They say that war never changes. They were wrong.
In the fifty years since the war began, it became something else.
Worlds rendered lifeless, fleets left open in the void, countless trillions dead, and all of it just to point towards the simple fact that war evolves.
One of the truest axioms is that there isn't a limit to the lengths that sentient beings will go to exterminate each other if they are given enough of a cause.
The galaxy in flames is proof enough of that principle.
If things had turned out differently, then perhaps peace would have had a greater hold, but now, now it's only a matter of time before everything erupts once more.
Humanity had a single advantage at the beginning of the war, one we still hold even as the rest of our technology nears parity with our enemies. They had experience, we had the ability to dump antimatter at our enemies on a scale they'd never dreamed of.
Project Nemesis, originally one of a thousand similar attempts to create a useful FTL led, instead, to the ability to cheaply and easily mass produce antimatter.
Then the Turians appeared, attacking the defense fleet near Shanxi and the war was on as the line held in a wall of death and destruction.
A baptism by fire unlike any ever seen.
We had hoped that talks could come of it, and it seemed like they would until one of those bastards allies involved themselves. Earth was hit by the Batarians, a slave raid combined with an attempt to gain favor with the Citadel.
The battle ended as quickly as it began, but the price was higher and the majority of the Alliance government was among the dead when alien ships crashed in the capital.
Intercepted communications revealed that our enemies were cheering, seeing the slavers as heroes who might break the stalemate between the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy.
It was then that the Alliance died, and the Empire was forged from its ashes.
Until that point there had been rules, things that would not be done.
But now, we had a new response that our leaders took from the past.
They called it the Chicago Way, hit them twice as hard as they hit you. If they do something, do something worse.
It was open season on Batarians.
Recruits poured in as advances in technology skyrocketed, the results of reverse engineering of our foes toys.
We found Khar'shan and unleashed a new hell upon it with our greatest weapon. We became death, the destroyer of worlds.
May god have mercy on our souls...
excerpt from Admiral Williams journals
Date unknown
xXx
We should have seen it coming when the war began to spread across the galaxy. Humans were not a foe to be taken lightly, even if our allies believed in our superiority.
Then the Krogan joined them.
Over a thousand years of bad blood between them and the council, our arrogance came back to haunt us in what was done to them.
The STG was dragged into the mess during the human liberation of Tuchanka, when a Salarian research station was discovered. If they weren't whole heartedly with the Empire before, having a cure for the genophage brought the Krogan into their fold en mass.
With the Salarians caught red handed with an update for the bioweapon, well, the war changed as the Salarians were dragged fully into the fight while the methods of battle changed again.
Ground combat became something else, large battles obsolete and leaving only small skirmishes after high priority targets as orbital strikes became the norm.
It was the siege of Palaven that allowed the Matriarchs dominance on the council and the means to push for a cease in hostilities. There wasn't a choice at that point as humanity unveiled a new weapon that made things all the worse.
To think something called a dust bomb could be so catastrophic, but it was.
Particulate antimatter, the same thing that humanity was throwing around in all their conflicts, fired to spread out in an area, denying large portions of the orbitals to citadel ships and giving them a larger control of the battlefield.
And we gave them everything we could, all of their holdings became human territory and there wasn't a thing we could do about it.
The Turians were seething, and the Empire had to know that it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the trigger again and madness resumed control.
Matriarch Benezia
Remembering The Peace
xXx
Traditions forged in fire remain the strongest, be they the fires of war or family.
While we call ourselves an Empire, it is not one in the truest form.
We took the name from history, from Rome, from China, from many others.
Looking at the forces arrayed against us, we saw as our ancestors did. They saw a world on the brink and the barbarity that must fall to civilization, and we saw the turian invaders, the batarian slavers, the salarian assassins, and others who sought to conquer us.
We put ourselves into the fight, striking at the support of those besieging Shanxi before freeing our people even as we rebuilt what the slavers did to us.
We saw the state of the Krogan, the pride of a people who had been hammered by blows brought on by the idiocy of those who advanced them beyond what should have been. Accepting them as brothers, offering them the chance to grow and rebuild, to avenge the countless children dead due to the choices of those who took a developing race, gave them weapons, and pointed them at their enemies while expecting them to just stop because they said so.
And now it is time to see if the Citadel has learned the lessons we aimed to teach, or if this is only a delay in the forging fires that cleanses the galaxy.
Admiral Douglas Walker
Speech concerning the Cease Fire
xXx
The council chose the Krogan because we could fight.
We fought the Rachni for them, using weapons generations ahead of what we had ever developed. Entire generations thrown into the grinder, knowing nothing but warfare.
Then we won, leaving our enemies exterminated and naught but a name for the histories.
It was then that I see the folly that overtook everyone.
We only knew what was taught, and that was war.
Take, hold, and advance.
A people bred for war and had but a few remaining that remembered anything but combat do not adapt easily to peace. The council hadn't bothered to aid their weapons in adapting to the galaxy beyond making them the point of the sword.
So we fought as we always had, doing what we had for years against those who stood against us.
Just as those fools had done against the Rachni, they did against us.
Their dirty secret is that the Turians weren't the first meat shield they used.
We admit that the Turians could fight well, but the Salarians did what they always did best and fought dirty.
If only their work had targeted the soldiers then my people wouldn't have fallen so far. But they targeted the women and children with their Genophage. Krogans fight to survive, if we don't then death is what awaits us as only the strongest of us survive to take breath.
Since the humans found us, I've wondered if those children lost were the ones that could have helped, just as those lost during the Rachni Wars were lost by being pressed into battle when it was other callings that suited them.
My people never take charity well, and that wasn't what humanity offered.
While they needed soldiers as the Citadel had, they didn't want us to fight for them, but with them.
We knew the galaxy, they had troops ready to fight.
It was a different concept than we were used to, and a chance to take back what was stolen from us.
Unknown Krogan Battlemaster
Comment recorded shortly after the Krogan Treaties
xXx
When the Alliance came into being, it had been decided that a new city was needed for the capital. No nation was to be favored and it would be a neutral location.
Unfortunately, that planned city hadn't come into fruition before the Batarians attacked Earth.
Chicago had functioned as a temporary capital while plans went through for a real attempt at building on the one continent that didn't have a constant population.
Unfortunately, the windy city was leveled when the enemy dreadnaught crashed while under fire from converging defense fleets.
Four million casualties in the space of five minutes.
Humanity didn't have time to properly mourn the dead. There were things that could not be taken lightly, and it shifted our focus.
Where before there had been hesitation to build up, a push to talk to the Turians and try to have peace had been a major thing and ironically one of the major issues that the government had assembled to debate when it happened, now there was a will to fight and desire to force these new enemies to back down.
Then a week later, we cracked the general media encryption our enemies had been using and that changed things even more.
We knew what the Batarians were doing, we've captured enough of them alive from their raiding fleet for that, but the Turians made those slavers heroes for their "noble sacrifice" as it were. It was the moment that it was released that the Alliance was truly dead and the Empire had risen from the ashes of our one time capital.
Unconditional surrenders were the only kind we would take, and our own forces ceased to give them. Better to die in combat that live as a slave.
Slugging matches between fleets became the norm. The major advantage we had was our ability to outproduce them with antimatter, but other tech disadvantages had us using other options.
The Citadel forces had the doctrine of using larger ships and bigger guns, and we didn't have the refined barriers and armor they did so we went with another option.
Smaller ships were faster to build and required far less crew, while the dust bombs didn't require the large support the heavier citadel weapons did.
We just had the capability to drown them in small ships that they couldn't take down fast enough.
Then came Tuchanka and the Krogan.
Unfortunately, the Salarians decided that they couldn't let us repair what they did to our allies. Bioweapons were added to the enemy arsenal as were several other nightmares.
We responded with our own new WMD's in the form of nanite weaponry while we were forced to get very good at dealing with plagues.
Before the Asari managed to force a peace nearly a hundred worlds were uninhabitable from weapons each of us had deployed, most of which were by our own hand rather than theirs.
Oddly enough, there are a few Asari that are all but part of the Empire thanks to the Krogan. Not that many, mind you, but several that had longer associations with members of one of the few species with lifespans to match their own.
Add that there were several Krogan who would rather have a family with someone where their kids only had a one in a thousand chance of making it to birth, and you had several of them in the various enclaves across the Empire.
Then you had the "bad boy" effect and a lot of the younger Asari ended up gunning for Krogans.
We kept them contained during the conflict, no sense letting them see more than they had to within our borders. All out war with two members of their council meant that we couldn't expect the third not to get involved. We're still working out what to do with them now that we're supposedly at peace.
Now, all there is to do is wait until someone drops us back into war.
Doctor Bishop Grey
Lecture on the forming of the Empire
xXx
One of the more interesting social dynamics we encountered among the stars was the Volus.
Their culture limited emotional ties to those near them thanks to the method of advancement their clans had. They would trade members or even take them in combat, though combat tended to be brief with a loser quickly capitulating rather than dealing with heavier losses of life.
As such, their race fractured during the conflict between the Empire and the Turians long before the Salarian involvement began.
The major response to the Volus left in Imperial hands was one of confusion.
Excerpt from Species At Contact
xXx
Momentary peace led to opportunity.
The oldest ships were brought off the line, replaced with the newest models. Some of which had been in service since near the beginning.
Relay travel opened up once more without the ambush possibilities they presented during open warfare, though several systems left the battlefield hazards about them rather than risk them becoming gateways for enemy action in the event that hostilities resumed.
It took an unconventional solution to defend the relays that were opened. A solution in the form of some of the larger asteroids towed near them and armed with the best weaponry available, utilizing both barriers and their massive bulk as a defense for armored bases carved into them.
Then came the major jump in the Imperial arsenal as the planned advancement of VI systems into AI began.
Taking the lessons of the Citadel species, the AI development followed a different path. Licensing research combined with a mix of easy to obtain licenses with penalties for unauthorized research opened up doors.
When one of the Asari diplomats questioned someone of the policy, the response was that they equated AI to children, and if someone were to develop one then there had to be steps to protect it just as their would be to protect any other sapient entity.
The genophage issue shifted as a partial cure finished development. It wasn't something that would remove the issue entirely, but it shifted the Krogan reproductive cycle to minimize the influence.
Total fertility was decreased, but survival rates of the children soared within months of implementation.
But all was not well on either side of the peace.
Several of the soldiers were not quite ready to lay down arms on either side and leaving forces on both sides of the border attempting to deal with the militants intent on restarting the war.
The largest post war battle occurred between one of these groups and a batarian fleet over the unaligned system of Jartar before both Citadel and Imperial elements arrived to enforce the cease fire.
Recovered remains of an unknown vessel found amidst the wreckage has been classified at the highest levels.
Excerpt from A Try For Peace
xXx
During the Siege of Palaven, it was said that the weapon to force the Turians and Salarians to step back from the issue was not the one they dubbed the "Anti-Nuke" but a development that had taken years. The same designs that would later give rise to the defense platforms defending the relays was first used to develop a weapon.
The Juggernaut class mobile defense station remains as the largest vessels developed by the Empire. Fully the size of the Citadel itself, the Juggernaut was essentially a colony in and of itself.
It's design a response to the lack of dedicated military installations on several of the smaller colony worlds that could support actions in their area, and the incursions into enemy space that followed the early strikes. Starting from the bulk of a world consumed by a nova millenia prior, it was awe inspiring when it entered the direct conflict for the first time in the Turians home system.
With seventeen years spent in construction, and nearly a mile thick armor, nothing that was in our foes fleets could harm it.
But it's arrival was to late for the thousands of ships lost before it was sent to break the Turian forces.
Codex: Juggernaut
xXx
The Turian forces pride took the largest hit as peace settled about. Their spoils from the Krogan Rebellions were taken from them, returned to the clans that still lived and the rest went to museums.
Scrapped ships were harvested, the metals used for a new reward to the soldiers fighting for the Empire. Where various militaries remembered their lineages through history with a saber, the Empire chose a weapon more in tune with those whose name was claimed.
Each soldier was presented with a gladius forged from the hulls of the ruined hulks of enemy vessels. The victory swords were also presented to the widows and orphans of the dead.
And while the Turian fleet lay in ruins, the Batarians were worse off. Only a dozen ships were still space worthy, and of those only one was from their military and even that was a reconditioned pirate vessel rushed into service.
For the first time since the Rachni Wars, the Asari were essentially the only Citadel race with a notable military.
Codex: Effects of Peace
xXx
Peace was a fleeting thing.
It was neither the Citadel or the Empire that ended the fragile peace.
The Quarians had continued their covert operations beyond the veil, into Geth space and what they found started the spiral to conflict once more in a galaxy that had but three years of peace.
Geth scouts had found something amidst the chaos of the Contact War, an ancient derelict and within its hold the last eggs of the Rachni.
At that news, even the fragmentary attempts at developing longer lasting peace seemed to halt as both sides began an almost frantic buildup of military assets.
Excerpt from The Second War
xXx
Suspicion was rampant, factions from both the Empire and the Citadel all but directly accusing the other of having something to do with the rebirth of an ancient enemy. Early suspicions also turned on the Quarians, a popular rumor was of the Rachni threat being a ruse for them to gain military support in retaking Rannoch.
But there were also those who took advantage of the rising tensions in other ways.
Omega, long a haven for pirates, thieves, and other rogues shifted in nature as the new pirate queen moved to expel much of the criminal element during the Contact Wars rather than risk the station being either co-opted or attacked by either side. During the relative peace, Aria capitalized upon the unaligned nature of the station shifting it from a criminal kingdom to a neutral location between the Citadel and the Empire.
A neutrality enforced by some of the less upstanding members of several races.
Tensions in the Terminus
xXx
Rumors and mysteries spread as they advanced along the road to a new war.
Reports of an unknown craft matching that of the destroyed one from Jartar among the Geth and Rachni craft being spotted by reconnaissance drones beyond the veil.
Outlying colonies of several races being found abandoned, leaving no sign of what attacked them.
Sightings of the semi-mythical Collectors rising in number.
A supposed zombie attack on Feros.
Even as the scramble for new and more powerful weapons and technology spreads amidst the return to wartime recruitment and training levels, there are still attempts at communication between the Empire and the Citadel.
Moments of Peace
xXx
To much of humanity, the Krogan were an unusual addition to the Empire. Not just in being the second species to join, but in how they changed.
In a way, some of the krogan found religion, or rather, religion found them.
One of the battlemasters working with special forces units made a friend who happened to introduce him to Norse mythology. It seemed that the viking sagas managed to mix well with the few religious tendencies of the krogan.
It was an unexpected shift, but after a second look, relatively unsurprising after the fact.
Of course, the shift must have startled the hell out of the Citadel at the time, and it took a lot of effort to shift them back to sane armor rather than adding the horns to their helmets that they saw in art and fantasy stories.
The helmet cam from the STG team trying to gain access to our datanet is still rather far up there in the ratings. Ten salarians trying to deal with an enraged krogan in the buff singing some of the old norse sagas while using a decorative warhammer.
Most still aren't sure if the krogan was just that good, or if it was the shock of stumbling upon a drunken, naked krogan that gave him the advantage there.
Krogan And Religion
xXx
Fighter combat remained a useful tactic by both sides during the war, however, the fact remained that point defenses left pilots essentially to perform suicide missions.
There were attempts to raise the survivability, but they had failed.
Uparmoring them tended to simply create bigger, slower targets. Tech enhancements tended to simply be countered by the other side after some brief success. There had been multiple attempts at creating VI interfaces to shift to drone fighters, but the intrinsic limitations of a VI tended to hobble their capability far worse than other options.
However, freed of the limitations, full AI tended to match human pilots, and with remote recovery systems, managed to exceed them as their experience began to match their skills.
Then came the options available by the removal of the required life support systems. Lack of energy use allowed for longer missions, and the lesser visibility meant that fighters worked well for ambushes and even for some other surprise tactics.
One pirate stronghold discovered when a wing of fighters launched cold nearly a month before went active after using the momentum to coast into the target area.
Codex: Fighter Combat
xXx
Operative Rubicon's deployment beyond the veil in a contact mission was ended prematurely.
One received transmission after six databursts, hostile unknown contact prompted retreat and recovery. Possible positive communications, unknown end value as received transmission. More data possible after decryption.
Possibility of neutral contact with Geth remains unknown, hostile craft does not match known configurations. Organic forms detected upon hostile craft suggest something from our side of the veil rather than theirs.
Suggest further contact attempts even if hostilities occur.
Report from recon unit beyond the veil
xXx
As the military began to phase out the older ships of the fleet, it fueled a rise in private military companies formed to replace the military escorts for cargo vessels.
Often owned and operated by the same companies financing the trade ships, they tend to be refitted to a mere step or so behind current military hardware.
Piracy issues for Imperial ships plummeted with several ships gaining reputations exceeding their wartime victories. The Asari and Turian forces took steps to mimic the success as the strategy began to work, though the Turian steps fell short of those attempted to be met due to previous losses during wartime limiting ship use outside of military channels.
Peacetime Piracy Issues
xXx
During a minor skirmish with a pirate band in the terminus, the Salarians unleashed a new weapon design that was observed by Imperial scouts.
Assumed to be one of many each side developed from recovered debris of the Alpha Leviathan wreckage, the Salarians unveiled a particle beam weapon mounted on smaller atmospheric craft attached to STG units.
Possible acquisition of samples became a high priority due to observed effectiveness against ground targets.
Several recovered remains and impact points post STG bugout at that location and others since has given the possibility of engineering an Imperial version. This has gained increased funding to several defense firms and research groups across the empire.
Weaponry Post War
xXx
Heavy population losses during the war coupled with the severe lack of colonial holdings after the war prompted a shift in Turian operations. The smaller numbers allowed them to focus more on better equipment for their operatives to the point of individualizing gear for their soldiers.
Higher equipment values and customized equipment was not without its downsides. Less interchangeability even within their own units, even less of a chance in larger forces. But in the border skirmishes and rogue forces, their strategy paid off in reducing casualties and improving the capability of their operations teams.
However, the massive recalls of available personnel during the later parts of the war weakened the Heirarchy's standing with the Asari and other races that refused to involve themselves in the conflict.
Citadel Security suffered nearly a seventy-five percent loss of officers due to the recall as did several similar forces.
After the Salarians joined their militaristic endeavors, the Asari took steps to maintain a more peaceful balance of power boosting the Hanar into a position of being the fourth council race in all but name, and their formal induction into the position in the months after peace was declared.
Unlike the other races, the position is currently viewed as shared between the Hanar and the Drell. This shared position created another issue the Turians have been forced to deal with as the Volus ambassadors have been quick to remind their allies.
This combined with the collapse of the Treaty of Farixen has created other issues within the Citadel races.
Developments in the Turian Hierarchy
xXx
During the peace one of the races that gained an unexpected boost in their position was the Drell. Along with the Hanar's decision to share their council seats responsibility with their allies, the Drell received a second major boost in a deal with the Empire.
A trade of data from a Prothean cache from Kahje and other sources, they, along with the Hanar, negotiated for a planet in exchange.
Mojave served as a remote refueling and rearmament station during the middle years of the Contact War, but it's temperature left it uncomfortable for longer term colonization while there were more palatable worlds available for the Empire to expand upon.
The trade did cause minor issues for the Council, primarily raising issues of secrets between the two races and the factions that supported the war.
Rather than an abandoned facility, Mojave has become a Drell world and a prime trade route deeper into Citadel Space, one of the ports where species from both sides are common sights in the spaceport.
Codex: Mojave
In the fifty years since the war began, it became something else.
Worlds rendered lifeless, fleets left open in the void, countless trillions dead, and all of it just to point towards the simple fact that war evolves.
One of the truest axioms is that there isn't a limit to the lengths that sentient beings will go to exterminate each other if they are given enough of a cause.
The galaxy in flames is proof enough of that principle.
If things had turned out differently, then perhaps peace would have had a greater hold, but now, now it's only a matter of time before everything erupts once more.
Humanity had a single advantage at the beginning of the war, one we still hold even as the rest of our technology nears parity with our enemies. They had experience, we had the ability to dump antimatter at our enemies on a scale they'd never dreamed of.
Project Nemesis, originally one of a thousand similar attempts to create a useful FTL led, instead, to the ability to cheaply and easily mass produce antimatter.
Then the Turians appeared, attacking the defense fleet near Shanxi and the war was on as the line held in a wall of death and destruction.
A baptism by fire unlike any ever seen.
We had hoped that talks could come of it, and it seemed like they would until one of those bastards allies involved themselves. Earth was hit by the Batarians, a slave raid combined with an attempt to gain favor with the Citadel.
The battle ended as quickly as it began, but the price was higher and the majority of the Alliance government was among the dead when alien ships crashed in the capital.
Intercepted communications revealed that our enemies were cheering, seeing the slavers as heroes who might break the stalemate between the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy.
It was then that the Alliance died, and the Empire was forged from its ashes.
Until that point there had been rules, things that would not be done.
But now, we had a new response that our leaders took from the past.
They called it the Chicago Way, hit them twice as hard as they hit you. If they do something, do something worse.
It was open season on Batarians.
Recruits poured in as advances in technology skyrocketed, the results of reverse engineering of our foes toys.
We found Khar'shan and unleashed a new hell upon it with our greatest weapon. We became death, the destroyer of worlds.
May god have mercy on our souls...
excerpt from Admiral Williams journals
Date unknown
xXx
We should have seen it coming when the war began to spread across the galaxy. Humans were not a foe to be taken lightly, even if our allies believed in our superiority.
Then the Krogan joined them.
Over a thousand years of bad blood between them and the council, our arrogance came back to haunt us in what was done to them.
The STG was dragged into the mess during the human liberation of Tuchanka, when a Salarian research station was discovered. If they weren't whole heartedly with the Empire before, having a cure for the genophage brought the Krogan into their fold en mass.
With the Salarians caught red handed with an update for the bioweapon, well, the war changed as the Salarians were dragged fully into the fight while the methods of battle changed again.
Ground combat became something else, large battles obsolete and leaving only small skirmishes after high priority targets as orbital strikes became the norm.
It was the siege of Palaven that allowed the Matriarchs dominance on the council and the means to push for a cease in hostilities. There wasn't a choice at that point as humanity unveiled a new weapon that made things all the worse.
To think something called a dust bomb could be so catastrophic, but it was.
Particulate antimatter, the same thing that humanity was throwing around in all their conflicts, fired to spread out in an area, denying large portions of the orbitals to citadel ships and giving them a larger control of the battlefield.
And we gave them everything we could, all of their holdings became human territory and there wasn't a thing we could do about it.
The Turians were seething, and the Empire had to know that it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the trigger again and madness resumed control.
Matriarch Benezia
Remembering The Peace
xXx
Traditions forged in fire remain the strongest, be they the fires of war or family.
While we call ourselves an Empire, it is not one in the truest form.
We took the name from history, from Rome, from China, from many others.
Looking at the forces arrayed against us, we saw as our ancestors did. They saw a world on the brink and the barbarity that must fall to civilization, and we saw the turian invaders, the batarian slavers, the salarian assassins, and others who sought to conquer us.
We put ourselves into the fight, striking at the support of those besieging Shanxi before freeing our people even as we rebuilt what the slavers did to us.
We saw the state of the Krogan, the pride of a people who had been hammered by blows brought on by the idiocy of those who advanced them beyond what should have been. Accepting them as brothers, offering them the chance to grow and rebuild, to avenge the countless children dead due to the choices of those who took a developing race, gave them weapons, and pointed them at their enemies while expecting them to just stop because they said so.
And now it is time to see if the Citadel has learned the lessons we aimed to teach, or if this is only a delay in the forging fires that cleanses the galaxy.
Admiral Douglas Walker
Speech concerning the Cease Fire
xXx
The council chose the Krogan because we could fight.
We fought the Rachni for them, using weapons generations ahead of what we had ever developed. Entire generations thrown into the grinder, knowing nothing but warfare.
Then we won, leaving our enemies exterminated and naught but a name for the histories.
It was then that I see the folly that overtook everyone.
We only knew what was taught, and that was war.
Take, hold, and advance.
A people bred for war and had but a few remaining that remembered anything but combat do not adapt easily to peace. The council hadn't bothered to aid their weapons in adapting to the galaxy beyond making them the point of the sword.
So we fought as we always had, doing what we had for years against those who stood against us.
Just as those fools had done against the Rachni, they did against us.
Their dirty secret is that the Turians weren't the first meat shield they used.
We admit that the Turians could fight well, but the Salarians did what they always did best and fought dirty.
If only their work had targeted the soldiers then my people wouldn't have fallen so far. But they targeted the women and children with their Genophage. Krogans fight to survive, if we don't then death is what awaits us as only the strongest of us survive to take breath.
Since the humans found us, I've wondered if those children lost were the ones that could have helped, just as those lost during the Rachni Wars were lost by being pressed into battle when it was other callings that suited them.
My people never take charity well, and that wasn't what humanity offered.
While they needed soldiers as the Citadel had, they didn't want us to fight for them, but with them.
We knew the galaxy, they had troops ready to fight.
It was a different concept than we were used to, and a chance to take back what was stolen from us.
Unknown Krogan Battlemaster
Comment recorded shortly after the Krogan Treaties
xXx
When the Alliance came into being, it had been decided that a new city was needed for the capital. No nation was to be favored and it would be a neutral location.
Unfortunately, that planned city hadn't come into fruition before the Batarians attacked Earth.
Chicago had functioned as a temporary capital while plans went through for a real attempt at building on the one continent that didn't have a constant population.
Unfortunately, the windy city was leveled when the enemy dreadnaught crashed while under fire from converging defense fleets.
Four million casualties in the space of five minutes.
Humanity didn't have time to properly mourn the dead. There were things that could not be taken lightly, and it shifted our focus.
Where before there had been hesitation to build up, a push to talk to the Turians and try to have peace had been a major thing and ironically one of the major issues that the government had assembled to debate when it happened, now there was a will to fight and desire to force these new enemies to back down.
Then a week later, we cracked the general media encryption our enemies had been using and that changed things even more.
We knew what the Batarians were doing, we've captured enough of them alive from their raiding fleet for that, but the Turians made those slavers heroes for their "noble sacrifice" as it were. It was the moment that it was released that the Alliance was truly dead and the Empire had risen from the ashes of our one time capital.
Unconditional surrenders were the only kind we would take, and our own forces ceased to give them. Better to die in combat that live as a slave.
Slugging matches between fleets became the norm. The major advantage we had was our ability to outproduce them with antimatter, but other tech disadvantages had us using other options.
The Citadel forces had the doctrine of using larger ships and bigger guns, and we didn't have the refined barriers and armor they did so we went with another option.
Smaller ships were faster to build and required far less crew, while the dust bombs didn't require the large support the heavier citadel weapons did.
We just had the capability to drown them in small ships that they couldn't take down fast enough.
Then came Tuchanka and the Krogan.
Unfortunately, the Salarians decided that they couldn't let us repair what they did to our allies. Bioweapons were added to the enemy arsenal as were several other nightmares.
We responded with our own new WMD's in the form of nanite weaponry while we were forced to get very good at dealing with plagues.
Before the Asari managed to force a peace nearly a hundred worlds were uninhabitable from weapons each of us had deployed, most of which were by our own hand rather than theirs.
Oddly enough, there are a few Asari that are all but part of the Empire thanks to the Krogan. Not that many, mind you, but several that had longer associations with members of one of the few species with lifespans to match their own.
Add that there were several Krogan who would rather have a family with someone where their kids only had a one in a thousand chance of making it to birth, and you had several of them in the various enclaves across the Empire.
Then you had the "bad boy" effect and a lot of the younger Asari ended up gunning for Krogans.
We kept them contained during the conflict, no sense letting them see more than they had to within our borders. All out war with two members of their council meant that we couldn't expect the third not to get involved. We're still working out what to do with them now that we're supposedly at peace.
Now, all there is to do is wait until someone drops us back into war.
Doctor Bishop Grey
Lecture on the forming of the Empire
xXx
One of the more interesting social dynamics we encountered among the stars was the Volus.
Their culture limited emotional ties to those near them thanks to the method of advancement their clans had. They would trade members or even take them in combat, though combat tended to be brief with a loser quickly capitulating rather than dealing with heavier losses of life.
As such, their race fractured during the conflict between the Empire and the Turians long before the Salarian involvement began.
The major response to the Volus left in Imperial hands was one of confusion.
Excerpt from Species At Contact
xXx
Momentary peace led to opportunity.
The oldest ships were brought off the line, replaced with the newest models. Some of which had been in service since near the beginning.
Relay travel opened up once more without the ambush possibilities they presented during open warfare, though several systems left the battlefield hazards about them rather than risk them becoming gateways for enemy action in the event that hostilities resumed.
It took an unconventional solution to defend the relays that were opened. A solution in the form of some of the larger asteroids towed near them and armed with the best weaponry available, utilizing both barriers and their massive bulk as a defense for armored bases carved into them.
Then came the major jump in the Imperial arsenal as the planned advancement of VI systems into AI began.
Taking the lessons of the Citadel species, the AI development followed a different path. Licensing research combined with a mix of easy to obtain licenses with penalties for unauthorized research opened up doors.
When one of the Asari diplomats questioned someone of the policy, the response was that they equated AI to children, and if someone were to develop one then there had to be steps to protect it just as their would be to protect any other sapient entity.
The genophage issue shifted as a partial cure finished development. It wasn't something that would remove the issue entirely, but it shifted the Krogan reproductive cycle to minimize the influence.
Total fertility was decreased, but survival rates of the children soared within months of implementation.
But all was not well on either side of the peace.
Several of the soldiers were not quite ready to lay down arms on either side and leaving forces on both sides of the border attempting to deal with the militants intent on restarting the war.
The largest post war battle occurred between one of these groups and a batarian fleet over the unaligned system of Jartar before both Citadel and Imperial elements arrived to enforce the cease fire.
Recovered remains of an unknown vessel found amidst the wreckage has been classified at the highest levels.
Excerpt from A Try For Peace
xXx
During the Siege of Palaven, it was said that the weapon to force the Turians and Salarians to step back from the issue was not the one they dubbed the "Anti-Nuke" but a development that had taken years. The same designs that would later give rise to the defense platforms defending the relays was first used to develop a weapon.
The Juggernaut class mobile defense station remains as the largest vessels developed by the Empire. Fully the size of the Citadel itself, the Juggernaut was essentially a colony in and of itself.
It's design a response to the lack of dedicated military installations on several of the smaller colony worlds that could support actions in their area, and the incursions into enemy space that followed the early strikes. Starting from the bulk of a world consumed by a nova millenia prior, it was awe inspiring when it entered the direct conflict for the first time in the Turians home system.
With seventeen years spent in construction, and nearly a mile thick armor, nothing that was in our foes fleets could harm it.
But it's arrival was to late for the thousands of ships lost before it was sent to break the Turian forces.
Codex: Juggernaut
xXx
The Turian forces pride took the largest hit as peace settled about. Their spoils from the Krogan Rebellions were taken from them, returned to the clans that still lived and the rest went to museums.
Scrapped ships were harvested, the metals used for a new reward to the soldiers fighting for the Empire. Where various militaries remembered their lineages through history with a saber, the Empire chose a weapon more in tune with those whose name was claimed.
Each soldier was presented with a gladius forged from the hulls of the ruined hulks of enemy vessels. The victory swords were also presented to the widows and orphans of the dead.
And while the Turian fleet lay in ruins, the Batarians were worse off. Only a dozen ships were still space worthy, and of those only one was from their military and even that was a reconditioned pirate vessel rushed into service.
For the first time since the Rachni Wars, the Asari were essentially the only Citadel race with a notable military.
Codex: Effects of Peace
xXx
Peace was a fleeting thing.
It was neither the Citadel or the Empire that ended the fragile peace.
The Quarians had continued their covert operations beyond the veil, into Geth space and what they found started the spiral to conflict once more in a galaxy that had but three years of peace.
Geth scouts had found something amidst the chaos of the Contact War, an ancient derelict and within its hold the last eggs of the Rachni.
At that news, even the fragmentary attempts at developing longer lasting peace seemed to halt as both sides began an almost frantic buildup of military assets.
Excerpt from The Second War
xXx
Suspicion was rampant, factions from both the Empire and the Citadel all but directly accusing the other of having something to do with the rebirth of an ancient enemy. Early suspicions also turned on the Quarians, a popular rumor was of the Rachni threat being a ruse for them to gain military support in retaking Rannoch.
But there were also those who took advantage of the rising tensions in other ways.
Omega, long a haven for pirates, thieves, and other rogues shifted in nature as the new pirate queen moved to expel much of the criminal element during the Contact Wars rather than risk the station being either co-opted or attacked by either side. During the relative peace, Aria capitalized upon the unaligned nature of the station shifting it from a criminal kingdom to a neutral location between the Citadel and the Empire.
A neutrality enforced by some of the less upstanding members of several races.
Tensions in the Terminus
xXx
Rumors and mysteries spread as they advanced along the road to a new war.
Reports of an unknown craft matching that of the destroyed one from Jartar among the Geth and Rachni craft being spotted by reconnaissance drones beyond the veil.
Outlying colonies of several races being found abandoned, leaving no sign of what attacked them.
Sightings of the semi-mythical Collectors rising in number.
A supposed zombie attack on Feros.
Even as the scramble for new and more powerful weapons and technology spreads amidst the return to wartime recruitment and training levels, there are still attempts at communication between the Empire and the Citadel.
Moments of Peace
xXx
To much of humanity, the Krogan were an unusual addition to the Empire. Not just in being the second species to join, but in how they changed.
In a way, some of the krogan found religion, or rather, religion found them.
One of the battlemasters working with special forces units made a friend who happened to introduce him to Norse mythology. It seemed that the viking sagas managed to mix well with the few religious tendencies of the krogan.
It was an unexpected shift, but after a second look, relatively unsurprising after the fact.
Of course, the shift must have startled the hell out of the Citadel at the time, and it took a lot of effort to shift them back to sane armor rather than adding the horns to their helmets that they saw in art and fantasy stories.
The helmet cam from the STG team trying to gain access to our datanet is still rather far up there in the ratings. Ten salarians trying to deal with an enraged krogan in the buff singing some of the old norse sagas while using a decorative warhammer.
Most still aren't sure if the krogan was just that good, or if it was the shock of stumbling upon a drunken, naked krogan that gave him the advantage there.
Krogan And Religion
xXx
Fighter combat remained a useful tactic by both sides during the war, however, the fact remained that point defenses left pilots essentially to perform suicide missions.
There were attempts to raise the survivability, but they had failed.
Uparmoring them tended to simply create bigger, slower targets. Tech enhancements tended to simply be countered by the other side after some brief success. There had been multiple attempts at creating VI interfaces to shift to drone fighters, but the intrinsic limitations of a VI tended to hobble their capability far worse than other options.
However, freed of the limitations, full AI tended to match human pilots, and with remote recovery systems, managed to exceed them as their experience began to match their skills.
Then came the options available by the removal of the required life support systems. Lack of energy use allowed for longer missions, and the lesser visibility meant that fighters worked well for ambushes and even for some other surprise tactics.
One pirate stronghold discovered when a wing of fighters launched cold nearly a month before went active after using the momentum to coast into the target area.
Codex: Fighter Combat
xXx
Operative Rubicon's deployment beyond the veil in a contact mission was ended prematurely.
One received transmission after six databursts, hostile unknown contact prompted retreat and recovery. Possible positive communications, unknown end value as received transmission. More data possible after decryption.
Possibility of neutral contact with Geth remains unknown, hostile craft does not match known configurations. Organic forms detected upon hostile craft suggest something from our side of the veil rather than theirs.
Suggest further contact attempts even if hostilities occur.
Report from recon unit beyond the veil
xXx
As the military began to phase out the older ships of the fleet, it fueled a rise in private military companies formed to replace the military escorts for cargo vessels.
Often owned and operated by the same companies financing the trade ships, they tend to be refitted to a mere step or so behind current military hardware.
Piracy issues for Imperial ships plummeted with several ships gaining reputations exceeding their wartime victories. The Asari and Turian forces took steps to mimic the success as the strategy began to work, though the Turian steps fell short of those attempted to be met due to previous losses during wartime limiting ship use outside of military channels.
Peacetime Piracy Issues
xXx
During a minor skirmish with a pirate band in the terminus, the Salarians unleashed a new weapon design that was observed by Imperial scouts.
Assumed to be one of many each side developed from recovered debris of the Alpha Leviathan wreckage, the Salarians unveiled a particle beam weapon mounted on smaller atmospheric craft attached to STG units.
Possible acquisition of samples became a high priority due to observed effectiveness against ground targets.
Several recovered remains and impact points post STG bugout at that location and others since has given the possibility of engineering an Imperial version. This has gained increased funding to several defense firms and research groups across the empire.
Weaponry Post War
xXx
Heavy population losses during the war coupled with the severe lack of colonial holdings after the war prompted a shift in Turian operations. The smaller numbers allowed them to focus more on better equipment for their operatives to the point of individualizing gear for their soldiers.
Higher equipment values and customized equipment was not without its downsides. Less interchangeability even within their own units, even less of a chance in larger forces. But in the border skirmishes and rogue forces, their strategy paid off in reducing casualties and improving the capability of their operations teams.
However, the massive recalls of available personnel during the later parts of the war weakened the Heirarchy's standing with the Asari and other races that refused to involve themselves in the conflict.
Citadel Security suffered nearly a seventy-five percent loss of officers due to the recall as did several similar forces.
After the Salarians joined their militaristic endeavors, the Asari took steps to maintain a more peaceful balance of power boosting the Hanar into a position of being the fourth council race in all but name, and their formal induction into the position in the months after peace was declared.
Unlike the other races, the position is currently viewed as shared between the Hanar and the Drell. This shared position created another issue the Turians have been forced to deal with as the Volus ambassadors have been quick to remind their allies.
This combined with the collapse of the Treaty of Farixen has created other issues within the Citadel races.
Developments in the Turian Hierarchy
xXx
During the peace one of the races that gained an unexpected boost in their position was the Drell. Along with the Hanar's decision to share their council seats responsibility with their allies, the Drell received a second major boost in a deal with the Empire.
A trade of data from a Prothean cache from Kahje and other sources, they, along with the Hanar, negotiated for a planet in exchange.
Mojave served as a remote refueling and rearmament station during the middle years of the Contact War, but it's temperature left it uncomfortable for longer term colonization while there were more palatable worlds available for the Empire to expand upon.
The trade did cause minor issues for the Council, primarily raising issues of secrets between the two races and the factions that supported the war.
Rather than an abandoned facility, Mojave has become a Drell world and a prime trade route deeper into Citadel Space, one of the ports where species from both sides are common sights in the spaceport.
Codex: Mojave