Asari Republics

The Asari Republics were the governmental structure of the asari, the species native to Thessia widely regarded as the most influential and respected in the galaxy. Renowned for their elegance, diplomacy, and biotic aptitude, the asari were among the earliest races to achieve interstellar flight after the Protheans and the first contemporary species to discover and settle the Citadel. Favoring compromise and cooperation over conflict, they were instrumental in proposing and founding the Citadel Council and remained at the heart of galactic society for two thousand years, normally serving as its diplomatic arm.

Origins on Thessia#

The asari arose on Thessia, a world whose abundant element zero gave much of its life biotic tendencies. The Protheans, discovering the asari, crafted the guise of a benevolent goddess named Athame to accelerate asari development, genetically granted them biotic capability, and defended Thessia from disaster. When the Protheans departed they left a single beacon, around which the asari built a temple devoted to Athame; the beacon contained the Prothean VI Vendetta and quietly drove centuries of asari technological advancement. Its existence became a closely held state secret, since revealing it would have discredited the near-universal belief that the asari had reached their heights on their own merit. By 2183 few outside the highest echelons of asari government knew of the Protheans' role.

Founding the Citadel Council#

The asari were the first contemporary race to achieve spaceflight and discover the mass relay network. When they found the Citadel in 580 BCE, the silent assistance of the keepers allowed them to settle the station quickly and learn its systems. Sixty years later the salarians made first contact, and in 500 BCE the two species founded the Citadel Council, a galactic governing body that would eventually unite dozens of races. The asari continued to explore in later centuries, making first contact with the elcor around 200 BCE and welcoming the raloi into the galactic community as late as 2185.

Government#

The Asari Republics formed a relatively broad and decentralized structure, reflecting an asari political tradition that came late to world government. For centuries Thessia was dotted with loose confederacies of republican city-states, comparable to the ancient Mediterranean, and the asari value for consensus left little impetus to form larger principalities. Only in the information age did the city-states draw together into what amounted to an electronic democracy. Aside from their single Council representative the asari had no politicians or elections, instead conducting a free-wheeling, all-inclusive legislature in which citizens debated policy at any hour through forums moderated by virtual intelligences, with every matter open to plebiscite. In practice the asari lent the greatest credence to any Matriarchs present, nearly always deferring to the experience of these millennia-old "wise women."

Culture and the long view#

Because asari commonly lived beyond a thousand years, they tended toward a "long view" uncommon among other races, comfortable with extended observation and undaunted that an investment might not pay off for decades or centuries. In interstellar relations this manifested as an unspoken policy of centrism, instinctively seeking to maintain stable balances of power. The asari traditionally spread their influence not by conquest but through cultural domination and intellectual superiority, inviting promising species into the galactic community in the knowledge that asari ideals would inevitably shape them. The mainstream asari religion was siari, a pantheistic faith holding that the universe is a single consciousness and that all life is an aspect of the greater whole, a belief reinforced by the asari ability to meld with nearly any form of life. A few asari renounced their possessions to become justicars, members of an ancient order who corrected injustice within asari space by often harsh means.

Economy and military#

The asari possessed the largest single economy in the galaxy, with extensive trade contacts and a virtual monopoly on advanced biotic technology held by craft guilds in cities such as Serrice and Armali. Their military, by contrast, resembled a collection of tribal warrior bands with no national structure: each community organized and equipped its own unit and elected a leader, though those who served were full-time professionals. The typical asari huntress, a commando in the maiden stage of life, devoted decades to martial training and fought individually or in pairs with profound tactical insight and a dancer's grace. Because their units were small and lacked heavy armor, the asari were almost incapable of conventional defensive war and instead specialized in ambush, infiltration, and assassination. As a turian saying held, the asari were the finest warriors in the galaxy, fortunately few in number. Their navy was among the most powerful in existence, possessing twenty-one dreadnoughts in 2183, including the Destiny Ascension, flagship of the Citadel Fleet, whose firepower nearly rivaled the rest of the asari fleet combined.

The Reaper War#

During the Reaper invasion of 2186 the asari initially refrained from supporting the other races, reluctant to divert resources from defending their own worlds. Despite this caution the Reapers tore through asari defenses, and hit-and-run tactics could only slow, not halt, their advance. Desperate, the asari government authorized their Councilor to reveal the long-hidden Prothean beacon in the Temple of Athame to Commander Shepard, hoping it would provide the key to completing the Crucible. As Shepard sought to retrieve the beacon's data, Thessia came under Reaper assault for the first time since the Rachni Wars and swiftly fell. Out of options, the asari at last joined the Allied war effort, committing resources to bolster the fleets and complete the Crucible, and their forces fought alongside the other races in the final confrontation over Earth.