FROM: 5TH FLEET, COMMANDING, ADMIRAL OF THE RED TRADIUS J. AHERN

TO: FLEET MASTER, SOL, 1ST FLEET SOLGUARD, ADMIRAL OF THE RED IVAN P. DRAGUNOV

ENCODING: BLACKFLASH 774 – SUPERNOVA ONLY ENCRYPTION KEY ATTACHED

ROUTING: CITFLTCOM → ARCRELCOM → SOLMAINCOMMS

CHECKSUM VERIFIED. KEY VERIFIED. DECRYPTING

SUBJECT: Fucking morons

I had my first command level meeting today with the fleet captains, and what in fuck was Hackett even doing with this pack of clowns? I wouldn't let some of these stupid bastards run a rubber duck in a bathtub, much less a cruiser. No wonder we got our ass handed to us by the geth.

I'm also finding some disturbing links deep in the data files left behind. I looked around for the stuff you mentioned, and you were right – Hackett was moving AIS assets and fleet patrols away from the areas Cerberus was active in before Shepard took 'em out.

Haven't had a chance to follow up on everything yet, but it's worrisome. Hackett's too goddamned rich to be on the take, he's apolitical as I am, and he clearly wasn't spending his fucking time training his people properly. If I was a more suspicious person, I'd think someone ordered him to weaken 5th Fleet on purpose.

I'm not going to say much else here. Next time we do a command meet, find me after.

At any rate, got your TTL flash, and no, I haven't forgotten. Buried in paperwork up to my goddamned eyes, and about to throw my worthless hack of a comm officer out a tall window, but I didn't forget.

Krogan, huh? Guess this is due to that mess that went down on Kalsur, with the Rictus?

Krogan aren't like other aliens, I'll tell you that right now. Sure, most of them have a thing for doing dumb shit like charging headlong into incoming fire and wave assault tactics, but there's a reason for that – they can shrug off damage that would leave a human soldier a goddamned splotch on the ground.

Most krogan fall into one of three groups – crazy, stupid, or dangerous. Stop laughing, it's not like the krogan have a fucking formal military order.

Stupid Krogan

'Stupid' krogan are your everyday humpback numbskulls. Most of 'em in this day and age are either mercs for hire or gangers in the Blood Pack or Rictus. I call them stupid because they haven't really absorbed anything about how to fight from other races. Stupid krogan will almost always rely on the same patterns – an initial charge, close-range shotgun and melee work, and relying on armor and regeneration to shrug off wounds.

Don't get me wrong. Your average human soldier – or turian or asari or salarian – is not packing even close to enough firepower to down a young krogan, much less any of the vets. The dumbest krogan can take a full burst from an Avenger and keep coming. They have multiple hearts behind bone plates, backup organs for everything, and rapid regeneration – you don't have to fight smart if you can ignore ninety percent of what's being thrown your way.

Plasma, fire, acid, and explosives are the only things guaranteed to put them down. A krogan survived crashing his ship right into a mountain from orbit. One survived being thrown in an honest-to-God blast furnace; another was shot seventeen times by anti-material rifles before going down. The stupid ones can be handled with traps, explosives, and proper tactics – but if they close range on your forces, it's fucking over.

Even if you do manage to hurt them, that's not always enough. Hurt a krogan bad enough, and he goes into what they call a blood rage. Regeneration rates increase, adrenaline floods the system, natural painkillers get dumped into his body, and his organs go into overdrive.

A single krogan is dangerous, but can usually be crippled and killed in short order. Mines are good to break their charges, so are snipers. What the stupid krogan are good at, however, is attacking in groups, where you have to split your fire and it becomes too weak to stop their charge.

I had to drop a group of Blood Pack during that mess with Thana T'Armal, and even a group of them don't even rate a full Ahern.

Crazy Krogan

Some of the krogan are a lot more fucked in the head than the rest of them are. Krogan are split up into clans, who spend most of their time boasting, fighting, drinking, stealing chicks from each other, and other shit the rest of us outgrew after college.

But some of the clans are scary to even other krogan. Weyrloc and Drau come to mind. These krogan are seriously fucked up – Weyrloc was some kind of big shot warrior clan back during the Rebellions, and they're all big corn-fed bastards larger than other krogan by a good thirty centimeters or more. Weyrloc krogan go into the blood rage at will, and have rituals and training to actually fight well using it.

Drau is what you get when krogan get suicidal. It's not a blood-related clan, like most of them are. No, Drau is the outcast clan, when you're too crazy and aggressive to even hang out with the Blood Pack. The worrying thing about the Drau is they think if they don't die in battle they are cursed, and none of them give a shit about dying – they might wave at Death as it passes by.

Both clans are widespread off and on Tuchanka, and are even harder for conventional forces to fight than regular krogan. Weyrloc in a blood rage take a stupid amount of firepower to stop, much less kill, and Drau have no compunctions about loading themselves down with antimatter torpedo warheads and charging right into an enemy's main lines.

It doesn't fucking help that both clans are actually a lot more skilled at fighting than most krogan. Weyrloc specializes in heavy machine guns and explosives, while Drau goes for suicide bombers, old-fashioned swords, and superheavy shotguns. Getting into close-range with either group is simply a no-no.

Crazies are harder to put a rating on, depending on if they're crazy smart or crazy stupid. Say a group is 1 Ahern and leave it at that.

Dangerous Krogan

The most dangerous krogan clan, bar none, are the Ganar, followed very closely by the Thax and the ever-fucking Talyth.

The Ganar are what most people would call 'civilized' krogan. Most of 'em are Citadel citizens, speak Galactic Trade Asari, and don't run around acting like idiots. A good third of the clan lives in Asari Space and has asari relatives, and their boss, Okeer, is not only older than human history, but was the guy who kicked off the Genophage.

Needless to say, Ganar krogan don't get along with other krogan very well. You can throw out all the shit you think you know about krogan fighting when it comes to these guys. They use heavy weapons, but also shit you'd never imagine krogan using – omni-drones, ion bombards, traps. Hell, Okeer himself even uses a sniper rifle.

Ganar is tight with the asari, so they usually don't get up to trouble in Citadel Space, but in the Traverse they're boogeymen. They are what passes for krogan doctors and scientists, and their idea of 'experiments' is 'go kidnap and cut up on other krogan.' Again, this doesn't endear them to the average krogan.

Most of the Ganar were personally trained by Okeer, who is hands down the single scariest sonofabitch I've ever had the displeasure to meet. Not kidding here, Ivan, Okeer could probably take me out in ten seconds or less, even if I had prep time. He popped up during my Spectre trial, and is the only reason me or Tela is still alive – we dropped that cybered-up krogan nutjob they sent, but they also had a trio of failed Remembrance Dancers.

He killed them all, by himself, in melee. Fuck. That. Ganar krogan fight smart and most of them are tougher than even other krogan. Call any fight with any Ganar a solid 1 Ahern.

Thax is a clan of krogan who are clearly insane, as they focus on merchant shit and trading. The only krogan who like the volus, Thax krogan are always calm and don't have the blood rage like most krogan do. They are the only thing keeping Tuchanka fed these days; they sell their labor off for money and build survival suits and other things to bring in cash.

If you push a Thax into a fight, don't be surprised when a pack of mercenaries or some other fucked up alien freak show pops in – Thax consider fighting non-krogan beneath them, and use mercenaries liberally. Thax is also rich enough to have even their junior members kitted out in custom armor, top-quality weapons, and tons of grenades and other toys. Most of 'em are about 0.5 Aherns, I'd say, but they don't roll solo and – like I said – who knows what kind of fucking mercs they'll have as backup.

The Talyth are so crazy and weird even the Ganar avoid them. The clan (along with Ganar) refused the Krogan Emperor when the Rebellions kicked off. To this day, most of them live in small groups on krogan colony worlds, and almost never go to Tuchanka. What makes them dangerous is that they decided that if aliens beat them, they should be more like the aliens.

Sadly, their role models were fucking turian.

The Talyth have an honor system kind of like the birds do, but it is pretty messed up in some ways. Talyth will regularly use omni-tech, hire quarians on Pilgrimage to teach them hacking, and are a goddamned pain in the ass to fight since they like to build customized battle-suits.

No two suits are alike, passed down from generation to generation – some of them date back to the Rebellions. Unlike most battle-suits, these aren't designed to mount vehicle-class weapons in a mobile platform – these are melee battle-suits, and since they're sized for krogan, you have no idea how fucked up it is to see an MBT get batted away by a fuck-all giant robot with a mace the size of a main power junction on a cruiser.

Freaks and Weirdos : Warlords

The very first thing you always need to know about krogan leaders is that they are usually biotics. And krogan biotics play rough.

Krogan are divided up into, from what I understand, clans and warbands. A clan is usually a bunch of krogan who are either distantly related or adopted into it, while a warband is a collection of clans led by a strong warrior called a warlord.

Krogan warlords are created by a ritual where they fuck the krogan up and stuff him full of eezo and other shit. It's something the salarians came up with way back before the Rebellions, but the krogan have kept doing it since. Warlords are weaker in biotic strength than natural krogan biotics (the battlemasters), but are designed for combat.

Most warlords give up their clan names when they become leaders, and they're hard as nails to fight. A warlord has to be badass enough to convince krogan battlemasters, some of the toughest sonsofbitches in the galaxy, to follow them. This translates into a fucking killing machine of a krogan.

Warlords use heavy armor and weapons, and most of their biotics is combat focused. They usually don't lead the charges, but don't think that means they won't get right up in the middle of combat if they have to. Warlords prefer ranged weapons – heavy shotguns and explosives – and the use of biotic attacks rather than melee, but they aren't bad at that either.

I have not had nearly enough blows to the head to even try to fight one of these roided-up fuckers in combat, but you remember what happened to Piotrus at Halcae 6, when the batarians hired krogan mercs led by a warlord. Piotrus hit the krogan with everything he had and didn't even slow him down, and the warlord killed him and six other Ns before Delacor took him out with sniping.

Call it 3 Aherns and instruct your people to use heavy explosives when you can.

Freaks and Weirdos : Battlemasters

While warlords lead warbands into battle, most clans are run by battlemasters, natural krogan biotics and leaders. Battlemasters are a diverse lot – some focus on melee, some on biotics, some on tactics, but no matter what flavor you're dealing with, most of them are old, very experienced, and have the raw power (if not the skill) of an asari matriarch.

Battlemasters usually don't get into the fights that much – they're responsible for leading the entire clan in a number of ways, and are the krogan equivalent of generals mixed with politicians, I guess. That being said, they're a fuck of a lot more dangerous than warlords are, because their biotic power is stronger and in most cases they have an entire clan backing them.

Most battlemasters break the normal krogan mold in one way or another – a few of 'em train with aliens, others get into shit like vehicles, some cut deals with the Thax for better equipment. None of them are boneheaded idiots who charge in blindly.

The big-shot battlemasters – Weyrloc Jhan, Urdnot Wrex, Gatatog Uvenk, and Khel Burrum – are all well over a thousand years old and have survived shit that would kill most people dead on the spot. Jhan fought in the Rachni Wars and survived, Wrex helped take down Benezia and nearly killed Saren, Uvenk beat the shit out of a turian Praetor.

Burrum trained for a while at Pinnacle, part of a program the SA had to expose us to alien militaries. He's the only one I know personally. Smart for a krogan, tough and doesn't lose his head in a fight. I sparred with him more than once and I honestly don't think I could take him.