You know... I suspected. Seriously. Go. Read. The. Files.
All of them. And a fuckton of your questions will be answered.

Right now you're meandering. You grasp some things really, really well but you're off the mark about others, and worse of all you mix your spot on speculation with syed levels of being lost in the fog.

Check the files, they will clear a lot. You already cottoned to a lot of hints.

Read the:

The Systems Alliance Addenda File.
Then the, Officer Edition
Hit the Encyclopedia Biotica, (there are Cthulu levels of fuckery right there)
Then the Cerberus files:
Citadel Races, don't skim through it. Especially the histories of the turians, asari and salarians.
Then the: Opposing Forces, followed by Outcast Races and Separatist Races, lastly hit the STG files and Tech Guide.

Logical Premise has been dropping hints and pieces of plot in all of those. Including past alien races shenanigans and what did they get up to with the current races.


Here's a teaser of things you can find in the files.

 

Ooh!

Anderson and his ... connection is a complicated subject. Anderson was never a part of Cerberus, in that he never wore the gold hexagon. But he knew things, some of it passed to him by Chu in the AIS, and he'd done some digging.

And he was an old friend of Michael Shepard, her father. This is something he has not revealed to her.

The reason why he was in New York that day wasn't to recruit her to Cerberus. I'll leave it at that.

Very true!

Cerberus project BETHLEHEM targeted the families of poorer children with probable biotic abilities and disrupted families to assist in obtaining said children.

Jack and Shepard were basically dealt the same hand.

Between bounty contact services and police files, it doesn't take long to set up a VI to flag people of interest ahead of time. They deliberately exposed a population, hacked and obtained the pregnancy records, then did some work behind the scenes to track the resulting kids via a number of mostly automated methods.

When one messed up...frame 'em and have them dumped. Only in this case, Cerberus fouled up the recovery -- due to Anderson.

...you would be correct.

While Yishan Shepard was just a pretty girl, Michael Shepard ... well, once we get to a certain point in Lions and Blue and Silver it will make more sense.

He certainly was not, at one point, a nobody.

BETHLEHEM tracked about five thousand kids. By the time they were fifteen, a third were dead of eezo complications, and a third were on the streets. The rest were subtly steered towards the Alliance military.

Fun fact: Alenko was one of these.

Given my love of angst... you can probably guess where she'll be found.

---------- Post automerged at 10:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 PM ----------

...sort of.

I've served with a fair number of soldiers when I was in the military. There were always a few whose grandfather was an admiral, and great great whatever sailed with John Paul Jones, and so on and so forth.

Were they 'better' than everyone else? Hard to say. They picked things up faster, they seemed more at ease with a military lifestyle, that kind of thing.

Certainly there is a message of determinism in the Premiseverse -- after all, the main changed condition is that all the vile slime that we would NORMALLY expect running things are, indeed, running things. Genetics can certainly play a role.

But more of it has to do with being in the right place at the right time, I think. Fate, or destiny. [/QUOTE]

A number of races have tampered with species, trying to make anit-Reaper weapons. The turians, salarians, vorcha, and batarians were all heavily modified by a species several cycles ago, and both asari and humans were altered by the Protheans.

The Inusannon, however, mostly saw 'lesser species' as tools, or more likely prank material. (They were, honestly, truly horrible trolls). Editing any species seemed a waste of effort in their eyes, as if they and the Tho'ian couldn't stand up to the Reapers, how could some pathetic sack of water do so?

The Inusannon's Hail Mary was instead Vigil, who can provide stiff resistance and mess up Reaper plans again and again as long as he isn't caught. And the first thing he did when he got off the Citadel was spread backups all over the galaxy.

The Reapers are not quite as stupid as ME makes them out to be. They make quite a point about going on about the genetic requirements of their prey, yet ultimately that isn't even what they care about. More than one race has tried to code in 'genebombs' or the like into races, and the Reapers usually gather around and laugh for a bit at this before processing the defeated into more bionetic slurry.

The end game of exactly WHAT the Reapers are doing is something I plan to explain in detail towards the end of the second book, and its a lot worse than just melting people down.

 

So yeah, additional, new tertiary materials not on the front page written in the last half year or so, just as a reference (i'd add it to the OP if I could). Each with some lore from the previous, fascinating discussion:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/117796...-unending-the-Cerberus-Files-Separatist-Races (so far on the Hanar. Interesting shit... they're spooky)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11108830/1/ANN-Media-Reports-Archive (some Emily Wong stuff)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11513705/1/STG-Investigative-Report-The-Odd-Couple (Lt. Bastard Kai Leng and lol Pelham)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11580584/1/STG-Investigative-Report-Doctor-Ganar-Okeer (Warmaster Okeer STG report... nuff said)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/117625...to-the-Technology-of-the-Mass-Effect-Universe (technology lore)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11545569/1/The-Cerberus-Files-Tactical-Addenda-Opposing-Forces (not sure how often this will update. It's essays on the Deathwatch, Asari Nighwind, and the Justicars. Other et ceteras open for later revelation.)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10810265/1/No-Single-Raindrop (Lady Benezia essays. Good shit. Poor woman)

 

So, I'm doing a readthrough again, and am almost to the end of Book 2.

This is quite spooky, and something I really didn't notice before, beyond a nice bit of writing.

What constitutes the trumpet? Is it as simple of an answer as the shriek of a Reaper? Why would these religious texts have reference to those? Protheanic or Inusannon interference? Does this touch on the speculation and essays of the previous few pages?

Is this one of the examples of the Darkness, or whatever it is the Reapers fear, "chastising"/destroying a galactic group who has breached the Severity?

 

It's funny that no one has ever asked, "Hey, what were the Prothean Beacon's actually supposed to do?? I mean, do they just sit buried until someone finds them then blows up their mind? That doesn't sound very beacon-like. It's almost like you expected them to be transmitting something that might take hold in the mind of primitives as religious imagery."

You win a Darkness Plushy! Congratulations!

 

Well, cultures on Earth have had varying opinions on what makes a trumpet, let alone different cultures in different species on different planets.

So, I guess trumpet really means signal or sound. The noise that heralds arrival.

The rest, the mentions of "stars, sky, sun, moon" are something that were and will be mentioned in every religious text ever. Especially if the religion has an apocalypse/end of the world subsection.

The third thing is interesting, so, warning from someone, like one of the two previous alien cultures, either Prothean or Inusannon? Then again, stuff like Christianity is newer than Okeer, so, that puts stuff into context. Heck, Okeer probably pre-dated many of Earth's religions.

I guess the trumpet is actually the Citadel, the thing that calls the other Reapers for the invasion.

That's actually pretty awesome.

 

Lol. That's the most dog-fuck-dog world of a response I could have gathered.

>Breach the Severity
>Have no Idea that which you do
>Get your entire galactic arm destroyed by X
>The reapers try to prevent you from attracting the attention of X-based ideas
>You start to attract X anyway, and the Reapers annihilate everything within literal imagination to stop you from increasing the further development of X
>Reboot

>Breach the Severity
>Have no Idea that which you do
>Get your entire galactic arm destroyed by X, preventing the Severity, continue
>The reapers try to prevent A Galaxy from further attracting the attention of X-based ideas that can attract the Darkness.
>Based on Genetics, the galactic civilizations, through time, begin creeping towards Severity Breach, thus the Darkness is getting tweaked anyway, and the Reapers begin a systematic destruction of that shit. To stop the even more ruthless bullshit. This shit, man.
>The new shit, those Inusannon, which evolved independent of the mas effect, and the protheans, begin influencing further races. -> Asari, Humans, the rest of this cycle
>Not quite close to the class 4 ish breaches of the Inusannon, but close enough to trigger Sovereign, who is butt-plugged inadvertently by douchenozzles like the Rachni and Saren/Benezia.
>Nazara defeated, subsumed, studied, feared.
>Thus, the literal destruction of imagination and the reboot is delayed
>The watchdog race called, the Collectors. Harbinger not yet willing to send in the rest of the Vanguard. Stopped by Jesus Shepard
>>Mass Effect 3?
>>>God Help Us

 

That's not even the bestest part, though.

Remember the Hanar describe the Citadel as the snare that catches the hunter.

 

Well I bit the bullet and started actually reading this. I'm on chapter thirty (or twenty-four by the author's numbering) so far, which I think ought to be far enough to give it a rating, right? I'm skipping most of the discussion in the thread so if I'm repeating what's already been gone over, that's why.

I largely like the expanded background on the Alliance military and such, I like his restructuring of the events of the game so far, and generally I like his handling of the characters, save for one. I don't even mind the OCs he's put in, really. Not yet anyway.

I don't like Shepard, and it's my biggest problem with the story so far. I think her backstory and characterization are almost comical in how overwrought it is, and I've found myself skipping a lot reading about it. I also don't like how inflated her combat abilities seem to be, by her and by the characters around her. She kind of reminds me of a bad anime character sometimes. (And lo and behold, he also writes Naruto fanfic... :|)

Granted, I haven't actually gotten to Liara's introduction yet, which is probably going to be an important facet of her characterization. But still, Shepard's the main character and it's really bugging me so far.

My second biggest problem is the lack of proper spacing and other editing problems. Makes it a chore to read sometimes when I'm trying to suss out who's talking, because the dialogue isn't properly broken up.

Third problem, though I'm not sure this is really a problem considering I'm still not too deep into the story yet, is that I really have no clue what the fuck is going on with Earth, and the "history" between the present and 2183. Now granted, Bioware's background in that respect was pretty retarded at times, so I welcome some changes, but the few references to fucking commisars have me scratching my head.

Anyway, as for a rating thus far, probably a 3.5/5 that I don't mind rounding up to a 4/5 despite my reservations. I'll keep chipping away at it though.

 

First, thank you for reading.

Second, I'd like to say this : The first book is ... kind of fail. I think before I start on the ME3 piece, I am seriously going to rewrite all of OSABC because so much of it is ... not what I want.

I think anyone whose read ATTWN and TWCD would say both are much much better than my first effort.

Shepard being annoying is ... sort of by design. I was not taking this very seriously at the beginning, and in a lot of ways Shepard was designed as a deconstruction -- a person who supposedly can do everything better yet who's clueless about politics, can't articulate herself, drowns in pointless and repetitive angst about what a monster she is, yet gets offended if you point that out, so on and so forth.

What I *wanted* was to try to show growth as the series went on, but I started from a pretty skewed perspective. And I'm not defending it -- it needs to be redone in lots of areas, including spelling and punctuation, certain phrases, additional explanations, and dialing back some of the emoness.

On the other hand, I'm kinda happy, because I wanted people to want to smack my Shepard for being an idiot, and that's exactly what people want to do!

As for writing Naruto, well, to be ironic, most of my stuff there is purely emotional and/or trolling people who can't handle Naru/Saku. Although I recently tried something new and probably stupid with that too.

Anyway, thank you for the feedback. I hope if you continue reading my later stuff will be more readable and less producing.

 

Huh, I didn't know you had a profile here. Like I said I haven't read the rest of the thread.

I'm on chapter fifty (or forty-three) now, right at the tail end of Feros. I like that you had Saren and Benezia there -- I had also thought some kind of involvement from them there would've been better than that awful Thorian boss fight (well, actually, all the boss fights in ME1 are shit). And I liked that you have the Normandy playing an active role in events too.

I'm not really sure on this Shields character, or the other OCs from Shepard's backstory. If you want my two cents for what to think about when you get around to doing that rewrite, I think Shepard's whole backstory is a bit over-complicated. The games were definitely lacking with respect to Shepard's origins, but I think a positive side of that is that it didn't dwell too much on them, whereas here Shepard's backstory almost seems to overshadow the main story.

To be honest though, I think some of my thoughts on your Shepard just come from her not being my Shepard. I guess that's a credit to Bioware for getting me invested in the player avatar like that.

 

Now if only we could fit the hanar in that equation...

 

All right, I made it to Chapter 103 and I've just had enough. This story has spiraled out of control since I last posted. It's only gotten more bloated, with OCs piled on OCs (in a series with plenty of characters as it is) and massive dumps of things from ME2 and 3 to create a labyrinthine mess of a plot. It really hurts my brain to not only follow it, but to wonder what sort of confusion of ideas even lead to it.

Practically all of the wholesale AU elements are not only ill-fitting, but also pointless and stupid. For example, the changes to the Systems Alliance. Not the shady undercover stuff, which you could say is just exaggerated some from canon, but this Penal Legion, commisar, aristocrat bullshit. I mean, if you wanted to write a WH40k crossover just do it. Or throwing around terms like "warpfire," which just seems to be a more fantasy-like term for the warp fields that already exist in ME. I'm really wondering why these changes were thought to be necessary at all.

(Oh, and my earlier questioning about what exactly the SA's history was and what these "Days of Iron" were still weren't even answered when I left off, but by then I just didn't care.)

And as for Shepard, I really tried to give her a chance, but the melodrama and inflated background continued to bother me, and Liara didn't improve it once she was added into the mix. Not to me anyway. Maybe part of it is that their pseudo-telepathic connection reeks of the soul-bonds that everyone is sick of Harry Potter fics.

The story was best early on when it largely followed canon and just patched it a bit. For that earlier portion I'll give the story a few points. And even though I was rolling my eyes hard enough for them to hurt over the last couple days there are still some nuggets of interesting ideas in there, which I'd really like to see implemented in an overall better fic. But those positives aren't enough to make me seriously recommend the story to anyone.

For a numerical review, I guess somewhere between a 2-3/5.

 

A question for LogicalPremise , as well as anyone else.

In one of Sovereign's POVs, when he's assaulting the citadel, he states that the Destiny Ascension was the flagship of the Protheans (and the Inusannon? It was implied that Nazara encountered this ship in different iterations in each cycle) before the Asari found and made it the flagship of Citadel space, and that he was eager to destroy this vessel, this thorn in its side once and for all.

I wonder if the weaponry of it, I remember some crazy dark matter missiles that the Asari never used until battling Sovereign, was the weaponry of the previous cycles, built again and again and upon and upon the previous cycles, like the Crucible was supposed to be in ME3?

Another major question is if silaris armor, which I don't remember much of, was reverse engineered after the Asari recovered the Ascension or if it was discovered independently.

I can't help but feel that this cycle will research further into the Ascension (a curious name), and it won't be a huge Chekov's Gun.

 

That was the idea. I always found it strange that the asari never demonstrated any form of advanced technology in any of the games that we could see, and I found it very strange how much bigger the ship was than other asari dreadnaughts.

If asari were a male culture I'd have shrugged it off as 'my dick is bigger' syndrome...but they aren't. They are supposed to be a lightweight hunter mindset in terms of military, so why do they have this super-massive thing?

It was ... not connected to the Ascension. The core of the ship was plated over and re-designed to match asari designs, which is why its dimensions are a bit strange. Silaris armor is something the Protheans left them the specs for basically.

They have been somewhat already. The ship has enough power to use multiple full-strength Thanix cannons, without having to be redesigned from the keel up like most dreadnaughts would require.

@Red Aviary : It is not everyone's cup of tea, nor is it designed to be.

If you are wondering why the changes were necessary at all, I'm guessing you didn't bother to read the long author's note in the very beginning.

In short, ME is boring, unrealistic in terms of military, stupidly Roddenberry-esque, flipflops multiple times in both direction and tone, has a total of seventy six show-stopping plot-holes and countless minor ones, and not a single culture in the game has any consistency from a cultural or anthropological level.

There are many possible changes one can make, and crossovers are one way, but they ultimately limit you to following two sets of canon instead of one, which doesn't help the picture. I didn't do a 40k crossover because I dislike the idea of having to follow two sets of canon. You might as well as wonder why I didn't do a Call of C'thulhu, Shadowrun or Conspiracy X crossover, since those were all equally large parts of how the story has been shaped.

I find that the people who dislike it the most do not particularly care for large changes away from canon. That's perfectly valid, and if the way the story evolved ultimately makes the reader lose interest or get confused then obviously it needs a lot more work. I'm sorry you feel as if you wasted your time and that my presentation of the work was 'pointless and stupid'.

The number of OC's was something I originally hesitated over, but ultimately the entire premise of ME 1 went so far out of how an actual military would operate that I felt not including them would have limited me and what I wanted.

The story is also much better understood with some of the side documentation, but I have found that people either :

a) like the story and then go to read the documentation and discover things that link back and forth or

b) dislike the story and thus have no incentive to read any side documentation.

Ultimately it was a choice I made in sort of experimenting with how I write, and the ultimate payoff is in learning how to do things better so that when I finally take my long-delayed stab at original work it won't be crap.

 

New update, people.

We see some more stuff with Aria and Shepard's team is growing, it seems. Good stuff.

 

May I use this term? I might make it the chapter title.

*staggers off laughing*

 

So, another update, (12k in two days, that cheating asshole =P) and we got to see some more stuff from others. As always, Delecour is just a gargoyle of misery to everyone in his vicinity, pretty sure Tela is close to considering faking her own death at some point to just get away from all this bullshit and Aethyta is going to look back at her time in Arya's mercy without the ability to walk while her daughter was drenching herself in blood as not so bad in hindsight as to what awaits her with her remaining family now. Also, Liara and Telanya need a couple of decades therapy each.

Yeah, good times for everyone on the horizon.

 

STG report on Tela Vasir

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12011995/1/STG-Investigative-Report-Tela-Vasir

 

Wasn't sure how well my version of Vasir would go over... thoughts?