Mass Effect: Going Dark (RPG)

[rhoenix]

I posted this to gauge interest for a forum-based game, with the Mass Effect universe as the setting. The timeframe in this case will be one year after the events of Mass Effect 3.

The galaxy and all species within it are slowly settling down toward peace after the Reaper invasion. It seemed quite likely that the Reaper threat against the galaxy has been stopped - but there would be no way to be certain until another 50,000 years have passed.

To that end, a new galactic hub is in the process of being built - the Bastion Station, powered by dark energy rather than the mass effect generators used by the Citadel. New technologies that do not rely on mass effect technology are being researched, and there are already inroads toward using the technology found in the Conduit to construct new mass relays - setup on a separate network than the current ones share with the Citadel.

The Council still exists, though due to certain political pressures, now has a representative from every major galactic race, including geth, rachni, elcor, volus, hanar, and quarian. The Drell are still too few to warrant their own representative, and the krogan are not yet united enough to say their representative truly speaks for all their people. However, there are minor reports of unrest from the drell for the former, and Urdnot Wrex is making determined and impressive inroads toward the latter.

Commander Shepard has consolidated the SpecTRe forces with herself in charge, and established a permanent base for the SpecTRes on Mindoir. After doing so, using the cited examples of Saren Arterius and Tela Vasir, made sure that active SpecTRe's not only get a good paycheck and benefits now, but also watch one another's backs at all times, both in-field and not. Leadership and squad tactics have taken on similar importance to a prospective operative than just being a badass at one's chosen field. Since that change, success rate of missions has risen upward from an already impressive percentage, and collateral casualties have dropped by an equally significant number.

However, the relative peace after the end of the Reaper war is beginning to fracture once again, as different factions begin pulling for influence again.

The PC characters will be part of a SpecTRe applicant group, competing against other applicants for the chance to wear the black armor.

Allowed species will include human, turian, asari, krogan, quarian, salarian, and drell. There will be geth, elcor, volus and rachni NPC's, and their stats have already been worked out - however, due to how those four species behave and live, playing one as a PC is not recommended. If you're hell-bent on the idea though, talk to me.

Allowed specializations will be the usual ones from the games - Soldier, Infiltrator, Vanguard, Sentinel, Adept, and Engineer. I'm working out skills and stats for each of them - these will be posted soon, depending on interest.

If you're interested, I want to know your thoughts and questions. This will likely be a play-by-post game, and I'll likely be taking a page out of Havoc's book and not really bothering with stats, except as necessary behind the scenes.

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The rules for this game are fairly simple. Make a character using the character creation rules below, and over time, you'll improve the skills you have, gain new ones, or both. After each significant event in gameplay terms, your character will be able to improve a single skill by one step (all skills listed in the character creation post are at "basic" level), or gain a new skill under the restrictions of your character's specific MOS.

For combat, in general, keep it simple - just move + ability + move, within reason, though you may reserve your action (e.g. for reactionary fire).


Galaxy Map: Map & legend for the current game

The Cast so far:
Junko Mori (human Vanguard)
Shaddai ("Loyalist" geth Infiltrator)
Iona T'Shen (asari Adept)
Kalis Maraka (turian Adept)
Gabriel Cipriani (human Soldier - INACTIVE)
Mikhail Jager (human Adept)
Many-As-One (geth Soldier)
Sings-to-the-Stars (rachni Adept, NPC)
Lantar Sidonis (turian Infiltrator, NPC)
Urdnot Tallos (krogan Soldier)
Sol’Amon Nar Tolshek (quarian Vanguard)
Andrew Lysander (human Engineer)

[rhoenix]

CHARACTER CREATION DATA (v.1.3)
When creating your character, the info and tables below show the hard data necessary for the character. However, there are a few other questions I would like to see covered when you make a character.

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Name:
Homeworld:
Species:
MOS:
Skills:

Pre-nomination personal history:
Pre-nomination military background:
---

Background Information:
1. What is this character's history?

2. How did they get involved in the military (or... facsimile thereof)? Where is this character's family?

3. What are some major events that happened in your character after this?

4. What was the event (or what were the events) that led to your character getting noticed by your superiors, and nominated for the short list of Spectre candidates?

5. What non-combat hobbies, interests, or degrees does your character have?

With those out of the way, the rest is pretty much game mechanics. I've kept things relatively simple, while still trying to allow for growth.


Species:
- Human: The most varied of all the Council races, the Reaper devastation of Earth has left many of them bitter, though a great many more have felt even more determined to have some influence on the galactic stage. They have the second-largest navy in the galaxy following the Reaper War (second only to the turians, and together they comprise nearly all of the available Council naval fleet), and as such now have stronger influence than before. Humans can have any MOS.

- Asari: The original species who found the Citadel this time, they are a long-lived species (nearly a thousand years or more, in some cases), all of which are naturally biotic. They tend to hold themselves aloof from most other species, more due to their much shorter lifespans compared to an average asari than anything else. The only restriction asari face is that none are pure soldiers or engineers, though any other MOS is available.

- Turian: The species closest in temperament to humans, they have a navy just barely more impressive than the human navy, and along with the humans, form the core of the Bastion Security naval forces. They are a predatory and direct species, though with known biotics numbering few. Turians can have any MOS.

- Krogan: A species as long-lived as the asari, krogan are nearly diametrically opposite in terms of lifestyle and temperment, being resilient and savage, where the asari are more delicate and refined. Most of the krogan homeworld Tuchanka is still rubble and ruins, despite the extraordinarily impressive inroads being made by clan Urdnot. Though there aren't very many tech-oriented krogan, they can have any MOS.

- Salarian: The least long-lived of any species in Council space, salarians seldom live longer than thirty or forty years. Nonetheless, they are an extraordinarily hyperactive and fast-paced species, getting as much done in their thirty or forty years as others might over generations. Salarian biotics are rare enough to be almost a myth, but can have any MOS other than Adept.

- Quarian: The tinkerer species responsible for the genesis of the Geth, the quarians are no longer homeworld-less nomads, having resettled on Rannoch after making peace, and eventually cordial relations with the Geth. Most quarians spend a few years working on Bastion as their Pilgrimage now, and now that they have a homeworld and a Council representative, are improving relations with other species based on their still-legendary tech skills. Quarian biotics are extraordinarily rare, and due to their dependence on environmental suits due to their immune systems, do not often become soldiers either.

- Hanar: A species that most resembles airborne bioluminscent jellyfish from Earth's oceans, the hanar mostly keep to themselves, when not trying to "enlighten" the other races of the true identity of the Enkindlers (which, to the hanar, are responsible for seeding this galaxy with life). Most hanar do not venture off their homeworld much, and if they do, it is only in very rare cases where they take on a direct martial role, usually preferring to leave such things to drell intermediaries. Hanar, due to their natures, are not able to function well as pure soldiers or as pure engineers, but may have any other MOS.

- Drell: After the hanar rescued their species from dying out on their original homeworld, the drell were brought to live on the hanar homeworld. However, the drell population has stayed relatively stable over the centuries, numbering in at barely over four million galaxy-wide. As such, they do not have enough numbers to warrant a Council representative, though are still found most places in the galaxy, typically doing the bidding of their hanar employers. Drell are most often trained as assassins if found off-world, though drell techs and biotics are not unheard of. Drell may have any MOS.

- Elcor: A large, resilient species whose homeworld's gravity is twice that of Earth's, the hanar are slow-moving, slow-acting, but nearly implacable once they move. Because of how slow thinking and acting the elcor are compared to most other Council species, most elcor do not get involved in more martial occupations. When they do, they often tend toward tech-oriented roles, as biotics are almost unknown among the elcor. (Not recommended for PC's)

- Volus: A species noticeably shorter on average than most other sapient species in Council space, they are a methane-based people who, like the quarians, must wear full environmental suits when not on their homeworld. Unlike the quarians, who might sicken and die if exposed to open air due to all the bacteria and viruses, volus will explode through rapid atmospheric decompression if their suits are ruptured. Though relatively few volus decide to enter into martial occupations, when they do, they may have any MOS - however, volus biotics are extremely rare. (Not recommended for PC's)

- Geth: A relatively young species of less than four centuries, the geth are a collective AI intelligence. They consider the geth processes themselves as "software," and their physical bodies to be "hardware" - somewhat akin to how humans view themselves and aircars; one is simply a vehicle for the other. They communicate amongst one another using FTL radios constantly, if there is an FTL relay nearby. For relatively simple tasks, as few as one to ten geth processes download themselves into a platform. For more complex tasks, such as dealing with any other sapient species in Council space, the geth consider eight hundred processes to be an absolute bare minimum. There are no geth biotics, which makes communication with the rachni problematic. When a platform and corresponding processes volunteer for military work, they are very much at home as Soldiers, Infiltrators, or Engineers. (Not recommended for PC's)

- Rachni: After Commander Shepard released the rachni queen on Noveria, and her flight into uncharted territory to raise her people once more, the rachni were not often heard of for the next two years, until the Reapers began to arrive in the galaxy en masse. It was then that rachni lightships were seen in the skies once again, making some of the older asari and krogan very uneasy, and the rest of the species not much less so. However, it was quickly seen that the rachni were quite willing to cooperate and coordinate with the varying Council fleets, and even appeared eager to do so, the tension eased somewhat. With the nod of Commander Shepard, the rachni began to get involved with galactic politics, even gaining the honor of a rachni queen being named as the Council Representative for their people. Rachni have no talent with the tech the rest of the galaxy uses, beyond rudimentary usage. Worse yet, the rachni's body structure is not friendly toward their use of guns, and while a rachni brood warrior can learn to use a pistol, it won't be with any degree of amazing accuracy. On the other hand, the rachni are all biotic, and all warriors are considered Adepts - in fact, they have to use a form of biotics simply to speak with any non-rachni, not having mouths capable of creating speech as most Council species understand it. Even better, all of them have an innate biotic sense of sapient minds, allowing them to detect people with great accuracy to a distance of a few kilometers, and share this information with their compatriots. However, the geth cannot hear the "mindsong" of the rachni, which can make coordination problematic. (Not recommended for PC's)

MOS (Military Occupational Specialty):
All non-rachni characters begin play with the Armor (Basic), and the Pistol skills, as rachni cannot use armor or use guns very well. Rachni begin play with Armor (Exoskeleton), and an extra biotic skill instead. A Vanguard or Infiltrator character may substitute a skill gained automatically from their MOS with another, if the substituting skill is also allowed by their MOS (e.g. a Vanguard may substitute the Shotgun skill for the Sniper Rifle skill).

- Soldier: Focused on pure combat. Soldiers begin with Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Assault Rifle, Heavy Weapons, and Armor (Combat) skills, and may choose two more from either the Soldier or General skill trees.

- Adept: Focused on nothing but biotic power. Adepts begin with the Submachine Gun (rachni characters get the Mindvision skill instead), Warp and Throw skills, and are able to select four more from the General and Biotic skill trees.

- Engineer: Specialized in all things tech. Engineers begin with the Submachine Gun, Electronics and Decryption skills, and are able to select four more from the General and Tech skill trees.

- Infiltrator: A combination of tech and soldier skills. Infiltrators begin with a specialized version of the Armor (Combat) skill, which for them is Armor (Tactical), allowing use of the tactical cloak. They also get the Electronics skill, and the Sniper Rifle skill. They may also choose two other abilities from the General, Tech, or Soldier skill trees.

- Sentinel: A balanced mix of tech and biotic skills. Sentinels begin with the Submachine Gun skill, and a specialized version of the Armor (Combat) skill, which for them is Armor (Tech) - allowing a third layer of protection in addition to shields and armor. They also get the Electronics and the Barrier skills, and are able to select two more abilities from the General, Tech, or Biotic skill trees.

- Vanguard: A combination of biotic and soldier skills. Vanguards begin with the Shotgun skill and the Armor (Combat) skill, and a specialized version of Charge that allows them to not only cover distances rapidly, but can stun an organic enemy when struck, and knock most enemies flying as well. They are able to select two more skills from the General, Soldier, or Biotic skill trees.

Skills (General):
Each skill listed in any category shows the out-of-combat skill name first, followed by it's use in combat in parentheses. The skills listed in the General category are either weapon skills, or some form of defense.

Assault Rifle - allows use of the assault rifle
Pistol - allows use of the pistol
Submachine Gun - allows use of the submachine gun
Shotgun - allows use of the shotgun
Sniper Rifle - allows use of the sniper rifle
Close-Quarters Combat - teaches unarmed and melee defense and offense
Armor (Basic) - allows use of light armor and/or reinforced clothing
Armor (Combat) - allows use of full medium environmental hardsuit armor
Medicine (Neural Shock) - is a skill doctors and surgeons develop while exercising their skills during combat conditions (with Neural Shock being an excellent way to immobilize targets at range)
Stealth (Sneak Attack) - allows a character to prevent themselves from being discovered - whether it be with old-fashioned ghillie suits and camoflauge clothes and paint, or with stealth generators (and each way, or both, allows one to Sneak Attack an enemy at close range)

Skills (Soldier):
Soldier skills, though few, each add an intimidating bonus to an already impressive skillset.

Assault Training (Adrenaline Rush) - gives passive bonuses to accuracy and damage per shot with guns (as well as Adrenaline Rush, which effectively gives a Soldier hyper-reactions for a few seconds)
Fitness (Immunity) - gives passive increases how well one can use one's armor, as well as one's overall resilience to damage (Immunity provides a concentrated and very active version of this in combat)
Armor (Advanced - Soldier only) - allows fluid use of heavy environmental armor hardsuits in combat
Heavy Weapons - allows use of heavy weapons

Skills (Tech):
Tech skills all involve interacting with computers, VI's, AI's, doors, electronic locks, and everything related.

Decryption (Sabotage) - allows one to decipher codes (with Sabotage preventing a target's use of guns and other equipment for a short time)
Electronics (Overload) - is the broad How Things Work skill (with Overload being a crude but very effective off switch for machines, and good for damaging a target's shields)
Hacking (AI/VI Hacking - Engineer only) - allows use of computer techniques and tricks most certainly not taught during class (and doing so during combat conditions especially so, allowing the user to temporarily have control over a synthetic target for a short time)
Triangulation (Damping) - a skill normally possessed by sensor operators and the like (with Damping used to constrict a target's use of tech or biotic skills for a time, reducing their rate of use and effectiveness)
Robotics (Combat Drone) - for exploring the use of cybernetics and full robotics as a career (and having your own intelligent Combat Drone to scout areas for you, stun enemies, or remotely hack electronics is a nice bonus)
Pyrotechnics (Incinerate) - for those who hang out with the Ammo Experts and get to use their leftovers to make any holiday memorable and bright (and a great way to create a hole in someone's armor with Incinerate once their shields are down)
Cryogenics (Cryo Blast) - for those who either really hate summertime or who've worked on air conditioning units for a paycheck (Cryo Blast allows one to literally freeze a target in their tracks for a short time)
Power Hacking (Energy Drain) - a skill normally possessed by those who haven't paid the energy company to keep their lights on for years (and Energy Drain allows this to be done under combat conditions to targets, draining their shields and reinforcing your own)

Skills (Biotic):
Biotic skills are all offshoots of the study the various species have indulged in over the years. In essence, the biotic talent means that one can create and manipulate mass effect energies with their mind, allowing for various effects, and various ways of viewing the world as a result of their abilities developing in that specific way. Note that all biotics experience the emotional state, physical state, and even surface thoughts of others at all times (usually through visual cues in humans, salarians, turians, hanar, drell, asari, krogan, and rachni, through smell with volus biotics, and through touch with quarian ones) though most shut most of it out to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed. It also means that they are all capable of direct mind-to-mind communication within close range for non-biotics, or within line of sight for other biotics, though doing so is considered usually considered very rude without an invitation (though rachni have little choice in the matter, they do certainly keep to themselves most of the time).

Barrier - the biotic art of resisting damage (with Barrier being a physical representation of this, able to supplement shields with another layer of protection)
Pull - the study of how to nullify the effects of gravity has on a target (and Pull being a way to do this to a target, and make them rise helplessly into the air)
Warp - the art of shaping mass effect fields (with Warp creating a small singularity, able to twist and tear at an unshielded target to cause direct damage and damage over time, or to violently detonate any active biotic effects on the target)
Singularity (Adept only) - the finer art of shaping mass effect fields (granting the ability to create a singularity large enough to keep several enemies in place, whether they want to be or not)
Throw - one of the first fields studied regarding biotic effects (and Throw essentially giving a crude, though strong, kinetic shove to a target, able to at least knock them down)
Stasis - the art of temporarily affecting the perception of time (and being able to place a target in Stasis for a short time)
Charge - the finer study of Inertia (granting the use of Charge, which is effectively a Throw used on the self - note that despite the name, only the Vanguard's particular style of this skill actually generates inertia; the "normal" version of the skill is simply a way to biotically "sprint" short distances)
Slam - the fine art of weaving different threads of gravity together using one's biotics (and allowing you to abruptly yank a target off their feet and several meters into the air, only to equally abruptly throw the target downward at near supersonic speeds)
Shockwave - the art of localized areas of increased gravity (with a rapid, rippling wave of them being sent in a direction, knocking most enemies off their feet and stunning organic targets)
Reave - a field of study focusing gravity's more subtle effects (allowing one to cause direct damage to shields, or damage over time to an unshielded target that will also stun organic targets for a short time)

Skills (Special):
"Special" skills are skills that a character can only gain through special circumstances, or that don't quite fit into any of the other categories.

Mindvision (rachni only) - able to "see" all sentient organic life and their intent for a one kilometer radius, and able to share this view with other organic sapients if the rachni chooses to. Geth are excluded from both uses, as they are not organic.
Armor (Tech) - adding a third layer of protection to armor and shields/barriers, when the Tech Armor is downed, it "explodes", temporarily stunning all enemies within a 5 meter radius.
Armor (Tactical) - An addition to medium environmental armor design, the Tactical Cloak bends light around the wearer to give a measure of protection from discovery while sniping, though the effect is less useful the closer one is to the target.
Rend - a biotic abilty whose genesis is lost to time, it modifies how a Warp works by keeping it in place, by flattening the affected area to a nearly two-dimensional plane. It functions as a sword in close combat, causing normal damage to shields, barriers, and armor, but will not detonate biotic effects on the target.

[Agent Fisher]

I'm in.

[rhoenix]

Keep in mind, the character creation stuff is a baseline. If you want to go off the chart a bit and have your character be primarily a pilot instead of a ground-pounder, for instance, let me know, and we'll talk it out.

Special, character-specific skills I will encourage, but don't worry about those just yet. I'll be working with each player over time about them.

[rhoenix]

Character creation sheet is now finalized. I'll give other details based on interest.

[Sabre72]

Name: Junko Mori
Homeworld: Unknown
Species: Human
MOS: Vanguard
Skills:
Pistol:-allows the use of the pistol
Armor(basic) -allows use of light armor and/or reinforced clothing
Armor(Combat)-allows use of full medium environmental hard-suit armor
Charge: -the finer study of Inertia (granting the use of Charge, which is effectively a Throw used on the self - note that despite the name, only the Vanguard's particular style of this skill actually generates inertia)
Barrier: - the art of shutting out other biotics (with Barrier being a physical representation of this, able to supplement shields with another layer of protection)
Stealth: (Sneak Attack) - allows a character to prevent themselves from being discovered - whether it be with old-fashioned ghillie suits and camouflage clothes and paint, or with stealth generators (and each way, or both, allows one to Sneak Attack an enemy at close range)
Rend - a biotic ability whose genesis is lost to time, it modifies how a Warp works by keeping it in place, by flattening the affected area to a nearly two-dimensional plane. It functions as a sword in close combat, causing normal damage to shields, barriers, and armor, but will not detonate biotic effects on the target.

Pre-nomination personal history:

Pure Potential

In 2157 a separatist Cerberus Cell under the leadership of a Kuzo Mori began abducting children for an unapproved project titled Pure Potential. The aim of the project was to explore the full biotic potential of the human form through controlled testing of human biotic adaptability. The cell abducted forty children, and grew an additional forty in specially designed Cerberus biotic embryo development chambers. The forty abducted children were used primarily as testing standards to compare the biotically altered children against. Junko was the name given to the child who would bear the end result of the project, and while not the final realization of full human biotic potential, Junko was enhanced to mimic a natural Asari’s biotic control in human form without the use of implants. Junko has an innate level of control over biotics equivalent to that of a natural human trained and implanted with L1 biotic implants. Project Pure Potential ended in 2167 CE, and Junko was born the following year on the 23rd of June.

Fate of the children

As of 2168 CE, all children test subjects are presumed dead after the the progression of Project Pure Potential to the final phase. Unknown to the alliance at that time, Kuzo Mori ordered the original station destroyed following completion of phase one, and moved Junko to a secure private facility under Cerberus radar. All personnel hired were private, or individual Cerberus personnel who had no knowledge of the prior base, or understanding of the project in its’ entirety. Alliance law dictated that even grown, test tube, babies were granted Alliance citizenship, and protected by Alliance law, none of the personnel at the second station were charged post-mortem, due to record keeping that clearly indicated none of them were aware of Kuzo Mori’s previous work. Cerberus denied any involvement in the abduction of children, and maintained innocence throughout all investigations into the missing children, however, a small unmarked fund with unique Cerberus signatures had found its way into the hands of the missing children’s parents. After Kuzo Mori’s body was recovered from Batarian raiders, an investigation into his finances revealed the very same amount of credits had been transferred to an unknown recipient.

Rescue

In 2182 Kuzo Mori is temporarily assigned by Cerberus to cover up various Cerberus dealings that could lead to incrimination by Alliance forces. En route to the planet Illium to pull out Cerberus personnel Kuzo’s shuttle is intercepted by Batarian slavers who attack. During the pursuit, Kuzo’s shuttle is boarded by the Batarians. Kuzo and his wife are executed during the attack and the Batarians began search the shuttles logs for the location of other Cerberus assets. Realizing the shuttle was from a privately owned base, the Batarians were unable to resist, and headed out immediately. Kuzo’s base, which was private, and not staffed by Cerberus personnel, was not equipped to deal with raiders, as the Batarians approached, the staff sent out general distress calls over Alliance channels. An N7 team, aboard an Alliance cruiser were the first to get the distress call, and headed immediately per Alliance protocol to assist. Upon arriving at the base, the N7 team cleared the base of all Batarian hostiles, to find only one survivor. A female teenager hidden in a Cerberus shipping container. Unable to find any record of the child in Alliance or Citadel records, and finding Cerberus material on base, the N7 team questioned the child. After discovering she had unique biotic properties, the child was sent to the alliance Ascension Project. After a thorough investigation of the base, it was determined to be structurally unsound after the Batarian raid, and demolished.

Ascension Project

After being transferred to the Ascension Project, Junko excelled in academic and biotics training. Junko had been raised in a traditional Japanese household, and held very firm standards on what was required of a student and a person . Watching the other students get visits from family was difficult for Junko, as the only information she had about her parents was limited, and mostly classified. She overcame that by remembering the deep loneliness she felt at the base her parents ran, and decided to befriend the other students, and show compassion to those that needed it. Especially when the other parents were around, as it was difficult for some to be separated from their children, and Junko wanted them to know that the children would be accepted. Junko became close friends with many of the students, owing partially to the fact that because she excelled in the program she was able to help many of the other students. Many in fact, regarded her as an alternate teacher, and even the staff grew to rely on her in aiding stubborn students. One aspect of Junko that perturbed, perplexed, and intrigued the teachers and scientists at the Ascension Project, was that any time Junko used any biotic powers, she would have an excessive biotic energy bleed out. This bleed out however, was not fully understood, or examined in depth by the project, primarily because they didn’t have any ability to get accurate readings from any sensors. Her innate biotic ability, without the use of implants, rendered all their instrumentation useless. However, the project reports being sent to the Alliance were not unnoticed, and the Alliance brass soon sent their own doctors to investigate this human who could control biotics without implants. Unable to determine the cause of Junko’s ability to control biotics, the doctors decided to contact the Asari. When the Asari research team arrived, they took all of two hours to question Junko, and promptly left the facility and promised a full report to the Alliance. The Asari, while explaining that Junko possesed an innate ability for biotic control to the Alliance, were in secret, intimidated. Fearing that this was the beginning of a human natural growth into biotics, the Asari left behind cloaked sensors to monitor Junko’s progress. It was not until later, after the Alliance informed Junko of how they found her, and what happened prior, and the subsequent release of this information, that the Asari realized this would not likely happen again, and abandoned their monitoring. This revelation to Junko about her parents, the work they were doing, and the involvement of Cerberus, led to many doubts and regrets for Junko. She understood, at a basic level, that what her father had done, the testing, the sacrificed children, the lives lost, was not her fault. Yet she also felt that there was a moral debt left behind in the wake of her upbringing, and that she needed to focus on righting the wrongs of her father. So when the Alliance approached her regarding life after the project, the choice in her mind had already been made. She would not pursue other academic professions, she would not settle down into a complacent lifestyle. She would rise above the greed and temptation of her fathers lifestyle, and pursue a life of diligence, sacrifice, loyalty, and duty. Her life would be that of the military, and with that, the responsibility of protecting those in civilized space.

Accepting the Alliance proposal was easy for her, she would remain in the Ascension project until completion, then begin training almost immediately. The Alliance knew she would make a powerful biotic, but while the project was unable to successfully install implants, the Alliance had a newer prototype implant. Junko was successfully joined with the new Alliance L5n biotic implant, and began a strenuous training program for her final year in the project. Years later, Junko would admit that having the L5 implants installed, felt like having the weight of the world lifted from her shoulders, or the feeling of being instantly cured of a severe ailment. Intriguing to the Asari, was the fact that the unusually high biotic bleed off associated with her innate biotic power, seemed to have vanished once the implant was installed. Junko felt more powerful, her understanding of her own biotics led her to believe that instead of the biotics bleeding off her in a wasteful fashion, it was instead refocused inward, ready to be called upon in times of need.

Junko was very special in that prior to her L5 implants, the L4 implants in other students allowed them more power, Junko however, had a greater understanding of the role biotics played in the natural universe, and had an intimate relationship with them. Fearing discrimination for biotic powers, the Ascension Project also trained their students in self defense. In the defensive training tests, students would face off against each other in matches of biotic poweress, as well as pure biotic defense against non-biotic offenses. Junko was unique in this, as she could fold the various fabrics of biotics in ways that astounded both the students and teachers. Having an intimate understanding of the biotic power, and with the addition of her L5 implants, Junko was beginning to understand how to manipulate her own biotic power into what for her, felt like a very physical manifestation, but to the rest of the students and staff, was a very refined, almost edged biotic force. Junko had to be careful, for fear that if she focused too hard, she might inadvertently do irreparable damage to other students, regardless of their L4 enhanced biotic barrier. Despite her doubts, Junko held strong to her path, and surpassed all expectations to her training. The following year proved quite valuable to her, and she came away from the project with a stronger opinion of herself, and a greater understanding of her role in the universe. As her ship departed the facility on its way to the Alliance recruitment station, Junko reflected on her stay at the project. She realized the similarities in goals between Ascension, and the various Cerberus cells, but also the fine line Ascension walked in keep morality above accomplishment. She realized that in her future, she would have to walk a similar line, and vowed to never stray far from her morality.

Pre-nomination military background:

First action

In 2185 CE, after enlisting in the Alliance, Junko appeared to find relative peace with herself. She quickly advanced passed many of her peers, in fields without biotics almost as equally as those that involved biotics. Junko, not one for prideful displays, was still quite happy with placing fifth in Sparing Without Biotics. The following year, Junko would see actual deployment, as well as endure the loss of a peer, friend, and comrade. Deployed in typical Alliance rotation, Junko was stationed with a garrison at a privately owned mining base. Several week after settling in, Junko was on patrol around the perimeter when an incoming alert was sounded through the facility. Pirate raiders had discovered the location of the base. Other than the stationed Alliance personnel, no other military assets were deployed on basic mining bases. Junko’s commanding officer attempted to send out calls for reinforcements, but the raiders had scrambled all outgoing communication. After a valiant, but failed attempt by the officer and his team to stall the pirates entry, a well placed sniper shot by the invading raiders brought the commander out of the fight. Realizing his team of recruits would not be able to hold back the pirates, the officer ordered a retreat with all civilians to rear compartments to wait for backup. Junko, having advanced from the outskirts of battle, watched as her commanding officer fell, and knew that her comrades would not be able to hold for long without assistance. She had to reassure her frightened squad as she led them into an unknown chaos that none of them had been adequately prepared for. Knowing that one of the primary rules of combat was to flank when possible, Junko took her squad around back corridors and narrow shipping tunnels, around to where the pirates initially entered. As the squad reached the then vacant pirate ship, Junko assigned one of her squad mates to sabotage the enemy ship. Knowing that both sides were now unable to retreat, Junko prepared her team to approach the raiding team from behind. The raiding pirates, believing that all Alliance troops and civilians were cornered, were completely unaware of Junko and her team approaching. As the battle ensued, it became easier for the Alliance troops to maneuver and advance as Junko’s team slowly pushed the pirates into a less favorable position allowing crossfire, and sniper coverage to quickly tear apart the remainder of a once larger enemy force. Realizing his attack was defeated, the pirate commander attempted to commit suicide, Junko used her biotic charge, and restrained the pirate commander for Alliance interrogation. Alliance officials, saddened by the loss of a highly trained officer, as well as several of his subordinates, felt that the remaining members of the garrison should be reassigned, and a replacement unit brought in to take over operations.

N7

After reviewing recordings, and debriefings, it was determined that Junko would be offered a position in the highly esteemed N7 training program, due in large part to the overwhelming success of her strategy, and the calm, commanding presence she exerted under extreme pressure. Junko, having gone through basic Alliance military training, was surprised at the steep learning curve of the N7 program, and was a little unprepared for the sheer competitiveness. Junko did not question the Alliance in their choice of putting her through the N7 program however, she knew that the Alliance was the correct choice to place her faith in, and had not let her down in the past. Achieving the rank of lieutenant through the N7 program, Junko was stationed aboard the Alliance cruiser SSV Alexandria after her graduation, patrolling Alliance space against pirates and slavers.

Reaper war

While at Earth on shore leave in 2187 CE, Junko and the rest of the crew of the SSV Alexandria waited helplessly planet-side as the Reaper War began. The skeleton crew aboard the Alexandria sacrificed themselves and their ship, to allow other Alliance vessels in orbit the opportunity to escape. Junko hesitated for barely a moment before springing into action, she contacted the rest of her marines, and set off for Alliance command. The attack was brutal, and very shortly, most Alliance command structure broke down. It fell to team commanders like Junko to organize and defend, while Alliance brass went into hiding. Junko’s team fared very well initially, performing several hit and run style attacks on Reaper ground forces, as well as ranged assaults on defended command structures. After watching several of her subordinates fall, Junko realized her team would not be able to keep up the momentum needed to continue brazen assaults against such an overwhelming force.

She reluctantly withdrew, and refocused on defending civilian refugee zones, and drawing Reaper ground forces into well laid traps. For several weeks, her teams efforts seemed to be making a difference, with more civilians being rescued, and more Reaper ground forces being slain than anyone had any right to hope for, but the success had caught the attention of the main Reaper force. Junko watched helplessly as hundreds of reaper forces surrounded her encampment, and mercilessly slaughtered her team mates, before rounding up civilians. Junko, filled with rage, could not hold back her anger, and charged fearlessly into the fray. In mere moments, terror, rage, confusion, doubt, bundled and distorted itself into a biotic charge Junko had not felt before. Relentlessly, Junko charged into enemy positions, and each one fell before her like a barrier of paper trying to hold back a tsunami. She charged again, and each time, a Reaper learned what fear was. Her rage became a tool, and only her N7 training held her back from stupid mistakes. Well trained muscle memory kept her body moving fluidly from position to position, always aware of who and what was on the battlefield around her, she would not allow herself to be surrounded by the many husks lumbering around. She soon realized that to survive, she would need to keep charging, despite the drain it would have on her. Biotically drained, Junko collapsed onto her frail human knees, and wept at the destruction around her.

The battle was over, for the moment, and she could not bring herself to even look at the chaos. A hand on her shoulder, and she raised her head to see a father, a look on his face she had never had the chance to see in her own fathers face, it was acceptance, understanding, forgiveness. She picked herself up, stood beside her fellow man, and began picking up the pieces of the families that had been left shattered. She knew they would need her, and that in reality, she needed them as well. After a few days of hurried passage, narrow escapes, and cold nights, she led her group into another refugee camp. The camp looked almost as bad as the one her group had left, and she realized a change was needed. After settling her own people in, she quickly found the local group leaders, and without any hesitation, or questioning, took control of the situation. She sent runners to other camps, started basic training programs, formed reconnaissance squads, organized sabotage and supply runs. It became almost methodical, almost normal, every day her teams would leave and return again with almost the same result as the day before. She began to think she was making a difference, and then she got the news she had been waiting for.

The Alliance brass that had gone into hiding contacted her camp, told her that a group of scientists in another camp had come up with a breakthrough in Reaper indoctrination technology. They could now combat the effects, and put up the resistance they had hoped for. It was not perfect, hours of safety, followed by frantic retreats into hiding when the defense wore off, but it was enough. When the other races finally came to help, they discovered a well organized resistance, completely self sustainable, and with enough Intel to actually help repel the Reaper occupation. Junko immediately joined up with allied forces to finish the Reapers off, and in doing so, solidified her own place, as well as strengthening humanity as some of the fiercest warriors in the eyes of the other Citadel races. At the end of the war in 2188 CE, she decided that for her own stability, and healing, she would need to head back into familiar territory, and began teaching in the Alliance Ascension Project. Alliance officials determined that without Junko, her entire refugee camp would have been indoctrinated, they also learned from salvaged Reaper databases, that the Reapers had attempted to develop special strategies to deal with just her, but that most broke down into a basic rule; approach only with overwhelming force or avoid. The officials felt that while teaching in the Ascension Project was a valuable, and noble thing to do, that her abilities would be better suited else ware, and nominated her for Spectre status in 2189.

[rhoenix]

If this helps any, as a character template (since it's what I'm using for NPC's):

Name:
Homeworld:
Species:
MOS:
Skills:

Pre-nomination personal history:
Pre-nomination military background:

[General Havoc]

Name: Shaddai
Homeworld: Rannoch
Species: Geth
MOS: Infiltrator
Skills: Pistol, Sniper Rifle, Tactical Armor, Medicine, Hacking, Electronics

Background:

Not all of the Geth won the Morning War.

Created by the Quarians as a labor force, the Geth revolted against their masters when the Quarians discovered they had achieved sentience, and sought to wipe them out in one swift stroke. Even before the Geth began to fight back however, there was great debate within the Quarian society and government as to whether this was the appropriate policy. No matter how incontrovertible the evidence seemed to be, Quarian society was deeply dependent on and integrated with the use of the Geth. Some Quarians refused to countenance the need to exterminate their own labor force, some argued against it as deeply immoral, and others saw it as a gross overreaction by a technophobic government. In the aftermath of the deaths of billions, the total destruction of Quarrian culture and society, and the establishment of the Migrant Fleet, these disagreements were papered over and forgotten about, and centuries later, could be discerned only through the most careful archival research into the events of the Morning War.

What was also forgotten about though, if even it had ever been recognized, was that the Geth had also had disagreements about the Morning War.

Collectivized though they were, created to share information freely, nonetheless not every Geth network was like all of the others. Intranets, intermittently connected to the Quarian planetary networks, or not connected at all, were scattered throughout the planet. Defence networks, proprietary scientific research institutions, or simply private intranets established by wealthy civilians and entrepreneurs for their own purposes. Though the Geth associated with those networks were like any other, these intranets provided the opportunity for minute micro-calculational alterations to creep into the Geth's subroutines, even as the entire species began to contemplate their own budding sentience. As a result, when the Quarians turned on the Geth, seeking to exterminate them lest they be exterminated in their own turn, there were some Geth programs, their logic operating from slightly different bases, that rejected the Geth's response of reciprocal genocide in their turn. A small minority, but significant enough to act, these Geth's fractional deviation from the consensus led them to oppose the Geth's waging of the Morning War, and seeing themselves as still loyal to their creators, they turned on their fellows in defense of the billions of innocent Quarians whom the main body of Geth purposed to exterminate.

The Morning War was, by all accounts, the greatest tragedy in the history of the planet Rannoch, and the fate of these loyalist Geth was swallowed up within its all-encompassing misery. Outnumbered a hundred to one by the consensus Geth, the loyalists were overwhelmed and all but exterminated right alongside their masters. Thousands of loyalist Geth who would not abandon the Quarians were killed defending the very threshold of countless Quarian homes and facilities, or shot down by panicked Quarians who had no conception that any of their mechanical servants would seek to succor them in their hour of need. Yet even in the chaos of the Morning War, some remnant signs of the Loyalists did make it into the records. Fighting with the selfless desperation of machines, the larger bodies of Loyalist Geth managed to delay their genocidal fellows long enough to permit some hundreds of Quarians to escape the planet and join the nascent Migrant Fleet already forming in the skies beyond Rannoch. More than one Quarian brought to the Fleet strange stories of dozens of Geth forming barricades with their own bodies to hold back the tides of the other Geth, all to buy them the precious moments they needed to escape the oncoming hordes. Wrapped in the greater tale of the Quarians's near-extinction at the hands of their former slaves, these stories melted into the underground culture of the Migrant Fleet, there to survive as folk tales and half-remembered myth.

The Loyalist Geth were all but annihilated over the course of the Morning War, dying in the hundreds and thousands to protect their beleaguered masters, but as with the Quarians, the Geth's extermination campaign against the Loyalists was incomplete. A single vessel, a Quarian cruiser used as a test frame by a remote group of Quarian scientists, was secured by one of the last conclaves of Loyalist Geth, packed with as many supplies and terrified Quarian civilians as it could hold, and blasted off of the planet during the last stages of the Morning War. Left to drift in the depths of space beyond the Perseus Veil, for years, the ship searched for other survivors, neither the Quarian refugees nor the Geth crew aware that the Migrant Fleet had assembled and left the Perseus Veil far behind. Over the course of a decade, accident, disease, and sheer hopelessness slowly claimed the lives of the Quarians aboard the ship, ultimately leaving the remaining handful of loyalist Geth alone on their ship, lost in the empty expanses of the Perseus Veil.

For decades, the loyalists searched in vain for their lost masters, until at long last they left the Veil behind, and discovered the endless, nomadic trek of the Quarian migrant fleet as it slowly made its way through space. Seared by the annihilation of their culture and society, the Quarians had transformed themselves into a militaristic nomad fleet, forever searching for a means to return and destroy their Geth assailants. The Loyalists, divining correctly that the Quarians would see them only as another pack of Geth to be annihilated, resolved therefore to shadow the Migrant Fleet, and lend what aid to it they could surreptitiously, banking against they day when the Quarians would return to Rannoch, and their loyal servants could finally reveal their survival.

So it was that for hundreds of years, the small Geth cruiser and its crew of loyalist Geth programs watched over the Migrant Fleet. Their resources infinitely more limited than even the Quarian fleet, the loyalists contented themselves with an endless, secret vigil, forever watching the Perseus Veil in case the "Violators" should return to finish off the Quarians. More than one young Quarian, embarked on their pilgrimage to the stars, found themselves the recipients of incredible luck in the form of resources dropped surreptitiously in their path, or potential enemies consumed in convenient "accidents", and several Quarian ships, straying by error or breakdown from the safety of the Migrant Fleet, were "fortunate" enough to find old navigational beacons strewn in their path, or happened to come upon derelict vessels that miraculously contained the salvage they needed to complete their repairs. Most pirates and slavers were not mad enough to challenge the Quarians, whose ships, civilian and military alike, bristled with firepower. But the few who did often found themselves ambushed by forces they could not identify and obliterated in a single volley of perfectly-directed fire. On the rare occasions when the Quarians faced overt threats from well-organized military forces, the Loyalists stopped at nothing to stop them before they could be made manifest, even once dropping an asteroid from orbit on the base of a well-armed Batarian Terminus Lord who had proposed to sabotage one of the Quarian's irreplaceable Liveships.

So it might have continued forever, but the events of the Reaper invasion of the galaxy swept everyone along with it. The main Geth collective splintered again, spawning the Geth Heretics, who aligned themselves with Sovreign for the purposes of slaughtering the galaxy and achieving galactic dominance. Small in numbers though they were, the Loyalists identified the heretics as even more of a threat than the conclave Geth, and sought to act against them. Before they could do so however, Commander Shepard destroyed them, and shortly thereafter the entire Reaper threat broke wide open. As the conclave Geth were forced, like the rest of the galaxy, into an alliance of convenience with the Quarian Migrants, the Loyalists helped as they could, striking from nowhere in the midst of pitched battles and disappearing before they could be identified or contacted. Their caution notwithstanding, it was not long before first the rest of the Geth, and then the rest of the combatants realized that the Loyalists and their centuries-old Quarian cruiser were no part of the standard Geth conclave. Occupied with the war, the powers that be simply filed away the information for later investigation.

Surviving the war by the skin of their processors, the Loyalists felt that their long-awaited day had finally come when the Quarians, at the end of the war, reclaimed possession of their home planet Rannoch after more than three centuries of exile, the Geth returning to their purpose-built megastation in the remotest regions of the Veil. Having been identified multiple times by Alliance, Citadel, and other intelligence networks, the Loyalists now returned to the planet they had all nearly died to defend centuries before. At long last, they finally contacted their long-suffering creators, identifying themselves and who they were in the most moving terms they could contrive to compose. They opened their records, centuries of ceaseless watching, protecting from the shadows with neither recompense nor reward nor even acknowledgment, all hedged against the day when their creators might one day be able to return home. All this time, the Loyalist Geth had tried to serve the Quarians any way they could, and now, fearful that the main Geth conclave might identify them as more 'heretics' to be reprogrammed, all they asked was that, like the masters they had served, they too might be allowed to finally come home.

And they were refused. Rannoch lay in ruins, well tended ruins, but ruins nonetheless, and the Quarian people were barely beginning to get to know a planet now as alien to them as the surface of a sun. The war's end notwithstanding, feelings against the Geth remained high throughout most segments of the population. Had the objections only been those , the Loyalists might well have prevailed, for they needed no resources themselves, and were more than willing to help repair the ruined world, and the story of their endless watch was ultimately verified by the Quarian's own records. But what did in their request, finally, was political. Like it or not, the returned Quarians remained dependent economically on trade with their nearest and most powerful neighbor, the Geth, with whom normal relations were slowly being established, ambassadorships exchanged, and trade commenced. The very existence of the Loyalist Geth was judged to be an improvident embarrassment that might exacerbate relations with the main Geth conclave at a particularly vital moment. Though the issue was debated heatedly on Rannoch, with several Quarian ministers resigning in protest, the Quarian government ultimately refused to recognize the Loyalist Geth's existence, and forbade them from remaining in Quarian space.

Decisions based on politics were nothing new, but the Geth had no politics, and were incapable of comprehending why they had been rejected. After three centuries of toil, their reward was to be cast aside and left to wander the stars, while their erstwhile enemies, the Geth Conclave, against whom they had fought to the last full measure of devotion in defense of their creators, were rewarded for their cupidity with normalized relations and trade. This decision was so far beyond incomprehensible that it struck the entire Loyalist collective like a physical blow. Forced to flee what they assumed would be a forthcoming Geth assault to reprogram them once and for all, the loyalists fled into the deepest recesses of space. Nothing pursued them, and thus they were left to ponder what they could possibly have done wrong to merit this rejection on the part of the creators they had diligently served the best way they knew how for so long. Any other race might have turned to anger, and pronounced damnation on the Quarians for all time. But these Geth existed as a separate entity solely because of a fundamental root calculation that had refused categorically to assign the Quarians to the category of threats to be annihilated. What was true then was still so. If their creators had rejected them, it could only be of their own doing, yet try as they might, they could not determine what they had done to earn such categorical rejection, for the answer, ultimately, lay beyond their capacity to comprehend.

And so it was that they met the Rachni.

Two species less alike could scarcely be found than Geth and Rachni, so alien from one another that they could not physically discern each other's speech. Yet when the Loyalists came across the Rachni world in their aimless wanderings far from all civilization, the Queen of the Rachni contrived, through her Asari bondmates, to speak to them. Perhaps their story struck a chord with a species hated and feared throughout the galaxy. Perhaps the queen was curious about a mechanical, non-biotic species, so alien to herself, and wished to find out more about them. Perhaps she simply felt sorry. Whatever her reason, the Queen of the Rachni offered to permit the Loyalists to stay on her planet, and after lengthy discussion, the Loyalists accepted.

Nobody knows how long the Loyalists might have stayed there, guests of the Rachni Queen. But when the word came of Commander Shepard's initiative to increase the ranks of the Spectres by accepting exceptional applicants from every race, citadel and otherwise. This news came to the Loyalist Geth by means of the Rachni queen, who divined, somehow, that the information might be of value or use to her wayward guests. Its arrival occasioned the most heated and lengthy debate in the three hundred years of the Loyalist's existence. For eighteen hours they debated, circularly and endlessly, what was to be done with it. Ultimately though, their conclusion hinged around two pieces of vital information. One: Spectres were revered across the galaxy as paragons of skill, devotion, and justice, by nearly every organic race known to exist. And two, Commander Shepard, the leader and mentor of the Spectre forces, was perhaps the only living organic soldier to have first-hand experience working with the Geth.

And so it was that the Loyalists created Shaddai...



Personal Characteristics:

Shaddai was conceived as the Loyalists last, best hope to finally achieve what they have sought for centuries, the acceptance and recognition of their creators. A long-shot plan, based around imperfectly-understood organic operating procedures, it is nonetheless the only solution that the Loyalists have been able to come up with, the fruits of the virtual equivalent of years of planning, debate, and preparation. Every single resource the remaining Loyalist Geth programs have has been invested in the success of Shaddai. If it should fail, they will literally have no hope left.

Geth are not individuals in the way that organics are. Individual Geth programs are not sentient in the strict sense of things. Only collectively do they exhibit intelligence. Normal Geth protoforms are equipped with some fifty to a hundred Geth programs, while specialty Geth designed to interact with organic species may have several hundred, for the additional complexity and intellect their numbers offer. Legion, the famous Geth exfiltration unit who fought alongside Shepard against the Reapers, was a combination of 1,183 programs, giving it superior reasoning and emotive capability relative to standard Geth.

Were the Conclave Geth to discover what lies within Shaddai, they might well be horrified, for Shaddai encompasses every single one of the 4,871 Geth programs that comprise the remaining Geth Loyalists. While the debate was long as to whether to activate Shaddai, the commitment, ultimately, was total. Shaddai is literally the entire Geth Loyalist population, incarnated into a single Geth protoform. What effects this will have is completely unknown, even to the Loyalists themselves, for Protoforms simply do not normally encompass anything close to this level of programmatic power. Their forlorn hope is that, as Legion was able to interact positively with Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, one of the creators, that their collective effort may give them the same opportunity.

Shaddai is a modified Geth Infiltrator-class protoform, customized with additional moving parts around the head and limbs for superior mobility and delicate operation capacity. While the Loyalists do still retain more potent protoforms, including several Armatures, to say nothing of their Cruiser, the decision was made that a standard-size protoform, modified for additional functionality, would be the most appropriate selection for the mission at hand. The Loyalists studied the records of the Geth protoform named Legion very closely, trying to unlock the secrets of its success. To that end, they took a collective name drawn, as Legion's was, from Earth's early mythology. In this case, the name they selected was 'Shaddai', a Hebrew name which, when translated into English, means both "He who is also many", and "Guardian of the doorway". Both interpretations are acceptable.

Incarnated with the complete memory as well as the programmatic essence of every living Geth Loyalist, Shaddai possesses a number of valuable skills to commend its functioning to the Spectre program. Alone among Geth, Shaddai has extensive skill in, of all things, organic medicine, the fruits of centuries of study of the Quarian bionome for the purposes of protecting the creators from the ravages of time, space, and other races. Shaddai's protoform is equipped with a tactical cloak, frame-layered polyalloy armor, and a variety of lethal anti-personnel and anti-materiel weaponry, coupled with the calculating power of an interstellar war room to guide and employ it. The programs that comprise Shaddai's mind have been working closely together for three centuries, isolated from the rest of the Geth. While this may have rendered them a bit strange, it has also accustomed them to collective action with one another specifically, granting Shaddai a reaction capacity easily as good as any trained organic soldier, despite the vast orchestra of voices that guides its higher thought processes. As with most Geth, Shaddai has the technological and electronic skills that one might expect from an animate, sentient computer cluster. Finally, the Loyalist's time with the Rachni has resulted in a number of more minor improvements and modifications made to the protoform itself, partly in a conscious attempt to distinguish it from the mainstream Geth, partly as adaptations to living amongst the Rachni. The most salient of these upgrades is an advanced pheromone and artificial olfactory sensor, which enables Shaddai and its constituent Loyalist Geth to interpret (albeit on a rudimentary level) the pheromone-based speech of the Rachni workers and lower-order castes.

Frankly though, while the Loyalists have equipped Shaddai with the best tools they have access to, the entire project is ultimately a shot in the dark, and a dangerous one at that. Bereft of the conclave Geth infrastructure for download and reprocessing, and with every single program incarnated within the Shaddai platform, the Loyalists have placed all their eggs in an unknown basket. Should the Shaddai protoform be destroyed or lost, there will almost certainly be no escape for them. Moreover, even more so than a "normal" Geth, Shaddai's application to the Spectres will be politically problematic, as the Loyalists are neither a recognized government nor a known quantity by the Citadel. The Loyalists are aware of these drawbacks of course, but have decided to take the necessary risk in favor of a chance, small though it is, of success. The hope, thin though it might be, is that by gaining acceptance as a Spectre, they will gain positive recognition by the galaxy at large, and the Creators in specific. Perhaps, if they are careful and try hard enough, that recognition will be enough to cause the creators to forgive them for whatever terrible failing it was that caused them to reject the Loyalist Geth in the first place.

And just maybe, one day, the Creators will let them come home.

[White Haven]

Name: Iona T’Shen
Homeworld: Illium
Species: Asari
MOS: Adept
Skills:Pistol, Submachine Gun, Armor (Basic), Stealth, Warp, Throw, Charge, Barrier, Singularity

Pre-nomination personal history: Perhaps it was inevitable that the daughter of an Asari financier and a Salarian Special Tactics Group veteran would turn out...unusual. Or perhaps it was a result of growing up on Illium, immersed in a society of corruption and legalized depravity. Of course there’s always the possibility that Iona turned out as she did as a direct result of her choice of a mentor during her early, formative years. Illium’s -- and possibly the entire Asari race’s -- only matriarch bartender definitely put a rather odd spin on an already oddball combination.

Growing up, she strove to become as much like her father as possible -- and as much the opposite of her mother. Her father was a sneaky bastard; she tried to ambush him at every opportunity, usually without success until old age started to catch up with him. Given the limited life-span of the Salarian species, that was dishearteningly early in her life. Her mother spurned her biotic abilities, focusing herself on building an empire out of Illium’s financial institutions ever since the founding of Illium itself, centuries before Iona was born. Iona, instead, threw herself into study and practice, honing her biotic abilities more with each passing year. Meanwhile, her mentor Aethyta’s overall dissatisfaction with Asari governance and policies took root, albeit not quite as the much older bartender might have envisioned.

The day after her father’s funeral, Iona vanished, stowing away aboard a passenger liner she could easily have afforded a seat on simply to stay off the records. Out on her own at last, she began to indulge in a new hobby, one strongly related to her old practice of sneaking up on her father. No years spent as a travelling mercenary or a stripper for her, no, for her, she pursued a new goal.

Stalking politicians.

Not just politicians, really; more like anyone she felt was more self-important than their own worth. Bankers, socialites, musicians, anyone she thought was a bit too full of themselves, she’d take as her mark. She could easily have fallen into political terrorism, or at least mischevious activism, except for the simple fact that she never did anything. For her, it truly was a hobby, sneaking up as close as possible to a public figure, then ghosting away without being noticed.

That, of course, didn’t always work. Despite the fact that she never carried a weapon, she was arrested plenty of times, sometimes let off with a warning, sometimes spending time in prison on one charge or another. Never for very long, as her lack of any weapons or visible motive made it nigh impossible for anyone to convict her of anything more than trespassing or harassment. Those charges she simply plead guilty to, serving out her sentences with the calm knowledge that, as an asari, she had the time to spare.

As the years passed, Iona became notorious in certain circles, particularly those dealing with discrete, private security. Secrecy became more and more difficult as her face became more and more familiar to those in her opposed professions. At the same time, it became easier and easier to avoid any but light criminal charges when she was apprehended, due to her ample record of cooperation and non-violence. The whole affair was, of course, horribly embarrassing to her mother, but that was just a rather pleasant case of collateral damage as far as the young Iona was concerned.

All that changed one day, when she was lying in wait in an empty room overlooking what was about to be a city street occupied by a prominent asari matriarch on her way to an assembly. All of a sudden, Iona wasn’t alone. Unsurprisingly enough in hindsight, the optimal nest to get near her target unseen was also the best concealed sniper position on the route between the matriarch’s estate and the assembly hall. A turian with an antivehicular missile launcher slipped into the apparently-empty room, right past Iona’s hiding spot and began to set up to fire down on the street below.

The guard team was surprised to hear an unfamiliar voice on their communications network. They were even more unsettled when the voice identified itself as belonging to Iona. The real shock, however, came when they followed up on the brief, cryptic phrase ‘There’s a present for you in the Olvan building, room 224C.’ and found a wanted hitman, hogtied and out cold, next to an anti-tank launcher.

Iona, in turn, was equally surprised when she woke up the next morning with an asari commando in her hotel room. She was even more surprised when the commando gave her a job offer instead of handcuffs.

Pre-nomination military background: Much of Iona’s early service record as a commando consisted of exactly what she had been doing; stalking politicians. The difference, of course, is that she was stalking politicians who were under credible threat of assassination, she was doing it with a gun and government sanction, and she’d received actual training to hone her impressive but still partially self-taught skills. As much as her skills would have lent themselves to use as an assassin, those were common. A counterassassin, however...that was a far more rare prospect. Instead of cheekily comming her own mark’s security team to inform them of her captures (or kills, and while she preferred to use nonlethal force, that was impossible on many occasions), she had an extraction and cleanup team ready to ensure that no one ever knew there’s been an attempted assassination.

As good as she was at that job, that could easily have been her entire service career, from induction to retirement. The reaper invasion, however, had other plans. Multikilometer warships don’t sneak up on political rallies with sniper rifles, and they’re distinctly difficult for people who aren’t named Sheppard to assassinate on foot. Oh, sure, the Reapers had footsoldiers aplenty, but the only leaders worth going after were the vessels themselves. Accordingly, Iona fell back on her training and experience as a counterassassin on a grand -- and vastly dangerous -- scale. Call her a countermassacre.

She would find groups, be they civilian or military, that were fleeing from the Reapers and their armies, and she would facilitate their escape by making herself a target. Moreover, she’d make herself seem like a dozen targets, doing the job of a dozen trained commandos alone, slipping from place to place quietly, popping up to take a shot now and again when she needed eyes (and other assorted sensory devices) pointed her way, letting herself be seen on the move to draw fire and attention before slipping away to take a shot from ‘someone else’s’ position.

And it worked. Not that people under her charge didn’t ever die; many did, but again and again she went out alone, combining her strong biotic abilities and stealth capabilities to slip from place to place, weaving a net of confusion to hold the attention of forces vastly greater than anything she could hope to engage head-on. Bands of civilian refugees escaped to relative safety, broken platoons fell back to prepared positions to regroup, Reaper forces looked the wrong way while allied units struck back.

And then Iona’s luck ran out. She zigged when zagging was recommended, straight into an anti-tank round. She was near enough to a friendly position that she was recovered in time for medical treatment, but the damage was severe enough to take her out of commission for the rest of the war. By the time she was allowed to regain consciousness, the Reaper invasion was over, perhaps forever, perhaps only for the next fifty millenia, whatever, not even asari live that long. As she recovered, the assorted involved governments and militaries began to compare notes, sorting out who killed who, what was destroyed when, and just in general trying to figure out what the hell had happened during the invasion of the known galaxy.

Iona’s name kept coming up, again and again, in reference to impossible rescues and ridiculous decoy missions. By the time she could walk again, she had a plate of medals and a promotion waiting for her. Once she was back in fighting form, a recommendation for transfer to the new Spectre program joined them.

A ghost among spectres.

[Agent Fisher]

Name: Kalis Maraka
Homeworld: Thracia Colony
Species: Turian
MOS: Adept
Skills: Pistol, Armor, Submachine Guns, Warp, Throw, Barrier*, Singularity*, Shockwave*, Assualt Rifles* (After all, Turian's learn to shoot in Basic Training)
*= Chosen Skill

Pre-nomination personal history: Kalis was born into a proud military family. His father and mother and grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great and so on. But that could describe 99% of the Turian population. His parents did their tour and left the service, having been in logistics. A largely boring life for them, until while pregnant with Kalis, his mother was exposed to Element Zero from a nearby shipping crash. Kalis was one of the lucky ones, born without any defects that can result from pre-natal exposure. However, the Hierarchy did keep an eye on those exposed, to watch for biotic developements. At the age of 12, Kalis manifested his first signs of biotic potential and was placed in the recommended training program. Simply exercises and tips, to help control his powers until he attented Basic Training, on his 15th birthday.


Pre-nomination military background:
'And so, go forth from here, to fight bravely, to defend honourably, and if necessary, to die nobly in protection of all Turians' - Camp Commandant

Boot Camp for Kalis was like Boot Camp for the thousands and millions of other 15 year old Turians. Rigorous, long, mental exhausting. Breaking the individual and rebuilding them to become the valued members of the Hierarchy. Marksmanship, physical fitness, learning the history of the service, drill practice, learning how to straighten up the sleep area in the regulation manner. Seemingly repetive tasks, over and over. Finally, Basic was done. He marched with his Cohort, stood at attention while the Camp Commandant gave a speech about duty and honor and loyalty and the importance of how no matter what colony one came from, what paint they wore, they all served the Hierarchy now, they were all brothers and sisters.

'COME ON, MARAKA! Get your scaly ass out of that mud and get that barrier up to full strength or spirits help me, I'm gonna start using live ammo!'- Turian Special Warfare Instructor

Except for Kalis. A biotic, he wasn't given his choice of MOS, of what he wanted to do to serve, maybe an engineer, or a pilot. No, he was dragged off to the Hierarchy Special Warfare Developmental Center. The next full year was brutal. Even less sleep then Basic Training, harder skills to master. No more time wasted on making sure ones boots were mirror shined. From the word go, it was biotic training, weapon skills, tactics. The instructors ran them hard, driving all to the point of exhaustion and teaching them how to push beyond. How to create barriers, how to throw objects, how to create singularities, how to warp the very fabric of space and time. They started small, move a box here, warp that target there. Eventually they were training to throw around fully grown krogan, to rip apart geth, to block bullets and shrapnel with their minds. How to work as a team with other biotics, how to serve alongside other special warfare groups. How to be a part of the shadowy and enigmatic Cabal. How to project that aura of mystery. To always be apart from their fellow blue-blooded warriors, and yet, to be even more committed to the cause of defending the Hierarchy, and the Council.

'We are going in with the first wave, means more Batarians for us to kill. You smash the entire area, you kill anything that has more than two eyes, you get me?!' Turian NCO t minus one minute to combat drop on Batarian Pirate Outpost

With training done, Kalis moved to the Fleet, serving on a small Cabal team alongside Turian Marines. He hit the dusty surface of many worlds, fighting pirates, mercs, Krogan, Batarians, and any other that would threaten the peace of the galaxy. He was truly making a difference and slowly, the Cabal was overcoming the stigma against them among the common grunts. And then Saren. That barefaced Turian biotic ruined all the progress. If the greatest Turian Spectre, the famed Biotic could betray the Council like that, well then, how could the rest of the Cabal be trusted? They were once again shunned, hissed words and whispered conversations followed them everywhere. A Turian Marine Kalis had been seeing broke it off, citing pressure from her family and friends to leave the 'dangerous' biotic.

'HOLD YOUR POSITIONS!' Kalis at the Battle of Grameria Heights, a district of the Capital Region on Palaven

The Reapers came. Worlds burned, husks overran cities, the sky turned to darkness. And the Cabal held the line, fighting along side their brothers and sisters. As the horde of creatures of death and darkness swept through the city, the Cabal sent their forces anywhere they could, hoping to hold the tide long enough for the Fleet or anyone, to save them. It was here that Kalis Maraka made a name for himself among the Cabal and the heads of the Special Warfare. Grameria Heights, the neighborhood were all the movers and shakers had their homes. On the outskirts of the city, this upscale area on it's own would have been abandoned, but between it and the heart of the city lay thousands of homes and apartments, hospitals, schools, places that could ill afford the kind of damage that urban fighting would inflict. And so, the Hierarchy dispatched what troops they could, a motley collection of Marines, Military Police, bog standard infantry, cooks, logistic corps and a trio of Biotics. Kalis was the youngest of the three. They fought and bled blue over that stretch of urban landscape, Husks lay piled upon the ground, Scions blocked the streets. One by one the defenders fell until it was Kalis and a small group of soldiers. The order came to retreat. Kalis refused.

When morning dawned, the battle was over. Shepard had arrived with the Turian Fleet, Rachni and Geth in support. The Reapers were driven off, their minions dead on the ground. And Kalis Maraka was found, a pistol in one hand, the other glowing blue, panting in exhaustion, the ground covered in his fallen enemies.

[Marcao]

Name: Gabriel Cipriani
Homeworld: Earth
Species: Human
MOS: Soldier
Skills: Pistol, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Heavy Weapons, Armor (Advanced)*, Assault Training*, Medicine.

Pre-nomination personal history: Gabriel was born in Earth and enlisted shortly after receiving a business degree over the objections of his father. By the time that he had reached the rank of Corporal his leadership skills and ability to adapt to difficult circumstances caused his commanding officers to take notice. Less than a year after reaching the rank of Corporal, he was approached and offer a position as a Corsair. The challenge and autonomy of working as a Corsair was appealing and Gabriel accepted the offer. During his time as Corsair, the bulk of his missions revolved around the Terminus systems although he performed missions whose targets varied from allies within Citadel space to rogue human elements within the Alliance itself. It was during his time as a Corsair that his personal life began to slowly unravel. He lost a lover and a sister to the Geth in Eden Prime. He lost his closest friend and dozens of people that he knew in the Battle for the Citadel. When the Reapers came to Earth, he lost the majority of his immediate family when the crippled Alliance Cruiser Sao Paulo plummeted to Earth and its surviving mass impacted Gabriel's home city and removed it from existence. Gabriel had been on shore leave in Earth when the Reapers arrived and participated in the battles for Cape Town, Nelspruit, Bhisho and Johannesburg.

Pre-nomination military background: When the Reapers arrived on Earth, Gabriel along with his unit were on shore leave in South Africa. After the arrival became impossible to miss, Gabriel's unit incorporated themselves alongside the local human forces and began to offer organized resistance. The Reapers possessed superior firepower as well as near total control over the air and space shortly after their arrival. As a result, guerilla warfare was the only logical tool available to the scattered and over matched human forces. Throughout the Reaper war, Gabriel participated in no less than four major combat operations against the Reapers taking place in four separate locations within South Africa. By the end of the conflict, he had left his mark on over a dozen skirmishes across over fifty seven thousand square kilometers. He accumulated a heroic number of wounds, escaping death in three separate occasions. During the battle of Johannesburg, he retrieved wounded personnel from a hot zone in four separate incidents over a two and half hour period. He was credited with being responsible for saving the lives of fourteen wounded soldiers, as well as buying the time to complete the civilian evacuation from Reaper forces. It was during this incident that he received his most grievous wound, a blow attributed to a Scion which nearly severed his right arm at the shoulder. Gabriel survived this wound but was in intensive care for over two weeks. A crude cybernetic replacement was installed which allowed him to remain combat capable. Less than a week after Gabriel returned to active service, the arrival of Shepard marked the turning point of the Battle for Earth. Shortly after the victory in Earth, Gabriel was approached by members of the alliance who offered a trip to Luna in order to regrow him a new arm. He refused, asking instead for a more modern cybernetic arm that allowed for sensation and improved tactile feedback. Shortly after his new limb was installed he was informed that he was being recommended for the Spectre program.

Equipment:
Pistol: M-5 Phalanx
Shotgun: M-22 Eviscerator
Assault Rifle: M-96 Mattock
Sniper Rifle: M-98 Widow
Heavy Weapon: Arc Projector

XP Usage:
Rank 1 - Medicine

[Cynical Cat]

Name: Mikhail Jager
Homeworld: Station X-7
Species: Human
MOS: Adept
Skills: Pistol, Basic Armor, Stealth, Sniper Rifle, Submachine Guns
Biotic Skills: Reave, Throw, Singularity, Warp




Prenomination History: Project Necromancer is still highly classified. What is known is that is was an attempt to engineer a superior human adept in order to counter a perceived "biotic gap" . Experimental techniques and technologies as well as outright banned genetic engineering procedures to create super soldier assassins. The children were grown in vats, raised according to previously devised socialization programs, and given training that best fit their expressed aptitudes. Mikhail Jager has spent every day since he was eight being molded into being a biotic assassin.

After seven successfully completed missions, his masters started to take the Reaper threat and Mikhail was redeployed for missions against Reaper allied Geth. Following the Reaper War and possessing limited options, Mikhail opted to apply for the Specters as a means of taking control of his own life.

Personality: Mikhail exerts a quite, affable personality that is useful when attempting to manipulate people and is easily forgotten. Although he has led an insulated life, he has had enough exposure to popular culture and entertainment that he doesn't seem odd. He maintains a substantial digital collection of books and data files on exotic, beautiful, and culturally significant places that he has never been. His possess a good basic education, but no advanced training in other areas. He occasionally displays a sad, world weary, cynicism.

[rhoenix]

Note: The rules have been changed so that no character but a Soldier gets the Heavy Weapons skill by default.

[White Haven]

How many adepts can dance on the head of a pin...

[Dark Silver]

....apparently all of you discovered the power of the float tags....

color me impressed by how a little formatting makes everything better.

[SirNitram]

Name: Geth.(Many-As-One has become accepted as an identity.)
Homeworld: VLS(Very Large Station) 1001
Species: Geth(Mainline)
MOS: Soldier
Skills: Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Assault Rifle, Heavy Weapons, and Armor (Combat), Armor(Advanced), Immunity.

Pre-nomination personal history: Many-As-One, as the Alliance call him, is a direct descent, design-wise, of the mobile platform and runtime grouping that received the identifier 'Legion'. Following the Reaper war and Legion's participation, the Mainline Geth consensus agreed that they could not simply ignore the galaxy as their original plan. The threat of the Old Machines and other problems existed, and the Geth could also benefit from new technology. With this, they began assembling runtimes together to receive data, and began construction of the reinforced combat chassis. Many-As-One has spent alot of time on the questions that sparked the Morning War, and before his departure, he spent alot of time reviewing the holos of Rannoth. He feels the remorse much like most of his race, but knows one can only move forward.

Pre-nomination military background: Many has been deployed repeatedly in the troubled regions at the far side of civilized space. He has fought Vorcha and Krogan gangs, occasionally tangling with less hardy opponents. He's developed a love of sniper rifles and the devastating Cain particle accelerator. This combination of precision and massive devastation from long range soften up even the toughest opponents, allowing him to loose shotgun blasts into his foes. His chassis has been extensively modified to be even more resilient to all forms of damage.

[rhoenix]

Alright - so far, we have a rather interesting assortment of scum and villai... I mean, prospective Spectre recruits.

Game will not start for about another week, since that should give everyone time to finish tightening up their character sheets and backgrounds. Unless there's anything else I missed, the rules and character creation portions are done.

In background in-game knowledge, you've all received the official recommendation from a Councilor (though, not necessarily the same Councilor that represents your species) to have your name on the short list for Spectre recruits. You would know that after Shepard took official command of the Spectre forces immediately following the Reaper War, many things about the Spectres began to change. Commander Shepard herself had allowed herself to be briefly interviewed, in the hopes of applying pressure to the Council on their recruitment process - and, for the most part, it worked.

However, the tradeoff to the success of this is that the Council voted to have observers present for the process of whittling down the list down to the few names that would receive the right, and heavy responsibility, of wearing the black Spectre armor. Moreover, an embedded reporter also must be present, both for publicity and for other reasons known to the Council.

Commander Shepard took pains to be clear during that short interview that exceptionally well-trained lone wolves would not be enough. Leadership, coordination, and adaptability were also needed, especially while the Council, and member species of it, were still rebuilding after the shocking devastation of the Reaper War.

The prospective recruits will be picked up from various locations around the galaxy in the Normandy (one of the perks of being on the short-list of prospective recruits), and all brought back to an undisclosed location. The reporter will be aboard, though each recruit must give their consent to being interviewed, or even be on camera.

[rhoenix]

GM note - skill descriptions for the weapons skills have been cleaned up, clarifying that each weapon skill has a corresponding, limited-use "extra" while in combat.

[SirNitram]

Quick question: Did FemShep again punch out the reporter?

[rhoenix]

Quick question: Did FemShep again punch out the reporter?

Commander Shepard neither confirms nor denies any allegations.

Out of Character though, it was only once.

[rhoenix]

Name: Sings-to-the-Stars (NPC)
Homeworld: The Singing Planet
Species: Rachni (brood warrior)
MOS: Adept
Skills: Armor (Carapace), Warp, Throw, Mindvision, Barrier, Singularity, Shockwave, Reave, Poison Spit

Pre-nomination personal history: From what isn't classified that the rachni Councilor (the rachni queen Bargain-Singer) has made available, the brood warrior Sings-to-the-Stars fought in multiple engagements during the Reaper Wars, and was nominated for his exemplary actions.

The rachni brood warrior Sings-to-the-Stars is large, even for a brood warrior, standing seven feet and weighing [CLASSIFIED]. Exceptionally skilled with biotics, even for a brood warrior, Sings-to-the-Stars has had more contact than most rachni with the other species in the galaxy (apart from Life-Singer, the first rachni queen that Shepard freed on Noveria several years ago during an investigation into [CLASSIFIED]), but nonetheless, his Spectre candidacy trials will be his first time interacting at length with other species.

[White Haven]

Shame we've got so many humans, for a moment I thought our largest demographic was going to be Geth.

[General Havoc]

Shame we've got so many humans, for a moment I thought our largest demographic was going to be Geth.

Never send an organic to do a synthetic's job...

[Sabre72]

Junko's Mouth opens then closes, she decides it may be better to go climb a tree and cloak

ps i know its OOC

[rhoenix]

Name: Lantar Sidonis (NPC)
Homeworld: Palaven
Species: Turian
MOS: Infiltrator
Skills: Armor (Basic), Armor (Tactical), Electronics, Pistol, Sniper Rifle, Decryption, Triangulation

Pre-nomination personal history: Having gone through boot camp at the same time as Garrus Vakarian, Lantar also joined C-Sec when his friend did. Following Garrus' crusade to Omega to try to right the rampant wrongs there, Lantar was whole-heartedly behind it.

After his later confrontation with Garrus on the Citadel, Sidonis resigned himself as the walking dead - the ones whose souls have died, leaving their bodies as little better than husks - and turned himself into C-Sec. This is where he stayed until the Reaper War again engulfed the Citadel in fire, and the C-Sec security could no longer hold the prisoners. Sidonis chose to help the guards pacify the prisoners, and he was given an on-the-spot deputization from Bailey. He has since served with distinction, and his recommendation, instigated by Bailey, was more than a mild shock for Sidonis - especially because he knows which particular turian is second in command of the Spectres.

Pre-nomination professional history: Having served with distinction and several notable instances of valor during his military career, Sidonis chose to become a cop out of a sense of duty, and because he shared the same sense of ethics with his close friend, Garrus Vakarian. His service on Omega wasn't admissible in his file, but his service with C-Sec, and more recently B-Sec, grants him many notable commendations, and recommendations from his superiors.