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[normandysbest]

DW username: spacespecs
E-Mail: alexgalef@gmail.com
IM: AIM: keysmashFTW
Plurk: cancerously
Other Characters: Alphys / sciencelizard

Character Name: Commander Shepard
Series: Mass Effect
Timeline: Mass Effect 3; After all DLC but before the assault on Earth
Canon Resource Link: Here’s the wiki, but since Shepard is the main character you may also need the list of plot missions to help supplement. Also, here’s her world state with her version of the key decisions of the games and backstory customization options. I’ve included all of these in the history section but these are the best points of reference.

Character History: My deepest, deepest apologies mods, this is going to be long as hell. The point in canon in which I’m taking her from is the end of a trilogy of games and Shepard is the main character, so I'm covering 150+ hours of playtime. In an attempt to make this slightly shorter, I’ll hotlink things where available (i.e. places, alien species, other universe-specific conlang necessary to understanding) as not to break the narrative too much, and I’m leaving out anything that doesn’t have to do with Shepard’s direct story, i.e. character-specific and loyalty sidequests. Additionally, whenever Shepard is mentioned it can be assumed she has 2 squadmates along with her; while these change mission to mission, the narrative treats it as if every squadmate was there every time for the flow of the story.

Shepard was born in the year 2154 on Mindoir, a small farming colony on a planet in the middle of nowhere, to a peaceful family and tight-knit human community. She grew up happy, healthy, and in the presence of a completely normal life, all things considered. Nothing was expected of her, and her future looked simple- tend the farm, get married, have a few kids, and die. Small, short, and simple. Of course the universe had other, more bloody plans. At the age of 16, Batarian slavers attacked Mindoir and, whether through luck or circumstance, Shepard is one of the only people to survive when Alliance military forces intervene. She’s dumped into the foster care system on Earth, and spends two tremulous years with an overworked social worker; on her 18th birthday, she marches into the nearest military recruitment center, slams her hands on the desk, and demands to be taken back into space.

She spends the majority of her next 4 years in military training- first in basic, then invited to prestigious N-class training for special operations, and then through the first 6 ranks into active combat. She’s sorted early on by specialty towards sniping- she’s good at staying quiet, unnoticed on the battlefield, and she’s surprisingly got better aim through a scope than she does at close range. Her higher-ups also give her commendations on her skills in hand-to-hand combat, and she does have quite the affinity for just beating people with the sniper rifle if they get too close. It all culminates during a bit of shore leave in 2176, on the human colony of Elysium. During her stay, batarian slavers attacked the colony as a rebuttal for humanity’s expansion into the Skyllian Verge, and Shepard vowed that they weren’t going to get away with it a second time. Rallying the colonists and locals, delegating weaponry and positions, and by holding the line when the barriers broke single-handedly, the Batarian threat was repelled- without a single human casualty. Dubbed the Skyllian Blitz, Shepard is elevated to the top rank of N7, is given the Star of Terra and is widely regarded as humanity’s hero. She continued to work within the Alliance for the next 7 years, jumping from mission to mission and doing what was necessary as it became apparent.

Finally, in 2183, Shepard is approached by an old friend and SO, Commander Anderson, with a position on a brand-new state of the art frigate, the SSV Normandy. Their shakedown run is meant to take them to a small human colony on Eden Prime, to pick up a recently uncovered Prothean artifact, a species wiped out over 50,000 years ago whose advances were responsible for most of the technology currently used in the universe. What should have been a simple shakedown becomes a scouting mission for theCitadel Councilto evaluate Shepard for their elite special forces, the Spectres, with a Turian named Nihlus. Naturally, everything goes completely fucking wrong- Nihlus is killed by a former friend and fellow Spectre, Saren, there to steal the Beacon with the help of a previously thought extinct AI race, the Geth. When Shepard attempts to recover the beacon, she loses a member of her squad, and barely makes it to the artifact first with the help of gunnery chief Ashley Williams, whose squad was on patrol when the geth came to attack. When she and her squad attempt to recover it, one of her squadmates, human staff lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, accidentally activates it- and in getting him to safety, Shepard get sucked in to the Beacon’s pull. It shows her a scrambled vision of an incoming war set to wipe out all life in the galaxy, at the hands of a unknown race called the Reapers. When Shepard wakes up again, she’s back on the Normandy, en route to the Citadel to meet with the Council to discuss the Beacon, Saren’s betrayal, and Nihlus’ death.

Of course, upon getting there, the Council sets the precedent for the rest of the series by not believing Shepard in the least, and blaming her for the failure on Eden Prime. After a wild goose chase runaround on the Citadel, Shepard manages to acquire proof Saren is working with the Geth and has turned against the Council, from a Quarian who Shepard rescues from a mob boss. The Council convinced, they appoint Shepard as the first human Spectre- with her first task being the capture of Saren. The saved quarian, Tali’zorah vas Neema, asks to accompany Shepard, along with turian Garrus Vakarian and krogan Urdnot Wrex, who assisted in securing and saving Tali while trying to prove Saren’s crime. Finally, Anderson hands over the Normandy to Shepard- she’s now its captain and commander, and this mission is hers. While the Council doesn’t believe Shepard about the supposed reaper threat, they do ask her to take down Saren, using any means necessary.

Tracking down Saren takes Shepard to a multitude of different locations, but most notably three planets- Thereum, Noveria, and Feros. Thereum brings asari archeologist Liara T’Soni, daughter of Matriarch Benezia, one of Saren’s known associates, while Noveria and Feros both have recorded geth activity for investigation. Shepard starts by picking up Liara, saving her from her dig site when it becomes overrun by mercenaries and geth sent to eliminate her. Liara completes Shepard’s squad, and offers her help for Shepard to understand the beacon’s vision, by utilizing an Asari mind-melding ability. After her initial recovery, Liara tells Shepard that the message is still muddled, but agrees that it’s a warning of something dangerous to come.

Heading next to the icy world of Noveria, Shepard discovers Matriarch Benezia is currently at a research outpost outside of the main landing zone, but they have lost contact with the base. Though Shepard is delayed left and right by Saren’s forces, she finally reaches the outpost, only to find the scientists there have been doing illegal genetic experimentation on a race thought dead, the rachni, a bug-like race who were eliminated after attempting to take over the galaxy over 2000 years ago. Fighting her way through the labs and restoring functionality to the base, she finds her way into the labs, where even the security force keeping the place on lockdown tries to kill her, being under employ of Benezia. Finally, Shepard tracks her down in a secret lab- Saren and Benezia are breeding and creating workers from the last Rachni Queen, to create an army of canon fodder. Benezia attacks, despite Liara’s protests, but once her commando squad is defeated she immediately changes her tone, revealing she’s being mind controlled. She warns Shepard that Saren is not the real threat- that his base of operations, a massive warship named Sovereign, “warps the wills” of those aboard until they follow him. She apologizes for losing herself, and gives Shepard a copy of the data Saren came for, giving a clue as to where Saren is heading. Unfortunately, Benezia loses lucidity fast, and Shepard goes to kill her, but is stopped by Liara, who takes the shot instead, mourning the loss of her mother. Finally, it comes down to the issue of the rachni queen, kept bottled in the lab. She explains that her species is nonviolent and the lab-created rachni were ‘mindless’, and promises to live in peace and silence if Shepard will let her live. In the end, Shepard decides she can’t be responsible for the genocide of an entire species, and allows her to survive, jettisoning her pod into space and sending it to an uncharted planet.

During a routine stop back to the Citadel after Noveria, Shepard is confronted with a request from Anderson. A ship of batarian slavers was taken down lately, and as it turns out, many of the slaves were captured from Mindoir. One had escaped, gotten a gun, and was planning to kill herself or anyone who approached on the docking bay. Shepard was asked to help talk the girl down so she could be given psychological help. Shepard agreed, shedding herself of her armor and guns before tenderly approaching and sharing details of her own pain of losing her family to get the girl not to harm herself. When she finally agreed to take the medicine Shepard brought to get her to sleep, Shepard carried the girl herself back to safety, making sure she would be taken care of.

Finally heading to Feros, Shepard came across the main site, a small colony called Zhu’s Hope. The colony was sponsored by the ExoGeni company, a genetics company with a nearby laboratory studying the extensive Prothean ruins on the planet. When Shepard arrives, she finds the colonists hiding in a downed freighter, barely keeping the Geth crawling through the ruins at bay, saying their communications are jammed because of a transmitter in a nearby tower. Shepard clears through the geth to destroy the transmitter, and then heads into the tunnels to help the colony get food, water, power, and rid of the geth. Despite getting the colony up and running, the colonists are acting suspicious, and their leader, Fai Dan, is acting squirrely about colony details or any personal details. After Shepard finds a wayward colonist, screaming in pain, in the tunnels, she’s still brushed off by Fai Dan, saying he’s “damaged” and “deranged”. Shepard decides to fight her way through the geth to the company headquarters, to try and determine what the geth are looking for; in the process, she loses the ability to contact the Normandy due to a signal jammer from the geth main ship. Halfway there, Shepard uncovers the ExoGeni workers hiding in a weigh station, and finally breaks into ExoGeni Headquarters, where she finds out about a being called The Thorian. The Thorian is a massive, ancient, plant-like being that has infected the colonists with spores and turned them into it’ thralls- all while ExoGeni watched and experimented on them, all without their knowledge. After dispatching the geth dropship from ExoGeni tower, Shepard is able to contact the Normandy, where her pilot Joker says the ship is under attack from the colonists. Shepard, disgusted at the manipulation of the colony, she drives back to where the ExoGeni employees are to try and find a solution. After gunning down their head, a selfish man named Jeong who tries to kill Shepard when she mentions trying to save the colony, the workers agree the colonists will attack, and Shepard, not wanting to kill any of them, asks for a better solution. Shepard is given a modified nerve gas she can use in her grenades to paralyze the colonists, so she can find her way to the Thorian’s nest beneath the colony. Shepard fights her way back to the colony, and then manages to disable every colonist on the way to the lair- with the exception of Fai Dan, who shoots himself against the Thorian’s orders rather than kill Shepard. Heading into the Thorian’s lair, it creates an Asari clone, who tells Shepard that Saren came to deal with the Thorian because the Thorian, having been alive since Prothean times, has something called the Cipher that will allow Shepard to understand the Beacon’s vision. Saren traded the asari seen in exchange for the Cipher and for the Thorian’s safety, but Saren attacked, so the Thorian is unwilling to make any deals with Shepard and attacks. Forcing her hand, Shepard climbs the towers the Thorian is suspended between, and shooting down its nodes and tentacles, causes it to drop thousands of feet into the abyss below. When Shepard reaches the top, she rescues the original asari in question- Shiala, a follower of Benezia’s, who gives Shepard the Cipher to understand the beacon’s vision. She also mentions that Saren thinks Shepard is also chasing after something called the Conduit, the thing he is apparently also searching for. Bringing Shiala back to the colony, she agrees to help the colonists re-establish a life here, and the colony is saved.

Upon making it back to the Normandy, Liara tries to help Shepard make sense of the vision with the Cipher, but there are still pieces missing. Shepard is re-contacted by the Council with one more lead- a small tropical world called Virmire, where a salarian team sent out a garbled distress signal claiming to have some information about Saren. Fighting her way through by tank to the research site, it turns out Saren has supposedly found a cute for the genophage, a biological weapon used against the Krogan in a previous war, rendering the species as a whole almost completely infertile; he’s using it to breed an army of krogan. The Salarian commander, Kirrahe, insists on its destruction, and Wrex is immediately angry at the idea- Shepard has to talk him down and use his trust in her to get him back on her side, before he’s gunned down as a danger to the crew. When everything is resolved, Shepard and Kirrahe create a diversion plan to take down the facility- Kirrahe taking his men and one of your squadmates to create a diversion at the front, and having your team sneak in the back. Both Kaidan and Ashley volunteer, and Shepard selects Kaidan to go with the salarians to provide backup. Gunning her way with the rest of her squad through the base, Shepard finds Saren’s private laboratory and discovers a terrible secret – the ship Saren has been using, Sovereign, isn’t just a ship, but actually a Reaper. Reapers, through their presence, are able to indoctrinate people to their ideals, explaining how Benezia was coerced and revealing that the plan has been Sovereign’s all along, using Saren as a tool to herald in the Reaper’s return and the end of organic life in the galaxy. They also confirm that the Protheans were not the first life in the galaxy, but the most recent in a series of cycles in which the Reapers will wipe out organic life when it becomes too advanced. Fleeing the lab, Shepard is contacted by Joker and told Sovereign has set its sights on the facility, and that they need to destroy it before it comes directly to kill her, now that it knows she knows their plan. Meeting with the Normandy, Ashley brings out the Salarian ship’s drive core that’s been converted into a nuclear bomb. The plan is to arm it, pick up the rest of the Salarian group when they meet in the middle, and detonate from orbit. However, everything goes wrong- Kaidan calls and says the Salarian team is pinned down at the AA tower, but as soon as Shepard heads to get them, Ashley calls back from the bomb saying they are being attacked. Shepard realizes she can only help one of them- and with the bomb already armed, there won’t be enough time to go back for whoever she leaves behind. With a heavy heart and deep sorrow, she goes back to save Ashley and ensure the bomb can detonate. Shepard heads back to the bomb site, and is greeted by Saren himself, who attacks. While they fight, Shepard tries to convince him of his indoctrination, and get him to stand down, but Saren insists the best way to survive the oncoming invasion is to serve the Reapers, and that he has made himself useful while all Shepard does is destroy. The geth follow him because they believe the Reapers are the ultimate machine race-that the Reapers are gods, and the paradigm of inorganic life. Shepard finally drives him back, but it’s too late- by the time everyone makes it on the ship, the bomb is already detonating, and Kaidan dies while the Normandy speeds away.

Despite her grief, Shepard presses on, and with Liara’s help they are able to determine the location of the vision- a small planet called Ilos, which is undoubtedly Saren’s destination. However, before they can head there, the Council calls them back, and grounds the Normandy- they have decided that the Reapers are a myth Saren has created to distract from his plan to destroy the Citadel and that finding out what the Conduit is doesn’t matter. With help from Anderson, Shepard is able to regain control of the Normandy and speeds to Ilos to stop Saren. Plowing through the Prothean ruins to beat Saren down, Shepard finds her way to an old Prothean VI, that, through utilizing the Cipher in her brain along with the Beacon’s information, she is able to understand as a distress signal. After using the information to open the bunker Saren had barricaded himself in, Shepard runs the Mako down into the Archives, where she is stopped by a barrier- when she gets out to investigate, she meets Vigil, a Prothean AI over 50,000 years old. Vigil reveals some damning news- the Citadel is actually a gigantic Mass Relay, the technology Protheans supposedly invented for faster-than-light travel, and it will allow the Reapers to come through from dark space and eliminate all organic life. Sovereign was only the advance scout to the oncoming hoard. The Conduit, in the end, is a prototype mass relay and back-door to the Citadel. Vigil also reveals that this facility on Ilos was top-secret, but by the time the Reapers retreated there was only enough power to have saved 12 scientists- they built the Conduit so the next cycle would be able to defeat the Reapers before they took the Citadel. Finally, Vigil gives her a disruption cycle that will allow her to stop the Citadel’s transmissions to let the Reapers through, and tells her that Saren hasn’t yet reached the Conduit, and she is the galaxy’s last hope. Galvanized and more than a little bit worried, Shepard rushes back to the Mako, drives it at top speed right into the Conduit, and slams into the atrium of the Citadel, which is already being overtaken by geth. Fighting her way through the broken-down space station, through an elevator shaft and up onto the outside, she one-woman armies her way into reactivating the outside canons with her squad, to keep Sovereign busy and the geth running in circles while she dropped into the Council chambers to deactivate the relay.

When she makes it into the room, Saren is already there, programming the Reaper’s entrance through the Citadel’s relay. Saren tries to convince Shepard to join the Reapers’ side, saying he’s been outfitted with implants and is now fully under Sovereign’s control. Shepard begs him to give it up, to believe in the organic’s side, and Saren reveals that Sovereign gave him the implants because he couldn’t stop thinking about what Shepard had said about him being indoctrinated on Virmire. Shepard screams to Saren to resist the implants, and when Saren says he can’t, he mentions there’s one thing he can do, and raises his pistol to his face and shoots himself in the head, plummeting into the atrium below. Shepard rushes to the control panel, inputting Vigil’s data file and opening up the Citadel, allowing attack of the Reaper and shutting down the relay’s call. She’s relayed a distress call from the Council’s warship, the Destiny Ascension, demanding Alliance forces protect it as it tries to escape; Shepard takes her chances with attacking the Reaper instead, and the Ascension is lost, killing the Council. As the entirety of the human fleet fires down upon Sovereign, Shepard jumps down into the atrium, to confirm Saren is dead- but just as she turns her back on the body, Saren’s outer flesh is stripped away, and the implant skeleton, being controlled by Sovereign, attacks. Shepard barely takes it down, but when it turns to dust, Sovereign releases its grip on the station, powerless, and the Normandy’s missiles tear Sovereign apart. The resulting debris crash into the Council chambers, and Shepard is struck, passing out in the wreckage.

When Shepard comes to, it’s just in time to see Anderson getting her squad out of the wreckage, and helps her into the presidium atrium, and she gives her support to Anderson to run the new council, much to the dismay of human representative, Udina. But for the time being, it’s over- a new council is being assembled, humanity has earned its place at its head, and Shepard can get some rest.

...Sort of, because that’s only the first game.

As soon as she’s able to be back up and running, Shepard gets back on the Normandy with her crew, searching out pockets of geth resistance. While some of her squad splinters off to return to their homeworlds, or continue on their individual missions, most stay to help Shepard finish the fight. After 3 months of finding geth, the Normandy is lured into a trap- a massive, massive ship appears, cutting through the Normandy like butter. In the evacuation, Shepard stays behind on the splintering ship to rescue the pilot, Joker- he has an extremely brittle bone disease and wouldn’t leave the ship going down. Shepard drags him from his seat, determined to save his life, but only he has time to make it to the escape pod- the ship breaks apart, Shepard’s air tube gets cut, and she whizzes off into space, gasping for breath. Eventually, she suffocates to death, body plummeting in her hardsuit to the nearby planet’s surface.

This would be the end of the story for most people, but you’ve probably gathered that Shepard is not Most People by this point. She comes to, groggily, in a laboratory with a voice calling her name over the speakers- the facility has been compromised, and she needs to get out, despite still being injured. Weakened but not out, Shepard finds a pistol and fights her way through the unknown facility, eventually finding a security officer, Jacob Taylor, who explains what happened. Shepard has been dead for two years, and in that time was brought back to life by a pro-human organization called Cerberus in an experiment known as the Lazarus Project. She’s now outfitted with a cybernetic skeleton and incredible combat enhancements, including a biotic amp and military plane-grade cloaking technology for temporary invisibility. However, before Shepard could heal fully from the procedure, the facility was attacked, and here she was. Shepard didn’t have time to think before she and Jacob had to fight their way out, making it to the escape shuttle with the help of a staff scientist. When they reach the shuttle, however, a woman appears and shoots the scientist down- she identifies him as the origin of the coup, and introduces herself as Miranda Lawson, the head of the Lazarus Project and responsible for bringing Shepard back to life. Getting the three of them into a shuttle and off the station as it collapses, Miranda explains that they’re going to see Shepard’s new boss, the Illusive Man, where he can tell her about her mission.

When Shepard finally meets him, he’s only available through holographic projection, and he tells her they revived her perfectly to save humanity again. She’ll now be working for Cerberus, investigating the disappearance of thousands of people throughout tons of human colonies. Her first quest is to a little colony called Freedom’s Progress, one of the most recent colonies to be attacked, as a test run for Shepard. Upon reaching it, the colony is abandoned- searching through meets her with reactivated combat mechs, and finally, Tali’zorah, there on a mission to retrieve a quarian on his pilgrimage travel. With Tali’s help, they manage to get through to the quarian, Veetor, where Shepard makes sure he goes with Tali instead of Cerberus, despite the information he could provide about the abduction. Tali, however, will not rejoin Shepard- Cerberus is pro-human, but is often anti-alien, and she could not trust that Shepard hadn’t turned on her. The information they do gather, however, shows a species called Collectors stealing the humans from the colonies- and taking them back to their home, beyond the Omega 4 Relay, from which no non-collector ship has ever returned. Parting ways, Shepard meets with the Illusive Man one more time, where he gives her a prepared list of teammates she may want to recruit, to be able to tackle the issue of the missing colonists once and for all. Shepard digs at him for information on her previous squad and friends, but he has few answers, and continues to push Shepard to move forward. As a final show of goodwill, Shepard is greeted by Joker, who joined Cerberus after Shepard’s death, and a new Normandy- the SR2- upgraded and better than ever to helm her mission. On top of it all, the SR-2 is manned by an advanced wartime AI named EDI, who now helps control the ship from her AI core in the back of the medical bay.

Shepard heads first to a lawless world known as Omega to speak to an asari named Aria T’Loak, local crime lord and self-proclaimed ‘ruler’ of the planet, who points her towards her first two dossiers: a turian named Archangel, a vigilante hero trying to fight the crime of the planet, and a salarian named Mordin Solus, an ex-military doctor running a clinic in the middle of a quarantine zone for a self-made plague. Mordin ends up easy to convince once the plague is contained and the people healed, after Shepard fought through the local gang wars to disperse the cure, and Archangel turns out to be Garrus, having gone rogue years ago and tried to do good in a lawless galaxy. Once Shepard saves him from the local gangs out to kill him for taking down their kingpins, Garrus is recruited, but not after taking a missile directly to the face and getting an incredibly nasty scar. In her first wave, she picks up four more squadmates- Zaeed Massani, human bounty hunter; Kasumi Goto, master thief; Jack, biotic prisoner and convict; and Grunt, a tank-bred krogan designed for perfection by an ancient warlord. Along the way, Shepard also makes it back to the Citadel to see Anderson, who is happy to see her alive, and getting her spectre status reinstated- despite the Council having been replaced after Shepard ‘caused’ the other Council’s death, they do believe she is fighting the good fight, and since she’s operating primarily in the Terminus Systems, she’s mostly outside of Council-ruled space and their jurisdiction anyway. Shepard is also taking the time to speak and meet her squad- she doesn’t want to admit it, but being brought back from the dead knocked her more than she wanted to admit, and it became important to her to talk to others and try to remind herself she was, in fact, still human.

After collecting those squadmates, she receives an urgent call from the Illusive Man to a colony on a planet called Horizon where an abduction is in process. If Shepard can defeat the Collectors there, they may be able to stop more humans from being abducted. As they learned on Freedom’s Progress, the Collectors use a type of insect with a paralyzing agent to stop the humans from escaping, and Mordin had been working on a countermeasure- Horizon is the test, and it works. They’re able to fight their way through Horizon and meet Harbinger, a force that possesses Collector grunts to taunt Shepard on the field. Finally, at the end, the Collectors are forced to leave with only 1/3rd of the human population- but Shepard is confronted by Ashley, still with the Alliance, and shocked to see Shepard alive. She’s distrustful of Shepard, believing she is being controlled by Cerberus; Ashley reveals she was there following up on a tip that Cerberus themselves were behind the Collector attacks. She won’t listen to any of Shepard’s defenses and storms off, disbelieving of Shepard’s loyalties. Shepard, feeling like she just lost a friend for the second time, returns to the Normandy, pushing forward to prove her innocence and finish this mission. She doesn’t want to be part of Cerberus and never signed up for it, but she won’t let these abductions go unanswered, and she won’t leave these people to be hurt. Lashing out at the Illusive Man for publicizing Shepard’s “loyalty” to Cerberus, he reveals he lured the collectors to Horizon so they could gather more intel. Hurt by the Illusive Man’s lackadaisical view on the colonist’s lives, Shepard surges forward with her mission, determined to finish this as fast as possible.

Next, Shepard goes about collecting three new squadmates- Samara, an asari justicar searching the galaxy for her daughter; Tali’zorah, who upon being rescued from another mission, believes Shepard now that she can explain her cause and agrees to join; and Thane Krios, a drell master assassin. She also begins to gain the trust of her teammates through helping them solve personal missions- she assists in getting Miranda’s sister to safety after her birth father tries to abduct her from her foster family, and helps Jacob find his father who he thought had died in a ship crash years ago. (Note: see Shepard’s World State for more details on the outcome of these missions; for simplicity’s sake, I won’t be detailing them all here because it would double the size of this already behemoth of a backstory. The important thing to note is that these missions were completed because Shepard cares about her team, and that every squadmate is loyal to her- not to Cerberus- by the end. More details on individual loyalty missions can be found here, with the character's name before the title of each one.)

Partway through completing loyalty missions, Shepard receives another call from the Illusive Man- he’s gotten a tip from a turian patrol that they have disabled a Collector ship, and it lays, inert in space, where Shepard can go on board and figure out what the Collectors are planning. Additionally, EDI informs her that the ship matches the signature of the ship that attacked Horizon, possibly promising the rescuing of the colonists. Despite the danger, Shepard takes the risk and boards the ship with her squad. However, it doesn’t take long to find new revelations- scans of a dead Collector reveal that Collectors share the same DNA as Protheans, meaning the species are the same. Shepard also picks up the Widow Anti-Material Rifle, aka the Best Sniper Rifle Ever, which Shep nicknames “The Ass Destroyer” because what else would you name a rifle that shoots slugs so violently it would break a lesser, non-cybernetically boned person’s arm? You don’t. You name it the Ass Destroyer and it’s great.

Continuing through the Collector ship, EDI pings Shepard again to tell her this is also the same ship that destroyed the SR1 and was responsible for Shepard’s death- as she announces this, Shepard steps into the atrium of the ship, revealing possibly millions of pods designed to hold humans- the collectors must be heading for Earth. Rushing to the command console so EDI can gain access to the ship, Shepard activates the connection, but it turns out to be a trap- the collector ship begins to try and take over the Normandy. EDI begins to fight off the threat, but Shepard holds the line until EDI can return, piloting the platform they’re on as close to the exit as she can. Before Shepard makes a run for it, EDI reveals one more thing-that the distress signal originated from the Collector ship contains an error that clearly identifies it as a non-turian signal. She further explains that it is not possible the Illusive Man would’ve been fooled by it, since she discovered the error using using Cerberus detection protocols that he wrote, meaning that the Illusive Man sent her into this trap knowingly. Cursing and beginning the retreat, Shepard and her squad barely escape before the ship reactivates after being blasted with hundreds of enemies, and the Normandy zooms off into deep space just as the Collector ship’s guns go live. Getting back to the Illusive Man, Shepard chews him out for the near miss, and while he says it was necessary, protests that he was unwilling. Still, they did learn that Shepard will need to acquire a Reaper IFF (friend-or-foe) device to make it through the Omega 4 Relay and take on the collector base. He tells Shepard that Cerberus acquired the location of a derelict Reaper where they can acquire an IFF, and has already sent a science team out to investigate- Shepard decides to continue with her squad’s loyalty missions, as the Illusive Man reminds her that the assault on the collector base will likely be a one way trip for most of them.

Continuing through the squad’s missions, Shepard finds herself spending more and more of her free time on the ship with Thane, leading up to his confiding in Shepard of his long-term illness and desire to reunite with his son, whose relationship with Thane splintered after his mother’s death. She can’t say what it is- Thane’s passion, his skills, or his wit, but they begin a relationship after the affirmation of their affection for each other. It weighs heavy on her that his disease is killing him, and their affection is the Normandy’s worst kept secret, but she doesn’t let it affect her performance on the field- if anything, she’s more likely to watch her own back, because she knows there’s someone really waiting for her. She gets a small amount of flak for this from Mordin, who recommends her cross-species dating pamphlets with more than his required share of sass, but for once, she enjoys herself in her downtime spending time with him. She’s often playfully teased by other members of her crew about her supposed ‘adopting’ of different squadmates following an incident of Grunt accidentally referring to her as “Mom”. She figures living on a ship with a bunch of different people sort of makes you like a family, and moves forward with the mission- if they’re heading towards certain death, she’s gonna give them something to believe in. Shepard also manages to meet up again with Liara, who’s become an information broker in trying to track down the elusive Shadow Broker. Apparently, the reason Cerberus revived Shepard was because Liara found it after challenging The Shadow Broker and losing her trusted agent, Feron. With Shepard’s help, Liara is able to locate the Shadow Broker base, rescue Feron, and kills the Shadow Broker in a fight- then takes the mantle herself, in the hopes of helping Shepard in her fight against the Reapers. While Liara says she can’t be part of Shepard’s squad, she’ll be a trusted resource, passing on supplies, information, and opportunities as she has them.

Finally, upon the completion of everyone’s side missions (and breaking up a rather nasty argument between Miranda and Jack with more than her share of screaming for everyone to JUST GET ALONG, DAMNIT), Shepard is ready to acquire the Reaper IFF. She and her crew head to the Derilect Reaper to meet with the Illusive Man’s science team. Of course, because this is Mass Effect, everything’s about to go horrifyingly wrong. The science team is missing, and the Reaper isn’t deactivated after all- the scientists became indoctrinated, and upon Shepard’s arrival the Reaper re-activated it’s kinetic barriers, and the only way to take them down is to destroy its mass effect fields. Doing this, however, will cause the Reaper to fall to the nearest planet, as those fields are the only things keeping it afloat. They have to now acquire the IFF and then race to get off the ship after the barriers are removed, fighting through waves upon waves of scientists turned reaper-controlled monsters. As they fight their way to the mass effect core, Shepard notices there is someone else following them- a sniper, who seems to be helping take down enemies for Shepard. After finding the IFF in a science team station, she figures out who it is in the mass effect core- a geth unit with pieces of N7 armor strapped to its arm. Letting Shepard in, the geth is overwhelmed by husks, and quickly destroying the mass effect core, grabs and escapes with the powered-off geth, escaping on the Normandy before the Reaper falls. Despite Miranda’s wants to give the geth to Cerberus and Jacob’s suggestions to get rid of it, Shepard reactivates them from within the AI core. Taking the name Legion at EDI’s suggestion, they join Shepard’s squad in the fight against the Reapers.

Meanwhile, the Reaper IFF is being installed to the Normandy’s systems. When it is ready for testing, EDI recommends Shepard take the shuttle to her next assignment with her squad, as oppose to using the Normandy for dropoff. When she arrives back from her mission, she arrives to a terrifying scene- the Normandy was targeted by the Collectors, who took every member of the ship’s crew except for Joker, who managed to escape by unshackling EDI’s AI restrictions and then hiding in the warp drive. With her teammates’ support, the ship is checked, all upgrades are attended to, and they head through the Omega 4 Relay, to tackle the Collectors where the live and get the abducted humans back. Utilizing upgrades from Shepard’s squad to the Normandy- including improved shielding and a massive- ass gun- the ship makes it through intact, though an EMP knocks the ship to make a crash landing. Knowing this will be a one-way shot, Shepard gives the pep talk speech of the century, and everyone heads into the base with their assignments to make it to the center of the base. The fight through the first section is grueling, Garrus leading a fireteam to run distraction while Shepard assists Tali as she crawls through a vent tube to open the doors on the other side. Skirting out with everyone alive, Shepard enters a massive room containing thousands of pods; wiping the steam off the top of one, she sees one of the colonists from Horizon, with just enough time to watch them scream and be liquefied into a black sludge. Ordering every pod open that they can get their hands on, Shepard is able to save her entire crew before the pods kill them, and Doctor Chakwas says these humans are being “processed” somewhere further along in the facility. Sending the crew back to the ship with Mordin’s defense so he can check them for injuries, Shepard presses onward, fighting through a hoard of seeker swarms under a biotic barrier and finally leaves most of her squad to hold the line at the doors of the central chamber, taking only Thane and Grunt to the final fray with her.

Entering into the central chamber, the reasons for the abductions became clear- the Collectors were building what appeared to be a gigantic human skeleton, using tens of thousands of humans worth of genetic material to grow a human Reaper. EDI confirms to Shepard that right now it’s in a larval stage, with only a head, arms, and torso, and that it may not have even developed consciousness yet. Shooting down its suspended tubing that was feeding it the genetic material, the incomplete Reaper falls into the chasm below, Shepard prepares to blow the place sky-high when she’s contacted by the Illusive Man, who asks her to preserve the base for Cerberus research. Shepard is having none of it- she wants no changes of Reaper technology getting in the hands of anyone else, and in her opinion, none of this would do anything but hurt more people. Severing the Illusive Man’s connection, she plants the explosives before the entire platform rocks and threatens to throw her off- the reaper larve is, in fact, conscious, and it is pissed. She unloads every bit of ammunition she has into it before it falls, crashing down the platform she’s on and causing her to pass out temporarily. When she comes to, it’s from Garrus yelling in her ear that they have to move, that her squad at the line is already escaping. Pulling herself up, she rushed over to Thane and Grunt, heart in her throat, and pulled them out of the rubble- both alive, both conscious, both alright. Planting a quick kiss to Thane’s forehead, she grabs them both by the hand and they run through the base to the Normandy, already in the air, and Shepard barely makes it on a dramatic endgame jump into the Normandy’s side door. Slamming the opening, Joker hits the gas, and they zoom away from a massive explosion and back through the relay, home.
When she’s standing properly, Shepard meets with the Illusive Man, furious with her actions for destroying the Reaper base, saying that technology could’ve helped humanity. Shepard, however, is done- her mission is finished, and with the squad becoming hers and saving the lives of the crew, no one is left to be loyal to the Illusive Man. She cuts the connection, steals the ship and its crew, and begins her own mission- to get rid of the Reapers. Studying the information EDI managed to steal from the base, Shepard now knows without a doubt that the invasion is coming, and they have little time to prepare. Finally, she decides on a course of action- that she can’t do this alone, and needs Alliance support. Dropping off her crew across the galaxy, and giving the ex-Cerberus crew the opportunity to escape, she delivers herself and the SR-2 to the Alliance on Earth, hoping to gain their trust and allow her to work with them to stop the Reapers.

(And again, a quick pause Mods, because we still have a whole third game to go. We’re getting there, I swear.)

Shepard spends 6 months court-marshalled by the Alliance, her Spectre status and past history the only things protecting her from being dishonorably discharged for working with Cerberus. She’s reunited with Anderson as she’s being held under watch in Vancouver, awaiting her trial, and when she’s finally brought forward, Shepard barely has time to advocate that the Reaper invasion is coming when their base on the moon goes silent. Mere seconds later, hundreds of Reapers begin to rain from the sky, landing over the planet. There’s no question on if the invasion is real or not- the Reapers are here, and one immediately cuts a swath through the meeting room with its laser. Anderson pulls Shepard from the rubble, tosses her a pistol, and they run- they’re going to get to the Normandy, which has been undergoing retrofits to be within Alliance code, and escape the planet. While climbing over roofs, shooting down husks and other Reaper monsters, Shepard holds back to try and help a small boy hiding in a vent, but he insists she can’t help him and runs away. Being forced to move, Shepard fights her way to the nearest seaport to find a working radio, and she gets into contact with Ashley Williams, already aboard the Normandy. When the ship arrives, Anderson pushes Shepard on board and then says he’s not coming with her- he’s going to stay and spearhead the resistance on Earth against the Reapers. Shepard, however, has to leave and rally the galaxy to come help and save Earth. They argue, but Anderson tells her there’s no time- she is the only one the races will trust and rally behind. As she’s pulled back, and the ship begins to fly away, Shepard gets to see the boy from the vents earlier being loaded into a cruiser to escape… which then gets cut in half by a Reaper beam and explodes. For the first time in her life since she was a teenager in a colony, she can’t fight. She’s being forced away, and people are dying to cover her escape. For the first time since she joined the military, she’s helpless as the Normandy flies into deep space.

Aboard the Normandy, Shepard is contacted by Admiral Hackett, who tells her to go to the Mars Archives- apparently, Liara is there, studying Prothean technology, and she may have uncovered something which will help them fight the Reapers. However, the Archives have gone dark, and they can’t get anyone into the planetary system to figure out what’s going on. Thankfully, despite the Normandy rushing off, the people installing the retrofits are mostly still on board, and offer to run as the ship’s crew. This includes Samantha Traynor, the new comm specialist; Steve Cortez, expert shuttle pilot and mechanist; and James Vega, extremely decorated soldier and the first new member of Shepard’s squad. Luckily, as well, Joker is also on board as pilot- he had tricked the retrofitting crew into thinking EDI was still a simple VI, instead of a fully-realized AI, and would only respond to his commands, so he was able to take the ship when Anderson calls. Shepard, James, and Ashley embark onto Mars, despite Ashley’s protests of not being sure if she can trust Shepard, and encounter a curious thing- a blockade from Cerberus. Despite having no contact with them for the previous 6 months, Ashley is wary about Shepard’s involvement. Skirting inside the facility, they are immediately met by Liara escaping and killing a group of Cerberus troopers. Shepard, ordering James back to the ship to hold it down before a sandstorm comes in to cut communications, follows Liara into the archives to figure out what it was she found. Fighting Cerberus in droves throughout the main facility, Liara reveals what she has found is a device called The Crucible- a massive weapon, of Prothean design, seemingly developed during the Prothean’s war with the Reapers but never finished due to the extermination of the race. If they can secure the blueprints, and get help from the Council to build it, it may have the ability to stop the Reapers. Hacking into the security cameras to figure out what’s going on, it’s revealed a new scientist- Dr. Eva Core- is actually a high-tech android mech, working for The Illusive Man. Fighting their way to the other side of the archives, Shepard, Liara, and Ashley engage Dr. Eva directly, and the Illusive Man comes in by transmission- he insists that despite Shepard’s subordination, he thinks he has found a way to control the Reapers, and will be stopping Shepard’s attempt at their destruction. Meanwhile, Dr. Eva downloads the Crucible plans and tries to escape, while the group gives chase. By the time they get to the roof, Eva is climbing into her shuttle to escape- when out of nowhere, James, piloting his own shuttle, crashes into Eva’s and takes her down. However, she climbs from the burning wreckage, only her robot parts revealed, and attacks Ashley, almost killing her by slamming her into the wreckage. Shepard manages to take Eva down, but Ashley is in critical condition, and, taking the robotic body and Liara with her, she boards James’ (heavily dented) shuttle and they all make it back to the Normandy and off to the Citadel.

Ashley is rushed to the Citadel’s hospital, Huerta Memorial, while Shepard is inundated with meetings- first, to Diana Allers, a reporter who wants to broadcast the war from the Normandy, which Shepard accepts. Second, to Commander Bailey, a security officer she helped while working for Cerberus who is now head of C-Sec on the Citadel. Third, by reporters as she tries to check in at the Spectre station in the embassies, that get brushed off in her haste. Finally, she has a bit of time to check on Ashley in the hospital- while she has stabilized, she’s in a coma, and Shepard is encouraged to go speak to the Council and check back later. Meeting up with Councilor Udina in his office, they check in with the Council who deliver the news exactly expected of them- that they’re completely useless, can’t spare anything to save Earth because the Reapers are coming for their people as well, and Shepard can basically fuck off. Shepard cuts the connection, angered, but is contacted separately by the Turian councilor. He reveals that the Reapers have hit the turian homeworld, Palaven, and if Shepard could use the Normandy’s exceptional stealth drive to get their Primarch out of a war zone, they could provide help for taking back Earth. Shepard, realizing this entire war effort is going to be sucking people’s dicks until they give her a fleet, accepts, and returns to the ship. Retreating into her room, she has the first of a series of nightmares- being stuck in a dark forest, only able to move in slow motion, reaching for the child she saw in the vent, but never quite getting there before he’s lit aflame and dies again before her eyes. Waking up in a cold sweat, she spends the rest of the night meeting with her new squad and re-learning the layout of the ship as they speed to Palaven.

Arriving to the war zone, the Normandy drops Shepard off on Palaven’s moon, fighting her way to the turian camp to find the location of the Primarch. Upon arrival, she finds Garrus is there, having been promoted to the turian’s top Reaper advisor. However, the Primarch is already dead, and working through the laws of succession, it falls to a general named Victus, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Garrus, having seen Victus earlier, volunteers to lead Shepard to his last known position- and just then, Shepard receives a call that the Normandy is malfunctioning, and Liara leaves to investigate. Fighting through Reaper forces, Shepard, Garrus, and James manage to find Victus, who consents to becoming the new Primarch despite an argument about desiring to die with his men. Escaping back onto the Normandy, Joker tells Shepard that there was a fire in the AI core- when Shepard rushes to investigate, she discovers that EDI has taken control of Dr. Eva’s empty body as a mobile consciousness, and can now accompany Shepard as a squadmate on the field. Garrus also joins as a squadmate to protect Victus, but also to continue to be by Shepard’s side. Finally, Shepard receives intel from the Alliance about a Prothean artifact uncovered on Eden Prime and being attacked by Cerberus- as it turns out, Cerberus had dug up half the colony and were abusing the colonists, and the artifact wasn’t just a fossil, but a lifepod, containing a real Prothean in cryo-stasis. Managing to rescue the pod and open it up, Shepard meets Javik- the last living Prothean, who pledges to help Shepard stop the Reapers in this cycle where his species could not. While en-route to the Citadel, all these updates in tow, she is also contacted by Hackett- the Council has agreed to build the Crucible, and construction is already underway. However, they are still missing a key piece of the plan- a Catalyst that will cause it to work. Shepard is instructed with the task of finding the Catalyst, and sending as much help for the Crucible as possible, so it can be built quickly.

Back on the Citadel, Shepard heads to the hospital while Victus speaks to the Council to see how Ashley is doing- she is awake, and doing better, though still seriously injured. She thanks Shepard for coming to see her, and Shepard says she wants Ashley back on the ship when she heals. In addition, Ashley apologizes for the nasty things she said on Horizon when Shepard was working for Cerberus, and her skeptical words on Mars, saying she trusts Shepard to be fighting the good fight. Udina has also offered Ashley the chance to become the second human Spectre, and she took it, whenever she’s up and running again to have the ceremony. Finally feeling slightly better, Shepard finds one more fortunate thing- Thane is in the hospital’s lobby, having moved to the Citadel to be closer to his son. He is full-time at the hospital now because of the advanced state of his illness, and he tells Shepard he is already living past where his doctors thought, but he cannot join her squad on the ship. Still, Shepard is elated to see him- the Alliance wouldn’t let her send or receive anything off-world while under lockdown, so they hadn’t gotten to talk since she had given herself over. Thane offers protection to Ashley knowing she is Shepard’s friend, and the two share a kiss- Shepard makes him promise that he will stay in contact, and they agree to tentatively continue their relationship. She also makes contact again with Kasumi and Zaeed, on the Citadel for separate missions, and upon assisting them, they join the Crucible project to fight the Reapers.

Meanwhile, Victus and the turian councilor propose a war summit to take on the reapers- but Victus wants to include the krogan to bring the firepower, and the asari refuse to cooperate. Taking the Primarch to neutral space, Shepard officiates the meeting between him, the Salarian Dalatrass, and the Krogan clan leader- Urdnot Wrex. Trying to keep tensions low, Shepard ends up joining into the fray, when Wrex lays down his ultimatum- if the turians want help fighting the Reapers at Palaven, they will have to agree to cure the genophage that has plagued their people for over 2,000 years. The Dalatrass protests, calling the krogan unreasonable and monstrous, and Wrex calls out that a salarian doctor has leaked him footage of captured krogan on the Salarian homeworld of Sur’Kesh, from Maelon’s experiments, that are already cured of the genophage. Shepard orders the Dalatrass to give them over, and the ship speeds to Sur’Kesh to pick them up. The Dalatrass, as well, draws out of the partnership, swearing that curing the Genophage will be a mistake and retracting the salarian forces. Upon arrival, Shepard learns that the mole Wrex was in contact with was Mordin, working to fix his ‘mistake’ with Maelon by saving the females he experimented on. All but one have died, a female Mordin refers to as “Eve”, and as soon as the authorization comes through to get her back, Cerberus attacks the facility. Fighting through waves of troopers as Cerberus trashes the area, Shepard manages to escape with Eve and Mordin, Wrex now being the one to crash the shuttle down trying to get everyone to safety- when he tries to assist Eve, she takes his pistol and shoots down two troopers coming to attack him, causing Shepard to laugh and Wrex to go red. Back on the Normandy, Mordin insists he can synthesize the Genophage cure from Eve’s tissue, but she will need to heal and they will need time. In the interim, both Victus and Wrex have things they’d like help with before the cure is dispersed. Victus reveals that a secret turian team, headed by his son, crash-landed on Tuchanka and he needs Shepard’s help in retrieving them, but won’t reveal the mission they’re on. Wrex, on the other hand, asks Shepard to go investigate the loss of a top Krogan team who had heard news the rachni were returning and have gone missing. Shepard agrees to both, wanting to help Wrex and keep Victus on their side while Mordin synthesizes the cure.

Heading out to help the Krogan team first, Shepard is greeted (rather excitedly) by Grunt, who was placed as the leader of the team after Shepard helped him pass his Rite of Passage with flying, explosive colors. He tells her a sinkhole took much of their team into the tunnels, and Shepard falls in as well when the portable base she’s in collapses into the hole. Staying in touch with Grunt and fighting her way through the caverns, she finds out that the rachni queen Shepard spared on Noveria was hiding out on this remote planet, but the Reapers arrived and began to control her children. She asks Shepard to help her escape, where her non-corrupted children will help build the Crucible. However, to buy time for her escape, Grunt’s team must be sacrificed. Shepard, unable to commit genocide in letting the rachni die out, has Grunt cover her back- but Grunt makes it out, just barely, stumbling bloody towards the Normandy when all hope seems lost. After Mordin fixes him up, Grunt goes to provide security on the Crucible, along with the Rachni Queen and her children. Next investigating the turian presence on Tuchanka, the squad mysteriously sent by the Primarch turns out to have been overrun by the Reapers. Once the remaining squad is rescued, Shepard finds out the squad is being lead by Victus’ son, and they are there for a secret reason- at the end of the Rachni Wars, before the genophage was dispersed, the turians hid a gigantic bomb under Tuchanka’s surface, meant to stop the krogan if they rebelled again. Now, they were there to secretly disable it, but Cerberus had gotten their hands on it and needed to be taken down. Shepard provides backup on the squad to fight their way to the bomb, but upon reaching it, Victus’ son ends up sacrificing his life to disable it manually. Despite the passing, Victus says his son died honorably, and is thankful to Shepard for keeping the secret of the bomb, so the turians and krogans may finally be able to work in peace.

Still waiting for Mordin to synthesize the cure, Traynor picks up on a distress signal from Grissom Academy, an academy for biotic students that appears to be under attack. Arriving on the scene, it’s revealed Cerberus is trying to steal the students from the academy- and their instructor is no other than Jack, reformed to a point and protecting the students. She and Shepard cut a swath through the Cerberus forces and escape with Jack’s class, sending them to provide help on barriers and not on the front lines. While the students are disappointed, Jack offers her thanks, and says they need to drink and party on the Citadel next time they’re both around.

Finally, Mordin is ready to distribute the cure, and Eve is healed enough to accompany them. Mordin plans on utilizing a tower called the Shroud, which the salarians used to distribute the original genophage, to disperse the cure into the air over the planet. On their way, Shepard is contacted secretly by the Dalatrass, trying to tempt Shepard into making a deal with her- if she sabotages the cure, the krogans will believe themselves cured, and the dalatrass will offer the salarian forces as well as the krogan. Shepard, however, shoots her down immediately- Wrex is possibly her closest friend, and betraying an entire race for help in the war effort would never be worth it to her. Landing with the ground party, Shepard reveals the Dalatrass’ offer from within one of the tanks, tipping off Mordin to another thing she mentioned- that the Shroud was sabotaged by the salarians years ago and will need to be fixed. Mordin affirms that he can do it, but the tanks are cut off, a Reaper moving within range of the Shroud and therefore blocking access. When a downed fighter destroys the road, Shepard falls into the ruins of an old krogan city, fighting through reaper-transformed creatures through to the other side as the planet shakes beneath them. Tuchanka is the home of one of the most feared creatures in the galaxy- thresher maws, gigantic, dangerous worm-like creatures that spit acid and have far too many teeth for Shepard’s taste. According to Wrex, the mother of them all, Kalros, lives in this area, and is none too happy about all the activity. Finally reuniting with the tanks, Mordin, and Eve on the other side, Shepard uses this to develop a plan- in a temple near the Shroud lies two maw hammers, huge slabs of rock that pound the ground to summon thresher maws, used in old ceremony and krogan religious rights. Shepard runs directly through the legs of the Reaper to activate the hammers, but in the end it’s worth it; Kalros bursts from the ground, slams directly into the Reaper, and drags it underground in a crushing, writhing blow. When asked to retell this, Shepard can only comment that she wishes she’d taken photos, because no one would ever believe her. Approaching the Shroud in a euphoria of victory, everything quickly comes crashing down, as the tower has been damaged severely by the Reaper. Mordin is able to stabilize it, but only for a few minutes- still, he says he must do what is right, fix his mistakes, and after a tearful goodbye to Shepard, takes the elevator to the top floor and disperses the cure seconds before the tower collapses.

Dragging herself back to the ship in a haze of grief, she’s immediately contacted by the Salarian councilor, urging her to come to the Citadel. She says Udina is acting strangely, and may pose a security risk of some kind, but knows Udina trusts Shepard and hopes she will come mediate. Naturally, by the time she’s arrived, it’s already gone to hell- Cerberus has broken in and began a coup attempt on the Citadel, aiming to destroy it. As they get close, Shepard picks up on an outgoing transmission from Thane, attempting to contact her for help. They stay in communication as Thane finds her a safe place to board, fighting through Cerberus to C-Sec, where she gets Commander Bailey on his feet and back in charge of security. He says he’s received word that the Salarian councilor is missing, and Shepard goes off to find her, Thane over comm still moving through the Citadel. Finally, Shepard makes it to where she was supposed to meet the councilor, in the executor’s office- the councilor reveals the coup is actually Udina’s, pairing with Cerberus to kill the Council. Out of nowhere, a Cerberus assassin drops down and attempts to kill the councilor- he is combatted, and thrown back, by Thane, skidding in at the nick of time. Shepard attempts to shove the Councilor out of the way before going back for Thane, but she’s too late- Thane is stabbed through the stomach and the assassin disappears. Running to him, Thane tells her to go after the assassin, and that he put up as much fight as he could. Shepard radios for help before leaving his side, only pulled away by her team when they drag her to continue.

Chasing down the assassin throughout the Citadel leads her through the Presidium and up an elevator shaft, to find Ashley up and about, protecting the rest of the Council. She turns her gun on Shepard when she arrives, while Udina claims that Shepard is there to kill them. Tired and scared, Shepard yells to Ashley about Udina’s plan and the assassin that hurt Thane, and Ashley turns on Udina. He then produces a gun, and both Spectres shoot him down. After Udina’s death, Cerberus seems to retreat, but Shepard gets the name of the assassin- Kai Leng. Once the Council is secure on the Normandy, and the Citadel is being cleared, Shepard rushes to the hospital, barging into Thane’s room, praying to his gods and not even hers that he’s going to be okay. However, the effects of his illness coupled with the injuries are too much; Kolyat, his son, is there to read the prayers to his gods, and Shepard joins in as he passes, her hand in his, eyes looking away so she won’t have to see him die. She holds it together as the doctors escort her out, back to the Normandy, up to her cabin, and then she’s not seen for three hours. EDI keeps the doors locked, at her request, so no one can hear her scream.

Eventually, the Council is allowed back on the Citadel, and Ashley asks to accompany Shepard again to defeat the Reapers- it’s not who Shepard wanted, but at least she could save someone. On top of that, she’s contacted by Aria T’Loak with an offer to help her take back Omega, through her own bloody coup against Cerberus. Shepard barely remembers that mission; she goes through the motions, kills as many Cerberus officers as she can, helps people. But in the end it was all for blowing off steam, and she’s still got too much of it. Bottling it down, she heads where she’s sent next- the Asari councilor tells her about an undercover mission that a group of her best commandos didn’t return from, and Shepard goes. There, she reunites with Samara, there to save her daughters- the hidden place is a monestary for Ardat-Yakshi, where both of her daughters live. The Reapers are turning these asari into powerful beasts, Banshees, and eventually the facility must be bombed, rescuing only one of Samara’s daughters. Shepard then prevents Samara’s death by her own hand, as she tries to escape hurting her only remaining daughter. Samara agrees to help in the war effort, but there’s no time for celebration- Hackett tells her the quarians and the geth have been scuffling in the Far Rim, and if she wants the Quarian’s support in this war, she’ll have to go see what they’re up to.

Upon arrival it becomes immediately apparent- the quarians, not a few weeks earlier, began a war with the Geth to retake their homeworld, Rannoch. She meets again with Tali’zorah, now upgraded to Admiral, and she confirms what the other quarians have told her- the geth have them pinned down because they have been affected by an EMP that put them under Reaper control, and there will not be a fleet to assist unless Shepard helps. They tell her to take out a geth dreadnought that’s broadcasting the signal, and Shepard and Tali go to investigate- as it turns out, the signal booster being used is Legion, the only platform with remnants of the Reaper’s code upgrades that didn’t enslave them. Freeing them, Legion returns to the Normandy and informs Shepard that in order to take down the Reapers, she must enter into the geth consciousness, downloaded temporarily onto their server, to disable the geth platforms remotely. Shepard nervously agrees, and travels to a massive server on Rannoch. Legion travels with her through the server, viewing pieces of the geth and quarian’s past, and what caused their original war- the geth gaining sentience, and asking “Does this unit have a soul?” Shepard destroys the server from the inside out, making it back into her body to find Legion had downloaded the non-affected geth consciousness’ to spare, massive bodies, who ask to help Shepard with the war effort. Shepard also plots a rescue mission on Rannoch to retrieve another admiral, Admiral Korris, who mans the civilian fleet and is barely able to be saved, as he insists on trying to protect the innocents he presides over.

Finally, the Reaper base controlling the geth on Rannoch is located, but jamming technology means the quarians can’t take it out from orbit, because they can’t target it. Shepard and Tali infiltrate the base, fighting through waves and waves of geth, and finally open its blast shields and manually targets its core. In a Bioware twist of fate, of course, the base turns out not to be just reaper tech, but an actual Reaper, who, upon being hit with a giant laser, rises from the rubble and gives chase to Shepard’s shuttle. Deciding she was more done with this shit than anyone has ever been, Shepard jumps from the shuttle and manually targets the Reaper as it advances on her on a ridge- it takes 7 orbital strikes to take it down, and maybe her will to live is stronger than she thought, but even facing it point-blank she comes out only singed. From her climactic spot on the ridge, the Reaper talks to her, insisting the cycles must continue, and she is powerless to stop them. Finally, it dies, and Shepard turns, meeting Tali and Legion who have obviously come to deliver terrible, terrible news. Legion wants to upload a modified reaper code, turning all the geth into true AI and giving his people sentience. Tali states that this will cause the geth to wipe out her people in their strength, as their more war-happy admirals have already begun trying to exterminate the geth while they are broken down. Shepard allows the upload, but rallies the fleet into stopping their attack in an incredibly rousing speech. Legion, however, has to disseminate itself to distribute the code, and dies to free their entire race. The quarians and geth finally meet again, on both their homeworlds, and agree to work together against the Reapers, and with each other.

Of course there’s no rest for the wicked, and Shepard is called back to the Citadel for two meetings- one with the asari councilor, who points her towards a Prothean artifact on Thessia, the asari homeworld, that might gain insight into the Catalyst to make the Crucible fire, and Dr. Bryson, a scientists studying the Reapers who may have found a species capable of killing them, something he refers to as the “Leviathan”. The meeting with Bryson is short-lived, however, when his indoctrinated assistant shoots him, but then seems to come out of the fog, confused. Turning over the lab for clues, Shepard puts together a map to a fellow researcher of Bryson’s, Dr. Garneau, on a distant mining asteroid. Exploring through the asteroid, however, reveals the crew seems to be operating in a haze, sometimes threatening Shepard or chanting ominously that “the darkness must not be breeched”. When she finally finds Garneau, he bolts, and when Shepard fights her way through the reaper-controlled facility to him, he detonates an orb-like artifact, killing him and the rest of the husks around him. As it turns out, that Garneau was an impostor, and upon finding his body, the other facility workers seem to awaken from a similar haze, and believe it’s 10 years previous. The artifact detonated appears to be the thing that controlled them, and belongs to the Leviathan- and Bryson had an identical one in his office. Speeding back to the Citadel and putting up barriers to stop the artifact’s influence, Shepard works to find Bryson’s daughter, Ann, another researcher who might have had a clue to the artifact’s nature. Traveling to a far reaching system to find her, they find the planet already under attack by Reapers- she is the only one left of the science team, and when found, she’s possessed with a deep voice repeating what the miners did on the asteroid. Shepard shoots and destroys the artifact, breaking the trance, and goes through an extreme firefight getting her out. When they’re back on the shuttle, Ann doesn’t remember being controlled, but upon learning of her father’s death, offers to be possessed again so Shepard can track the Leviathan’s location. Tracing the possession leads to an ocean-covered planet, and their landing shuttle is disabled by an EMP- they crash on another downed freighter, and after a heavy Reaper fight, it’s determined the energy signature they’re looking for is at the bottom of the ocean. Borrowing a research diving mech, Shepard delves into the deep, losing contact with Cortez halfway down and having to soldier on alone.

What she finds is nothing short of a Cthulhu-tier horror show. The Leviathan is a massive, ancient race, responsible for the creation of the Reapers, and now hiding out to avoid being wiped from existence and reaper detection. While they attempt to keep Shepard as their thrall, Shepard convinces them to join the fight, saying they can’t hide forever and they can help prevent the death of the universe. Finally, the Leviathan agrees, sending Shepard’s diving suit back to the surface- Shepard, however, was communicating with the Leviathan in her mind, and has since passed out. When she awakens again, she’s back on the fixed shuttle and escaping, just in time to see the Leviathan send out another pulse signal, taking down an entire Reaper into the ocean.

After some recovery time, Shepard heads to Thessia on the asari councilor’s advice to find it already under siege by Reapers. The science team they were supposed to meet to get to the artifact is already dead- Shepard fights across the planet’s surface to the artifact’s supposed location, a gigantic temple dedicated to the asari Goddess, Athame. Shepard recognizes from her previous contact that the gigantic statue in the temple’s center is a hidden Prothean Beacon, explaining the asari’s dominance as the galaxy’s most advanced species. It includes a VI, Vendetta, who begins to explain the Catalyst, but stops when they detect an indoctrinated presence- and guess who, it’s Asshole Assassin, Kai Leng. He delivers a hologram of the Illusive Man, who continues to explain his full plan to control the Reapers, and that they’re here for the VI. Leng attacks, and Shepard jumps straight from shooting to biotics to beating him with the nose of her sniper rifle when he’s close enough, because there’s a lot of pent-up rage there. Nevertheless, he brings a gunship to a gunfight, and destroys the temple floor out from under her; by the time Shepard climbs, barely, back to the top, Leng is escaping with the VI and hope seems lost for discovering the Catalyst. Beaten and bruised, Shepard and crew return to the Normandy, and for once receive some good news- Traynor managed to track Kai Leng’s signal to where his gunship touched down, a planet called Horizon, which Shepard grudgingly remembers from the colony attacks there. Still, Shepard is hopeful, wanting to, frankly, beat the living shit out of Leng, so having any trail is a good trail.

Arriving at Horizon, Shepard discovers the terrible truth- the location they’re going to is actually a Reaper shelter, nicknamed Sanctuary, which is actually controlled by Cerberus secretly experimenting on refugees. On top of that, she gets contact from Oriana, Miranda’s sister, who is currently hiding there and discovered the plot. When Shepard arrives, the facility is already cracked open by Reaper forces, and Miranda is already inside- Shepard had spoken with her on a few occasions previous, hearing that Miranda was trying to track down her father once and for all. Shepard, in turn, warned her about Kai Leng after the attempted Citadel coup. Shepard fights through the facility, following a trail of Miranda’s log notes, trying to find what was going on- as it turns out, the underbelly was an experiment in turning the colonists into reaper husks and trying to control them. However, the whole facility is now free, and the Reaper experiments running wild. Once Shepard dispatches with all of the high-level enemies, she makes it to the control room, where she finds Miranda’s father, Henry Lawson, holding Oriana at gunpoint while Miranda pleads for her life. Shepard manages to talk to Henry long enough to get him to release Oriana, and as soon as he lets her go, Miranda biotically crushes him, throwing him out the cracked window behind them and to his death. Miranda then disables the communications scrambler so no one else comes to Sanctuary, and she and Shepard manage to find directions to the Cerberus headquarters- and where Kai Leng has gone with the VI, because Miranda slipped a tracker onto him before he left Sanctuary.

With Shepard about to spring on Cerberus and then deliver the Catalyst to the almost-completed Crucible, she gets a call from Anderson, back on Earth. He is holding out with the resistance, but he was asked to pass along an order from Hackett that the Normandy is due at the Citadel for retrofits and fixes before the final assault, and she and her crew have earned a few days of shore leave. He gives her the passcode to an apartment he has there and tells her to use it during her stay. Upon arrival, Shepard finds the apartment to be vast, and with an email from Joker inviting her out to an incredibly fancy sushi place for dinner, she changes into a nice dress, heels, and meets him there. Naturally, nothing goes correctly ever, and after barely starting drinks, an alliance officer, Maya Brooks, rushes in and says they have a tip that someone is trying to assassinate Shepard, hacking her accounts and freezing her info. As if on cue, a group of mercenaries enter, shooting at the ceiling and sending the restaurant into a panic. Shepard, using Joker as bait, grabs one and steals his pistol, using it to fight her way to the front of the restaurant to Brooks, who takes a bullet for Shepard before the mercenaries’ fire breaks the glass floor and Shepard goes tumbling down multiple floors to a maintenance landing below. She gets up and continues to sneak along, being met with more mercenaries and an increasing lack of bullets, and using her cloak as much as she can. Finally, she’s contacted by Liara, trying to locate her, and Brooks cuts in, leading all of them to a nearby car park where she says a C-Sec shuttle is going to meet them. When Shepard gets there and meets Liara, a shuttle shows up, but it’s full of mercenaries- however, Wrex crashes down from an above platform, taking out all the Mercs and tossing Shepard a rapid-fire gun. Wrex helps Shepard and Liara take out the mercs until a shuttle does arrive for their escape, piloted by Joker, with Brooks inside. They all head back to Anderson’s apartment, regrouping with the rest of Shepard’s squad to figure out what was going on.

After some examination, Liara determines the gun Shepard stole from the mercenary is linked to a casino owner, Elijah Khan, and Shepard, along with Brooks and Wrex, infiltrate during a fancy charity party and find their way to Elijah’s office, where he is found dead. Brooks and EDI are able to pull information from his hard drives that show he hired the mercenaries, after being paid handsomely by an outside source. Brooks then gets a notification that someone is using Shepard’s Spectre ID to get into the Citadel Archives. The entire team moving together as one overwhelming force, they arrive to find the mercenaries are controlled by none other than… Shepard. A clone of Shepard, built during the Lazarus Project, in case Shepard needed extra organs or limbs during her battle. The clone is trying to kill her and take her place, and the fake Shepard escapes into the Archives, causing a crashing chase of all Shepard’s squadmates alongside her to the very back. However, when Shepard catches up to the clone, Brooks makes a double-cross and seals the real Shepard and her squad in a vault. Brooks is, in fact, ex-Cerberus and working for the clone, who was in the archives to change Shepard’s fingerprints to the clone’s, so she can take over Shepard’s life. Sealing herself away in the vault, the clone delivers Shepard’s trademark “I should go”, and leaves, which bothers Shepard a little more than it should- when Wrex finally asks why she’s not more worried about dying in a vault, Shepard mentions that Glyph, Liara’s droid, is outside, and is able to find them by Shepard’s voice command.

Escaping the Vault, Shepard and her crew race to the Normandy, where she knows the clone is going to take her ship and escape the Citadel. Upon getting there, she’s met by heavy resistance and then, a very angry Traynor, who says she’s been thrown off the ship for “disorderly conduct”. When Shepard explains that no, it’s a clone, Traynor helps them get back inside using a security hatch… and her Cision Mark Pro 4 toothbrush, using tiny mass effect fields to biotically overload the hatch’s controls. Shepard and her group sneak under the main landing and into the ship, shooting the clone’s mercenary crew and finally confronting the clone in the shuttle bay for a final shootout. The battle is grueling, and Shepard’s realizing she never wants to fight herself again, but after a fatal slip, the clone falls out the back of the Normandy’s hatch, falling to her death miles to the Citadel below. Shepard then cuffs and captures Brooks and returns the Normandy to the Citadel docks to actually have some shore leave.

The vacation she does get, however, is perfect. She gets to spend time with every one of her squadmates, playing games, gambling at the casino, and messing around at the Armax Arsenal combat arena, plus an unexpected bit of closure- she’s contacted by Kolyat to hold a funeral for Thane, and he gives her a series of videos Thane tried to send while Shepard was stuck in Alliance custody. These are his real last words to her- a promise to meet her after death, across the ocean, together. Finally, Shepard throws a party for her entire squad and friends in the apartment- she even manages to invite all her squadmates, including those who were not on her ship for the current reaper siege. Everyone drinks, dances, and a few hookups are even had, but it’s everything Shepard wanted- and when it’s finally over, time to get back on the ship and hunt down Cerberus once and for all, Shepard could swear she could hear Thane encouraging her along to the end.

But just as they’re going to make ground on the Cerberus base, Shepard suited up and ready to go, is when she’s taken to Wonderland.

Abilities/Special Powers: Shepard is a N7 Class Soldier in the Alliance military, meaning she’s been through years of training that would kill most people. While the specifics are hazy, codex entries in game specify the training entails “instruction in zero-G combat, military free-fall (parachuting), jetpack flight, combat diving, combat instruction, linguistics, and frontline trauma care for human and alien biology”. She’s also had years of front line combat experience and has been trained explicitly in pistols, submachine, shotguns, and sniper rifles, though her specialties are in sniper rifles and close combat. She’s also a talented hacker and coder, and has been shown to know how to hack into systems, guns, and ships over the course of the trilogy utilizing her omni-tool, a miniature computer-type device on her arm.

Additionally, as a result of her death and subsequent rebirth in Mass Effect 2, she also has cybernetic “upgrades” that makes her more durable than the standard human being. She’s got metal implants in most of her skeletal structure and advanced regeneration abilities, meaning she can take a lot more hits than the average person. She was also outfitted with a tactical cloak embedded in her spine, which provides temporary invisibility for about 12 seconds, with a short recharge time between uses. It extends like a cloaked field to her body, clothes, and anything she’s holding, within about a foot diameter around her; in general, it’s long enough to cloak a gun, but not another person.

She’s also got quite a quick wit, a great tolerance for alcohol and the ability to do a ton of pull-ups for the express purpose of pissing off her friends. She can also run in heels and once crashed through a glass floor, fell like 5 stories, and still had enough energy to make jokes, so that’s a plus.

Third-Person Sample:

Shepard sighed, tracing their finger across the datapad sluggishly as she tried to sign off on the report she’d been passing over. She knew it was late, but it was easy to lose track of time when 100% of your overhead scenery was the void of space, and if she wasn’t going to sleep, she was at least going to get some work done. This wouldn’t be the first time she forgoes rest for work, and she’s certain it won’t be the last. Tossing the pad down by her side, she flopped back onto the empty bed with an annoyed exhale, staring up at the glass ceiling and out towards the stars.

‘I keep expecting to see Reapers out there’, she muses to herself, pursing her lips and absentmindedly raising her arm to trace constellations in the outside stars. They’re not moving, for once, waiting docked for a meeting in the morning, so she can clearly see the pinpricks of light in the sky outside. ‘Everything’s so peaceful. Hard to believe there’s a war going on. Hard to believe there’s a war she feels like she’s losing.

Letting her arms fall, Shepard stands, stretches, walks over to her bathroom to wash her face. If she’s going to be awake, she’s getting something to eat, and half-hoping she’ll run into someone else she can talk to. If all else fails, she can end up at the front of the ship and talk to EDI until she’s ‘reminded’ how much sleep humans are supposed to be getting. She appreciates it, but she also likes seeing activity and talking to people when she gets like this- having signs of life are comforting. Remembering there is life on her ship is important. Remembering there is life she fought for, life she won, maybe more so. The activity is calming now that she knows what the Normandy sounds like without anyone aboard. Shepard pulls on a hoodie on the way out the door, banging on the elevator button rather violently and leaning against the wall as she waits. Even just reaching for the hum of the engine for comfort, she smiles. It’s something. The noise is something. With a small smile, she steps into the elevator, leaning back against the wall.

‘Keep moving forward. This too shall pass.’

First-Person Sample:

[The camera clicks on, being held steady and centered well; this is obviously someone who knows and understands this technology. A redheaded woman looks on, pretty serious about this situation, and despite the camera cutting off at her chest, people on the network can see she’s in heavy, and rather advanced, armor, and armed to the teeth in weaponry. She’s also wearing some sort of visor, displaying a holographic screen over the right side of her face.]

This is Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy, reporting from some sort of mansion in the middle of nowhere. No intel on planet or time, though it appears to be habitable. If anyone is on this channel and has any information about my current whereabouts, and how I could make contact with my ship, that would be incredibly helpful.

[She pauses for a second, looking a bit off camera and grinning.]

And if no one has that, I’d love information about the current whereabouts of a cocktail, as that would be equally as helpful.