#palaven: menae

[missgamerin]

Mass Effect 3 Scenery I Priority: Palaven - Menae

[illusivesoul]

N7 Month 2023 ‑ Day 8 Prompt: Crash

.

James: "Commander, how many troops in that crash? Fifty? Seventy‑five?"

Garrus: "Sounds about right..."

James: "Hard to see a beautiful ship like that go down"

Shepard: "Not to mention the men serving on her"

James: "Yeah"

[edains]

"Commander, I appreciate your need for our fleets, but I can't spare them. Not while my world is burning." "But if the pressure could be taken off Palaven..."

(LE3) Garrus and Turians - Face and Eyes Textures (GTFET) - HR HD HQ

[plethomacademia]

wip bully me into finishing this

Trying to make the Shakarian reunion that I want, which is two people who know each other well and therefore speak in few words because they are not necessary, but also have six months apart to make up for (horny). Also they are probably going to die bc the galaxy is ending.

Over the past few weeks, Kathryn Shepard has become all too familiar with failure. Every day is another emergency, another vital mission that ends in another quick retreat, another loss of ground in a war that feels unwinnable.

The shuttle ride from Menae to the Normandy is in most ways no different from the rest. She settles into her seat, letting the structure of her suit hold her up as the adrenaline fades and her joints try to turn into jelly. She swallows against the film of dirt coating her tongue, sniffs in futile attempts to chase the smoke from her nose. Her teammates do not speak, each of them retreating into their own inner worlds as they process the sight of a Palaven on fire. Shepard’s ears ring on the quiet, steady whirr of the engines taking her back to her ship. It feels distant, muffled, and she tries to pop her ears to hear better.

The only difference is that this time, she knows that Garrus Vakarian is on another shuttle taking the same path. She knows that he is alive, that he is joining her to try to fight this thing, that seeing him had unfurled a tight space in her chest that she had not realized was there. She does not realize she has put her hand over the spot until she hears the tap of her gloves against the hard plating of her armor.

When Liara catches her eye up and gives her a knowing look, Kathryn puts her hand on her thigh and turns away.

[veshialles]

Priority: Palaven - The Battle Of Menae

[dragonflight203]

Mass effect 3, Normandy post Menae:

-What are the turian reinforcements even going to do on Earth?

Shepard keeps seeking reinforcements, but their purpose is unclear. This war will not be won by fighting the Reapers directly. The entire might of the galaxy could descend on Earth and that won’t save it.

I suppose the logic could be the same as the krogans on Palaven – evacuate as many people as possible until the Crucible is ready.

Kind of shitty to ask other species to abandon their people to save Earth’s though.

-In most backgrounds, Shepard has no reason to be attached to Earth. Or negative reason. So why does the game insist leaving was hard?

This would have been an excellent opportunity to let the player, you know, pick what Shepard says.

I’ll go with Shepard had a hard time abandoning civilians to die since I’m paragon. For renegades – hard time letting the Reapers have a victory?

-I’m fond of Victus. Seems like a good guy. He’d probably be an awful politician in peace, but he’s just what the Hierarchy needs in war.

-According to the email he sent, the spectre Jondum Bau is skeptical of Shepard’s ties with Cerberus.

I suspect many people feel that way, especially now that Cerberus is openly attacking so many people and places.

How much did working for Cerberus in ME2 hurt Shepard’s credibility? Many spectres apparently took Shepard’s claims about the Reapers seriously, but did others blow them off because of it?

(Also, the spectres taking Shepard’s Reapers claims seriously can be a hint that the Council did as well. The spectres work for them.)

-Aria sent me two emails to see her ASAP. One is from the base game, one for the Omega DLC.

That’s very poor execution on Bioware’s part. The DLC email should have been sent after the base game’s email. It could have come after meeting Aria the first time.

-First conversation with Garrus on the Normandy and he’s already mentioning “old times”. The writers love that phrase.

-If you go paragon, Shepard mentions the boy they watched die on Earth.

The writers really leaned on you caring about him. If only they had put some effort into giving the player a reason to.

Yes, yes, symbolism but you still have to earn your readers’ attachment. Don’t take it for granted.

-Garrus: It’s something I learned long ago in C-Sec: An imminent and painful death has a way of motivating people.

Garrus, would you care to explain how you learned that in C-Sec?

Garrus was a terrible C-Sec Officer, wasn’t he.

-Garrus’ father was a friend of the former primarch.

Garrus has lived a very privileged life. Probably why he takes crime so personally – he did not grow up expecting it.

-Garrus won’t say his current rank in the Hierarchy. Presumably he’s quite up there, to be advising the Palaven Primarch personally.

-The first meeting with Edi in her new body is a reversal of norms: Renegade is far more supportive of her than paragon. Usually it’s vice versa.

Renegade, you congratulate her on saving the data about the Crucible and will let her know when you’re ready to take her on a mission.

Paragon, you stress the dangers she risked acting on her own and want her to test the new body thoroughly before taking it out.

-I’ve seen people insist that Edi’s body is not intended to be sexy, but it blatantly is. Edi comments on it (Joker will want to see it), Chakwas comments on it, Dianna comments on it, and Joker won’t shut up about it.

(How fascinating, that it’s all women except for the love interest.)

I’m disappointed in it; I would have preferred for Edi to have an “ambiguous” or blatantly robot body and to still become Joker’s partner. That would have been a more powerful story about a man and an ai falling in love.

Still, compared to what Bioware did to Ashley in ME3 this is a minor quibble.

-That aside, in-universe I think it’s a terrible idea to take Edi on missions. If you go too far out of Normandy’s range she’ll lose control of the body. Why risk that when you can take an organic squad mate?

-Oddly enough, Adams has nothing to say about Edi gaining a body despite the fact he was there.

-Why is Ceberus incapable of successfully faking a turian signal?

Traynor says they made the same mistake they made in ME2. That’s just inexcusable. At least fail differently.

-If you go renegade with Edi, it’s rather amusing. Change the core programming that prevents you from harming humans? Nope, it’s perfect leave it be.

-Your next conversation with Edi emphasizes that she has personality traits. She’s curious, enjoys learning, has preferences, can lie…

This is so odd. We know Edi has a personality. We saw this throughout ME2. Why state it outright state it now like it’s something Shepard is just discovering?

I think ME3’s writers struggled with the concept that machine life can exist on its own terms. Hence why Edi got a body and the geth need to “evolve” into full AI in the Rannoch arc to be alive.

So even though EDI has been a person since ME2, they emphasize how she’s just like a human here because that’s the only way they can conceive personhood.

Disappointing, but that will be an ongoing theme throughout ME3. It has many good points, but on the whole the narrative does not work for me.

[omniblades-and-stars]

Earthbound

Got Your Six: Part 5

The trajectory of his life changed the moment Shepard witnessed him arguing with Executor Pallin. He didn't know it quite then, but Garrus knew it now. It was proven over and over again in innumerable ways. If someone told him a few years ago that he would end up serving on a human ship during a galaxy-wide push for survival, and that the person leading that push, one of the most willful, powerful humans in the known universe, would call him home ...

Well, he probably would have laughed at them and told them to get their head checked.

He sat on the corner of her bed, a small glass of water in his hand (the small cups Helen kept in her cabin were almost comical in his hands), and watched her sleep. Even as exhausted as she was, he could tell she was suffering a nightmare. For as long as he'd known her, she was haunted by bad dreams - of slavers and their destruction of her home, thresher maws, the broken messages from the Protheans, the attack on Earth, and all of the ghosts of the people they'd lost during this fight.

If only that list had been comprehensive. She had so many nightmares.

And as they prepared to make their final push on Earth, the dreams only got worse. He watched as the skin of her forehead creased, and a grimace marred the angular features of her face. Stress left its marks on her, shocks of gray hair rested on her temples where the hair had once been entirely blond, and she had new and ever present wrinkles around the corners of her eyes.

Human bodies were so malleable, changeable. It was such a startling difference between their species. Just a few months of pushing nonstop through impossible barriers, brutal battles, and heart-rending losses bore themselves so obviously on her body. Her sagging posture when she thought no one was looking, the red along the bottom ridge of her eyelids, the ragged edges of chewed fingernails, and the subtle impression of bones too close to her skin - weight lost from meal after missed meal, pouring over “just one more report, Garrus, I'll eat later.”

She never ate later.

Not that he was the champion of taking care of himself or managing the unbearable weight of their shared burdens. The already pitiful dextro provisions on the ship became less and less appetizing, and it felt like a battle in itself just to choke down enough calories to keep moving and keep himself sharp. And many nights, he spent so much time looking at the numbers and the data feeds at his console in the main battery that they all started to bleed together before he was gently pulled away by her voice on the intercom, reminding him to come to bed. Like she knew that he was suffering from a splitting headache, and an aching heart.

Leaving Palaven to burn while they went to take their chances on Earth was a nearly impossible decision to make. Were it not for the woman sleeping fitfully next to him, he probably wouldn't have left. If any other person had been at the helm of the end of the world, he'd still be on Menae, or dead. No, he'd definitely be dead, and so would so many countless others.

Garrus barely managed to keep himself from actually laughing at the thought, a muted huff snuck up from his chest. Thankfully, it didn't wake her. It was a bleak thought, but there was humor to be found in how he kept narrowly avoiding his own demise because of her.

Spirits, it could only have ever been her. What a terrible burden. They both knew it was the truth. Neither of them could stand by and watch the galaxy burn around them, even if it killed them to try to stop it in the end. They were on the cusp of finishing this thing for good, one way or the other. The count was down to mere hours.

This was becoming a bad habit of his, sitting at the edges and watching over her sleep like some sort of guardian angel, when he should have been lying next to her, haunted by his own dreams. He had plenty of his own nightmares. But even when his own thoughts were turning to the hopeless, watching her sleep made it feel bearable. That she could sleep at all meant that this thing was doable, right? He had to believe that, for her, and because of her.

Garrus stood quietly and set the glass on the nightstand. He wasn't going to waste what was potentially their last hours just watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, or staring at the way her hair fanned out all over the pillow, tangling in small knots as she slept. All the reminders that she was, in fact, a living, breathing person. Not just the monolith or legend that the Alliance built up around her, not the off the rails Council Spectre she was often accused of being. And definitely not the Cerberus science experiment she still often felt that she was.

The Illusive Man's files had done nothing to assuage that particular fear of hers. Not that she'd had any time to sit with what they found. They left the bastard's space station to immediately head to Earth, it had only been mere hours.

Garrus carefully climbed back into bed, and settled underneath the covers. With her warm body pressed up against him, the rhythm of her heartbeat was an assurance of its own. A strange lullaby reminding him that they were here, they were together, and that they could do this.

They were going to make it.

They were going to win.

The last thing she remembered was hammering on the trigger of her pistol to trigger the explosion that would, in theory, save the galaxy. She was surprised to be aware again. She knew she was dead, there was no other option after that.

The afterlife was not at all like she was expecting. It was a lot like the nightmares she was having for months before, but it was also different. She knew it was different, knew it wasn't just a dream.

For one, there was no child. When the Catalyst took the form of the small boy she tried to help when the Reapers first arrived on Earth, she wondered if he had ever existed at all. Reapers did that - fuck with your mind, try to convince you to not destroy them. Her decision to destroy them never felt firmer than when she was face to face with a mind game. She was so tired of bullshit psychological manipulation, it only made her furious.

She didn't hesitate to blow up that tube.

The second difference from her nightmares was that her afterlife seemed like some mutated version of the Citadel, rather than an endless expanse of dying trees in an ever-repeating park. But it wasn't the Citadel like it was when she ran into that beam. No, it looked like the Citadel when she first came to it, back when it was just Saren and the Geth she was fighting. At first, it felt nostalgic, like home, or like a favorite vacation spot. Like she could point to a storefront and laugh as she said, “Look Garrus, do you remember the time we almost got blown up by an AI in the stock room there? Those were good times, I wish we had a pic.”

That illusion was shattered almost immediately. It was all false. It was empty.

Well, not empty. Those shades came back, very quickly. The ones of her friends that whispered her name, or repeated their final words to her. They filled the walkways, tormenting her with their faraway cries of “Shepard” and “Commander”. Anderson's voice was among them now, another stone weight of guilt in her belly, rendering her sluggish and confused.

The other thing about this Citadel was that it was wrong. After she spent some time wandering around, the halls contorted and changed just when she thought she found somewhere familiar she wanted to go see better. Maybe she was just too tired to see it right.

It wasn't fair that she was so exhausted, even in the afterlife. It definitely wasn't heaven, it was too cruel to be heaven. But it wasn't hell either. Or if it was, it wasn't as bad as she feared.

It wasn't good, though. The shades tormented her, they didn't respond to her attempts at communication. Her fingers moved through their vague shapes like smoke. One sounded like Thane, and she dropped to her knees to beg him to move on to his goddess's ocean, and found that no matter how the knot in her throat grew, she could not cry.

The shade didn't leave.

She was so alone there, and so tired.

Her only comfort was that none of the ghosts called her by her first name, and none sounded like him. She wasn't sure she would know if he died after her, but at least he wasn't among the one's she'd already lost.

Voices of her dead friends rang out around her.

“It’s the right choice, and you know it, Ash!”

“Had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

“Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness.”

“Shepard-Commander.”

“You did good, child. You did good. I'm proud of you.”

They wouldn't stop. Millions of whispers slithered into her mind constantly. They were so quiet, but she could hear nothing else. Please, God, she just wanted it to stop for just one minute. Hadn't she earned just one minute of fucking peace? She gave her life to try to stop everything ...

Ice gripped her lungs, and tears that couldn't come choked her. What if it hadn't worked?

It had to be hell she was in, she would know if it had worked otherwise.

Shepard began to run, she felt a desperate need to find anything real, anything fucking tangible. The Citadel construct was a cruel farce. Storefronts faded into solid walls as she drew near, she walked into an apartment building only for there to be more empty hallway on the other side of the door. Ramps that went up took her right back where she started. She thought. She couldn't be sure.

Everything there was so confusing, it never ended. She could have been walking for hours or lifetimes, she couldn't tell.

Her legs felt like they weighed hundreds of pounds, and her posture dropped, shoulders sagging and head hanging low. She couldn't keep moving. Couldn't keep searching.

For what?

She didn't even know. She should have been done looking for things now. She was dead.

Maybe if she just closed her eyes and slept for a little while, the afterlife would feel better. She slid down to the ground with a groan, laying in the middle of what was once a busy thoroughfare in Zakera Ward when she was still alive. It was so lonely there, now.

As her consciousness slipped away, she heard her first name.

“Helen.”

Stubborn.

If there was one word to describe Garrus Vakarian, it was stubborn. Being bullheaded landed him on the Normandy, and he wasn't about to stop being stubborn now.

Someone gave him the plaque with her name on it, to add to the memorial wall on the ship, but he just couldn't do it. It couldn't really be called optimism, no one had ever accused him of being an optimist, but there was absolutely no way that he was going to give Commander Helen Shepard up for dead until he saw her body for himself.

The rest of the crew seemed to agree with him.

Even as they mourned the loss of EDI, the entire crew threw themselves into repairing the ship. Commander Shepard wouldn't let something so simple as a small spaceship crash stop her from getting back in the fight, and neither would her crew. She never gave up on them, they sure as hell weren't going to give up on her.

Tali and the engineers helped get the drive core back online, while Garrus helped find workarounds for all of the systems that used to run through EDI's processors. Liara helped Traynor get communications back online, she picked up a lot of comm-tech expertise in her very brief time as the Shadow Broker. Ash and the rest of the crew helped to patch the old girl back up so that she was a space-faring vessel once again. And Joker put on a brave face and fixed all of the flight computers that he could in preparation for taking the long way back to Earth without the assistance of an AI.

Garrus hoped that EDI's memory core was still intact, maybe they could bring her back in some way. But their first priority was getting back to Earth. Everything else could be figured out from there. Hell, he'd even help.

Another thing that Garrus had never been accused of being was patient. Even with FTL speeds, the journey back to Earth took too much time. Too much time with too little information, and he started to descend into the what-ifs.

What if we can't make it back?

What if we run out of rations on the way?

What if she's dead?

No. No. He wasn't going to let himself think like that.

The closer they got to the Sol system, the more destruction they could see. It was so hard to keep holding onto that thin filament of hope. Like if he breathed to hard, it would blow it away forever, and that by losing that hope, it would ensure that she was dead.

No, if he had to sift through the wreckage of the Citadel himself, he was going to find her again.

He tried to distract himself as best as he could, but the longer it took, the harder it was to keep from going crazy. When they were still unable to make contact with Alliance Command, he nearly wrenched the QEC terminal from its housing. He paced so much that Dr. Chakwas cautioned him that he was going to re-injure his leg before it finished healing. He didn’t understand how everyone else was so calm.

Even if they could get to Earth at that very second, it wouldn’t be fast enough.

Spirits grant him some patience, he just needed to wait a little bit longer.

She woke up standing on the platform where she met her final decision, and her end. It was startling and confusing. The glass tube stood shattered before her, dangerous shards crunched beneath her feet as she cautiously moved around the platform.

In the open space around her, she could see the battle still. Only, it was stopped in time. Reaper lasers paused midstream, taunting the ships they would burn into nothing, just as surely as they were taunting her. More than one of the Alliance's ships was coming apart, pieces suspended in the vacuum of space when they should have kept moving forever, or until some other force acted upon them.

Like gravity.

It occurred to her that she didn't know if the Citadel was close enough to Earth to be brought into its orbit. Not that it mattered. This, again, was just another torment in her death. She was so close to seeing the results of her final act, but everything was just stopped.

“Helen, I'm here.”

It startled her, anxiety shot through her veins, dumping adrenaline directly into her heart. She looked around, searching for a shade or a body, or some proof that he didn't make it. But there was nothing, not even a half-hallucinated child program. She swore that his voice came from below her. Far below, somehow reaching up to her from the planet's surface.

“Please, Helen.”

Helen approached the edge of the platform and dropped to her hands and knees at the precipice. Her heart thundered in her ears, she was afraid that she'd go careening into space again. If she died in the afterlife, what would happen?

She looked over the edge. Earth looked so beautiful from up there, an impressionist painting of blues and greens. She could almost forget the ruin and desolation from her lofty perch. Her heart ached and she wanted to return. Shepard had only ever been to Earth on a couple of occasions. The most time she ever spent there was in a detention room crafted to try to make her forget that she was a prisoner.

The most memorable trip to the planet was the final push. A fiery, husk of a destroyed city, overrun by abominations and the dead. It was cruel that she could remember it.

Fuck, she wanted to cry, needed to cry. But she couldn't. The tears just wouldn't come, and it was so fucking distressing. Why wasn't this death followed by empty oblivion like the last one? Why was it like this now?

Oblivion was so much more preferable to this.

Shepard cried out, but the open space around her swallowed the noise. “Garrus,” she whispered. It was some relief that she could voice his name, even if she was alone there.

“I'm here. Come back. You can do it.”

”Garrus! I can hear you!“ Helen shouted at the top of her lungs, but it sounded only like a whisper. She stood up and turned around, desperate to see his face. She wanted him to still be alive, but if he was there in the afterlife, she didn't have to be alone. He'd always been there for her, through some of the worst things that had ever happened, to either of them. They could face this hell together.

But he wasn't there.

She stood alone among the shattered remains of the Catalyst, and a hopeless space battle frozen in time.

"Garrus, please! I can't find you!” she screamed up towards the heavens. Her voice broke through, no longer sounding like she was yelling under water. As she frantically ran from side to side, searching for a way to get down, her ears started ringing.

It was strange, after Cerberus rebuilt her, the old tinnitus had gone away. But now it was unbearably loud, screeching inside of her head.

“I'm here, Helen. It's okay. It's going to be okay.”

He had to be talking to her from Earth. She just knew it. Helen walked back to the edge and peered over the side. Her vision tunneled and vertigo threatened to send her tumbling over. Something like cold water filled her veins and her heart began to race again. She'd never had vertigo before.

She dropped to her knees and gripped the edge of the platform. She felt her nails splintering beneath her grip. “Garrus!” she called out over the edge, “Can you hear me? Please, I don't know how to get down!”

Shepard knew it didn't make any sense, but nothing else here made any sense. Her heart was beating so fast, the noise of her blood rushing in her ears was drowning out that horrible screeching in her head.

“Come back, please, Helen. I need you to come back.”

Garrus was pleading with her, and he sounded so fucking broken, and still, she could not cry. She just needed to be with him again, needed to not be on this stupid fucking platform anymore. This is hell, she decided. She wasn't able to outrun the devil after all.

Fuck it.

Helen Shepard never let something impossible stand in her way. She beat death before, and if this was what she had to deal with in death, she wasn't going to stand for it.

It was fitting that she was about to throw herself into lower orbit. It amused her to think that she might manage to die in the afterlife just like she'd died once before.

“I'm coming, Garrus,” she whispered and stood resolutely. Shepard walked several paces back towards the wreckage and turned to face the edge again.

Helen ran.

Her feet hit the shining metal platform like rolls of thunder, and her breath felt real, heavy in her lungs again as she dashed towards almost certain destruction. Panic tried to take over, freeze her muscles in place, make her hesitate, but she did not stop.

She leapt over the side

It was strangely comforting to her that hurtling through space was a familiar sensation. As her body fell, it was caught in the inexorable draw of gravity, hard and fast. Her body began to ache, pain bloomed from her joints and spread through her muscles. But she wasn’t suffocating like last time, not burning up.

The strangest sensation pinched at her right hand, and she tried to shake it off, but it wouldn’t go away. Her vision blurred, but she was moving so fast, hurtling towards Earth like a Commander Shepard shaped comet, she couldn’t really see anything anymore.

Tears burned hot on her cheeks. Finally. She’d never been more relieved to cry.

And then, everything went black.

That screeching in her ears was back, louder, but less in her head, and more next to it. Her awareness came hurtling back to her with all of the force of a bullet train. It was too much all at once. She opened her eyes and then slammed them shut, too bright. Her skin tingled and itched, and she’d only been aware of the sensation for seconds but it was already driving her crazy. She tried to form a word, but it came out as a tight groan. Her throat was so dry, she felt like she drank an entire desert’s worth of sand.

“I’m here,” he said again, only he was so much closer now. He was holding her hand.

Helen tried to sit up, but was so weak. Her body didn’t even get far enough to crash back into the hospital bed dramatically.

Hospital.

Helen was in a hospital. She was in a hospital, and Garrus was there with her. It couldn’t be heaven, because there was no way heaven would have hospitals. And it couldn’t be hell, because hell already tried to keep her away from him.

“Garrus!” she tried to shout it, in her heart and in her mind it was a jubilant cry, but even to her own ears, it was actually a pitiful croak. She braved opening her eyes again, and everything was so blurry, she began to panic. A hundred possibilities crossed her mind, messed up eyes from the explosion, faulty cybernetic processors, brain damage. All were likely, if she remembered what happened right. But as she blinked to try to focus, she realized she was still crying.

Helen raised her free hand to wipe the tears away, but found that it was … gone. Her right hand was gone. She stared at the place where it used to be dumbly, unable to process the visual information she was receiving.

“Helen, you’re awake,” Garrus nearly laughed. He sounded so relieved. His grip around her hand tightened. Helen lowered her arm, deciding that she could deal with the onslaught of feelings she had about the missing limb later. She turned to look at Garrus, and was relieved that her vision cleared enough to see him. Cobalt blue eyes greeted her, it was really him, not some horrible wisp of smoke. “How do you feel?”

“Like hell,” Helen started. Her hips burned, her head was pounding, the hand that wasn’t there ached, and she was distinctly aware of all of her remaining fingers and toes. Every last part of her just hurt. “Tired … confused,” she continued with a great deal of effort. “Thought I was dead.”

Garrus lifted her hand and very gently brought it to his mouth plates. “It was close, Helen. Too close.”

Helen exhaled and laid her head back against the too thin hospital pillow. It was almost too much just to be able to stay awake. “Garrus … did it work?”

“You did it. They’re really gone.”

Tears gathered in her eyes again, and began to slide down her cheeks and onto the pillow. They did it. Really did it. The impossible part was over. Fuck she was so tired.

She must have started to drift off, because Garrus began to rub the back of her hand with his thumb before he said, “Get some rest, Helen. You’ve earned it. I’m here with you, I’ll keep watch.”

Victory was complicated. The costs were astronomical. The recovery would be difficult and arduous.

But at least, for one time in so long she couldn’t even remember it, Helen slept soundly and without dreams, with the knowledge that she was safe with the one she loved.

[callista-curations]

Adrien "Daddy" Victus

i have a lot of feelings for him 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

SEND ME A CHARACTER AND I’LL DO THIS

Sexuality Headcanon: bi, absolute softie and pillow princess, doesn't have a kinky bone in his body

Gender Headcanon: cis

A ship I have with said character: Castis...

OK so like... Adrien's wife dies in the Reaper war, when he left Palaven for Menae she refused to join him and she ended up dying there, it was HARD on him (and on Castis too). He ends up marrying again after the war and having a daughter, but it doesn't last, it's too much of a political/trophy marriage (and he's kinda swooning over Castis all the time) and they divorce.

The daughter stays with him, but because of his work Castis also helps take care of her, by the time she's around 10 she's absolutely latched on to the feelings her father has for Castis and gives them the shock of the lifetime when she asks why they aren't together.

A BROTP I have with said character: GARRUS GARRUS GARRUS GARRUS

A NOTP I have with said character: None really

A random headcanon: Always was strongly critical of the treatment of turian biotics, in middle school he had a girlfriend who was a biotic. Looks up to Saren a lot.

General Opinion over said character: He's a sweetheart with too many good intentions, the universe is just hard on him.

[gefionne]

Fic first lines!

Thanks for the tag @thenookienostradamus

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written fewer than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway.

Celestial Motion - Zuko/Katara - ATLA Moonlight made the water a ribbon of silver: a shimmering cursive trail from the tips of slender fingers.

Stars and Skies Light Our Way - Jaal/Evfra - Mass Effect: Andromeda Invaders—enterprising aliens, if he was being generous—had brought miserable customs to Heleus, his home, which he had fiercely defended since boyhood.

Echoes of You and Me - Buffy/Spike - BtVS Buffy had done the “drown your sorrows in the bottom of a bottle” thing before—mostly at Willy’s, where the Slayer wasn’t going to be refused service—and she could have done it again tonight, but after the gang (memories restored) had gone their separate ways from the Magic Box, she’d chosen the counter at the Bronze, where she could get the usual cappuccino or virgin cocktails.

Marking Time By Your Side - Garrus/FemShep - Mass Effect Catch Widow’s dwarf star at exactly the right time, its meager luminosity filtering through wispy gasses of the Serpent Nebula, and it would cast the office in dreamlike shades of purple and blush.

5. All Roads Lead to You - Alistair/F!Brosca - Dragon Age Lightning spiked through the cloud-covered sky, snapping tendrils illuminating the sucking mud of the path ahead.

6. Who But Lovers and Soldiers Endure - FemShep/Adrien Victus - Mass Effect At the edge of the horizon, a Reaper made its slow, lethal progress, ground-shaking steps an awful accompaniment to watching Palaven burn.

7. Comrades in Arms - FemShep/Adrien Victus - Mass Effect On the day she’d met him on battle-torn Menae—his sleek armor piped with red and his elaborate white facial markings stark against the gloom of the moon’s night—Adrien Victus had said that war was in his bones.

8. Commander Royale - Gen - Mass Effect Dressing up Dark Star with crystal chandeliers, gilt garlands, and red carpets for the high-rollers couldn’t mask the reek of stale smoke and dinginess of a Wards casino.

9. Gold Don't Shine Like You - Cobb Vanth/Din Djarin - The Mandalorian They say the heat of one sun on a desert flat makes for mirages so real they’ll trick the even sharpest man.

10. What Comes Without a Price - Kylux - SW:ST Trespassing on a mind was never gentle, the Force a cruel intrusion that elicited agonized cries and left the subject limp and aching.

I tag @modernmythic and @sombredelanuit and anyone else who wants to do it!

[theanimangagirl]

So, Victus mentions on how Garrus always spoke very highly of Shepard...makes me think he literally didn't shut up about Shepard on either Palaven nor Menae...

Kinda like

[shepgarrus]

On Menae, a few months into the Reaper War, Garrus is getting some work done and all of a sudden he hears Turians making noise like they're a bunch of hormonal teens

Garrus: ?????

Shepard: *appears*

Garrus, internally: oh, that's why

ASLKFHSAKLFHAS when the war starts he's on menae fighting and he starts hearing Horny Subvocals over the comms when people near Corinthus speak

Garrus: ?????

Garrus, upon arriving at the base where Corinthus is: *sees Shepard*

Garrus: *joining in the subvocal choir* Ahhh, that's why.

[wrymbloods]

Good to see you again. I thought you'd be on Palaven.

[albinoshepard]

N7 Month: DAY #021 - Struggle

Shepard: General Victus, you're needed off the planet. I've come to get you.

Victus: It will take something beyond important for me to abandon my turian brothers and sisters in their fight.

Garrus: Fedorian was killed, you're the new Primarch.

Shepard: You're needed immediately to chair a summit and represent your people in the fight against the Reapers.

Victus: I'm Primarch of Palaven? Negotiating for the turian hierarchy?

Shepard: Yes.

Victus: I've spent my whole life in the military. I'm no diplomat. I hate diplomats.

Shepard: War is your resume. At a time like this, we need leaders who've been through that hell.

Victus: I like that, you're right.

Shepard: And honestly, uniting these races may take as much strength as facing the Reapers. - See this devastation Primarch? Double that for Earth. I need an alliance. I need the turian fleet.

Victus: Give me a moment to say goodbye to my men.

[shepardluvsgarrus]

Reapers on Menae

I don't know why, but I find the Reapers strangely beautiful to look at.

[diekaduwee]

For the few who have had the privilege of seeing Earth from space, they have often described it as singular spiritual and humbling moment, incomparable to anything else. While regular space travel might take the edge of I imagine seeing your home planet from space for the first time is still one of the most important events of your life. When the Reapers sets fires that can be seen from the moon, they aren't just burning your planet, they are also burning your soul.

[dragonflight203]

Mass Effect 3, exploring and Priority: Palaven:

-Broadly speaking, many planetary descriptions are the same as they are in ME1 or ME2. Some have minor differences.

It’s disappointing. The descriptions have always been an excellent opportunity for world building and ME3 barely utilizes them.

Harsa

-Khar’shan – It’s implied that the reign of the Hegemony is over. Whatever the future may bring, the batarian government will be different.

It’ll be interesting to see if the next Mass Effect game holds to that or not.

Annos Basin

-Sur’kesh – The salarians avoid overpopulation by careful breeding rules.

I suspect part of their frustration with the krogan is the krogan’s refusal to do the same. After all, both species lay eggs. If the salarians can maintain a steady population, why not the krogan?

I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but the salarians likely consider those bits irrelevant.

-The salarians are noted as an amphibious species.

Trebia

-The turians classifying information about their moons is amusing. I’m sure records already existed in other species’ systems; did classifying them actually accomplish anything?

Also, how hard is the information to refind? We calculate information about solar bodies that we will never reach in our time. Surely doing so for Palaven’s moons is even easier when you can just swing by a mass relay to observe them first hand.

-Menae – Shepard has no dialogue choices on the shuttle but speaks plenty.

I don’t plan to mention this every time it comes up, but the lack of control of Shepard in this game is grating.

-The turians are under attack and scraping by, so of course Shepard will loot multiple weapons and mods. I’m sure they won’t mind.

-Speaking of, the interaction sensitivity in ME3 is turned down way too much. You have to get very close to an item for it to alert you. The sensitivity in ME2 was much better.

-You should be able to speak to General Corinthus after the initial dialogue with him.

He could provide a lot of additional information and lore on the turian military and current situation. Huge missed opportunity by Bioware.

-Why are the primary enemies husks?

The Reapers are actively fighting the turians. Palaven is right there. We should primarily be fighting marauders.

-You get no additional information on what Taetrus is or why Victus was there, so if you’ve never read up on the Cerberus Network screw you. Figure it out by context.

I’m actually okay with that part – Shepard should know what Taetrus is. However, Bioware could easily have tweaked the dialogue to make it more clear for players and should have added a codex entry on the Taetrus war.

-I’m puzzled at why Victus’ actions on Taetrus are considered so radical.

He let the separatists and the salarians wear each other out, then swooped in and took both out.

Isn’t that what Palaven did during the unification wars?

Palaven remained neutral, let the colonies wear themselves out fighting each other, then swooped in and forced them to make peace and rejoin the Hierarchy.

If anything, Victus’ actions should be considered traditional.

-What’s the point of sending Liara back to the Normandy because it’s behaving strangely?

She’s not an engineer. She’s not even especially good with technology. She sent Shepard to hack those terminals in ME2 on Illium because they’re better at it than her.

I suppose that after the Collectors invaded the Normandy in ME2 it’s not unreasonable for everyone to be a bit jumpy and want a strong fighter on the ship.

-How do the turians feel about Garrus so easily falling in line with Shepard?

He’s clearly high ranking now, but he recognizes Shepard as a superior and accepts their orders.

Sure, Shepard’s a spectre and a war hero but that must still seem strange.

-As many have said, the image of Victus facing Palaven as he processes that he’s the primarch now is powerful.

-On the way to Victus, James mentions the lack of batarians and krogans at the war summit. They should be there as strong fighters.

The batarians are out of the picture because the Hegemony is effectively destroyed. The krogans hate turians and salarians and therefore won’t attend.

Then Victus immediately says the krogans will be needed.

Good foreshadowing on Bioware’s part, and Victus has already been established as a loose canon so it feels natural.

-What is Garrus’ title while he’s on the Normandy with Shepard?

He continues to be Victus’ advisor so there’s presumably some formal arrangement between the Hierarchy and Alliance that Shepard doesn’t care about.

Ambassador? Seconded? Detached?

Normandy

-Hackett acknowledges that everything he does is just a delaying action to build the Crucible. The war will not be won head on.

-Once again, the dangers of building the Crucible when nobody knows what it does is raised. However, there aren’t any better options so build it it is.

And they wonder why the other species are reluctant to join in?

-Hackett says that Cerberus does not have humanity’s best interests at heart.

Considering that Arrival is supposed to be played last in ME2 and it ends with Hackett saying that at least Cerberus is doing something about the state of the galaxy, that’s quite a turn around.

It feels like the writer of ME2 and ME3 were working from different scripts. Which is bizarre, because they’re mostly the same writers.

-Shepard mentions that TIM wants to control the Reapers. Hackett dismisses it; the war will end with dead reapers.

This is what I mean by the endings are not a natural extension of the game. This is the perfect opportunity to hint that Control might be viable – either by Hackett suggesting that TIM might be on the right track or Shepard pushing back that they think it may work.

But the way the scene plays out, Control is treated as failure state. Of course players reject it as valid choice. The game tells them it isn’t one.

Codex

-The Codex says that Reaper capital ships are created from one species each cycle.

It also says the Reapers have lost multiple capital ships this cycle.

That must be extremely heavy losses for them.

-The entry for krogan ancient history mentions Kalros to explain why krogan architecture can withstand vibrations despite Tuchanka not having many earthquakes.

Once again, good foreshadowing by Bioware. This is mentioned well in advance of Priority: Tuchanka.

-Why is Garrus referred to as a combat engineer? He’s an infiltrator.