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maskormenace
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Kytha
AGE: 18+
JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
meme
IM / EMAIL: AIM: icierthathou
PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
kiffle
RETURNING: Yes! I currently play Rick Bradbury.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Commander (John) Shepard
CHARACTER AGE: 32, from d.o.b.
SERIES: Mass Effect
CHRONOLOGY: Just prior to the beginning of ME3.
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Yup, though he isn't going to stay for long if he can help it!
BACKGROUND:
(While there's a basic amount of information on Shepard on the Mass Effect Wiki, a good deal of Shepard's characteristics are left up to the player to decide, from gender to appearance and even their history. I'll be writing this with a male Shepard with a relatively even mix of diplomacy and ruthlessness, with a Spacer and War Hero background who didn't romance anyone in the first and second Mass Effect games.)
In Mass Effect, humanity's destiny was forever altered when they uncovered ruins of an ancient spacefaring race on Mars. With the data from these ruins, humans discovered the secret to faster-than-light travel, allowing expansion on a scale never seen before. They also learned how to use an inter-galaxy array of devices known as mass relays, capable of transporting ships thousands of light years away to anywhere a mass relay exists. Unsurprisingly in the face of so much potential, humans went a little spacefaring-happy -- only to be unpleasantly surprised when they discovered they weren't the only sentient species to have discovered the mass relays.
After a brief war with the turians, the military, avian-like alien species humanity had inadvertently stumbled upon, humans are now one of many species struggling to carve out a place for themselves in a Milky Way that's a lot more crowded than they thought. The Systems Alliance, often simply referred to as the Alliance, is currently the body responsible for many of humanity's main military, exploratory, and economic activities in space. Having realized that conflict between different countries is ultimately unproductive when one has alien races to contend with, the Alliance is backed by Earth's major nations.
It's generally acknowledged that humanity is quite remarkable for the speed at which they've expanded and how quickly the Alliance has managed to secure an embassy on the Citadel, an ancient space station which serves as the heart of the galaxy's politics and home to the Council -- an executive committee composed of the alien races who carry the most political weight and influence. Besides the turians, there were councillors for the asari, a monogendered race with a thousand-year life span, and the salarians, an amphibious species whose short lifespans are made up for by razor-sharp intellect. Other species of note are the warlike krogan, almost neutered through biological warfare long ago, and the quarians, a largely mistrusted group of spacefarers who live off their enormous flotilla of ships.
However, all of that is simply setting the stage for what's to come.
The aliens who built the ruins found on Mars are known as the Protheans, and mysteriously went extinct more than 50,000 years ago, and no one knows why -- but the ruins of their civilization are scattered throughout the galaxy. Most species attribute their discovery of space flight to the knowledge the Protheans left behind, but intact ruins are rare, and much is still unknown about them.
Fast forward to 2183. When a nearly intact Prothean beacon is discovered on a human colony named Eden Prime, the Alliance sends a state-of-the-art starship known as the Normandy SR-1 to pick it up on her maiden voyage. On board the Normandy, assigned as its Executive Officer, is one Commander Shepard.
At the age of 29, Shepard's already gained a bit of a reputation for himself. Growing up as an Alliance brat, Shepard is no stranger to space, as he spent a good part of his childhood traveling with his parents as they were assigned to one posting after another. At the age of eighteen, Shepard enlists in the Alliance military, and works his way steadily up the ranks. It doesn't take long for the young marine to earn himself a reputation. When a massive combined force of slavers and crime lords threatens to take over a colony where Shepard is spending his shore leave, he rallies its civilian inhabitants to hold them off until reinforcements arrive and shatter the invader's army. Recognizing his achievements, the Alliance enters him into the special forces training program, where Shepard earns the highest rank possible: N7.
As it turns out, the mission to Eden Prime is more than just a shakedown run, because they have an unusual guest on board: a turian named Nihlus, a Council Spectre. Acting directly under the Council's direct orders, Spectres are bound by no laws or restrictions, granted full discretion to carry out the Council's will using whatever means they deem necessary. To have a Spectre on board what should be an ordinary mission is highly unusual, to say the least and the ship's captain, David Anderson, confirms as much just before they approach Eden Prime: Nihlus' true purpose is to observe Shepard as a potential candidate for Spectre status. As eager as humans were to earn respect in the galactic community, being the first human Spectre would be a significant step forward.
And then things get shitty, really fast. They arrive at Eden Prime only to discover that it is under attack, with a ship that's nothing like anything they've ever encountered. When they land, it's even more troubling to discover that the attackers are the Geth -- a race of sentient machines who haven't been seen outside the Perseus Veil in centuries -- and that they are capable of transforming humans into mindless, half-machine creatures. Shepard and his team, composed of Kaidan Alenko and a soldier posted to Eden Prime named Ashley Williams, race to find the Prothean beacon, but it's not long before they find Nihlus, who was scouting ahead of them, dead as a doornail. A colonist claims he was shot by another turian that Nihlus called "Saren," who also seems to be on the hunt for the beacon and may in fact be working with the Geth.
When Shepard and his crew finally locate the beacon, there's no sign of Saren, and it seems to be malfunctioning. On their approach, it exerts a strange force that draws Ashley. When Shepard shoves Ashley away, he gets caught up in the force himself and gets forced to relive visions of destruction and violence. The beacon explodes and Shepard blacks out, waking up in the medbay with one thing clear in his mind: someone needs to be informed about what happened on Eden Prime.
The Normandy heads for the Citadel to seek an audience with the Council and warn them about Saren. Understandably, the Council is skeptical, given that Saren is one of their best Spectres, and Shepard's claims are dismissed. Quickly realizing they need to find more solid proof to bring before the Council, Shepard and his crew search the station, going on a few wild goose hunts and picking up a few more new recruits along the way: a krogan bounty hunter, Wrex, a turian C-SEC officer, Garrus, and a young quarian who turns out to hold the key to the proof they need, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Tali's recording, salvaged from a geth unit, clearly demonstrates Saren's involvement with the geth, though there's another unpleasant surprise: also audible on the recording is the voice of Matriach Benezia, a respected asari leader.
The Council, in typical diplomatic fashion, decides that the best decision is to grant Shepard Spectre status to simultaneously get him out of their hair and let him do all the dirty work. Command of the Normandy is officially signed over to Shepard, and he promptly heads off to try and hunt Saren down, or at least figure out what the hell he's planning. Along the way, he fishes Liara T'Soni (a Prothean archaelogist and Benezia's daughter) out of a crumbling ruin, frees a colony from being mind-controlled by a giant sentient plant (not without casualties), and confronts Matriarch Benezia in an ice-bound laboratory facility. Before she dies, Benezia reveals something even more worrying than the possibility of a Spectre going rogue: he may be under the control of something else entirely. Apparently, Saren talks to his ship.
Crazy, right?
Shepard doesn't have much time to dwell on exactly how out of his gourd Saren may or may not be, because the next thing they know is that the Council is sending them off to answer a distress signal from a salarian reconnaissance team on a planet called Virmire. The message wasn't particularly clear when they got it, which would have been really convenient if it was, because it turns out that besides covering the planet surface with a fuckton of geth, Saren's breeding an army of genetically modified krogan to serve as his army. The salarians are in the process of aiming to destroy the facility, but they were outmaneuvered and pinned down by Saren's troops. Forced to proceed on foot because of the anti-aircraft cannons in place, Shepard and the salarians join forces to infiltrate the base and rig a bomb to blow the whole thing sky high, which necessitates splitting up into smaller teams.
In the process of entering the base, Shepard encounters another Prothean beacon, this one more intact than the last, and upon activating it, a hologram of what appears to be Saren's ship appears... only it's not, apparently, a ship. Instead, Shepard discovers that it's a Reaper -- a race that's considered even more mythical than the Protheans, and none-too-coincidentally responsible for their extinction. Apparently, the Reaper, Sovereign, has been the driving force behind Saren's actions all along, and Saren is merely paving the way for the Reaper's return to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. Later Shepard has a chance to confront Saren himself about his reasons for betraying the Council and helping the Reapers, but the encounter is cut short: with the bomb set in place and ticking down, Shepard's forced to make a choice between saving Ashley, pinned with the salarian team, or Kaidan, who armed the bomb.
Shepard chooses to save Kaidan, but doesn't get to dwell on it much, because once they return to the Council with the information they've found, they (surprise) don't believe him. The Reapers are a fairy tale, after all, and something about the idea of a Spectre gone crazy is a lot easier to swallow than the return of a 50,000-year-old myth. The Normandy is grounded at the Citadel, but Anderson believes Shepard's story. After he manages to break them out, the Normandy chases after Saren to a planet called Ilos, where he's looking for something called the 'Conduit.'
The fun never stops for Shepard, as he discovers that Ilos was the last stand of the Protheans when the rest of the galaxy was being decimated by the last wave of Reapers. A Prothean VI called Viigal tells them that the Reapers are merely repeating a cycle that has been going on for millions of years, and that the Citadel and the mass relays which galactic civilization depend upon are actually all Reaper constructs, to shape the galaxy the way they want it to, then destroying it all over again before retreating into dark space. The Citadel itself is a giant relay, but Ilos was a Prothean research facility on how to to disable the signal that would allow the Reapers to activate it. Their efforts were successful, even though the Protheans went extinct, and thus Sovereign sought control of Saren to find a way to manually activate the Citadel.
Using the miniature relay that the Protheans built to instantly get inside the Citadel, Shepard chase Saren down for a final confrontation, where a furious firefight is going on within the Citadel's arms. Shepard manages to talk Saren down into shooting himself, and takes control of the Citadel with data uploaded from Vigil. With Sovereign itself actually in the Citadel, Shepard faces the choice of ordering the Alliance fleet to save the Council, whose ship is under attack, or not -- and it's not easy, but he chooses to ask the Alliance fleet to focus on Sovereign, the Reaper that's attached itself to the Citadel. The Council dies as a result, but Shepard's too distracted fighting Sovereign to focus on it -- Sovereign has taken control of his body. When Shepard finally puts Saren (and Sovereign) down for the last time, the resulting explosion nearly takes them all out, but he and his crew are pulled free from the wreckage. So the galaxy is saved, for now, and despite the new Council being cranky as hell that Shepard's orders meant the death of their predecessors, they accept his recommendation for Anderson to become the human Councilor.
All's well that ends well, right?
The Council considers the matter closed with Saren, ignoring the Reaper threat which is still present-- just delayed. Months later, Shepard and the Normandy are on a routine patrol to monitor Geth activity when they are suddenly attacked by a strange, alien spaceship. Unprepared for the strength of the weaponry used against them, the Normandy's hull is breached, forcing the crew to evacuate into the escape pod. Shepard just barely manages to get Joker, the ship's pilot, into an escape pod. Then the ship comes around for another pass and shatters the Normandy entirely, leaving Shepard drifting in space. A rupture compromises the integrity of Shepard's suit, leaving him airless in a matter of seconds.
Shepard dies.
Shepard wakes up, two years later, in a laboratory facility he doesn't recognize, feeling like shit and looking even shittier, ears ringing to some kind of alarm. A woman's voice he doesn't recognize tells him to get up and get armed, and despite not knowing what the hell is going on, he complies, leaving the questions for now.
It turns out that Shepard's been brought back by Cerberus, a pro-human (borderline terrorist) organization that he's encountered before. Their reasons for bringing him back aren't entirely altruistic, and he's quickly brought up to speed on the situation: human colonies have been going dark, attacked and kidnapped by beings known simply as the Collectors. The Illusive Man, Cerberus' leader, believes Shepard was speaking the truth about the Reapers, but claims to need his help in stopping this new threat to humanity, since clearly no one else will step forward and do it. Despite his misgivings, Shepard agrees to work with Cerberus -- under duress -- and assemble a team to take down the Collectors with Cerberus' support and resources, including a new ship -- the Normandy SR-2.
The main events of Mass Effect 2 are pretty succinctly covered by the wiki, so I won't cover them in detail, but suffice to say that Shepard succeeds in assembling a team to destroy the Collectors, who turned out to be modified Protheans under the control of the Reapers (who, yes, aren't gone). Met with resistance and mistrust by some he considered former allies along the way -- particularly Kaidan Alenko, who isn't shy about letting Shepard know how fucked up he thinks it is that he's working with terrorists -- Shepard becomes a little harder and more ruthless than he was as part of the Alliance, trying to focus in on the endgame instead of second-guessing himself. After all, if they fail, there's not going to be much room for regret, and he survives, he can worry about it later. He still manages to earn his squadmate's loyalty along the way, and succeeds not only in surviving the suicide mission, but in pulling them all through.
After destroying the Collector Base, Shepard agrees to take on a mission from Admiral Hackett to rescue a scientist who may know something about the coming Reaper invasion, and heads for the planet Aratoht to extract her. Unfortunately, it turns out she's indoctrinated by the Reapers and plans to help them return, rather than prevent it. With literally minutes left to go before the Reapers come through, Shepard ends up having to crash an asteroid into a mass relay to slow their approach down. The resulting explosion takes out the entire star system and some three hundred thousand lives along the way. When told of the mission outcome, Hackett tells Shepard he'll have to come to Earth and face the music for what he's done, even if Hackett agrees that it was the right call.
Strangely enough, Shepard complies, and the Normandy surrenders itself to the Alliance, though its crew members have dispersed. Effectively under house arrest on Earth and awaiting his court-martial, Shepard's forced to finally hold still for the first time in a long time, wondering how much time they have left before the Reapers arrive.
PERSONALITY:
Whether one considers him a sinner or a saint, one thing is for certain: Shepard didn't earn his reputation by sitting around with his thumb up his ass. While taking a quiet moment or two for some introspection isn't unheard of, nine times out of ten, if you look for Shepard he'll be in motion. If Shepard's job consisted of paperwork instead of shooting things, he'd probably be called a workaholic. Apparently, the man has also never heard of delegating, because once he gets a task he needs to carry out in his head, no matter how trivial, he'll see it through.
Perhaps it's that quality that makes him such an effective leader, a position Shepard has proven to be remarkably good at occupying over the years of his career. Shepard isn't the type to hang back, expecting those under his command to take risks that he isn't willing to put himself through, but charges right into the fray himself. You could call it reckless, really, if the risk didn't pay off often enough for it to actually seem like a sound strategy instead of just dumb luck. Earning the rank of N7 isn't for chumps who don't know the value of self-discipline and how to take orders, but Shepard's capable of throwing the rulebook right out the airlock when the stakes are high enough, swapping diplomacy (something he's surprisingly effective at, despite his distaste for politicking) for good old-fashioned ass-kicking (sometimes with inappropriately vindictive glee) to get the mission done.
Not all problems are solved so easily, and despite his best efforts, there are times when Shepard is forced to make tough calls. Often, these don't leave him the luxury of being able to weigh a decision to its fullest extent, and there are times when it most often comes down to a numbers game: what decision will lead to an outcome where more people can survive? He'll choose that, every time. The botched mission on Aratoht, where victory comes at the cost of an entire system being destroyed, is perhaps the most visceral illustration of that. Shepard doesn't shy away from the repercussions of his actions, either -- he could have easily taken the Normandy and walked away from that mess, but he chooses to submit himself to the Alliance for a proper hearing instead.
All that, of course to say that Shepard's all about the job, all the time. While it takes up a big part of his focus -- and really, likely the reason he hasn't had a serious romantic relationship in years -- he cares a lot about his crew's well-being, and takes it fairly seriously. It's important to Shepard to have people he can trust as his back. It's in dealing with them that the softer side of his personality comes through, because somehow, in between getting shot at and shooting at things, he manages to find the time to get to know them and help them with their problems. At times, this can mean talking them down from decisions that he's pretty sure would make them feel unhappier instead of better -- like killing someone out of a misplaced sense of revenge. Even during the suicide mission to stop the Collectors, when there's no real reason to get to know his crew, he manages to anyway.
Given the fairly crappy things he's gone through, it's surprising that Shepard has come out relatively well-adjusted. After all, he's had the incomprehensible dying messages of an extinct race planted directly into his brain, died and was brought back to life, and has generally been through a lot of shit that would have other people breaking down. What exactly the force that keeps Shepard moving forward is hard to say: but whatever else can be said of him, he's one stubborn son of a bitch. It's not that he doesn't have his moments of uncertainty or vulnerability, but he doesn't let himself stay down for long, his dark (and slightly juvenile) sense of humor coming out at some of the worst times.
Shepard doesn't buy into his own hype, preferring to simply think of himself as the guy who gets the job done, and not much else. And really, despite his badass reputation? He's kind of a big dork at heart.
POWER:
A fair amount of Shepard is cybernetic, given that his body was almost entirely reconstructed by Cerberus, and additional enhancements were made to him over the course of his stay on the Normandy SR-2. What this simply means is that Shepard is slightly stronger and faster than an average human, and capable of slightly accelerated healing.
Besides being more physically adept, Shepard is also a biotic. Broadly speaking, biotics cover a wide range of abilities that can be loosely likened to telekinesis, performed through the manipulation of mass effect fields which are activated through memorized mnemonics. In some species, this is innate, but in humans biotic ability is granted by in-utero exposure to element zero -- assuming it doesn't kill you first. As a Vanguard, Shepard's fighting style is high-risk, high-reward, and his comparatively limited biotic abilities are therefore geared to suit. His biotics lack finesse, and his primary attack is a biotic charge designed to close the distance between him and an enemy as quickly as possible. In addition to this, he can detonate his biotic barriers, sacrificing defense for a short-range burst that can take out most enemies in its radius.
In addition to his canon powers, Shepard will gain the ability to summon at will one of his custom armor suits, the Collector Armor, along with the Collector Assault Rifle, based off their Mass Effect 3 specifications. In the Collector Armor, Shepard is able to take greater amounts of damage and recover more quickly. In addition, as it is a fully sealed suit capable of sustaining a stable interior environment, he can safely traverse zero-g environments or vacuums while wearing it.
However, in Mask or Menace, the armor and rifle will have limitations. He can only wear the suit for limited periods of time, as it puts a direct drain on his physical stamina. Initially, he may only be able to wear it for periods of ten minutes or so. As he grows more accustomed to it, he can work up to wearing it for more extended periods. Additionally, while the rifle does not require conventional ammunition, it will also tax him physically to use.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ The voice on the communicator is thoughtful, and a little dry. ]
This isn't exactly what you'd call a secure channel, is it?
[ There's a pause, then, like he's considering something -- or more accurately, futzing with the controls. ]
I've woken up in a lot of strange places before, but I think this might be the first time that didn't involve alcohol -- or people trying to kill me. Kind of a nice change of pace.
[ His tone's deceptively light. Like he didn't just try to punch the people who brought him here in the face. ]
So, any of you ever heard of the Systems Alliance?
[ It's as good a place to start as any, right? ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: This is from a couple of months back, but TDM link!
NAME: Kytha
AGE: 18+
JOURNAL:
memeIM / EMAIL: AIM: icierthathou
PLURK:
RETURNING: Yes! I currently play Rick Bradbury.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Commander (John) Shepard
CHARACTER AGE: 32, from d.o.b.
SERIES: Mass Effect
CHRONOLOGY: Just prior to the beginning of ME3.
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Yup, though he isn't going to stay for long if he can help it!
BACKGROUND:
(While there's a basic amount of information on Shepard on the Mass Effect Wiki, a good deal of Shepard's characteristics are left up to the player to decide, from gender to appearance and even their history. I'll be writing this with a male Shepard with a relatively even mix of diplomacy and ruthlessness, with a Spacer and War Hero background who didn't romance anyone in the first and second Mass Effect games.)
In Mass Effect, humanity's destiny was forever altered when they uncovered ruins of an ancient spacefaring race on Mars. With the data from these ruins, humans discovered the secret to faster-than-light travel, allowing expansion on a scale never seen before. They also learned how to use an inter-galaxy array of devices known as mass relays, capable of transporting ships thousands of light years away to anywhere a mass relay exists. Unsurprisingly in the face of so much potential, humans went a little spacefaring-happy -- only to be unpleasantly surprised when they discovered they weren't the only sentient species to have discovered the mass relays.
After a brief war with the turians, the military, avian-like alien species humanity had inadvertently stumbled upon, humans are now one of many species struggling to carve out a place for themselves in a Milky Way that's a lot more crowded than they thought. The Systems Alliance, often simply referred to as the Alliance, is currently the body responsible for many of humanity's main military, exploratory, and economic activities in space. Having realized that conflict between different countries is ultimately unproductive when one has alien races to contend with, the Alliance is backed by Earth's major nations.
It's generally acknowledged that humanity is quite remarkable for the speed at which they've expanded and how quickly the Alliance has managed to secure an embassy on the Citadel, an ancient space station which serves as the heart of the galaxy's politics and home to the Council -- an executive committee composed of the alien races who carry the most political weight and influence. Besides the turians, there were councillors for the asari, a monogendered race with a thousand-year life span, and the salarians, an amphibious species whose short lifespans are made up for by razor-sharp intellect. Other species of note are the warlike krogan, almost neutered through biological warfare long ago, and the quarians, a largely mistrusted group of spacefarers who live off their enormous flotilla of ships.
However, all of that is simply setting the stage for what's to come.
The aliens who built the ruins found on Mars are known as the Protheans, and mysteriously went extinct more than 50,000 years ago, and no one knows why -- but the ruins of their civilization are scattered throughout the galaxy. Most species attribute their discovery of space flight to the knowledge the Protheans left behind, but intact ruins are rare, and much is still unknown about them.
Fast forward to 2183. When a nearly intact Prothean beacon is discovered on a human colony named Eden Prime, the Alliance sends a state-of-the-art starship known as the Normandy SR-1 to pick it up on her maiden voyage. On board the Normandy, assigned as its Executive Officer, is one Commander Shepard.
At the age of 29, Shepard's already gained a bit of a reputation for himself. Growing up as an Alliance brat, Shepard is no stranger to space, as he spent a good part of his childhood traveling with his parents as they were assigned to one posting after another. At the age of eighteen, Shepard enlists in the Alliance military, and works his way steadily up the ranks. It doesn't take long for the young marine to earn himself a reputation. When a massive combined force of slavers and crime lords threatens to take over a colony where Shepard is spending his shore leave, he rallies its civilian inhabitants to hold them off until reinforcements arrive and shatter the invader's army. Recognizing his achievements, the Alliance enters him into the special forces training program, where Shepard earns the highest rank possible: N7.
As it turns out, the mission to Eden Prime is more than just a shakedown run, because they have an unusual guest on board: a turian named Nihlus, a Council Spectre. Acting directly under the Council's direct orders, Spectres are bound by no laws or restrictions, granted full discretion to carry out the Council's will using whatever means they deem necessary. To have a Spectre on board what should be an ordinary mission is highly unusual, to say the least and the ship's captain, David Anderson, confirms as much just before they approach Eden Prime: Nihlus' true purpose is to observe Shepard as a potential candidate for Spectre status. As eager as humans were to earn respect in the galactic community, being the first human Spectre would be a significant step forward.
And then things get shitty, really fast. They arrive at Eden Prime only to discover that it is under attack, with a ship that's nothing like anything they've ever encountered. When they land, it's even more troubling to discover that the attackers are the Geth -- a race of sentient machines who haven't been seen outside the Perseus Veil in centuries -- and that they are capable of transforming humans into mindless, half-machine creatures. Shepard and his team, composed of Kaidan Alenko and a soldier posted to Eden Prime named Ashley Williams, race to find the Prothean beacon, but it's not long before they find Nihlus, who was scouting ahead of them, dead as a doornail. A colonist claims he was shot by another turian that Nihlus called "Saren," who also seems to be on the hunt for the beacon and may in fact be working with the Geth.
When Shepard and his crew finally locate the beacon, there's no sign of Saren, and it seems to be malfunctioning. On their approach, it exerts a strange force that draws Ashley. When Shepard shoves Ashley away, he gets caught up in the force himself and gets forced to relive visions of destruction and violence. The beacon explodes and Shepard blacks out, waking up in the medbay with one thing clear in his mind: someone needs to be informed about what happened on Eden Prime.
The Normandy heads for the Citadel to seek an audience with the Council and warn them about Saren. Understandably, the Council is skeptical, given that Saren is one of their best Spectres, and Shepard's claims are dismissed. Quickly realizing they need to find more solid proof to bring before the Council, Shepard and his crew search the station, going on a few wild goose hunts and picking up a few more new recruits along the way: a krogan bounty hunter, Wrex, a turian C-SEC officer, Garrus, and a young quarian who turns out to hold the key to the proof they need, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Tali's recording, salvaged from a geth unit, clearly demonstrates Saren's involvement with the geth, though there's another unpleasant surprise: also audible on the recording is the voice of Matriach Benezia, a respected asari leader.
The Council, in typical diplomatic fashion, decides that the best decision is to grant Shepard Spectre status to simultaneously get him out of their hair and let him do all the dirty work. Command of the Normandy is officially signed over to Shepard, and he promptly heads off to try and hunt Saren down, or at least figure out what the hell he's planning. Along the way, he fishes Liara T'Soni (a Prothean archaelogist and Benezia's daughter) out of a crumbling ruin, frees a colony from being mind-controlled by a giant sentient plant (not without casualties), and confronts Matriarch Benezia in an ice-bound laboratory facility. Before she dies, Benezia reveals something even more worrying than the possibility of a Spectre going rogue: he may be under the control of something else entirely. Apparently, Saren talks to his ship.
Crazy, right?
Shepard doesn't have much time to dwell on exactly how out of his gourd Saren may or may not be, because the next thing they know is that the Council is sending them off to answer a distress signal from a salarian reconnaissance team on a planet called Virmire. The message wasn't particularly clear when they got it, which would have been really convenient if it was, because it turns out that besides covering the planet surface with a fuckton of geth, Saren's breeding an army of genetically modified krogan to serve as his army. The salarians are in the process of aiming to destroy the facility, but they were outmaneuvered and pinned down by Saren's troops. Forced to proceed on foot because of the anti-aircraft cannons in place, Shepard and the salarians join forces to infiltrate the base and rig a bomb to blow the whole thing sky high, which necessitates splitting up into smaller teams.
In the process of entering the base, Shepard encounters another Prothean beacon, this one more intact than the last, and upon activating it, a hologram of what appears to be Saren's ship appears... only it's not, apparently, a ship. Instead, Shepard discovers that it's a Reaper -- a race that's considered even more mythical than the Protheans, and none-too-coincidentally responsible for their extinction. Apparently, the Reaper, Sovereign, has been the driving force behind Saren's actions all along, and Saren is merely paving the way for the Reaper's return to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. Later Shepard has a chance to confront Saren himself about his reasons for betraying the Council and helping the Reapers, but the encounter is cut short: with the bomb set in place and ticking down, Shepard's forced to make a choice between saving Ashley, pinned with the salarian team, or Kaidan, who armed the bomb.
Shepard chooses to save Kaidan, but doesn't get to dwell on it much, because once they return to the Council with the information they've found, they (surprise) don't believe him. The Reapers are a fairy tale, after all, and something about the idea of a Spectre gone crazy is a lot easier to swallow than the return of a 50,000-year-old myth. The Normandy is grounded at the Citadel, but Anderson believes Shepard's story. After he manages to break them out, the Normandy chases after Saren to a planet called Ilos, where he's looking for something called the 'Conduit.'
The fun never stops for Shepard, as he discovers that Ilos was the last stand of the Protheans when the rest of the galaxy was being decimated by the last wave of Reapers. A Prothean VI called Viigal tells them that the Reapers are merely repeating a cycle that has been going on for millions of years, and that the Citadel and the mass relays which galactic civilization depend upon are actually all Reaper constructs, to shape the galaxy the way they want it to, then destroying it all over again before retreating into dark space. The Citadel itself is a giant relay, but Ilos was a Prothean research facility on how to to disable the signal that would allow the Reapers to activate it. Their efforts were successful, even though the Protheans went extinct, and thus Sovereign sought control of Saren to find a way to manually activate the Citadel.
Using the miniature relay that the Protheans built to instantly get inside the Citadel, Shepard chase Saren down for a final confrontation, where a furious firefight is going on within the Citadel's arms. Shepard manages to talk Saren down into shooting himself, and takes control of the Citadel with data uploaded from Vigil. With Sovereign itself actually in the Citadel, Shepard faces the choice of ordering the Alliance fleet to save the Council, whose ship is under attack, or not -- and it's not easy, but he chooses to ask the Alliance fleet to focus on Sovereign, the Reaper that's attached itself to the Citadel. The Council dies as a result, but Shepard's too distracted fighting Sovereign to focus on it -- Sovereign has taken control of his body. When Shepard finally puts Saren (and Sovereign) down for the last time, the resulting explosion nearly takes them all out, but he and his crew are pulled free from the wreckage. So the galaxy is saved, for now, and despite the new Council being cranky as hell that Shepard's orders meant the death of their predecessors, they accept his recommendation for Anderson to become the human Councilor.
All's well that ends well, right?
The Council considers the matter closed with Saren, ignoring the Reaper threat which is still present-- just delayed. Months later, Shepard and the Normandy are on a routine patrol to monitor Geth activity when they are suddenly attacked by a strange, alien spaceship. Unprepared for the strength of the weaponry used against them, the Normandy's hull is breached, forcing the crew to evacuate into the escape pod. Shepard just barely manages to get Joker, the ship's pilot, into an escape pod. Then the ship comes around for another pass and shatters the Normandy entirely, leaving Shepard drifting in space. A rupture compromises the integrity of Shepard's suit, leaving him airless in a matter of seconds.
Shepard dies.
Shepard wakes up, two years later, in a laboratory facility he doesn't recognize, feeling like shit and looking even shittier, ears ringing to some kind of alarm. A woman's voice he doesn't recognize tells him to get up and get armed, and despite not knowing what the hell is going on, he complies, leaving the questions for now.
It turns out that Shepard's been brought back by Cerberus, a pro-human (borderline terrorist) organization that he's encountered before. Their reasons for bringing him back aren't entirely altruistic, and he's quickly brought up to speed on the situation: human colonies have been going dark, attacked and kidnapped by beings known simply as the Collectors. The Illusive Man, Cerberus' leader, believes Shepard was speaking the truth about the Reapers, but claims to need his help in stopping this new threat to humanity, since clearly no one else will step forward and do it. Despite his misgivings, Shepard agrees to work with Cerberus -- under duress -- and assemble a team to take down the Collectors with Cerberus' support and resources, including a new ship -- the Normandy SR-2.
The main events of Mass Effect 2 are pretty succinctly covered by the wiki, so I won't cover them in detail, but suffice to say that Shepard succeeds in assembling a team to destroy the Collectors, who turned out to be modified Protheans under the control of the Reapers (who, yes, aren't gone). Met with resistance and mistrust by some he considered former allies along the way -- particularly Kaidan Alenko, who isn't shy about letting Shepard know how fucked up he thinks it is that he's working with terrorists -- Shepard becomes a little harder and more ruthless than he was as part of the Alliance, trying to focus in on the endgame instead of second-guessing himself. After all, if they fail, there's not going to be much room for regret, and he survives, he can worry about it later. He still manages to earn his squadmate's loyalty along the way, and succeeds not only in surviving the suicide mission, but in pulling them all through.
After destroying the Collector Base, Shepard agrees to take on a mission from Admiral Hackett to rescue a scientist who may know something about the coming Reaper invasion, and heads for the planet Aratoht to extract her. Unfortunately, it turns out she's indoctrinated by the Reapers and plans to help them return, rather than prevent it. With literally minutes left to go before the Reapers come through, Shepard ends up having to crash an asteroid into a mass relay to slow their approach down. The resulting explosion takes out the entire star system and some three hundred thousand lives along the way. When told of the mission outcome, Hackett tells Shepard he'll have to come to Earth and face the music for what he's done, even if Hackett agrees that it was the right call.
Strangely enough, Shepard complies, and the Normandy surrenders itself to the Alliance, though its crew members have dispersed. Effectively under house arrest on Earth and awaiting his court-martial, Shepard's forced to finally hold still for the first time in a long time, wondering how much time they have left before the Reapers arrive.
PERSONALITY:
Whether one considers him a sinner or a saint, one thing is for certain: Shepard didn't earn his reputation by sitting around with his thumb up his ass. While taking a quiet moment or two for some introspection isn't unheard of, nine times out of ten, if you look for Shepard he'll be in motion. If Shepard's job consisted of paperwork instead of shooting things, he'd probably be called a workaholic. Apparently, the man has also never heard of delegating, because once he gets a task he needs to carry out in his head, no matter how trivial, he'll see it through.
Perhaps it's that quality that makes him such an effective leader, a position Shepard has proven to be remarkably good at occupying over the years of his career. Shepard isn't the type to hang back, expecting those under his command to take risks that he isn't willing to put himself through, but charges right into the fray himself. You could call it reckless, really, if the risk didn't pay off often enough for it to actually seem like a sound strategy instead of just dumb luck. Earning the rank of N7 isn't for chumps who don't know the value of self-discipline and how to take orders, but Shepard's capable of throwing the rulebook right out the airlock when the stakes are high enough, swapping diplomacy (something he's surprisingly effective at, despite his distaste for politicking) for good old-fashioned ass-kicking (sometimes with inappropriately vindictive glee) to get the mission done.
Not all problems are solved so easily, and despite his best efforts, there are times when Shepard is forced to make tough calls. Often, these don't leave him the luxury of being able to weigh a decision to its fullest extent, and there are times when it most often comes down to a numbers game: what decision will lead to an outcome where more people can survive? He'll choose that, every time. The botched mission on Aratoht, where victory comes at the cost of an entire system being destroyed, is perhaps the most visceral illustration of that. Shepard doesn't shy away from the repercussions of his actions, either -- he could have easily taken the Normandy and walked away from that mess, but he chooses to submit himself to the Alliance for a proper hearing instead.
All that, of course to say that Shepard's all about the job, all the time. While it takes up a big part of his focus -- and really, likely the reason he hasn't had a serious romantic relationship in years -- he cares a lot about his crew's well-being, and takes it fairly seriously. It's important to Shepard to have people he can trust as his back. It's in dealing with them that the softer side of his personality comes through, because somehow, in between getting shot at and shooting at things, he manages to find the time to get to know them and help them with their problems. At times, this can mean talking them down from decisions that he's pretty sure would make them feel unhappier instead of better -- like killing someone out of a misplaced sense of revenge. Even during the suicide mission to stop the Collectors, when there's no real reason to get to know his crew, he manages to anyway.
Given the fairly crappy things he's gone through, it's surprising that Shepard has come out relatively well-adjusted. After all, he's had the incomprehensible dying messages of an extinct race planted directly into his brain, died and was brought back to life, and has generally been through a lot of shit that would have other people breaking down. What exactly the force that keeps Shepard moving forward is hard to say: but whatever else can be said of him, he's one stubborn son of a bitch. It's not that he doesn't have his moments of uncertainty or vulnerability, but he doesn't let himself stay down for long, his dark (and slightly juvenile) sense of humor coming out at some of the worst times.
Shepard doesn't buy into his own hype, preferring to simply think of himself as the guy who gets the job done, and not much else. And really, despite his badass reputation? He's kind of a big dork at heart.
POWER:
A fair amount of Shepard is cybernetic, given that his body was almost entirely reconstructed by Cerberus, and additional enhancements were made to him over the course of his stay on the Normandy SR-2. What this simply means is that Shepard is slightly stronger and faster than an average human, and capable of slightly accelerated healing.
Besides being more physically adept, Shepard is also a biotic. Broadly speaking, biotics cover a wide range of abilities that can be loosely likened to telekinesis, performed through the manipulation of mass effect fields which are activated through memorized mnemonics. In some species, this is innate, but in humans biotic ability is granted by in-utero exposure to element zero -- assuming it doesn't kill you first. As a Vanguard, Shepard's fighting style is high-risk, high-reward, and his comparatively limited biotic abilities are therefore geared to suit. His biotics lack finesse, and his primary attack is a biotic charge designed to close the distance between him and an enemy as quickly as possible. In addition to this, he can detonate his biotic barriers, sacrificing defense for a short-range burst that can take out most enemies in its radius.
In addition to his canon powers, Shepard will gain the ability to summon at will one of his custom armor suits, the Collector Armor, along with the Collector Assault Rifle, based off their Mass Effect 3 specifications. In the Collector Armor, Shepard is able to take greater amounts of damage and recover more quickly. In addition, as it is a fully sealed suit capable of sustaining a stable interior environment, he can safely traverse zero-g environments or vacuums while wearing it.
However, in Mask or Menace, the armor and rifle will have limitations. He can only wear the suit for limited periods of time, as it puts a direct drain on his physical stamina. Initially, he may only be able to wear it for periods of ten minutes or so. As he grows more accustomed to it, he can work up to wearing it for more extended periods. Additionally, while the rifle does not require conventional ammunition, it will also tax him physically to use.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ The voice on the communicator is thoughtful, and a little dry. ]
This isn't exactly what you'd call a secure channel, is it?
[ There's a pause, then, like he's considering something -- or more accurately, futzing with the controls. ]
I've woken up in a lot of strange places before, but I think this might be the first time that didn't involve alcohol -- or people trying to kill me. Kind of a nice change of pace.
[ His tone's deceptively light. Like he didn't just try to punch the people who brought him here in the face. ]
So, any of you ever heard of the Systems Alliance?
[ It's as good a place to start as any, right? ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: This is from a couple of months back, but TDM link!