Eden Prime
First Human Garden World
Eden Prime was one of the first human colonies founded beyond the Charon mass relay, an idyllic agrarian paradise whose Prothean ruins made it the opening battleground of the war against the Reapers.
Eden Prime was an idyllic agrarian world in the Exodus Cluster and one of the first human colonies established beyond the Charon mass relay. Its biosphere was unusually well suited to Earth-native life, drawing heavy immigration and corporate development under the Systems Alliance. To much of humanity it became a symbol of the species' ability to build thriving colonies within the wider interstellar community, but in 2183 it was the site of the geth raid that first revealed the threat of the Reapers to Commander Shepard.
A model colony#
Eden Prime was one of the earliest human colonies founded beyond the Charon mass relay, and its fertile, Earth-like biosphere drew rapid settlement by the Systems Alliance and various corporations. The colony grew into a model of organized, sustainable development, with its population housed in space-efficient arcologies that towered over thousands of kilometers of green fields and orchards. Most long-time colonists worked in agriculture, and the world was regarded across the galaxy as a beautiful and welcoming place. Census figures placed its population at roughly 3.7 million in 2183, with later data recovered from Collector records tallying just under four million.
A Prothean past#
Long before humanity arrived, Eden Prime had been a colony of the Protheans some fifty thousand years earlier. When the Reapers swept through the galaxy in that age, Reaper Destroyers and Sovereign-class vessels descended on the world and leveled its cities with the support of Collector troops. One bunker complex was meant to preserve a million Protheans in stasis, but indoctrinated traitors betrayed its location, and a cascade of disasters reduced the survivors to a mere handful. Buried in the colony's soil, these ruins left behind the technology that would draw outside powers to the world thousands of years later.
The geth raid of 2183#
In 2183 Eden Prime was attacked by a geth force led by the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, who sought a Prothean beacon unearthed on the colony. Commander Shepard, serving aboard the Normandy, responded to the attack and reached the beacon, receiving a vision that warned of an imminent Reaper invasion. That warning, and the swift action it prompted, gave the galaxy its first real knowledge of the coming threat. The raid devastated the colony and marked the opening engagement of the long war against the Reapers.
The Reaper war#
By 2186 the Reaper war had reached Eden Prime. Distress signals jammed every available frequency, fires burned across vast swaths of its farmland, and its monorail network was reduced to twisted metal. A surviving Prothean stasis pod, the last intact pod recovered from the buried bunker complex, drew the attention of Cerberus, which abducted able-bodied colonists while it worked to open the pod. A local resistance movement formed to oppose Cerberus, its success depending on the intelligence it could gather. The pod held particular value, and Cerberus had much to lose if its assault on a human colony became widely known.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Eden Prime in Mass Effect?
- Eden Prime was an idyllic agrarian world in the Exodus Cluster and one of the first human colonies established beyond the Charon mass relay. Its fertile, Earth-like biosphere drew heavy immigration and corporate development under the Systems Alliance, and it became a symbol of humanity's ability to build thriving colonies.
- What happened on Eden Prime in 2183?
- In 2183 Eden Prime was attacked by a geth force led by the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, who sought a Prothean beacon unearthed on the colony. Commander Shepard reached the beacon and received a vision warning of an imminent Reaper invasion, the event that set the war against the Reapers in motion.
- What is Eden Prime's connection to the Protheans?
- Some fifty thousand years before humanity arrived, Eden Prime had been a colony of the Protheans. When the Reapers swept through the galaxy in that age, Reaper Destroyers and Sovereign-class vessels leveled its cities with support from Collector troops, and the ruins left behind concealed a Prothean beacon buried in the colony's soil.
- How large was Eden Prime's population?
- Census figures placed Eden Prime's population at roughly 3.7 million humans in 2183, with later data recovered from Collector records tallying just under four million. The population was housed in space-efficient arcologies that towered over thousands of kilometers of farmland.
- What happened to Eden Prime during the Reaper war?
- By 2186 the Reaper war had reached Eden Prime, with distress signals jamming every frequency and fires burning across its farmland. Cerberus moved to exploit a surviving Prothean stasis pod buried beneath the colony, abducting able-bodied colonists, and a local resistance movement formed to oppose it.
Gallery
Images via Mass Effect Wiki
Sources
- WikiEden Prime — Mass Effect Wiki entry
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