The Mysterious Benefactor

Cerberus is basically a conglomerate of military-industrial complex companies which became stupidly ungodly rich because they were the first ones through the Charon Relay and made trillions because of the unimaginable wealth to be had by being the filter which new technologies reached Earth and having Dutch East India Company access to the markets of a whole new galaxy. The Illusive Man controls Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, and a bunch of other equivalents in-game.

You're attempting to draw a line but the weird thing is the line was crossed a long ago and this is well behind it.

It's not even like it would be a Cerberus project. It's just Cerberus underwriting the Andromeda Initiative after Space Elon Musk ran out of money. The Andromeda Initiative is exactly the sort of thing they'd be surprisingly good at funding without bankrupting themselves.

Especially since it's not like the Nexus is actually the Citadel.

Citadel=13 million
Nexus=200,000

Plot twist it's SAM! We've seen an AI able to funnel credits before..

O...M...G.

I just had an epiphany.

Note that I'm saying this half-joking but...


What if it is Kumun Shol? The eccentric volus billionaire who owned and lived on a planet called Klencory who saw visions of "beings of light" and "machine devils" etc etc.

But then why kill Garson?

They're evil, whoever they are.

So that eliminates Anderson.

The Benefactor is a Geth from the future ^TM.

I dunno, Cerberus is a friend with lots of options:

* Cora finding out she's not her actual parents child
* Cerberus working as a cult to take over the Initiative
* Possibly a Cerberus ark arriving

Lots of interesting stuff.

I was thinking about the Cora part, how would that work with her last name? TIM found other Harpers for her?

Well I can only speculate but how I would write it?

Basically, the same way TIM raised Gillian in the novels.

Fake parents who raised her then sent her to train with the Asari so TIM could learn their secrets.

Maybe explaining why Cora's parents didn't seem to love her.

That would require the writers actually had a grasp of the lore anywhere near ours.

lol nupe

TIM is IMO the only one with both motive and means to be the Benefactor. The other one *might* be the Shadow Broker, since I think it's implied that the yahg Shadow Broker who preceded Liara knew about the Reapers. But why would that iteration of the Shadow Broker bother helping the Initiative? He and the yahg were getting nothing out of it.

I think the Benefactor is actually a group of people, and that they are people we don't know about yet. To give a comparison, I'm thinking the Benefactor is like the Illuminati from the Deus Ex franchise.

I don't think it is TIM. Too much, both ingame and metagame, goes against him being involved. Now if I am right and the Benefactor is a group of people in the shadows I can see TIM having been a member, but he focused on other things than the rest did. 

That's definitely possible, as it was suggested the Benefactor could be a group. I definitely do think TIM was involved in some capacity, even if he was just a member of that group. The real question is who are they in Andromeda? Clearly, some of them (or at least representatives) are there. Jien Garson's death is evidence of that. What are they doing and what are their plans?