Collectors

The Collectors were an enigmatic race that lived beyond the Omega 4 Relay, a mass relay in the same system as the station Omega in the Terminus Systems. Rarely seen even in the Terminus and all but unheard of in Citadel space, they were widely regarded as a myth, glimpsed on Omega only once every few centuries. They were best known for strange trade requests in which they offered startlingly advanced technology in exchange for living beings gathered in oddly specific numbers and varieties, and no one knew what became of those they took. In truth they were the subjugated remnants of the Protheans, tools of the Reapers.

Biology and origin#

The Collectors resembled human-sized bipedal insects, with chitinous exoskeletons, vestigial forelimbs, four eyes, large tapering heads, and wings for short flights. Each appeared to be little more than a drone with no distinction between individuals, communicating mostly in insectoid chirps and trills though able to speak other languages when needed. When Shepard's team explored a supposedly derelict Collector ship, they found that the Collectors shared the quad-strand genetic structure unique to the Protheans, a race long believed extinct. Their DNA bore the marks of extensive genetic rewriting, with fewer chromosomes and stripped-out sequences.

Studying the data, the salarian scientist Mordin Solus concluded that the Reapers had indoctrinated the Protheans and, as prolonged indoctrination eroded their abilities, compensated with cybernetic modification, until each Collector was little more than a clone riddled with implants, lacking glands or a digestive system and stripped of self-awareness. He judged them closer to husks than slaves, mindless drones without culture, creativity, or any concern for self-preservation.

The Collector General and Harbinger#

The Collectors were overseen by a single General that served as intermediary between them and the Reaper Harbinger. The General differed greatly from a standard Collector, lacking humanoid traits, with a much larger head, a short body, and clawed limbs. Through this connection Harbinger could remotely possess any individual Collector, turning it instantly into the most dangerous Collector on the battlefield. When possessed, a Collector's outer surface cracked open to reveal a glow like molten rock, its eyes burning orange, and it gained armor, biotic barriers, and powerful biotic attacks. The effect strongly resembled the husk conversion process Sovereign used on Saren's corpse.

History and emergence#

The Collectors arose in the closing years of the Reapers' harvest of the Protheans, the end result of extensive experimentation on captured Protheans. They were deployed against the last of their own kind: when the Protheans tried to wait out the harvest in stasis bunkers on Eden Prime, indoctrinated agents betrayed the plan, and Collector Drones infiltrated the bunkers and destroyed hundreds of thousands of stasis pods, leaving the soldier Javik among the few survivors. When the harvest ended, the Collectors withdrew beyond the Omega 4 Relay.

The modern galaxy began reporting Collector sightings around 1600 CE, but the aliens were dismissed as myth, and no vessel that ventured beyond the Omega 4 Relay ever returned. They operated through agents and strange trades, taking living beings whose fate was never known. In 2183, weeks after the Battle of the Citadel, a lone Collector vessel destroyed the original Normandy, and Shepard was lost in the attack; the Collectors then sought the Commander's body through the Shadow Broker, though Liara T'Soni retrieved it first for Project Lazarus.

The abductions and the Collector Base#

In 2185 the Collectors reappeared as the culprits behind mysterious mass abductions of human colonies. They struck without warning, jamming communications and releasing Seeker Swarms, insectoid probes that paralyzed everyone in the colony, then sealed the victims in stasis pods and departed leaving no trace, obliterating settlements from orbit when resistance was heavy. At least a dozen human colonies were known to have been attacked.

Recognizing a Reaper connection, Cerberus recruited the resurrected Commander Shepard to investigate. Securing safe passage through the Omega 4 Relay, Shepard's team found not a homeworld but the Collector Base, a vast station near the galactic core where tens of thousands of captured humans were being broken down and used to build a Human-Reaper. Shepard destroyed the construct and set the base to be destroyed, and as the General perished, Harbinger condemned its failure and declared it was releasing control, revealing that a Reaper had directed the Collectors all along.

Return during the Reaper War#

During the Reaper invasion of 2186 the Collectors returned in force, emerging from dark space on low-velocity transports called Black Arks so they could keep a low profile while the galaxy fixed its attention on the Reapers. They served as deadly reserves, wiping out pockets of resistance, and were among the forces the Reapers turned against the turians and their krogan allies at the battle for Palaven, deploying Abominations, Praetorians, and Scions alongside Collector troops. Not all remained loyal, however; the Leviathans, with enthrallment abilities of their own, severed Harbinger's connection to some Collectors. Most so freed died, but a few survivors joined the galaxy's fight to avenge their Prothean ancestors.