Dragoon: Cerberus's biotic shock trooper

The Dragoon was a heavily armored combat specialist fielded by Cerberus during the Reaper War. Where most of the organization's infantry fought from cover behind rifles and kinetic barriers, the Dragoon was built for the opposite kind of war. Armed with lashes of biotic energy and sheathed in dense armor plating, Dragoons crossed open ground at a speed no other Cerberus soldier could match, lunging into enemy positions to drag defenders out from behind their barricades. Their signature whips marked them as products of the organization's long experiments in human biotic enhancement, and many players have linked the Dragoon to Project Phoenix, the Cerberus program that had tried to build stronger human biotics before its original operatives deserted, though the game never confirms it. Dragoons appear in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer and in the Armax Arsenal Arena added by the Citadel add-on. (Mass Effect 3; Mass Effect 3: Citadel)

Origins in Project Phoenix#

Cerberus never explained where its Dragoons came from, and the game leaves the question open. Among the many projects the organization ran under the Illusive Man, Project Phoenix experimented on enhancing human physiology to develop stronger biotics. The program's operatives were formidable, but their loyalty did not survive the organization's methods. When the Illusive Man began using indoctrination to guarantee the obedience of his troops, many Phoenix operatives deserted Cerberus entirely, carrying their enhancements and their training over to the organization's enemies. (Mass Effect 3)

The Dragoons that later appeared in Cerberus ranks bore an unmistakable resemblance to those defectors. Both wielded the same biotic armament, the whip and the ground slamming smash, though the energy of a Dragoon's attacks burned yellow where the Phoenix operatives' burned blue. Both wore armor of the same design. The parallel has led many players to suspect that Dragoons were the end result of Project Phoenix, but that is a fan reading rather than anything the game states. (Mass Effect 3)

Whatever their origin, Dragoons occupied a distinct position in the Cerberus military. The organization's forces during the Reaper War ranged from massed Assault Troopers and squad leading Centurions to Guardians behind their shields, Combat Engineers with their turrets, Nemesis snipers, Phantom assassins, and the towering Atlas mechs. Within that order of battle the Dragoon served as the armored combat specialist, armed with biotic lashes for close to mid range attacks, the soldier Cerberus sent forward when a position had to be broken rather than besieged. (Mass Effect 3)

Armament and capabilities#

The Dragoon's defining weapons were its biotic lashes, whips of coherent energy it used in several distinct ways. A Dragoon could hurl itself toward an enemy behind its lashes, a lunge that covered considerable distances with startling speed, or bring them down against the ground in a smash that struck everything around it at once. The lashes ignored intervening cover altogether. A soldier crouched behind a barricade that stopped gunfire cold was no safer from a Dragoon's whips than one standing in the open, which made the Dragoon uniquely suited to flushing entrenched defenders out of protected positions. (Mass Effect 3)

For ranged work each Dragoon carried an M-25 Hornet, the Cerberus machine pistol, and its skill with the weapon was routinely underestimated. Enemies who prepared only for the whips discovered that a Dragoon's Hornet bursts were powerful enough to collapse a soldier's kinetic barriers in moments, and that a group of Dragoons firing while they closed the distance could be a greater threat with guns than with lashes. Against a fallen enemy the Dragoon showed no restraint at all. A Dragoon that reached a wounded fighter on the ground would finish the kill with a single crushing stomp. (Mass Effect 3)

Protection and weaknesses#

Dragoons went into battle behind heavy armor plating and nothing else. They carried no kinetic barrier shielding and generated no biotic barriers whatsoever, an unusual choice for soldiers of their role, and their protection was pure mass. That mass carried its own advantages. A Dragoon was far too heavy to be seized and hauled over a barricade, and the mass effect fields biotics used to pull, throw, or suspend ordinary infantry found no purchase on one. Even a stasis field, which could freeze most soldiers where they stood, failed to hold a Dragoon. (Mass Effect 3)

The armor had gaps all the same. Electrical attacks, overload surges and energy draining fields among them, could shock a Dragoon into a momentary stagger, though a Dragoon in the middle of a lash strike or a lunge powered through such shocks without slowing. Marksmen found a subtler opening. During the windup before a lunging smash and in the recovery after it, a Dragoon's head stayed comparatively still, and a shooter patient enough to time the moment could place a precise shot where the armor mattered least. (Mass Effect 3)

Doctrine in the field#

Dragoon doctrine was built on speed and pressure. They moved much faster than any other Cerberus soldier, fast enough that their closing speed deceived defenders who judged them safely distant, and they did not take cover. A Dragoon charged directly into close range, trusting its armor, and pushed enemies out of their positions by making the positions worthless. Faced with a low barricade, a Dragoon would not even vault it; it simply struck at the soldiers sheltering behind it with lashes the barricade could not stop. (Mass Effect 3)

They almost never fought alone. Dragoons traveled in pairs and trios, and coordinated groups were known to lunge together at an isolated fighter and bring the target down almost instantly. They worked closely with Phantoms, the two Cerberus specialists surrounding and flanking an enemy squad between them, the Dragoons pinning defenders in place while the blades closed in. Automated distractions failed against them entirely. Dragoons ignored combat drones, decoys, and sentry turrets rather than wasting attention on them, though any such device caught in the arc of a lash was destroyed outright. (Mass Effect 3)

Dragoons in simulation#

The Dragoon's reputation outlived its battles in the training halls of the Citadel. The Armax Arsenal Arena, the combat simulator on the Silversun Strip, reproduced Dragoons in its Cerberus scenarios, the only place outside multiplayer where a player meets them. (Mass Effect 3: Citadel)