What did you do today in ME?

"Hi Alec,
we made it to Feros at last and I'm glad we did sooner rather than later. The colony, Zhu's Hope, was under attack by the geth and things looked pretty bad. All the rubble, destruction. Reminded me of back then. But thankfully we could help out those colonists. We were able to fight off the geth wave and helped the colonists get back on their feet by hunting down varren for food, enabling running water and getting the power back.
We heard from the colony's leader that the main site of the geth was located at the nearby headquarters of a company called ExoGeni. We took the Mako to get there, but on our way we noticed some comm chatter. We found some ExoGeni scientists holed up in an underground structure and asked them about the geth and their company. No answers that really helped, but one of the scientists asked us to look for her daughter Lizbeth who was still at the HQ. Once we were inside we found her pretty quick, unharmed. She figured the geth were there because of something called the "Thorian", an ancient alien plant, and gave us her keycard so we could move around freely in the building. I used it at a VI terminal and learned that ExoGeni studied this thing and the effect of its spores, and that they used those poor colonists as a control group. I fucking hate scientists sometimes. The Thorian had the ability to enthrall the affected colonists, and it was right under their colony. The colonists had behaved a bit strangely earlier on, and then I knew why.
I wanted to help them so badly, but first we needed to deal with the geth. A giant geth ship was attached to the wall of the building, and we eventually found a way to get rid of it. Its claws were attached to some high pressure doors, and we found the controls for it. And this thing was history.
With that out of the way, we wanted to return to the colony asap, but the comm revealed something was going on with the scientists. Lizbeth, who had come with us, asked us to stop. One of the scientists, Ethan Jeong, was arguing with her mother and threatened her. Jeong wanted to keep the company's secrets safe and was ready to do anything for it. I tried talking him down, but it didn't work. Had to shoot him in self-defense. He was a fucking idiot, but still I wish it hadn't come to this.
Lizbeth had told us earlier that the colonists had covered the entrance of the Thorian's lair shortly before the geth arrived, so we knew they'd try anything to keep us from getting to it. Lizbeth's mother suggested to use nerve gas grenades to keep the colonists from harm, and it worked. We knocked out all of them and opened up the hidden entrance, when the colony's leader appeared. For a moment I feared he wanted to shoot me, but then he shot himself instead. Poor bugger.
Then we entered the lair. Lizbeth had thought that Saren was after the Thorian because of its mind-control abilities, but it was something else entirely. After we had weakened the Thorian (which was frigging large and spanned over several floors) by shooting its nodes attached to the walls, an asari was released from a node once the Thorian fell to its death. Her name's Shiala and she told me she had helped Saren gain the so-called Cipher from the Thorian to understand the vision from Eden Prime better. Feros was a Prothean world once, but the Thorian was there long before them, and those who died became a part of it. Pretty freaky, huh?
Saren then had his geth try to take down the Thorian to stop me from following his steps. That didn't work out so well for him, since Shiala gave me the Cipher willingly as well. On the other hand I did what Saren wanted all along. Bit sad to think I killed such an ancient being. It was just caught in the middle of all this.
In the end, the vision didn't become any clearer, but we learned some more interesting bits from Shiala. Sovereign, the ship Saren uses, is able to indoctrinate people, and Matriarch Benezia originally tried to bring Saren back on a better path, but she fell under the influence, too. At least according to Shiala, but she seemed trustworthy enough. She stayed with the colonists to help them, which is good. They need all the help they can get to rebuild. I'm so glad we could free them from the Thorian's control.
We returned to the Normandy and Liara attempted to make sense of the vision by linking our minds, similar to how Shiala transferred the Cipher. It's fascinating what some species are capable of, but she said the vision didn't make much sense to her, so we still have no real clue where Saren went. It was a little disappointing, but there's something else that piqued my interest. I found a message at the ExoGeni HQ, from a doctor mentioning Cerberus, and the creatures we fought at the Thorian were the ones we saw in one of these Cerberus bases. Wonder how they're connected, but I intend to find out.
On a different note, the Normandy is really great. I like the crew a lot and we're becoming friends gradually. I'm learning a lot more about their pasts, like... Wrex told me his father tried to kill him back on Tuchanka, but he killed him first. Some tough shit. Williams told me about her big family. She has 3 sisters, and it sounds really nice from what she told me, even though she lost her dad some time ago. And Tali is the daughter of a quarian admiral. Pretty big thing, huh? Wish you could meet them all.

-Dee"

A bunch of pics:


I feel kinda OP, haha. The Sniper Rifle is amazingly strong now, I'm really digging it. Wouldn't have thought it's so much fun to use. I even killed everything on foot on the skyway, something I never did so far because I like to blast those geth away with the Mako (it's just less time-consuming that way ).
I also bought more Spectre weapons for Kaidan and Wrex (Tali also got a shotgun, but I barely use her in this run). Never did that before, but with so much money... tehe.
Now back to some sidequesting!