Mass Effect: Annihilation discussion thread

- Hephaestus Station is in the Caleston Rift
- The Initiative paid better than anyone, even the Alliance
- The quarians wanted to make sure that the Ark didn’t just get them to Andromeda but would allow them to live on it indefinitely if something went wrong, which led to delays.
- The quarians were encouraged to bring other races onto their ark.
- Hephaestus Station has a total lack of architectural character
- Hephaestus Station is where the Keelah Si’yah was built.
- Hephaestus Station is a glorified orbital platform
- Quarian Cryopods are programmed to play the lullaby “My Suit and Me” once a century. A sentimental addition to make them more comfortable.
- Senna’Nir vas Keelah Si’yah is the quarian second-in-command.
- There are “Sleepwalker” teams on the Arks.
- 3,311 elcor went to Andromeda on the ark.
- The Radial is an industrial ‘zen’ garden in the middle of the ark where members of each race could meet and commune without leaving their atmospheric preferences. (33)
- The batarian section of the Radial was dank and moist. (33)
- Cryogenic conditions were dictated by the Council. (33)
- Quarians steadfastly refused to make one environment that suited no-one, which is why they made the Radial to suit them all. (34)
- Each race had two representatives (male and female, or other) who made up the Quorum, a kind of ‘Council” (35)
- There were only several hundred batarians on board, and they shared representation, and pathfinder, with the quarians. (35)
- The hanar and drell share a single Pathfinder too. (35)
- Presumably most races have a Pathfinder. (35)
- The Quorum woke at the halfway point to review operations. (35)
- Ship captain is Qetsi’Olam vas Keelah Si’yah.
- Telem’Yered, the Quarian Pathfinder, is a specialist in stellar cartography (51)
- Telem’Yered is an anti-geth hardliner. (52)
- Senna’Nir is very comfortable around machines and virtual intelligences, and secretly craved SAM to link with. (53)
- SAM on the Keelah Si’yah was deeply shackled so it would never be a true intelligence. The Quarians wouldn’t allow anything but that. (53)
- Rhodamine is found in mineral deposits on the moons of Xathorron. (92)
- The elcor Quorom representatives were Threnno and Nebbu. Nebbu appears to be the female. (108)
- The drell representatives on the Quorom were Kral Thauma and Glamys Azios. Kral is male, Glamys female. (108)
- Chabod is the hanar represenative on the Quorom. (108)
- The Andromeda Initiative took Lancer Assault Rifles with them. (113)
- The Andromeda Initiative managed to secure Arc Pistols. Not sure how. (113)

- The asari have a disease called the “Asari Cyanophage”. What it does is unknown, but its compared to HIV with how it is transmitted through bloodstream to bloodstream contact. (143)

- Ignac are spiky spice cones from the harsh plains of Khar’shan (36)
- Batarian crime leaders who are deposed have a lower eye gouged out. (54)
- Calling a batarian by a lower class is a serious insult. (62)
- Batarian poisons; Mother’s Milk is so caustic the victims throat dissolves mid-swallow. (104)
- Batarian poisons; Pauper’s Pleasure makes you break out in purple hives before your saliva boils and you slowly braise in your own fluids. (104)
- Batarian poisons; Final Jest turns your blood to ‘lighter fluid’ and uses your own brain electro-chemistry pain response as ignition. Explosive. (104)
- Ignac is the head of the Ferank crime syndicate. (104)
- Vacuum-popped Kharlak eggs appear to be a delicacy for a batarian. Something to eat when watching vids. (106)
- Batarians appear to breed rather prolifically. Borbala Ferank had 17 children and that was at the same time as running one of the most deadly smuggling operations on Khar’shan. (106)
- Batarians have been known to sell slaves to asari, turians, salarians and humans. (203)
- A batarian slave can buy its way to freedom. (203)
- On Khar’shan, slave is a position rather than a condition. (203)
- There are 30 year dry spells on Khar’shan. (203)
- Batarians are not upset about infidelity if it is with a higher caste. (203)
- The Reapers struck Camala before the Quarian Ark left the Milky Way. It seems as if they hadn’t expanded beyond batarian space by the time they did. (204)
- Batarian nobility are known as oligarchs. (204)

- Usharet used to grow on Rakhana.
- Some female drells have orange frills along their jaw.
- Few drell make long voyages.
- Cnidaria is a city on Kahje. (page 32)
- Lerian are pale, bioluminessent sea ferns from Kahje. (36)
- Usharet flowers are scarlet. (36)
- There are streets, slums and docks in Cnidaria City on Kahje. (42)
- Drell are called Rakhana-clan by the Volus. (67)
- To an elcor a hanar smells of ozone and seawater (73)
- The hanar’s entire culture relied on seeing the slightest flicker in the dark, their bioluminessence key to their culture. (74)
- Cnidaria City on Kahje is the only place the drell can live without succumbing to Kepral’s Syndrome. (109)
- Cnidaria is packed with drell. (109)
- There are drell beggars in Cnidaria, both young and old. These were known as the Drala’fa, meaning “the ignored”. (110)
- There were the drell equivalent of dogs in Cnidaria. (110)
- Hanar appear to have varying sizes, one was mentioned as ‘giant’. (110)
- Ranking members of the Illuminated Primacy need secrets, everyone’s secrets. Their drell agents were deployed to secret these to keep, or erase them if they would harm their patron or the hanar as a whole. (110)
- There is no religious conflict on Kahje, they all worship the Enkindlers. (156)
- There are different sects and cults within the Enkindler worship. (156)
- One sect believes a hanar called Kholai is their only true prophet, who they call The Enkindled one. (156)
- The Kholai Sect believed the Enkindlers made a mistake uplifting primitive life. Because they erred in directing evolution, this sect believes all present organic life is tainted and trends towards wickedness and chaos. (157)
- The Kholai Sect adamantly believes the Enkindlers will return one day to punish their ‘children’ for their impure way of life, for using their blessings improperly and polluting themselves by mixing with other cultures. (157)
- This sect believes this will be an extinction event they call the Day of Extinguishment. (157)
- The Illuminated Primacy objected to Kholai’s teachings, as they believe the Enkindlers incapable of error. (157)
- Drell cannot be in full body suits for too long. The toxins secreted by their skin gets absorbed due to the confined space, so they have at best two days before they go mad. This is why they don’t wear suits like quarians/volus to avoid Kepral’s Syndrome. (159)

- Lumm is a reasonably kind Elcor who allowed slaves to buy their way out of slavery.
- Elcor have powerful smelling senses.
- Elcor take a long time to wake from cryo (page 28).
- The elcor roam savannahs on Dekuuna, their native habitat. (36)
- Onuffri blossoms grow on the savannahs of Dekuuna. They are thick purple bulbs. (36)
- Nothing is a secret to the elcor, they communicated using scent and microgestures and could communicate in ways vastly deeper than vocally. Hanar have similar ability to communicate. (38)
- There was an elcor battle on Viluuna. (44)
- There is a city on Ekuna called New Elfaas. (55)
- Elcor are very long lived, 50 years isn’t much to them. (64)
- Elcor are known for serving as medics in the military. (75)
- Elcor young are called calfs. (75)
- Yorrik is 398 years old (83)
- Ekuna was once invaded and it was termed “The Little Invasion”. The invasion was by quarians, these were exiles, criminals, anti-socials and gangs that were dumped on Ekuna. (83)
- The Little Invasion happened in 1900. (83)
- Elcor have at least 3 stomachs. (87)
- During the Little Invasion, elcor had to test their food sources for toxins placed by the exiled quarians. (87)
- All Elcor hate confined spaces, it’s why so few took to interstellar travel. (127)
- To an elcor you can’t call something love until its lasted a couple of hundred years. (144)
- Elcor lip slats might look like simple orifices, but they are terribly delicate sensory organs prone to infection. (206)
- Ochreous Rhinophage, Thunowanuro Megafluenza and Hunno Plague are known elcor viral diseases. (206)
- Hunno plague ripped through settlements on Sangel a few decades ago. (206)
- Ochreous Rhinophage was an ancient elcor pandemic that spread quicker than smallpox. (212)

- Thousands of refugees from the attacks on Eden Prime, Virmire, Noveria, etc. ended up lost and broke, many sold into indentured slavery.

- Keleven is a breed of blooming, celery-like plant high in protein that was developed in the bio-vaults of a quarian ship. (37)
- A Quarian taking an ancestors name in vain is blasphemy. (49)
- The Nedas movement was made up of young radical quarians who felt the endless quest to recover the homeworld would doom their species. (51)
- Quarian suits have the ability to cure infections, and can be used even without a quarian inside them. (124)
- One of those who had programmed the geth was Liat’Nir. She was turned into an Ancestor VI during the Morning War. (130)
- Quarians make suits so nothing gets in, volus make them so nothing gets out. (151)
- Almost all quarian children are only childs. (167)
- Quarian Ancestor VI’s were stored on disc. Those quarians on the disc do not have suits, they appear as a hologram in the centre of the disc, translucent but in full colour. (172)
- Quarian eyes are white and without pupils. (173)
- Quarians pre-Morning War wore cowls, they also were known to wear dresses. Some were purple and red. (173)
- Quarian hair turns grey when they’re old. (173)
- Quarian Ancestor VI discs are made of metal. (173)
- Ancestor VI’s are made from a personality imprint of the dying quarian. (174)
- Ancestor VI’s are utterly illegal and unspeakably valuable. (174)
- In the past every quarian had ancestor VI’s. These provided comfort, continuity, and a past that didn’t truly end. (174)
- The geth destroyed the ancestor databanks when they revolted. It’s unknown if it was deliberate. (174)
- The Ancestor VI’s are not truly sentient, but there had been something of an arms race to augment and upgrade them, to the point where the difference between VI and real ancestor was academic. (174)
- In the anti-machine panic the quarians never tried to make another and feared them. They were an acceptible, but deeply felt, loss. (174)
- Not every ancestor VI was destroyed by the geth. (175)
- The ancestor VI’s were close to sentience by the time of the Morning War. (175)
- Quarians now would be torn between where an ancestor VI would be a hideous crime or one of the only objects they can ascribe value to. (175)
- Ancestor VI’s have a set number of phrases for opening a conversation, but they can improvise conversations too. (176)
- There is a plant called a Fa’yin on Rannoch. It gives seeds with shells, and a nut inside. (179)
- Qorach, a rannoch-native carnivore, has blind children which are called Ke’sad. (179)
- The Qorach is a bit like a very carnivorous bighorn sheep whose bellies are covered in blue-green fern pollen and seed casings, and drag thorny plants over mountainsides. (179)
- There are no pollinating insects on Rannoch. All lifestock exists in an uneasy, ungraceful symbiosis. (179)
- The Lemek was a worm, a desert vermiform species. It was small, slender and covered in metallic rose-covered scales. (246)
- If you cut apart a Lemek both pieces will grow into new lemek worms. (246)
- Quarian suits are made from whatever they can scavenge. (253)

- The elcor knew of the Raloi 200 years before the asari brought them into Citadel Space.
- Raloi have elegant feathers. (57)

- The salarians can get proto-syphilis called Ayalon B. (208)
- Ayalon B is not a natural virus, it was created by salarian scientists on Erinle. It proved too volatile for mass manufacture, so all samples were supposedly destroyed. (209)
- There is a crawling algae on Erinle called Yelik. It can infect the lungs. (233)

- There is a rare hemorrhagic fever called Titan’s Tears. It only affects Turians. (208)

- 10.1% of drell experiencing frostbite and are stuck between death and life (42)
- Measles, Ebola, Marburg Virus, Sangelian Hemorrhagic Fever and Teukrian Flu are the only known diseases that can transfer between sentient species. (125)
- There is no known virus that commonly afflicts both drell and hanar. (125)
- Yoqtan was deliberately engineered for the Ark. Only 91% of its RNA was the same as it would normally be. (125)
- The genetically modified Yoqtan virus contained the asari cyanophage, salarian proto-syphallis Ayalon B, turian Titan’s Tears, and measles. (208)
- The virus also included junk RNA from a dozen sources including genetic traits for Kepral’s Syndrome, Ardat Yakshi, Varren Scale-Itch and the bubonic plague. (208)

- Kympna Lobes are pungent, toothy plants that were near carnivorous plants from the chemical forests of Irune. (36)
- Volus suits can be sleek and stylish, even beautiful. (57)
- Gaffno Yap is one of the volus elected to the Quorom. He was known as a political radical. (108)
- Yoqtan is the volus equivalent of chicken pox. The treatment is taking baths, apparently. (124)
- The symptoms of Yoqtan are; dark-blue sores, swollen tongue, high fever, chills, and sometimes persistent nausea. (124)
- Only the weakest volus children die of Yoqtan. (124)
- Volus suits are not designed to keep out pathogens, they’re purely to maintain atmospheric pressure. (124)
- There are high-pressure jungles on Irune. (125)
- Volus are allergic to oxygen. (125)
- Volus find being thin unattractive. (150)
- Volus are commonly paranoid that they’re the most hated race in a room. (150)
- Volus suits have a visual display like a quarians. (150)
- The volus visual display is able to show the status of suit seals, filters, pressurization zones, hygenic sieves and also exterior conditions. (151)
- Quarians make suits so nothing gets in, volus make them so nothing gets out. (151)
- Volus suits can be upgraded with medical shields, prophylactic reserviors, contaminant stopgaps and the ability to detect aggressive foreign cell structures. (151)
- Volus visual displays are controlled via facial tics. (151)
- The volus have no quarrel with the drell, if anything, they are sympathetic because their client relationship with the hanar is akin to the volus relationship with the turians. (153)
- The volus have no quarrel with the hanar, they just find preachers annoying. (153)
- If the volus were to strike at the drell they would try to buy out the hanar Compact so they would have a client race of their own, thus improving their galactic standing. (153)
- The volus wouldn’t stoop to poisoning a species… apparently. (153)
- The volus might not poison a species, but they would be prepared to finesse another race into war with that species, such as the batarians or quarians. (154)
- The volus gave up on war long ago, they find them wasteful but are very interested in other wars. (154)
- Volus would never deny munitions manufacturers opportunities. (154)
- The volus dislike unpredictability, they would rather be direct. This is why they dislike biological weapons. (154)
- The Vol Protectorate has only ever used three writs of exile in this history, two of which were for a dissident called Gaffno Yap. (155)
- A volus’ second name is not a surname, it indicates no genetic relationship. (155)
- Volus dislike the implication of families owning their offspring. (155)
- Gaffno Yap was considered a terrorist. He was an anarcho-communist who wanted to abolish currency and personal property. (155)
- Gaffno Yap wanted to set up his anarcho-communist society in Andromeda. (156)
- Volus fabrics can transmit textural information into the cerebral cortex. (157)