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0121.11.15

Harsa System: Khar'shan

Entroa Batarian Hegemony 65th Pirate Fleet

High Admiral Octab'noel

It had been almost a whole month since the High Admiral had left the Alien System and taken the quickest route back to the Terminus. Several Turian fleets had tried to head them off, they had been reduced to floating scrap and the survivors taken as slaves as well. Though most had killed themselves before capture.

A month of working to parse through the asarian machines that they had taken, the technology that they had acquired. Though even as he had begun to make his way towards Omega, a call had come the Hedgemony itself, calling him back.

His arrival in System had been met with parades, with grand feasts in honor of the man that had brought home so much. Yes, he had lost the Quarians, yes he had been driven from these new "Hoomans" Nests, but what he brought back, in the hold of his Dreadnaught, had made up for it.

A partially intact Frigate of the "Hoomans" as they were known. Even now, the greatest engineers of the Hegemony were starting to work towards unraveling the mysteries of their unexplained technology. However, perhaps it was the fact that the Hoomans had apparently made contact with the Council, a Spectar had been squirreled away amongst the slaves sent against them!

But if they could crack this form of FTL, they could potentially finally shake off the limitations of the Relays. The Batarians in their entirety had been shown the things that the 65th had seen ground and planetside. The use of power armor, the synthetics by the galore, their primitive use of powered armor, their liquid metal creatures. These things instilled fear and anger within the Hegemony.

Now, Octab'noel was sitting before the largest Batarian he had ever seen, but not in terms of body mass, but in terms of muscle mass. The male before him was nearly ten feet, covered in so much cybernetic augmentations, and baring many, many, cybernetics that extended out of his form. The High Admiral of the 1st Fleet. The one which never left the Home System. Suffice it to say, he was scared out of his mind. The man before him was leaning forward, reviewing Slave Recordings and their own cameras from the downed vessels left planetside. A quick pause would cause the video to stop and show one of the large armored Hoomans, a chunk of metal lodged in its side, blood leaking from the stump of an arm and the wound.

First Admiral Cethor Cram'pehal* looked him in all four of his eyes before a small smile worked itself into the face of the largest Batarian perhaps alive.

"You've done well to return Octab'noel. You've done the Hegemony proud in bringing in so many slaves and so much new technology. Yet I fear that you have set off a chain of events within the Terminus which will change things forever."

He would type into his computer system, bringing up an image of the Batarian Navies and their holdings in the Terminus and Attican. Even now, he could see hundreds of fleets, as large or smaller than his own once was, scattered across the Terminus and with a handful in the Traverse.

"I can understand that the Council likely has heard of my actions, as well as the video footage that I brought back, but do you truly think that the situation is truly so perilous?"

Cethor would nod his head as he looked up towards the ceiling before breathing out. The hologram shifting to show several riots across their planets.

"The defeat of your forces weren't what set these off. It was the fact that these Aliens not only show a general danger towards ourselves, but what we have enjoyed. We are the Stuarts of the Terminus. While most of the politicians wouldn't care if we lost that title, it was one given to us as a sign of trust between us and the Citadel. We no longer even care for the opinions of the Citadel, but it was no less a sign of importance. One which we have neglected."

That caused him to sit up a little more, blinking his four eyes as he looked towards his Elder. Staying silent either way, there was more coming, he was sure of it.

"As such, the Council, while you were away, have come to a decision. The Hegemony has become complacent, has become reliant on the Citadel imports. As such, the Council Of Elders has decided that the time for the Lawlessness of the Terminus is over. Effectively immediately, the Hegemony is going to be bringing the Terminus under our thumb. Your 65th will be reinforced with new ships off the line, fresh troops from our Training Yards, and given your first assignment within the next few months."

That was not the conversation he thought he was going to have. The floor dropped out from under him as he felt his fingers dig into the chair, puncturing the leather from sheer terror. The things this man was saying, the scope of this undertaking was beyond titanic, it was completely insane. The scale of the Terminus took up a good 35% of the Galactic Map alone! The Hegemony was planning to try and conquer the entire thing rather than just police it?!

"Have the Council done insane? That much territory, even barring the fact that we would be dealing with a limited amount of the entire Terminus due to the Relay Network, is still a vast and expansive amount of territory. They wish to completely control that rather than police it? We'd be dealing with not only uprisings from the citizens but from the minor races living in our domain."

That actually caused Cethor to chuckle as he shook his head.

"The citizens have seen the images; they understand the threat these Hoomans represent. Barring their blatant archaic ideals and designs, banners in this day and age, based on their own technological progress, they yet show a danger to the galaxy as a whole unless nipped before they can spread."

He couldn't disagree with that assessment though, these aliens, they had shown the willingness to use horrific abominations of intelligence and unnatural living metal to wage their own wars. He was starting to see the logic of fighting them, but not why they needed this extensive undertaking.

"They are small compared to our own forces, even with the losses we took against them, we still held their planet-"

A hand came down as those four eyes narrowed.

"You couldn't take the planet even after a month of action and fighting! You can't honestly say that the Hegemony will stand a chance if we attempt to push into their territory now as we are."

He sat back down before motioning towards a video of the second largest vessel he had seen outside of the dealings with he Collectors, emerging before the Citadel. It managed to equal the Destiny's Ascension in some aspects. It was in fact, beautiful in its design, the bone white outer hull starting as a jutting point and sloping towards the engines.

"I will admit…they put up a far greater fight than I or my commanders anticipated. Are you certain this massive undertaking is wise though? The Council will call for action when we begin."

He sighed, leaning back, as the situation and the actions of his people were growing on him. What they were undertaking, or planned to, it would turn the galaxy fully and finally against the Batarians. Even if he knew his race to be superior to any of the two eyed weaklings, he knew that they had actually driven one species to extinction and two others that were nearly there already. The Council, unlike the Batarians, had experience, even in using others, to enact genocide for them. The Batarians didn't.

"We have decided to close the Relays leading into the Terminus. To keep any from fleeing, and any from entering. Funds set aside to establish Space Stations in the systems leading in and out. This should lock down any attempts by the Council to Intervene. As well as pull back from the Attican. This will have the side effect of needing to transform many rural planets into plantation planets to feed the war machine."

He would breath out before slightly nodding, looking towards his senior in this matter. It was still an insane undertaking either way, no matter how you decided to cut it. It would be another hour before he was dismissed from the meetings, his eyes drooped in exhaustion. He may have been a High Admiral of a small fleet, but he knew a lot of Batarians were going to die in the coming years.

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Information

Veltsrism: The Volus weren't the only species that eventually evolved upon their home world. Like many other planets which eventually gained sentient life, there were competing members of the same species. Usually overtaken and driven to extinction in some form or another, the Veltsrism were instead worked with, as the Volus would eventually at a later time. In some ways, their treatment of the Veltsrism would be a precursor for their eventual interaction with other races, playing their hands in the shadows, not being a confronting species. The Veltsrism can be found on Volus ships before they become a client species. Acting as Men at Arms and Voidsmen for boarding action. Even following their designation as a Client Species by the Turians, they would still hold this role, even going so far as to join Turian vessels as additional forces for fighting against pirates and boarding space stations. Their robust bodies, coupled with their heavy build, allowed them to endure quite the punishment. Physically stronger than their cousins, the Velsrism even developed their own biological distinctiveness, their large tentacles acting as emergency CQC weapons, with enough strength for a trained Veltrism to bend steel and iron bars.

The Order of Bravery: The Order of Bravery was established with a decree of Knyaz Alexander Batenberg on 1 January 1880. It is the first Bulgarian order and was modeled after the Order of Military Merit of the Grand Duchy of Hesse which existed to 1866. The recipients of the order are called cavaliers. The order was one of the many violations of the Treaty of Berlin with which Bulgaria demonstrated full independence although the country was deprived of high state decorations - symbols of national independence. Following the assimilation into the Earth Alliance during the End War, the Order of Bravery, like many other Orders, were disbanded forcefully to fall in line. Following the End War However, while the Nations of Earth would still be unified under a singular Chater, the Order was reinstated and promoted to a full Knightly House in Bulgaria. They, along with other Houses, would go on to rekindle many traditions of the Kingdom of Bulgaria that had been lost since World War 1 and up to the End War. They are most known for their Boarding Actions and their brutal close quarters conduct, earning them the nickname "Door Breakers" or "Hounds of the Tsar" depending on what circles you ask about them.

Stuarts of the Terminus: The Title was gifted to the Batarians after several dozen years. From frequent attempts to police just the edges of the Terminus, the Council found their forces unable to properly combat and subjugate the Pirate Lords or Minor Nations that exist within this vast stretch of space. The Turians were unprepared for fighting against guerrilla forces due to their strict adherence to a traditional war and engagements. However, the Batarians not only employed a similar combat pattern against others but excelled at them. They however seemed to favor a general mass force against hard targets. As such, they were given the title of Stuarts to properly police the Terminus. Something which at first, they had taken to with gusto. However, that gusto soon turned to arrogance as well as a stagnant complacency due to the mass influx of slaves have not pushed the Batarians to expand beyond the relay systems. They would slowly gain alliances with the various notorious forces within the Terminus, slowly enslaving those former independent alien civilizations that developed within distance of a Relay.

Cethor Cram'pehal: Cethor is not just a large Batarian, he is perhaps one of the largest of the main species that make up Mass Effect's sapient species minus some Collectors and the Leviathans. Defying the whims of the Council, he was created from scratch by the best the Hegemony produced. Stronger, Faster, Smarter, he proved himself invaluable against anything that the Terminus could produce and throw at him or the Hegemony. Not unlike that of the Coordinators of Humanity, his mere existence was met with fear, and nearly killed multiple times. It was only thanks to his altered nature that he survived these attempts on both himself and his family. He would go on to rise through their military ranks, eventually earning the First Fleet for himself. During several invasions by minor nations in the Terminus, he personally led counter attacks and subjugation fleets to meet them. On ten separate events, he beat back an unexpected aggression from a minor alien species, but never fully committed to their destruction. Citing how the Hegemony and Batarians should not follow the Council's methods of extermination and genocide, that they were better.