Author's Note: It was either this, or a section on the Shadow Broker and I already covered him in the story itself
After the situation on Hagalaz plans are currently being discussed concerning the Salarian's and what to do with them, specifically to determine how much of liability or asset their mad science and double dealing actually is. You have three days. Ad. H.
Biology
Salarians are on average five foot two amphibious reptilians with two small horns sticking out of their heads and large eyes with skinny builds. Salarian's live on average for forty years and reach adulthood by two, a by-product of a heightened metabolism which also makes it so they only have to sleep for an hour per day and makes them seem hyper active to most, they also possess intense photographic memories contributing greatly to their famed intelligence. Salarian's are Haploid Diploid egg layers, what this means in layman's terms is that Salarian gender is determined by fertilisation. Fertilised eggs are born female, unfertilised ones male, which due to now lifted laws restricting reproduction only one in ten eggs per batch receive fertilisation with the males undergoing intense scrutiny before contributing their share of the DNA. This said, Salarians do not possess a sex drive, becoming a 'father' is more of a status symbol than anything else as it denotes 'a person desirable enough to contribute to another's clan.'
I will now offer speculative but likely accurate information concerning future Salarian biology. According to Miss Naught of Grissom Academy almost all of the Salarian's sent to Grissom are grade 5 to 6 psionics, a Notable leap when the average Salarian encountered clocks in at around 1 to 2, the ones that are are also all female and all Biotic as well. We do not think this to be a coincidence, the most popular theory that my colleagues have devised is that the Salarian's have found a way of fertilising their eggs with Thorian spores resulting in their unusually potent psionics, which were then deliberately injected with Eezo while in the egg state, possibly to the point of being toxic, or a equally likely explanation, that they used the fruits of a existing program to breed or engineer biotics for their experiments to breed psionics. We should assume that only a fraction of the kids they conceived using these inhumane methods have been sent to Grissom, with a significant portion having died from half baked methods and another portion being held in reserve.
Culture
Salarian's are matriarchal in nature. Whenever a new clutch of eggs are about the hatch they are left alone for several days with a given clan's head, a Dalatress, or Dalatresses depending on which clan fertilised the eggs, in order to having the newborns imprint upon her/them. Salarian's are also intensely competitive which usually manifests in rivalries between families or companies, most strongly this manifests in the development of technology, hence the Salarian Union, a decentralised government of various different groups leading to a shell game of anonymity, misdirection and a fine example of the left hand not knowing if the right is holding a data pad or a gun. Before the introduction of Stellar Union technology in council space Salarian's were consistently regarded as being the leaders in cutting edge technology, their rapid maturation cycles means that new generations and fresh thinkers are introduced faster than anyone else which is reflected in the core of their ship design, which will be touched upon later. While this obsession with being on the cutting edge could be a good thing it also leans into more of a toxic mentality.
Part of the hyper competitive mentality of the Salarian's leans over into information gathering and sabotage, rivalling Salarian clans would sooner both fail then succeed together at the same goal. The Short life spans also leads to a clear disregard for the long term consequences of their actions, 'it doesn't matter if it backfires on us eventually: we'll all be dead by then' the end results of this semi-defeatist attitude will be covered in length during the history section. Speaking of...
History
Salarian's hold the prestige of being the second race to reach the Citadel, narrowly beaten out by the Asari by virtue of their larger base of Prothean technology to reverse engineer, and one of the two founding races of the citadel council excluding the Volus at the time. The following will list crimes against sapient life as defined by the Stellar Union committed by the Salarian Union.
500 GS: Unethical First Contact with a Sapient Race
The Salarian's discovered a hive of Rachni on the planet Suen, Rachni genetic memory doesn't cover what the Salarian's did during this time or at this place but whatever it was it prompted the Rachni to reverse engineer the Salarian ships and launch a genocidal campaign against the Council. Unable to prove that Salarian experiments were responsible for this hostility. An equally likely explanation is that the hive was one of the left overs from the Prothean's ill advised attempts to weaponize them.
580 GS: Uplifting a Pre-Spaceflight Species
Eighty years and 5 generations into their species screw up a then standardised scan of a desolate tomb world later known as Tuchanka revealed not more Rachni but rather a Hardy reptile like post nuclear race known as the Krogan who had accidentally nuked themselves back to the stone age. The Krogan were the Salarian's opposites in many ways, Physically strong and durable enough to survive the tomb worlds that the Rachni preferred as their standard, aggressive and war like to the Salarian calm and slightly more peaceful leanings, long lived to the Salarian's short lives. Most important of all, from the Salarian point of view, the Krogan were Stupid to the Salarian's 'genius.' While Uplifting the Krogan would have been seen as illegal by Union standards an exception would've likely been made citing the inhospitable living conditions of the Krogan and the Rachni's aggression.
The main problem, in a fine example of why laws against uplifting pre-spacelight civilisations in the first place are in place, is that the Salarian's took a race of artisans and honourable warriors whose own apocalyptic situation had taught them the deep and sacred value of life and they twisted them into a culture of aggressive sociopathic fire and forget weapons, nor did they take measures to curb said overwhelming hostility once the Rachni War ended. Instead, two hundred and twenty years into a new post Krogan Galaxy they patted their warrior slaves on the back, gave them a single garden world and several tomb worlds, and flew back to their own territory to pop their champagne equivalent in celebration.
For the next four hundred years the Krogan would see a unprecedented age of unchecked population growth which was usually solved by them snatching up whatever world became available for colonisation, the straw that broke the camel's back being when they attempted to conquer a already inhabited Asari world and dared it's original owners to come and take it from them. Que the Krogan rebellions.
1210 GS: Development and Deployment of Bio-Chemical Warfare Weapons, as well as Attempted Genocide
The Main problem with fighting against the Krogan is not their extremely hardy biology or their hyper aggression, but rather their explosive fertility. People dying off in numbers that would end normal races was barely a drop in the bucket for the Krogan. The Salarian solution was to create a Sterility plague that causes severe and ultimately fatal neurological conditions in fetal Krogan leading to still birth in 999 out of 1000 Krogan births, approximately the same rate of Krogan surviving to physical maturity back in their pre-uplift post nuclear age, better known today as the Genophage. The Salarian's are not solely to blame here, while they created the weapon their ultimate intention was that it would be deployed to a single Krogan world as a warning to the rest: 'cease and desist or face annihilation' it should also be noted that the Salarians could've, with much greater ease, created a weapon that would wipe the Krogan out entirely.
The Turian's response however was mass production followed by mass deployment to every world with the Krogan on it, followed up by shooting, air striking, planetary bombardment, pretty much using any method they could think of to wipe out as many Krogan worlds as possible until the Krogan were forced back to their still thoroughly irradiated home-world with several Turian 'Failsafes' in place to ensure that they didn't get any funny ideas. And indeed if it was limited to just that then the Salarian's wouldn't be receiving nearly as much flak for the Genophage as they currently are. Testimony and evidence provided by one Dr. Urdnot Okeer, a Krogan scientist working to find a way of reversing the Genophage, has confirmed the existence of several variants of the Genophage that have been gradually introduced to the remaining Krogan worlds over the course of the past Twelve hundred years designed to counteract the gradually improving birth rates and fertility of the Krogan, with testimony from ANONYMOUS, Urdnot Bakara and Evidence taken from the Gene alteration company Binary Helix confirming the ongoing conspiracy to see the Krogan driven to extinction, which at the time of discovery was being headed by former Salarian Union Leader Dalatress Linron.
2586 GS: Attempted Uplifting of a Pre-Spaceflight Species
Having Clearly not learned their lesson from the Krogan, the Salarian Union has secretly made plans to uplift a Hyper Aggressive Pre-Spaceflight species, the Yahg, into a fighting force secretly under the Salarian Union's control. The most generous interpretation is that this was done to counteract the impending Reaper invasion, with a far less generous but equally likely possibility that the plans were being made to go to war against the Stellar Union.
From this section one thing is made clear, the Salarian's have a clear, long standing history of total disregard for basic ethical regard for life, long term survival of the galaxy or their own species and a almost complete lack of sense of guilt or responsibility for their actions to the point of being almost non-existent. It is with a heavy heart that this intel specialist must recommend the immediate vassalization of the Salarian Union for their own good if not that of the Galaxy at large. As it stands...
Military
Salarian ground forces are almost non-existent, Salarian warfare emphasises sabotage and intelligence gathering through it's STG or Special Tasks Group, itself a precursor to the Citadel's Special Tactics and Reconnaissance/SpecTRe/ST&R forces. It is often said that the Salarian's prefer their wars won before they've started, a common Salarian boast being that they would never do something as 'immature' as declare war, their declaration of war is the complete, total and simultaneous destruction of all space ports and space born weapons platforms of the enemy followed by their ships de-cloaking above the capital city of every world held by the enemy. That said, the aforementioned obsession with cutting edge technology has led to a unique ship design philosophy.
Similar to human ships, every Salarian ship is built from the beginning with the intention that at some point in time every component is going to have to be removed and replaced. Opposite of humanity and it's standardised components though, the Salarian's do this not for ease of repair but ease of modifying or 'updating' components with the latest technology, and for the same reason disregard the ship's durability with their designs being compared to Lego Bricks by Tebrid hackers, with the added suspicion that they would be approximately as easy to take apart via weapons fire. Mentioning specific ship models is effectively pointless as every clan within the Union builds their ships to their own exacting specifications.
Conclusion
Disable ships at range, sweep the Salarian worlds for potential trouble makers, put the lizards with more than two brain cells to rub together for anything other than SCIENCE on something that will leave a lasting positive influence on the galaxy and then go home and order a pizza. It's what I plan on doing. P. Harris Out!