The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space
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DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO
ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED
To the Three:
Thankfully, my assignment in asari space is at an end, as we have completed all the tasks assigned. The compilation of important figures required a great deal of interactions – I'm not sure that our cover story fooled some of the matriarchs we came in contact with, but the brilliant linguistic ability of Agent Lawson came in great use in helping us decipher the asari news stories and tabloids. (I remain vastly amused at the idea that the Terran Enquirer and the Sun are both widely read in asari space. It almost humanizes the asari at times, until you take a closer look at the tramps.)
Also, the assistance of Matriarch Trellani was invaluable and far-reaching. Her disdain for her own kind nearly matches my own, and interviewing her lead to some concepts and points I think will follow this section. Trellani pointed out that the greater the power an asari wields the less she is inclined to use it, and that most become paralyzed by the ever-shifting flows of intrigue and influence in asari culture.
Our investigations touched on a couple of very troubling figures, including one of the most terrifying aliens I've ever met or hope to meet, and I've been mugged by krogan.
Cerberus Thought for the Day: It is not in my mind to ask questions that cannot be answered. That is the soul standing upon the crossroad of vacillation. You search for wisdom, but achieve only a stasis of will.
Notable Asari :
The asari are strangely picky about their mode of address. A maiden is usually referred to only by her first name, clan or family references are rare. Clanless family names are usually the first name of the bloodline they come from, while Clans have no last name, only referring to their Clan. Matriarchs are almost always referred to as Matriarch first name, and to skip the Matriarch is a severe faux pas unless you are friends.
The Thirty are even more haughty. The rough translation of the prefix of asari members of the Thirty is "Her Grace", and this is a formal title used only in announcements. A reference to their title – Queen or Princess – is only required in formal introductions. Even so, it's best to be very polite around the Thirty. Most are insufferable.
Her Grace, High Matriarch and Queen Thana T'Armal : without a doubt the single most powerful being in the galaxy, Thana T'Armal rules House T'Armal and most of Thessia. Her personal fortune, not even counting the assets of her House, is in the low tens of billions, and her personal fleet is larger than a SA squadron. Thana is a regal, ancient figure, over 1300 years old now, but showing no signs of age or slowing down. Boasting nine children and over twenty grandchildren, she is the closest thing to a ruler the asari species has. Unlike most asari, she is not arrogant, dismissive, or absorbed in social maneuvering. These are beneath her. A former lunar high priestess of Athame as well as an asari commando in her youth, Thana now spends most of her time administering her business holdings and training her successors.
The queen plays politics only on the highest level, with the Citadel Council or directly with the rulers of other races. She is an avid patron of the arts, sponsoring thousands of artists, musicians, poets, and other creatives from her own pocket, as well as amassing a private museum of cultural artifacts conservatively valued at six billion credits. She travels under extremely heavy guard and her bodyguard consists of two Royal Paladins, a Justicar who has sworn a life long oath of obedience, and two cybernetically augmented krogan she raised from birth.
It is extremely difficult to determine the motivations and goals of such a creature. She seems to honestly believe asari should dominate, but not out of racial pride but mere understanding that the asari military, economy, and population are supreme in Council Space. Our best political projections suggest she's waiting for humanity to make a move before deciding whether to back us or backstab us.
Her Grace, High Matriarch Uressa T'Shora : There is a belief that Uressa is the most beautiful asari who has ever lived, and it is hard to debate this. Even Agent Galis, who hates asari more than anyone I know, was struck stuttering and wide-eyed upon seeing her in person. Taller than every other asari I have met, she is blindingly beautiful, voluptuous, and graceful. Her voice is sweet and gentle, calming, almost hypnotic, and she seems capable of putting even the most aggressive at ease. She is a brilliant musician, has written a dozen books of poetry, and painted Misery In Joy, a painting that has reduced krogan to tears. Educated, polite, and interested in alien cultures, she dresses demurely and eschews the pomp and regalia most of the Thirty embraces.
By all indications, nearly all asari revere her, calling her Athame returned, a title she embarassedly denies with great force. Uressa T'Shora focuses her efforts on expanding medical care and outreach to the Clanless, building schools, touring disaster sites, and funding charity efforts, while the rest of her House is obsessed with making money and ever more debauched parties. Uressa was the deciding vote on the Council of Matriarchs to dispatch the Asari Fleet to stop the First Contact War, and was the only house Leader to ever tour Earth. She does not seem very asari like to me, to be honest.
Unlike the Queen of the T'Armal, Uressa's only goals are aiding others, particularly the helpless. She was horrified to see the homeless of Earth's arcologies, and has dropped a good billion in credits on building shelters and even arcology expansions in New York and Bangalore, donating the money and offering asari Clan assistance where plausible. She is a quietly firm believer in siari, but feels it only should apply to the asari people, and that each race must find it's own path to unity, not merely hobble themselves by mimicking the asari.
Despite myself, I can't help but admire her. Trellani implies Uressa is uncommon among asari, a truly noble soul, and she may be right. She is the only figure among the Thirty that seems to be free of the corrupted nature of asari, as she quietly bonded with her childhood sweetheart and does not play the usual sexualized games of her species. I am not sure what to make of her, but despite my admiration, something feels off. She's too perfect, too … everything. I would recommend closer investigation.
Her Grace, Princess Shaltha T'Vaan : House T'Vaan is still reeling from the death of Matriarch Ynnal some six months ago, and they have not confirmed Princess Shaltha as High Matriarch, but it is only a matter of time. Shaltha is a quintessential asari, obsessed with social status, arrogant, haughty, and wasting her time and energy more on maneuvering House T'Vaan in murky political games than anything else. A narrow-faced asari of rather plain looks, she was a commando in her youth and a friend of Jona Sederis from childhood. A vicious shrew of an asari, the deaths of two of her cousins in strange accidents has many wondering if she is behind their deaths to cement her rule.
Shaltha is a cool political player and is rapidly maneuvering through companies on Illum to boost her wealth and portfolio. She is just as rampantly sexualized as most asari, with a bewildering menagerie of lovers that changes weekly and includes the most fucked up matches I've seen, including a pair of hanar twins, (don't ask) , krogan (please don't ask), and even elcor (really, don't ask). She's a thrill seeker, often participating in aircar races and biotic fighting exhibitions. Hardly a dignified figure, she has no real goals that can be perceived. Her only redeeming feature is her curious rejection of siari and the worship of Athame – amusingly, she's taken up an obscure turian ancestral honor religion, one that she thinks can link her with the 'spirit of Athame'.
Clan Matriarch Thessial, Clan Steelshape : Thessial is a salarian stuck inside an asari body, it seems. Rambling, constantly inventing and researching, disorganized and disheveled, Thessial doubles as the asari ambassador to Sur'Kesh and is a great favorite among the salarians. Her mind is brilliant, with a staggering thirty four hundred patents to her name, among them vectored mass effect gunships and the humble and ubiquitous datapad. Her most famous invention however, the omni-tool, cements her as a genius among geniuses. Thessial technically leads Clan Steelshape, but in practice, her subordinates do most of the organizing. Thessial's only weakness is her hunger for reckless, drug-crazed orgies with maidens or (more recently) human women, these binges seemingly acting to reset her mind and drive her onto new inventions. Over nine hundred years old now, she is one of the very rare asari to continue to have children throughout her life – she has 'fathered' over sixty children and given birth to twenty eight more, and is probably the only asari to have children by a salarian dalatrass. Her rail-thin, slim figure is hardly beautiful but her intensity and personality are overwhelming.
Thessial is also curious in that she practices miari, a mix of siari, aspects of Zen Buddism, salarian circle worship and nature worship. Thessial has, over the past decade, become increasingly focused on humanity, and most of her recent investments have been in human corporations. She has a minority stake in the Sirta Foundation, and has been working with variants of medigel that will incorporate asari regenerative functions to attempt to make the gel capable of healing almost any injury.
Thessial is the devoted friend of more than one salarian dalatrass, keeps an estate on Sur'Kesh itself, and is the unofficial pinup girl of the STG, apparently. More than one observer has noted the utter and complete failure of many industrial espionage attempts against Clan Steelshape can be traced back to affectionate STG interference. A common joke is that if she ever decided to run for High Dalatrass of the Salarian Union she'd probably win by a landslide.
Matriarch Lidanya T'Armal : Commanding officer of the Destiny Ascension, Lidanya began life as a mere clanless orphan, making a hand to mouth existence selling herself to turians visiting Thessia. She managed to convince one such turian to train her how to fight and learned some turian biotics, before enlisting in the salarian mercenary band Forethought to pick up info-war tactics. By the time she was 200, she was a veteran mercenary, and returned home to join the asari military. Legendary for clearing her status to master in one day, and then immediately applying to the Republican Guard, she made her name in the so-called "Second Krogan Rebellions", when krogan mercenaries attempted to take the asari colony of Urana. She defeated a krogan warlord in biotic hand-to-hand combat, before killing the brute with his own hammer. She left the military at around 400, appealing to join Clan Steelshape and learn to be a master-crafter, spending a century learning to build and craft the famed asari warp swords.
Lidanya had a plan, carefully using her great beauty, skills, and wide range of allies to rise upwards in society. By the time she was 600, she'd had children with three lesser House members in Family T'Armala, who sponsored her into the Family. She then gifted then Princess Thana T'Armal with a magnificent warp sword, six feet long but with mass effect lighteners built into the hilt, and a special diamond-matrix alloy that allowed the destructive force of a singularity to be channeled through the blade. Called Tsunami, the blade was probably worth twenty million credits, and was given to the Princess just before her ascension to High Matriarch.
Lidanya was adopted into House T'Armal and continued to rise, spending a century as an asari commando and even several decades back in the asari military as House Advisor for their dreadnaught captains. When the commander of the Destiny Ascension died of infections related to off-duty injuries, the struggle for the prestigious position was fierce, but Lidanya had the backing not only of House T'Armal, but Clan Steelshape, several military units, and a host of other influential matriarchs.
Lidanya is considered 'proof' of the asari democracy and that it's social system is truly fluid. Now nearly eleven hundred years old, Lidanya has worked hard to master naval combat tactics and is considered a masterful admiral and administrator. Working closely with the Citadel Council, there are rumors she has her eye on moving into the position of asari ambassador one day. Of course, there are also rumors that if Princess Nathesia doesn't meet the critical eye of Queen Thana, it might be that Lidanya would be the next High Matriarch.
Citadel Councilor Tevos T'Sael: a slimy woman, Tevos is the asari Citadel Council member, and the pivotal swing vote between the salarians and the turians. Calm and usually gentle in speech and manner, she strives to present an image of grace and wisdom, but she is rather average looking and is not particularly eloquent. Tevos's greatest strength is the backing of her network of friends and lovers, boasting contacts among literally every house of the Thirty and many Clan contacts as well as alien lovers. She seemingly sees nothing wrong with conducting diplomacy on her back, and rarely offers initiatives to the Council, instead seeking to twist whatever proposals arise to the asari advantage.
We have no real insights as to her goals (aside from banging anything that moves), but rumor states she is not really the one in charge, and that Irrissa Te'Shora calls the shots. This would not be that surprising, as T'Sael is a small Guardian House whose fortunes have waned in the past few centuries, and they have not really gained any advantage from having Tevos as Councilor. It's quite possible that Tevos is nothing more than the grasping hedonist she seems, and in analysis of previous Councilors, it's more than likely that this is deliberate and that EVERY Councilor is actually the cats paw of the associated ambassador.
Rumors link her to Aria T'Loak, but , then again, they also link her to Elvis, Sharblu and Aish Ashland, so go figure.
Asari Ambassador Irrissa Te'Shora: The more public face of the asari government, Irrissa is a frequent verbal sparring partner with Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani of Westerlund News, and is a common guest on her news segments. She is what passes for a human specialist among the asari, and is surprisingly blunt in her views. She sees humans as needing guidance and protection, and sees the asari as the natural and correct providers of such. For all her blinding arrogance, however, I will grudgingly admit that she seems to actually respect human culture, and has worked to introduce aspects of it to asari worlds to stir up critical thinking and reflection. Her viewpoint on Cerberus is equally shocking, as she is the only asari to publicly admit, in her own words, "The only difference humans and aliens is the humans are honest enough to put their black-ops groups in the public eye." Even so, she is hardly an ally and remains convinced of asari superiority.
Irrissa is a deft political operator, eschewing the normal asari methods of using sex to get her way in favor of old fashioned glad-handling and an amusing skill at charming children of all races. She is an amateur astronomer and often pushes projects to the Skywatch Clans, who in turn are useful in providing her with investment insights into new technologies.
Rumor has it she is romantically involved with Khalisah al-Jilani , which would be .. curious , given al-Jiliani's on-air attitude towards her.
Matriarch Serisa T'Suon : This ancient hag is the master of the Lodges of Hunt on Thessia, a group of informal training and conditioning groups that produce the feared asari commandos. One of the oldest asari known to history, currently over fifteen hundred years old, Serisa is still active and vital, often training commandos herself. Ancient enough to remember the times BEFORE the Krogan wars, she is bitterly conservative and hates modern asari culture. We're not even sure if this creature is aware humans exist yet, as she has not left the vast hunting preserves on Thessia in over six centuries. By all accounts, the Matriarch is more focused on simply ensuring the continuance of the commando as the premier aspect of asari military culture than any political agenda, and doesn't even bother to engage in sexual contact any longer. Pictures of her show an average looking asari woman, with thin angry features and facial markings so thick they cover her entire face, one for each enemy she's killed. Serisa is the wielder, in ritual occurrences that happen once a century, of the Sword and Shield of Athame, ancient artifacts supposedly granting mystical powers to their wielders. We managed to get our hands on some photos of these artifacts in the last Showing, and we don't recognize the metal used for the objects, but one thing is very clear – that sword wasn't designed for an asari hand.
Justicar Mistress Layana : the head of the Justicar Order, this icy woman is chilling to behold. Scarred by plasma fires so intense even asari regeneration didn't heal it, her left eye is gone, replaced with an iron patch screwed directly into her skull. Layana has killed well over ten thousand criminals and monsters in her life, including one of her own children, at least a dozen rogue ardat-yakshi, a yahg, and not one but two wild thresher maws. On foot.
Over twelve hundred, she is emotionless and unyielding, having lost two bondmates to batarian slavers before joining the order. On her word, no batarian is allowed with her sight or she will kill them, and she has warned that if the Batarian Hegemony raids another asari world she will kill their entire leadership. The fact that there haven't been any known raids on asari worlds in the past sixty years, when she uttered that threat, should remind everyone that even the arrogant batarians fear this woman. The asari have built her into a myth, but there is ancient combat footage of her fighting pirates on Kantah who ambushed her three hundred years ago, and it is terrifying to watch – she crushed a gunship out of the sky with her biotics while fending off a dozen attackers with insulting ease, armed only with a single pistol and dressed in a bathrobe. There is a pirate bounty on her head offered by the Blood Pack of a hundred million credits that, to the best of our knowledge, not a single fool has even TRIED to collect.
If this hatchet-faced asari has a 'plan' or a 'goal', it probably involves smashing something or someone to paste. Layana has no investments and does not participate in asari culture to any real degree. Her only real interaction with others is an on again, off again relationship of some kind with the ancient krogan warlord, Ganar Okeer. It is not romantic or sexual, the two appear to have a highly ritualized unarmed combat once a century. The significance and meaning of this is currently unknown, but given Okeer's extremely long and sinister history, it's probably nothing good.
"Midnight's Kiss" : The name refers to a certain asari sex act, which I have no intention of detailing. The title refers to a brilliant asari thief and assassin, believed to be an ardat-yakshi who has killed six Justicars and killed a pair of Spectres some five hundred years ago. Our intelligence on the ardat-yakshi is sketchy – only a tiny handful are known to exist, and most of them bury themselves under layers of deception and fake names. Midnight's Kiss, however, is unique, as careful peeling back of rumors and assistance from Matriarch Trellani indicates the ardat-yakshi in question was once actually some kind of royal executioner! The rumors are very hushed, but if the intelligence is true, Midnight's Kiss used to be the ultimate sanction, and was once the leader of the mysterious Asari Night-wind – ardat-yakshi, conditioned with mind controls and cortex bombs. How she slipped free is a matter of myth, but now she is on her own, and, according to Trellani, working with the Shadow Broker.
Midnight's Kiss is implicated in a string of thefts and deaths, most of which seem to be targeting the Thirty who have opposed shifts in Asari culture, as well as the Clans and the siari and Athame movements. Trellani believes that Midnight's Kiss may have uncovered the same shattering truths she did, and is now acting out to disrupt the asari unity and reveal the truth. We made several attempts to make contact with her, but all were rebuffed – non-violently. The last one got a brief response – "let humans tend to their own flock, I am busy with mine". We will defer further action to your response to this strange missive.
Matriarch Trellani, Clan Moondance : We are all of course familiar with Matriarch Trellani, as she has been one of the few aliens who have proven their worth to humanity. Trellani's past is known to us, she was once a ranking priestess in the Moondance Clan, the religious practitioners of siari. As she rose through their ranks, she discovered disturbing intelligence indicating the asari were nothing more than Prothean test subjects. She reached out to human elements at the Mars Archive to try to confirm this, but of course fell afoul of the Manswell Doctrine's wise containment of any kind of information like that. But Cerberus reached out to her, and when she confirmed the truth of her revelations, she severed all contact with her own kind.
We have watched Trellani carefully, and we can find no sign she is anything but what she claims. It's possible she's no longer entirely sane, as the Council of Matriarchs responded harshly to her claims on the extranet, slaughtering her entire family and killing several close allies and her bondmate. Such casual cruelty for merely expressing the truth is, of course, why humanity must defend itself.
Many Cerberus operatives are uneasy working with Trellani, but for her part she is rather laid back and does not have a superiority complex like so many asari. In asari circles, Trellani is hated widely, but her public pronouncements have shaken some asari's faith in the precepts of siari and asari history.
Trellani has been very helpful in making sense of some of asari culture and history, and recent events among the asari have proven her dire predictions about the course of asari culture very correct. She fears that in any real conflict, the asari will simply be paralyzed by indecision and social maneuvering, and that they are so convinced of their own correctness that they will eventually corrupt and destroy other alien societies.
Trellani's greatest assistance, however, has been in identifying the hallmarks of the idiotic biotic supremacy cults that matriarchs have begun to craft in human space. Her training as a priestess gives us great insight in countering siari babble, and her ability to link and ensure the sincerity of certain Agents in risky assignments can't be duplicated by any other method.
We have first hand evidence of Trellani's allegiance to Cerberus and her combat ability, as it was her attack on the Night-wind who assaulted our research base that saved my life, and that of Dr. Nielson-Kahn and Agent Lawson as well. She was over-matched by the Night-wind but was able to put her warp sword to wicked effect, and severely wounded three of the assassins.
Lunar Priestess Matriarch Benezia T'Soni: recent events have refocused a great deal of attention onto this mysterious woman, but even if she was not involved with Saren we would have done a workup on her. Benezia was the Priestess of the Moon, one of two of the highest figures in the worship of Athame. As House Matriarch of House T'Soni, she also had vast wealth and influence. As CEO of Binary Helix, her business influence and research into human and asari genomic links was both far-reaching and disturbing. As the leader of the Triuna Siari movement, a political action group with links to those filthy alien lovers in Northstar, she was the leader of a charismatic cult movement implying humanity should let itself be lead by and dominated by the asari, with humanity as children and asari as caring mothers.
Her background is remarkable – the older of two sisters, Benezia sacrificed her youth in the service of Athame, leaving only to join the ranks of the commandos when she was a matron. After this she began dabbling both mystical cults and business ventures, and with House Devir, renovated the aging city and sagging fortunes of the City of Armali, revitalizing it's Clans and being instrumental in the formation of the Armali Council corporation.
Sometime after an acrimonious split from her bondmate, however, Benezia began to change. She was a known associate of Desolas Arterius, and had contacts with Saren twenty years ago. Benezia became cold and focused, moving further and further into business activities and founding a wide array of charismatic cults. She resigned her position as Priestess of the Sun in 2175, but political scandals force her to return to the role in 2180.
Given the security around the Temple of Athame, her use of House Commandos in defense of her properties, and the many security precautions she took with Binary Helix, her movements and motivations were hard to discern. We do know she probably started a relationship with Saren of a more serious nature in the 2170s and that by 2180 they were bondmates.
Benezia is extremely dangerous. As a commando she was lethal even among that group, and has trained over a hundred commandos in her day. As a war priestess, she has devastating biotic abilities unmatched by lesser asari. As the House Matriarch of House T'Soni, she has access to (and by our intel, probably took with her) the House's suit of Royal Paladin armor, and the house warp sword.
Worse, Benezia's cult movements were popular both in asari space and in human space, and it's possible even now she has a network of agents reporting events to her that are hard to root out.
We have only fragmentary reports on her house and family. She had one child, a pureblood, Dr. Liara T'Soni, who as you know is serving with Commander Shepard currently. Her bondmate, a Matriarch Aethyta, disappeared from popular society nearly a century ago and hasn't resurfaced. A good third of the family left with her after the split, the remainder have fallen onto hard times as Benezia took 90% of the House assets with her when she fled to Saren's side.
Solar Priestess Thana Vathan : Benezia's counterpart, the Priestess of the Sun is a highly visible figure who has never liked the turians and is mostly focused on asari society. A vicious warrior who spent four hundred years as a Justicar before retiring from the Order with her tasks complete, she took up the worship of Athame with a militant eye, and has been instrumental in growing the church in recent years. Thana preferred to let Benezia handle the political and economic policies of the Church, instead focusing on preaching and swaying converts through her titanic level of combat prowess and feats of biotic might. She is more than a little arrogant, a figure I liken most closely to P. , and I have my doubts about her religious devotion. She is, very simply, in love with attention, and her antics have grown more desperate in the wake of Benezia's actions. For all her frivolity, however, she is very serious when it comes to security, and Athame's temples have gone even deeper into lockdown since Benezia joined Saren. She is almost obscenely muscled, rippling with power, and usually parades around stark naked, dancing under the sun and crying out the glory of Athame.
Her motivations and goals remain a mystery. Certainly she is focused on growing the Church, but unlike Benezia, she has no personal investments, no real wealth, and only faint connections to her House. She is charismatic but inept at politics, and despite her wanton and lewd appearance has only ever maintained a pair of lovers, one a salarian with which she had children, and her bondmate, an asari lesser priestess.
Her combat ability transcends amazing, bordering on the flatly ridiculous. She once defeated an entire raiding band of batarians with nothing more than her sword, cutting apart two armored vehicles and using kanquess to leap to their airship and carve it to pieces in midair, literally dodging ground fire and moving so fast the video blurs. She has faced down (and defeated, usually in seconds) rogue ardat-yakshi, krogan warlords, turian separatists, and even asari criminals that the Justicars couldn't bring in.
Much like Benezia, Thana is also extremely dangerous. She is not the House Matriarch, but is it's Royal Champion, giving her access to a suit of the royal paladin armor and other such gear. While she rarely uses anything but her warp sword, she spent over four centuries as a Justicar, and and probably more as a commando in her youth. Her biotic barriers are strong enough that she can bounce light cannon fire from a Mako – do not underestimate her.
Siara Grace Matriarch Nelanya : the so-called "Living Power", the Grace is the leader of the siari religious movement, if it could be said to have one. Her origin is rather humble, an orphaned clanless woman, she claims she felt the call of unity as a child and has spent her life preaching it's strictures, freedoms, and tenets. A true fanatic, she eschews all forms of violence and is constantly calling for ever greater unity not just among asari but all life forms. While her message is tritely revolting, her biotic power is anomalous – she rivals the strongest Justicars in her abilities, bizarre given her clanless background. A small asari of average features and a hesitant manner of speaking, she currently acts as a sort of goodwill ambassador to various races, and is conducting a pilgrimage to visit the home worlds of every race to share siari with them. I hope the batarians have fun with that.
The Grace is well known at charity functions and other such events, using them to springboard her preaching. A frequent ally of Uressa T'Shora, she seems (key word, tricky phrase) to be fairly sincere in her efforts to alleviate suffering. That being said, quite unlike Uressa, she is very quick to to accrue the financial benefits of such displays. She also writes books and lectures frequently, charging huge fees to do so, and her home on Illum is palatial.
The Consort Sha'ira : Nothing else quite exemplifies the nature of asari whoredom like Sha'ira. A normals society would not make a folk hero out of a prostitute, much less a prostitute who doubles as a spy and pimp, but that's the asari for you. Sha'ira, who styles herself as the Consort (ha!), operates out of the Citadel in a vast complex gifted to her by a besotted admirer two centuries ago. The Consort entertains influential guests, offering poetic 'gifts of words' and political insight. By linking and melding with every damned politician on the Citadel, she has amassed tremendous insight into politics and has secrets even the Shadow Broker would probably kill for. She also has thousands of allies, giving her enormous reach and power. Despite this, she's still a jumped up, clanless whore, and the Thirty laugh themselves silly at her when she makes an attempt to enter their rarefied level of influence. The fact that she has the nerve to imply her services are tied to the siari religion really brings it all home, how despicable and corrupted these aliens are.
Trellani (displaying exactly why she's superior to most of her kin) is utterly dismissive of the woman, suggesting that the only people who fall for her act are rarely the true movers and shakers of society, and that anyone with sense is not going to meld with her or any of her sluts. She has started accepting turian and human females into the ranks of her previously all asari band of followers, which given their lack of ability to meld implies she's either trying to really branch out into full-on prostitution or is actually believing her own bullshit about being a poetic philosopher of siari love or whatever such babble justifies it in her mind.
Matriarch Jona Sederis, Umbral Queen of the Eclipse : There's no real nice way to put this, Jona Sederis is completely insane. Once a powerful commando, she was driven mad by the death of her bondmate and daughter in a botched pirate raid on her home world. Having bonded at a very young age, right out of maidenhood, she was not mentally tough enough to really understand what had occurred. Jona went on to found a mercenary group to hunt down the pirates, and along the way, picked up increasing numbers of clanless huntresses and bitter matrons tired of service to the state. Thus, the Eclipse mercenary company was born.
Jona Sederis has built the company up brilliantly, incorporating all races while lacing it's ranks and structure with mystical overtones. While no one can deny her biotic power and brutality in combat (the krogan even have a song about her), the woman is not stable, and has murdered her own associates more than once. Eclipse is now a popular destination for rebellious maidens to join up with, and the wealth and power she has acquired has gone to her head. She styles herself "the Umbral Queen" and considers herself the House Matriarch of "house Sederis", a made-up family comprised of her many children.
Sederis may be crazy, but she serves as a useful outlet for asari outcasts and malcontents who would disrupt the unity of asari society, so thus far the Thirty have tolerated her brutality and outbursts. As long as she doesn't hurt asari interests, she'll be tolerated, much to the disgust of the Justicar Order, who have been grimly waiting for their chance to crush her skull for centuries now. They only reason they haven't acted is that Sederis hates ardat-yakshi and has killed or captured six over the years, which implies she's not so crazy as to be completely gone off her nut.
Her Grace, Princess Aleena T'Armal, Aria T'Loak, Pirate Queen of Omega : Of all the asari on this list, none are more dangerous, more lethal, more cunning, and more amoral than Aria T'Loak. Our investigation into her past cost us a dozen agents, but we got lucky and discovered exactly why the Asari Republic has never acted against this legendary rogue.
Aria T'Loak (the last name is not even a family name, it literally means "of no House") was born as Aleena T'Armal, the eldest daughter of Thana T'Armal. In her youth she was legendary for her biotic strength and charm, her beauty rivaling that of Uressa T'Shora. She gave herself over to training to be a priestess, isolating herself from other asari and becoming something of recluse, and then began working with the Temple of Athame to aid the poor and build shelters and medical centers for clanless in the cities of Thessia.
But something happened that changed her life forever. Aleena had a daughter, a dangerous and unexpected result for a maiden, only possible by dint of her overwhelming biotic strength. The father was, unexpectedly, another asari, and even more unexpectedly, a clanless. Such things were simply not done – children were either links to other Houses, on that rare occasion where such a thing was needed, or were with influential aliens, not gutter trash. Aleena was ordered to have an abortion.
She refused, and the ruthless nature of her mother came out, planning to imprison her daughter and her lover and hush the whole thing up. But the act was botched, in the raid her bondmate was killed, the shock driving Aleena nearly mad. She managed to fight her way out of the T'Armal complex and off-planet, but was wounded and miscarried in the escape.
This was made aware to us by finding (based on leads provided to us by, amusingly, mislead STG teams who thought we were Alliance Intel working to counter Aria) an old krogan who served as a house bodyguard at the time. He informed us that Aleena was definitely the same woman as Aria T'Loak, and that, given how long ago it was and how few people knew Aleena at the time.
We know very little of what she did during her middle years. We know at one point she was definitely a commando, an entry for one "Aleema, of no clan or house" was found in records at Lodge of Four Stars in southern Thessia. On the run from her House, Aleena must have been very skilled at manipulation and misdirection to operate in a lodge four hundred miles from her estates with a single letter changed in her name.
At some point about half a century ago, Aleena vanished. Rumors suggest she met her end on a space station fighting mercenary krogan forces. It was some fifty years later that "Aria T'Loak" emerged and within half a century had conquered Omega.
It seems inconceivable that the Thirty did not recognize Aria as Aleena, and indeed, there are hints that the Thirty sent assassins and other measures to attempt to stop Aria, but she destroyed them all. According to Trellani, Aria sent an ultimatum to the Council of Matriarchs, warning them that if they continued to harass her she would unveil information from "the Temple" that would shatter asari society. At that point, the attacks stopped.
For Aria to have stood off the Thirty implies she knows something incredibly damaging. Unfortunately, we have little to no way to gather what that intel might be. Aria is a very strong biotic, with skills that are roughly on par with a war priestess, sans biotic sword. She has a wide control of Omega, with innumerable spies and informers, and is considered the premier warlord in the Terminus, with all of Omega and a dozen independent or pirate worlds answering to her directly. The Omega fleet is a bit dated and somewhat mismatched, but has well over five hundred ships and probably triple or even quadruple that would answer her call to war, making her effective strength in ship counts if not weight nearly equal to the Systems Alliance!
Aria has an intelligence network nearly as good as ours, and does regular business with the Shadow Broker. Among her many, many allies are at least two krogan warlords, several STG specialists, and dozens of asari mercenary leaders.
Aria ultimate goal appears to be nothing less than building the Terminus into a nation-state of it's own, capable of containing the expansion of the Citadel races. Omega's vast eezo reserves give her staggering wealth, and her cult of commandos trained by her gives her an advantage in infiltration and counter-espionage – all are basically trained courtesans and prostitutes, more than capable of hiding their true capabilities under a layer of sensual innocence until they can strike.
Aria has repeatedly been linked to Councilor Tevos, but we have no evidence either way of this being true, and in any case, Aria almost never leaves Omega, which she governs (in true tawdry asari fashion) from a goddamned strip club. If Matriarch Lidanya is a measure of the fluidity of asari society, Aria is a sobering reminder of the capability of one of the Thirty when driven to extremes.