This was what I wanted to do to the Reapers
Alternate Timeline of the Mass Effect Universe
All dates are in BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).
Prehistoric Times (Unknown BCE - 1,000,000,000 BCE)
The Time of the Keepers
The Keepers were the original architects of the Citadel and the Relays, the masters of the Mass Effect and the most technologically advanced civilisation ever to exist in the galaxy. The Keepers were an augmented organic race with hybrid hive mind intelligence, able to communicate complex ideas in an instant over vast distances through the relay network. The centre of the Keeper civilization was the Citadel; here the Keeper Queen was
interfaced with the main hub of the relay network itself. Each Keeper was hard wired into the system. This was their greatest asset in their exploration of the galaxy, but also their greatest weakness.
The Keepers were curious beings, drawn to researching the mysteries of the Galaxy in the search for understanding. A group of Keepers were assigned to observe the environmental collapse of some long forgotten
water world. They arrived to undertake a study of the dying world’s environment’s death throws, little did they know that their doom lay lurking in the hidden depths of the planet.
The Origins of the Reapers
The Reapers ancestors were originally a race of aquatic apex predators on this unknown, Eezo Rich water world. Evolution had gifted them with extended life span, a cunning intelligence and a deadly effective form of biotics, a form that doesn’t only manipulate the physical, but the mental chemistry of its prey. The Reapers were patient ambush predators. They set traps for the unwary, subtly overtaking the minds of their prey and then striking in a powerful mind attack aimed at provoking terror and panic or paralysis. These predators had a taste for fear,
the chemical reactions racing through were their “Ambrosia” and their hunger was insatiable. It was a key function of Reaper society; an individual Reaper’s power is measured in its reserves of “Ambrosia” The more Ambrosia, the more trrifying and powerful an individual Reaper is
The Long Hunger
The Reapers ancestors were limited by their inability to use tools and were tied to their home planet. The planet was facing environmental collapse, prey species were disappearing rapidly and they were facing extinction. This was the period the Reapers still call The Long Hunger, the time when the Reaper’s learned fear for the first time.
They needed to escape their doomed planet and salvation lay in the hands of the Keepers. They patiently enthralled the minds of the Keepers studying them, turning scientific curiosity into an overwhelming religious
belief. This belief spread through into the hive mind of the Keepers rapidly until virtually the entire civilization was converted.
The Reapers encouraged the enthralled Keepers into augmenting their bodies with synthetic tech and Mass Effect Drives to enable them to escape the planet. They burst out of their home world into a galaxy full of
defenceless Keepers. The Reapers are not a co-operative species by nature, their native environment encouraged competition and this had been honed during the Long hunger. Each Reaper raced through the galaxy eager to harvest as much “Ambrosia” as possible to ascend their status. The Reaper’s predatory instincts and greed took over and they entered into a cataclysmic feeding frenzy on the enthralled Keepers.
Harbinger
The most cunning individual Reaper, Harbinger, adopted a different strategy than his brothers. He was weaker physically than other Reapers and did not join the frenzy on the Keeper’s colony worlds. He attacked the Keeper Queen and took over her control of the Keeper augmented communication hub. Here he used his thralls to link his body into the centralised hive mind of the Keeper Queen directly, fortified his defence and he waited his opportunity. When the Frenzy was over, he struck and overwhelmed the fragile bond between each Reaper’s organic mind and its synthetic body and in the process he shackled their instincts to his will.
The Silent Cycle (1,000,000,000 BCE - 68,000 BCE)
The Reapers are extremely long-lived Cybernetic intelligences, virtually immortal but still subject to the Laws of Entropy. Their organic element and Element Zero reserves decay over vast periods of time. The Frenzy had taken out virtually the entire Keeper Civilization, of the trillions of beings spread across the galaxy; only the relatively tiny population within theCitadel remained. Harbinger had control of the only remaining Keeper Queen but the species would never be able to reproduce enough genetic material to sustain or satiate the rest of the Reapers hunger. Another solution was needed
Harbinger knew the limits of his control, if his brothers became hungry for “Ambrosia”, they would Frenzy and be out with his control, their hunger would drive them to eradicate Organic life totally or they and would turn against him. To protect himself, he constructed a Relay link to the void of Dark Space and built a giant station in Dark Space. He convinced his brothers that entering Dark Space would allow them to enter into prolonged stasis and conserve their resources over the vast period of time that would be required to replenish Organic reserves to a level capable of sustaining the Reaper population. His brothers saw the benefits, but were unaware of Harbingers other intention, when they retreated through the Dark Space relay and linked into the giant home base, he struck and overwhelmed them, now the Reapers themselves were enthralled slaves.
Harbinger knew the risks of waiting on evolution offering no guarantees of another race ascending to a level required to feed the Reapers. He bypassed the process by uplifting species that were suitable to Reaper
needs, engineering them a their development along specific paths. To perpetuate their cycle required the thralls to have access to certain technological advances.
Space flight: The reapers need a vast amount of organic material, more than a single world could provide.
Ability to manipulate Element Zero: The thralls need to have knowledge of how to manipulate stable Eezo, either by evolution (Biotics) or through technology
Creation of synthetic augmentation technology: The thralls need to understand, and construct/ repair advanced synthetic intelligence networks
Uplift Technology: Each cycle must be able to uplift the next.
Ability to construct Dark Energy Devices: Each cycle needs to be able to construct DED’s to enable the Reapers to control the next cycle, construct a Reaper to replenish losses and to extend the web of influence of the Cycle
(Relays and Terminus devices)
This was the perfect system for Harbinger with it he was able to balance the insatiable hunger of his brothers with his own needs for keeping control. He had imposed an order on the chaos of the Frenzy and enabled his race to achieve a form of immortality
1,000,000,000 BCEThe Leviathan of Dis, a Reaper casualty of the Frenzy. Its corpse comes to rest on the planet Jartar and remains undisturbed for nearly one billion years until being discovered by Batarian scientists
37,000,000 BCEAn unknown space faring race fires a mass accelerator round at a Reaper near the planet Mnemosyne. The round penetrates the Reaper, disabling it, and continues moving through space, eventually striking the planet Klendagon and creating the geological feature there known as the Great Rift Valley. Cerberus traced the origins of the weapon and begin to reverse engineer the technology
298,000 BCEThe ancient Arthenn race flourish in the Zelene system, living on the planet Helyme until being destroyed in an unknown event that wiped out all complex life on the planet. They also maintained a presence on other planets in the system including Epho, which bears the scars of an ancient orbital bombardment, and Gaelon, which may have been mined for helium-3.
125,000 BCEAncient spacefaring races called the Thoi'han and Inusannon fight over the planet Eingana, littering the planet with the debris of hundreds of starships. Refined element zero scattered by broken drive cores contaminates
the environment, causing many native species to go extinct and those that survive to show a tendency to develop biotic powers.
Protheans (68,000 BCE – 48,000 BCE)
68,000 BCEThe Reapers cycle worked perfectly for aeons, most cycles were pacified and offered little resistance to the harvest. That was until the arrival of the Protheans. The Protheans were the penultimate Cycle race, uplifted by the Inusannon at the behest of Harbinger prior to their Harvest. They achieved space flight and discover mass effect technology from the ruins of the extinct Inusannon and go on to establish a galaxy-wide civilization linked by the mass relay network with the Citadel as their capital, unaware that they were enthralled by the Reapers
50,000 BCE –48’000 BCE The Cycle is discoveredThe Protheans encounter a hostile race of machine intelligences that endanger their existence in a conflict known as the "Metacon War". To combat this threat the Protheans uplifted several races, including an insectoid race, the Rachni
The Rachni were intelligent insectoids with a hive mind intelligence. Cunning and aggressive, the Protheans uplifted them and with their help turned the tide of the Metacon war, though the conflict was long and bloody.
Evolution had bestowed other gifts on the Rachni, they had an ability to sense the subtle control signal of the Citadel. When they deciphered the meaning and origin of the signal, they rebelled but were eventually defeated by the Protheans, but not before news of the Reaper signal was passed on.
A team of Prothean Scientists read the genetically encoded knowledge of a Rachni Queen using their unique sensory ability. They were able to decipher more of the signal and tried to warn their leaders of the Reapers, but to no avail. The Citadel’s influence was too strong and their leaders would not leave the Citadel.
48,000BCE The Harvest of The ProtheansWhen the Reapers invaded, the Prothean Empire was in chaos as a result of the rebellion. The Reapers quickly assumed command of the Prothean leaders but still they had a long and bitter war to defeat the Prothean rebels. This was the first time in history that the Reapers had encountered any real resistance and they were unable to harvest the Protheans with impunity. They had to stall harvesting for their own needs and produce augmented Protheans to supplement their force. Over time this strategy turned the tide of the conflict, each Prothean world the Reapers captured was a factory for enthralled and augmented soldiers.
It still took the combined fleets of the Enthralled Protheans and the Reapers several hundred years to finally defeat the Prothean rebels, who fought a war of attrition and sacrifice. They destroyed worlds rather than let them be captured or harvested but it wasn’t enough to halt the Reapers, though it did impact heavily on them, who were unable to process the vast amounts of organic material they required. The cycle had been broken. Harbinger recalled the Reapers earlier then previous cycles when the last enclaves of Protheans were destroyed and they tasked their Indoctrinated forces with the task of clearing the galaxy of the last of the rebels and all Reaper or Prothean technology.
The Rebels had one last card to play, cadres of specialists hidden in long-term stasis in remote worlds. These were built to house the best minds of the Protheans. Some were discovered and destroyed, but a precious few
survived into this cycle and were able to sabotage the Reaper system. They closed off the Citadel portal to dark space and sabotaged its mind control signal. Then they wiped out virtually all the Enthralled slaves, who without the Reapers were a vastly reduced force.
Their last acts were to sabotage the Cycle any way they could. They completed their genetic reverse engineering of the uplifted races, built warning beacons and technology archives on or near the home worlds of an uplifted race and closed off many Mass Relays, before vanishing from history.
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Modifié par alleyd, 03 octobre 2013 - 03:46 .
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