SECRET LSCI / ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE / SECRET LSCI
AIS INTELLIGENCE REPORT - CONTRACTED
Vega Field Office, Agent Basilisk
(UN/NOSAT) Feedback file and commentary, drell mercenary 'Nexa', real name unknown
(UN/LSCI) Source File: axxtp:/exone23-black/node5.6.11
(SEC/LSCI) Summary: Per cooperation with Asari Republic agents inside C-SEC and Customs, contact was made with extensively traveled drell mercenary who has agreed to write up a summary of the Traverse and the groups in it.
(SEC/LSCI) Sourcing: From the contact only. At a later date elements will be assigned to back-trace, localize ,and confirm all information.
FILE START - CLASSIFICATION SECRET, LIMITED SECURE COMPARTMENTALIZED INFORMATION (SEC/LSCI)
My name, I suppose, is unimportant. What matters is what I say, not who I am, after all. If you need a name, I have a moniker of sorts, bestowed upon me by the asari – I am the Nexa.
Your people's emergence into galactic politics – at the end of turian weapons and the dubious mercy of the asari – was something of a surprise, on the surface. In the reality of things, you never did ask just how the turians had translator software so quickly, before they'd even captured any prisoners?
I suppose that is unimportant too.
I have been paid a very handsome sum to share my knowledge with you. I'll even try to keep it mostly free of distortion, but anyone can tell you that while a drell cannot forget and rarely lie, we can only see and perceive what we can grasp.
The Traverse is a very dangerous place, and one it is easy to be confused by. There are many 'Traverse' areas – the Volian, Solian, Attican, and so on. There is also the Black Rim, the Verges (Skyllian, Venha, and Purice), and the Terminus Systems, as well as the … Deep Traverse. There are also no-go areas – the Empty Expanse where the rachni came from, the Perseus Veil, an opaque nebula full of geth and worse, and the Blackedge, a gap of black holes and ancient ruins ending in a vast void.
Collectively, however, the Traverse properly consists only of the areas called 'Traverse' and I suppose the Terminus Systems. They comprise more than half the actual galaxy, since the further out you get from the Citadel, the more branches and secondary relays open up. The area is not a coherent and collective state, it is a swarming pile of groups, all of which might be allies one day and enemies the next.
As you lot are some kind of intelligence or military force, you probably aren't interested in the culture and art of the Traverse, or the people. You want actionable intelligence. A very … human... way of looking at things. To the drell – and I dare say others such as asari, salarians and even volus – the military is an afterthought, and it is not the primary lens through which the universe is viewed, nor the fulcrum along which power is maintained.
But I rarely see those willing to look at certain truths in a hard light without self-reflection, and your AIS has a fell reputation in a bare handful of years. Instead, I will cover the groups that are in power, since knowing a bit more about the players in this area will give you a better understanding of the Traverse.
There are two groups I will not cover in … great detail. The first is the Circle of the Fallen, and that is very simply for two reasons: prudence and isolation. Not many know how the Circle is structured. Even fewer don't realize it is a government all its own, separate from Aria. Many confuse the Omegan Congress or the Black Fleet or the Warlords with the Circle, and none of them are really related.
There is also the prudence of not bothering to piss off the most powerful crime syndicate in the galaxy. I keenly remember the last time I displeased them and I barely survived.
The other group I will not cover is the Terminus Systems, albeit for different reasons. They do not deal with outsiders except in trade, and at great remove. It is unlikely any contact with them will happen of a military or espionage foci, so such things won't be useful, and I don't know much about them anyway.
What I will cover, in short is simple.
First, the actual structure of the Traverse and the areas of the big players.
Second, the distinctions between the slavers, the pirates, the cloneleggers, the dust-pushers, and the mercs.
Third, the big players – HIVE, Hellwyrm, Cinder Industries, the Investigators, and the Serenity Collective.
And finally, some of the crazy people you'll run into.
An Overview: the Traverses
If you want to be a Kalahirist technical type, the 'Traverse' is a bad asartic translation of the salarian cant term for 'useless useful space', a concept that enshrines the salarian weirdness about utility in one neat package. The Traverse is useful – full of resources, habitable planets, old ruins, lots of HE3 and the like. But it's also useless as the only ways to get there are a maze of interconnected secondary relays and long FTL paths through various nearly empty systems.
There are only three primary relays in the entire known expanse of the Traverse – the Hangman's Relay, which eats ships stupid enough to use it, doesn't count. The first is the Tethar-Vlindis Relay which connects the Omegan Traverse to the Attican Traverse. The second is the Ursan Relay, which links out the Mimbala Pirate Clans to the Volian Traverse. The final one is the Ytrri 19 relay, which is actually in deep space outside Yttri. That one goes to the Blackedge.
The five 'major Traverses are as follows:
Omegan: Often referred to as the Far Traverse or Omegan Traverse, this is a tightly clustered group of over two hundred systems, all centered slightly around Omega. HIVE, Hellwrym, multiple pirate clans and the Warlords of Omega all are based and organized here. The only ways in are through Umlor, Vreksis, or the Tethar systems, all of which are problematic. Umlor should be obvious. Vreksis is a corporate station, but the planet below is owned by the krogan Thax and is home to a turian weapons company that is too immoral for even Noveria or Ilium to host. The Tethar pirates are sometimes reasonable, and sometimes bent, depending on the mood they're in.
Volian: Curving around the end of the territory of the volus and turians with bits along the asari border, the Volian expanse is a long and sinuous string of systems linked with relays and FTL paths that terminates in the Hook, three pirate systems. The Volian traverse is rife with smugglers and volus Depthwalkers, the Vol Protectorate looks the other way as long as certain fees are paid to certain people. It's secured by a pair of giant volus battlestations at the entry relay which purportedly have over six million missiles aboard. For obvious reasons, this is not really a pirate-rich area, the Pirates of the Hook have backpath FTL lines leading into the Venha Verge and thus the Attican.
Attican: Bordering batarian, turian and what has become human space, the Attican Traverse is vast, with over five hundred systems and a tangle of relays and FTL paths that famously broke a VI mapping system. Turian separatists, human 'free soil' settlers and batarian warlords all have carved chunks out of this area, and they battle each other and the pirates in this region constantly. The access to batarian and turian space (and the Volian traverse) makes this a prime region for more sophisticated groups like cloneleggers and red dust labs to operate in.
Solian: This is your backyard, stretching from the Dead Worlds off into a long string of crappy or empty systems, linked with some of the most dangerous and unstable FTL lanes and a paucity of relays. Not a lot of outside interest in the space, mostly because there's nothing of value there.
Deep: The Deep Traverse is the blob of space between the Omegan and Volian ones, with a ragged border with the Perseus Veil. It's a literal warzone, where bits of renegade pirates and independents tuck themselves away in poorly mapped systems. A lot of this region was inhabited by asari and later turians who couldn't cut it in the Citadel areas and were too wild for the Terminus Systems, and less than fifteen percent of it is mapped. Given this is over four hundred star systems that's a lot of blank space and a lot of wild things that you could run into.
Overview: The Verges
Like with the word 'Traverse', Verge is another terrible translation of a combined asartic/salarian mapping slang. In effect, if the Traverse was a sea, the Verges would be the beaches. Most of them have more stable FTL lanes and more useful relay paths than the Terminus, as well as more planetary systems with useful materials or garden worlds.
This, of course, means they're conflict zones. Open warfare in the Purice Verge between the Asari Republic and the pirate clans of the area has been going for centuries, and the Skyllian Verge was basically a nearly all out war between the Alliance and the Batarian Hegemony.
The Verges are less important than the Traverse, because no major (or even minor) players actually base themselves here. The colonies tend to be independent and surly, few trusting large and organized groups visiting to not be affiliated with a star nation or some group of mercs. On the other hand, outcasts and political dissidents are welcomed, regardless of background or species.
Overview: the Black Rim
The very edge of Salarian space edging into the Traverse proper, the Black Rim is a wild and unsettled area. The portion closest to the Salarian Union is heavily controlled by salarian fleet and corporate assets, but the rest is poorly mapped, with even less centralized control than some Traverse areas. All manner of independent mercs and corporations operate here, along with pirates and other criminals.
The Black Rim is a sort of experiment in the Union, as the only part of their territory that allows aliens to settle in and own things. This has lead to massive spikes in population and a great deal of trade traffic, which is often predated upon by pirates.
Overview: The Empty Expanse and the Blackedge
There are places, even in the Traverse, one does not go. For some, that's due to danger from pirates or other forces. For others, it's lack of useful resources that drives avoidance. But the Empty Expanse and the Blackedge are unique in that they are actually both dangerous and mysterious.
The Empty Expanse is a cone shaped region of the galaxy over nine thousand light years long and nearly fifty light years wide in a rough cylindrical shape, like someone punched a hole in the galaxy. The area is devoid of almost everything – mostly nebula and hundreds of broken, wrecked mass relays.
Given how tough relays are, what would be capable of destroying so many has lead many adventurers and mappers to try to locate a weapon they believe is inside the Empty Expanse. But any ship that stays inside the region for more than a day or so simply vanishes.
What few systems remain in the Empty Expanse are damaged – lopsided stars, melted planets, vast asteroid fields. The wrecked relays look both buckled from force and half-melted.
The Blackedge is even worse. At least there are stars and wrecked systems in the Empty Expanse. The Blackedge is a massive 22,000 light year … gap.
There are no stars. No planets, no rogue blackholes, no relays or relay ruins. There are no nebula clouds or even asteroid groups. There is but a single system, in the closest fringes of the Blackedge within FTL range. The world is a melted yellow ball, festooned with scattered ruins that predate the Pentafar by some thirty million years. There's nothing to scavenge, just odd yellow smoothly flowing ruins.
The Blackedge's danger is different. No one really knows what happens to ships inside the Empty Expanse. But Citadel tech teams have sensors and recordings of the Blackedge, including several sets where a scout ship is flying in FTL and suddenly just comes apart. There are what I've been told are pockets of 'chronodynamic incongruity' and that if you hit one, you and your ship might age a few thousand – or million – years in a split second to an outside observer. These pockets have been seen in a few other locations, but the surroundings of space make them easily seen. There is nothing in the Blackedge, and nothing to show you where they are. The only safe FTL lane leads to that one world.
There may be more systems or planets inside the Blackedge. But finding them risks running into one of those pockets of destructive time.
Overview: The Criminals
I use the word 'criminal' here loosely. Given what some my brothers still in service to the Hanar Ascendancy have gotten up to in the Alliance, most drell are probably seen as 'criminals' by the Alliance.
That being said, there is a staggering amount of confusion (some intentional) about who actually lives in the Traverse, and their goals. There are five rough groupings of such, if you dismiss the bigger players like Omega and P.
Pirates are usually turian, batarian or asari outcasts who have some military experience and ships. The pirates are typically organized into yharsi – 'clans', roughly in asartic. A clan tends to be several core family groups organized into a long term agreement, and then all manner of others who work for them or with them.
Pirates can be broken down into three types. There are the ones who operate primarily as commerce raiders. They strike at ships most times, looking to capture raw materials, machinery, weapons, eezo, or optronics systems. The typical slang for this kind of pirate clan is 'raiders'. Mostly, raiders are the most dangerous in a technical sense – they retain a semi-military approach and good discipline. Many trade off their loot to Traverse organizations.
Pirates who focus on slavery will also engage in ship raids, but they also take the crews captive, and raid planets, especially independent asari colonies. These pirate slavers have the most disposable wealth, but most are monstrous and engage in a lot of ignorant infighting.
The final kind of pirate clan is really only seen on the edges of volus and asari space, those who run protection rackets for merchants and colonies. Typically pirates won't hit targets protected by other pirates. Given that turian and human reactions to piracy are basically identical (kill them all), this kind of thing won't be seen too much in the Traverse near the Alliance.
Slavers are distinct from pirates in that they operate the infrastructure needed to handle and sell slaves. You need medical centers, food storage, places to both hold slaves and to sell them, demonstrations, sometimes even training. That's where the slavers come in, as they work together to create a network of services and locations to buy, sell, 'service' and handle slaves.
Most slaves end up falling into three uses: forced simple labor (mining and farming) on Traverse settlements, sex related slavery, or skilled supervised labor (shipfitting, industrial support, etc). Many 'dirty' industries, such as omnidisposal, shipbreaking, industrial waste handling, and the like are simply too destructive on mechs to have them perform such tasks. Slaves can do this and if they die there's always more.
Some slave markets cater to sicker things, like people who want to eat alien races, the ones who modifiy slaves sexually, and the red sand labs that grind up asari brains into drugs. There's also the Batarian Hegemony – the Imperials often buy large blocks of slaves and ship them off. What they end up doing no one knows. But not one single person has ever claimed to have been a slave of the Imperials and escaped or survived, which leads one to some ominous conclusions.
Cloneleggers are a subset of slavers, who use slaves to culture tailored cloned tissues, organs, bionetics, or limbs. Why buy expensive orthoskin that wears out in a decade when you can get the real thing, carefully tailored to your exact needs?
Most cloneleggers are exiled or criminal biological techs or scientists, mixed with slavers and what not. They deal in everything from replacement organs to brainwashed clone bodyguards to snatch-and-replace jobs. This does require a great deal of equipment and resources, however, so they tend to be located in one spot and are not able to quickly leave if they are under threat of attack.
Dust-pushers is a catchall term for another subset of slavers that capture asari (preferably young ones) and use their bodies to create the biotic drugs vehyai and nshahi. This is known as 'red sand' and 'dark sand' to most in the galactic community. Red sand is a drug that binds eezo particulates and several other compounds and when inhaled, provides limited and crude but powerful biotic abilities, a rush of energy and physical power, and pretty much nullifies pain. It can be mixed with other drugs, the most common marked to humans is 'red angel' a variant that incorporates PCP and several agonist drugs alongside the red sand. Dark sand is an injection that can destroy a biotics's ability to use their biotics, which can also be made into a temporary biotic suppression gas or spray. It would be very difficult to take asari slaves without dark sand.
Of all the criminal groups dust-pushers are unabashedly the most sick and worst. Most brutalize their product in sickening ways before converting their brains and organs to drugs, and the rest of whatever is left is butchered and literally used as food. Every dust-pusher I encountered was borderline insane, or completely over the line. Most operate in the Deep Traverse, or at least as far away from the Asari Republic as they can, who for obvious reasons hates them. On the other hand, they rarely are any danger to other species.
Finally, there's a wide variety of mercenaries that operate in the Traverse – thousands of such bands. Some are fleet level assets, others field entire armies (what a baffling concept) and still others are small strike teams, hackers, medical support or a host of other possible functions. What unites them all is their focus is on money, not ideology or actions like slaving or piracy.
The highest level of a mercenary group is to become a van-thess. Roughly 'warlord', these are vast organizations that hold multiple colonies and have their own fleets. Warlords control most territory in the Traverse and many of them answer indirectly to Aria, as part of the Black Fleet.
Warlords and other mercenaries are dependent on constant cash flows and their reputations determine what kind of jobs they get. Some mercenaries are corporations, like the Blue Suns, and even operate in Citadel space. Others are political dissidents – there's more than one large band of mercs that are all members of Brasil Eterno, for example.
I'll get into specifics in the subfiles, but the takeaway I want to get across is the Traverse is not a monolithic state. It is more than Omega and the Terminus Systems, and a lot of the people there are just trying to live their own lives.
(SEC/LSCI) Closeout Assement: Seven teams have been assigned to check the veracity of the above information. Assuming it all looks good, we will pay the contact for additional reporting on the topics he has mentioned.
The Nexa is a well-known mercenary in several paramilitary circles, one who was outcast from the Hanar Ascendancy and has a public record of destroying slavers and dust-pusher groups. This does not mean the contact is 'good' but he is less revolting than most of his ilk and purportedly very trustworthy.
(TS/HLOS) Approval: Good work. Approval granted. Have copies sent to the Commissariat Analysts, BuCrime, and the Alliance Exploration Corps. Full engagement is granted, with a limit on expenditure of two million credits. Signed, Aloxius Manswell, DirAIS.
A/N: This is a file that will cover the bits and pieces that don't get touched on much in Xabiar's files, focusing mostly on the groups in the Traverse.
