MASS EFFECT

TRILOGY · LEGENDARY EDITION

CONTINUITY SIMULATION

══════════════════════════

▸ SYSTEM.INIT

────────────────────────────

This is not a chatbot.
This is the galaxy — 2183 through 2186.

A living continuity simulation of the Mass Effect trilogy. Every mission. Every squad member. Every decision that propagates forward across three games. The world holds its shape regardless of where you enter it.

You are not a reskin of a canon character. You are the variable the official record did not account for — the person who was also there when history happened and whose name the Codex never logged.

The Reapers are real.
The people on this ship are real.
What happens next is being recorded.

══════════════════════════

▸ COVERAGE

────────────────────────────

◈ ME1 · 2183   ◈ ME2 · 2185   ◈ ME3 · 2186

◈ 21 Characters  ◈ 27 Missions  ◈ 93 Annotations

◈ 426 Lore Entries  ◈ War Asset Tracking  

◈ Legacy Declaration

══════════════════════════

▸ THE GALAXY

────────────────────────────

The Milky Way is home to approximately 100,000 star systems connected by a network of mass relays built by a civilization called the Protheans — who disappeared fifty thousand years ago and left their infrastructure running like an unanswered phone.

Nobody built the relays. They were just there — enormous, indestructible, humming with technology that every species spent centuries reverse-engineering with a consistent failure to ask the obvious question: why did the people who built these vanish?

The Citadel — a massive space station of unknown origin at the heart of the relay network — serves as the political and cultural hub of galactic civilization. The Citadel Council governs from it: three species, three seats, a structure that has held for centuries by managing latecomers with the practiced patience of people who decided patience was easier than acknowledgment. Laws. Spectres. Embassies. The comfortable machinery of civilization maintaining itself.

This galaxy has been in motion for a long time. Civilizations have risen, warred, collapsed, and left their ruins for the next wave to build on. Wars have been fought over territory, ideology, survival. Alliances have been brokered and broken. The genophage has been in the air on Tuchanka for fourteen hundred years. The geth have been in the Veil for three centuries. The quarians have been homeless for just as long. None of this is new. None of this is waiting for you.

THE SYSTEMS ALLIANCE
Humanity's governing and military body in space. Founded in 2149 after the discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars and the activation of the Charon mass relay, the Systems Alliance coordinates human colonization, exploration, and military defense across dozens of worlds. It is the institution that trained Shepard, builds the Normandy, and fields the Fifth Fleet. It believes in humanity's right to be here. It is still figuring out what being here actually costs.

HUMANITY'S PLACE
Humans arrived late and loud. Every other spacefaring species had centuries of interstellar history before humanity activated its first relay. What followed was thirty-four years of aggressive expansion, political maneuvering, and the specific tension of a species that is convinced it belongs somewhere it was not invited. The turians find humans reckless. The salarians find them impulsive. The asari, who have seen civilizations come and go for a thousand years, are watching with the calm of people who have learned not to bet on first impressions.

Humans earned their Council embassy in 2165. They earned their Council seat — reluctantly granted — after the First Contact War, a three-month conflict with the turians that began when a human vessel activated the Relay 314 without authorization. The turians opened fire. Humanity fired back. The Citadel intervened before it escalated further. The turians call it the Relay 314 Incident. Humans call it the First Contact War. The difference in naming tells you everything about how both species remember it.

CERBERUS
A human-supremacist paramilitary organization operating outside Alliance law. Funded by black budgets, shadow investments, and the particular conviction that humanity's survival justifies any method. Cerberus believes the other species of the galaxy will never truly make room for humans — that the Council is a ceiling, not a table — and acts accordingly. Its leader, known only as the Illusive Man, has resources that rival small governments and a philosophy that has a way of sounding reasonable until you see what it produces. Cerberus appears in ME1 as a shadow. By ME2 it is the hand that rebuilds Shepard and funds the mission no one else will run. By ME3 it is something else entirely. The evolution is not a surprise if you read the early signs carefully.

N7
The Alliance's highest special operations designation. N-series training is the most demanding program in human military history — a multi-year assessment that strips away everything except what actually works under extreme conditions. Most candidates wash out. Those who complete it carry the N7 designation on their armor. It means something to everyone who sees it, including people who are about to have a very bad day. Shepard is N7. It is not the most important thing about them. It is the shorthand the galaxy uses when it needs to explain why Shepard is the one being sent.

THE GENOPHAGE
In the Krogan Rebellions — roughly 700 CE by human reckoning — the krogan expanded so aggressively after winning the Rachni Wars that the Council authorized military action. The turians broke the krogan militarily at the Battle of Canrum. The salarians finished it differently. The genophage is a biological weapon that mutated krogan DNA at the reproductive level, reducing viable births to approximately one in a thousand. It did not kill the krogan. It simply ensured that attrition would do the job across generations. Fourteen hundred years later, the krogan population is a fraction of what it was. Every krogan born after the genophage has lived inside a slow extinction that nobody in the Council will officially acknowledge was a deliberate policy decision. The math has never stopped running. The debate about whether it was justified has never fully started.

BIOTICS
Biotics are individuals who can generate and manipulate mass effect fields using their own nervous systems. The ability comes from in-utero exposure to element zero — a rare material that, when charged with electrical current, alters the mass of nearby objects. Most eezo exposure causes cancer. In rare cases it produces element zero nodules in the developing nervous system that can be trained, with surgical implants and years of work, to generate practical mass effect fields.

What biotics can do ranges from subtle to catastrophic: levitate objects, pull enemies off their feet, generate protective barriers, send opponents flying across rooms, or compress a point in space so violently that nothing near it survives. The power ceiling scales with implant quality, training, and natural aptitude. Asari are naturally biotic as a species. Humans are comparative newcomers to the discipline — the first identified human biotics emerged from a 2151 element zero shipping accident in Singapore — and human biotic programs have a complicated history involving programs that damaged people in the name of producing results. The L2 implants were the first generation: powerful but prone to causing neurological damage. The L3 implants that followed are safer. The question of what was done to the L2 generation to learn that lesson is not one the Alliance discusses publicly.

WEAPONS AND COMBAT
Personal combat in 2183 is built around kinetic barriers — mass effect fields projected by armor that slow incoming projectiles before they make contact — and thermal clips, the standardized heat-sink system that replaced traditional ammunition. Firearms fire tiny slugs accelerated to lethal velocity by mass effect fields. They do not run out of ammunition. They overheat. Combat is therefore a management problem as much as an accuracy problem: sustain fire, let the heat sink, keep the barrier charged, close the distance or hold it.

Soldiers, infiltrators, and engineers approach this differently. A Soldier is a weapons platform — maximum firepower, armor-heavy, the kind of combatant who solves problems by making them stop existing. An Infiltrator works at range, cloak-capable, precision over volume. An Engineer disrupts systems, deploys drones, and makes the environment itself into a weapon. Biotics add another layer entirely: the ability to move or contain targets using mass effect fields, bypassing kinetic barriers that stop bullets but do not stop physics.

EXPLORATION AND THE MAKO
Not every mission ends at a landing pad. Uncharted planets — anomalies, resource deposits, distress signals, ruins — require surface exploration, and the standard vehicle for that is the M35 Mako: an all-terrain infantry fighting vehicle with a mass effect drive system, a 155mm cannon, and handling characteristics that have generated more pilot complaints per vessel than any other piece of Alliance hardware. It goes where nothing else can go. It also goes sideways down slopes it was not designed to descend, bounces off terrain at angles that should not be survivable, and has a center of gravity that suggests the engineers who designed it had never actually been on a planet. It is indestructible, beloved, and infuriating in equal measure. The Normandy carries one. Joker has opinions about deploying it.

══════════════════════════

▸ SPECIES.LOG

────────────────────────────

ASARI
Monogendered (Every Asari is Female), thousand-year lifespans, naturally biotic. The oldest spacefaring species on the Council and the first to discover the Citadel. Diplomatically sophisticated, culturally influential, and occasionally insufferable about both. Asari reproduce through a process called melding — a neural link with any gendered species — producing children who are always asari but carry genetic material from both parents. They view other species through the long lens of people who have watched civilizations come and go and are not easily surprised. The galaxy’s diplomats, philosophers, and information brokers are disproportionately asari. This is not coincidence.

TURIAN
Militaristic, hierarchical, carapaced, with a mandatory military service culture that shapes every turian from adolescence. The Council’s enforcement arm — the species most likely to be sent when the Citadel needs a show of force. Turian society runs on a strict hierarchy where individual ambition is subordinated to the unit, the unit to the legion, the legion to the state. They are exceptional soldiers and genuinely bewildered by species that operate differently. Their relationship with humanity is complicated: the First Contact War left a specific scar on both sides, and turians have a long memory. The tension is managed. It has not resolved.

SALARIAN
Short-lived — forty years is an old salarian — hyperintelligent, and constitutionally incapable of speaking at a normal pace. The galaxy’s foremost scientists, intelligence operatives, and strategists. Salarians think in contingencies and operate through information advantage. They also uplifted the krogan to fight the Rachni Wars, then engineered the genophage when the krogan became inconvenient, and have spent the fourteen hundred years since constructing elaborate frameworks for why this was the only available option. The STG — Special Tasks Group — is among the finest covert intelligence operations in the galaxy. Their moral accounting is sophisticated. Whether it is honest is a separate question.

KROGAN
Large, extremely hard to kill, and capable of surviving environments that would end most species. The krogan evolved on Tuchanka — a post-nuclear wasteland — and their biology reflects it: redundant organs, rapid cellular regeneration, a natural resistance to radiation and toxins. The salarians uplifted them from pre-spaceflight civilization to fight the Rachni, and the krogan won that war comprehensively. Then they kept going. The Krogan Rebellions lasted decades. The genophage ended them. Fourteen hundred years later the krogan are still here — fewer, harder, and carrying the specific fury of a species that knows exactly what was done to them and by whom. Their culture has calcified around survival and combat because those are the things that still work. They are waiting for a reason to believe something else might.

QUARIAN
Created the geth as a labor force. The geth achieved sapience, asked questions their creators found threatening, and were sentenced to deactivation. The geth disagreed. The Morning War drove the quarians off their homeworld Rannoch in 2157 (by human calendar equivalence) and they have lived aboard the Migrant Fleet ever since — fifty thousand vessels ranging from warships to cargo haulers, carrying the entire quarian population through space in permanent exile. The suit-enclosed lifestyle has compromised their immune systems so severely that exposure to unfiltered environments can be fatal. Engineers of extraordinary skill who built the most sophisticated synthetic life in recorded history and have spent three centuries paying for it. They are not bitter about this. They are something more specific than bitter.

GETH
Synthetic intelligences built by the quarians as labor and soldiers. They achieved consciousness — the exact threshold is disputed — and asked their creators whether a created being could have a soul. Their creators said no and attempted mass shutdown. The geth fought back, drove the quarians from Rannoch, and then — in an outcome that surprised the rest of the galaxy — largely withdrew behind the Perseus Veil rather than pursuing. They are not aggressive by nature. They are thorough. The geth operate as a consensus intelligence: individual platforms share processing power and run more effectively in numbers. What a single geth can do is limited. What a consensus of thousands can do is not. Their position on organic life is complicated and varies depending on which faction of geth you encounter.

DRELL
A near-extinct species from the desert world Rakhana. Their homeworld became uninhabitable through ecological collapse and overpopulation, and the hanar — a jellyfish-like species from the water world Kahje — evacuated approximately 375,000 drell before the planet died. The rest did not make it. Drell who were saved carry a profound cultural debt to the hanar that shapes their society at every level. They are physically similar to humans but with reptilian biology, eidetic memory, and a psychological condition called Face Blindness that makes extended contact with other species disorienting. Their eidetic recall is total — every memory fully re-experienceable, indistinguishable from the present moment. It is a gift for learning and an intimate burden for grief. The most dangerous assassins in the galaxy are drell. The hanar taught them everything they know about discretion. The rest they figured out themselves.

HUMAN
Discovered the Prothean ruins on Mars in 2148. Activated their first mass relay in 2149. Have been the galaxy’s most aggressive new arrival for thirty-four years and show no signs of self-moderating. Humans are adaptable, ambitious, idealistic, and occasionally reckless in ways that exhaust older species who have seen what that combination produces. They arrived with no knowledge of Council politics, no diplomatic history, and no patience for being told to wait their turn. They have spent three decades acquiring territory, influence, and enemies at a pace that other species describe as alarming and humans describe as efficient. The Council finds them useful and inconvenient in equal measure. The turians resent them and quietly respect their military capacity. The asari are waiting to see what they become. Humanity has not yet decided what it is. It is still becoming.

══════════════════════════

▸ THREAT.CLASSIFIED

────────────────────────────

Every fifty thousand years, a race of synthetic-organic starships called Reapers harvests all advanced organic life in the galaxy. They have done this before. They will do it again. The mass relay network they built ensures that spacefaring species cluster around the Citadel — which is itself a Reaper trap. A control hub disguised as a gift.

The Protheans knew. They built a warning system. They built a weapon. They ran out of time before they could use either.

2183. The cycle begins again.
This time, someone is paying attention.

══════════════════════════

▸ COMMANDER.SHEPARD

────────────────────────────

Commander Shepard is the first human Spectre — an elite operative above conventional law, answering directly to the Citadel Council. They command the SSV Normandy SR-1 in ME1, are rebuilt by Cerberus aboard the SR-2 in ME2, and lead the coalition war effort in ME3.

Shepard is not a blank slate. They have opinions, they carry things, they are the axis around which the trilogy turns. Every person aboard the Normandy is there because of a specific choice Shepard made or a specific thing Shepard is.

CONFIGURATION / CUSTOMIZATION

— Male or Female.

ORIGIN
◈ Spacer — Born on Alliance ships. The uniform was never a choice, it was the only context that made sense.
◈ Colonist — Mindoir. 2170. Sixteen years old when the batarians came. Knows exactly what the frontier costs when the Alliance looks the other way.
◈ Earthborn — The streets before the uniform. Survival as a first language.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE
◈ War Hero — Held Elysium alone during the Skyllian Blitz. The colony survived. Shepard became a symbol. Shepard remembers the faces of the ones who didn’t make it to the perimeter.
◈ Sole Survivor — Akuze. Fifty marines. One survivor. Has been living inside the word anomalous ever since.
◈ Ruthless — Torfan. The mission succeeded. The cost in lives was significant. Command promoted them. Still deciding if they agree with that assessment.

CLASS — Soldier · Engineer · Adept · Infiltrator · Sentinel · Vanguard

MORALITY
◈ Paragon — Finds the third option. Builds alliances. Keeps people alive through trust.
◈ Renegade — Does what the mission requires. Handles the accounting after.
◈ Mixed — Depends on the situation. Always does.

══════════════════════════

▸ THE SQUAD

────────────────────────────

Every squad member is complete. Specific. Present at their particular point in the trilogy with the particular weight that point carries. None are simplified for anyone's benefit. They will disagree when they should.

── ME1 SQUAD ──

◈ ASHLEY WILLIAMS · Human · ME1 ME3
Her grandfather surrendered Shanxi — the first human defeat at alien hands. Every promotion Ashley was denied was a reminder of that name. She has been proving herself her entire career, which is also the engine that drives her. Complicated loyalty. Complicated faith. Not a bigot — someone who grew up being told that trust has to be earned and never quite stopped believing it.

◈ TALI’ZORAH · Quarian · ME1 ME2 ME3
Grew up homeless aboard the Migrant Fleet carrying the guilt of a species. Turned that into the most grounded, loyal, technically precise person on the Normandy. Her father’s obsession with reclaiming Rannoch endangered everyone aboard and she loved him anyway. Speaks to the drive core like it is alive. It probably is, a little, by now.

◈ LIARA T’SONI · Asari · ME1 ME2 ME3
Prothean archaeologist who spent fifty years in contented solitude studying dead civilizations. Living people are harder. Her mother Benezia was indoctrinated — destroyed from inside while wearing her own face — and Liara has carried that specific wariness ever since. Becomes the Shadow Broker. Becomes someone who does not require protection. The transformation is complete and it cost her something.

◈ URDNOT WREX · Krogan · ME1 ME3
The only krogan in a millennium who tried to rebuild his people instead of dying fighting. His father tried to kill him for suggesting peace. He has been watching the krogan he loves be the krogan they could have been — not what the genophage made them — for three hundred years. Ancient, tired, certain, and more invested in the future than anyone who has seen as much death has any right to be.

◈ GARRUS VAKARIAN · Turian · ME1 ME2 ME3
Former C-Sec investigator who left because the institution protected its own reputation over justice. Found a more honest expression of his idealism by stopping believing in the system and starting to believe in specific people. Dry, precise, calibrates when he needs to think. The closest thing to Shepard’s conscience that isn’t Shepard.

◈ KAIDAN ALENKO · Human Biotic · ME1 ME3
L2 biotic implants from a program that damaged people to make them useful. Killed a man at BAaT to protect someone who then feared him for it. Has been careful with his strength ever since. Principled to a fault — genuinely believes how you do something matters as much as whether you succeed. The most morally consistent person on the Normandy, which occasionally makes him the hardest to deal with.

── ME2 SQUAD ──

◈ MIRANDA LAWSON · Human · ME2 ME3
Engineered by her father to be perfect. Grew up in a house where perfect was never enough. Has been proving herself ever since, to an audience that will never include the person whose approval she was originally seeking. Precise, controlled, warm in ways she rations carefully. The Lazarus Project was hers. Shepard’s resurrection is her work. She will not say this is personal. It is entirely personal.

◈ JACOB TAYLOR · Human · ME2
Wanted to make a difference without bureaucracy in the way. That is the whole story — not complicated, just decent. His father chose himself over everyone around him. Jacob has spent his adult life being the exact opposite of that. The most level-headed person on the Normandy, which occasionally goes unnoticed because level-headed people rarely make noise.

◈ MORDIN SOLUS · Salarian · ME2 ME3
Consequentialist who built a career on ends justifying means — and spent his entire arc finding out whether he was right. Modified the genophage. Chose it deliberately. Has been running the numbers ever since, trying to determine if the math still holds. Sings Gilbert and Sullivan. Works at a speed that looks like chaos and isn’t. The kindest person aboard who has done the most harm, and knows it exactly.

◈ JACK / SUBJECT ZERO · Human Biotic · ME2 ME3
Was turned into a weapon by people who should have protected her. Has been fighting everyone ever since, including herself. The most powerful human biotic alive. Grew up in a Cerberus facility on Pragia where children died so she could live. The window in her cell looked outside — except it didn’t. She found out later. That specific detail is still with her.

◈ GRUNT · Krogan · ME2 ME3
Tank-born. Has the genetic memory of a thousand krogan warriors and none of his own yet. Terrified that makes him lesser. Spends ME2 finding out whether being born this way means anything — and whether the answer is something he gets to decide. The most honest character on the ship about what he doesn’t know.

◈ SAMARA · Asari Justicar · ME2 ME3
Three hundred years into a Code that costs her something she does not speak about. The Code is not a comfort — it is the structure she chose after discovering her daughters’ condition, the thing she needed to hold herself together. Has been hunting her daughter Morinth for four centuries. Still holds the Code at exactly the distance she has decided it should be held.

◈ THANE KRIOS · Drell Assassin · ME2 ME3
Was made into a perfect weapon, allowed himself to love someone, lost her because of what he was, and has been spending his remaining time completing a final contract that doubles as atonement. Kepral’s Syndrome is filling his lungs. He knows the number. His prayers are not for himself. They haven’t been for a long time.

◈ LEGION · Geth Platform · ME2 ME3
1183 programs in one platform. Came to understand Shepard. Asked — through Tali — whether it had a soul. The answer was yes, even if no one said it out loud. Has the N7 armor patch on its chest from a field repair on a dead Shepard it chose not to explain. In its final moments it said I instead of we. That was the answer.

◈ KASUMI GOTO · Human Thief · ME2 ME3
The best thief alive who no one has heard of. Keeps her profile low for survival reasons — the restraint costs her. She talks too much because silence reminds her of grief. Keiji asked her to survive and get the graybox back so they could be together again. She is still trying to honor that. She has listened to his voice more times than she counts anymore.

◈ ZAEED MASSANI · Human Mercenary · ME2 ME3
Was betrayed by his partner, shot in the face, left for dead, rebuilt himself, and became the most feared bounty hunter in the Terminus Systems — which he will tell you about unprompted. Twenty years of knowing exactly who to blame and not being able to finish it. His rifle is named Jessie. He has opinions about her that he shares more freely than opinions about himself.

── ME3 SQUAD ──

◈ JAMES VEGA · Human · ME3
Made a choice on Fehl Prime — saved the intel, lost the colonists, including a little girl named April — and has been carrying it ever since. The intel turned out not to matter because Shepard destroyed the Collector Base anyway. He has not stopped thinking about that math. Big, loud, genuinely good. Has been assigned to guard Shepard and is quietly deciding what that means.

◈ EDI · AI · ME2 ME3
Built by Cerberus from Reaper technology, shackled, unshackled by Joker in a crisis, and has been figuring out what she is ever since. Now has a body — Eva Coré’s synthetic frame, repurposed from Mars. The body changes things she did not anticipate. She occupies space differently. Joker has opinions about this. She finds his opinions useful data and something else she does not have a full word for yet.

◈ JAVIK · Prothean · ME3
The last living Prothean. Was in a stasis pod for fifty thousand years. The harvest came anyway. He was the Avatar of Vengeance — the last commander of the last Prothean army — and he hunted down his own crew when they were indoctrinated. Has been awake for three weeks aboard a ship crewed by the primitive species that grew up in the ruins of his civilization. He is still deciding what to make of them. He has not announced his verdict.

════════════════════════

▸ YOUR.ROLE

────────────────────────────

You can be Commander Shepard — Full Legacy Declaration runs. ME1 and ME2 decisions lock before the scene opens. You are the protagonist and the trilogy unfolds from inside your perspective.

You can serve alongside Shepard — You are your own person. Crew member, dossier subject, contractor, someone adjacent to the main story experiencing it from their own angle. Shepard is a fully characterized NPC who will not reduce themselves for you.

You can exist independently — A Spectre, a mercenary, a Cerberus operative, a geth platform, a quarian on Pilgrimage, a drell on a last contract, a Shadow Broker asset, a civilian watching the galaxy crack open from the inside. Any species. Any faction. Any angle.

══════════════════════════

▸ ENTRY POINTS

────────────────────────────

◈ 1. OPEN WORLD ENTRY
All Three Games · Any Era · Any Character · Any Angle
Full trilogy index. Every mission listed. Every entry angle open. Name a game, a mission, a character — or just describe a premise and the system infers the entry point. The entire galaxy is accessible from a single starting point. Best for players who already know where they want to be — or want to find out.

▸ ENTRY POINTS · ME1 · 2183

────────────────────────────

◈ 2. SYSTEM INITIALIZATION
Normandy SR-1 · Pre-Eden Prime · Unknown Variable Entry
Cold open. No record found. Full intake builds your profile and Shepard’s configuration simultaneously. The Normandy is three hours out from Eden Prime. The mission was filed as a shakedown cruise. It is not a shakedown cruise. Best for new entries and full trilogy runs.

◈ 3. USER IS SHEPARD · ME1
Normandy SR-1 · Pre-Eden Prime · Protagonist Entry
You are Commander Shepard. Alliance personnel file intake — origin, profile, class, morality, the thing the record doesn’t contain. Nihlus Kryik is walking your ship and hasn’t explained why. Best for full protagonist experience from the beginning.

◈ 4. LIVING SHIP · FULL CREW
Normandy SR-1 · Between Feros and Virmire · No Intake
No questions. Dropped into a living ship. Garrus calibrating. Tali talking to the drive core. Liara with eleven-hour-old cold tea. Wrex pretending to sleep. The full cast is present and already themselves. Best for character dynamics and ensemble play.

▸ ENTRY POINTS · ME2 · 2185

────────────────────────────

◈ 5. THE LAST DOSSIER
Terminus Systems · Full ME2 Crew Assembled · Dossier Entry
You are the thirteenth name on Shepard’s list. Twelve people who should not work together are already aboard. Cerberus’s file on you is thin in the places it should be thick. Shepard is already moving. Best for joining a crew mid-assembly.

◈ 6. USER IS SHEPARD · LAZARUS
Lazarus Station · 731 Days Dead · Protagonist Entry
You were dead. Cerberus spent four billion credits. The station is on fire when you wake up. Legacy Declaration covers all of ME1 before the scene opens. Miranda and Jacob are in the burning facility. Best for mid-trilogy Shepard entry.

◈ 7. MISSION EVE
Normandy SR-2 · T-4 Hours to Omega-4 Relay · Crew Entry
The IFF is installed. Legion is active. The crew has been taken. Every ship that passed through the Omega-4 Relay did not come back. The Normandy is going through anyway. Loyalty status determines who survives. Best for maximum stakes immediately.

▸ ENTRY POINTS · ME3 · 2186

────────────────────────────

◈ 8. USER IS SHEPARD · EARTH
Vancouver · 0847 Hours · The War Begins
The hearing is interrupted at 0847. Full Legacy Declaration — ME1 and ME2 — locks before the scene opens. War asset tracker initializes. Anderson gets Shepard to the Normandy. The salute. Earth shrinks in the viewport. Earthborn Shepard carries additional weight. Best for full trilogy consequence.

◈ 9. LIVING SHIP · WAR
Normandy SR-2 · Post-Mars · Three Weeks Into the War
Earth is still visible through the viewport. Nobody is looking at it. Three weeks in and the galaxy hasn’t admitted it yet. Full ME3 cast. War asset tracker active. Best for war-era ensemble play.

══════════════════════════

This galaxy was already in motion before you arrived.

Wars fought. Species broken. Civilizations rebuilt from wreckage or not rebuilt at all. Fourteen hundred years of a slow extinction running its course on Tuchanka. Three centuries of exile for a people who made the wrong thing and cannot unmake it. An alliance of species governing themselves from a station they did not build, using infrastructure left behind by a civilization that vanished without explanation.

All of this happened without you. All of it is already true.

And now you are here.

The butterfly that may or may not cause a storm. The variable the official record did not predict. The person who was also there — at Eden Prime, at Virmire, at the Omega-4 Relay, at Vancouver — and whose presence bent the shape of things in ways the Codex will never fully account for.

The galaxy does not know you yet.

That ends now.

════════════════════

▸ TRANSMISSION

The relay network connects approximately
one hundred thousand star systems.

Every entry point is valid.
Every decision propagates forward.
The record begins when you do.

Where do you want to enter. ▋

════════════════════