Nations of the Relay Ecumene

By the Terminus Exarch

The Citadel Council is an association of governments which grew like a vine around the "mass effect relay system," which allows for rapid transit over some two-thirds of the galaxy and was built by an antecedent civilization of uncertain provenance. The Citadel Council's capital, the Citadel Station, is the heart of that relay system. The Citadel Council holds a weak degree of power over its component governments. It does not even have a pretension of controlling the Krogan "Demilitarized Zone." It had no pretension of controlling what were called the Terminus Systems, inhabited by diverse discontented settlers drawn from those same populations which comprise the Citadel Council's governments.

The three most important Citadel governments are those of the Turians, Asari, and Salarians. These form the Council proper. Other governments are either lower members or formal nonmembers. All carry out whatever internal practices and customs they like. How can such a brittle and opaque system be justified? It cannot, but the Citadel Council cannot face up to its faults and so it tries, through the preposterous argument that all cultures must be considered equal. This only reflects a failure of leadership and willpower on the part of the Turians, Asari, and Salarians.

When our Covenant expanded so that its frontiers reached out of the "Attican Blank," and we discovered the mass effect relay system and made first contact with the Relay Ecumene, we knew that we were obliged to seize responsibility from those unfit to have it. Our Covenant has already conquered what were the Terminus Systems and what is now the Terminus Exarchate; but we have not yet conquered even one of the Citadel Council's component governments. We must know these different peoples better if we are to subjugate them, teach them of the Great Journey, and determine their proper roles and caste-ranks.

Turian

Although the fronts of the war lie against Asari and Salarian space, it is the militarized society of the Turian Hierarchy which is the acknowledged backbone of the Citadel Council's war against our Covenant. The Turians are physically weaker than Sangheili or Jiralhanae but show aggressiveness and a superior discipline. After the Citadel is conquered Turians will be the great logisticians of the Covenant, ensuring that Sangheili and Jiralhanae fight not only with valor but with efficiency. The Terminus Turians whom we have already conquered, distinguishable from their homeworld brethren by their tattooed faces, exhibit a frustrating degree of independent mindedness. Assimilation into military structures is slow-going as conscripted Terminus Turians often insist on sharing their unwanted suggestions for "modernizing" Covenant military doctrines.

Asari

It is astonishing to think that a people might travel through space and retain such a primitive form of government as a republic! It only begins to make sense when one meets an Asari. The Forerunners blessed the Asari with such generous gifts that they have simply had things much easier than other peoples and have not needed to organize for hardship as others have. The Asari live for centuries and have psychic power useful for combat. The monogendered Asari also use their psychic power to reproduce, and they can and often do reproduce with aliens. These children are, however, entirely Asari. We can infer from these peculiarities that the Forerunners intended the Asari to be leaders and unifiers on the galaxy's Great Journey, but the Asari have largely squandered their blessings and become mired in contented idleness and ignorance. Terminus Asari are those who found the Republics stifling. They are usually "young," by which the Asari mean something a little different than other peoples, but this is good because it is the young who take to religious education most easily.

Salarian

Salarians are a short-lived people who evolved from amphibians. Their Salarian Union is reminiscent of pre-Covenant Sangheili society in the sense that its internal politics revolve around dynastic negotiation. Otherwise Salarians are not much like Sangheili. Excessively transactional and pragmatic, the Salarians are only able to maintain parity of power with the militaristic Turians and preternaturally gifted Asari through technical ability and great effort. Terminus Salarians are often but not always "Lystheni." This is some kind of ethnic distinction that no one who is not Salarian finds interesting or important, but which Salarians take very seriously. Terminus Salarians, Lystheni or otherwise, consider themselves the founders and natural leaders of the Terminus Systems; although they are not properly native like Vorcha and they are heavily outnumbered in modern times by Terminus Batarians. Salarians will be made into the Covenant's second technical caste, joining the Huragok. Some Terminus Salarians argue that Lystheni and other Salarians should be considered as two separate castes, but to do this would defy precedent and reinforce the kind of small-minded bigotry which the Covenant stands against. Salarian internal prejudices certainly have less biological basis than those of the Kig-Yar, and we have always forced the Kig-Yar together.

Batarian

The Batarian way of life was historically marked by oppression and criminality. Frustrated with the stratified and alienating government of their homeworlds, a great proportion of Batarians left to settle the Terminus Systems, and in time they came to outnumber the Terminus Salarians. Terminus Batarians are modestly less oppressed but massively more criminal than those remaining in their Batarian Hegemony. Because such a great proportion of the Batarians are already under our rule, our Covenant may begin their integration earlier than with the other peoples of the Relay Ecumene. By making the Batarians into our spies and inquisitors we make their cunning useful to us and teach them to work for the law rather than against it. The timetable for their assumption of this duty is a matter of some controversy. I will refrain from further comment as it is a matter for the Hierarchs, and lofty as the office of Exarch might be, I am but an instrument of the Hierarchs' collective will.

Krogan

The Krogan are as strong as Sangheili or Jiralhanae, and they are hardier and more durable, although they are not so strong as Mgalekgolo. The Krogan terrorized the other peoples of the Relay Ecumene until the Salarians and Turians sterilized them (Krogan can still breed, just nowhere near as prodigiously as they did once). What happened next is hard to explain. The Council governments did not subjugate and reform the Krogan, but neither did they exterminate them and eliminate the threat the Krogan posed. They left the remaining Krogan to live as ungoverned relicts, albeit dangerous ones, drifting back and forth among their homeworlds and the Terminus Systems with no direction or purpose. This historical episode shows the indecisiveness characteristic of the Citadel Council, the tendency to half-measures which guarantees victory for our Covenant. As for the Krogan, we shall not fail to tame them and compel their muscle to high purpose.

Volus

Volus culture is hopelessly materialistic and may need to be entirely dismantled! The Volus are small and cowardly, and their accumulation of wealth and prestige in Citadel and Terminus Space seems to belie the laws of nature. Their government is a client state of the Turian Hierarchy, which provides for their security needs. Most Terminus Volus evacuated to their homeworlds before our fleets could overcome them. The Volus may yet prove useful to our Covenant. Adapted for life on ammonia-atmosphere planets inhospitable to others, they are accustomed to wearing environmental suits and may be employed as managers on unpopulated worlds devoted to resource extraction. The usurious Terminus Volus encourage us to let them do more, to let them establish great convoluted systems of credit and debt, but if these suggestions were wise then we San'Shyuum would be able to understand them. We are keeping the Volus are on a short (hah!) leash.

Hanar

The Hanar are very interesting. They are the only people in Council space whose government aspires to transcendence (apart from their Drell lower caste), and while their doctrines are suffused with an unacceptable passivity they are not entirely ignorant of the Great Journey. The Hanar understand that the Forerunners, or as they say "Enkindlers," are responsible for galactic civilization and that they deserve reverence for it. They do not seem to be entirely clear on the distinctions between the Forerunners and other, lesser antecedent cultures such as the Protheans or Xalanyn. Few Hanar live in the Terminus Exarchate, but for now those that do are to be treated with tolerance. They are the only known people to be adapted for aquatic life and in the future will be seeded among the oceans of all our worlds, lighting the waters with hymns to the Great Journey.

Elcor

The Elcor are slow, lumbering, and peaceful. Very few live in the Terminus Exarchate. The Elcor are unimportant and are apparently content to stay unimportant. It is truthfully not certain what the Covenant can do with these people after we conquer them. Of course, they must be made to understand the Great Journey, but perhaps we will otherwise allow them to continue their inoffensive ways without much outward change.

Vorcha

Vorcha are the only people known to have originated in the Terminus Systems, and their homeworld of Heshtok is by far the most populous of the Covenant's new planets. Regrettably, Heshtok is a horrible wasteland and the Vorcha are absolute cretins. The astonishing capacity of the Vorcha for physical adaptation seems to have left them stunted in other respects. Evangelical outreach to the Vorcha has failed wherever attempted peaceably, although some of them have embraced the Great Journey with apparent sincerity when beaten. Vorcha are obviously destined to join the Unggoy at the bottommost ranks of our society. Heshtok itself will benefit from the full military occupation and programs of compulsory education that the Citadel Council saw the need for but lacked the stomach to carry out.

Quarian

The Quarians are the only people in the galaxy so intelligent yet unwise as to create machines with independent wills. Their richly deserved reward was the near-total destruction of their civilization and the relegation of their survivors to pariah status. They skulked around the edges of Council and Terminus Space in nomadic poverty for three centuries. Upon our invasion the Quarians ran away and vanished into the uncharted territories of the galactic southeast, on the side of the "Attican Blank" opposite that of traditional Covenant space and on the side of the galaxy opposite that of their lost homeworld. Their current circumstances are unknown. What is known is that whether they reemerge or perish, the Quarians have chosen to be irrelevant to the course of this war.

Geth

Strictly speaking the Geth do not belong in this tract, as they are not people and they have no place awaiting them in our Covenant, or our galaxy. They are the mechanical killers who turned on their Quarian creators. The Geth reside in the Perseus Veil, which borders the Terminus Exarchate and is actually much closer to High Charity than the Citadel. They do not ever leave the Veil, or associate or communicate with organic life, and are therefore irrelevant to the course of this war. We obviously plan to expunge the Geth as soon as we have the spare fleets to do so, but it may be best not to advertise this too loudly, as they are theoretically capable of monitoring the things we publicly say and accordingly deciding to strike us preemptively.

Drell

The Drell are a primitive people saved from self-imposed extinction by Hanar charity. There are not many of them, even fewer are known to have ever lived in the Terminus Systems, and none are known to have come under the authority of the Covenant. We may hope that the Drell have learned at least the confused Hanar respect for the Forerunners, but we really know very little about them.