This is going to be very, very long, and in essence it's a fan-fiction story. I wasn't really sure if it was OK to post something like that here, but with all the talk about the ending here, I thought some people may find it interesting to read how I filled in the story blanks inside my own mind. So, here we go.
The whole idea is that if left unchecked, organic life would create synthetic life and there would be war until synthetics destroy all organic life.
I write this under the assumption that we are to infer that an organic race created Reapers at some point. I mean, the whole idea of the Reapers is to SAVE organic life from its own advancements by "resetting" them. So, most likely, that means organics started it all somehow. Which means organics made the Citadel and the Relays and the Catalyst. Makes sense, no? Even when the Reapers say "we" created this and that, it still makes sense since the Reapers ARE organics deep down. They must have some sort of memory and I'm sure the organics they assimilate pass their memory and knowledge to the Reapers when forming their gestalt conscience.
Now, on to the REASON the Reapers were made. The Catalyst says that synthetics will always be created and always rebel against organics. It takes a lot of certainty to say "always". To be that certain, there must be some empirical evidence the Catalyst is basing that claim on, right?
What I mean is, that it must have happend before, and technically, it must have happened more than once in order for him to claim it will always happen and to create a solution as drastic as the Reapers.
To know that, they must have seen it happen, right? But if they saw that happen, all organics would be dead, so that means they must have watched it almost happen (and then almost happen again and again). This also means that the first Reapers were made during the first time synthetics almost wiped out organics, otherwise, they would have been wiped out!
So this is where my fanfiction-esque backstory comes in. It's long very long.
There was a single race, millions and millions of years ago, that created the Relays. It was this one race that jump started the very first galaxy wide civiliation, like we see in Mass Effect, due to those creations. Although at this time, the Citadel was not created yet.
That same race witnessed all other organic species in the galaxy get destroyed by their
own creations over a very, very long time while they tried desperately to survive and hide from the synthetics.
Eventually, they were one of the last organic races still around since the entire galaxy became overrun with synthetic life. There were a few primitive races and a few advanced ones around still, but this one race thought that they were going to be completely wiped out in the very near future.
While the synthetics were rebeling against their creators and purging organic life from the galaxy, this one race built the Citadel. They built it to be a mobile home for the remainder of their species. It wasn't safe to settle on planets at this point and regular ships needed too much maintenece and fuel/power to be able to protect and house almost an entire race of people.
The Citadel ran on a special engine, an eezo core, just like the Relays they created (and eventually the Reapers), that allowed it to last for a long time, so they wouldn't have to worry about fuel or power like they would with regular ships. This engine is gigantic, which is why it couldn't be applied to those regular ships.
So, the Citadel would be their home for many years to come as synthetics finished off all other organic life in the galaxy (or so this one race thought). During this time, they tried to save as many other races as they could but they were only able to save a fraction of 2 or 3 other species and house them in the Citadel.
(From this point on, this one race operates under the thought that they are the last bastion of organics. They think that the synthetics have destroyed the rest and that if one of their plans somehow destroyed the Citadel, it could mean destroying the last organics, this is why they were slow to simply trigger their "destructive burst" or "synthesis signal". This will all be explained ahead.)
When they became most hopeless, when it seemed that there wasn't a reason to even try and survive anymore due to the galaxy being overrun with synthetics, they began to experiment with combining synthetic life and organic life in a bid to make themselves strong enough to overcome the overwhelming odds they faced. They did it for strength, they did it to become smarter, they did it to live longer, all so they could preserve organic life. The irony was not lost on them. Neither was the danger.
After many advancements in sythesizing organic/synthetic hybrids, two factions began to diverge within that one race. (and as some foreshadowing - apparently, other races in the very distant future that worked on the Crucible also thought that "synthesis" was a possible way to preserve organic life as well, to eliminate the war with synthetics by merging with them, and programed that into the Crucible).
One of those factions wanted to continue with the idea of synthesis and use their newest device, the "Catalyst AI" system. They called it the Catalyst since it would facilitate their plan to destroy synthetics and preserve organics. This AI helped this faction create the forumla for perfect organic/synthetic DNA combination.
The Catalyst was also builty to essentially be a giant amplification system that drew on the power of every person on the citadel. Consuming every living being in the vicinity, it would create a burst of energy that would send out their DNA along with the formula they created for merging organic and synthetic life. This burst would meld the synthetic life in the galaxy with their DNA. The Relays would act as amplifiers along the way, assuring the burst would reach the entire galaxy, but also possibly destroying them.
This same group also worked on using this "energy burst" to simply destroy or disable all synthetic life in the galaxy instead of merging with it. They weren't exactly sure which path to take just yet since they weren't sure if the "destruction burst" would kill everyone on board the Citadel as well by destroying it.
The other faction did not agree with either of those ideas though. They thought it wasn't right to destroy what was left of "pure" organic life to create a new hybrid life form. The only reason they ever worked on the synthesis project at first was simply to find a way to empower them enough to be able to fight the synthetics. This new idea of complete galactic synthesis would mean replacing organic life, not truly preserving it, in their opinion, and they didn't want that.
This second faction also started to think that this was their fate. They started to believe that this was their punishment for thinking organics could create and control other life. They eventually came to the conclusion that if they were to destroy all of the synthetic life and survive, that their descendants would eventually try to create synthetic life again, no matter how long it took, they felt it would happen again.
Since this second faction did not agree with either of the two plans the first faction had, they started to work on their own idea. They needed a way to preserve organic life and destroy the synthetics that currently control the entire galaxy.
They also wanted a way to "reset" technology. To allow organics to have a clean slate. They didn't want any descendants to have the ability to create synthetic life so soon.
Their solution was...the Reapers. Combinging their entire races power into one place, giving them the power to stop the synthetics and to live long enough to make sure this never happens again.
They figured they would use a synthetic shell and an organic interior to power and drive it's functions and weapons. They were creating a giant synthetic that was powered by organic life and conscience. This idea involved sacrificing what was left of organics as well, just like the synthesis would, but it would allow organics to rise again, much later in the future, instead of replacing them with hybrids. They knew that sacrificing what was left of organics would also assure organic life could start over, from scratch, without the technology to create synthetics so soon.
A civil war broke out on the Citadel between these 2 factions, which now also had people from the other 2-3 surviving races they saved choosing sides. They tried their hardest not to kill each other throughout this time knowing how precious each of their lives were, although some did die.
Eventually though, the synthesis faction was taken by surprise, disarmed, and taken to a giant room with tubes. One by one, they were liquified and pumped into a metal sphere, almost brainlike in shape. This sphere was an advanced VI programmed with their formula for synthesis. The VI was able to take the broken down organic matter and mold it using mass effect fields. This was the beginning of the first "Reaper", although we know they didn't call them that.
He was no where near complete though, with so little raw organic matter to work with so far. After the synthesis faction was assimilated, they began to gather the rest of their species and assimilate them as well. The other 2-3 races that were left were taken in the same fashion and turned into smaller versions of their creation since there was less of them.
The Catalyst was reprogrammed. Originally, the Catalyst AI had the possibilities of the first faction programmed into it, destroy all synthetics or send out the synthesis signal. The second faction destroyed those possibilites within the AI programming and replaced it with the prime directive of protecting organic life via their "Reaper" creations, of which they had 3 of now (1 capital **** and 2 smaller ones).
At this point in time. there was not a single sentient organic life form left in the galaxy. All that was left was inside the immortal Reaper shells. Or so they thought...
(they knew that with the synthetics gone, new life would eventually spring up, which is partly why they didn't leave any of their race behind, the other part of the reasoning is that they wanted to organics to start over completely)
The Reapers set out to destroy the synthetic life in the galaxy. During these attacks, they were surprised to find that the synthetics didn't destroy ALL organic life, but instead enslaved some races, both primitive and highly advanced. There wasn't much of these organic slaves, but there was enough to "use" against the synthetics.
The Reapers started to target the synthetic settlements that had organic slaves, and they "harvested" the advanced species (as to eliminate possibility of their descendants creating synthetics), taking them to the Citadel for processing into another Reaper.
They simply infused the primitive races they found with their synthesis technology, turning them into ground forces they could control.
The war lasted a few hundred years since the Reapers were outnumberd. Although they were powerful, they still had to be careful when facing the overwhelming odds they were against. They had moved the Citadel into dark space to keep it safe and they also retreated to dark space when needed (the Citadel was not yet a Relay at this point).
Eventually, they went from only 3 Reapers, to 6 Reapers and some ground forces, then 10 Reapers with a giant ground army. Most of the Reapers were of medium size being made up of small amounts of organics, but when they could find a large number of a particular race, they were able to create a "capital" ship.
After a very long war, the synthetics were wiped out. The galaxy was quiet. The Reapers had left only a few primitive organics alive that they liberated from the synthetics. With no reason to stay within the galaxy, they left it, only to return tens of thousands of years later to see how the primitive organics they left behind have advanced. They made sure to wipe out any evidence of what happened before leaving.
They moved the Citadel back into the near center of the galaxy. Some of the primitive organics they saved were turned into the Keepers somehow. They tasked the Keepers with programming the Citadel to control the other Relays, and to turn the Citadel itself into a Relay. They left the Citadel Relay dormant though as to not tip off any organics that may find it in the future and learn about it's true powers.
The Reapers retreated to dark space, taking a relay that they linked with the Citadel with them through unknown means. They left one of their own behind in order to activate the Citadel Relay to return in the case that organics made the same mistakes again, just like they believe they will. This one Reaper was dubbed Harbinger.
The Reapers knew that the Relays and the Citadel would create a wonderful and prosperous galactic community, allowing organics to become extremely advanced as they share knowledge between each other. They knew it would make their quality of life much better than if they were isolated from each other. This is why they ruled against simply destroying the Relays to stunt organic advancement from going to fast. They deemed even without the Relays, organics would still create synthetics to destroy themselves.
The Reapers also predicted that the Citadel would be home to many races as it was to them at one point, which is why they had the Relay built into it and awaited in dark space with their own Relay connected to it.
If.....when (in their minds) the time came that organics got to the point where they could create sentient synthetic life, they would activate the Citadel Relay, pour through, and destroy the races on the Citadel and also taking control of the Relays to isolate the rest of the galaxy so they could be easily harvested,
Eventually, the Reapers belief was proven true, when the next "cycle" began. One of the primitive species they left behind after the synthetic war became extremely advanced. They found Relays and started to "uplift" the other few primitive races they could find. When there was eventually multiple advanced races, completely new primitive sentient life forms started to come into existance. Races that were not around during the synthetic war.
This completely validated their choice, the Reapers thought. Not only was creating the Reapers as a way of policing organics in order to protect them a good idea, it allowed new species that otherwise would not have existed, to flourish. It gave life new chances to create new peoples and civilizations that would not have been around without the prior purging of organics before them.
So, these 2 reasons became the foundation of the Reaper philosophy. Protect the organics by stopping them right at the point where they could create synthetic life that would rebel against them, and at the same time, the harvest would allow completely brand new life forms to start up. The primitives that they didn't harvest from that cycle would then become advanced, and in turn "uplift" those newer life forms, and that cycle would continue...forever.
Modifié par Glowyrm, 10 avril 2012 - 09:31 .
Retour en haut
