What Happened To...

Hello, I have a couple questions that might be an excellent source of articles and topics for CDN and a great way for CDN to expand the Mass Effect universe:

What happened to Shepard's Team - One would think the team that saved the galaxy would have achieved celebrity status and become newsworthy. Of course the Vimire Survivor and Garrus would avoid the public eye as SPECTREs, bute some of them positions of authority, like Clan Chief and Overlord Urdnot Wrex and Admiral Tali'Zorah. And I'm sure James Vega and Miranda and rest would be climbing up the ranks in the Alliance. It would be interesting to see what impact they made and continue to make in the galaxy.

What happened to the Raloi - I don't really know if there are already Raloi characters out there, but it would be interesting to see how the Raloi re-enter galactic civilization, one that is different than the one they are forced to leave.

What happened to the Leviathans and the Awakened Collectors - The Leviathan DLC and ME3 Reckoning multiplay introduced the ancient Leviathans and Collectors freed from the Reapers Control. How will they interact with a galaxy now rid of the Reapers?

Hey Loocoon and welcome to our forums.

Now, to address your questions:

#1 - Shepard's team: We try to avoid mentioning or using canon characters to best of our capabilities (e.g. Hackett being supreme dictator of Earth cannot be ignored). Fudging with Bioware's canon is avoided to retain a familiar environment for newcomers, but continuing after the Reaper war required us to write some of our own canon to follow.

#2 - Turvess is accessible but had not initiated contact with the Council ships standing guard above the planet. The situation may change in future, but for the time being Turvess and new raloi are off-limits. This change can be also initiated by players if they have a plot or article involving Turvess approved by the administration.

#3 - Leviathans and awakened collectors have no bearing on the Cerberus Daily News. The first were only encountered by Shepard and then small circle of Alliance intelligence community and leadership know about them at all. Awakened collectors have been ignored by the forums, and they are not available as characters given their very unique situation.

If you have any other questions or wish to ask for advice, please do so! We'll do our best to get you started with us.

We're glad you asked!

There are a lot of questions that never really got answered regarding the Epilogue of Mass Effect 3 - so much so that when the boards prepared to cross over, we had to iron out a whole lot of details ourselves - were the krogan saved? The geth? The quarians? Who amongst Shepard's crew survived? To that effect, the forum moderators asked several writers across the board (each of them regularly recognized as loremasters of their own species) to figure out the logistics of what happened in the year between The Final Battle and the beginning of Reconstruction.

They created a lot of information - which could easiliy fill a codex of its own, and (being one of those moderators) we managed to predict a lot of what happened in the Extended Cut. I really suggest that you give them a read - they cover a lot of information, explain the fate of several factions, and introduce even more that rose up as the result of the Reapers and the Crucible.

To answer your questions in particular:

In general, the only members of Shepard's team confirmed alive are those absolutely required for the Golden Ending of their species, to maximize play potential across the fanbase. However, upon reflection, this only requires two members to survive, and as very specific positions in their governments: Tali, as an Admiral of the Fleet, and of course Wrex as Overlord of the Krogan. Nobody else is guaranteed to survive (not even fan favorite Garrus Vakarian), though the boards have de facto decided that the names "Thane Krios" and "Mordin Solus" have spread as figures to spread a banner under (if not as people with speaking roles). And, of course, as HD noted, Hackett is enjoying all the pain and stress of being the leader of the Systems Alliance Transitional Administration on Earth (or SATAE).

Regarding characters like Garrus, vega, and Miranda, however, assuming they survived, they have very vested interests in remaining anonymous - as Shepard's confidantes, N7 candidates, members of Cerberus and as SPECTREs in pretty much everything but name. The board effectively doesn't talk about them, so as to avoid crossing Rule #6 of the forums, and avoid turning the boards' theme into the Secondary Adventures of Garrus Vakarian and Friends.

According to an article from the SPECTRE terminal on the citadel, the Raloi destroyed every means of interplanetary communication and travel on their planet, intent on slipping under the Reapers' notice as a "pre-spaceflight" species. This has become a double-blind, however - since they have no means of reaching us, we have no means to reach them and tell them of war's end. There are reports of raloi sightings across the galaxy, but most of them are relegated to the tabloid sections instead of being truly explored. You are, of course, free to discuss this to your heart's content - but keep in mind that despite the efforts of the Council, Turvess is largely out of contact with the rest of the galaxy.

This may well change when players introduce news articles changing the scnenario - if you have an idea on how to address this standoff, please, write it up!

It is unclear what happened to the Leviathans, as the thralls they employed were stolen from Reaper forces and never very common to begin with. As the Reapers were never truly destroyed (coming under Shepard's control during the Final Battle) and have largely disappeared, so too have the Leviathans and their thralls - under largely unexplained reasons.

Given their role as single-minded vessels of vengeance, they are unfortunately not acceptable as a playable race. Feel free to discuss them, but don't expect anyone on the board to know for sure what happened.

Again, I wholeheartedly recommend skimming through our Retrospectives for information. It's a lot of stuff, I know, but it gives a very rich background of information you can use for both IC and RP material. If nothing else, consider this: they predicted almost all of the salient content from Bioware's Extended Cut.

If you have other questions, though, please ask!

One could set up pols for major character moments, like who is the Virmire Survivor and did he/she survive the Citadel Coup, who did Shepard romance, how did the loyalty missions turn out, etc., but I don't know how feasible that is. However, considering the universe already set up, it looks like that Shepard had been going paragon throughout the series. So going by the best case scenario, every team member survived except for Thane, Legion and Mordin. And I can see the galactic equivalent of People's magazine talking about Tali/Garrus and Joker/EDI, if that happens.

As for the Raloi, there can be a story of a diplomatic team being sent to Turvess' surface to reinitiate contact.

But what's going on with the Rachni? Seeing that they're saved, and they may have contributed to the war against the reapers, are they public knowledge and giving territory by the council, or did they go underground so to speak and joined the Leviathans and their thralls into urban folklore?

The issue with this is that the moderation team's leery of adding more detail than absolutely necessary to Canon - particularly when we already have so much detail coming from perhaps five choices. There's also Shepard's clandestine nature - do we really need to know who the Virmire Survivor is or whether s/he died in the Coup, especially when the only witnesses are Shepard's crew, Commander Bailey and the Councilors themselves?

The article we wrote for the Coup suggests otherwise - and, indeed, masks the Paragon/Renegade choices Shepard can make in that mission. After all, not everyone plays a totally Paragon shepard. Not everyone saves Jack in time, and a whole lot of people engage either Tali or Garrus in the romance sidequests (which, obviously, negates that angle for their column in Fornax). By pointedly not mentioning those (and discussing her more catastrophic blasts to the status quo), we avoid excluding those people who don't care to live in someone else's save file.

That's the big issue we have with defining further Shepard plots. As for your other suggestions (which we welcome, so keep asking away):


We have no problems with this idea. In fact, some people have already floated this by the moderators, and we've approved it. What we need, however, are people with the spare time and dedication to write those articles and submit them to our Presslink News Aggregator.

Do you think you have what it takes to get the Raloi off of Turvess? Then, by all means, take your shot at it! Send us an article that explains the situation, and once we've had a chance to approve it, we will make it canon.


The rachni's current whereabouts are unknown, as they left pretty much the moment the Relays came back online. Their existence is a mystery; considering their involvement with the battle started and ended with assisting on the Crucible, there are many who might claim the new queen doesn't even exist.

The reason for this issue is twofold: one, the Queen's refusal to rejoin the galaxy after her extinction, and two, the "hive" nature of the Queen's forces - she literally controls them all. Thus, if you speak to a drone, you're in reality speaking with her, thus breaking the Rule #2 of the Rules and Guidelines. It is literally easier to play as a geth (whom are no longer a single entity) than as a rachni, and given their restricted use on the forum, that's saying something.

This isn't to say we aren't averse to publishing news on her whereabouts - but those articles will always be under close scrutiny, as will all RP interactions with rachni forces.

Any other issues you'd like to ask? I'm sure I or any other member of the forum could help you! And we are serious about the Turvess issue. Give us a good article on the subject, and we'll work with you to get it running.

I'm glad someone who isn't from a CDN background still knows/cares about the raloi. <(^v^)>

I have been reading the Quarian Retrospectives, and I am wondering while reading The Beast Problem, where is Tali? Isn't she supposed to be an Admiral, why isn't she with the other Admirals discussing the rogue Geth armada? Did she working as a diplomat or the head military mechanic? Did she step down in favor of working on the Normandy, or retired? Was she killed in the final battle against the Reapers?

We try not to talk about Shep's crew, but I'm pretty sure she's an admiral now (or was at the end of the war at least), since her presence was needed to save both quarians and geth.
About the beast it was retconned by the mods.