Commander Shepard

Commander Shepard was a graduate of the Systems Alliance N7 special forces program and the executive officer of the frigate SSV Normandy, who rose to become the first human inducted into the Spectres, the elite operatives of the Citadel Council. Shepard led the hunt for the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, defeated the ancient warship Sovereign at the Battle of the Citadel, and afterward stood at the center of the galaxy's war against the Reapers. Much about Shepard, including the Commander's first name, gender, upbringing, and the moral course taken across the war, was never a settled matter, and the records of those years preserved several different accounts of the same events.

A soldier of the Systems Alliance#

Shepard was born on April 11, 2154, and became a graduate of the Systems Alliance N7 special forces program, the highest distinction the Alliance military conferred on its operatives. By the time of the events that made the Commander famous, Shepard was already a decorated veteran, and was known to be a biotic, having been exposed to element zero in childhood. Beyond these facts, much of Shepard's early life was recorded in differing forms. In some accounts Shepard was a spacer born to two career Alliance officers, raised aboard ships and stations; in others, an orphan who survived the streets of Earth's megacities, or a colonist whose home on the border world of Mindoir was raided by slavers.

The Commander's reputation likewise rested on different deeds depending on the account. Shepard was variously remembered as the sole survivor of a disastrous mission on Akuze, where a thresher maw destroyed the rest of the unit; as the war hero who almost single-handedly threw back a batarian slaver assault on the colony of Elysium during the Skyllian Blitz, earning the Star of Terra, the Alliance's highest honor; or as a ruthless commander who got the job done at any cost during the assault on Torfan. What every account agreed on was that Shepard had a gift for command, the kind of presence that made others willing to follow the Commander into any danger.

The first human Spectre#

In 2183, Shepard served as executive officer aboard the SSV Normandy under Captain David Anderson. Unknown to Shepard at first, Alliance officials and the Council were weighing the Commander as a candidate to become the first human admitted to the Spectres, the agents who answered directly to the Citadel Council and operated outside ordinary law. The Normandy's first mission, the covert recovery of a Prothean beacon from the human colony of Eden Prime, was meant in part to test Shepard's worth, with the turian Spectre Nihlus Kryik aboard to observe.

The mission went badly. Eden Prime came under attack by the geth and a vast warship, Nihlus was murdered, and Shepard learned that the assault had been led by Saren Arterius, a senior turian Spectre. When Shepard made contact with the beacon, it implanted a fragmentary vision of galactic destruction. The Council at first refused to believe one of its own Spectres had turned traitor, and Shepard was forced to gather evidence of Saren's crimes. With proof recovered, the Council revoked Saren's status and inducted Shepard as the first human Spectre, charged with bringing the renegade in.

The hunt for Saren and the Battle of the Citadel#

As a Spectre, Shepard took command of the Normandy and pursued Saren across the galaxy, assembling a team drawn from several species along the way. The trail revealed that Saren served Sovereign, an ancient machine that proved to be a Reaper, and that he sought a Prothean device called the Conduit. Shepard tracked Saren to the world of Virmire and confronted him, warning the turian that Sovereign had indoctrinated him and was subtly bending his will; Saren denied it and escaped, though the words took root.

Saren reached the lost Prothean world of Ilos first and used the Conduit to bypass the Citadel's defenses while Sovereign and a geth fleet assaulted the station from outside, intending to open the way for the rest of the Reapers waiting in dark space. Following through the Conduit, Shepard caught up to Saren at the Citadel's controls. In some accounts Shepard convinced the broken Spectre that he could still resist Sovereign, and Saren took his own life rather than complete his master's work; in others, Shepard was forced to kill him in battle. Either way, Sovereign reanimated Saren's corpse for a final confrontation before Shepard's team destroyed it, leaving the Reaper open to the Alliance fleet. During the battle Shepard could choose whether to divert the Alliance ships to save the Council aboard the Destiny Ascension or to let it fall and concentrate on Sovereign, a decision that shaped the politics of the galaxy afterward.

Death and the Lazarus Project#

Following the victory at the Citadel, Shepard returned to duty hunting the remnants of the geth. While the Normandy searched a remote sector, it was attacked and torn apart by an unknown ship. Shepard saw the crew to the escape pods and went to retrieve the pilot, Joker, but in the process was thrown into space when the Commander's hardsuit was breached. Shepard suffocated in the void, and the original Normandy was lost.

Shepard's body was recovered, and over the following two years the pro-human organization Cerberus, under its leader the Illusive Man, poured enormous resources into the Lazarus Project, an effort to rebuild and revive the Commander organically and synthetically. The Illusive Man refused to allow any control implant, insisting Shepard be restored exactly as before. Shepard awoke two years later on a Cerberus station under attack, scarred by cybernetics that had not fully healed. Those scars were said to brighten or fade with the Commander's conduct, glowing more fiercely the more ruthless Shepard's choices became.

The Collectors and the Omega 4 Relay#

Restored and uneasy in Cerberus' employ, Shepard learned that entire human colonies were vanishing from the Terminus Systems. With the Council and the Alliance hampered by denial and red tape, only Cerberus would act, and Shepard agreed to investigate aboard a newly built frigate, the Normandy SR-2. The trail led to the Collectors, an enigmatic species revealed to be descended from the Protheans and remade by the Reapers, who were harvesting humans for an unknown purpose beyond the Omega 4 Relay.

Shepard recruited a team of specialists from across the galaxy and led them through the relay on what was widely regarded as a suicide mission to strike the Collector base. Who lived and who died on that mission was never fixed; the survival of the team and of the Normandy's crew depended on how thoroughly Shepard had prepared and on the choices made under fire. At the base, the Illusive Man pressed Shepard to preserve it intact so its technology could be turned against the Reapers. Shepard could destroy the base or spare it, and could break with Cerberus or remain in its confidence; in most accounts the Commander rejected the Illusive Man's ambitions and severed ties with the organization.

The Reaper War and the final choice#

In 2186 the Reapers at last entered the galaxy and fell upon Earth. Shepard, by then detained by the Alliance, escaped aboard the refitted Normandy SR-2 as David Anderson stayed behind to lead the resistance, reinstating his protege and charging Shepard with finding help. Acting on intelligence that the Protheans had designed a superweapon, Shepard set out to unite the galaxy's peoples behind the construction of the device, called the Crucible, while Admiral Hackett marshaled the fleets.

Across the war Shepard brokered alliances that had seemed impossible, and the resolution of each was the Commander's to shape: the cure for the krogan genophage, the fate of the geth and the quarians, the survival of the rachni, and the loyalty of countless smaller powers all turned on Shepard's decisions. The Illusive Man, by then indoctrinated, opposed Shepard at every turn, seeking to control the Reapers rather than destroy them. In the final battle for Earth, Shepard was gravely wounded reaching the Citadel, confronted the Illusive Man one last time, and was brought before the Catalyst, the intelligence that governed the Reapers and their endless cycle.

The Catalyst offered Shepard a choice of how to end the cycle. The Commander could destroy the Reapers, at the cost of all synthetic life including the geth and the artificial intelligence EDI; could seize control of the Reapers and bend them to a new purpose; or could trigger a synthesis that merged organic and synthetic life into a single new order. Shepard could also refuse to choose at all, leaving the cycle to run its course. Which path Shepard took, and whether the Commander survived it, was never settled. In the accounts that endured, Shepard activated the Crucible and broke the Reapers' grip, and in the cycles that followed was remembered only as "The Shepard," a near-legendary figure whose name was set above all others on the memorial of the Normandy.