The Human Effect

by Whiskey144

When they found Humanity, it was unlike anyone had ever imagined. For here was a species that had found Element Zero and Mass Effect Physics within the past decade- but more than a thousand years after they had achieved interstellar flight. Mass Effect AU

1. Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Humans are upstarts because they have never learned their place in the universe.

-Saren Arterius

Despite the fact that we have been in contact with humanity for more than a hundred and fifty years, we still know so little about them- to the point that we do not even know what they look like under their encounter suits.

-Lecture at the University of Thessia, unrecorded professor(s)

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Many historians choose to gloss over the realities governing First Contact with Humanity; of how the Turians finally found an opponent that outmatched them in more ways than they could have imagined, of how the Asari for the first time found that they could not entice a species into compliance with Citadel Law, and of how the Salarians could not penetrate the information networks of this new power.

More than that, however, they choose to play down the importance of the events leading up to The War, as it became known. For it was not a case of mistaken law enforcement, the reason most often trotted out by the Turian government. It was raw and brutal imperialism- for why else would the Turians have dragged in a non-Council species?

Where they expected an easy conquest of a power that did not even understand Mass Effect physics and sciences, they found that they were severely outmatched, in ways that should have been impossible. They found that they had, quite simply, swatted the curious pup, and the mother beast had come to swat them back.

What follows is an analysis of that conflict and the recent history of the Citadel-Human relations; it has been assembled from eyewitness accounts, historical documentation, and parsed combat footage. This document does not, in any way, downplay a single detail; instead choosing to present nothing but the truth, in its brutal entirety. Many will disagree with this paper's findings, but facts are facts, and this is a verifiably truthful analysis.

Date formats as presented are in the form of Pre-Contact/Galactic Standard and After-Contact/Galactic Standard, or PC/GS and AC/GS, respectively.

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A/N: So this is an idea I've been sitting on for a while now. The idea is a historical document analyzing humanity and their interactions with the Citadel and the Terminus- and beyond- within the framework applied be a couple of assumptions. What said assumptions are will be revealed shortly- but suffice to say, they're generally pretty different than most AU concepts, at least IMHO. Rest assured, all those technically-minded among you, I intend to do a parallel resource consisting of Codex entries regarding human technology.

Feedback is awesome. Except for flames. Constructive criticism, yes. Flames, no. Flames do not make a story better. They either leave it the same or send it into the ground.