STG Field Manual

Subfile AYT-002: Alien Interaction with other primary races (human, quarian)

Prepared by Master Agent Korals (retired), Aytheology Specialist, Quarian Specialist, Human Specialist, SPECTRE (retired)

Compiled by Master Field Agent Kossi, Executive Agent SOLUTHUS, Senior Agent Soril, Senior Agent Dagama, and Master Agent Unai (retired)

This is a Virshan-Orange file. Distribution is for senior (non-FCA / non-FAC) agents and specialists only.

A few words you'd best open your horns to:

I am Master Agent Korals Yresso. If you don't know who I am, go tell your Master Agent so we can figure out how someone with a full lobotomy is walking around.

We're rewriting this entire set of subfiles because you newts don't get it.

I was a Senior Agent thirty years ago when the humans first came onto the scene, and I've been retired for longer than most of you arrogant newts have been alive. I'm the oldest Collapse-be-damned salarian in history at age fifty-nine, aside from that relic Edat Kurass who's mostly cybernetics by now. I have nine Swords of Shego, two Black Remembrances, four Citadel Medals of Valor, and the human's Star of Sol.

I wrote half the reports and files you morons were trained on, and the only reason half of you are alive is that me, Muvai Solus, Tela Vasir, and Saren Arterius stopped Remembrance from blowing all of Sur'Kesh into rubble. So, when I speak, I expect you all to listen. If you don't, you'll be dead, just like a lot of other brave, smart, intelligent, crafty, and dead as last week's fish agents I've known.

Vessi is dismissive (and a racist cloaca) because unlike most of you, he's buried damn near his entire family and all of his clutch-brothers due to alien action. Most of those deaths could have been avoided. Most of them weren't avoided because of turian or asari operational stupidity coupled with rash action and reckless arrogance on the part of several very dead STG Masters and Master Agents.

Vessi is not wrong in his racism. It is not a lie to say we're the smartest, or that we have pushed the limits of technology further. It is not a lie to say that asari are ancient and evil creatures that spit lies to cover their own sins while twisting the very fabric of other races. It is not a lie to say the turians are clearly little more than the puppets of the Palavanus and were shaped to be blind to the pull-strings.

Vessi is wrong, however, in assuming that we're any damned better than they are. Smarter and cleverer and more suited to espionage didn't stop the hanar from stomping a squirt-hole in our cloacas in the Refusals. It didn't stop the krogan from coming within a few weeks of dropping giant rocks on Sur'Kesh.

For being so fucking smart, that intelligence sure hasn't done anything to stop the asari from dominating the galaxy or countering their optronics graashit, has it?

All our vaunted intellect has done has convinced the other races that we're feeble, obsessed with secrets, and not to be trusted. Turians and humans killed each other by the boatload and now work together to develop new technologies and share ships. Volus and vorcha have nothing in common and yet are united. The damned quarians were elevated from ruins-grubbers and sneak-thieves to a Council seat.

Why? Because they risked it all. They didn't sit back like grona-slugs and send out cloned up agents to die in piles or waste money and lives listening to a fuck-all giant plant who's probably laughing itself silly at us. They impressed the other races by going against their own instincts and patterns to charge like an enraged krogan and held the line against overwhelming geth firepower like a turian elite would.

We, on the other hand, have lost influence. Quarians and humans and turians are the new power block, and the asari are already making inroads with them and the volus.

Our arrogant and uppity superiority does not render respect. It creates hate, fear, and jealousy, and above all else, the realization that we'd be quite happy murdering the rest of the galaxy to make ourselves safe.

That is not the Special Task we were given by Shiron. Our very first duty was to strike down our own to ensure the salarian people were not threatened by alien retribution. And the way we act – especially in the past five years – has done nothing but paint giant targeting frames on us.

So, when I tell you stupid newts to stop thinking we're somehow running anything, you should listen. I've seen the sweep of history as much as any other salarian can claim, more than Shego, more than Kalras the Wise. I've seen the fall of four STG Masters, I've seen the emergence of an entirely new power structure, and I've seen how we have failed to adapt.

That can be ameliorated, I assure you. And I believe humans and quarians are the lever to do so.

Humans and quarians are odd creatures who are very fussy about their self-image. While most of it is graashit thick enough to plant a mushroom farm on, catering to it is the key to making nice with them. Unlike Vessi, I'll not tell you aliens are useless. We didn't stop the rachni. We only shut down the krogan with Okeer's help and turian pushing. We didn't stop the Thirteen, or the hanar, or the Blitz of the Forsaken.

There wasn't a single damned salarian on the crew of Commander Shepard when she stopped Saren, Benezia, and whatever the Collapse they were really up to with that Reaper thing.

So, pull your self-congratulatory heads out of your cloacas and at least attempt to learn something before I keel over and die.

Alien Relations and Interpretations : New Council Members

History is important, and you're all junior to me, so listen up.

Until recently, the balance of power was clearly in the hands of the asari and salarian people. The turians never were master diplomats or skilled in espionage, and did not need to be as their place on the Council was that of the muscle. Muscle that was useful as long as it didn't try anything, and, for the most part, the turians were fine with that. The volus kept things from bubbling over and we were able to play all the idiots against one another.

I'm beginning to suspect that such ease of manipulation was exactly what both the Thirty and the Palavanus wanted. It maintained a balance of power, for many reasons, that was advantageous to everyone.

Precarious as it was, this balance required the STG to waste our energy and time on trying to focus on thwarting the asari menace, while it allowed the asari to slowly and carefully blunt and twist the turians, and allowed the turians to have an outlet to tamp down and stop any further Unification Wars. You can see who came out on top in that mess.

Hint: wasn't us.

The problem with the balance is that we had no real tools to change it to be more in our favor. Alteration has produced a lot of variants that range from the useless (sex agents, really?) to the dubious (A88c, the living computers, have a ninety-two percent failure rate after a year) to the Collapse-damned idiotic (Tazzik). Economics and cultural tricks have never been what we're good at, and in the years before the Relay 314 Incident, most of our time was locked up countering stupid asari stunts.

Minor races like the elcor and volus simply did not project onto the galactic stage in the ways we cared about, so their influence went entirely unchecked. Meanwhile, the krogan and quarians were spent and exhausted groups lost in their own troubles, and we spent no resources on keeping any kind of eye on them (hence, Okeer going bad without us being aware, if he wasn't bad the entire time).

Thus, it was a continual circle that no one had the interest or heft to disrupt.

The arrival of humanity on the galactic scene disrupted everything.

The turians, in their understandable but lock-jointed aggression, managed to piss-off the only race that prefers death to submission and is clearly some kind of genetic offshoot of the asari. (I say 'understandable' because their internecine violence serves a number of purposes. Just because we don't see value in something or grasp it, doesn't make it 'stupid' or 'mindless' any more than thought-seek is mindless because it has no lasting effects.)

The leaders of humans (who are much more dangerous than the average human) were brilliant in their transmission of the 'Message,' a melodramatic info burst of shocking video of turian atrocity and scenes of human children dying and ruined worlds.

It was calculated to tug at heartstrings, and it did so with great effect. The turians themselves recoiled from images of shattered, burning nurseries and blind, burn-scarred tiny human children as if they were scenes of a smashed turian hatchery. The volus saw an entirely new and untapped market going up in flames. Elcor saw worlds of great beauty burning. The quarians and krogan saw another helpless race being kicked into oblivion.

Even we responded. The idea of a primitive species fighting for its life against outlandish and insane odds using cunning, sabotage, and deceit was something every salarian could viscerally grasp. I remember thinking these new aliens were fascinating in that they not only spat on turian honor concepts but missed no opportunities in using it as a weapon against the turian.

Ah, the asari, though…

I was there, I remember. The asari were horrified. While most races have somewhat similar features in some regards, the amount of identical things between the two races – eyes, facial features, breasts, even teeth and joints – is eerie. Asari saw beings like themselves being obliterated savagely and their entire culture was protesting and angry in mere hours.

The asari fleet tore across relays with the wrath of a goddess named Uressa, and she wasn't taking any shit from anyone. The Citadel tried to block her and she stood in the Council Chambers and dragged all three across the gap with her biotics before telling them if they interfered they would need really good spinal repair. She force-boarded a turian ship holding a relay in lockdown and biotically slapped the entire crew into submission, and if rumors are correct, damn near killed one of the Thirty who tried to stop her.

The asari acted to save the humans for more reasons than Uressa's outrage, of course. Humans solved all kinds of problems for the asari – outcasts, lack of alien mates, asari who never swung xeno, and most of all, a client race like the turians had. Humans being so close to them gave them an opportunity to practice their arts on a truly unsuspecting race – and the fact the humans are so sex-obsessed themselves only made that easier.

Unfortunately, they didn't understand humanity and thus, doing so only intensified the error of the turians. The only thing humans resent worse than slavery is condescending pats on the head like you'd give a fishdog, and to be the fishdogs of the asari wasn't in the deck. They have proven over time to be a mess to deal with no matter what you think of them.

And us? We did nothing. The STG was focused too much on other events and ignored the recommendations of Explorations, who had visited and observed human culture for over six hundred years via FTL scouts (as with five other 'undiscovered' races we still keep tabs on). We assumed that humanity would be a mentally scarred wreck and a footnote, sexual playthings for the asari and maybe a good aftermarket for surplus out-of-date tech for us to dump.

Arrogance.

Humans proved terrifyingly adept at improvisation of modern tech, and even if their technology base is primitive and clunky, are nearly as adept in other fields as the rest of the Citadel races. And aside from improvising, they have their own hidden dagger on Mars. The hyperscoop, however the damned thing works, bankrupted a dozen corporations in mere months, and who knows what else they have in their 'Mars Archives.'

Worse, humans and asari have, for the most part, united in a common cause, swaying the balance of power towards the asari even further. They are not blind to what the STG does and out of all the races, are the only ones who devote significant resources (Cerberus, the Silver Legion, etc.) to nothing but countering not only us but the League of Zero.

Of course, the STG has attempted to react to this countering where it is possible, but the High Lords of Sol are not the incompetent fools the turian leadership presents. They are ruthless to the extreme and are the only other race to grasp the idea that socio-cultural slavery or extinction or alien domination are not viable options.

Our attempts to derail human growth have failed mostly due to the fact that humans are also stubborn like turians. While the AIS is laughably inept, they are also fast learners, and their various black-ops groups (a curiously salarian concept if there ever was one) such as Cerberus, Hades, and HANDSHAKE proved to be nearly a match for us. The fact that they don't rely on any one piece of their forces to handle us is further indication they're not worthy of scorn or looking down on.

The thirty years that passed should have proven that they're worthy of respect – the few hints we have of them doing their own version of the Alteration Framework, the brilliant econosabotage of Harper and the cunning funding of the remains of the Remembrance to blunt STG actions against Alliance expansion, and most of all, the brilliant way they played us all into getting a Spectre – these were good solid plays any STG Master would have been proud of.

The fallout (not to mention the inception) of the Benezia Incident took everyone by surprise, although the STG report on the Incident makes it clear our distraction with other events did us no favors. The turian insistence on adding humans and quarians to the Council shattered the delicate balance and is the first sign of something approaching turian political cunning, in that it has reshaped the balance entirely.

Now, instead of being the outlier, there are a variety of outcomes the turians can play. We have never liked quarians and yet are often forced to side with them to counter human-asari political pushes, a stance that results in the turians being the swing vote that decides our course.

This is, of course, intolerable. Clever of the turians, and yet another sign of our own arrogance blinding us to possibility.

Vessi covered the general alien aspects (stupidity, dumbness, and all around moronic idiocy) with enough spittle in the first file. I'm not so dismissive of asari or turians and the fact that he is makes me question if anyone has noticed we are not the baddest cake in the bakery and haven't been for some time.

However, I'll focus on what I know about the newest twist to our travails. It should be consulted after reading the first file if only because Vessi is pretty funny at times.

Alien Interaction Guidelines : Human and Quarian

Vessi had a great point about aliens not being capable of summation in a series of cliché racist stereotypes. This is even more true for the humans, and to some degree for quarians as well. While the asari, volus, and turians all had to survive, humans and quarians are like us in that they faced obliteration and survived.

Never, ever underestimate human or quarian grit. They have endured a lot more pain in very recent times than our brush with the Collapse, the turian Burning, or the asari War of Queens. We have grown soft and they have never had that luxury.

Humans:

Even among the myriad alien weirdness that we are forced to associate with, humans are something anomalous in many ways. There are so many points of… wrongness… with them that I have to wonder if they, like the asari, were tampered with.

Let me clarify.

All races have outcasts of one kind or another who are fundamentally different from the baseline. Lythari, ardats, turian outcasts, batarian recidivists, drell on Rakhana, volus Depthwalkers, elcor Pure, even the hanar have the Ninety-Four and the Vabo… freaks.

Human outcasts exist due to socioeconomic failure, political differences, religious differences… but they are just like other humans. Their reactions, cultures, and beliefs are no different. There is no part of the race that is discrete from any other part. In that they are, despite their chaotic and wildly hard to follow politics and social stratification, far more 'united' than the damned asari are.

All races have cultures and subcultures. Humans, however, have obliterated many such things (and long before they met any aliens) and yet embrace cultural diversity almost as religion. (The less said about their actual religions the better.) Humans are not like asari and turians in that you can make sweeping statements to cover wide swaths of the race and their cultures are less ways of living than flavors of a stew.

All races have something they are exceedingly good at, and several fields they ignore. Humans on the other hand, want to be good at everything and refuse to accept the primacy of anyone else. More terrifying in my opinion is that they are not the smartest, toughest, fastest, or whatever – but they can do a little bit of everything, in a way we simply cannot match.

A human's primary characteristic is individuality. They prize being 'themselves' and look at conformity as surrender. Humans have logical philosophies and standards but often ignore them utterly, being willing to ignore truth and scientific fact for 'gut instincts' and 'feelings.' Emotional control is seen as unnatural and placing the race before personal desires is rare.

Human heroes are usually not paragons of what it means to be human, but instead, are those who ignored the trends to do something different. By the Collapse, tune into human trideo 'historicals' and watch 'Mr. Rogers' if you want to see something so utterly alien we can't even classify it – and that humans idealize to this day even though the figure in question died well over a century ago.

Humans have a truly violent and bloody history of internal fighting, but never to the extent of turians, drell, or even our own people. Humans felt themselves a warrior race, but shied away from true mass exterminations until very recently, and that was most likely due to resource collapse issues. They are harder on themselves than anyone else and despite their staggering naïveté in many things, they're not without a certain roughly-hewn grace in their refusal to give themselves a pass.

There is and can be no standard definition for a given human. Even large groups can act in surprising (and illogical) fashions for no good reason. This makes profiling and predictions very difficult to make with any accuracy.

When dealing with humans, the primary dividing lines are locational and economic. Humans are split between three rough groups – those who stay in Sol, colonists outside of Sol, and exiles or others who have abandoned the Alliance entirely.

Most humans live in the Sol System, their home system. While some of these humans travel, it is only very rarely any of them leave Alliance Space, and as such, all of their information on aliens comes from two sources – the mess of propaganda that passes as human news, and the interactions they have with aliens who have come to live and mingle with humans.

Humans are, as I said, very different – in their government, some aliens can not only have citizenship, but hold power and even run for offices. Salarians who live in Human Space are almost always going to be a mouth-foaming Lythari, full of goggle-eyed admiration and about as witless as a brain-damaged vorcha.

Thus, most Sol humans will not really be prepared for interacting with normal salarians and will expect you to, sadly, act like one of their friendly neighborhood deviants. As such, teams operating in Alliance Space are allowed to use Lythari branding and genotyping, and hyper-hypnosis programming to embrace such personas until recovery teams move in.

Colonist reactions vary widely. Humans from Bekenstein and Watson have the highest exposure to aliens and are more reasonable in dealing with them than, say, the bloody-handed paranoid survivalists of Mindoir. Colonists are also going to be a lot more leery of salarians since most of their interactions will come from direct interaction with normal salarians on a wide basis. The best methods of interaction are to find a cover in fields humans struggle to fill on colony worlds – engineering, hard math, things of that nature.

Those who have turned their back on the Alliance can be put into simpler groups. Well over a hundred million are now in asari territory and are basically fucktoys and can be ignored except as access points to asari. The hardcore survivalists that make up the so-called 'wildcat' colonies are not going to be friendly at all and should be avoided. The wildcats are nothing, they offer no advantageous positions for us and half of them are religious nutjobs of the highest order of graashit.

Humans outside of those two bins of outcast – explorations types, freethinkers, Omegans, criminals, pirates, what have you – should be examined on a case-by-case basis. Yes, it's boring. I'm old as fuck and I don't complain so neither should you. Time-consuming work on these kinds of humans may give us leads into their black-ops orgs, or ferret out new pirate ports or other crime rings.

Money is also big in human culture. Humans are dominated by a layer of super-rich nobles and another layer of very rich types that have all access to human government. The remainder fall into their what would be middle-class, the working poor, and outright victims. Rich humans (noble or not) will almost never directly associate with salarians and the human Commissariat is carefully watching for such humans to try such a thing.

The poor are the best access points, but proffer little actual use as the rich humans see poorer humans as trash. Ninety-seven percent of all wealth in the Alliance is held by less than four hundred families and controlled by less than a hundred humans. This makes even batarian castes look almost generous, as even the poorest low-caste at least do not starve to death by the thousands every day.

Colonist wealth levels are more evened out, but the colonies themselves are hotbeds of disdain, with richer colonies sneering down their chest at 'poors.' The entire thing is rather distastefully echoing batarian ideals (which is why it's hilarious to make humans admit how much like the batarians they are).

Talking with humans shouldn't be hard. Meaningless conversation masking actual topics is not just common, but almost required in human society, with those who cannot translate or dissemble such empty garbage being seen as disabled. (Vessi's ranting about stupidity is not entirely off target.) Bizarre and seemingly random sub-factors (expression, breath odor, hair style, even things like stance) are non-verbal communication and also vary based on culture.

Humans admire grit and bravery but also admire cleverness. While the High Lords would not be out of place at a dalatrass gathering, a disturbingly large number of humans retain beliefs in honesty, generosity, reciprocity, and optimism even in the current day and age where the only reason we haven't all brutally murdered each other is we're waiting for the right (or for turians, most melodramatic) moment.

So, don't go in cynical. Sarcasm can be good when needed, but overdoing it makes you sound like a bitter cloaca. Snuggle something soft and practice being upbeat for an hour before interacting with humans. Have a swamp-damned drink.

Humans value power in deeds and words, but not cruelty. They chastise themselves for ruining their world, but spent more on both restoring it and keeping ecologically sound practices on all other colonies than anyone else aside from elcor. They seem to think they're a warlike race but have fewer conflicts in their entire history than even our own people did during the age of the Daltriana alone.

Dealing with these confoundingly obtuse juxtapositions requires you to be mentally flexible. Humans are good targets for humor (self-depreciation is best) as well as gushy emotional statements.

A final warning: humans are irrational, murderously obtuse, and dangerous in two situations – when they are backed into a corner with no way out and when young offspring are threatened. The turians found this out the hard way during the storming of Arcturus Station, where at least fifteen percent of infantry boarding losses were due to enraged human civilian parents. When pushed far enough, all humans have a willingness to 'go down fighting' or 'rage against the dying of the light' and are very nearly as stubborn as turians.

Review tapes of "Turian 3rd Fleet vs. Solguard" for some examples.

Standard considerations for humans:

I'll make this simple, there are three rules of horn to keep in mind with humans that will keep you from being an embarrassment to the STG.

First, expect nothing. Some humans will be hostile, others will be friendly, still others will have no real insight in how to deal with a salarian. Do not go in with expectations like you would with asari or turians, as they'll be wrong. Instead, set yourself in a position to ask questions and try to figure out what kind of human you're dealing with.

Second, despite what they think, humans are not all that hard to manipulate once you grasp their motivations. Most humans are focused on the very short-term, from their businesses reporting things once every ninety or so days, to their politicians, to everyday human activities. Long-term planning is something they have to sit down to do – engage them on the here and now and they will ignore the long-term you have already prepared for.

Finally, and most importantly, humans are self-esteem slugs of the highest order. All of them – every last human I've met – is vulnerable to flattery, to being made to feel important, to being told they're smart or insightful or whatever. While this is less true for their professional intelligence officers, none of them are truly immune to it – and here our arrogant declaration of being smart can work in your favor, as if a salarian admires your intelligence you must be pretty smart. Right?

Once again, Vessi's racism isn't wrong, just too vituperative and overlooking of our own flaws. Humans are dumber than a sack full of mud about a lot of things, but unlike almost everyone else, they're aware they're dumb as mud and work to find ways to fix it. People keep underestimating them and keep getting caught off-guard – don't make the same mistake.

Quarians:

Until recently, most of you simple-minded dolts probably thought the quarians were annoyances. I made reports twenty years ago stating that simple, subtle, and quiet support of quarians could give us unparalleled access to areas we had no presence in as well as allowing us to take advantage of quarian engineering and developmental skills, but was ignored.

That turned out just spectacular, didn't it? Pack of Collapse-damned fools, the lot of your superiors who led us to this cack-up should have been made into krogan omelets at birth.

Quarians are often called out as being similar to turians, which is true in the same sense that river dragons are similar to a plasma reactor assembly – both will kill you extremely dead if you go poking at them. Quarians have a lot of things in common with turians, true – but the differences matter more. Turians focus on the whole, the tribe, but also their place within – they have ambitions to rise up the meritocracy and to be important and like a Praetor. They want to show bravery and (to steal a phrase from the humans) 'badassitude.' Quarians don't care about any of that. Glory is childish and rank is seen more as a trial, and duty as a reward. Their Admirals are some of the most haggard-sounding worn-out bastards I've ever seen.

For the most part, quarians aren't good targets for the STG. They are (by nature of the entire galaxy spurning them for three centuries) given very much to insular and protective isolation. Why wouldn't they be, when they've been spat on and looked down on even by batarians? Even quarian exiles aren't going to do anything likely to injure other quarians or the Fleet. In hundreds of years of history the only quarian who's acted against his people is Golo of Omega and I'm pretty sure that's because he's nearly as crazy as P.

Quarians stick together and, due to the nature of how they organize themselves, aren't very internally competitive. From what we've gathered, they're split up into ranks of importance – the military types on top, scouts, scientists, engineers, and the like in the middle, and everyone else at the bottom. The flip side of this is that the higher up you are in quarian society, the more likely you are to die in battle or something, and that they're remarkably egalitarian when it comes to living standards. They don't have ambitions outside of maybe starting a family or, at the most, having a ship or gun or what have you named after their family.

Dividing quarians along these lines for infiltration is useless as they tend to see their ranks as both justified and useful. A quarian in the Civilian Fleet who is a janitor is not going to be consumed with jealousy over the lifestyle of a captain, since the differences in their levels of wealth, lifestyle, and living space is minimal – the leader of the Admirals has three rooms to himself and an extra day of time in the clean room a year. The janitor is going to be happy to be a janitor, to have a clear and simple task in the Fleet.

It's absolutely maddening.

Most quarians that would be vulnerable to our sort of manipulating end up exiled in short order and thus, are useless for gaining insight (or control) of the Fleet. More than that, the exiles are depressed and suicidal in many cases, making them poor investments. Worse, most of them got exiled because they're unwise, shallow morons – but also because they didn't muster up to the quarian standard.

I'm sure none of you younglings has any idea what it must be like to have your entire species say you aren't worthy of even existing, but it leaves crippling mental scars.

So why even bother focusing on them if they're impenetrable? Quarians aren't manipulatable in the individual sense because, to a large degree, individuality isn't that important to them. Unlike turians, they aren't obsessed with honor or valor, instead they're obsessed with safety and survival.

And one other small item – revenge on the geth and retaking their homeworld. And that's where you'll find your methods of using the quarians.

I won't go into detail about quarian history – it's a depressing read of just what short-sighted bigotry and a lack of vision as to what a bunch of machine killers could do if you just left them to their own devices for centuries instead of killing them off. We should have helped the quarians and then used that to sink our horns into whatever they knew instead of writing them off, and the Benezia Incident and following Geth War have shown what a stupid idea it was to ignore the problem.

But we're in the here and now and our past failures give us opportunities today. All quarians hate the geth, and getting quarian groups, businesses, or Fleet assets to work with us if the goal is destroying geth is surprisingly easy.

Quarians – both in groups and the individual – long to be accepted. They want to feel like they're part of something and the humans reaching out to them even before the Battle of the Citadel was key in their trade agreements. We never got along with the little ghrangas – their idiot focus on 'getting things done' led to them never double-checking their work and the geth, and their irritating ability to come up with new and off-the-hut technologies from nowhere was every bit as suspicious as the asari doing it.

Use that history to your advantage when you deal with quarians, as having a salarian come to them for help is a huge ego trip and one that makes them less careful about what they say or agree to do.

Quarians can be very stubborn (like turians) and brave, but look at the universe in a much darker light than the turians. They pride themselves on not having the internal conflicts that most other races have and are even more proud that they do not participate in the shadow wars that the asari and our own people have done for millennia.

Young quarians tend to act like a young breeder in her first heat surrounded by young males, a bit shy and overwhelmed. Sometimes it's even true. But even the damned kids on Pilgrimage have two solid years of military training and are harder, stronger, and mentally more durable than most adult salarians. The young ones are not as bitter and cynical as older quarians, however, and are more approachable.

Aiding quarians in Pilgrimage can pay off, as quarians are desperate for allies and have a well-known and deep sense of gratitude. One reason that irritating thug Edat Kurass is untouchable is that he gave away a damned planet to the quarians years ago – turns out they couldn't colonize it due to the lifeforms on it and whatnot, but they sold the coords to the turians and in one fell swoop convinced the turians they could and did follow laws and at the same time, got enough cash to retrofit their Heavy Fleet.

They aren't dumb. They'll use whatever's presented to get an advantageous position, but it's for the good of the race, not themselves. If you can make a push using that, you can find them very cooperative, even if they know full well you intend something – as long as it won't hurt the Fleet.

The quarians on their new colony world are not worth going after – access to the planet is completely forbidden to all non-quarians for any reason. The only ones who can even get to the surface are a pair of heavily cybernetic turian Spectres who have agreed to full body sterilization and encounter suits at all times.

A final aspect: quarians are very useful in getting into human mindsets. Humans have this concept, 'underdogs,' which translates very poorly – a dog being a long-term domesticated pet/hunting animal that they consider their best friends. The 'underdog' concept is one of humans wanting those who are seen as down and out and downtrodden to beat the odds and succeed. It is – despite vast gaps in their various subcultural views – a nearly universal human response, and one the demure, self-effacing and nervous quarians can easily evoke in most humans.

(As fitting a cousin race of the fuck-hungry asari, human sexual deviance likes the body shape of quarians as it emphasizes broad shoulders on the males and wider hips on females, which are some kind of secondary erotic qualifier. Don't ask. Just… don't ask, and don't look it up on Fornax, trust me.)

Standard considerations for quarians:

First, don't ever attempt any kind of cold contact. Quarians should always be approached with a plan and research in place, and they are absolute masters at body reading and gestures. They also have, I am sure, accumulated large amounts of information on the races of the galaxy and train their children in this intently. Have an idea of how you are going to win them over before you ever move forward.

Second, assume quarians operating away from the Fleet who aren't youngsters are exiles. Some of them will claim otherwise, but it is extremely rare, especially single quarians. (Some small groups do perform engineering work, so it's not entirely impossible, but in that case, there will also be at least one Migrant Fleet Marine with them. No Marine, one hundred percent exiles.) As I stated, exiles are basically useless.

Finally – and most crucially – remember that quarians have no official or even unofficial intelligence or espionage services. They don't care or bother with infiltrating or spying and are very good at making sure that they don't need to be concerned about stopping it. Their comms security is immaculate, their infowar is always better, and hacking them is the height of arrogant hubris likely to end badly. Their only real vulnerability is finding more help for their race, so if your plan doesn't rotate around that you're going to fail.