A/N: Thus ends the Asari section. I'm actually interested in feedback so far – it it too much detail or not enough? Should I focus on turians or salarians (or some other race) next? I can't finish the human history yet, as it has a few spoilers and will get done after some more OSABC updates.

The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space

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ALEXANDRIA-NINE-NINE-ALEPH – SUBSECTION TWO, PARTITION TWELVE

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USER: TRELLANI

My lovely Jack,

I was amused by your private request for me to comment on the body of work your fanatical little doctor is putting together for you and your fellow travelers. The poor man was quite shaken with the death of Dr. Uraj , but that is what you get when you are fool enough to spin and dance in the webs of the Thirty, fear be upon their enemies.

I fear the rest of your compatriots dislike me – not that I care. I understand their anger and rage, their rejection of anything not of their species. One reason we asari cling so tightly to our blind seeking of unity and comfort in one another is we are all very afraid of the darkness beyond our warm seas and comforting forests. Our ancestors looked up at a sky we worshiped, only for it to split apart and rain death and calumnity upon us, our only comfort the warm bodies and open minds of our clans.

Humans never embraced one another as we asari have. You divide yourselves over the most inane of concepts, of invisible lines on maps, over pieces of cloth with designs, over imaginary 'nations' that can't be found by the naked eye. You derange your languages and cling to your quaint food dishes and curious clothing, as if the universe cared for such effrontery in the face of it's majesty. You tell yourselves that the amount of dye in your skin somehow determines your intelligence and personality.

You hate and burn so brightly because you fear, each of you, deep inside, that you are insignificant. Not for you a god that merely guides the dreamer into a deeper sleep, or a unity with all life. You have to have a God that is responsible for all things, knows all things, and grants immortality. You have to punish and reincarnate yourselves, or submit endlessly without relief in pursuit of a wisdom that sounds not that much different than siari when you shave away the fancy words.

No, Jack – your people hate aliens because you cannot stand the idea that you are not , indeed, superior. You are not as blind as my people are, who have no hate because we cannot even conceive of such a ridiculous concept that some race might be our equals, much less superiors.

I think some asari insight into some of the questions and issues your little doctor did not touch on are in order.

Cerberus Thought for the Day: – file error – not found – error 404c

Jack, your average asari is no powerful biotic warrior, mystical and wrapped in shimmering, body hugging silks. I am sure that is what the human ideal of my kind is , and I remain just as sure that such images are the exact public face the Thirty, grace unto their houses, place before you constantly.

But most of the clanless are but people, my friend. The average asari grows into a family that is almost always bifurcated, between asari culture and whatever the race of the father is. Salarians make poor fathers in most cases, distracted and unused to raising children, while turians delight in turning their blue daughters into tiny little soldiers. Krogan lovers are rare, but no one will spend more time , or show such unexpected gentleness, with a child as a krogan. A batarian is usually a brute, but those who were slaves are more gentle themselves, but they remain stern, unyielding and distant power figures.

Human fathers are often the best, be they male or female humans, as they can simply enjoy the growth and joy of a child's live. An average asari child knows nothing of the games of the Thirty, grace unto their houses, or the machinations of the Clans, or the smeared, unending dance of the agile wit that plays across asari culture. They are children, innocent and pure.

The average asari, then, is usually a mere worker. She provides for her child, loves her bondmate, and works to ensure their comfort and safety. If there are other asari nearby she is open with them, but in this modern age more and more asari turn away from the communal clan parenting of children and dote upon them personally.

Your average asari studied biotics in her long-ago youth, and maybe , if she was daring, used them for a few years when she ran with wilder sisters. But despite what Dr. Minsta thinks, most asari girls don't spent but a handful of years with that crowd. Few indeed are cruel and hard enough become a Sister of the Eclipse, who require you to kill another being in cold blood. To fully embrace such a life is to turn away from siari, to make it hard to ever come back into the fold.

Most will do a bit of dancing or mercenary work, then find work on the Citadel, Illum , the five colonies, or on Thessia. Secretaries and analysts, legal assistants, legates, medical workers, clerks and hostesses. Poor trembling Minsta would have you believe every asari girl is a hardened veteran. It is more akin to the dangers posed by a human who served two years in the military reserves as a clerk. They may remember a few things, but most is gone , and they have not the nerves or the mindset for battle.

The average asari votes diligently, with a firm belief that regardless of what happens, the Thirty, honor and peace upon them, will act in the best interests of all. She is not fool enough to believe she is important ; rather, she trusts that with enough grains of sand, even the ocean must stop it's surge. What point a large and powerful government which expends most of its efforts trying to coordinate that which is best handled by mere common sense?

Jack, the average asari is too wrappped up in her own life, in the joys of it, in the little things, to give much thought to humans, or the fate of the galaxy. Minsta's points may be correct in terms of the powerful of my race, but the average asari is just … a person. We are not all biotic witches, grim of eye and voluptuous of form, capable of magical feats of arms and sleeping with a legion of exhausted lovers out of sheer carnal hunger. They are just people, and if they are a bit given too much to pleasure and love to intrigue over little social clans or who is sleeping with who, what matter that to such as you?

Minsta dislikes our practice of siari, and finds our casual embrace of pleasure disturbing, as if it is somehow unclean or wrong. But how much of this is human views on sex, and not really our views? Are we to be judged, then, on humans and their practices, without judging in turn? A society of humans sees nothing wrong with letting billions starve, or for the masses to struggle to eat while the rich have palaces they do not even visit. You poison your own kind in the empty pursuit of wealth and influence, and then use said influence to oppress and control others, without even reaping gain for your selves. You prate about empty sexuality but are the first to sexualize every bit of advertising, news, fashion, even military service, and you denigrate females as weaker and frailer, mainly to serve the strong sexual urges of your males, whose genes bid them to spread their children among many mates, while females want to retain the father of their children for defense and aid.

One wonders where Minsta finds his moral compass at nights. (And who he fills his bed with). Asari sex with other asari is merely a sharing of sensations and pleasures. It is not the gross and frankly insipid insertion of body parts into other body parts, the splattering of fluids and diseases that every other species practices. It is a beautiful glimpse into the wonder of another being, a way to find and open your mind to concepts, memories, feelings you never experienced, and the warm glowing release that shivers both your frame and theirs is united.

We do not believe in Original Sin. Minsta's narrow-minded Christianity defeats his understanding of the meld and our focus on unity. The average asari may link shallowly with two or three friends, but not while she is bonded. Her life focuses on her children and her bond, her exploration...

Oh, how to make you understand? You with your devil-may-care belief in your invincibility, your optimistic hopes? Women are drawn to you like a moth to the flame, for your power, your calm, your iron determination, your looks.

But do you even enjoy it, I wonder, as asari do? Is all human sex guilt-ridden? Is it because every act can lead to children your kind rarely seems to want?

Can you understand the beauty of laying naked beneath the stars with someone so close to you that every breath is as one, to know and feel and exult in such closeness that it seems the very sky touches your skin, that your whole world is suffused with this glow? How can I explain the comfort from the ties that bind each asari to each other, and to others beyond, to see the joy of an impish young maiden in the ghost of an aging matriarch, and her smile as you discuss things neither you nor she ever lived?

I have turned away from the purposes to which our unity has been twisted, and the filthy black tide that spills from the worn stone steps of Athame's so-called temple, but siari is not some game of sex and titillation. You cannot understand , and Minsta should stop trying to do so. Siari is a feeling, a touch of something beyond the grasp of one or many minds. You would, I suppose, call it a gut feeling, a hunch. It is the unseen flicker of something , perceived by a million million asari memories throughout fifty thousand years. There is something beautiful and mystical there. I have no words for it, but I know it.

That being said , siari is not for humans, and shouldn't be perverted in such a fashion. I understand, in a way, where he comes from with his distaste. A human using sexuality to influence others would indeed be a whore, as the sex act for your kind is so much different than for us. No flower of a field of Thessian blue can thrive in Terra's green grasses or Sur'kesh's moss, and forcing such a mesh is exactly why your group is needed. There are those, I will admit, who have turned our glorious unity into a weapon, a tool. It is akin to shoveling snow with a famous painting, or cleaning a counter-top with the documents of a brilliant author from ages gone past.

Minsta's insights into our culture mostly on target, but some regarding the Clans are … skewed, at best. He sees the Clans as tribal throwbacks, when they are specialists, in a culture and world that now calls for each to be all things. There was a time when asari workmanship and ethics were all about pride, when a woodworker would spend six years merely finishing a table , every detail so utterly perfect that you couldn't even find a joined edge that didn't look natural. Now, we have fallen into the consumerist trap, that ease of convenience that is the mire of the extranet and free shipping. The Clans refuse to give up that core of patience that made asari what we became, that loving attention, when a mere sword, or the work of a stone-cutter, was an asari's very name and pride, her skills linked and passed to her descendants.

No human can or ever will surpass a Clan artesian, who has the memories of an eon of fine crafting in her mind. The pride of the asari Temple of the Moon, the Serration of Unspent Blood, is a warp sword over nine thousand years old, before we had plasma forges or fancy metals or nano-composited alloys. Made of nothing more than thin sheets of the purest silver and steel, banked in snow drifts, hammered and folded seven million times, quenched in volcanic ash and tempered in pure ocean water.

It took six hundred years to make one sword, Jack. One blade. A blade that was wrought so fine that when the Priestess of the Sun took it up it rivaled the very life giving orb in brightness, so sharp it would send razoring cascades of rainbows along it's edge with every movement. What human culture could expend such effort on a mere item? You are as mayflies. You forget your own history, your cultures melt and flow like taffy, and your memories are as water.

We do not forget, and we do not move on. We remember, and we build on what we know. That is our strength, Jack. That is what fools like Minsta fail to see, despite his genius and skill and wide education. He sees only what the Thirty allow, he sees the corruption, yes, the failure, yes..

But not the glory, not the pride, not the bitter, unyielding remembrance that has built us up. He sees those who lie to themselves, who turn their gaze to nothing more than existence, when our love and dreams are so much more rich, more moving, more keening in their grasping , hungering needs.

An asari poetess once spoke it best, I feel. I fear the translation does not rhyme, but you should get some sense of the emotions I speak of.

Long days have slid past the vault of the sky

As sun and moon chase each hour across the blue of sea and shore

I long for the days of my life givers and life bringers

I am weary of toil and proud of the rings I bear on each arm

My daughters, straight and proud, carry my name and blood

My fine lovers are my supports when the nights grow cold

But under this vault of sky

I am alone, within myself, a multitude of those I know

My fingers touch air, but I am made of many

I have seen shores I will never walk upon

I have danced with smiling princesses I will never see

Lips have tasted mine that are long dead

I have chased the narhwan upon the bright waters in boats

though I love the mountains and have left them not once in my years

Now I am fading from this light, laying full upon the lucid blue of the waters

I can feel all of those in my life around me, the darkness of the moon

and the glory of the sun, burning through dark spaces to bring forth

Dawn? A light that I cannot comprehend. A face that is sweet and dear to me

My daughters kiss my ancient flesh, my bondmate wipes her tears from broken eyes

I am weary of toil and proud of the rings I bear on each arm

I will live on forever, in the minds of those who remain

and dance beneath midnight skies, thighs damp with the sea-mist upon the grass

I will soar under clear blue skies, in the minds of those who follow

Under this vault of sky

I am never alone, I am asari, I am one, I am all.

If you can grasp that, Jack, you can grasp siari.

On a more practical note, having spoken my little piece... I want to touch on three things Dr. Minsta did not.

First, the biotic supremacist cults that rage across your world are indeed no natural evolution of siari, nor are they the hands of any but the Thirty, blessed be they. The Thirty , sharp are their swords, are not something I can explain, except perhaps to suggest that your kind would feel the same if Jesus Christ had children who to this day were the leaders of your nations. To gainsay them is –

Difficult.

Even cut off from my own people, by my own choice. Even knowing the Temple is hiding the truth and that those who call themselves the Thirty are frauds... my very soul rebels at speaking their title without one of the hundred blessings to follow. The Thirty. The Thirty.

Shift to non-verbal command by user. Recording begins of verbal output per Cerberus protocol six. Output suppressed to user interface

My mind moves under it's own power. My spirit gives me strength, my strength fuels my thoughts, my thoughts embody motion. My mind moves under it's own power.

Shift to verbal command by user. Recording begins of verbal input to datapad

I am no weak fool , and even my own mind rebels against casting imprecations against the Thirty. Suffice it to say that biotic supremacy is not something asari give much cause to think of, and that in humans it is a dark concept indeed. Your kind is naturally given to discrimination and self-sectioning. Skin color, the place you were born, what language you speak, what nation you hail from, what gender you prefer in bed – the divisions and separations in your culture drive one mad to ponder long upon. Biotics, feared and distrusted, used by the SA to check the ambitious and the proud, are the natural focus of hatred and rage.

I fear these biotic cults are not trying to infiltrate society so much as ensure your biotics are fearful of asari power. I have seen some of your better biotic students. A few of the would best me with ease, and a very few would give pause even to that crazed hag who styles herself Priestess of the Sun. But most of your kind are simply too weak to battle the best the asari have to offer. The Thirty –

Intolerable. They , rather, are disinclined to see humans develop further down the path of biotic mastery. And thus, I fear the L2 issues your early biotics had, using implant designs of asari make, were flawed on purpose. I fear the asari would prefer if human biotics were distrusted and ostracized, because it gives them an easy inroads to power. Not to hurt humanity, but to apply leverage.

Asari dismiss violence...but manipulation? To control without lifting a finger? That we admire. Destroy these cults wherever they appear and you will thwart whatever plan … They .. have put into place.

Secondly, Minsta's assessment of the military is far off the mark, although I understand his confusion. Asari do have officers, I assure you. But they are concealed and often in positions of safety. They wear no pins of rank and attend no war college, but they are known to you already. The matriarchy. Lesser, younger asari naturally defer to their elders, by blood and instinct and biology. We do not need to train leaders in a corps because each matriarch is already a leader by nature. Yet Minsta stares right past this obvious fact, because when he looks to see patterns, he is too bound by human concepts to understand what is right in his face.

This is the truth behind our military – any losses dire enough to kill off all the matriarchs in a force is usually devastating enough that no military force will be left alive in any condition to fight anyway. It is a common mistake, made by every race who comes against us. Few can identify a matriarch from a maiden at a distance, fewer still when everyone is in the same armor and wearing full face helms.

Because (despite knowing better) I love you above all others in this vile galaxy, I will share with you a little secret. The asari matriarch does not, despite what the rumors say, have larger breasts than a maiden, nor do we grow taller or shorter. The trick to picking out a matriarch from maidens is the way one holds themselves. Our skeletons are cartilage, and it stiffens over time. Look for those asari who move more slowly, who are careful when evading and who rely upon heavier armor – those are most likely your matriarchs.

Minsta's summary of our history was .. good. But he continues to wonder what lies inside Athame's temples. Shall I tell you, Jack? Of artifacts that predate any Prothean dig? Of swords of a metal we have identified as being of Insuannon make?

I am fairly sure, although I cannot prove it as I did not rise to the proper rank, that our temples are actually sites of Prothean technology, much akin to your Mars Archives. I have seen ancient paintings of Athame and her 'servants', and they are no asari, nor any being I have seen. I am almost certain that the Thirty , may honor trail their days, know of this, and keep it a secret, and it is the core of why our mass drives and certain aspects of our technology are so vastly beyond even those far smarter than us, such as the salarians.

Of proof, I have none. I can see you narrowing your eyes, inhaling on one of those vile cigarettes, smiling to yourself. I have no proof, but I know what is in my mind, and the reaction of the Council of Matriarchs to my simple questions – the vile murder of all I held dear – is proof enough for this old fool.

A final thought, Jack. I know there are those in your organization who are distrustful of me, or my motives, although you know them clearly. I do not hate Cerberus, even the vile acts that your Shadow Hand has committed on innocent asari do not change my beliefs on that. Your people are acting in the name of survival, and while I feel Minsta is too vitriolic (and anthropocentric) to understand some parts of why my people act how they do, his argument that the asari wish humanity to kneel at their feet is all too accurate. There are a few who mean well, and many who have no ill will towards your kind, but as I said, one cannot be anything but dismissive of the creatures who need pills , injections, and accidents to touch biotics, who die in the span of an asari youth, who burn so brightly and so briefly. It is akin to fearing the action of a pack of sheep. Your livelihood may depend on them, you may be outnumbered by them, the rams might, if they get upset and charge you, injure you badly if they surprise you, but they are not going to suddenly one day take over your home, or take away your guns and shear you in turn!

You are being herded, and while I find some of what Cerberus does to be distasteful, I cannot in good conscience say that other races do not do the same or worse. I stand by my words, at least humanity is brave enough to put it's terrorists in the public eye. The vile nature of the Night-wind (damn all ardat-yakshi) should be proof enough that we asari are far more monstrous than even your Emperor Ardiente could ever hope to be.

I find I miss your easy company , your smile, your hands and your deft touch on the skyball court. Minsta is becoming boring to talk to, and Agent Lawson hates me because I make her feel plain and small. Perhaps a few weeks on Bekenstein would be agreeable for you, while your team removes to their next assignment?

Know that I love you, even if you tell yourself you are beyond such things.

Trellani