Thessia and the beacon

A lot of those matriarchs are apparently dead. So I'd say a lot of them paid the price for their actions. that said, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few dissatisfied young asari around these days. My wife was not happy to find out about it.

You're all missing the point a little bit here. This wasn't one or two matriarchs making the call. This was hundreds of them over the course of thousands(?) of years making the call to not only not reveal this thing, but to do absolutely nothing with it themselves. This is a systemic problem, and it doesn't matter how many are dead, something has to change to make sure this can't happen again.

...Okay, I don't mean to imply that there's another race of sentient godships coming to harvest us all. Obviously this exact situation can't happen again. On a smaller scale, though, very similar situations might arise. Minus the godships.

Well, if ever there was an opportunity for asari society to change it's now.

Beacons are not always easy to decipher, it's entirely possible that this one was absurdly cryptic (Like Lorath, or more famously, the Eden Prime beacon, both of which required various forms of ciphers to use effectively) as opposed to a relatively simple to understand load of information (Like Mars or Koranti).

Quoted for fucking truth.

Like, I get that I'm a fairly atypical example of your average asari, but I'm still trying to work out why we didn't rule this galaxy with Protheotech.

I mean, we were nearly beaten to the Citadel by the salarians. We had the advantage of an actual Prothean VI, and they nearly beat us to the tides-damned Citadel. Not impressed.

how come everybody thinks the Protheans where so damned superior? they got fucked by the reapers - we all did not (barely but still)

Maybe that content is a bit overrated when you reach a certain point in evotechnovolution. There isn't much more to come, it isn't as if they would know how to build themselves new relays or something.
There sure is a lot to find out about their society and empire but i seriously doubt there are hidden superweapons in that beacon.

besides, asari are no hasty species. Corona, you know how we are, talking, judging, mulling things about before decisions, while the hasty salarians have burned through two or three gernerations already.

What should we have done with it? Built wave after wave of warships? Enhanced our genome to turn ourselves into unstoppable warriors? Made the Republics a fortress of battle steel and relativistic beams primed to shatter anyone who defied us, and dictate the terms of the Pax Asari from the ashes of our enemies' homeworlds.

Look, you won't find me defending the choice to keep what was evidently the crown jewel of Thessia's Protheotech a secret, and our current Councilor and Matriarchs don't seem that way inclined either, judging by the policy of full disclosure. But we had, evidently, an 'unfair' - define that however you will - technological edge on the rest of the galaxy, and we waged no wars with it, pursued no conquests. So far as anyone seems to know, all we used this beacon for was to learn. For all the instances in the history of so many species where advanced technology has led to brutal conquest or self-destruction, is the Republics' peaceful coexistence with its neighbours that terrible a crime?

...Sorry if I seem a bit on edge, but some of the criticisms floating around - you'd think the Protheans had left a giant cache of anti-Reaper missiles on Thessia with detailed step-by-step instructions, and we'd just been using them as decorative coat racks for twenty thousand years. It's too easy in hindsight.

You have a point Mrs T'Nara, but you have to admit there is a little hypocrisy in here, since the Asari were the one who came up with the obligation for every race to share prothean tech.

I hear a lot of bitching about the beacon, but I hang out with Citadel Truthers/Accountability People.

I donno, I think the Asari have to fix this one for themselves. It was an unforgivable betrayal, but...I never trusted anyone on the council anyway.

I'm kind of more interested in how they feel about being uplifts.

Is it wrong that I got pissed off like hell for Thessia?


Oh well. Could never hold a grudge to an Asari though <3

Slaver asshat with shit for brains has a point. For ages the asari held the other council species to the same standard, that all protheotech would become available for joint study and dispersal. All the while everyone else followed this standard, the matriarchs kept their species subtly at the top of the game, taking pieces of that technology, as opposed to either devoting research to its contents entirely or following the same standards that everyone else did.

Frankly it was an abuse of power, and a further abuse of trust. If the asari hadn't suffered for their actions in the war, I'd be a lot more pissed than I am. And I'm still pretty pissed.

Okay, I'll play. Set aside the obvious technological advantages the beacon should have granted (would have granted literally anybody else) and there's still the question of why the asari didn't pop up and support Shepard when she said the Reapers were coming. The higher-ups must have known, and even so they decided to deny everything and keep the galaxy in the dark despite mounting evidence.

No matter how you spin it, the asari are responsible for a lot of needless deaths in that war.

Hoo, boy. Lotta jumping to conclusions ITT. Now, I still don't know if this is even true. I haven't read about this anywhere else, so all I have to go on is the word of some guy on a forum that used to be rife with rumour and fabrications.

But even if it is true, we have absolutely no idea what was in that beacon. I don't know how you can call the asari out for not siding with Shepard or whatever when we just don't know if they found anything in that beacon that even referenced the Reapers. How do we know the asari didn't use up all the beacon's goodies centuries ago? What if it was just plans for really nice biotic amps (the asari do those very well), or terrabytes of awful Prothean fan fiction?

Yap, Mr. Quarian, most of Thessias population for example.

do you you really think weighig up who screwed up most is going to get us anywhere? Quarians arn't that shiny example, don't speak about salarians or also turians and humans as well. The batarians payed isolationism bitter. Everyone has secrets, just a natural thing but we got our shit together in the end. I don't hate any of them for what they may have done in the past, nobody knew what was coming. Feel free to hate the asari for not disclosing the becon earlier though.

Daia is so right about asari. never was this thing - whatever it contains - used to rule or wage war against others. To give that up in the absolutely right moment is hard. asari sometimes tend to observe a bit longer, not so great when a reaper is on your doorstep but the final decission will be a good one in the long run.

actually, everything we did, the citadel, the relays, was preplanned and observed by the reapers, the big masterplan. inside that beacon is for sure no information about that fact, so all we would have done would have only accelerated the arrival of the reapers. That beacon contains prothean tech and scientific information but not a clue about the reapers or wonderweapons that would have won us the war fast and easy.

Imagine if the situation was flipped? If Humanity found another beacon?

We'd be expected to turn it over immediately.

I do. But would humanity have done so if nobody else would know? imagine that situation.

You also have to take into account that we do not have a government as you do. asari republics are not even capable of the big conspiracy, it is all hanging on a few individuals who know about the beacon at all. There is no political scheme or plot because we have no politicians in your way of understanding.


EDIT: I don't feel ashamed to say I'm sorry on behalf of my people. Take if from my blue face personally, everyone that has posted here or is reading this, for whatever it is worth.

You're implying that human government conspiracies involve politicians.

Well you have matriarch, who have the power of making high level decisions without consulting with the citizens, don't you? That's how it happened, isn't it?

All right, now I've actually read up on this rather than hide in my safe little dome of "not paying attention"...

First, let me categorically state that I believe that my government's concealment of this device was indefensible. It broke our own laws, contradicting our own philosophy of sharing and integration. In short, the matriarchs who made that decision all those centuries ago were wrong. Had I been there, I'd have argued against it - as it happens, all I can do is apologise on behalf of selfish old women who chose to preserve their own advantage rather than release this gift so others could benefit.

However, what I can understand (if not approve of) is how this illusion was maintained for so long.
What do you think would happen if the asari turned around to the rest of the galaxy and said "hey, look, we had this thing all along, silly us"? It would, in one move, turn the civilised galaxy against us - the political equivalent of walking through the den of a [TRANSLATION ERROR: did you mean "hamster"?] holding a [TRANSLATION ERROR: did you mean "beetroot"?]. Like any lie, it festered with time until the higher-ups were forced to maintain it to keep the peace.

One thing about this issue that irks me is that some are tarring all asari with the same brush as those who hid the beacon in the first place. Your average asari in the street likely hadn't a clue that this was going on until the rest of the galaxy found out, most matriarchs included - I certainly never found out, at any rate, and I'm fairly sure neither my mother nor hers ever rose high enough to be privy to such information.
And no, matriarchs can't just decide to make some change or other willy-nilly. The e-democracy exists for a reason.