Heyo people. Sorry for the long wait, I have been writing bits and pieces, codex entries and then I am trying to structure it out and add the meat on top of it.
Also I have reworked all the chapters with quite a bit added/fixed in the earlier chapters and several codex entries added. I urge anyone who hasn't read this before may to at least glance at the codex entries. The biggest change if you notice will be the dates. There were things that I wanted to do that simply did not fit in the old timeline.
I hope you enjoy this and as always I am open to constructive by that I mean I don't need more of the ones that clearly come from people whose goal was simply to insult my work and me. Thankfully majority of you are great and are very supportive of this even when I take this long.
06/02/2175 Chalkhos Fortress Monastery, Thessia, Parnitha system, Athena Nebula
Kal'leena sat on a cold marble bench in the winter garden overlooking the city below, ancient fortress city Chalkhos. Not much of it has been left now apart from the fortress itself. Many of the buildings standing abandoned and slowly crumbling away. The city had dwindled to barely a few hundred inhabitants in the last thousand years. The mountain range where the Chalkhos was built had always been a rough place to live. So much colder and drier than the coastal cities, little land to grow food, no pasture for animals. It once had been important as a city guarding the passage through the mountains from the coastal trade cities to the bountiful agrarian cities of the planes on the other side of the mountain range. Now the city mostly lived because it's remaining inhabitants were too stubborn to move anywhere else. And the ancient monastery dedicated to Kurinth still stood high over the city, it's ten thousand year old stone walls weathered and forbidding.
The sky was overcast, the clouds heavy with snow and the western wind gentle for now. Kal'leena had seen the forecast and it would soon shift to the north, gusting until it would stir the clouds enough for a snowstorm to form.
The winter garden was open to air, located on one of the dozens of towers along it's mile long wall, it was home to carefully cultivated wintergreens, stone-creep lianas and many, many more plants that Kal'leena wouldn't even guess at. She hadn't thought about taking on gardening yet but seeing this garden she imagined that once she was heavy with child she could start her own little garden and learn all the strange and delightful names of such plants. She would also teach her daughter and they would cultivate it together for at least fifty years before her daughter would be ready to leave her home. The fantasy however evaporated as she saw another asari enter the garden. Kal'leena was here to ask for wisdom and help, to deal with the things that Sam had shown her. Because if they didn't then neither Kal'leena nor any other asari would give birth to any more daughters.
Kal'leena stood up and put her hands together in a gesture of greeting towards the matriarch that was approaching her. She was a prioress at this monastery, one of the high priestesses of Kurinth and she was also Kal'leena's mother Anto'naya.
"Hello mother." she said awkwardly, she hadn't spoken to her in over a decade, ever since going to explore the human space.
"So formal, child. Have we quarreled?" asked the prioress, her tone reproachful but there was a hint of a smile on her lips
"Sorry, ma." Kal'leena replied grinning now. Even if nothing would come out of this at least she would have talked with her mother.
"I am glad to see you girl. You look well." Anto'naya said and came closer to grasp her daughters hands
"So do you ma. I swear you do not look a day over five hundred." Kal'leena said smiling
"I see your compliments haven't changed. Something else has." Anto'naya said sensing an unease about her daughter
"Let's sit first." Kal'leena said and both of them sat down.
"I met a human male. Sam. He saved my life and he showed me something. A memory." Kal'leena said not sure how to approach the subject. She had rehearsed the conversation in her mind on the way here but now that she was here she just felt like the words simply wouldn't convey the meaning well enough.
"Ah, so I am to be grandmother finally. It is about time you settled down. Did this human die or was he not able to come with you? It would have been only proper for me to see your lover" Anto'naya asked her smile gentle
"No, I am not pregnant. We didn't do it that way, yet." Kal'leena said not noticing her slip of a tongue
"What way did you do it then?" Anto'naya teased
"MA!" Kal'leena yelled
"Alright, alright girl. Go on." Anto'naya said patting her daughters hand to calm her. Kal'leena had never been able to take the teasing which made it so much fun to do.
"I will just show you. That will be faster." Kal'leena said and gripped her mother to initiate a shallow mind-meld. For a moment both sat stiffly lost in the memory being replayed.
"That was not pleasant." Anto'naya said as the meld ended and she rubbed her temples.
"I know. And I have forgotten most of it. The memory was too much to hold on fully." Kal'leena said
"I can see that. Even incomplete, fragmented as it was. The horror in it was substantial. And this human, Sam. He showed you everything?" Anto'naya said, her mind recalling similar scenes from her own life. The geth uprising had left deep scars that even nearly three centuries have not fully healed.
"No. I couldn't hold the meld. He has seen far more but his mind is too much for me. I wouldn't be able to keep myself from going too deep. The call of Tevura was too strong. I was never trained as a mind-seer. There is also a second memory. Here." Kal'leena said and both of them stiffened again for a moment.
"Ah, I see now. Quite alarming." Anto'naya said after Kal'leena had replayed her memory in the warehouse where Sam had made a deal with the shining orb.
"They were not prothean ma. I had a piece of it analysed later and it was over a million years old. And whatever made it was still alive ma." Kal'leena said her voice shaken. With her mother she didn't have to keep her emotions in check and what Sam had shown her had affected her far more than she had thought at first.
"I saw that, girl. This Sam clearly knows more. Before we speak more about this there is something you should see first. Follow me." Anto'naya said and stood up ushering her daughter into the monastery. Both mother and daughter stayed quiet, lost in their thoughts as they descended down the ancient steps, worn smooth as much by the passage of time as by the feet of thousands of asari that had walked them in over ten thousand years since it was built.
As they descended deeper the chill of the winter garden didn't leave them, the stone of the ancient fortress cold to the touch and even an occasional glow globe barely dispelling the gloom.
After some time Kal'leena started noticing that the stonework was becoming rougher as they descended until it resembled a barely worked natural stone. Before she could ask her mother about this they stopped. In front of her was a door with no handle but with the ancient asari cuneiform etched into the marble door.
"I won't ask you for the traditional vows that asari who enter this place take. You will promise me that you won't tell or show this to anyone but your human. No other asari even justicars or the matriarchs of the Council. No aliens. Only Sam." Anto'naya said looking straight into Kal'leena's eyes
"I promise mother." Kal'leena said with a nod.
Anto'naya turned back to the door and then glowed with the release of biotic power as she put her hand on the engraved symbols. The door started to roll sideways and Anto'naya kept the biotics flowing until the round capstone that was the door rolled away enough for them to enter. Once inside Anto'naya located the ancient electro-chemical generator that was right next to the door and turned the key letting it whine into life. The lights strung along the ceiling flickered one after another as the generator was building up power. They had entered a large crypt. Kal'leena saw that there were dozens of niches along the walls going further into the darkness on each side.
"This is the crypt of the Daughters of Kurinth. They were the first huntresses of our kind. We don't know exactly when they came here and built this but it had been a place of pilgrimage long before the fortress or the city stood here. The murals girl, look at them." Anto'naya said and gestured towards the wall
And there on the wall, carved into the wall was the story. A tall humanoid figure with a triangular head with asari around it but shown smaller. Hunting and fighting. Kal'leena assumed it was Kurinth teaching the asari the art of hunting and warfare. Other scenes from life. Then midway through there was a giant squid like creature and it was being attacked by more humanoid figures with triangular heads. Then next to it another mural was showing all the triangular headed people dead with the squid like thing above them and Kurinth hiding along with asari around it in the tall grass. The last mural showed Kurinth being carried by the asari up the mountain.
"That squid thing. It looks similar to the ones in Sam's memory." Kal'leena said
"That is what I thought. There are more depictions of these triangle headed people in other temples. Until today I thought that they were simply shown that way because they were divine. But now I have my doubts. And the squid was explained as one of the deep sea lanayar that were blamed for sinking ships by our seafaring ancestors back when we were still a people of superstition. But now seeing what you saw in Sam's memory I am no longer willing to accept that." Anto'naya said
"We will need a mind-seer. She will be strong enough to see more in Sam's mind. Sam is also sure that they are coming and soon. Within a human life time at least. I promised to do everything I can to help him in this fight. I have already called in every favour I could but it won't be enough. Can you help ma?" Kal'leena pleaded
"Of course. Everything that is mine is yours. And I know just the person to help you. However let us depart this place. The cold is getting to me. Let us talk over some hot tea." Anto'naya said and turned to exit the crypt. Kal'leena looked one last time at the murals, shuddered with the half-remembered vision from Sam's mind and followed her mother. She knew her mother.
08/02/2174 Attican Traverse
Recruiting proved to be much easier than I had expected. A third of the former miners joined straight away before we even left the pirate base and after they saw the devastation left behind in their mining colony by the batarian pirates most of the others joined too. The second group of captives brought on the frigate had been grabbed from a few outlying homesteads on their colony of Rosetta in the Kepler Verge and the batarians hadn't stuck around to blast the buildings or make life harder for anyone who hasn't been captured. So we safely returned them to their colony. But hearing about what I was planning to do a dozen or so ex-Alliance soldiers and a few experienced spacers joined up. So we actually had a full crew for the freighter and the frigate, even if none of us had any experience with batarian ships.
Not that it was especially hard considering the general level of batarian technology. Their computer systems were far simpler than Alliance tech, there were only a few haptic screens on the whole ship and most of them were later additions by the pirates, salvaged from civilian ships they must have captured. Most of the controls were physical buttons, dials or levers. The VI was basic even without a proper personality matrix, it wasn't even secured for unauthorised access.
The ships captain proved to be a complete waste of time, he was some minor Hegemony noble and had thought that we would ransom him back to the Hegemony. Several of the colonists disabused him of the notion after they stabbed his eyes out before they killed him. Apparently it was some kind of batarian cultural notion that because batarians had four eyes they were superior to everyone else in the galaxy as they only had two eyes, and hanar had none at all. So it was a big deal with other batarians becoming very pliant after they saw what happened to the captain.
The purser turned out to be far more interesting person to have a conversation with. He bargained for his life with all the funds that the pirate crew had and with some information that he had on the other pirate groups in the region.
As I suspected batarian pirates were being supported by the Hegemony, a portion of them were actual Hegemony military forces with Hegemony ships but the majority of them were small time noblemen like the dead former captain. Without the wealth or connections required to move up in the batarian society they would gather funds to establish a small pirate gang and then go on raids, ships and weapons sold at discount by the Hegemony. According to the purser a few years of successful raiding would net enough profit that a minor noble could retire from such life and buy out an estate on the home world. Not that many did. Most of them found this kind of life to their liking, raping and pillaging across the Terminus and the Traverse until a turian patrol caught them and killed them. The purser had filled in a lot of the blanks I had about batarians. They were secretive even before humanity arrived on the galactic stage so knowledge was limited at best. Not that anyone was willing to risk going to batarian controlled space and research their culture or religion.
There weren't any big revelations, the purser himself came from one of the outer colonies and has never been to Khar'shan but has noted that over the past decade that the orders from the nobility that come from there are more aggressive and blood thirsty than before. Priests have been asking for ever greater number of slaves which has driven even more batarian pirates to raid. I suspected that it was the influence of Leviathan of Dis. Batarians did grab it back in 2163 and they must have been experimenting with it. Or it has been experimenting with them. You can never be quite sure when it comes to Reapers.
Our next stop was Illium. I could not risk going to Alliance or Citadel space at least until I got the ship registered under a new name with a new registry, somehow I couldn't see Alliance or Turian patrol just letting through a batarian pirate frigate. There we would also sell the loot from the pirate base.
Secondary Codex Entry/Asari/Old Religions
Before the rise of pantheistic religion of siari the asari were mostly polytheistic in nature. Athame, goddess of prophecy and fate was always seen as the central deity for worship but others were not forgotten. Just like with old human polytheistic religions there were goddesses for every facet of life. From Kurinth, goddess of war and the hunt to Piares, goddess of death to Tevura, goddess of love, sex, travel and law. A modern asari huntress or a commando might still say a prayer to Kurinth before going into combat and many incantations beseeching Piares are used in funerals it is Tevura and the myths surrounding her that remain popular with maidens. It is in many ways her legendary behaviour that they try to imitate, travelling the galaxy in hopes of finding love or sex. A common question asked is how does law enter into this. For a non-asari it seems like an odd choice however law, love and sex have been all intertwined in asari culture. There are many laws that cover relationships in asari society due to their biology and reproductive method. There is a scroll of sutras that is nearly two meters long that covers all the differences between recreational and procreational sex and what is allowed and not allowed in each case. Although modern asari no longer strictly adhere to the rules they still hold an important cultural significance and even a cursory examination of some of the sutras bring a deeper understanding of asari attitude to the rest of the galaxy.
Asari old religions have hundreds of goddesses, demons and semi-divine offspring, however due to how long the asari have been a scientific civilisation much of the old religions are a mystery to modern asari.
Secondary Codex Entry/Batarians/Culture & Society
Batarian society is infamously secretive with very few details known to outsiders. In fact most of what is known in Citadel Space comes from a famous salarian traveler and adventurer Gama Vascode who had allegedly snuck onto Khar'shan and spent a week there undetected in 2097 CE. Batarian society is usually said to be caste based and that is true on some level, however societal stratification is much more elaborate than just caste. The four major castes of batarian society are slaves, freeborn, nobles and priests. Slaves do not have any rights, they are property of nobles or priests, freeborn batarians while are not forbidden from keeping slaves are not likely to afford one, most freeborn that have enough wealth to own slaves buy into a noble patent first. Freeborn batarians while making up nine tenths of the batarian population hold less than a fifth of wealth and have little sway in how their government operates. Noble batarians make up a tenth of batarian population and they take up most of the leadership positions in the governments, companies and military. Priests are the group that varies the most in the batarian society. Depending on the nation state priests can be humble preachers, teachers and philosophers that devote their life to the understanding the teachings of the Pillars of Strength or are as much politicians as they are religious figures.
Batarian society is patriarchal in nature, batarian males are expected to compete with other batarian males over the females, status and patronage usually by display of strength, wealth or prowess. Bloodsports, either an arena style combat or a real time hunt pitting a batarian male against slaves or beasts, remains popular despite the dangers it represents. Displays of sexual prowess are also held in high regard. It is believed that this is one of the reasons why batarian pirates are known for being indiscriminate when it comes to choosing partners/victims. Species, sex and age seem to matter little, only the social position. Marriage and concepts of chastity and fidelity do not exist in batarian society. The traditional arrangement is a sort of a loose group marriage formed around three to five females and one to seven males forming the outer shell of a family unit.
As with almost everything when it comes to batarians facts are hard to come by, no doubt STG and Citadel SPECTRE records hold more information however they are not available for public access.
Secondary Codex Entry/Batarians/Economy
Batarian economy is almost entirely focused on it's own domestic markets. Food, entertainment, consumer goods and everyday electronics are rarely exported outside of batarian territory and even then mostly to the Terminus as it hosts a large enough population of batarians. There are only two commodities that Hegemony imports en-masse. Element zero and slaves. Most of them from the Terminus systems or the Attican Traverse.
For everything else Hegemony prefers to rely on it's own industrial capabilities to produce, going as far as putting exorbitant import taxes on anything that was produced in Citadel space. This however produced a very active grey market where Citadel space produced goods were being smuggled into Hegemony despite heavy penalties for anyone caught. Asari and salarian omni-tools and luxury alcohol are top of the list with human commercial grade electronics now in Top 5.
Hegemony's weakening economy draws little sympathy as they had been a thorn in the sides of every other Citadel species.