Bio.

GENERAL INFO.

Full Name: Eden Shepard
Aliases: Commander Shepard, Shep
Gender and Pronouns: Trans Female; She/Her
Place of Birth: Derby Line, Vermont, United States
Heritage: White Canadian-American; Human (Bio-Synthetic as of Mass Effect 2)
Date of Birth: April 11, 2154
Age: 29-32
Parents:

Siblings: N/A
Children: N/A
Other Family: N/A

Allergies: N/A
Addictions: N/A
Mental Conditions/Disorders: Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), Survivor’s Guilt, Derealization/Depersonalization Disorder (Mass Effect 2 - Mass Effect 3)
Physical Conditions/Disorders: [TBD.]

APPEARANCE INFO.

Features: Fuller, angular features with a defined jawline, fuller lips, and a button-like nose. After Mass Effect 1, Eden has prominent facial scarring along her cheeks and jaw due to her revival by Cerberus.
Voice Claim: Jennifer Hale
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Hair Color: Honey Blonde; After being subject to the Lazarus Project, Eden has starker, pale blonde sections to her hair that mirror the effects of vitiligo on the hair (due to the science behind the reconstruction). This impacts her eyebrows, as well as strands of hair that frame the face.
Hairstyle: Shoulder-length hair tied into a messy ponytail.
Build: Tall and athletic, with broader shoulders, wide hips, and a defined waist. Leggy and has a long torso.
Height: 5 feet and 9 inches (approx. 175 cm)
Weight: 141 pounds (approx. 64 kg)

SOCIAL INFO.

Connections:

Relationship Status: Single
Sexuality: Heterosexual

MISC. INFO

While Eden is a close friend to the Ryder family and was welcomed as an aunt to the Ryder twins when they were born, this plot only applies to the Ryder twins that are present on the blog unless otherwise plotted.

Eden is stealth, and intends to keep her transition status that way. Very few people end up aware of her status (e.g., Garrus, Kaidan, Dr. Chakwas, the Ryder family, and potential love interests).

BACKGROUND.

Both of Eden’s parents were in the Alliance military, and this made Eden’s childhood rough. She spent her time on ships and stations as they traveled from posting to posting, never staying in one location for more than a few years. Following in her parents’ footsteps, she enlisted at the age of 18. She is a graduate of the Systems Alliance N7 special forces program (service no. 5923-AC-2826)

Eden’s transition was a private one, kept mostly under wraps between medical professionals and her family. Rumors spread, but she was quick to dispel them and had the benefit of being such a transitory individual in her youth.

During her military career, Eden has built a reputation for being a cold, calculating, and near brutal commander. Her one rule is simple: Get the job done. Her reputation precedes her, and makes her fellow soldiers wary of her. Yet when failure isn’t an option, the military comes to her for guidance. She specialized as a vanguard, combining her talent for biotics and weapons to take down opponents at close range. Such was evident during the Skyllian Verge.

Joining the campaign to rid the Verge of batarian slavers and other criminal elements, the commander was faced with a rough final battle. Alliance forces laid siege to Torfan, a slaver base built miles below the surface of a desolate moon. The majority of the Alliance’s human fleet was wasted in the assault, but Eden led a corps of elite ground troops into the heart of the base. It was here that three-quarters of her squad perished violently during the combat, yet not a single slaver made it out of Torfan alive at the end.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MASS EFFECT 1

Selected by Captain Anderson, Eden was sent alongside Kaiden to the human colony of Eden Prime to recover an unearthed Prothean beacon. The duo repels an attack by the geth, rescuing Ashley in the process. Saren Arterius, a rogue turian Spectre, activates the beacon before escaping. When the team reaches the beacon, Eden receives a vision of war and death. The SSV Normandy and its crew are summoned by Ambassador Donnel Udina to the Citadel Station, yet despite the circumstances, Eden is unable to convince the Citadel Council of Saren’s treason without solid evidence. Eden searches the Citadel for more information and rescues Tali, who reveals she possesses a recording of a conversation between Saren and asari Matriarch Benezia. The two discuss their victory while also mentioning an artifact called the “Conduit” and the return of the Reapers, a highly advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships believed to eradicate organic civilizations every 50,000 years. The Council revokes Saren’s Spectre status and makes Eden the first human Spectre. Eden is given command of the Normandy by Anderson, and begins to follow leads provided by him and Udina in pursuit of Saren.

On the planet Therum, Eden rescues Benezia’s daughter Liara T'Soni, who joins Eden’s squad; providing Eden with better understanding of the vision from the beacon.

On the colony of Feros, Eden acquires the ability to comprehend and interpret the images seen in the vision from a former subordinate of Benezia, and learns that Saren’s flagship, Sovereign, possesses unique mind-control capabilities. Meanwhile, the Council informs Eden that a salarian infiltration unit has uncovered Saren’s main base on Virmire. Upon arrival, Eden learns that Saren has discovered a cure for the krogan genetic disease, the Genophage, and plans to breed an army of krogan warriors. Wrex confronts Eden over whether to destroy it, which results in him standing down after she promises him that this is not the cure he thinks it will be. Disgruntled, Eden then assists the salarian team in destroying the base by planting a bomb in it. Inside the facility, Eden is confronted by Sovereign, who reveals itself to be a Reaper. Sovereign reveals that the Reapers remain outside the galaxy waiting for organic life to develop and discover the Mass Relays, before harvesting them when they reach their peak of advancement.

Afterwards, Eden makes a harrowing choice between saving Ashley or Kaidan, and ultimately returns back to the landing zone to save Kaiden. Eden then encounters Saren, who claims that his allegiance to Sovereign will save organic life forms by demonstrating their usefulness to the Reapers. It is after this event that Eden is set on a warpath for revenge.

On the world of Noveria, Eden tracks down and defeats Benezia, who reveals that she and Saren are being indoctrinated by Sovereign. It is here that she releases the rachni mother, and returns to the Normandy, where Liara pinpoints the Conduit’s location: a Prothean world known as Ilos.

Upon fighting through Ilos, Eden learns from a Prothean virtual intelligence (VI) named Vigil that the Citadel is actually an enormous Mass Relay that the Reapers use to invade the galaxy. During the last extinction cycle, a few Protheans survived on Ilos via cryopreservation and then re-entered the Citadel via the Conduit, a reverse-engineered miniature Mass Relay disguised aboard the station as a statue. The Protheans sabotaged the Citadel to prevent the Reapers from remotely activating it, which Saren plans to undo in order to trigger the Reaper invasion.

After fighting through geth forces at the Conduit, Eden confronts Saren at the Citadel’s Tower. After a heated exchange, Saren is killed by her with little remorse. The Destiny Ascension, the Citadel’s flagship with the Council on board, then requests assistance; Eden decides to risk heavy human casualties to save them and, in turn, save the Council. Sovereign then reanimates Saren’s corpse to attack Eden while fighting off Citadel forces. Eventually, Saren’s corpse is destroyed, incapacitating Sovereign and allowing it to be dispatched by the Alliance. For prevailing, humanity is invited to join the Council. Utimately, Eden nominates Anderson to this new leadership position before leaving the proceedings, vowing to end the Reaper threat.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MASS EFFECT 2

One month after the battle with Sovereign, the SSV Normandy is on patrol to locate and destroy any remaining geth. Within the Terminus Systems, the vessel comes under attack from an unknown assailant, its stealth systems ineffective against the massive vessel. The ship suffers extensive damage and numerous casualties, forcing the remaining crew to evacuate via escape pods. Joker, the helmsman, continues to pilot the ship despite the received damage to it. Eden, against the fears of many, races back into the crumbling ship to pull Joker out of his seat and into an escape pod. Before she may board the escape pod, however, the Normandy is attacked once again and Eden decides to send the escape pod without her. Explosions send Eden flying out from the ship’s wreckage and into space, where debris slices through her suit and air vents out. Eden asphyxiates and dies; her body is seen entering the atmosphere of a nearby planet.

Eden later awakens in the year 2185 aboard a Cerberus space station, a research facility of the Lazarus Project, which is under attack by hacked security mechs. Eden, without much choice, aids Cerberus agents Miranda Lawson and Jacob Taylor in escaping and is then taken to another space station and granted an audience with the Illusive Man. The Cerberus leader explains that Eden was revived and “upgraded” in return for the Commander’s aid in combating a new threat: human colonies have been attacked, their colonists deemed missing. Shepard and the team are dispatched to investigate the recently attacked colony of Freedom’s Progress, located in the Terminus Systems. There, the group encounters Tali'Zorah vas Neema, one of Shepard’s former squad members, and discovers that the mysterious insect-like Collectors were behind the attack and are responsible for the further abductions of other human colonies. Eden reports this to the Illusive Man, who then places the Commander in control of the Normandy SR-2, a larger ship modeled after the original Normandy SR-1. Two faces from the previous ship, Joker and Dr. Chakwas, are revealed to have staffed the new one when Cerberus sought them out. An artificial intelligence, EDI, is also introduced as the Normandy’s cyberwarfare suite and overt surveillance mechanism. With the guidance of the Illusive Man, Eden begins traveling across the galaxy to recruit a new team for what is assumed to be a suicide mission.

Initially, Eden is given four dossiers regarding potential recruits: a salarian scientist, a mysterious vigilante called Archangel, a krogan warlord, and a powerful but psychotic biotic.

The salarian, Mordin Solus, is found on Omega and is working to stop a plague engineered by the Collectors but distributed throughout Omega by the vorcha. The vigilante Archangel is also on Omega, holding out on his own in a battle against three mercenary gangs. After reaching Archangel’s hideout, Eden learns that Archangel is actually Garrus Vakarian. Garrus is seriously injured while battling the mercenaries, and, although he is permanently disfigured, he survives and ultimately joins the team.

The krogan warlord, Okeer, is found on Korlus attempting to create the perfect krogan through unethical genetic research. When the warlord is killed, he leaves his creation, Grunt, under the care of Eden and her crew.

The biotic, known as “Subject Zero”, is revealed to be a human woman named Jack. Cerberus arranges for her to be purchased from the prison holding her; Eden travels to the Purgatory prison ship. Once there, however, Eden is betrayed by the warden as he attempts to capture Eden for a bounty. Eden manages to escape the trap and rescue Jack, who joins the team despite an initial distrust of Cerberus operatives.

After the recruitment of the new team, the Illusive Man reveals that a human colony called Horizon has come under Collector attack, and he dispatches the team in an attempt to save the colony. He also notes that one of Eden’s surviving crew members, Kaiden Alenko, is stationed at the colony to oversee the construction of massive defense towers. Eden arrives with a team and battles the Collectors face-to-face; the group appears to have arrived too late as half of the colonists have already been taken away. Eden’s team is able to activate the colony’s defense cannons and turn them on the Collector ship, which then flees the planet under heavy fire. Eden later reunites with the Virmire survivor, who leaves feeling betrayed by her temporary alliance with Cerberus. The two have a heated falling out, in which Eden returns to the Normandy feeling jaded. These feelings only intensify, however, as it is revealed that the Illusive Man allowed the Collectors to attack Horizon by leaking a tip to the Alliance that Eden is alive and working with Cerberus. The Collectors intercepted this message and attacked the colony. The Illusive Man suspected the Collectors were looking for Eden or people connected to her. It soon becomes clear that the Collectors are targeting Eden. Despite the distrust building between the Illusive Man and Eden, he provides her with dossiers on three more potential recruits: an Asari Justicar, a Drell assassin, and Tali.

During this time, Eden receives a broadcast from Admiral Hackett regarding the Alliance’s deep cover operative in batarian space, Dr. Amanda Kenson, who found evidence of an imminent Reaper invasion. Shepard will ask why Hackett contacted the Commander, and Hackett will say that he learned this morning that she had been arrested and was being held on terrorism charges in a batarian prison. He asks Eden to infiltrate the prison and get her out, as a favor to him. Hackett also asks Eden to go in alone to avoid drawing attention, to which she agrees to get the job done and secure the scientist.

Upon arriving on Aratoht, Eden follows the command to infiltrate the prison and find Dr. Amanda Kenson in the interrogation chambers. She releases the doctor and the duo makes a daring escape by fighting their way out and stealing a Kodiak shuttle. Onboard the stolen Kodiak, Kenson will engage the autopilot so they can talk and mentions it will be a while before the batarians get their systems unscrambled. The Commander asks if they will come after her, and Kenson says she’s not taking any chances. Batarians don’t like people who plan to destroy their mass relays. Eden then says that the charges were true, but Kenson says that’s only half the story. She says that she and her people were investigating rumors of Reaper artifacts on the fringes of the system. Kenson claims they found proof that the Reapers will arrive in the system and when they get here, they’ll use the mass relay to travel throughout the galaxy. Her team calls it the Alpha Relay and from there the Reapers can invade anywhere in the galaxy. Eden then deduces that, given the story, Kenson chose to destroy it. She confirms that. It would stop the Reapers’ invasion as it would take months or even years at standard FTL speeds to reach another relay. Kenson continues by describing what she and her team call “the Project.” The Project is a plan to crash a nearby asteroid into the Relay, thereby destroying it before the Reapers arrive. She finishes by saying that the resulting explosion could destroy the system. Eden will say that she is still curious about how Kenson learned about the invasion and that if she was willing to destroy a whole system over this, then the Commander must see the proof. Kenson says she can’t argue with that and opens communications with the base. The base replies by saying that it is good to hear her voice and asks if she is coming home. She says yes and continues by saying that she has Commander Shepard with her. The base seems shocked by that and Kenson says to tidy up the lab and that Eden needs to see the proof. The base replies by saying that they will work on it and signs out. Kenson tells Eden to relax and they will be there in no time.

The shuttle approaches a very large asteroid and then enters a hangar inside of a large complex on the surface of it. As Kenson and Eden exit the shuttle, Kenson welcomes the Commander to Project Base. Eden asks about the clock over the door, and Kenson says that is their countdown to the Arrival. When it reaches zero, the Reapers will arrive. She asks if that is certain, and Kenson will explain that there have been pulses coming from the artifact since they found it and that their intervals have been decreasing at a steady rate. The artifact is reacting to the Reapers’ proximity and when the clock reaches zero in just over 48 hours, the pulses will become constant as the Reapers will have arrived. Finishing the conversation has Eden saying that they could be at Earth in a little over two days, then there is no time to waste. Kenson then takes the Commander to the proof. She points to the door and says that it exits the hangar and that the artifact is in the central lab area. While walking through the complex, Eden asks what it will take to get the project back up and running. Kenson says that everything is ready to go and it isn’t a question of “can we,” but rather “should we.” Eden asks if there are any alternatives, and Kenson says that the Reapers will get here regardless, but the relay is their shortcut to the rest of the galaxy. If Eden wants to slow down the Reapers, then the relay must be destroyed. Kenson opens the door and inside is Object Rho, which looks like several other Reaper artifacts that Eden has seen in her journey. She is shocked that they have it just sitting out in the open, but Kenson claims it showed her a vision of the Reapers’ arrival when they found it. Eden is apprehensive, but Kenson tells the Commander to give it a moment to show all the proof they need. A short vision emerges of the Reaper Fleet approaching the relay, and then Eden collapsed onto the floor in pain. As the Commander is getting up, Kenson pulls out her weapon, points it at Eden, and says that she can’t let the Commander stop the Arrival. Despite her assertions, Kenson and her team are indoctrinated. As Eden struggles to stand up, some Project Guards come around, weapons drawn, but then Eden springs up, disarms Kenson by breaking her wrist, and takes cover while Kenson orders the men to take the Commander down while she limps out. From there, Eden fights for her life but is taken out by Kenson and some personnel who drag Eden’s body to the med lab.

When Eden eventually comes to, it resembles what happened the first time she woke up aboard the Lazarus Research Station. A scientist is saying that it looked like the Commander was waking up a minute ago, but it might have been a glitch in the system. They had drugged Eden and the sedatives are no longer working. The scientist runs out while calling for security. Eden hurriedly jumps off the table and proceeds to knock out the two guards before being trapped by a barrier. From here, she activates a nearby console to take control of one of the deactivated LOKI Mechs and use it for her purposes. Using the mech, she takes out the scientist and the other LOKI Mechs that come to challenge her. When clear, she heads over to the barrier’s power source and blows it up. Alarms sound and Eden must race through the facility and activate the destruction sequence before the countdown clock reaches zero. When she finally confronts Kenson, the doctor pulls out a detonator and becomes hysterical over the loss of the “whispers” the Reapers had granted her. Eden shoots at the device but misses and causes Kenson to drop dead and, in her final breaths, activates the explosive. Eden is knocked out by debris and awakens later to the Project VI saying that a collision is imminent. As Shepard gets up, the Commander eyes the main console and races to it. Shepard radios Joker for a pickup, but VI reports the comm system as damaged and for all personnel to head to the escape shuttles. Shepard asks the VI where that is, and the VI explains that to get to them, head through the lift in the room, and towards the communication tower. The remaining escape shuttles will be there. However, you now have little time to escape. As Eden fights her way to the communication tower, the last escape shuttle takes off, leaving Eden to watch as the mass relay grows closer. As if that wasn’t enough, a hologram appears, and Harbinger talks to her. First, it says that she has become an annoyance, that she fights against inevitability, and that she is like a speck of dust against the cosmic winds. While it may seem like a victory at the cost of a star system, the galaxy’s greatest civilizations are doomed to fall, and that their leaders will beg to serve the Reapers. Harbinger then asks Shepard to think about something while the Commander dies in vain, the galaxy’s civilizations and humanity will fall. It finishes by saying to “Prepare yourselves for the Arrival”. In the brink of time, the Normandy arrives and Eden escapes just before the asteroid destroys the relay.

In the crew quarters, Eden sits on a bed in the Med lab while Dr. Chakwas talks with Hackett. As Dr. Chakwas leaves and EDI’s hologram disappears, Hackett approaches Eden. He says that it sounds like she went through hell on the asteroid and asks how she’s is feeling. Eden replies that she will be fine and that there will be no more visions if that is what Hackett was asking. She notes how she didn’t expect to see Hackett on the Normandy, to which Hackett replies that he decided to debrief the Commander in person since Eden did the assignment as a favor to him. Of course, that was before the Alpha Relay exploded and took out an entire batarian system. She asks if Hackett heard anything, to which he replies that all he knows is that he sent Eden out on a personal mission, and in the end, an entire system was destroyed. He hopes she can fill in the gaps, and Eden tells Hackett of what happened to Kenson in that she said that the Reapers were the galaxy’s salvation. She then proceeded to capture, sedate, and hold the Commander against their will. Eden says that since Kenson wasn’t willing to stop the invasion, she did what needed to be done. Regardless, it is made known that the batarians will be out for blood and that the Alliance council on Earth will be awaiting Eden to stand trial and answer for the massacre of the system.

Eden later finds the Justicar, Samara, on Illium. She joins the team after Eden investigates the Eclipse mercenary group and its involvement in a murder. Eden, with the help of her team, is able to find evidence of the group’s connections to the murder. The Drell assassin, Thane Krios, is also found on Illium and is in the midst of completing an assassination contract on Nassana Dantius. After learning of Thane’s next target, Eden fights resistance along the way to the top floor of the tower complex where the target is located. Shepard encounters Thane, who successfully dispatches his target and joins the team, as Eden can provide him with a purpose.

Tali is found on a geth-occupied quarian colony world, Haestrom, where she is researching the system’s rapidly dying sun. After she is rescued from an immense geth force, she agrees to join Eden once again.

Not long after collecting the rest of her team, The Illusive Man informs Eden that a turian patrol engaged a Collector ship and managed to disable it before being destroyed, creating an opportunity to investigate the ship before either the turians or the Collectors respond. The Illusive Man requests the team to find any data or technology that can help them on their mission.

Upon boarding the ship, Eden discovers many empty Collector pods, as well as the bodies of dead human colonists, apparently subjected to various experiments by the Collectors. Eden then learns that the Collectors had also been experimenting on their own, with EDI saying that they appeared to be researching their genetic similarity to humans. EDI’s genetic analysis of the deceased Collectors reveals that they are the long-extinct Protheans, having been subjected to extensive genetic modification to alter them for the Reapers’ purposes. As Eden proceeds deeper into the ship, Joker discovers that it is the same vessel responsible for the attack on Horizon and the destruction of the original Normandy, which Eden remarks is far too uncanny to be a coincidence. When Eden’s team reaches the center of the ship, they discover that it contains millions of empty pods, more than enough to hold every human in the Terminus Systems, thus indicating that their ultimate target must be Earth. Eden connects EDI with the Collector ship’s systems in order to search for any useful information, but she is quickly interrupted as she discovers that the ship is not disabled; the Collectors have drawn the Normandy into a trap. EDI also reveals that the Illusive Man knew of the trap all along but still sent Eden and the Normandy to the ship in order to gain information. Eden and her team fight their way out and escape from the ship on the Normandy before the Collector vessel can bring its weapons to bear.

After narrowly escaping, Eden demands answers from the Illusive Man, who freely admits to the deception. He claims it was necessary in order for the Collectors to believe they have the upper hand: telling Eden about it would have tipped the Collectors off. After talking his way out of the argument, the Illusive Man reveals the data gathered by EDI has led to the discovery of the Collectors’ means of traversing the Omega-4 Relay: an advanced Reaper IFF system. EDI calculates the location of the Collector homeworld from their ship’s navigational data and reveals it to be within the galactic core, an extremely dangerous area, which likely accounts for the fact that no ships ever return from the other side of the Omega-4 Relay. The Illusive Man then reveals that Cerberus has located a derelict Reaper orbiting a remote planet, evidently destroyed millions of years beforehand, and sent a science team there to recover an IFF transponder. Contact has been lost with the expedition there, and the Cerberus head would like Eden’s team to go there and find out what happened.

During the investigation, Eden discovers that the Cerberus science team members had all been killed before their arrival. Video logs left by the science team make it evident that even though the Reaper is no longer sentient or functional, the indoctrination effect that emanates from all Reapers is still present. The derelict ship automatically activates its shields, isolating Eden’s team from the Normandy and thus making their only means of escape to destroy the ship’s power core, which is also powering the ship’s latent mass effect fields and preventing it from plunging into the planet below. Battling their way through the Husks on board, Eden and her team are assisted by a single geth platform, somehow able to talk and also apparently friendly. Eden and her team recover the IFF and fight to the core of the ship, where the mysterious geth assists them once again before being disabled. As the Reaper’s core is destroyed, its shields disappear and Eden’s team is able to escape to the Normandy before crashing into the planet, along with the disabled geth. Following the mission, Eden chooses to activate the disabled geth, who is named Legion by EDI. Legion joins the team against the Collectors.

Shortly after retrieving the geth, Eden departs with the recruited members on a shuttle towards their next mission as the Normandy prepares the IFF for testing in their absence. However, EDI discovers a hidden signal after activating the IFF and realizes that the IFF is broadcasting the Normandy’s position. This turns out to be another trap set by the Collectors, as their ship is able to surprise the Normandy with Shepard’s entire team absent. Collectors board and seize control of the ship, and Joker is forced to remove EDI’s behavioral locks to enact countermeasures—a potentially dangerous move. After successfully regaining control of the ship, EDI manages to pilot the Normandy away from the Collectors and rid the ship of all enemies, but the entire crew barring Joker is taken by the Collectors. Upon returning to the ship, Eden’s hand is forced—the Commander must go through the Omega-4 relay immediately to rescue the Normandy crew members.

Upon exiting the far side of the relay, the Normandy appears in the midst of a vast debris field containing the wreckage of thousands of ships, presumably all destroyed attempting to traverse the relay. The Collectors have stationed automated defenses in the debris field, each known as an Oculus, which the Normandy fights off. Hull breaches from the attack enable one Oculus to maraud inside the Normandy’s cargo bay, necessitating defensive action from Eden and a small squad. After defeating the Oculus and reaching the far side of the debris field, the Normandy discovers the Collector Base, a giant space station orbiting a black hole. The Collector Cruiser is dispatched from the station, and the Normandy engages and destroys it, but as it explodes the blast cripples the Normandy causing it to crash-land on the outer surface of the base. Eden and the team enter the station and battle their way through the Collectors to the station’s core, rescuing any surviving Normandy crew as they go. Thankfully, during this assault, nobody dies.

Upon reaching the heart of the station, they discover that the Collectors have been constructing a new human-like Reaper, made from the genetic material of the abducted humans and fused with the advanced technology of the Reapers. EDI hypothesizes that the Reapers attempted and failed to create a Prothean-Reaper, and instead enslaved them and turned them into the Collectors and that they are now facilitating the Reaper equivalent of reproduction. EDI also guesses that due to its human appearance, Reapers are crafted to resemble the race from whose genetic material they are created. Eden targets the weak supports of the contraption, which is in the very early stages of its construction, and it is seen collapsing into the lower confines of the area. Eden then sets about with the plan to destroy the station. At this point, the Illusive Man contacts Eden and suggests that instead, use a radiation pulse be employed to kill all of the Collectors on board, but keep the station intact to allow Cerberus to research its technology. The Illusive Man notes that any information obtained from the Collector Base would be very valuable in the coming war against the Reapers, in addition to strengthening humanity’s position in the galaxy against other races. Eden chooses to refuse the Illusive Man’s advice and destroy the station and the Illusive Man orders Miranda to stop her from destroying the base. However, Miranda, seeing the Illusive Man as a power-hungry madman, chooses to follow Eden’s orders over the Illusive Man’s by resigning from Cerberus. When Eden makes the decision regarding the station’s fate and begins the countdown, the Human-Reaper resurfaces from the depths of the station and attacks Shepard’s team. After Eden and her team destroy the Reaper, the surviving squad members escape to the Normandy and flee the station. It is here that Miranda dies, yet there is little time to mourn. Seconds before the station’s destruction, Harbinger abandons the Collectors to their fate, berating them for their failure and declaring that the Reapers “will find another way.“

Aboard the Normandy, Shepard converses with the Illusive Man a final time, and he is extremely angry with Shepard regarding the station. Shepard cuts the Illusive Man off, promising him that they will find another way to stop the Reapers with or without the Illusive Man’s help or involvement.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MASS EFFECT 3

Six months have passed since the destruction of Bahak and Commander Shepard’s voluntary return to the Alliance. The Commander has been relieved of command and detained in a Systems Alliance facility in the city of Vancouver on Earth. Without warning, Alliance deep space outposts beyond Sol begin to go dark. Admiral Steven Hackett, the head of the Alliance military, begins to prepare for an imminent invasion. Admiral David Anderson arrives in Vancouver and escorts the commander with Lieutenant James Vega to a meeting with an Alliance defense committee. Eden confirms their worst fears: the Reapers have returned to the galaxy and are on their way to Earth. At that moment, contact is lost with Luna Base and news reports begin to surface of an unknown alien force landing in Earth’s cities. The Reapers have already arrived. A Reaper capital ship then descends through the clouds over Vancouver and blasts the Alliance building, killing the defense committee and Alliance staff. Shepard and Anderson survive and contact Kaidan Alenko, telling her to get to the Normandy.

As Eden and Anderson make their way from building to building to get to the spaceport, Anderson tells Eden that they have to get to the Citadel and seek help from the Council. They reach a comm set near a crashed gunship and hail the Normandy to evacuate. After holding off an attack from Cannibals, the Normandy bombs the area clear of attackers. As Eden boards the ship, Anderson informs the Commander that he will stay behind to lead the resistance, and hands over Eden’s dog tags. Eden protests, but Anderson charges Eden with getting as much help as possible to save Earth and stop the Reapers. As the Normandy lifts off, Eden witnesses a child running to an Alliance evacuation area and boarding a shuttle. As the shuttles lifts off, a Reaper destroyer emerges from behind a cluster of buildings and targets the shuttles, killing those who were aboard including the child. Distraught, Eden steps away from the open shuttle bay doors of the Normandy, and the ship escapes Earth as more Reapers and the wreckage of Alliance ships rain down upon the planet. Shortly after escaping Earth, Eden receives a communication from Admiral Steven Hackett, ordering the commander to the Prothean Archives on Mars, where humanity first discovered mass effect technology. Hackett insists that Liara T'Soni has found there what may be the only way to defeat the Reapers.

Upon arrival, Eden, James, and Kaidan take the shuttle down to the planet, receiving a warning from EDI that the base is not responding. They soon discover the reason why upon witnessing Cerberus soldiers executing Alliance personnel; the group fights their way through the enemy, inferring from the small size of the Cerberus force that they must have had help from the inside. Kaidan is also surprised that Eden is unaware of this, given their past association with Cerberus, and is unwilling to believe they cut ties with the extremist organization following their defeat of the Collectors. After entering the station and arriving in time to witness Liara biotically overpower and execute her pursuers, Liara explains why Hackett sent them to find her; she has found in the Archives blueprints for a Prothean device that might allow them to turn the tide against the Reapers. Unfortunately, Cerberus has learned of it too, and now they must hurry to recover the necessary information before Cerberus can. Sending James back to the shuttle to secure their escape route and prevent Cerberus from doing so, Eden, Kaidan, and Liara fight their way through the station to the main Archive, discovering along the way the identity of the traitor in the station: Dr. Eva Coré, supposedly a recently arrived researcher, but in truth a mole who sabotaged the station’s defenses to allow Cerberus entry. Reaching the Prothean Beacon at the heart of the Archives, the Illusive Man contacts them by hologram, mocking the Alliance for failing to take advantage of the wealth of information the Protheans left behind and commenting that Shepard is fighting a losing battle. He also explains his new motivation: to find a way to control the Reapers and thus use their power to advance humanity to a new level of evolution and above the other races. Deriding the Illusive Man’s plan as madness, Eden vows to use the information to destroy the Reapers and dismisses the Illusive Man’s warning not to interfere in Cerberus’s plans. The group then encounters Dr. Coré, who had been trying to upload information on the Prothean device, but her upload is interrupted by the squad and she tries to flee. Although Coré can reach a Cerberus shuttle, James disables it with a kamikaze attack before it can escape, having also alerted the Normandy to extract the squad. Coré, revealed to be an android by the explosion, emerges from the wreckage and attacks, critically injuring Kaidan before being disabled by Eden. The Normandy arrives to extract the team just as Reaper forces begin landing on Mars. Having escaped Mars, Eden forwards information on the Prothean device to Hackett, orders Liara and EDI to begin extracting intel from the android and orders the Normandy to the Citadel.

Upon arrival at the Citadel, Kaidan is taken for medical treatment at the nearest hospital, and Eden is conveyed to a meeting with the Council. Despite Udina’s insistence that Earth is bearing the brunt of the attack and needs the most help, the Asari Councillor succinctly sums up their view: while the Reapers focus on Earth, the other races have time to regroup and build up their defenses. The Council is also unimpressed by the Prothean device, insisting it must be flawed as it failed to save the Protheans from extinction at the hands of the Reapers, but Liara explains that a missing component referred to as “the Catalyst” prevented its completion. All is not entirely lost for Earth, however: the salarian Councillor informs Eden of a war summit they are convening to properly organize their strategy against the Reapers, and that whatever the summit decides will give the final word on the deployment of Council forces.

Upon departing the meeting, Eden and Udina are met in the human Councillor’s office by the turian Councillor, who explains that Palaven’s ruler, Primarch Fedorian, was to head the war summit, but didn’t escape the system before the Reapers arrived. He requests that the Normandy extract him from his current location on Palaven’s moon Menae, explaining that Fedorian will be a useful ally in accruing support for Earth. Before leaving, the Councillor informs Eden that the Council has agreed to uphold/reinstate their Spectre status, granting them the benefits of the position.

Knowing there isn’t much else that can be done whilst Kaidan recovers, the Normandy enters the turian home system to find Palaven and Menae under heavy attack by the Reapers, with the turian military under immense pressure and taking heavy losses. Upon landing on the moon at a turian base, Eden learns from the commanding officer that Primarch Fedorian is dead, having been killed an hour before Shepard’s arrival and they have no idea who has succeeded him because the communications with Palaven Command have been cut. Fighting through swarms of Husks to the comm tower and repairing it, the group soon learn that General Adrien Victus, a popular military commander with “a reputation for playing loose with strategy”, has been named as Palaven’s next Primarch; however, he is fighting at a base several miles away, with which radio contact has been lost. At the same time, Eden receives a message from Joker that EDI and the Normandy are acting strangely; Liara returns to investigate and Garrus Vakarian, now named strategic advisor to the turian army, greets Shepard fills her spot to lead them to Victus’ position. Fighting their way through Reaper forces, Eden and company arrive at the base and after helping Victus and his soldiers defeat their attackers, relay the news to the General that he is the newest leader of his people. Victus is doubtful about his ability to lead, claiming to be no diplomat and unwilling to leave his men, but he reluctantly agrees to accompany Shepard to the summit. He insists he can’t divert troops to Earth until Palaven can be secured, something beyond the turian military’s ability to do now. The turians will need reinforcements, namely the krogan, to succeed, and Victus insists they will have to be at the summit.

Upon returning to the Normandy, Eden and the crew discover the earlier power fluctuations were caused by EDI implanting herself in Eva’s body, a process which has completed successfully and given EDI more options, namely the ability to leave the Normandy and accompany Eden into combat. Soon after, Eden receives word from Admiral Hackett that Alliance Research and Development has begun construction of the Prothean device, dubbing it “Project Crucible”.

The decision to involve the krogan in proceedings causes major problems; the Asari pull out of the summit altogether, believing turian-krogan relations too fragile for anything to be accomplished. A diplomatic meeting is held between Eden, Primarch Victus, Dalatrass Linron (the leader of the Salarian Union), and Urdnot Wrex. The dalatrass is openly hostile and insulting to the krogan leader, who is ambivalent to the plight of the turians, insisting that the Reapers are moving on Tuchanka and refuses to provide military assistance unless their demand is met; that a cure is created for the genophage. The dalatrass flatly refuses to agree to such a demand, arguing that what Eden and Victus are planning to do in curing the genophage is the same rash mistake the salarians made when they uplifted the krogan to fight against the rachni, while Victus believe the plan impossible because it would take years they don’t have to synthesize a cure. However, Wrex reveals intel he has received that following the experiments of a salarian scientist into curing the genophage on infertile krogan females, an STG team rounded up the survivors of the experiments- a group of now fertile females who are also immune to the genophage- and took them off-world. The dalatrass, under pressure, reluctantly reveals that the females are being held at an STG base on Sur'Kesh and accedes to their release, though she insists that curing the genophage will have dire consequences for her people and the galaxy as a whole.

Eden, her team, and Wrex arrive on Sur'Kesh to oversee the exchange, meeting up with the salarian scientist in charge: Mordin Solus. The scientist is responsible for the krogan females’ care and is revealed to be the source who leaked information on their existence to the krogan. However, as a side effect of the cure, the females suffered from weakened immune systems and only one has survived. A Cerberus strike force hits the base shortly during the exchange, seeking to kill the surviving female and stop any hope of a cure for the genophage. Eden and her squad are forced to fight off Cerberus troopers deploying into the base as the salarian scientist and the Urdnot leader attempt to extract her. The team escapes Sur'Kesh with the female krogan, who is christened ‘Eve’ by the salarian scientist, and the cure is rapidly developed. Eve takes some time to regain her strength, and when she’s ready the salarian doctor proclaims her fit for travel to Tuchanka, where she’s needed for the last leg of the genophage cure’s completion. The krogan and turian leaders approach Eden with problems of their own, requesting that the Commander deal with them if there’s time.

The Normandy then deploys to Tuchanka, where the Reapers have begun attacking in force. They decide to release the cure from the Shroud, an enormous salarian structure built to repair Tuchanka’s atmosphere that was secretly repurposed to spread the original genophage. En route, Eden is contacted privately by Dalatrass Linron, who insists that she cannot go through with the genophage cure. The Dalatrass also reveals that the Special Tasks Group sabotaged the Shroud years ago to prevent it from being used for such a plan. The dalatrass offers Eden a deal; prevent repairs to the Shroud, thus causing the cure to fail, and in exchange, the salarians will provide military support and technical expertise to help construct the Crucible. Eden refuses, insulting the Dalatrass before cutting communications.

Upon arrival on the planet, Wrex rallies the krogan forces, who will work with a turian fighter squadron to distract a Reaper destroyer using the Shroud to further poison the atmosphere of Tuchanka. However, the plan almost immediately goes awry, with the krogan ground forces delayed and the fighters decimated as they attempt to attack without support. The ground forces are scattered and Eden’s team is forced to detour through ancient and impressive krogan ruins, which also happen to be home to the largest known thresher maw. They improvise a new plan, luring the thresher maw into attacking the Reaper destroyer to buy them time. This strategy is significantly more effective than the last: despite overwhelming Reaper opposition, Mordin and Eden make it to the Shroud, and Kalros manages to kill the destroyer. There are, however, complications. The salarian scientist, now aware of the STG sabotage, explains that the sabotage must be counteracted from the top of the tower to ensure proper release of the cure; a task that, with the tower collapsing as they speak, is essentially a suicide mission. Eden says her final goodbyes to Mordin, who enters the elevator to the top of the tower with the cure in hand. Before long, the Shroud lets out a blast of particles, blanketing Tuchanka with a shower of cure before disintegrating.

Following the mission on Tuchanka, Eden is contacted by the salarian Councillor, who requests a meeting on the Citadel regarding an important matter. The Councillor explains that it concerns Councillor Udina, who has been moving vast sums of money and the Councillor wishes to discuss where it is going, claiming that Shepard “won’t like the news.”

Upon arriving at the Citadel, however, the station is worryingly silent. Scanning emergency channels, the Normandy receives a transmission from an old associate of Eden’s (the drell assassin Thane Krios, who has retired to the Citadel to enjoy his remaining life) who explains that the Citadel is under attack; Cerberus has hit the station in overwhelming numbers and C-Sec is struggling to retaliate. The contact explains that Kaidan (having recovered from the injuries sustained on Mars and been named a Spectre by Udina since then) has gone to protect the Council, while they are attempting to reach C-Sec Headquarters since C-Sec cannot launch an effective counterattack while Cerberus holds it. Deploying in the shuttle, Eden and her squad land in the middle of a pitched battle between C-Sec and Cerberus forces outside the headquarters, helping C-Sec Commander Bailey retake the office. Inside, Bailey uncovers intel that the salarian Councillor was meant to be meeting with the Executor, presumably to have someone important prosecuted. Given the message the Councillor sent to the Normandy, Udina is implicated. Reasoning that the Councillor is likely holed up in the Executor’s office, a fairly defensible position, Eden’s squad fight their way through Cerberus’ troops, but when they reach the office and extract the Councillor, they come under attack from Kai Leng, who is under orders from the Illusive Man to assassinate the Council. The salarian Councillor also reveals that Udina is collaborating with Cerberus to stage a coup. Thane thwarts Leng’s assassination attempt but is mortally wounded in the process. Leng retreats to pursue the rest of the Council, with Eden and company in hot pursuit. Despite Leng’s best efforts to slow down and stop their pursuit, Eden reaches the Council ahead of him at a shuttle pad, locking the exits to prevent Cerberus troops from getting in and a tense standoff ensues, with Kaidan standing in her way. Eden reveals Udina’s treachery to the Council and while he attempts to deny it, the rest of the Council, after all the times they didn’t listen to Eden, begin to believe Eden. With the Council’s escape shuttle destroyed, Udina suggests overriding the lockdown and Eden threatens Kaidan to get out of the way. Udina, left with few options, begins to override the lock on the door. The Asari councilor tries to stop him, but he pushes her to the ground and pulls a gun on her. Eden is ultimately forced to kill the human Councillor, followed by the arrival on the scene of Bailey and C-Sec reinforcements. With Udina dead and their plan thwarted, Leng and the remaining Cerberus forces retreat, while C-Sec begins securing the station.

Deciding to linger around the Citadel following the attack, Eden receives a message from Admiral Hackett telling her that the Normandy needs repairs and that the crew should utilize Anderson’s apartment on the Wards while taking shore leave. Eden heads to the apartment and communicates with Anderson via the wall-mounted screen, where he tells her that the apartment is now hers and that he wishes to retire after the war and remain on Earth. She thanks the admiral before finding a message on her private terminal from Joker, telling her to meet up at the Ryuusei sushi place.

Once Eden arrives at Ryuusei, there is a queue, but the host notices Eden and lets the Commander bypass the line, saying that the table is waiting. Joker and Eden wave to each other, and Eden heads into the back corner of the restaurant to talk to Joker. After a small talk, Joker asks why Eden invited him here, but Eden replies that Joker sent the invitation. Their confusion is interrupted by the soldier outside, who has finally broken through the host’s defensive line. When she reaches the table, she introduces herself as Staff Analyst Maya Brooks of Alliance intelligence and proclaims that someone is trying to kill Eden. Joker makes note of the fact that Eden is already being targeted by multiple organizations, and that it isn’t news. Brooks restates that the group she is referring to are new people and that they are hacking Eden’s account, communications, and are targeting the Spectre personally. Eden tells Brooks to calm down after she tells a story about the last time she guessed at intel and tells her to start from the beginning. Eden’s inquiry about the situation is interrupted when several armed mercenaries stroll into the bar, and one knocks the host unconscious. They proceed to fire their weapons at the ceiling, causing the restaurant patrons to panic and scatter. Eden grabs Joker, pulls him down, and flips the table over for cover. Brooks hides behind another table, but one of the mercenaries finds and drags her away. Eden orders Joker to get the crew while she goes after Brooks. When Joker starts moving away, one of the mercenaries notices him and moves closer to the overturned table. Eden grabs the enemy and uses her biotic powers to kill him; Joker then complains about being used as bait but escapes. Eden recovers the mercenary’s pistol, an M-11 Suppressor, and tells Brooks to hold on. Once the duo unites, a mercenary targets Eden with his weapon, but Brooks notices, shoves the Commander out of the way and takes the bullet herself. Eden tries to get to her, but the mercenary’s bullets end up shattering the restaurant’s glass floor. Eden falls through the floor and down into the Lower Ward. After several repeated attempts to stop, Eden finally manages to fall onto a platform and lays there injured. Brooks contacts the Commander, saying she has found a secure terminal. Shepard asks how Brooks is okay, and Brooks says she used all the medi-gel, and now everything is a little bit bouncy. Shepard comments that she probably used too much. Brooks asks if she can be of assistance, and Eden tells her to alert C-Sec while she looks for a way out. Eden makes it to the Skycar Lot, where she comes into contact with Liara. The duo meets up and escapes to the parking balcony. As mercenaries pour into the facility, Wrex suddenly smashes through a window, slams into the shuttle, and crashes it onto the platform; Wrex then heads inside the shuttle and cleans out the ambushers. Once the crew escapes, they rendevous at Eden’s apartment to understand what happened and where to go next. Ultimately, Liara tracked a mercenary weapon back to a casino owner named Elijah Khan, who is suspected of using his money to smuggle weapons onto the Citadel. The crew decides to establish a plan to hunt him down: Infiltrate the Silver Coast Casino.

Brooks, Kaidan, and Eden arrive at the casino and enter via the red carpet, where they split up and begin putting their plan into action. Disabling security systems and carefully distracting the casino’s guards, the team discovers that Khan is dead. Brooks manages to get into his private terminal but finds a deletion order on it. Brooks starts to beat herself up but Eden calms her and then examines the terminal for mistakes, discovering that they wiped the terminal but not the comm. Eden activates the comm and a face appears on the screen over the mantel, distorted beyond recognition through signal degradation. Eventually, the figure says that they will take everything that Eden is and everything they own. As the conversation cuts, Brooks says she couldn’t trace the call. Eden orders them to remove the drives and get them back so EDI can analyze them.

Once the drives are analyzed, the team discovers a communication that details a series of purchases, weapons, and big ones. Mechs are part of the included package. Glyph then interrupts to say that Shepard’s Spectre access code was just used at the Citadel Archives. Eden brings the team with her, with the Normandy’s crew dividing themselves into two support teams and come along as well.

Entering the Citadel Archives, the crew makes a rather surprising and off-putting discovery: the culprit behind the identity theft is a clone of Eden, created by Cerberus if the real Eden needed “spare parts”. The two engage in a heated battle and harrowing chase, which ultimately ends with Eden being sealed in the Archives’ vault until Glyph gets her out. Eden then retakes the Normandy and, after another intense battle, kills her clone. To celebrate the victory, the Normandy crew has a wild party at Eden’s apartment.

Following the resolution of the quarian-geth conflict, and the events on the Citadel, the Asari councilor requests that Eden come to speak with her on the Citadel. Though the Crucible’s construction nears completion, the absence of the Catalyst still makes it useless against the Reapers. The Councillor reveals to her that there is a highly classified artifact located on Thessia that may help the Commander identify the Catalyst; however, she urges haste, as the Reapers have descended on Thessia in droves, seeking to annihilate the most advanced race in the galaxy.

En route to Thessia, Liara, who insists on coming to help her homeworld, explains that the artifact is housed in the Temple of Athame, a deity whose worship is nearly as old as the Asari, but has fallen out of practice. Arriving on Thessia to find the Asari military fighting a losing battle against Reaper forces, Eden and her squad make their way to the temple, where a science team is purported to be waiting for them. They arrive at the temple to find a security field blocking the entrance, strangely high-security for a temple of a dead religion. When Liara deactivates it, they enter the temple and find the scientists dead, but not at Reaper hands. They search the temple which houses artifacts related to Athame’s worship, including ones that look suspiciously Prothean. While Liara explains the temple’s history, Eden comes to a realization; the artifact the Councillor sent them to find is a Prothean Beacon hidden within the temple. Considering the temple’s age, the beacon is likely the reason why the Asari are technologically and scientifically ahead of the other races, and they have directly violated Council law by keeping the beacon to themselves. The beacon is powered up by the detection of one with Prothean-like brain patterns and once the squad fully activates it, a Prothean VI identifying itself as Vendetta appears. Establishing that it is in a post-Prothean cycle and detecting nearby Reaper forces, it attempts to shut down, but Shepard insists that it wait and provide information on the Catalyst and Crucible. Vendetta explains that the Crucible is not of Prothean origin, but is a cumulative design spanning countless galactic cycles stretching back millions of years. The Protheans themselves never used it because their efforts were sabotaged by a splinter faction who (like Cerberus in the present cycle) argued the Protheans should control the Reapers, not destroy them. By the time it was discovered the separatists were indoctrinated, it was too late; the Prothean order of battle was too fractured to coordinate an effort to activate it. Vendetta also mentions that the Protheans learned that similar patterns of evolution and dissolution occur in every galactic cycle, with each path of advancement and conflict happening differently but in fundamentally similar ways - too similar to be mere chance. Vendetta infers that the Reapers are “servants” of the pattern, not its creator, but cannot identify their true master or motive, only its intention: galactic annihilation. Before Vendetta can specify what the Catalyst is, it detects an indoctrinated presence nearby and shuts down.

The intruder is revealed to be Kai Leng who demands their attention, pulling a drone from his coat and remarking that “Someone would like to talk with you”. The drone projects a hologram of the Illusive Man, who has learned of the Thessia beacon from the Mars Archive, and mocks Liara for missing it. The Illusive Man goes on to expand on his belief and convince Eden that controlling the Reapers is the best course of action and that the Thessia beacon contains the information to do so. Shepard asserts their conviction to destroying the Reapers and dismisses the Illusive Man’s scheme, accusing him of being indoctrinated. Rebuffed, the Illusive Man orders Leng to kill Eden and recover the data. A vicious battle ensues, but Leng is unable to gain the upper hand. Leng calls in assistance, ordering a Cerberus gunship to destroy the temple’s structural supports and the temple begins to collapse. Eden and her squad are forced to react quickly to save themselves, with Eden nearly dying in the crumbling temple, and by the time they recover, Leng has already acquired the data and fled aboard the gunship. They can only watch helplessly as Leng’s ship escapes and more Reapers descend to complete the destruction of Thessia.

After escaping to the Normandy, the Asari Councillor contacts Eden, though the Commander delays the meeting out of reluctance. The Councillor eagerly requests information on the Catalyst and when it will complete the Crucible, but she is forced to tell her of Cerberus’ interference and their failure to acquire the data. Realizing that Asari civilization, maybe all civilization, may now be lost, the Asari Councillor cuts communication, leaving Eden to brood on her failure.

Following the disaster on Thessia, Eden bemoans the fact that Cerberus always seems to be one step ahead and asks the crew for any intel they might have to get the jump on the organization. The Normandy’s communication specialist, Samantha Traynor, mentions she had traced the route taken by Leng’s shuttle as it fled Thessia as far as the Iera system, but she had lost it there because the signal was being actively blocked. Despite the fact, the only thing of note in that system is Sanctuary, a refugee camp on the planet Horizon for those fleeing the war, the Commander decides that a lead is still a lead, no matter how slim, and agrees to check it out. Upon arriving at the facility, Eden and her squad find signs of a battle between Cerberus and Reaper forces, a surprising discovery given Cerberus’ collaboration with the Reapers. Investigating the camp, Eden finds evidence left by former squadmate Miranda Lawson’s sister that the ‘refugee camp’ was in truth a Cerberus laboratory run by their father Henry Lawson, working for the Illusive Man. Deeper in the facility, they discover that the refugees were being experimented on and ultimately turned into Husks, to further Cerberus’s research into indoctrination. A further bombshell is brought to light: a signal being broadcast from a tower within the facility, using Cerberus research, had allowed Cerberus the ability to control the husks created in their horrific experiments. Lawson had been working on the Illusive Man’s orders to find a way to transfer this process to the Reapers themselves before the facility had come under attack, the Reapers seeking to destroy any potential weakness that could be used against them. Fighting their way through Cerberus troopers who hadn’t evacuated in time and Reaper forces left behind after the attack, Eden and her squad make it to the tower that has been broadcasting the signal, as well as blocking all transmissions from the planet. Here, they find Henry Lawson holding Oriana hostage. The Lawson patriarch tries to cut a deal with the Commander for his freedom, explaining that despite his success, the Illusive Man had merely ordered Kai Leng to retrieve the data (the assassin having already been there and gone) and leave the Lawsons to their fate. Henry Lawson is gunned down by Eden after she convinces him to release his hostage. The crew then learn the location of Cronos Station, the headquarters of Cerberus itself, and hastily return to the Normandy.

Eden alerts Admiral Hackett to this discovery, and the Alliance begins making preparations for an all-out assault on the station to eliminate Cerberus and hopefully recover the Prothean VI along with any other information on the Catalyst. Hackett warns that once an assault on Cerberus is launched, the Reapers would take notice sooner or later; for all intents and purposes, the attack on Cerberus would be the first step in the campaign to retake Earth. The assault begins then and there.

Leading an armada to assault the station, Eden, EDI, and her squad are deployed to fight Cerberus forces in the base, while Hackett battles Cerberus’s fleet with the rest of the Alliance ships. The base is full of video logs, containing intel on EDI’s past, Project Lazarus and Cerberus’s newfound obsession with exploiting Reaper tech and indoctrination, and interesting tech such as prototype weaponry and pieces of the Human-Reaper salvaged from the Collector Base after its destruction. Eventually, the team reaches the Illusive Man’s office and begins to scour his private terminals for the location of the Prothean VI. The Illusive Man contacts Shepard by hologram, sneering that he has already acquired the Catalyst and all he needed to control the Reapers. Again, he dismisses Eden’s claims that he is indoctrinated and assures her that the idea behind Cerberus will survive any physical damage they cause to the organization itself. The Illusive Man severs communication when EDI discovers and activates the Prothean VI. They find that Vendetta’s security protocols have been overridden and he informs the squad that the Catalyst is the Citadel; in some previous cycle, the Reaper-made space station had been incorporated into the activation process of the Crucible to boost its power and coordinate its function through the mass relay system. After this revelation, Eden realizes it then should be relatively easy to activate the Crucible, but Vendetta has more shocking news; the Illusive Man has fled to the Citadel and warned the Reapers of the plan to destroy them. As if this wasn’t enough, the Reapers have already reasserted control over the Citadel and transported it to orbit one of their conquered planets: to be precise, Earth.

As Eden attempts to contact Admiral Hackett to tell him this devastating news, he is cut off by the return of Kai Leng, who once again engages the Commander in a furious battle, aided by various Cerberus forces. This time, Eden emerges victorious. After the fight between the duo, Eden goes back to the Illusive Man’s computer to activate the Prothean VI. Little does the squad know, Leng survived the beating he took. After silently limping to the Commander, Leng raises his sword in an attempt to kill Eden; the Commander senses the attack and in the nick of time dodges Leng’s attack and finishes him off with an omni-blade stab, avenging Thane. Eden manages to alert Hackett and Anderson to her discovery of the Catalyst’s identity and location. With no alternative, Hackett and Eden order the forces they have gathered to the Sol system intending to take Earth back from the Reapers.

Hackett and Anderson brief Eden on the three-fold plan of battle: ‘Sword’ Fleet will engage the Reapers in space, while ‘Hammer’ ground forces will land in London. When Eden queries why London is their landing zone, Anderson explains that the Reapers have established a teleportation beam between the city and the Citadel to transport dead and living humans to the station, presumably to be harvested. The plan is for Hammer ground forces to fight their way through the city to the beam, and get as many people as possible on board the Citadel and find a way to open the station’s arms. Once this is done, Hackett will signal the ‘Shield’ Fleet, which will remain outside the Sol system protecting the Crucible, to pass through the Charon Relay and clear a path for the Crucible to dock with the Citadel. All forces deploy for the Sol System and a brutal space battle ensues between the fleets Eden has gathered and the Reapers in orbit around Earth. The Normandy breaks off from the battle and descends to the planet. Eden and several other squads have been ordered to take out Reaper Destroyers planet-side, fitted with anti-aircraft Hades Cannons that threaten Hammer’s landing. After eliminating the destroyers, Eden and her squad are extracted by Anderson and local resistance forces, who convey them back to their forward base. At the same time, Hammer troops begin landing en masse in preparation for the assault on the Citadel beam.

When the bulk of surviving Hammer forces have landed and deployed, Anderson briefs Eden and the other team leaders that they must fight their way through the city to the beam, though they will need to take out another Reaper Destroyer blocking their path en route. Using Thanix missile batteries and EDI’s help to overcome interference in the guidance systems from the Citadel beam, the Destroyer is brought down, but by that time, Hammer’s forces have suffered heavy casualties, Reaper forces are gaining ground, and to make matters worse, Hackett warns that several Sovereign-class Reapers, including Harbinger, have broken away from the space battle and are descending to Earth. By the time the remnants of Hammer reach the Citadel beam’s immediate vicinity, Harbinger has already deployed to protect it. Hammer attacks, but Harbinger annihilates them; countless soldiers are killed and Eden’s squad is severely injured. With its stealth technology, the Normandy can move in and carry Eden’s squad to safety without Harbinger noticing. Almost immediately after the ship’s departure, however, the Commander is hit by Harbinger and critically injured. Believing itself victorious, Harbinger retreats to the space battle, not noticing Eden managing to get back to her feet and stagger into the beam. Upon arriving aboard the Citadel, Eden is contacted by Anderson, who followed her up but was somehow separated. The two find themselves dumped in similar-looking tunnels; keepers prowl about and there are human corpses dumped everywhere. Staggering to what looks like a control room, Shepard and Anderson are ambushed by the Illusive Man, the skin of his face and neck rotted and riddled with Reaper tech. These “upgrades” allow him to take control of their motor functions, even forcing Eden to shoot Anderson amidst their conversation. The Illusive Man again asserts the necessity of controlling the Reapers and that the Crucible will grant him that power, but it is clear to Eden and Anderson that he is deeply indoctrinated. Eden briefly shakes off the Illusive Man’s influence and shoots him. The Illusive Man turns to the view of Earth and with his dying breath laments that Eden could not see humanity and Earth the way he sees them: perfect.

With the Illusive Man dealt with, Eden opens the arms of the Citadel, and Hackett orders Shield Fleet, along with the Crucible to move in. The Crucible successfully docks with the Citadel, but nothing happens. At this point, Eden and Anderson sit together and look at the vast blue planet beyond. Anderson tells Eden that he is proud of her and it has been an honor to fight at his protegé’s side. After this final conversation, Anderson dies from his injuries and Eden passes out from blood loss. While unconscious, however, Eden is transported to another part of the Citadel. When she regains consciousness, Eden is confronted by an entity of energy, manifesting itself in the form of the small boy she saw die at the Reapers’ hands when she initially fled Earth. The entity explains that it is the Catalyst, the creator of the Reapers and architect of their galactic purges every 50,000 years. The Catalyst explains that the purpose of such genocide is to solve the problem it was created to stop; the total annihilation of organics by the synthetic races they inevitably create. Its solution was to allow organic species to evolve to the apex of their civilization and then harvest these races, with millions of bodies and minds from each race being processed and converted into new Reapers, while the remainder of their civilizations were systematically destroyed. By doing this, the Reapers preserved the harvested races, while allowing more primitive races to have their chances to become great, evolving on their own (though influenced along more preferable paths by mass effect technology) and they, in turn, would be preserved, thus ensuring that the threat of complete annihilation of organics by synthetics was averted. However, because the races of the present cycle have completed the Crucible, a feat never before achieved, the Catalyst no longer believes the cycle will work, and thus a new solution must be devised. The Catalyst offers Eden choices for this solution, leaving her to decide the fate of the galaxy while explaining how events will play out whatever Eden decides. The Crucible in conjunction with the Citadel, the Catalyst, and the mass relays can be used in a multitude of ways: as a means to destroy Reapers, control Reapers, or render the Reapers harvests moot by fusing organic and synthetic life.

Destruction of the Reapers means that all synthetic life: geth, EDI, and the Catalyst itself included, will be destroyed as well. All other technology will be affected to varying degrees depending on the Crucible’s condition, and the Catalyst warns while there will be peace, it won’t last. The organic-synthetic conflict it has worked against all these eons will inevitably surface and result in chaos. Control over the Reapers means that Eden can use the Crucible’s energy to control the Reapers. The process will destroy the Commander’s body, but her thoughts, memories, and consciousness will remain and replace the Catalyst as the Reapers’ master AI. The result is Reapers obeying Eden’s lead. When Eden remarks that the Illusive Man was right after all, the Catalyst explains he could never have taken control since the Reapers already indoctrinated him. Synthesis of organic and synthetic life is another solution the Catalyst may present and touts it as an ideal solution. According to the Catalyst, organics seek perfection through technology. Synthetics seek perfection through understanding. Organics will be perfected by integrating fully with synthetic technology. Synthetics, in turn, will finally have a full understanding of organics. By merging themselves with the Crucible’s energy, Eden will create a new organic-synthetic “DNA” for all denizens of the galaxy, bringing an end to the cycle and the need for the Reapers.

Eden, knowing that she will die regardless of what decision she makes, chooses to destroy the Reapers once and for all. The Crucible fires a red beam of energy that destroys the Reapers on and around Earth and transmits this energy to every relay the mass relay network through the Charon Relay before damaging the relays and the Citadel as well. Eden dies in the explosion that wracks the Citadel.