Rachni Queen

The rachni queens were the matriarchs of the hive-minded, insectoid rachni species, the largest of their kind and the guiding intelligence of every brood. Through a form of telepathic song they directed their soldiers and workers and could even speak through receptive members of other species. Believed extinct since the krogan exterminated the rachni at the close of the Rachni Wars, a single queen survived in cryogenic suspension to be hatched in captivity, and her fate became one of the most consequential choices placed before Commander Shepard.

Nature of the queens#

Rachni queens were powerful and intelligent creatures, the largest of their species at roughly fifty feet in length. They guided the soldiers and workers of their broods through a form of telepathic song, a faculty that also let them speak through receptive beings of other species. Each queen carried the genetic memory of her mother, so that she was effectively born already possessing the collective knowledge of the hive that came before her.

Queens resembled the rachni brood warriors but were far larger, with darker skin and glowing eyes. Though typically mated to brood warriors, they did not strictly require a male to reproduce, for a queen carried the genetic information of her fathers within her and could lay eggs even when no warriors were present. A queen was said to be capable of laying enormous numbers of eggs within hours, raising an entire colony in a matter of days. Queens nested deep underground, often on worlds of harsh environment, a habit that during the Rachni Wars frustrated every Council attempt to reach them and negotiate peace. When the advance could not be halted, the krogan entered the conflict, infiltrated the nests, killed the queens on every world, and hunted the rachni to extinction.

The queen of Noveria#

A single rachni vessel escaped the war and drifted for ages, its hold full of eggs in cryogenic suspension. The corporation Binary Helix later recovered the ship and brought an egg to the icy world of Noveria to hatch it, intending to clone the rachni within and mass-produce an army. Instead of the worker they expected, the egg hatched into a queen. She began to lay eggs, which Binary Helix removed from her presence to raise as obedient soldiers, only to learn that rachni must develop close to a queen for her mind to shape and soothe them; deprived of her song, the brood was driven mad and broke loose, devastating the facilities at Peak 15.

Matriarch Benezia, acting on the orders of Saren Arterius, sought to turn the rachni against his enemies, and used her biotics to draw the coordinates of the Mu Relay from the queen's genetic memory. When Commander Shepard defeated Benezia, the queen seized the chance to appeal for forgiveness, speaking through the body of one of Benezia's commandos. She gave the impression that the rachni had been driven to the old wars by a sour yellow note, a tone from space that had silenced one voice after another, suggesting her kind had not been fully responsible for the conflict. Wishing only to rebuild her species in peace, she asked what Shepard would do: consign her to the great silence, or set her free.

If freed, the queen escaped into the wilds of Noveria, intending to teach her new offspring the kindness Shepard had shown, though the turian Council representative warned the rachni might one day threaten Citadel space again. If destroyed, she made a final appeal before Shepard activated the acid that ended her, and the Council later rebuked the Commander for rendering the rachni extinct a second time.

Echoes and the Reaper War#

The queen's fate rippled outward for years. If she had been freed, sightings of ships consistent with rachni design were later reported, and she sent word of her gratitude to Shepard through an asari courier who, rescued and healed by the rachni after a crash, spoke of the queen and her brood with wonder and conveyed a promise of aid against the coming darkness. If she had been killed, recovered data pointed only to abandoned cloning efforts on Noveria.

During the war against the Reapers, a rachni queen surfaced once more on the world of Utukku, deep within a hive corrupted by Reaper technology. Whether this was the queen of Noveria, grown vast and proving highly resistant to indoctrination, or an artificial queen the Reapers constructed in her absence, depended on what had become of the first. Her young were being turned into Reaper creatures, and Shepard could choose to free her in exchange for her support or leave her to her fate. A freed queen of Noveria honored her word, while an artificial queen ultimately proved treacherous; a queen left behind accepted death calmly or raged against the Commander, according to which she was.