Batarian

The batarians were a species of four-eyed bipeds native to the world of Khar'shan, widely regarded across the galaxy as disreputable after their government chose to isolate them from the rest of galactic society. The Terminus Systems were rife with batarian pirate gangs and slaving rings, which fueled the stereotype of the batarian thug, though most batarians were ordinary citizens forbidden by their paranoid government from leaving batarian space. Their long-running grievances with the Citadel Council and simmering hostility toward humanity placed them in repeated conflict with the Systems Alliance, and they would later be among the first peoples overwhelmed by the Reapers.

Biology#

Batarians were an anthropoidal species comparable in build to humans and asari. Their faces were covered in short, fine hairs that grew longer and thicker around the mouth, and a flat stripe of ridged cartilage ran along the tops of their skulls and down the backs of their necks. Their voices were deep and guttural compared to a human's, and their mouths held dozens of sharp, needle-like teeth.

Their most distinctive feature was their four eyes. One pair was set wide in prominent bony sockets at the corners of the face, while a second, smaller pair sat closer together higher on the face, just below the middle of the forehead. The eyes were uniformly dark orbs without discernible irises or pupils. Batarians displayed a wide range of skin tones, from reddish-brown and greenish hues to light brown and teal, and some bore striped colorations on their heads. Batarian blood was red.

History and isolation#

Upon achieving spaceflight, the batarians discovered concealed Prothean ruins on Bira, a moon of Verush, which enabled them to develop faster-than-light travel. Because earthquakes had damaged those ruins, they took pride in having had less information to work with than other spacefaring races. The Citadel Council later granted them an embassy, roughly a century after first contact.

Despite their welcome into the galactic community, batarian aggression caused several crises. A batarian fleet bombarded the salarian colony of Mannovai around 1785 CE, the Hegemony annexed the asari colony of Esan in 1913, and Citadel forces clashed with batarian forces on Enael in 2115. The decisive rupture came over the Skyllian Verge, which humans began colonizing in the mid-2160s in a region the batarians were already settling. When the Council refused in 2171 to declare the Verge an area of batarian interest, the Hegemony closed its Citadel embassy, severed diplomatic and economic relations, and became an inward-looking rogue state. Government money and weapons then flowed to criminal groups who raided human colonies such as Mindoir, culminating in the Skyllian Blitz of 2176, an attack on the colony of Elysium by batarian-funded pirates and slavers. In 2178 the Alliance retaliated with a crushing assault on the moon of Torfan, after which the batarians retreated into their own systems.

Culture and religion#

Batarians placed extremely high value on social caste and appearance, and overstepping one's place was deeply frowned upon. Caste status could be purchased on an ongoing basis, allowing the wealthy to buy their way into elite circles, and casting aspersions on a social better's monetary worth was a serious insult. Batarians believed that species with fewer than four eyes were less intelligent, and they often gained an edge in interspecies arguments because others struggled to know which eyes to focus on.

Slavery was an integral part of the batarian caste system, so deeply ingrained that batarians regarded the Council's anti-slavery stance as discriminatory even though the practice violated Council law. Rogue slave rings were feared throughout the galaxy, and abducted victims were often implanted with painful control devices in their skulls. Body language carried great weight as well, since tilting the head to the left signified admiration and respect while tilting it to the right signaled a sense of superiority. Batarian religious beliefs were little understood, though they held that a person's soul left the body through the eyes upon death, making the treatment of the corpse unimportant unless the eyes had been removed by an enemy.

Government and military#

The Batarian Hegemony governed batarian space and remained hostile to the Systems Alliance while staying beneath the notice of the more powerful Council races. A Department of Information Control ensured that only government-approved news entered or left batarian space, and the homeworld of Khar'shan remained divided among competing nation-states. The Hegemony blamed humanity for its troubles, covertly supporting scams, slave raids, and terrorist attacks against human targets while publicly disavowing them.

Citadel sanctions had reduced the batarian military to a paper tiger that fought rivals through deniable terrorism rather than open war. Most of its hardware was produced by Batarian State Arms, a vast nationalized corporation infamous for waste and corruption. The fleet operated at least one dreadnought and smaller vessels such as the Hensa class of cruisers, and as a non-Citadel race the batarians were not bound by the Treaty of Farixen limiting dreadnought numbers. A special forces division known as the Special Intervention Unit was notorious for its brutal training, and other branches such as the Batarian External Forces, in which Ka'hairal Balak held high rank, were believed to handle unconventional operations.

The Reaper War#

When the Alpha Relay was destroyed, the Reapers entered the galaxy through the Vular system near the heart of batarian space and quickly advanced on Khar'shan. The batarian response was uncoordinated, in part because the Hegemony had recovered the Leviathan of Dis, a billion-year-old Reaper corpse, from Jartar in 2163 and conducted secret studies of its technology. Those studies allowed the Leviathan to indoctrinate the science team and prominent officials, who sabotaged the Hegemony's defenses and broadcast misleading messages in 2186, allowing the Reapers to crush the batarian navy and conquer their systems with ease.

Captured batarians were converted into Reaper husks called Cannibals and dispatched to battlefields across the galaxy, while those who escaped became refugees on alien territory, some sheltering on the Citadel itself. The few ships that survived the fall of Khar'shan fled to Alliance space alongside thousands of refugees. Surviving batarian soldiers contributed to the war effort against the Reapers, though Alliance reports noted that their participation, while appreciated, had not yet earned them full trust and respect.

Earlier crises and the X57 plot#

Before the full Reaper invasion, batarian extremists figured in several incidents. In 2183, a group led by the ringleader Balak hijacked Asteroid X57, intending at first to enslave the human engineers stationed there but ultimately executing them and attempting to drop the asteroid on the human colony of Terra Nova. Some of Balak's underlings, including his second-in-command Charn, balked at the atrocity, having signed on expecting only a slave raid. The attempted asteroid drop, which would have killed millions, was thwarted by Commander Shepard, though whether Balak survived depended on Shepard's choices. If Balak escaped, the Reaper invasion later left him the highest-ranking surviving member of the Hegemony's military, and he made his way to the Citadel where he directed the remnants of the batarian fleet against the Reapers; Shepard could persuade him to lend that fleet to the war or kill him for his crimes above Terra Nova.