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Shepard Quest Mk V, Base of Operations (ME/MCU)

Esbilon said:
"Of course, Miss Shepard," Mr. Goto replies with a slight bow of his head. You blink, is something moving behind him? Or is it your screen flickering?
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I got really suspicious right around here. I mean we're on a Cerberus ship, our communications are been routed through their comm system, and we're investigating a likely Cerberus plant after all.

There it was again, a flicker, or some kind of movement. You frown slightly, and then shake your head. This paranoia thing is getting a bit too much.
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Paranoia cranking up. Although at this point I start to wonder if it's Kasumi been a Ninja.

"Certainly Miss Shepard," he says, giving another light bow. As he speaks, there is a soft beep from your omnitool, and you spare a glance to look at it. There is a reminder that you'll be getting your next status update from Liara tomorrow evening, but why does that make a sound?
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Here I thought Cortana was warning us something was up with the signal.

"Sorry about that," you say as you return your gaze to Mr. Goto, and a for a moment, you are frozen in shock.

"Nothing to worry about, Miss Shepard," he says, smiling as if nothing in the world is amiss, "I will get right on it. Happy birthday."
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Peak Paranoia!

And at that, you are unable to keep from laughing, and quite naturally, he shifts his head in surprise, causing the source of your amusement to tumble from his head. While you were looking away someone had placed a furry rabbit plushie dressed up as a ninja holding a chainsaw katana in one hand and an over-sized present in the other on his head.
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Kasumi: "Were you expecting Cerberus? Too bad! It was me, Dio Kasumi!"

A high, joyful laughter joins yours from behind Mr. Goto and you hear Kasumi adding a "happy birthday, Revy," of her own before the connection is cut.
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Have I mentioned recruiting Mr. Goto was one of the best things to happen in this game? Chibi!Kasumi is adorable!

the Machiavelli
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You know I have to say a good chunk of my paranoia comes from the fact "Laurnece Freeman" was on a ship named The Machiavelli. Nothing good can come from a ship named that. It's like how any ship named the The Madame de Pompadour will almost certainly have Geth/Husks/Killer-Bots on it.

You take one, very brief, look at his deleted files. You may be of legal age as of today, but that does not mean you have to take full advantage of your new status, you reflect with a suppressed shudder.
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Timeline issues? Revy should be 19.

She was 16 in 2170 so she should be 17 in 2171, 18 in 2172 and 19 in 2173. Canonically Shepard was born on April 11, 2154 which again would put her at 19 in 2173.

Also I can't help but wonder what kind of porn "Laurence" was looking at. My bet is Human/Asari.

Based on the fact that he does not seem to have an automatic translator program turned on, you deduce that he is most likely conversant if not fluent, in the dominant Asari, Salarian and Turian languages.
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Or he we translated it using his Omni-Tool.

However, the sheer lack of files outlining his thoughts and analyses is more than conspicuous. You are not sure exactly what it means, but it is more than fishy. With a frown you consider the possibility that he could be old fashioned enough (well, more ancient fashioned) to write these things on paper, but surely that can't be.
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Omni-Tool. He could easily be storing the files on his Omni-Tool or on some form of external drive or even a Graybox.

Whatever the details are, his computer seems to corroborate his story, or at least not speak against it.
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Most suspicious thing you can find about someone is nothing. Everyone has skeletons.

It also has a very nice bed that doubles as a couch upon which you and Brian are currently snuggled up, enjoy the view and each other's presence.
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Have I mentioned I'm going to miss the Brian/Revy stuff this quest has had going? Because I will. Besides been rather well done considering the nature of the quest it is only Female!MC/Male!NPC I can think of on SB/SV. Was a refreshing change.

"Yeah," you agree, but some part of you can't help thinking of Liara and the other aliens out there.
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Mock Outrage: Revy. Thinking of someone else while your cuddling up with your (soon to be ex) boyfriend! For shame!

Is it really Earth you're fighting for, or is it something more?
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Well your friends of course, but yeah mostly Earth. After all Revy your making weapons for the Alliance not the Citadel. All those weapons are going to be used to defend human lives from Aliens after all.

Ashley might get a lot of crap from the fandom for her 'racist' words, and at times she very much is a raceist (technically speciesist) but she has a point. Aliens will look after their own before humans. Which makes sense because any government or organization that prioritizes non-members over members or even ranks them equally will inevitably fail/be replaced.

"I didn't get a proper look at it when I was here two years ago, but this is one great-looking planet." As you speak, the ship moves around Earth, and you look down upon the sparkling dark side where only the light of the cities is visible.

"What's the plan when we get there?" Brian asks, moving away from the kinda-touchy subject of his signing up, "got time for sight-seeing, or is it soldiers and salesmen from here on?"

"Nah," you say, putting some mirth in your voice, "there'll be politicians and photographers too."

It's where they invented tank-biathlon, you know,"
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I didn't even know that was a thing until now. The More You Know!

one of the vilest murderers
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Who? I'm guessing Stalin but generally one doesn't consider the sort of stuff he did (just shy of three million deaths) to be murder.

There is a reason people repeat his saying about tragedies and statistics.
 
UberJJK said:
Who? I'm guessing Stalin but generally one doesn't consider the sort of stuff he did (just shy of three million deaths) to be murder.

There is a reason people repeat his saying about tragedies and statistics.
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Could be Ivan the Terrible. Or it could just be an extra couple of centuries perspective on the history books.
 
UberJJK said:
Who? I'm guessing Stalin but generally one doesn't consider the sort of stuff he did (just shy of three million deaths) to be murder.

There is a reason people repeat his saying about tragedies and statistics.
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That isn't entirely accurate. Estimates for Stalin's kill count range from as little as three million to as many as sixty. Personally, I figure it was probably somewhere between twenty to thirty.

Although I agree that technically it wasn't murder. A horrible attrocity, sure, but he had legal authority to order summery executions.
 
Yog said:
AT least in Russia he isn't known as terrible. The correct translation of the nickname "грозный" would be "fearsome"
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Well for what its worth, terrible in that context is meant in the sense of fearsome. Like..."great and terrible" from Harry Potter is the first example I can think of.
 
UberJJK said:
Timeline issues? Revy should be 19.

She was 16 in 2170 so she should be 17 in 2171, 18 in 2172 and 19 in 2173. Canonically Shepard was born on April 11, 2154 which again would put her at 19 in 2173.

Who? I'm guessing Stalin but generally one doesn't consider the sort of stuff he did (just shy of three million deaths) to be murder.
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Yeah, I there's something of a discrepancy there. Let's not make a deal out of it.

I was thinking of Stalin, but Russia (and the rest of the Earth) has had 200 years to kill their own citizens in the mean time, so it could be someone new ;)
 
Esbilon said:
Yeah, I there's something of a discrepancy there. Let's not make a deal out of it.

I was thinking of Stalin, but Russia (and the rest of the Earth) has had 200 years to kill their own citizens in the mean time, so it could be someone new ;)
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You ever notice how you never see any blondes in Mass Effect besides Conrad and possibly Shepard? And even today, the sort of shit a private citizen can do with pathogens is fucking ridiculous. . .
 
I vaguely recall some ME1 codex entry saying that the EU became an actual government, declared war on freakin' everyone, and at some point during the war an anti-blonde bioweapon got unleashed.
 
tyaty1 said:
What.:facepalm:
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Kelenas said:
I'm pretty certain that's utterly false.
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This is Bioware we're talking about. That level of derp is totally in character for them. That being said, I haven't actually played the game in ages, and the codex entries got retconned in every game anyway.

Personally, my head canon has always been that some blonde-hating lunatic built a tailored virus in his basement at some point.

EDIT: Besides, this quest is an AU. Canon is largely irrellivent.
 
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Tachikoma's Uncle said:
This is Bioware we're talking about. That level of derp is totally in character for them. That being said, I haven't actually played the game in ages, and the codex entries got retconned in every game anyway.

Personally, my head canon has always been that some blonde-hating lunatic built a tailored virus in his basement at some point.
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Well...
her most notable feature is shoulder-length naturally blonde hair, which, as a genetically recessive trait, has become a rarity by the 22nd century.
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Datakim said:
Wonder if its illegal to do minor genetic tampering to give your child blonde hair? I mean given what else they can do, I would think something cosmetic like this would be simple.
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Cosmetics are fine, nobody really cares. Doing something completely outside the human norm, like bright green skin, would probably get people fined, but no worse than that. It just doesn't seem to be very popular for some reason.
 
Van Ropen said:
Kahlee Sanders does too I think. I seem to recall some fluff about the trait dying out.
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I think that might be something to do with Earth's 'Unification' - The actual 'organisation' called the System Alliance is more or less a version of the UN but with other human-inhabited planets (Joker is from Tiptree if I remember rightly), it's just that because of actually coming into contact with alien life has made it a genuine political body (the codex gives me an impression that even the navy was mocked by the general populace before the first contact war) and grown to the point where it's more or less impossible to tell the difference between 'SA' and 'Humanity'.

But there is something in the codex about how Earth has become less ethnically diverse....found it: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Systems_Alliance#Expansion

Humans have expanded rapidly from Earth in a very short period of time, becoming swiftly integrated into Citadel society and the galactic economy. They have become less ethnically diverse in the twenty-second century, due to a more multicultural society and greater unity between nations. Improved medical advances and gene therapy have led to longer, healthier lifespans; the average citizen can now expect to live to around 150. Most humans retain their native tongue, but learn alien languages or trade pidgin for the sake of convenience or as a gesture of unity.

If Earth more or less ended up like that, I can see how the blonde gene can end up disappearing, it usually only appears in european countries.
 
Tabron89 said:
I think that might be something to do with Earth's 'Unification' - The actual 'organisation' called the System Alliance is more or less a version of the UN but with other human-inhabited planets (Joker is from Tiptree if I remember rightly), it's just that because of actually coming into contact with alien life has made it a genuine political body (the codex gives me an impression that even the navy was mocked by the general populace before the first contact war) and grown to the point where it's more or less impossible to tell the difference between 'SA' and 'Humanity'.

But there is something in the codex about how Earth has become less ethnically diverse....found it: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Systems_Alliance#Expansion

Humans have expanded rapidly from Earth in a very short period of time, becoming swiftly integrated into Citadel society and the galactic economy. They have become less ethnically diverse in the twenty-second century, due to a more multicultural society and greater unity between nations. Improved medical advances and gene therapy have led to longer, healthier lifespans; the average citizen can now expect to live to around 150. Most humans retain their native tongue, but learn alien languages or trade pidgin for the sake of convenience or as a gesture of unity.

If Earth more or less ended up like that, I can see how the blonde gene can end up disappearing, it usually only appears in european countries.
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Or the character designers just neglected the blond npc-s.

Conrad is also blond in ME1.
 
Esbilon said:
The token blonde guy. Doesn't count.

That said, blonde hair isn't exactly common, I think the handful of people with it we see is fairly in line the world average. Though not a lot of the other numbers are.

Also, this talk about Shepard being a blonde doesn't make sense. Everyone knows Shepard's a redhead.
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I do not now the exact statistics, but for example in Hungary, -where the gene base is so diverse , that our genetic origins are impossible to trace back- blonds are fairly common.

It was projected that blond hair will die out, but is is just an old speculation. As far I know genes do not just die out, the previously inactive genes do resurface sooner or later.

I can accept, that natural blonds are rare, but extinct, with this ME level genetics? Unlikely.

An we have barely seen a few hundred human NPC in the games, so that number is not representative.
 
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