Mass Effect category

Species

39 entries tagged Species, 39 of them long reads. The rest of the wiki points here most often at Reaper and Collectors.

Every Mass Effect Species and Race, With LifespansA field guide to every sapient species in Mass Effect, from the Council races and their clients to the krogan, the geth, the Protheans and the peoples of the Heleus Cluster. Each entry gives the homeworld, the lifespan where the games actually state one, and where the species stood with the Citadel.
Justicars: the asari order that answers only to the CodeJusticars were asari who gave up family, property and everything but weapons and armour to wander asari space enforcing a code of more than five thousand sutras. The Code admitted no moral grey and commonly prescribed death, which made justicars both revered and feared by the governments that tolerated them.
Background Races: the vanished civilizations known only from ruinsAcross billions of years, countless races rose to sentience in the Milky Way and Andromeda, forged civilizations, explored the depths of space, and became extinct. The contemporary galaxy knew most of them only through ruins, wreckage, and artifacts, from the crypt builders of Armeni to the nameless dead entombed in the clouds of Anjea.
AngaraThe angara were the only known living sapient race native to the Heleus Cluster of the Andromeda galaxy. After a catastrophe called the Scourge shattered their ancient civilization, they rebuilt only to face the invading kett, against whom they waged a decades-long resistance.
AsariThe asari, native to Thessia, were among the most influential species in the galaxy, renowned for their elegance, biotic talent, and millennium-long lifespans. A mono-gender people able to reproduce with a partner of any species, they founded the Citadel Council and stood at the heart of galactic society for two thousand years.
BansheeBanshees were synthetic organic monstrosities created by the Reapers from asari who carried the Ardat-Yakshi gene. Intelligent and grotesquely biotic, they teleported across the battlefield in glowing surges and impaled their prey, and they were most often found leading a Reaper strike force.
BatarianThe batarians were a four-eyed species native to Khar'shan whose insular government, the Batarian Hegemony, withdrew from the galactic community and became infamous for slavery, piracy, and hostility toward humanity before the Reapers overran their space.
BruteBrutes were synthetic organic creatures the Reapers fashioned by fusing krogan and turian bodies and remaking them with their technology. Towering and heavily armored, they filled the heavy melee role in Reaper ground assaults, charging into the enemy line to crush smaller troops.
CollectorsThe Collectors were an enigmatic insectoid race dwelling beyond the Omega 4 Relay, long dismissed as myth. In truth they were the last of the Protheans, genetically rewritten and cybernetically enslaved by the Reapers, who used them to abduct human colonies and build a Human-Reaper.
DrellThe drell were a reptile-like species rescued from their dying homeworld of Rakhana by the hanar, to whom they remained bound by a tradition of service called the Compact. They were known for their eidetic memory and deep religious belief in the separation of body and soul.
ElcorThe elcor were a massive, four-legged Citadel species from the high-gravity world of Dekuuna, whose cautious psychology and ponderous, emotionless speech reflected an environment where a single fall could be fatal. Slow but immensely strong, they were nicknamed living tanks by their enemies.
Geth PrimeGeth Primes were the largest and most powerful geth infantry platforms, heavy units that served as command and control nodes on the battlefield. Sheathed in armor and heavy shielding, a Prime carried a punishing pulse weapon and a combat intelligence that sharpened the fire of every geth around it.
Geth Rocket TrooperGeth Rocket Troopers were geth support platforms that wielded rocket launchers, accompanying other geth into battle and firing from a distance. Specialized for heavy firepower against grouped enemies, they were marked out by their distinctive armor coloring.
Geth TrooperGeth Troopers were the standard infantry of the geth, lightly equipped platforms that formed the bulk of the synthetics' ground forces. They fought in groups, supported by heavier and more specialized geth units.
GethThe geth were a race of networked artificial intelligences built by the quarians as laborers. When they gained sentience and questioned their makers, the quarians tried to exterminate them; the geth won the resulting Morning War and withdrew behind the Perseus Veil to build their own future.
HanarThe hanar were a jellyfish-like Citadel species from the ocean world of Kahje, among the few non-bipedal races in galactic society. They were renowned for their scrupulous politeness, their two-name custom of face and soul names, and their fervent worship of the Protheans, whom they called the Enkindlers.
HumansHumans were the newest sentient species of note to enter galactic affairs, and also the most rapidly expanding. After discovering a Prothean data cache on Mars and unlocking the mass relay network, they rose within decades from isolated newcomers to a power whose ambition and military strength unsettled the older Council races.
HuskHusks were synthetic-organic creatures made from the bodies of organic beings, their flesh converted into cybernetic material by Reaper technology. Mindless and aggressive, they served the Reapers and their agents as shock troops and as a weapon of terror against the living.
InusannonThe inusannon were an ancient spacefaring race that existed at least 127,000 years ago and were wiped out by the Reapers. Tens of thousands of years later, the ruins of their civilization gave the Protheans the knowledge to develop mass effect technology.
KeepersThe keepers were a docile, bio-engineered insectoid race found only aboard the Citadel, where they tended the station's systems in total silence. Long assumed to be Prothean servants, they were in truth a relic of the Reapers, repurposed by the cycle to keep the great station ready for its next inhabitants.
Kett: Conquerors of HeleusThe kett were a hostile, militaristic species encountered by the Andromeda Initiative in the Heleus Cluster. Unable to breed by natural means, they expanded their ranks and their empire through exaltation, a process that converted captured members of other species into obedient kett.
KroganThe krogan were a hardy, long-lived reptilian species from the brutal world of Tuchanka, uplifted by the salarians to win the Rachni Wars before their explosive growth made them a threat in turn. The turian-deployed genophage crippled their fertility and left them a scattered, fatalistic people.
LeviathanThe Leviathans were an ancient aquatic species that ruled the galaxy before the Reapers, dominating lesser races through a power akin to indoctrination. After their own creation turned against them and built the first Reaper from their flesh, the survivors went into hiding through cycle after cycle.
PraetorianThe Praetorian was a slow-moving aerial construct fielded by the Collectors, built from dozens of deformed human husks fused into a single armored body. It was armed with twin particle beams and shielded by a regenerating biotic barrier, and it served as one of the deadliest guardians of the Collectors' operations.
ProtheanThe Protheans were an ancient race who ruled a galaxy-wide empire before mysteriously vanishing some fifty thousand years ago, harvested by the Reapers. Long credited with building the Citadel and mass relays, they secretly nurtured younger species, leaving ruins and technology that shaped the modern galaxy.
QuarianThe quarians were a nomadic, technologically gifted species exiled from their homeworld Rannoch after their created servants, the geth, gained sentience and drove them out. For generations they wandered the galaxy aboard the Migrant Fleet, a vast flotilla of salvaged ships.
Rachni QueenThe rachni queens are the towering, telepathic matriarchs of the hive-minded rachni species. One such queen, hatched in captivity centuries after her kind was thought extinct, became a pivotal figure in the age of Commander Shepard.
RachniThe rachni were a spacefaring, hive-minded insectoid species from the planet Suen whose expansion ignited the Rachni Wars roughly two thousand years before Commander Shepard's era. Driven to apparent extinction by the krogan, a single surviving queen would later place the fate of the entire species in Shepard's hands.
RaloiThe raloi were an avian, feathered species from the planet Turvess who made first contact with the asari in 2184 after their first space telescope spotted an asari cruiser. Newly welcomed to galactic society, they withdrew and isolated themselves at the onset of the Reaper War.
RavagerRavagers were synthetic-organic creatures the Reapers fashioned from captured rachni, deployed during the Reaper War as mobile artillery that bombarded enemy positions from afar and spawned swarms of smaller creatures to harry their foes.
ReaperThe Reapers were an ancient race of synthetic-organic starships that hibernated in dark space and returned once every fifty thousand years to harvest the galaxy's advanced life. They built the Citadel and the mass relay network to guide civilization down a predictable path, then reaped it to preserve organic life from synthetic destruction.
SalarianThe salarians of Sur'Kesh were warm-blooded amphibians with a hyperactive metabolism, fast-thinking and short-lived, renowned for invention, espionage, and non-linear reasoning. The second species to join the Citadel, they uplifted the krogan and later engineered the genophage.
Scion: Fused Husk ArtilleryScions were a heavy variant of Husk built from three human Husks fused together and grafted around a single mass effect weapon. Slow and heavily armored, they hung back from the front line and rained ranged fire and shockwaves on their targets while lesser Husks rushed ahead.
ThorianThe Thorian, also called Species 37, was an ancient sentient plant on Feros, at least fifty thousand years old. It controlled the minds of those who inhaled its spores, turning them into thralls, and held an entire colony in its grip until Commander Shepard destroyed it in 2183.
Thresher MawThresher maws were enormous, burrowing carnivores that erupted from the ground without warning to devour anything in reach. Spread across the galaxy by spores robust enough to survive deep space, they became a deadly hazard from the colony of Akuze to the wastelands of Tuchanka.
TurianThe turians of Palaven were a militaristic, disciplined species who earned a Citadel Council seat by defeating the krogan in the Krogan Rebellions and unleashing the genophage. Famed for their public service ethic and their contributions to the Citadel Fleet, they filled the galaxy's peacekeeping role for centuries.
VolusThe volus were a suited, ammonia-breathing species from the high-pressure world of Irune, a Citadel associate race and client of the Turian Hierarchy. Masters of trade and finance, they authored the galaxy's banking standards yet were never granted a seat on the Council.
VorchaThe vorcha were a short-lived, savagely aggressive species from the depleted world of Heshtok, regarded across the galaxy as pests and scavengers. Their unique cellular biology let them adapt rapidly to any environment, making them prized as mercenary muscle by the krogan Blood Pack.
YahgThe yahg were a towering, violently aggressive species native to Parnack, consummate predators with eight eyes and unrivaled perceptiveness. After they massacred a Citadel delegation in 2125, the Council barred them from galactic society, though one yahg would secretly rise to become the Shadow Broker.