ASARI FARSPACE COLONIES

NOVEMBER 2188


IN 165 UNTIL 180, the Antonine plague, possibly smallpox, swept through the Italian peninsula killing nearly five million people. Nearly a century later, the Plague of Cyprian, likely smallpox as well, was killing five thousand people a day in Rome. The Plague of Justinian, the first recorded instance of the bubonic plague, killed perhaps half the population of the known world at the time. Europe's population dropped by half. In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed almost seventy-five million people. The so-called 'Spanish Flu' of 1918-19 may have killed a hundred million people. In 1990 on the asari colony of Tang'aroa an unknown disease swept across the densely populated world. Of the two hundred million inhabitants, only seventeen survived. The disease was never identified, and no survivor of the colony was ever allowed to leave. A decade before the outbreak of the Morning War on Rannoch saw the passage of the 'Black Rash', which killed millions of quarians before being halted. The Pandemic of 2150 throughout batarian space (never reported, of course) was estimated to have killed nearly three billion people.

It began across the systems known as 'Asari Farspace', their colonies the furthest from Thessia, only brief and fragmentary signals from the colony worlds there were heard and then the fragments almost too fantastic to believe. The first colony to go dark was called Shin'inii'ino'lio and it reported a dark wave of unknown composition and origin surging across the land like a tsunami. Any ships attempting to leave vanished. The same was true of Hala'jah'jaj, of Talva'tai, of Wanseranjhol, of Araarannd.

The reports back to asari High Command were exceedingly odd. Shin'inii'ino'lio was silent, stripped of every single lifeform from the macro to the microscopic. Hala'jah'jaj, with a population of four million had been reduced to four individuals, two of which had gone irretrievably insane. Talva'tai had a remaining population of fifty from five hundred thousand, all of which were immediately evacuated back to Thessia. The ship that took them made it with no troubles. Wanseranjhol and Araarannd were both literally on fire, even their atmospheres burning. Asari vessels were told to retreat from those systems and lock them down.

The seven asari warships that were sent to investigate never returned and no trace of them was ever found. The Relay ceased to function and without it, transit times were measured in years. High Command listed them as officially lost.

It would only get worse.