. Bulldozer shit. No flexibility. And I’m faster. He will kill you but I can kill him. Either way, I’ll be here in the morning. If the brass wants to put a bullet in someone for breaking regs, then I’m someone.”

“I can’t even give you a weapon…”

Shepard tosses the rubber ball.

“Decent amount of iron in beans. Pop some chow in the chute and unlock my omni.”

“Done, and…done.”

“Go, Robert. I got this.”

=====

It’s dark. Leng likes to kill in the dark. Makes him feel like a badass. Shepard pockets one of the rubber balls that she re-jiggered: Filled with shards of carbon-tipped steel and a canister of liquid helium from the backups in her right-arm omnitool implant. Bob sent her a spare ball, and extra silverware, and not the plastic kind.

“This is going to hurt. Ammy, assume a low-grade warp sword, telescoping, stamped aluminum blade, single line of refined eezo. Say, one-half centimeter thick. The biotic…” she snorts. “Unskilled class four. I need to know where I can take that so it won’t kill me.”

(You really don’t care if you get hurt, do you? Displaying…)

She glances at the indicated points.

“Phew. Bicep means I can’t fight with that arm. Gut wound…pass. Collarbone on the right side it is.”

She rolls her shoulders, turns away from the door and pretends to read the paperback novel she bought off of an asari at a swap meet for antiques.

“Shepard…” Leng purrs. “The guard was kind enough to give me your key.”

(Corporal Grave’s transponder indicates he is not in the facility. Dead or alive.)

Leng's omnitool chirps and whirs as it tries to hack the lock.

“Bluffing? About kills and keys? Really, Kyle?”

“Kai.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s Kyle. Or was it Kevin?”

The lock clicks open. He screams.

Shepard calls on her barriers with everything she has. He stabs and swipes at her back and her neck, glancing off, and then metal and atom-shredding fire plunges into her flesh. She’s bleeding into her lung. She grabs his sword hand, warps the armor he welded into his skin, and twists the bone underneath. Leng bellows in pain.

She throws him over her shoulder and onto the ground with the leverage she has on his ruined arm. She slams her heel into his ribcage. She hears the human core of her leg bone snap, but the kick hurt him. He wheezes, mouth falling open.

“Bouncy, bouncy, lengy, lengy.”

She flings the ball at the ceiling as hard as she can, and just after it bounces off, the rubber snap-freezes.

=====

Kneeling on the floor waiting for the N-teams to secure the lockup after a Cerberus incursion. Is it Thursday already?

“Hands on your head!”

She wiggles a pinky.

“Already done.”

“Jesus Christ, Shepard. Why is it when I get called here, it’s because you iced some Cerberus cyborg in your cell?”

“You mean it’s not because of my feminine wiles, Vega?”

James snorts. He knows she’s not buying what he’s selling, but they get along.

“The fuck is he?”

“Rattlesnake Team, meet Kai Leng. He’s a bit out of it. Ice cream headache.”

“You know…I seem to recall we have a Citadel kill-on-sight order on him. So if the eggheads in Medical and Research were to maybe…”

She puts as much barrier around her fingers as she can manage with one lung pierced, then she slams her fist into his spine at the C5 vertebrae, which gives the most relaxing little crunch and Leng’s limbs go still. Keeping one hand on her head, she slides the other up the back of Leng’s and peels back the skin–he had plastic skin glued on, the freak–over his graybox and removes the power cell.

“…want to pick apart someone with implants like mine…with at least one of everything in working order, and he maybe doesn’t have any legal right not to be stripped for parts…”

“Fuck, girl. You are cold!” Vega laughs. “Spike, get a biotic inhibitor on that asshole! Bear, if he tries to get up, blow an arm off.”

“With pleasure,” she purrs.

Oh, to be a shot of vodka on her tongue, Shepard wishes. Why must all the hot gay snipers with icy Russian accents be happily married?

She looks at Leng’s face in the mirror.

“All work and no play. Gotta take your time, Leng. Relax. Have fun with life. Otherwise, you might get dropped by a shrapnel snowcone.”

“-uck…you.”

=====

Liara mumbles to herself, running through the list of supplies as she walks towards the ship. The markings are for a minor asari shipping company that does business with the Terminus but under her belly, House Guard techs are inspecting weapons emitters, and two massive antimatter missiles are being slotted into one of the ‘cargo pods’. Flanking the ‘freighter’ that Liara had booked passage on are two clearly military vessels; which kind, she’s not sure, as they’re a type of ship Liara’s never seen in the inventories Benezia that forces her to read. Both have long, pointed hulls, the surface is blood red in the early morning light, and black in the shadows underneath, sparkling and faceted as any jewel. One has not only the House Sigil on her hull but also the pictograph for ‘primacy’ in old Soni.

From the pristine look of their landing pylons, she doubts either has been in service more than a few years.

The flagship, Liara realizes. Mother really is worried.

Archon Shiala stands at a workbench, checking over the huntresses who will be sent to shadow Liara. She smiles and nods to Liara, glances at the Zealot rifle she’s inspecting, and folds it back into a single piece with a crisp motion that makes the metal ring. She hands it off to her second, Slaere, who clicks it into her armor. She waves the other three soldiers on her team forward and they lift their packs and file onto the ship.

Benezia waits at the bottom of the ship’s ramp, ancient and storied warpsword on her hip–Starless Hope, the blade that slew the last Malari Queen in Thessia’s darkest hour–the mask of the Lover of the Unknown tied to her bicep, and a chest at her feet with the sigil of the Chaser of Secrets. She is clearly seconds away from tears.

“I am One of the Thirty,” Liara mumbles to herself. “I am one of the Thirty. I am an Officer of the Thirty…”

She doubts it will ever feel real, but muttering to herself like a lunatic before she has to speak to other officers makes that easier to fake.

Benezia opens her arms. No longer a leader of the asari, no longer strong. Just a mother afraid for her daughter. Liara dives into them, feeling more like three years old than a hundred and three.

“Come back to me, child. Whole. Please.”

“I promise.”

#black and blue #my fics #alternate universe #shiara #liara x femshep #femshep x liara #liara t'soni #liselle t'loak #female shepard #saren x benezia #matriarch benezia #mass effect saren #horror elements #upper class asari #asari nobility

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sky-ham · 6 years

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I just finished reading the Mass Effect novels and was going through my Citadel recordings again when this asari from Zaeed’s shore leave scene caught my eye.

Benezia and Liara had those eyebrow markings (and they’re the only mother-daughter pair we see so I don’t have other references), so I was wondering if this one’s appearance could’ve been inspired by Liselle, given her skin color and similarity to Aria’s markings.

#mass effect #liselle t'loak #asari #mass effect spoilers #?

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rawliverandcigarettes · 3 years

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Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

#Mass Effect #mass effect retribution #me critical #writing #mass effect novels #anderson #kahlee sanders #Aria T'loak #paul grayson #liselle #salarians #IP conversation #omega #mass effect lore #reapers #book review

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polina-savitskaya · 4 months

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Blood Runs Through Tuhi | Environmental Concept Art & Design --- One of the very significant features of @sigmalied's writing is the thorough and thoughtful detailing of the characters' surroundings, their manner of interaction with the world around them. And exploring Omega Station and its inhabitants through Liselle's eyes brings the world around the character to life.

It was extremely interesting to work on the visualization of stage locations, since previously the main emphasis was on character concepts. The chapters describing the world of Omega are my favorite. And I think there will be more such sketches, and perhaps not only in 2D. Music: Guillaume David - Lost civilisation

#concept art #mass effect #omega #omega dlc #aria t'loak #liselle t'loak #digital art #2d drawing #photoshop #enviroment art #enviroment design #illustration #tutorial #turian #asari #polsav

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spectralhero · 1 year

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we should make a liselle t’loak fanclub omg

We should!!!

I honest to goodness am so happy to see another person show love for Liselle. She deserves it and quite honestly she lives as far as I am concerned. I need her to :(

I found a story, which is mainly about female Shepard and Liara but Liselle plays a way bigger role in it and I absolutely LOVE how this person writes Liselle. You can check them out here.

#ugh Liselle is amazing I just aksghbsdg #liselle t'loak #this makes us friends ok #c:

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omegastation · 7 years

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Did you read all the Mass Effect books and Comics? I read that in the book "Retribution" Aria's daughter Liselle gets killed. Was there some information about Aria's and Liselle's relationship? Sorry, I'm very facinated by Aria so I'm searching for more Aria in my life. :D

I’m sorry anon, actual shame prevented me from replying right away. No, I haven’t read all the books and comics. I know I should, and yet I just... I have this weird thing with them, I started reading some comics with Miranda and it just bugged me so much that I stopped. And what I thought would be a fun experience (yay more Mass Effect!!!!) turned out to be a bit stressful. But I’ll read them. Except that fourth book that is so bad Bioware promised a rewrite that they never ended up doing! And I’ll read the MEA books.

Can someone answer the question for us?

#books #comics #spoilers #aria t'loak #liselle #Anonymous

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omegalegacy · 4 months

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MOBILE RULES & GEN. INFO

About the mun: I’m Taliah, 22, she/her, CET timezone. I tend to get totally obsessed with BioWare minor characters.. therefore I made this Liselle blog. 💜

Blog info: This is an independent Mass Effect RP blog for Liselle T'loak from the Mass Effect Retribution novel. You do not need any knowledge of the Mass Effect novels to interact with Liselle, but knowledge of the games is recommended.

Spoiler warnings apply for all Mass Effect games. This blog may contain potentially triggering content, including graphic descriptions of violence and death.

Basic muse info: Liselle T'loak is the daughter of Aria T'loak, which is a secret kept only between mother and daughter. Officially speaking, she is merely one of Aria’s agents. More info about her (all headcanon) can be found on this blog under #about liselle and #headcanon

RP rules:

- Please follow basic roleplay etiquette. Aka being kind, avoiding OOC drama and so on.

- This is a selective blog (mutuals only).

- Do not steal my headcanons.

- Personal blogs; do not reblog my posts.

- I am selective towards ships and they’re limited to chemistry. I am not ship exclusive. I don't ship with duplicates or underaged muses. I also won‘t ship in and verse where Liselle is not single.

- This is a smut free blog, though I may hint towards smut scenes.

- I am friendly towards duplicates, OC’s, AU’s, crossovers, canon divergent portrayals as well as multimuse & multiship blogs.

- If we’re mutuals feel free to approach me for plotting. I’m also always open towards banter. (:

#mobile rules #general information #rp info

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excessiveturianflexing · 7 years

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Chapters: 167/? Fandom: Mass Effect Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Saren Arterius/Nihlus Kryik, Saren Arterius/Nihlus Kryik/Garrus Vakarian, Saren Arterius/Garrus Vakarian, Nihlus Kryik/Garrus Vakarian Characters: Nihlus Kryik, Garrus Vakarian, Saren Arterius, Garrus Vakarian's Father, Garrus Vakarian's Mother, Solana Vakarian, Original Characters, Female Shepard (Mass Effect), Shepard (Mass Effect), Hannah Shepard, David Anderson, Tevos (Mass Effect), Sparatus (Mass Effect), Valern (Mass Effect), Jondum Bau, Tela Vasir, Thane Krios, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Kaidan Alenko, Rahna (Mass Effect), Vyrnnus (Mass Effect), Urdnot Wrex, Aleena (Mass Effect), Aria T'Loak, Liselle (Mass Effect), Ashley Williams, Sarah Williams (Mass Effect), Lynn Williams, Abby Williams, Mrs. and Mr. Willaims, Male Shepard (Mass Effect), Reapers (Mass Effect), Geth Character(s) Additional Tags: Casual Sex, badassery, Friendship, Slow Burn, Recreational Drug Use, Alcohol, Suicidal Thoughts, Very slightly AU, mostly canon compliant, Aged-Up Character(s), turian culture, Alien Culture, Slice of Life, Action/Adventure, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nihlus Likes To Blow Things Up, Sociopathy, Pseudoscience, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Child Abuse, Familicide, Author is a super-geek who adds way too much nerdcraft between the gun fights and smut, Religious Fanaticism, Mercy Killing, Saren is a sucker for good architecture, Implied/Referenced Sexuality and Intercourse as a Weapon, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, calibrations, Rough Sex, Tenth Street Reds, Awkward N7s, Knife/Blade Kink, Oral Fixation, Terrorism, Torture, Blackwatch, Arson, Nature, War, Gun nerding, Shepard Siblings, Stress Baking, Far too much math, Mental Instability, C-Sec, Detective Work Summary:

Garrus Vakarian in canon seemed personally enraged about Saren's actions on Eden Prime. A colony slaughtered. A Spectre dead. Geth, everywhere. He dropped everything to see justice done when the opportunity presented itself. That's not normal, not unless the losses and betrayals were personal. Maybe they were. Maybe... they were very personal.

Begins the tale of Mass Effect just a little early, starting in 2167. T-16 years until Eden Prime.

A story of talented people who aren't exactly whole inside, but find those missing pieces in the warm regard of unexpected friends. Misadventure. Mass murder. Boring Council meetings. The mental dissonance of living above the law. Caffeine addictions. Spectre missions. The people behind the legends. Bullets. Many, many bullets.

@spectre-of-steel

#Mass effect #Fan fiction #Turian #Garrus Vakarian #saren arterius #Nihlus Kryik #Last of the Legion #spectre-of-steel

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dr-ladybird · 4 years

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Is Aria Liselle’s father?

Canonically, Aria is Liselle’s mother. However, Liselle’s whole existence is a bit para-canonical - she only shows up in the tie-in novels and she’s never mentioned in game - so I think it’s reasonable to treat her as slightly fanonical to begin with.

And if we assume Aria is Liselle’s father, and the mother’s some random mafia thug who doubled as a concubine (insert OC here), that helps explain their apparently rather distant relationship.

It also makes a bit more sense if we’re keeping canon’s “Aria keeps her relationship with Liselle secret to avoid making Liselle a target” angle. That way you don’t need to explain how a mega-celebrity mafia boss who likes to wear skimpy outfits and do her own fighting, got through an entire pregnancy without anyone noticing.

(Maybe asari are a lot smaller and less developed at birth than humans, making pregnancy less obvious?)

...regardless of Aria’s exact relationship to Liselle, I suspect she’s fathered a few kids with her favourite minions.

#Aria T'loak #liselle t'loak #mass effect #mass effect headcanons #liselle paternity headcanons #my headcanons #original content

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herpronuonsarefemslash · 2 years

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Black and Blue - Teaser (2/3)

A lightly horror-themed, mid-length (60,000 word) work setting up my "Blood and Treasure" story and introducing bits of my altered ME worldbuilding.

Chapter 1 to 5 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-1-58119478

Chapter 6 to 10 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-6-58262841

Chater 11 to 13 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-58353145

Out of context teasers for Chapters 6 to 10:

The hard plastic of the seat under her slams into her when the shuttle hits a pocket of dense air. Kelsey tries not to look outside at the orange plume of flame outside the kinetic barrier, or wonder if the hairline crack in the seat across from her is indicative of how well they take care of the engines, or…

WHAM!

“Did we just hit a rock?” Nina snarls, reaching up to rub her crests with a massive hand. “Do rocks float here?”

“Not at this altitude,” Trini whispers back. “Highest recorded eezo-levitation incident wa-mmph!”

Kelsey claps a hand over what looks like thin air. In her annoyance, Trini’s camouflage fades for a moment and what looks like the faintest outline of a human woman–bald, hairless, and lushly curved–flickers into view for an instant.

“Shh…” Nina reminds Trini.

All of Nina’s specialness is swallowed up by the fact that asari don’t usually hit ten feet tall, so she can pass through a crowd without alarm–just a lot of stares–because all her obvious hybrid traits hide in plain sight. Huge eyes, silver irises with tiny gold eyes lurking within, like the gears in fine watch, dark, wet tips on the pads of long, quick fingers, spooky black frills and fronds hidden under larger-than-normal scales on her arm, neck, and head. Longer and thicker crests don’t look strange in the scheme of things.

So it was Trini they had to hide. Trini’s almost right, but the deep, wet, glimmering fissures on her bare head don’t look like a human feature, just a bit longer, thicker, or bigger. When she’s stressed–or horny–they weep like any asari’s would and after the lady at a terminal on Knossos called a medic because they assumed Trini was bleeding, they didn’t have much choice. She’s kept her hand around Kelsey’s waist–thank God for modern maternity fashion–so that she’s present even when she’s invisible. The day-in, day-out practice Trini has gotten with her camouflage has led to giggly, stupid, clumsy sex in freighter cabins, with her trying to make a smiley face appear on her back to crack them up and Kelsey watching Nina try to distract Trini with her tongue, while curling a big hand around her thigh to share orgasms that Kelsey’s swollen body was too sore to chase.

=====

The Voice says she is here to do something, in the back area of this club, where the powerful eat and drink. The Memories like the place: Drunkenness, proffered flesh, the expectation of rough pleasure and keeping of names like precious secrets.

They overindulge. They are trusting.

Prey.

“Heya darlin’.”

She turns her head just slightly. Human male: Dirty, underfed, unshaven. She loosens her hold on her energy, letting it channel outward. Energy gathers between her fingertips, cords of red and black dancing and entwining.

“Now, now, little lady. Ain’t gonna hurt ya! No need to use…that. No need to use ol’ devil’s yarn on me! Just need a bit to get by, y’know?”

Ah. A beggar. The Memories remember these, not from the silver, blue, and pink place, where silk flowed across blue flesh like the water did, and the streets echoed with whispers from lovers who pulled each other into niches in buildings and slid curtains across, and carts were stacked with fruit almost till they spilled, and wine, and meat. No. The Memories tell her that beggars are from the black and brown place. Dirty, grimy, hidden in rock. Rough. Wild. Bloody. Uncaring. The perfect lair for the Memories.

She has credits. The Memories told her to never use accounts, only fixed chits. Accounts have names. Names… Names leave a scent? No, names leave a trail. Trails make the Memories afraid. The Voice told her where to find some credits buried in a rock outside the dome along with white metal things, red cloth, and blue bars of grit: The Voice said they were armor, civilian clothing to go over it, and a weapon.

=====

“Holy fuck. Stace.”

“Yeah?” she calls out over the thumps, electric screams, and cymbal crashes of the music.

“Total babe, at your three o’clock. Go get that pussy, buddy.”

She looks and there, at the edge of the floor, is a shimmer, just a silvery flicker of a woman’s body. She can see the booth behind her, but not see her–except for a thin sheen, like ice over a clear pond. It’s enough. It’s the juiciest, softest set of curves Stace has ever seen, on a giantess big enough to wrap around her, make her disappear into the hug.

She knows every queer that comes in here, so New Girl is not only in need of tips about the menu, she’s dancing alone. Shame. New Girl dances like no one she’s ever seen: Hands raised over her head, hips swaying on some notes, shaking on some and thrusting slightly on others, turning in a slow circle. Every motion is smooth–arms curling rather than waving, hips rolling in an S rather than swinging side to side, her thrusting matched by a bend in her back and curls of her arms–as if nothing she ever does is less than smooth, sleek, and seductive. It’s like watching water dance.

A red dress is flung over a nearby chair.

Ok. Right. Person, probably alien, who can make herself invisible–or invisible-ish, because damn–but only if she gets naked first. Naked’s good.

A shot glass slides into her hand.

“Liquid courage.”

“Thanks, Mack.”

“Go! You’re scaring off all the dick. Swear to God, you draw a no-men-allowed circle around you somehow.”

=====

“CHRIST!”

“WASTE HER!”

Red glop runs down the side of her face and drips onto the trick’s pants. Some red bubble of fuck knows–biotics? Does anything that fancy even happen in this shithole?–covers Nikki and the trick. It slices his head off, too, which slides slowly down the outside, blown in half above the jaw, with half his braincase just gone and half hanging at an angle like a scoop of lard. It rolls down, smearing blood, gray grease, and bits of bone the size of confetti until it hits the floor.

A shape walks by her–so bright and white it hurts to look at her–but obviously a her. Obviously a woman, and naked, and either turned on or recently well-fucked–Nikki hopes that this is not turning her on–because her nipples are stiff.

One of the Reds lunges, knife in hand. Something that looks like black smoke shot through with drops of blood forms into a plate and he smacks into it, breaking his nose. The shape turns her head for a moment, looks at him, and the bones of his arms and legs break with cracks so loud Nikki can hear them and then his spine punches its way out through his voicebox.

Little blue things pop like raindrops hitting concrete all over the stranger’s skin. Bullets. Hundreds of bullets spattering across that white light. Others hit the red bubble around Nikki but don’t break it, just bend it. Another man flies into view, suspended on another plate of red and black, and burns slowly with white fire, from the ribcage out, and up, until his skull melts. His gun tumbles in an orb of red energy and then crumples into something the size of a drink can.

“M-4 Shuriken Submachine gun,” the figure mutters. “Altered chamber, low grade phasic mod. Strong against kinetic barriers, tissue, weaker against armor.”

The outline of the glowing figure smiles.

=====

Tevos cannot stand being inside a ship she can’t see out of. She knows it’s beyond ridiculous–what good will her eyes do?–but it’s something she needs. She told the pilot she was up here to sign off with the Nefrane’s captain but she’s not sure her feet will work.

“Citadel-One, you are cleared for launch. Pleasure having you aboard, Councilor. Goddess light your path.”

She presses a finger to her omni.

“May the rains be gentle, the fires warm and the hunts easy, Captain.”

The pilot of Citadel-One detaches the ship from underside of the Nefrane’s hangar and taps the thrusters, passing between two Sunfish fighters which angle their flattened hulls to let the larger corvette slip between them, sliding out of the atmosphere containment field and performing at least four maneuvers with two flicks of her gloved fingers and intimate familiarity with ships, mass effect, and momentum.

“You’re welcome to have a seat, Madam Councilor. Soon as I ping the Exclusion Zone, we’re going to be moving slow. Twenty, thirty minutes at least to these…coordinates…inside…”

The pilot forces a cough. She glances from her controls, to the etching glass map Tevos scrawled out, and back. She soon decides against digging in. She’s seen Tevos’ face and any huntress worth handing a rock and a stick–let alone training as a pilot–knows that Officers of the Thirty conceal their identities at any cost. A name and a face cannot be paired with the office she holds.

So the pilot doesn’t ask.

“Taking the hint and flying the ship, ma’am. But feel free to have a seat. Once we hit atmo, not much more to see than being on the ground.”

“It’s a marvelous view.” The pilot nods at Thessia. “That’s why we both took the job, ma’am, isn’t it? Keep her safe.”

Thessia sparkles below them, the massive Tescani continent sprawled pole to pole, wrapping the seas around it rather than the seas wrapping around the land, taking half the planet for itself and leaving the other to the Great Ocean.

=====

Goddess cast shadow over the wardrobe expectations for a successful matron. Floor length, somber, gently corseted, skirted, and un-decorated by ruffle, embroidery or anything but the body within. These are matriarchal fashions. She won’t belong in them for two centuries, perhaps more.

Aria would blind in this, with her larger-than-life frame cradled by curves generous as the seas. Then again, that’s sort of the point of Aria’s style, Tevos supposes; Aria has fully embraced the idea of hotness over beauty, her stance, her motion, her hungry eyes and ever-flirting lips. Tight clothing and arresting motion replacing the latest fashions or the smoothest words. Aria was hot long before the turians and quarians stole that term from the humans.

As her bondmate, Tevos might be biased, but she could likely get a vote through the forums on maidens alone if she could just find a way to post it slyly.

She, on the other hand, does not have the hips for this and wouldn’t have the bust if she nursed two more daughters in the next decade. Her tailor is beyond reproach–and the most delicious source of batarian gossip–but there is nothing to be done.

“You look great, ainthar,” Liselle says without looking up. Tevos sucks in a ragged breath. Ainthar. Inspiration. As if she could have inspired her from the depths of Aria.

“Your mom’s idea, wasn’t that?”

“Just her observation that you could be. No one knows how long you were together. Pretend you raised me and bonded later. Prevents questions. I asked. Nyreen agrees with it…except you have to play rockball with us next time.”

Oh, Goddess. Who throws a ball, in gravity, standing on a sloped pile of boulders…for fun?

“Hmm.”

Liselle grins, well aware that she’s right. Simple, direct deception will do, and goes back to her tutor’s work on oration, seduction, and salarian cultural quirks.

=====

The Thirty know of Lycoris. How could they not? One of their own, on the Council–rare enough, they prefer minor clans or clanless for the role–and some great secret love and birthing her first? She flew to the Student’s Hall, as is custom, for the recording of a new Daughter. Aria was a shadow most of the guards never saw–never wanting to allow what was hers out of her sight–and old friends from every house present stopped by to comment on Ly’s eyes, or her attentiveness to nearby elders even with her fists in Tevos’ dress and pulses of biotic energy running down her arm to quiet her.

Benezia had already given her praise by vid–off with that turian on some mad quest to either tame or slay the galaxy’s horrors, as is the T’Soni way–and blessedly few of the matriarchs that Tevos did not want to see were in attendance that day. She collected many new names and faces: Maidens attending the hall to speak and not to listen, wide-eyed and trembling with gratitude, late-joining matrons, and even the newly elected B’Kapaesii representative for the colony at Hyetiana.

Even old Akkru K’Teyen chimed in, thus disproving the theory that she was in fact dead and just stayed in her chair at the Great Table, far too sturdy and wise to rot. She rapped her palm down on a T’Van maiden’s greedy fingers as they snuck towards a bowl of sweets before the hulking matriarch rose like a primeval spirit–she is formidable at fourteen hundred–counted a few from the bowl into her big palm, and came over to offer crumbs on her fingertip.

Lycoris nipped her–toothless, but still–and while a sputtering Tevos dumped her brain upside down and shook it hoping to find an apology, the matriarch laughed. Akkru laughed as loud and harsh and honest as the krogan bondmates her family–herself included–take along with their asari. She pronounced Ly a lovely baby and a ‘good mean pup’, and lumbered back to the table to split the bowl of ajahe juice puffs with the properly chastened–and suitably awed–initiate from T’Van whose mother had no doubt lied and said that the massive, dusky-scaled and black-clad matriarch was statuary or some nonsense.

“Goddess!”

Liselle’s head jerks up, her textbook flung onto the seat beside her, one hand at her thigh, near one of Goddess knows how many weapons secreted away, and the other had stretched over Lycoris’ crib, crackling with biotics to entertain her.

“Not that. I forgot to look at your outfit. Stand up, let me look at you.”

“I must look the part, mustn’t I?” she sighs.

She smiles white and toothy as a shark, stands, and smooths down her dress.

Archetypically maiden: It has freedom to move, dance, misbehave. ‘Energy over assets,’ Aethyta once huffed, pointing at a maiden and matriarch on the Presidium. The dress has no bodice, and only the clasps fit it closer to Liselle. The hang comes from gravity more than anything.

“Stand still.”

“Feels weird,” Liselle huffs, eyes on the ceiling as Tevos tilts her head up. “I’m not a prizefighting varren. We’re all asari here, right?”

“The Council is close to, yes. Some bondmates, of course, children from marriage or adoptions. A dozen turians between bondmates and bond-children, perhaps two. Three krogan pups, where triads with two krogan had the luck.”

“Right? Asari. Fancy asari. Bonding ceremony before eye contact asari. So I don’t have to look…sexy.”

Is she a maiden? Likely. She’s nearly seventy. Liselle never talks about that, so either she isn’t interested yet or she doesn’t want her mother involved…

“Lissi,” she murmurs, rubbing her shoulders.

“The Thirty are not shy about…”

“Purebloods?” Liselle whispers. “I’m ninety-five percent sure the word doesn’t bite. Ninety-three, for sure.” Tevos chuckles.

“Two things spring to mind: You are not pureblood, daughter dear. Though you might seem it to others, especially in the Thirty. Between ourselves and the other clans who bond elsewhere, we can compare. We learn to see the differences. You do have the build and the face. Your mother’s lineage is simply that strong.”

“Families in the Thirty have more purebloods than the Peeresses or the clans. By far. We don’t announce it. We don’t hide it. The asari know our clan names. Anyone who follows bonding notices and tabloids would see the pattern. Last I looked at the registry, all the officers have either an asari bondmate or an asari bondmate along with alien bondmates.”

“Fascinating,” she replies, keeping her chin up for no reason other than to seem put out.

Sarcasm won’t hide that, little one. You jumped when you put it together.

“Turn around for me, let me see the whole thing,” Tevos instructs.

=====

Tevos raises her hand and wraps it in the Art. She’s about to knock on the door to the Great Hall when a voice echoes down the hallway.

“Councilor!”

She turns to see a teal-scaled maiden in laboratory clothing sprinting down the hallway. Nimble but careless, sliding past a server who finds herself forced to use a ballerina’s spin to keep her tray from spilling.

Her bodyguards train their weapons.

“Stop!”

Tevos turns and puts her hand on Archon Igeni’s rifle.

“Gun down,” she hisses, before turning to Mylei and doing the same.

Skidding to a stop in front of her, the maiden flicks her eyes from weapon to weapon. No fear, even with such a well-armed squadron facing her down.

No fear. Eyes as pale and blue as the light of the Art itself. Disinterest in fashion or expectations…

“Liara? It’s been decades. I hadn’t seen you grow into your good looks,” she jokes.

“Greetings, Councilor. Matria-” Liara swallows her mistake. “Matron T’Reve. I was instructed to give this to you.”

She holds out a large datapad and a read-only storage device.

“My…” Liara stammers.

“She is your mother, Liara. Call her such,” Tevos teases.

“Yes. I was on the planet seeking a grant, and Archon Shiala gave this to me. She said that mother said I was to give it to you, and only you.”

=====

“Goddess.”

Liara’s nearly as pale as her jumpsuit–the side is stained with dust, Tevos notes fondly–after seeing that.

“It’s certainly not good,” Tevos agrees.

“Not good?” Liselle sputters. “Not good? That’s a pyjak-fucking ardat kill. On Earth. Found by human police and taken to a human hospital where they’re going to notice something, maybe everything that’s unusual about it. With a name written in the mirror. Not that I know who Morinth is.”

“She should be dead.”

“Perhaps the Justicar failed? Was deceived?” Liara suggests. “Rare, but not unheard of.”

“She was not killed by a Justicar, Liara.”

The Will of Sunset put her down. Your father. Not that I can tell her that. Goddess, Aethyta. Get up the courage to tell her she’s yours.

“Was the agent…competent?” Liara asks.

“Extremely. You would like her, Liara.”

“I find that unlikely.”

“Nearly everything about you is unlikely, Liara. Someone like you being the Heiress T’Soni is beyond unlikely. Embrace it.”

How long will you make me lie to this brilliant daughter of yours, old friend?

=====

Lanya flicks through the local news updates, like she has on every planet. She can’t lose the feeling they’re being followed even though the more she looks, the more it becomes clear it’s her imagination.

“S’really good,” Mascha mumbles, big blue fingers covered in some brown sauce as she lifts a massive sandwich–massive even in her hands–to her mouth.

“What s’it?”

“Hamburger. Human idea, apparently. Sakhoi meat, local. Nevosian flatleaf for lettuce.”

Masha lunges for her water and guzzles it.

“Krogan hot sauce, local artisanal brand.”

“Explains it. There are a lot here, aren’t there?”

She dismisses the window and looks around. At a nearby fountain, two krogan pups are playing with a taele of twenty-five or so, racing after her. They’re half her height but probably only a tenth her age. Their plate-studded heads are round, not flat, and the plates on their arms where they peek out of the sleeves of their jumpsuits are spaced out, rather than closely packed.

“Are those her…”

Masha is too surprised to finish.

“…sisters?” Lanya asks. “Why not? Asari and two krogan bondmates. Tell you how it works when you’re older.”

The pups launch after her like giggling rocks and she ducks, spins, pirouettes and weaves away, all maiden’s speed and nearly all of a maiden’s height, but not yet grown, lacking the muscle she’ll get as she fills out. So she moves suddenly, twisting her thin body between them like electricity arcing through a short. She doesn’t use her biotics, even when they barrel their rock-hard bodies straight towards her. She ducks instead.

She’s playing their way.

“With the genophage…I didn’t know there were any except on Tuchanka. Krogan children, I mean.”

“Besides here, there probably aren’t. The colony has been krogan nearly as long as it has been asari.”

Layna turns.

At the bar sits a huge female krogan with a stack of etching glass plates and small denomination credit chips to one side, and to the other, empty liquor glasses, the shells of the fried swarmers from an appetizer platter, and crumpled paper. Actual paper. Her voice is deep–that of rumbling earth, boiling mud, and cracking rock–and raw at the edges. Perhaps age or injury, perhaps stress. An impressive row of empty glasses sits beside her, each with the glowing green film that only krogan ryncol leaves behind.

The maiden bartender is collecting the glasses with a fond shake of the head.

“After the Rachni War,” she sighs. Without being asked, the bartender produces a small, bubbling shot of ryncol, which the big krogan downs immediately. “Some krogan and asari who fought together settled here.”

Lanya feels as compelled to listen to this krogan as she did to Aethyta. She has the same sense of experience. The big krogan chuckles and Lanya feels the laugh in her guts, it’s so low.

“War is a great place to fall in love.”

She fought in it, Lanya realizes. Needing the drink, the way the war made her smile when she talked about love…The Rachni War ended two thousand years ago. She’s twice the age of a matriarch.

=====

Sura looks over her notes, then back up at her students.

Is this how matriarchs feel all the time? Telling people about stuff I know more about is amazing!

“…and that’s the basics. Fertility festival. Sex and crops, but once we had spare crops, more or less became just sex. Five days. You’ll take turns watching ‘the kids’,” she scoffs, making quote-signs.

“One day, probably. I’m actually going to go see my friends for the first two. One’s human. Loves the pups to death and they’re never rough with him. He said it was Halloween on Earth…three days ago, or so? We ordered a rush shipment of candy. It’s so cheap after Halloween that it costs the same even with the extra shipping. Should get here on day three.”

“We’re the help,” Mascha points out.

“You’re new in town,” Sura retorts. “New is sexy. Uahi, Kesh, Argah, that’s dad…you’ll meet him at, I bet…they’re old school. Janiris is where people meet people. Sometimes a matriarch gets a thrashing she really likes and some maiden suddenly gets a call about a job or someone drops a hint that gets something out of her way. Everybody pretends it’s an accident–matriarch sneakiness and all–and never ask for that, but it’s a thing.”

=====

The moment Lan opens the door, she’s faced with a svelte asari with what looks like a biotically charged whip coiled around her neck like a purple snake of pure energy. The handle is between her breasts, glowing with energy as someone in the living room below manipulates it. Each time a pulse wraps around the handle, the stasis fields in the cord swell, and the matron’s breathing hitches.

Blessed Janiris!” she pants.

“Uh, hi.”

“Mistress wants to see if I can be good even if other people touch me,” she explains. She presses a pouch of tokens into Lan’s hand before taking one out and stroking it through her swollen azure, flushed nearly black with long-denied need. “You can’t touch anywhere else. But you can try to make me come, if you want.”

“I’m sorry. I really need breakfast.”

She chortles. “Don’t apologize to me. That’s not what I’m here for. What about you, tall, blue and quiet?”

Lan hands the pouch to Mascha, and as she walks away, she hears a surprised squeak.

“Can you take big?” she hears Mas ask. “And deep?”

=====

A little girl wanders through the backyard. Behind her, a titan of steel, ceramic, circuits and weaponry sits unseen in the gathering dusk. A twig snaps underfoot.

The metal monster unfolds from its rest.

“Intruder detected. Activating weapons systems. Targeting…”

The heavy machine gun on the mech’s right arm spins up as three dots of blue appear on her forehead. The left arm’s plates spread apart, revealing a rocket.

“M’not scared of you,” she huffs.

“Organic intruder has five seconds to vacate the premises before I use lethal force.”

“Mechs don’t say ‘I’,” she huffs, hands on hips as she shakes her head to flip her pigtail out of her face. “S’lot of them at mommy’s work. Not even the big ones…jimmies…no. YMIRs.”

“So…uh…YMIR-8 suffering operating system error. Error. Error. Err….bloooop! Powering down.”

A blonde woman armed with a barbecue fork and a half eaten caramel apple appears around the corner of the patio, making the giant backpedal.

“Nina! Don’t scare them.”

The mech’s ‘head’ splits apart as Nina opens the suit’s mask.

“It’s all right!” the girl chirps. “I’m not scared, Mrs. Maller. Cool Halloween costume, Nina. It’s neat that you’re so tall.”

=====

Trini carefully hands Delilah off to the greedy, flexing fingers of the minister’s wife. Mrs. Howard takes the tiny, blue-and-red-spotted body into her arms and rocks it with nigh-instinctive motions of a mother, grandmother and soon to be great-grandmother.

“Oh, they are darlings! And you look well rested. Do you take turns, or what?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, just that when I had my first, I couldn’t get more than an hour’s sleep. Always waking up to crying and trying to figure out what they needed.”

Trini grins.

“See, that’s the thing. Asari babies are pretty agreeable. Put them in bed with momma, who wants to sleep, give her a little skin to rest on, and she’ll want to sleep, too. Unless she really needs something. And they don’t cry much.”

The look Trini receives is one of such jealousy that it goes far, far beyond the mortal sin of envy.

Trini reaches between their armchairs and brushes a thumb across Deli’s soft little crests.

“They meld. So you just wear short sleeves and keep them on your hip if they’re awake. Right now she is…a little hungry.”

“You can tell what she’s thinking?”

Trini shrugs.

“Thinking is a generous term. More like…I’m not sure how to describe it. Half of a feeling? What urges she has, if she’s scared or not.“

“Deli and Sally will grow slowly. Walking by four, five. Reading by nine, though with Kelsey’s smarts involved, I’m afraid at least one will learn to read first. Back hom-”

Trini winces at the near miss. “That’s how Nina grew up too. All asari. It’s how they keep the eezo from hurting them. Grow into it.”

“Fascinating,” the town’s unofficial queen whispers, though she clearly means Deli’s scrunched pout and her attempt to biotic the woman’s locket into her mouth.

Salome fusses awake in her crib and Trini reaches out with a cupped palm, cradling her in her biotics and bringing her close. She’s back asleep before Trini catches her and slides her into the crook of her arm.

“And you can jus-oh my, that’s handy!”

“Gentle biotics nearby means mom nearby,” Trini whispers.

“Works…maybe a third of the time. Rest of the time, just do what you’re doing,” she jokes.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Mrs. Howard admits, staring at her own hand where it has come to rest on Deli’s crests of its own accord.

=====

The door to the office swishes open and Garrus glances in the corner-check mirror. She can’t quite shake the shock of seeing her face, real face: Sleek, flush mandibles, tips refashioned into sturdy jaw-horns, spikes another soldier once called ‘studly’ bent into a close, wavy crown that wraps around her wider, stronger neck. Her collar sawed down to a quarter its height, and the material added to the carapace, arms lengthened and hips broadened to match her shoulders and height–door width be damned–and fifty other tweaks to skeleton, carapace and innards. Her old, blocky male plates were removed from chest, legs and shoulders and refashioned into hundreds of wedges that dot her entire body and shimmer in the right light. Donor tissue from her mother and Solana.

Now that that will be a fun favor to repay someday, Solana calling the debt so she can continue corrupting her semi-nieces…

The doctor who helped her seemed shocked that she wanted the same name. Apparently, most turians passing through that particular deck on the hospital ship switch theirs.

“Hello?”

Shaken from her reverie, Garrus looks in the mirror again and sees an asari with powdery, dark red scales poke her crested head in and tries to look around the teetering stacks of datapads.

“Detective Vakarian? I have a…Tali’Zorah nar Rayya asking to see you. Are you even in here? Goddess. Better you than me but no one deserves sorting duty on the varrenshit files.”

“Back here,” Garrus croaks, waving and hoping her hand pokes above the top of the stack. Spirits, talking hurts. “Go on in, Miss Zorah.”

“Thank you, Officer Palero.”

The new hire for Zakera ward. Who stayed on after she heard what Fisk did to the old one and asked for the only krogan on the force as a partner.

Garrus hasn’t had the misfortune to spar with the cheerful matron–or youngish matriarch? she never knows if she should ask–but if Palero isn’t killed or driven off by Harkin’s drunk leering before the next raid on Fisk’s place, he’s going to learn what ‘retired huntress’ looks like and Zakera ward is going to need a replacement scumbag-in-chief.

#black and blue #my fics #alternate universe #shiara #liara x femshep #femshep x liara #female shepard #Liara T'Soni #liselle t'loak #saren x benezia #Saren #Benezia #horror elements #upper class asari #asari nobility

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