And welcome back, my pretties to the final part of this prologue. It has been a long road and I'm glad that I have made it this far to complete the setup for this story. I've had to make a lot of decisions on what to do for this story, there were things I was forced to leave out and there were things that I brought in. And through it all, you guys stuck with me and this story; and for that, I thank you.

However, this is not a happy update. I will go into this more at the very end here.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my laptop and my copy of MS Word. See the first chapter for the full disclaimer.

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"Talking."

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Tunnels between the Senate building and the Imperial Palace (immediately after the previous chapter ended).

Harry sat comfortably on the train that ran between the Senate building and the Palace. Beside him sat Jane who had returned back to New Mandalore less than an hour earlier. Harry could already tell that she seemed distracted by something. "Doesn't something bother you, my daughter?"

"I have to ask, why did you not kill the Citadel Council where they stood?" Jane asked. "Why did you just walk away?"

"I wished to show the galaxy, primarily the member worlds of the Citadel races that there is another choice, they are not limited to a government whose top ranks are ruled by three races alone and represented alone by three individuals with their own agendas. By walking in and declaring our existence we showed that not only is there another advanced civilization, but that we are just as powerful if not more so, and are willing to protect our people by any means necessary. We showed that the current Council are hypocrites, they claim to keep their people safe and fail to do so because expanding would threaten their status quo. Whether they change or not will be up to the pressure that their citizens place upon them, if they don't change then they now have another path, us."

"And your reasoning behind not killing them?"

"Tell me, is it easier to rule a disgruntled people or ones that willingly accept your rule? If I were to kill the defacto rulers of the galaxy the citizens would rally behind those that support the current Councilors would release propaganda that would have their citizens rally to the side of a new Council that would fight us every step of the way. And should we defeat and execute every supporter of the current corruption in the Council, we would have to put up with and extinguish constant rebellions, something that both the Order and the Brotherhood would take advantage of to attempt to overthrow the Empire, primarily attempting to kill me and those around us, a distraction that we cannot afford, especially this close to the clock on the Reapers' return ticking ever closer to zero. Them coming to us instead of us steamrolling them into submission minimizes rebellion and maximizes our chances for survival." Harry saw that the answer satisfied his daughter's question, however, something else seemed to be bothering her. "Is there something that is bothering you?"

She rubbed her chin in thought as she said, "Doesn't it seem odd how the Council acted? I watched the footage of your speech that was released on the Imperial News site on the AetherNet and something seemed off about them."

"Indeed, something did feel off," Harry conceded. "Indeed, have two theories that Imperial Intelligence is looking into further. The first is that the old add adage comes to mind that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely', but then that would not explain Valern's lack of commands or orders during our… scuffle leads me to believe that he is motivated by something else or is impassive."

"And the second?"

"As you know the Citadel station is the largest trap ever created by the Reapers to centralize the governments of that cycle in one central location, to have all knowledge of that civilization related to population centers and military all in one place so that they can easily search out that cycle's harvest without many problems. According to the Codex that the quarians gave us the turian, salarian, and asari species' technological advancement ended and has stagnated with the implementation of eezo into their ships and technology. Why haven't they advanced, why do they allow artificial intelligence below a certain threshold and ban those above it? The second theory is a lot more sinister and reminds me of Dumbledore to an extent: subtle mind control."

"Do you think the Reapers are capable of such a thing?" Jane asked in surprise.

"It wouldn't shock me. If the records of the Old World were anything to go by, if the CIA, MI6, and KGB have taught us anything humans can be influenced through things like infrasound to do things they normally wouldn't, and this technology has been around for many years, who's to say that the Reapers don't have some kind of hyper-advanced technology that allows them to do the same? The Citadel is the seat of their trap and those Keepers that run freely around the station it wouldn't shock me if they did this to make each cycle easier than the last."

"That would make sense, after all, we did find the remains of a Reaper that was gutted."

"Indeed. The remains of that Reaper are very old, millions of years even, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch to implement this new form of… steering the current cycle's government and technology towards a certain, more manageable technological path."

"It would make them more predictable," Jane concluded.

"That is what I believe as well." The metro car continued on towards the Senate all without another word being spoken.

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I'm going to go over the reasons why shortly, but from here onward will be a summary of the rest of the pilot that I had intended to write.

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The Emperor proceeds to give a rousing speech in the Senate where he solidifies his goals for the Council. As he knows spy agencies and other interested parties are watching offers refuge from those seeking asylum from the Council and promises retribution if they attack any of the Empire's worlds.

A closed session with the senators is held regarding the geth. They are in agreement that the geth need to be addressed; the quarians are on board with reclaiming their homeworld.

Council was indeed watching and seethes and copes while they try to establish how to defeat the Empire.

Slaves from the Batarians wrestle between going home and joining the Empire as citizens. The asari, Rilthyte, decides to join the Empire and sends a message to her family stating why she is doing so, encouraging her "clan" to do the same knowing that she wouldn't have been abandoned by family. Scraping this message, Imperial Intelligence uses it and many others contacting family in a propaganda campaign against the Council.

Many of the lower castes of Bararians are on board with the Empire's plan for their race (liberation and integration), many of the upper castes are not and flee into the Terminus to regroup, many with their wealth and slaves in tow due to being on colony worlds.

Batarian colony worlds are invaded and liberated by the Empire.

Several worlds on the outer reaches of Council space contemplate separating from the Council and joining the Empire instead as a planet's identity may be different than the species as a whole.

Tuchanka and the krogan contact the Empire seeking asylum and aid for their declining species. The Empire accepts and plans to integrate them as a species and free them from their past biological inflictions are made. Word is eventually spread to the Council about this and they make their displeasure known.

Initial contact is made some time later with the geth and while a splinter group flees and attacks the Empire, the rest of the geth collective decry these "Heretics" actions and seek peace with their creators. Resettlement talks are started between the geth "Loyalists" and the quarians with the Empire as intermediaries.

A separate set of talks are started between the geth and the Empire regarding Project Avalon with involvement/participation proposals at the same time.

Harry starts to go into Luna's journals that were bequeathed to him so he can start learning how to Ascend.

A proposal is brought to the Emperor in secret for a series of extra-galactic colonies in the Andromeda galaxy. He contemplates it as a backup to the backup plan and initial research is permitted with assistance from Imperial Intelligence and the Navy as a Special Research Project.

First Contact is made by an Imperial exploratory vessel with a species currently exploring their solar system.

Saren has his first interaction with Reaper technology. The voice on the other side, Sovereign, promises him power for his servitude. He accepts.

John, angry at his sister's position as the Emperor's Heir, starts to delve deeper into the Dark Side allowing it to cloud his vision. While he attempts to keep it secret, his sister suspects something's up but isn't quite sure what yet.

The remaining members and third and fourth generations of the Order of the Phoenix are close to rebuilding their numbers and reach out to the STG offering their services as spies and saboteurs to the Council as they have mutual enemies in the Empire.

With this, the groundwork would have been laid for this.

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This being the end of this, allow me to explain why I've decided to drop this fic as a whole despite having this roadmap.

One thing to remember with this fic is that it was started in 2016, 6 years ago. This was 1 year before the cluster that was Andromeda released and a year before The Last Jedi. The last update I had for this fic was in January of 2017. TLJ was released in December of that year and Andromeda in March. You can see where this is going. Andromeda being bad was a gut punch but it was one that I could walk away from, after all, I still have the original trilogy to play and enjoy despite the soured taste. But what really killed this fic was The Last Jedi. TLJ outright killed any interest for me in Star Wars as a whole. Don't get me wrong, I still love the OT and PT and all of the EU material (listening to the X-Wing series on Audible right now) as well as some select Disney-SW material (the Thrawn series, primarily); but I don't go out of my way anymore to watch any new SW material made by Disney. I outright watched the last two movies of the trilogy on "yar harr" sites if you catch my drift. It's just like with how I feel about the MCU, I don't go out of my way to watch it, but if some friends want to watch it, I'll still hang out with them.

You might think that the remastered editions of the Mass Effect trilogy may have gotten me back into this idea, and trust me, I tried. But I just couldn't pull through to finish it. For four years I would open this doc, and attempt to write the next section but it just wouldn't come to me. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I'll never get this done due to a pure lack of interest and new interest appearing in other series as seen in my one story repository for oneshots and pilots that come to mind.

I didn't just want to leave this hanging out there forever listed as ongoing when I've pretty much given up on it and I didn't want to leave you without some idea of the vision I had for this had I the motivation between these two series to follow through on it. I know that some of you will be upset regarding the status of this story and I feel you, mainly because I really don't like leaving things unfinished when it regards work, I've started, but I don't want to be another five years down the line and finally admit giving up on it. The only thing I request is that you respect my decision to terminate this project.

With all this being said, hopefully, you stick around to check out some of the other stuff I've worked on. As previously mentioned, I do have a repository for random story ideas in Fables and Future Fantasy (id: 11896737) where I explore ideas from a myriad of fandoms and just ideas in general including a couple of "original" (see: derivative ideas that take some elements from other existing works and run on its own with it) works. If you are so interested, I got everything from Harry Potter and Star Wars, to Fate and Persona, to the Legend of Zelda and Cyberpunk. There's a little bit of everything for everyone. If you are interested, I got a foreword with a table of contents and if you're not, that's alright I get it, you were here for this story in particular. But it is there if you're interested. Regardless, hopefully, you'll stick around and if you do, I'll see you in whatever I put out next.