The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space
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DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO
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To the Three:
Asari history is a cesspit, one that makes me feel deeply filthy and offended. The asari are no mysterious zen maidens, but feral savages, sex-obsessed and splintered by psychology and social structures into quibbling bands that only agree on how to manipulate those around them.
Although their history is quite lengthy, the focus of this document will be only on the most broad aspects of how it has shaped their culture.
Cerberus Thought for the Day: The Martyr's grave is the foundation of Humanity. Survival is it's own glory.
Historical Overview: Ancient evolutionary history
From what paleontological research has uncovered, the asari evolved from a group of semi-amphibian mammals on the world of Thessia. The seas of Thessia, awash in eezo from a series of massive asteroids strikes, lead to not only much higher rates of mutation but strange levels of adaptation to rapidly changing climatic shifts.
The asari ancestor was a bizarre cross between what would be considered mammalian and reptilian characteristics for Terran animals. Endothermic and bearing live young, the proto-asari were most similar to something like ichthyosaurs at some point. When an ice age lowered sea temperatures, killing off certain algae-analogues that enhanced the oxygen content of the ocean, they began the long road to evolving away from living in the sea.
Upon becoming fully amphibian, the proto-asari continued to evolve, moving more and more towards mammalian ideals. Some twenty nine million years ago, these proto-asari evolved legs and began moving inland from the oceans. They slowly moved towards brachiating arboreal hunters, using primitive bursts of biotic energy to stun prey and lurking in the many rivers and small lakes or ponds in the Thessian forest climes.
There is evidence that the asari had evolved to a form similar to their current form as early as three million years ago. Like all Thessian life forms, heat management was critical – submersion in the sea could help with such, but most land animals, due to the high levels of humidity and generally high temperatures, had problems with overheating, leading to the highly efficient head crests and the split-spinal arrangements with heat venting.
There is also evidence that the Protheans may have interfered with asari development, based on some of the texts found in the Mars Archive. These materials were removed early on, due to the Manswell Doctrine, and our researchers at the Mars Facility only have partial copies to work from. The gist of the information seems to suggest the Protheans shaped and altered asari and human evolution towards more congruent paths – certainly, no other races have the same similarity of features, down to both humans and asari having eyelashes, ears, etc. The purpose of this isn't known at this time, all we do know is that the fossil records show rapid changes in asari evolution from about 80,000 to roughly 50,000 years ago, moving from a semi-amphibian, partially erect form with features more similar to fish to a basically human looking being, fully upright, with the only vestiges of aquatic ancestry being faintly scaled skin and slight webbing of the hands and feet.
Prehistorical Age: the rise of the Thirty
Asari historians and practitioners of the old asari religions both maintain that some form of greater being – be that of divine nature or merely some kind of aliens – took part in early asari history. The worship of Athame and other asari goddesses appears to be central in their ancient history.
The earliest civilized asari were organized into hunting clans, ranging across both land and sea. Natural powerful swimmers and innate hunters, the early asari mainly focused around two regions – the coastal areas in the northern continent, and the wet arboreal forests in both the north and south. Asari more inland tended towards more purple coloration, while asari closer to the eezo choked seas remained the color of element zero, a bright, striking blue. In any event, asari in both regions subsisted mostly on hunting-gathering, rather than any form of agriculture, for millennial, and there was very little organization in such groups.
At some point 'Athame', in their history, taught the early asari about fire, agriculture, mathematics, logic, and astronomy. These innovations were only taught to a handful of the hunting clans, which rapidly grew in power and size as their relatively advanced capabilities allowed for not only much faster growth but the outright absorption of smaller clans. Eventually, these became the Thirty Families, each of which claimed a direct relationship with Athame and her guides, and founded the Thirty Cities of Thessia.
Due to the wide divide between the mountain and forest clans, and the seacoast clans, over time wealth and power accrued to the later. The Thirty were all from coastal areas, and without heavy industry or the need for large amounts of timber or ore, the mountain and forest clans had little to offer aside from meat and furs. The bounty of the seas – fish, seaweed, and a sort of whale-analogue that provide oils, bones, and meat of it's own – was matched by the ease of agricultural in the flatland near the coast, while growing in the forest and mountains was much harder. In time, this would result in a great deal of racism and discrimination, but at least in the prehistorical eras, clans tended towards their own.
Pre-industrial age: Changes, and the ardat-yakshi
The asari method of reproduction was similar to other animal life on Thessia, a modified XO/ZW determination system wherein genetic information in protein chains was manipulated by discrete organs connected to the nervous system. Low level mass effect manipulations of these fields could alter the based used to build the DNA chains, which themselves were tied to template protein 'ladders' that created genetic pairs for fertilized eggs. This process was low-yielding and somewhat inefficient, since it didn't ensure that all desired traits would be passed along to offspring.
Due to the high mutation levels from eezo in the oceans, however, this randomization of genetics ensured that lethal or dangerous recessive combinations did not occur even with heavy inbreeding of gene-related groups. As asari became sentient and achieved the first hints of civilization under Athame, however, the asari method of reproduction altered sharply.
Asari, unlike every other life form on Thessia, have conscious control of the mapping of genetics during sexual intercourse and fertilization. This gave the asari a staggering leap forward, moving from Darwinian models of evolution to near Lamarkian models, with parents capable of passing on acquired traits – or the basis of such traits – to their offspring. Based on experiments (see documents 44-3, asari dissection series V), there is clear evidence of high-order genetic modification in asari DNA, leading to these alterations.
It seems clear that 'Athame' changed the asari's sexual patterns, for their own good. However, two unexpected results came from this tampering, around 50,000 years ago. (The fact that the trends were not corrected and the timing of the Prothean extinction further lends credence to the idea that the Protheans were indeed tampering with the asari.)
The first change was that, due to hunter clans being able to select traits they found pleasing, the asari DNA and genetic diversity became much more homogenous. Older records of asari, and some archeological evidence, show that any differencing features (retained amphibian traits, etc) were weeded out around this time. The result seems to be that close-knit clan groupings and regional barriers created a sort of taboo about wide-spread interbreeding. Clans bred with clans living near them and like them and avoided more distant clans.
With no serious model of civilization to build upon, and the might of the Thirty Families drawing in many far and wide, it should not be surprising that the lightly civilized asari never developed the concept of the nation. Political allegiance was built on sexual relationships and the advantage of linking strong clans to weaker ones, the stronger gaining numbers, the weaker gaining technology and advancement. Each of the Thirty began to dominate areas around them, with lesser clans forming a loose confederacy that mostly involved the coordination of seasonal hunts and sharing of resources, not political dominance. (More on this in the psychology section).
Without any central governance, the ability of asari to work together to further their own civilization was blunted. Focused on consensus and cooperation within the clan, they did not link their efforts with other clans. Rather than build large cities and borders, asari preferred smaller, more diffuse settlement patterns. Matriarchs bound together large amounts of maidens and matrons through mental domination in ritualized mass sexual encounters. With the swapping and trading of genetic material something that could be controlled, in many instances the relationships between clans were based solely on sexual exchanges and which matriarch could dominate another.
The result was loosely organized chaos, with no one focusing on the advancement of the race or even their local group, and instead focusing on survival and positioning. While there was some limited warfare, it was usually in regards to hunting grounds and the limited amounts of space available for proper agriculture. Rather than identify by nations, or even by locale, asari identified by clan and bloodline and matriarchy.
Two, three, or even four clans might dwell in a region of several hundred square miles, with dozens of small agricultural villages mostly held by matrons raising their families, and hunting grounds dominated by maidens stalking prey. Trade was for meat and hides in exchanges for grains and, as civilization progressed, manufactured goods – weapons, tools, and the like. All of these exchanges were enhanced by a network of sexual relationships and mental bondings, often between up to thousands of asari in various lines of relationships. A hunter who bonded with a matron and delivered her meat would have her innermost thoughts shared with the other hunters who vied for the matrons favors, as well as other maidens, who might then bond with yet other matrons.
Sociologists have long sneered at the asari fixation on sex as some kind of deviancy, but asari are not humans and have very fine control over birthrates and needs. The lack of loyalty to concepts in favor of loyalty to a group, often poorly defined, meant that no leader could unify asari under anything larger than the city state. This point cannot be stressed enough, as the staggeringly long life spans of asari mean that this sort of social structuring occurred less than sixty asari generations ago. Sixty generations ago, humans had moved through several iterations of social structures (clans, tribes, city states, nations-states, empires, and ethnic national groups) and government types (autocracies, democracies, monarchies, republics, etc).
The asari, for being such an 'old' race with much longer recorded history than humans, are still 'young' in terms of social development. This has had ramifications in how their history has unfolded (see the government section.)
Another side effect of the tampering was, some ten to fifteen thousand years ago, the emergence of deviant asari with a flawed melding process and increased ability at mental domination. The results of this were the rise of very rare and powerful asari who could not meld to reproduce, but instead somehow absorbed the memories and eezo charge of the asari they bonded with. This action had several possible strengths, the weakest ravaging the neural system, the strongest burning it out. Additionally, the mental strength of these strange asari was much higher than other asari. They were capable of dominating other asari, through as yet unknown methods of subtle mass effect manipulation of the bio-neural fields of other lifeforms. In effect, they could put others at ease and force them to submit to the mistress's will.
The asari have been very careful in hiding the existence of these monsters, which they style ardat-yakshi, but their existence precipitated a crisis in asari history. For the first time, a single strong individual could amass enough power to face down multiple matriarchs. Several ardat-yakshi 'queens' arose, bidding their collective clans to fight one another for dominance.
By this time, asari records become more coherent, and no further influences of Athame can be seen. Some forty thousand years ago, the asari moved from a hunter culture to a communal one, under the pressure of the queens.
Imperial Industrial Age: The War of Queens
Most of the ardat-yakshi seemed to arise in the smaller, stubborn hunting clans of the forest near the mountains, where distance from other clans was high and none of the Thirty had arisen. Over the course of several hundred years, while the Thirty played political games and maneuvered with and around each other to slowly begin to control asari society, the ardat-yakshi battled for dominance. The weaker version of their kind was killed off, with only the strongest surviving, and two figures stand out in this historical context.
Queen Shatha was the strongest ardat-yakshi known, recorded multiple times in ancient records as being able to kill dozens of other asari with ease using biotics alone. All records of her indicate she was rapacious, cruel, delighting in sadism and dominance. She arose from uncertain circumstances in the fringes of the Skypillar mountains, among the mountain and forest clans. The disparate clans she brought together were on the verge of starvation, due to climate changes driving off the prey they depended upon and blights afflicting their crops. Never prosperous, the clans inability to even feed their young and their hatred and jealousy of the prosperous seacoast clans gave the ardat-yakshi a way to dominate them. Shatha lead these clans on a conquest of neighboring areas, driving a long cone of bloodshed all the way from the Skypillar Mountains to the Canthas Sea, bringing over two hundred and fifty clans under her domination.
Near the Sensha Sea, where none of the Thirty had arisen and the fishing was somewhat poor, the so-called Silent Queen arose to prominence. Legends and rumors surround this figure, who the stories claimed was so powerful she did not even need to speak, merely imparting her will directly on her followers. The Silent Queen was icy, cold, calculating, and meticulous. With an interest in mechanical devices and the sciences, she pushed her clan towards both military conquest as well as improving technology. It didn't take long for her to simply dominate the matriarchs of her clan, and from there control other clans. The Sensha Sea, an inland sea linked by a narrow natural canal to the ocean, was rich in seaweed but not fish, and the surrounding rocky flatlands were not suited for much agricultural, but were laden with ore and eezo deposits.
By this time, asari were operating at a level of knowledge roughly on part with Ancient Rome, but with clear understandings of biology and medicine and good working knowledge of astronomy. The asari hunted with various weapons, mostly light metallic spears hurled with biotics, slender metal rods imparted with biotic energy and weight, and a ranged device called the cerric that was akin to a cross between a slingshot and a crossbow. Clan warfare only broke out over hunting areas and occasionally breeding rights, and until the rise of the Queens was very rare
Shatha developed most of the concepts of the asari military that they still use today. The hunting pack, the scouting and quick strike, the use of biotics to wear down and demoralize enemies, and only then striking with overwhelming force – these were her strategies. She would send forth spies in the guise of battered refugees (often times mentally dominating actual refugees to do so, editing their memories) and spy out promising areas, clans with strong matriarchs, and natural resources such as iron, copper, and gold. The strike that followed would be overwhelming, focusing on crushing and killing matriarchs and gaining access to the areas where children were hidden.
In addition to her brutality, Shatha was a talented herbalist and healer. Ironic for someone of such a vicious disposition, but she is credited in multiple accounts for several advances in medicine and in agriculture. Her ability to bring together so many clans allowed, for the first time, the mass levels of agricultural development needed for dense populations. Since none of the Thirty were nearby, her achievements were all the more remarkable, and before long she had added nearly every one of the thousand clans that occupied the arboreal forest areas inland under her banner. Upon reaching the Canthas Sea, she built a magnificent capital, and assaulted the remaining clans in the area, who fled south to the protection of the Thirty.
The Silent Queen, on the other hand, focused on technology, and initiated the beginning of the industrial era. Her cohorts built metalled roadways, invested in (and mastered) both water and steam power, and in less than three hundred years, began producing primitive firearms and bombs. Their ability to use biotics to mitigate the weight of armor, based on the Silent Queen's research in to biotic abilities, allowed them to use heavy interlocking plates of metal to protect themselves. The Silent Queen conquered over a hundred clans, and used a complex method of favor and arbitration to organize hunting areas, breeding rights, water use, logging and more.
It is said that the Grand Temple of Athame was built by the Silent Queen, who was, according to legend, a priestess of the Goddess. What is known is that in less than two centuries, the asari of the coast had advanced from swords and bow-analogues
Between the two ardat-yakshi, nearly a third of the race fell under their domination. Shatha declared herself a goddess, promising a freedom from the restrictive, poor lives lead by the mountain and forest clans, using increasingly deranged and perverted sexual practices to form a cult of personality around her and her 'daughters', weaker ardat-yakshi who appealed to her for protection. The Silent Queen declared herself the Hand of Athame, calling the Thirty pretenders, and inciting the poorer clans of the far southern coasts towards war.
The Thirty were trapped between the two, and while their walled cities and larger wealth would serve them in the short term, they saw all too clearly that the ardat-yakshi would win in the long run, given time. The Thirty thus formed the Concordat of Armali, at the city of that name, binding the Thirty together as rulers of the Asari and promising to aid one another in times of war and famine.
The most powerful of the Thirty, Houses T'Armal and House T'Shora, lead the assault first against Shatha, the first large scale war in asari history. Sometime during the war, the Silent Queen lead her forces against the Thirty as well.
Much of the historical record of the so-called War of the Queens is lost, or mingled with legend and myth. What is known is that it was bloody and violent in the extreme, and the majority of the ardat-yakshi were slain in the conflict that raged for some six hundred years. The mountain and forest clans, with no real cities and dependent on numbers and biotic strength, were routed in short order, with the Matriarchs of the Thirty engaging Shatha in a battle recorded at length in the Justicar Memory-Oath chants. If this tale is to be believed, Shatha's biotic might was enough to destroy over two thousand asari before she was brought down by the combined might of over a hundred Matriarchs.
The war with the Silent Queen dragged on for centuries, as the Thirty slowly adapted and increased their own technology to match the level of their adversary. Many military historians puzzle over the Silent Queen's actions and activities, many of which make little sense, such as building faculties devoted to manufacturing or libraries of information in forward areas and allowing them to be captured by the Thirty. Every time the Silent Queen seemed to be defeated, she would bring forth new innovations.
There are some who believe the Silent Queen was acting to advance the asari race, believing that she could crush the Thirty who would do all the work of upgrading and improving the technology of the asari under their dominion. In a series of attacks, the Silent Queen crushed three armies of the Thirty and crushed the majority of the matriarchs of the Thirty. She drove over five hundred miles into the territory of the Thirty, slaughtering tens of thousands of asari who would not kneel, and managed to pin the largest armies of the Thirty into a trap that cost them almost a quarter of their forces.
In year 1 of the Asari Calendar, the remaining forces of the Thirty met on the plains of Miathra, the southernmost of the cities of the Thirty, against the full force of the Silent Queen's army. Historical records and artifacts indicate the Thirty's forces had developed primitive matchlock firearms, cannons, and begun the process of moving into molecular manipulation in biotics, moving beyond mere kinetic shifts. Their army numbered nearly half a million asari, the largest fighting force of huntresses and battle-priestesses assembled for many millennia, driven by desperation. If Miathra fell, the Silent Queen would have access to the largest dockyard and shipyard in the world, and an assault on Armali would soon follow.
The forces of the Silent Queen were less than half that, but they had repeating rifles, rotary barrel large caliber weapons, steam-augmented armored wagons that used what appears to be some sort of Greek Fire in a flamethrower-type arrangement, and over a hundred aerial balloons equipped with bags of naphtha.
The fighting was severe, the Silent Queen's armies breaking the lines of the Thirty with their more advanced weapons and inflicting devastating casualties. While the Thirty had the edge in numbers, their more primitive weapons were not a good match against the arms of the Silent Queen, and the ardat-yakshi's biotics were devastating, capable of crushing entire groups of asari under sheer kinetic force. Her barriers were so strong that she laughed at cannonballs and musket balls that rebounded from her slender form, and at a distance of two miles was able to crush the gates of Miathra with the wave of a hand.
It was the bravery of the Paladins of Athame, battle-priestess serving the Thirty, that broke through the Silent Queen's bodyguard just as the city was about to fall. The sixty or so warriors died nearly to the last asari, but they managed to injure the Silent Queen, using biotics the ardat-yakshi had never seen before and crippling her.
With her mental domination weakened, some of those she had controlled began to rebel, and fighting broke out in her own forces. Gambling everything, the forces of House T'Soni and House Vasir charged into the enemy, slaying many and, according to legend, shattering the guard of the Silent Queen and slaying her.
The Age of Unity: the Peace of the Thirty
With smashing of the Silent Queen and the death of most of the ardat-yakshi, peace descended over Thessia. The Thirty, shaken by the experience, began a process of outreach and moving their core habitations more widely across the planet. The Thirty were very quick and focused on applying the advanced technology of the Silent Queen as well as the improved agricultural methods of Shatha, incorporating these into their various exchanges with lesser clans. Many clans, on the fringes of asari exploration of their world, were able to advance from semi-primitivism towards civilized towns and modern medicine in a handful of years. This widespread gifting of technology and industry cemented the Thirty's control over asari society, and even today most asari view the Thirty with awe as saviors of the race.
Over the next thousand years, the Thirty spread themselves widely apart, rather than concentrating on the seacoast near Armali. The premier house of the Thirty, House T'Armal, abandoned it's ancestral home to the houses of T'Soni and Vasir, heroes of the War of Queens, moving deep inland towards the mountains. Other houses spread across the sea, or into the forests.
While this allowed the Thirty greater control over the areas they moved into, it also served to sever the tight bonds of the Thirty. Over the next five millennia, the cities became the centers of small city states. With no real need to go to war and the memories of the Queens firmly in their mind, conflict was avoided whenever possible.
The shift to attempting to understand each other rather than fight was improved by the rapid technological advancement that had occurred. But the natural conservative nature of the Thirty served to stifle innovation for many years, as they focused on spreading influence and control.
The asari had reached a level of technology roughly on par with early 20th century technology some six thousand years ago, and from there the pace of development slowed down drastically. Asari began the practice of siari as worship of Athame faded, focusing more on philosophical understanding, relationships and mastering their biotic abilities.
Periodic outbreaks of ardat-yakshi, and increasing amounts of crime and moral deviance, lead to the formation of the Justicar Order almost three thousand years ago, bound by oaths of subservience to the Thirty. Charged with the defense of the asari people, the Justicars acted as a vicious supra-natural police force that slew murderers, rapists, mind-dominators, ardat-yakshi, and anyone else that was a threat to the race. Refusing to become a political tool of the Thirty, the Justicars withdrew from society, giving up family ties and even children to focus on their duty.
Meanwhile, the city states of the Thirty had broadened, blooming into free-wheeling democracies dominated by not utterly controlled by the Thirty. While the Thirty owned well over half the race's wealth, they allowed the growth and prosperity of others, tying them to the fortunes of the Thirty through sex, bonding, trade agreements, and rumor. Society became stratified – at the top, the Thirty and their vassal clans, then the trading and warrior clans, then the merchant and agricultural clans, and at the bottom the so-called clanless, those common asari who's clans had melted away in the mixing of peoples after the War of Queens.
Such segregation was mostly limited to who one would have offspring with, but since offspring were the ultimate tie between clans, effectively the power of a clanless was limited to her lifetime, since it was unlikely she could parley her achievement beyond mere wealth to her children, and wealth was not the primary factor in affluence in asari culture. Indeed, while the Thirty were wealthy by dint of ancestral control of lands, mines and herds, much of the rest of the wealth was in the hands of the clanless, with the clans between beholden to the Thirty for social advancement but dependent on the good-will of the clanless for financial backing. This dance of position and control and submission fitted the asari personality perfectly and continues into the present day, not much changed.
Some four thousand years ago, increasing use of communication devices (electrical transmission devices, similar to telegraph but with a biotic component allowing stresses and emotions to be transmitted) began to link together various city states. The increasing unity of the asari people on a global level did not lead to further nation building – the change of the war now pushing consensus and accommodation as primary values meant there was little impetus to form larger principalities. Additionally, larger groupings would have required closer cooperation between the Thirty, who had by this time become warily antagonistic to one another.
Age of Flight : The Stars beckon
Thirty five hundred years ago, a massive asteroid broke away from the asteroid belts of Parnitha and smashed into the southern sea of Thessia, sending up tidal waves that smashed the city of Antai to ruins and slew most of the House Chansai. The devastation was horrific – six million asari lost their lives in tsunamis, millions more died from starvation in the famine that followed due to the darkening of the skies due to dust.
The Thirty began a heavy program of research and invention, creating over the next century a new clan structure out of whole cloth, that of the inventor clan. The inventors were given vast sums and broad goals by the Thirty – find methods to survive the asteroid strike, ensure it didn't happen again, and secure the safety of the race.
It took them some three hundred years to perfect flying machines, and another century to develop primitive spaceflight. As astronomers turned increasingly good telescopes to the skies, they realized to their horror that a rogue planet was traversing the system. It would circle back through the asteroid belt in but a few more centuries, and all calculations showed the results would be a wave of asteroid strikes likely to completely devastate the world.
Driven by desperation, the asari achieved rocket-assisted spaceflight around 600 AD on Earth. The Thirty financed a series of ships, exploring their solar system. They focused first on the barren, nearly airless world of Piares, mining it heavily for raw materials to build additional ships, then on Lucan, the super-massive asteroid in the belt that offered large amounts of bauxite and other industrial metals.
The force-march of the asari through such staggering technological changes ushered in significant cultural upheaval. Over time, avoiding inter-clan inbreeding, even with the ability to manipulate genes, became harder due to cultural limits and clan restrictions. Birthrates began to fall, and the number of asari with higher dispositions on the ardat-yakshi scale rose. With the lack of strong centralized leadership, matriarchs took even more power in society, but rarely retained family attachments at such an age, instead gathering groups of maidens to their side to spread their philosophies.
Families became strained, tense arrangements, with social standing, economic status and breeding quality all adding into clan politics and the constant swirl of social rumors and bond-enhanced sensitivity stirred in. Divorces became common and ugly, and increasingly, young maidens turned away from the pastoral life as hunters or priestesses, instead offering pleasure to lonely matrons, serving matriarchs, or falling to crime. The long-view asari viewpoint on these immature acts was amused tolerance, but some in asari society did not like the changes and called for a return to older, simpler values.
This was cracked down on by the Thirty as well as the inventor clans, now gaining influence due to the value of their skills. The space push increased, driving unemployment to almost zero percent, and the ecosystem of Thessia began to suffer as mining and industry took a toll on the planet. Increasing numbers of clans began to move from the hinterlands towards the cities, increasing the control the Thirty had over the population.
Unlike humanity, the asari appear to have no Prothean ruins of the sort we found on Mars, so we are unsure how they came to discover the mass relay in their system and how to utilize it. But they were able to do so, and began to explore space in hesitant jumps. With no centralized government, and no single family of the Thirty capable of funding a fleet of warships, the Thirty came together to form a loose confederacy of interlocking financial obligations and military cooperation known collectively as the Asari Republic.
The Republic had no ability to control the asari city-states, nor anything on Thessia itself, but had top priority in resource allocation, and was the central arbiter of funds moved towards space exploration. With this centralized repository, the pace of asari development and technology moved forward rapidly. It didn't take long for more powerful orbital satellites to pinpoint the path and trajectory of the rogue planet.
Fifteen years saw the construction of several large (roughly cruiser sized) ships, equipped with the first primitive mass accelerators the asari could produce. This fleet spent several months methodically bombarding the rogue planet before it shattered into varying large chunks, all of which hurled out of the path of Thessia – most being captured by the large gas giants in the system. Platforms with mass effect weapons and missile banks were also erected around Thessia, as were massive barrier shields to protect the cities from further asteroid impacts.
The Age of Silence : The trek to the Citadel
Asari exploration in the early years of their spaceflight era was cautious and hesitant. Asari colonized slowly, as Thessia was overpopulated but still the center of society. Clans who moved off planet were trivialized in terms of their relationships to the home world, although over time they came to dominate the planets to which they settled. New powerful clan groups and alliances sprung up on the handful of asari colonies, and suddenly the clanless realized true freedom from the wheeling social controls and tight constraints of Thessian society were available.
The colony wave moved more quickly after that, and Prothean ruins discovered by asari explorers further sped exploration along. The asari stumbled across the gory ruins of seven other sentient species, all slain by nuclear war or ecological disasters, and increased the weapons and size of their fleet-ships. Their cautious approach was given further reinforcement when asari researchers, plotting the links between the mass relays they had opened, discovered they were leading to a point near the outer rim of the galaxy core.
On a single fateful day, some five hundred years before the birth of Christ and the Rachni War, the Asari ship AEV Graceful Gaze discovered the Widow Nebula and the Citadel. The asari approached with trepidation, curiosity, and above all else caution, but the station was deserted save for the Keepers, the living maintenance drones that repaired and upgraded the Citadel.
The asari quickly realized that the Widow Relay connected no less than a dozen primary relays, each of which connected to dozens and dozens of secondary relays, and was a nexus of the entire relay system. They rapidly moved to dominate this space station, bringing in greenery and water to the central ring to simulate the environment on Thessia, and building on the five arms a variety of apartments, factories, warehouses and military facilities to secure their discovery.
They were in the midst of this effort when the salarian ships arrived at the Citadel, barely forty years after their own arrival. The meeting of the two races was a staggering, shaking event for both salarians and asari.
The lifespans of salarians was brief in a way that left the asari literally disbelieving, but their activity and intellect was equally swift. With a fifth of the history of the asari, salarian technology was significantly more advanced, refined, and flexible in many areas. But the asari had an edge in mass effect technology, and that, combined with their naturally mysterious aura, powerful biotics, and immense lifespans, gave the salarian dalatrasses pause.
Rather than take the chance fighting a clearly powerful foe, the salarians and asari decided to work together. And in many ways that partnership is the core of what Cerberus fears, for humanity and on a lesser scale for all races. Asari history had shaped these alien women into creatures completely incapable of understanding concepts such as liberty, privacy, or even dignity – a race who turned from violence to embrace a smothering level of almost incestuous self-reflection, an economy half based on social, sexual, and even cultural postures and cues and not on actual profit or merit, and a religion that quickly took up the concept that asari were destined to guide, lead, and dominate all other life in the galaxy.
The Modern Age and the Change of Focus
History after their capture of the Citadel is well known to all. They combined forces with the salarians and grew strong, strong enough that they could dictate terms to other species who arrived. The combination of asari political maneuvering and salarian intelligence gathering was unbeatable.
The quarians and batarians, each more wrapped up in their own cultural biases and loci, were easily manipulated to subservience. Turians were manipulated from the beginning, duped into overextending in the Krogan wars and then being reliant on asari and salarian financial aid to stabilize their culture. The hanar-drell compact was tolerated by the simple dint of being able to manipulate the hanar through the discovery and relinquishing of Prothean ruins after everything of use had been stripped. The volus, vorcha, and elcor were not even worthy of being considered for a place on the Council, and the only reason the turians were is due to the worrying size of their military.
Asari culture underwent another startling shift during this time period. A few asari had experimented with alien lovers – mostly quarians and salarians, but the occasional krogan. They believed, based on the results of their offspring, that mating with aliens produced superior results, and that they could manipulate the DNA of their offspring and match it to certain patterns in that of their mates to pass on traits that were desirable.
The Thirty investigated these claims and found that, at best, all that was passed on was various proto-racial memories, An asari with a krogan sire would be more prone to violence and strong emotion, but certainly had no real mental or physical differences.
However, such offspring were never found to be ardat-yakshi. With the problem of the ardat-yakshi growing with each year, the Thirty began to encourage breeding with aliens. Subtly, over several centuries, breeding with other asari for the purpose of offspring came closer and closer to outright taboo. At first, many asari embraced this craze. After years of byzantine mating and breeding rituals, the ability to simply pick a mate based on personality and desire was refreshing for many asari.
The asari ability to meld, to pick up surface emotions during a meld and memories during a bond, quickly became asari trump cards. Maidens were increasingly encouraged to mingle freely with aliens, and over time fell into further patterns of immature, impulsive behavior. Exotic dancing, prostitution, mercenary work and more all became the past-times of the young. The Thirty themselves took mates from other species with connections or vital information, and it was often joked among salarian intelligence services that an asari could achieve more with a smile and a night in bed than an entire spy unit.
As time progressed, and the number of ardat-yakshi dropped precipitously, the Thirty moved to ensure they did not arise again – as the only real threat to the power of the Thirty at this stage, they were seen as the primary danger. Worse, if aliens discovered the ardat-yakshi, the Thirty feared backlashes or reprisals, and a loss of trust. Thus, using all of their influence, control and manipulation, the Thirty steered asari society to the concept that asari having children with other asari was bad.
(An aside: of all the aliens, the asari are the most repulsive in their attitudes towards humanity, and their innate inability to trust and be truthful with other races is the core of this. The salarians are lying, shifty, and immoral, but they at least are not hiding the nature of who and what they are or what they want. The turians are hidebound, racist, and probably racially schizophrenic, but they do not betray or pervert the very nature of their enemies. Only the asari do. And only the asari see nothing wrong with doing so.)
This did not always work, however, and many asari, repulsed or at least not attracted to most aliens, refused to do such. While the quarians were extant, many asari found them attractive in an exotic fashion, and the females similar enough in some ways, but the Morning War sealed quarians into their suits and away from the gazes of asari maidens, who forgot them.
Increasingly, asari raised far from Thessia and the influence of the Thirty turned to their own kind for romance and comfort, and questioned the harsh social taboos against having children with their own species. Meanwhile, the efforts of the Thirty to reduce maidens from a potential army for troublemakers to very nearly a class of whores and mercenaries had succeeded in a generation of matrons who were very weary of such endeavors, returning home to raise families. The short lived races around them lived long enough to cause their asari mates great grief when they finally died, and as a result many asari did not even think about starting families or made any planning for such.
Humanity's arrival on the scene was another shock for the asari, who were the primary reason the First Contact War was stopped. With the exception of hair instead of crests and skin color, female humans might have well been asari, and male humans were different enough in just a minor way to be utterly exotic yet still close enough that asari natural species attraction affected them.
Asari went mad over the conflicting, rich cultures that humanity brought with them, and the energy and drive of humans was seen as something incredible to the asari. In the span of a few asari lifetimes, humans had driven themselves from fighting with sticks and rocks to gracing the corridors of the Citadel. To the Thirty, they seemed dangerous, but also an opportunity.
Currently, asari seem to favor humanity, although in a way that Cerberus finds disturbing at best. Asari matriarchs start biotic cults among our populations, and asari maidens seduce away men and women their service. The asari ability to enthrall their lovers, the addictive nature of bonding and melding, and the fact that asari are extremely attractive to humans, all combine to make them a lure few humans bother to resist.
And yet, any view of asari culture shows their fundamental nature is to adapt to changing circumstances and then bend them to their own purpose. The early asari, rather than use their nature to aid one another, bartered sex and advantage in a way that seems truly repulsive to us. Their inability to control their own kind, and the desire for matriarchs to rule, lead to scattered, weak clans. Even the Thirty, with all their vaunted wisdom, repeatedly made mistakes that ended up trivializing many asari who were not of importance to the Thirty, making them prime fodder for ardat-yakshi in the War of Queens.
Rather than rein in these impulses, they nearly let them destroy their entire culture, then rebuilt it using bribery and political manipulations. The Thirty care nothing for the clans, or even the asari race, only their own dominance. The clan structure isolates asari from one another, ensuring that only events that threaten the race as a whole can unify them, and even then, they are likely to hide behind an ally.