Commander Shepard personal log: the Saren Files

by Enlightened Llama

Some practice for me in writing out long form first person. A mild dramatization of My most recent run-through of the trilogy taking the form of after action journals to flesh out the character backstory and emotions. Follows Ira Shepard, a Adept Spacer War hero who is for now "Queen of the Girl Scouts"

Personal Log files:

Lt. Commander Ira Shepard; Biotic Adept.

Classification level: SPECTRE - Council approval only.

Eden Prime

The mission to Eden Prime has been an unmitigated failure. Right out of the Relay jump something felt wrong about the situation, Joker making his usual snipes about Nihlus, our SPECTRE observer. He was right to be suspicious, Captain Anderson revealed that not only were we on a retrieval mission for a high value payload, a Prothian beacon, but I was to be evaluated for a position in the elite council SPECTRES. Nhilus was respectful as Turians go, asking about the colony, all I've heard is from Jenkins's tales of home, which make it sound like a paradise.

We received a distress call on the approach, changing from a retrieval to an active combat drop. Jenkins was killed by unknown hostile drones, and I was injured. The kid was so excited to be on a mission with a real-life SPECTRE and an N7, but the weapons were like nothing I've ever seen.

Moving through the colony we found the marine who had sent the distress call, Ashley Williams, the only survivor of her squad, we saw constructs flagged by the battlecomp as "Geth" in the distance impaling the bodies on vicious spikes. She took Jenkins's role of heavy fire support and assisted us with clearing out humanoid form Geth from the dig site, as well as grim human corpses somehow animated by the Geth spikes. The fact that the Geth were not acting out of a machine cruelty or bloodlust is not a comforting revelation if they can use our own against us.

A researcher and her assistant had managed to avoid detection by hiding in a bunkhouse, the assistant was distressed and talking of "end times" like a mad prophet. The researcher gave more information, telling how the Geth had deployed for the beacon, but it had already been moved to the docks.

Approaching the docks a massive ship as tall as the Eden arcologies broke atmosphere, a booming sound emitting that was nothing like a normal rocket launch, red lightning discharging as it's core generated the mass effect bubble to allow lift.

We managed to save some more survivors from the Geth, who turned out to be a small smuggling ring protecting their stock, from whom we requisitioned arms. We later found the leader of the ring next to the body of Nhilus, mentioning the name of a SPECTRE "Saren" as the perpetrator.

At the beacon site we found Geth rigging explosives but fortunately manages to defuse these, although this gave Saren a chance to escape the plane. Upon reaching the beacon Kaidan Alenko triggered some form of reaction in the beacon, it exploded knocking me unconscious.

My dreams were full of destruction. Synthetics massacring the galaxy.

The Captain knows of this Saren, saying he is an enemy of humanity, which is troubling if true, all we can do now is try and apply to the Council for the authority and firepower to take on Saren…