Reaper

The Reapers were a highly advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships that dwelt in dark space, the vast and mostly starless gulf between galaxies. Their true name was unknown; "Reapers" was a label bestowed by the Protheans, the galactic power that fell fifty thousand years before Commander Shepard's era, while the geth called them the Old Machines. They were the original architects of the Citadel and the mass relay network, constructs left so that any rising civilization would build itself around them, all part of a repeating cycle of purges that had continued for countless millennia.

Form and design#

A Reaper was, in essence, billions of organic minds uploaded and conjoined within an immortal machine body. In silhouette they resembled a cuttlefish or squid, with a bulky semi-cylindrical hull, tapering rear plates, five tentacle-like forward arms, and six jointed legs. They were colossal, ranging from one hundred sixty meters to over two kilometers in length. The core of each Reaper was built in the image of the species harvested to make it, while the exterior followed a standardized, efficient design. All of them retained features of their forebears, the Leviathans, an ancient aquatic race that had once dominated the galaxy.

Several subtypes existed. Harbinger, the first and largest, was a unique form with four main legs and multiple glowing eyes. The two-kilometer Capital Ships, also called Sovereign-class, were the best known, carrying a spinal magnetohydrodynamic cannon whose yield dwarfed any organic dreadnought's main gun. Smaller Destroyers, only one hundred sixty meters tall, escorted the larger ships and could unfold their legs to walk as heavy ground walkers. Mindless, remotely controlled Troop Transports and Processors carried husks and victims to the harvest.

Technology and weapons#

Even without their psychic influence, the Reapers were devastating warships. Their magnetohydrodynamic weapon ejected a stream of molten metal at a fraction of light speed, tearing through a cruiser in a single burst, and the spinal guns of capital ships pierced even dreadnought hulls and kinetic shields. They were protected by shields capable of blocking an entire fleet's fire, hulls of incredible strength, and faster-than-light drives beyond anything the modern galaxy could match. Immense element zero cores let them generate mass effect fields strong enough to land on planets and maneuver in ways their size should have forbidden.

They recognized one another through a complex Identify Friend or Foe system that searched for a friendly intelligence rather than a simple transponder code, and that carried a crippling virus to punish theft. They also deployed advanced computer viruses to subvert reluctant synthetics, and microscopic robots called nanides, often delivered through devices known as dragon's teeth, to convert the living into husks. The galaxy reverse-engineered what fragments it could, producing weapons such as the Thanix cannon.

Origin and the cycle#

The Reapers had existed for at least a billion years. Before them, the galaxy belonged to the Leviathans, who created an artificial Intelligence to solve the recurring problem of organics and the synthetics they built turning on one another. The Intelligence turned on its makers instead, slaughtering most of the Leviathans and processing the rest into the first true Reaper, Harbinger, whose form became the template for all that followed.

To shorten the time between harvests, the Reapers built the mass relay network and the Citadel to coordinate it, and placed engineered keepers aboard the station to tend it and open its hidden relay when summoned. A lone vanguard, waiting in the galaxy, would signal the Citadel, the keepers would open the relay to dark space, and the fleet would pour through, killing the leaders of the assembled races before harvesting all spacefaring life. They then erased every trace of themselves and withdrew, leaving the next civilization to rise none the wiser.

The Prothean counterattack and Sovereign#

Fifty thousand years before Shepard's time, the Reapers purged the Protheans. A cadre of Prothean scientists survived in stasis on Ilos and, on waking, discovered how their civilization had fallen. The keepers had evolved to respond only to the Citadel's own signal, so the scientists used a reverse-engineered prototype relay to reach the station and altered that signal, forestalling the next invasion for future generations even though they could not save their own race.

The first living Reaper witnessed after the Protheans was Sovereign, discovered near the Perseus Veil and eventually claimed by the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius. Because the keepers no longer obeyed, Sovereign had to find a way to open the Citadel relay manually from within, working through Saren and the geth heretics. In 2183 it launched an assault on the Citadel, but Shepard stopped Saren and the Alliance fleet destroyed Sovereign, forestalling the invasion for a few more years.

The harvest#

During each harvest the Reapers gathered and processed enormous numbers of every spacefaring race. Those captured by husks were herded into camps, where the husks chose individuals fit for processing and converted the rest into more husks. The chosen were loaded into single-person pods aboard Processors and dissolved by nanides into a genetic paste, their minds preserved to form a new Reaper's gestalt consciousness. The only known construction sites were the Citadel and the Collector Base in the galactic core. As a backup, the Reapers could use the Collectors, a slave race engineered from the Protheans, to gather material in their stead, as when they raided human colonies to build a Human-Reaper.

The pace was staggering. During the invasion of Earth at least four hundred Processors operated at once, processing humans by the millions per day, enough to depopulate a world in a decade.

The Reaper War and the Crucible#

After Sovereign's fall, Harbinger directed the Collectors against human colonies to build a human-based Reaper, which Shepard destroyed. The full fleet, already moving from dark space, returned in 2186 and struck first in batarian space before overwhelming Earth and turning on the Turian Hierarchy. Shepard worked to unite the galaxy, becoming entangled in the curing of the genophage, the geth-quarian conflict over Rannoch, the defense of asari Thessia, and the discovery of the Leviathans, who had survived the making of Harbinger and could turn some Reapers against each other.

The galaxy's united forces built a superweapon called the Crucible, which required a missing component, the Catalyst, revealed to be the Citadel itself. When the Crucible docked, the Catalyst told Shepard that the Reapers had been created to preserve organic life from the inevitable rise of synthetics, and offered several courses. Depending on Shepard's decisions and the strength of the alliance assembled, the Reapers could be destroyed outright, brought under a single guiding control, or merged with all life through synthesis; Shepard could also refuse, leaving the cycle to grind on for at least one more turn. In several accounts the choice ended the harvest and left the galaxy to rebuild.

Indoctrination#

Reapers and their artifacts exerted a corrosive mental influence called indoctrination. Any organic who lingered too long near a Reaper came to believe in its cause and would do anything to serve it, the mind eroding until only a mindless slave remained. The Reapers could meter the process, leaving useful agents enough free will to remain competent while believing they still acted on their own convictions. The effect was permanent and nearly impossible to break, and it lingered even in derelict Reapers; a science team was indoctrinated aboard a Reaper that had floated dead for thirty-seven million years.