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[MyChemicalBromance]

We heard a number of theories from the Codex, Chorban/Jahleed, Vigil in ME1, (Biological Androids [oh snap they're green], Slave Race, the first Reaper thralls) but we never really got an explicit answer as to what they are. Their relevance to the plot diminished over the course of series so gradually that it doesn't feel like a gaping plot hole at first (it's hard to top the role they hand in the Prothean's attempt to buy the next cycle some time), but upon further reflection it becomes clearer and clearer that they don't seem to fit into what we learned about the Reapers.

Now one could simply argue that Bioware didn't have a use for them, and while that may be true, what we knew about them in ME1 was so vague that it's hard to say there was a greater plan for them back then, or at least it's still hard to guess what that might have been. About the grandest thing you could have guessed is that they were intended to hold the role that the Leviathans hold now, but that seems like such a basic message (Reapers try to control organics) that it hardly would have been a satisfying reveal if that had turned out to be the case.

So what are they?

[MyChemicalBromance]

Personally, I think a seemingly minor line in the Leviathan DLC could be
the closest thing we have to an answer, but I need to lay a few other
things out for it to make sense.

First, we have Chorban's letter in Mass Effect 2:

From: Chorban

I hope this address still works. I promised to send you intel on the
keepers if I found anything, and this is important. See, those scans you
took? It turns out the keepers are bio-engineered...and based on my
comparisons to some of that material from Saren's flagship Sovereign, they were engineered millions of years ago...by the same people who made Sovereign!



You may not understand how important this is, but it suggests that the Citadel wasn't really made by the Protheans! It may have been made by something far older,
with the keepers as organic guardians. And what's more, based on my
genetic readings, they're supposed to react to...something, some signal
or something...about every 50 thousand years. You can measure genetic
variances; it's a bit like comparing rings on a tree to see the drought
years.



Whoever did this...well, around the last time this signal went off would
be around the time the Protheans disappeared. And it's scheduled to go
off sometime around now. If any old tech still works, they could have
some nasty surprises waiting for us.



Just thought you'd want to know. Nobody here on the Citadel will listen to me.



-Chorban

That seems to confirm the "Biological
Android" idea, and it also tells us that they've been around longer than
any other living organism in in our cycle besides the Reapers and the
Catalyst (and possibly, but not likely, the Thorian).

Now the
next part gets tied up in the whole "Is the Catalyst the on the Citadel
all the time, or only once the Reapers show up? How can it be their
collective awareness and separate from them" mess. Regardless of how you
interpret that, I think most of us would agree that the Citadel doesn't
serve much of a purpose to the Reapers if there are no cycles going on.
Given this, I think it's reasonable to conclude it was created sometime
shortly before or after the first Cycles.

While the Leviathan doesn't tell us about the creation of the Citadel (considering it had
spheres on the Citadel, and knew about the Catalyst existing, but
doesn't tell Shepard the Catalyst lives on the Citadel, it seems logical
to conlude the Catalyst doesn't exist there exclusively, nor did it
originally), it does tell us about the beginning of the Cycles.

To find a solution, [The Catalyst] required information--physical data
drawn from organic life in the cosmos. It created an army of pawns that
searched the galaxy gathering this data. There was no warning, no reason
given when they turned against us. Only slaughter.

Now it seems odd to me that the Leviathan was so specific about the
Catalyst's methods here. We know chronologically that these "pawns"
aren't the Reapers, which is the only thing we've heard of the Catalyst
creating. Except...

It turns out the keepers are bio-engineered...and based on my
comparisons to some of that material from Saren's flagship Sovereign, they were engineered millions of years ago...by the same people who made Sovereign!

Now of course the first question that comes to mind is how could weak
little Keepers bring down Leviathans? Well we hear from Anderson in ME2
that they're capable of moving extremely heavy bulk heads, and there was
LotSB Video Archive footage that could be interpreted as implying that
Keeper 20 killed a Krogan.
http://youtu.be/qC8HKPMQPN0?t=8m38s

So are the Keepers the Catalyst's pawns? My arguments for:

-They are created life (corresponds to the fact that the Catalyst created pawns).

-They
were created by "the same people" that created Sovereign (this could
also imply that the Keepers were to the Nazara what the Collectors are
to Humans though).

-They are seen picking through corpses at the end of ME3 (collecting "organic data", one could argue).



So if this is true, what does it change? Well not much, really. You could
argue that it explain a little bit of a plothole with the ending.

When Shepard first comes up the lift, there's an odd moment when a Keeper
stares at him/her, which doesn't really seem to have a purpose (it's
worth noting that this Keeper is one of the last living things Shepard
sees, just for the significance that may imply). If the Keepers are the
Catalyst's pawns, then that would explain how The Illusive Man (also
under the Catalyst's controls) found the exact spot on the Citadel
Shepard and Anderson were so quickly. Of course, this could just as
easily be explained by the Reapers simply controlling the Keepers,
regardless of their origins.

Modifié par MyChemicalBromance, 14 janvier 2014 - 01:04 .

[ImaginaryMatter]

I think they're basically the Collector version of some other race. Only instead of responding to the commands of something like the Collector General/Harbinger they were simply Indoctrinated/brainwashed/programmed/whatever into maintaining the Citadel and responding to Sovereign's signal.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

In the words of Lt. Gorman, "It's a xenomorph of some kind."
Hicks: "It's a bug hunt."

[Sundance31us]

They are the reason you can never find your keys/wallet/etc in the morning.

[mybudgee]

They are like Rachni, but not dicks

[Maximillion46]

I like your idea OP and it makes sense, though I also found this explanation:

'According to Vigil, the keepers were likely once a race that was either created, conquered, or indoctrinated by the Reapers, possibly even the first race they enslaved.'

http://masseffect.wi...com/wiki/Keeper

For the rest of the scarce info on them.

I took it to be a poetic... something to have the first race conquered by the Reapers be the ones that help ensure all other races share their fate. Like something I read about Death or the ferryman (perhaps Charon) being the first person that died, though I could be confusing it with the fairytale with the ferryman that could only leave his duty by someone taking his place, but anyway...

I hadn't yet heared about the Leviathan DLC when I marathoned through the trilogy, so from what I heard in ME1 and read on the wiki, I thought 'Keepers are the earliest race there ever was. In other fictional universes they could have been THE Forerunners/Precursors... but then the Reapers swooped in'.

Turns out the Leviathan and other races that they enthralled were first (the Leviathan most likely wiped out some races that came before so they would be the 'apex race'), but the Keepers still holding the dubious honor of being the first race enslaved/Collectorfied by the Reapers to suit their needs... Funnily enough, organics are unpredictable and in ME1 Sovereign needs the geth to open the relay to dark space himself, or something like that.

So you first use organics to maintain the Citadel (AI would try to overthrow the organics of every cycle I'm guessing), but they're unpredictable (luckily, the keepers didn't make AIs (perhaps because they're part organic and synthetic? And also, hollow like the Collectors), so you use AIs to call in the Reapers to begin the harvest... you need the AI to stop the organics that make AI that will overthrow their creators and... I've got a headache, I need to lay down, though it's more sweet sweet irony than a plothole^^

[NeonFlux117]

Who care's.

ROC.

Rule of Cool. It's cool to have little bug things and stuff. It's a popular scifi trope. Deal with it.

Things like this will never really be explained.

[shodiswe]

The Keepers might be there to allow maintenance to the Citadel which serves as the Catalysts body. I'm thinking the Catalyst realised it needed a maintenance crew that seemed harmless enough to not frighten it's visitors or arouse hostility. It couldn't send for a Reaper ship every time someone broke something on the Citadel.
There for the keepers were designed to maintain the Citadel and the Catalysts systems aswell as help whatever species that commes to live on the citadel to ensure they come to accept the Keepers.

Sovereign also used an army of Krogan's and Saren a Turian, not just AI or the Keepers.
I don't think Sovereign cared who it dooped into doing it's bidding as long as they obeyed.

It's unclear wether sovereign brainwashed/reprogramed the geth/heretics or wether they were the equivalent to Geth teenagers looking for a fatherfigure, to ease their "feeling" of being lonely and lacking a purpose. Sovereign was in the end the mindless pawn of the Catalyst..

It was kind of weird to see those Geth in ME1 who had built shrines for Sovereign, or Nazara as we're told it's real name was.

The question really is, why did some Geth join Nazara when others didn't? Is it because each Geth was a unique with a different perspective, making different choices, or because soverign/Nazara did something to them. Are the Heretics the Cerberus equivalent of the Geth or a Huskified version or some other type of crazy religious cult similar those we got on earth today?

There are lots of tiny unanswered questions, maybe they are supposed to be.

Modifié par shodiswe, 14 janvier 2014 - 09:34 .

[Finlandiaprkl]

A slave-race of the Leviathans for the up-keeping of the Citadel/Relay-Network.

[Comrade Wakizashi]

Can't we say they are a mystery and keep it at that? I sort of liked the mystery behind the Keepers, and the fact that they completely ignore the Citadel population and vice versa. I loved how they just continued to work amongst a pile of dead bodies and a rain of blood in the ME3 ending.

[SwobyJ]

Rachni mixed with Collectors mixed with Geth.

Complete drones, following programmed instructions, who barely have minds of their own but are connected pretty much telepathically.

The Citadel seems safe, but it's really a trap where everyone is being under surveillance 24/7, and not but the Council, but technically the Reapers and possibly the Leviathans.


Based on the info we have SO FAR, it's a good guess that they were once a previous cycle, didn't quite live up to expectations, and instead of becoming a Reaper, they were engineered into a slave race (thus 'spared', in the Reapers' warped view) to serve the Citadel (and thus the control system revolving around it) more efficiently.

There's nothing left to them now but a bunch of drone clones.

And yes, they're supposed to be the hidden-in-plain-sight trigger to open up the Citadel relay to dark space through a secret routine.

Why couldn't the 'Catalyst' have done it?

I dunno, go ask Nazara , I mean him.

Modifié par SwobyJ, 14 janvier 2014 - 11:01 .

[Han Shot First]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

I think they're basically the Collector version of some other race. Only instead of responding to the commands of something like the Collector General/Harbinger they were simply Indoctrinated/brainwashed/programmed/whatever into maintaining the Citadel and responding to Sovereign's signal.

Pretty much this.

The Keepers are most likely the heavily modified version of some unfortunate sapient species that was annihilated by the Reapers, perhaps in one of the early cycles.

[KrrKs]

MyChemicalBromance wrote...
Question

MyChemicalBromance wrote...
Answer

Ok....?
But I also think that the Keepers were the Catalyst's/ AI's original pawns.

The Question of how they exactly they brought down the leviathans is not really that relevant, imho.
Plus, we have already seen that the Keepers can use advanced technology.
[Speculation:] Maybe they were not only used to collect data for the Catalyst, but also to do certain tasks for the Leviathans, that other species couldn't.
Anyway I'd say that they most likely had direct acces to the unsuspecting leviathans, so that killing most of them off would not be that much on problem as it might look to be now.

[Farangbaa]

This forum should really do something about all those similar display pictures.

[CronoDragoon]

One other thing to consider is that Patrick Weekes unofficially stated that the Reapers couldn't shut down the relay network in ME3 because the Keepers prevented them from doing this. Whether he was just spitballin' (it was an informal fan-writer discussion after a PAX conference I believe) or whether this was actually a plot detail the team decided on but left out I'm not sure.

[dreamgazer]

CronoDragoon wrote...

One other thing to consider is that Patrick Weekes unofficially stated that the Reapers couldn't shut down the relay network in ME3 because the Keepers prevented them from doing this.

Given what we learned about how the Keepers were changed by the Protheans in their cycle, it works just fine. 

Shame this wasn't point-blank addressed in the story, though.

[MyChemicalBromance]

KrrKs wrote...

MyChemicalBromance wrote...
Question

MyChemicalBromance wrote...
Answer

Ok....?

I did it that way to emphasize that I was asking people to speculate about more than just my answer (there could have been things I completely missed).