Citadel Council

The Citadel Council was the governing body of the Citadel and the ultimate authority in Citadel space. Convening in the Citadel Tower, the Council passed judgement on violations of Council law, settled disputes between governments, and maintained order, often through its covert intelligence service, the Spectres. It was an executive committee composed of one representative from each member species, and although it held no official power over the independent governments of other peoples, its decisions carried enormous weight across the galaxy. The Council would prove central to the rise of humanity, the hunt for the rogue Spectre Saren, and the galaxy's eventual reckoning with the Reapers.

Structure and role#

The Council was an executive committee composed of one representative each from its member species, with no single race strong enough to defy the others, giving all a vested interest in compromise and cooperation. Each member species was associated with a general aspect of governing the galaxy: the asari were seen as diplomats and mediators, the salarians gathered intelligence and information, and the turians supplied the bulk of the military and peacekeeping forces. Any species granted an embassy on the Citadel was considered an associate member, bound by the accords of the Citadel Conventions; associate members could raise issues with the Council but had no say in its final decisions.

Founding and expansion#

The Council was founded in 500 BCE by the asari and salarians, the first two races to independently discover the Citadel at the hub of the mass relay network, with the asari proposing the partnership. Its founding marked the beginning of the Galactic Standard calendar. Over the following five centuries the Council expanded outward, making first contact with new races and incorporating them into the growing community. The volus were the earliest, granted an embassy in 200 BCE in recognition of contributions such as the Unified Banking Act that established the credit as a standard currency, and the batarians, elcor, hanar, and quarians were welcomed during the same era.

Wars of the early Council#

Peaceful expansion ended with the accidental discovery of the hive-minded rachni around 1 CE, who reacted with extreme hostility and began a large-scale war. Unable to negotiate with the rachni queens in their underground nests, the Council turned the tide after the salarians made first contact with the krogan in 80 CE, uplifting and manipulating the resilient species into serving as soldiers. The krogan stormed rachni nests and exterminated the queens, and by 300 CE the rachni were declared extinct. A lasting result was the prohibition on activating uncharted mass relays.

Some four centuries later the krogan, having exploded in numbers and encroached on other races' territories, refused a Council order to withdraw from the asari colony of Lusia, sparking the Krogan Rebellions. The conflict persisted for a century until the Council made first contact with the turians, who declared war on the krogan and deployed the salarian-developed genophage to cripple their ability to replenish their forces. After the Rebellions, the Citadel Conventions were drawn up, the turians assumed the military niche the krogan had vacated, and they were inducted as the Council's third full member around 900 CE.

Humanity and the Reaper denial#

The next thousand years were relatively peaceful, broken by incidents such as the Geth War of 1895 CE, after which the Council revoked the quarians' embassy and tightened laws on artificial intelligence research. The Council intervened in the Relay 314 Incident of 2157, the brief conflict humans called the First Contact War, brokering a peace that forced the turians to pay reparations. Humanity rose quickly to prominence and was granted a Citadel embassy in 2165.

When Commander Shepard's induction as the first human Spectre coincided with the exposure of the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, the Council tasked Shepard with apprehending him but repeatedly refused to treat the Reapers as anything more than a story Saren used to control the geth, citing the absence of corroborating intelligence. The salarian councilor explained that the Council's decisions affected trillions of lives and could not be made on a single person's word without evidence. Reluctant to risk war with the Terminus Systems, the Council declined to send a fleet to Ilos, and Shepard escaped a grounded Normandy just before Saren and the Reaper Sovereign assaulted the Citadel.

The Battle of the Citadel and its aftermath#

During the assault, the Council was evacuated to the asari dreadnought Destiny Ascension, which came under heavy fire. Returning through the Conduit, Shepard faced a choice in deploying the arriving Alliance fleet that determined the Council's fate. Focusing on Sovereign and abandoning the Council led to the destruction of the Destiny Ascension and the deaths of the councilors, after which a new Council was formed; alternatively, the fleet could save the Ascension and the Council at the cost of many human lives, after which the Council accepted that the Reapers were real and invited humanity to join. Either outcome left the galaxy looking to humanity and the Council for guidance against the Reaper threat. In some accounts a human representative, David Anderson or Donnel Udina, was elevated to the Council in the aftermath.

The Reaper War#

By 2186 the full Reaper assault forced the Council to acknowledge the threat it had long denied, though the member races remained more concerned with their own borders than with retaking Earth. Shepard worked to win their support, helping broker a krogan-turian alliance by addressing the genophage. The Council then suffered a betrayal from within when Councilor Udina, having moved vast sums for unspecified purposes, reached out to Cerberus and helped launch a coup led by the assassin Kai Leng. Shepard foiled the coup, and whether the salarian councilor survived the attempt depended on Shepard's past deeds. Udina was killed as the plot collapsed, and the surviving Council lent its support to constructing the Crucible. Late in the war the asari councilor revealed a long-hidden Prothean beacon on Thessia that could illuminate the Crucible's final component, the Catalyst, though Shepard failed to secure its information before the asari government's contingencies took over.

Military and intelligence#

The Council's chief peacekeeping force was the Citadel Fleet, composed mostly of turian vessels and large enough to patrol numerous mass relays while garrisoning the Citadel, with the Destiny Ascension serving as its flagship. The Council Demilitarization Enforcement Mission, established under the armistice that ended the Krogan Rebellions, policed the Krogan Demilitarized Zone and managed the planetary shroud over Tuchanka. The salarians handled much of the Council's intelligence work through the Special Tasks Group, while the Spectres, individuals invested with the Council's full authority and answerable only to it, operated with near-total freedom under the law to preserve galactic stability.