Ardat-Yakshi
So, this one'll be out of character.
Ardat-Yakshi.
God, canon handled them poorly. Yes, this whole thing is just completely hidden from the galaxy in canon.
Gah, that's stupid. There is
so much about Ardat-Yakshi that just absolutely fails to make sense. I'm trying to roll with it; fold it in under general canon-compliance stuff.
So here's how it goes, as according to the best of Mira's knowledge.
What is presently publicly known: Ardat-Yakshi are asari suffering from a tragic condition, suspected to be congenital in nature, which modern science has yet to isolate. When they mate, they cause brain hemorrhages in their partner, which may or may not be fatal. The vast majority of individuals suffering from this condition will never kill their partners no matter how many times the attempt is made, although brain hemorrhages are, nevertheless, extremely hazardous for one's health. Individuals who learn of their condition this way -- which would be all of them -- will invariably be incredibly traumatized; one should give them some comfort while reporting to Republics law enforcement, who are qualified to deal with this matter and render the victims what aid is possible. In the past, these unfortunates were heavily stigmatized, and several demonic or tyrannical figures in early asari mythology or legend are identified as Ardat-Yakshi, characterizing them as psychic vampires. This stigma does somewhat persist in the modern day, and most Ardat-Yakshi choose a cloistered life, for their own safety as much as for others'. Their security is provided for by a religious order known as the Athamene Justicars, who devote themselves to the protection of these tortured souls. As a final tragedy, albeit an almost inconsequential one after everything else, all Ardat-Yakshi are completely sterile.
What Mira knows to be true: In addition to the general strand, there is an extremely rare strain of Ardat-Yakshi who
invariably kill their partners. Furthermore, all Ardat-Yakshi find mating to be
incredibly addictive, hooking hard from the first occurrence and growing worse as time goes on. Making matters worse is that their biotic powers grow stronger with every mating --
this is where the vampire myth originally arose. Particularly powerful Ardat-Yakshi are even capable of some form of mind control against people with weaker wills than they. There is no recorded ceiling on an Ardat-Yakshi's power; only a Matriarch can truly match them blow-for-blow. The old myths and legends are true, albeit corrupted by the passage of time; Mira does not know how overblown the exploits there recounted are. AY incidence is estimated at around 5%; the lethal strain presently has fewer than ten individuals, at least part of the scarcity being due to
heavy attrition at the hands of law enforcement. The Justicars are more wardens than they are security guards, although they take both roles seriously. The vast majority of asari are unaware of the true worst nature of Ardat-Yakshi; Mira is peripherally aware, through her prior experience, that there is a group within the asari government working to keep the truth confined to legends, presumably on the principle that fewer mouths to spill the secret make for a far more secure secret overall. She has been given code phrases by which she can indicate that she is in the know, and by which she can know she is speaking to somebody likewise in the know; Marae and Kirai have, over the past few years, both made contact in this manner. Mira suspects that the extremely low AY incidence on Virmire is due to local communities handling things themselves, extrajudicially. She has never been able to justify making an issue of it with resources so tight and the issue so explosive.
What not even Mira -- and thus, to the best of her knowledge, anybody -- knows: Ardat-Yakshi are exclusively the result of asari mating with asari. Virmire's low incidence
is in part due to community enforcement, but the greater part is that Virmire's asari population is extremely xenophilic even by asari tendencies, and thus has only rarely even
had the opportunity for AY-carrying offspring. In particular, Virmire has only produced one lethal-strain Ardat-Yakshi since the blockade fell, and she committed suicide upon accidentally killing her high school boyfriend.
Enforcement
In Thessia's distant past, Ardat-Yakshi represented disturbances in the generally peaceful paradigm cultivated by the asari. In pre-civilization and early-civilization eras, their addictions drove them to seek out new mates, which led them into conflict with their mates' social groups, which led to colossal smackdowns between superpowered psychic asari vampire vs. cohesive tribe of lethal telekinetics. Some Ardat-Yakshi learned to be subtle in the run-up period before that became an effortless slaughter on their part. These are the individuals who would give rise to the legends of demons and tyrants, and indeed, some Ardat-Yakshi did indeed rule as god-queens over entire civilizations. You can picture how much power demanding regular sacrifices could accrue; Morinth, a matron with a few centuries of
very slow, subtle killing behind her, was dead-even with a full-blown matriarch with combat biotics specialty training. Opposite this, there have always been Ardat-Yakshi who try to channel their worst impulses, entering legend as the foundational anti-heroes opposing their more ruthless kin. The battles between these asari became myth as the
entirely believable clashes of gods; two AY throwing down with centuries behind them of feeding from an unrestricted environment tends to leave no survivors within line of sight.
However, it is important to note that Ardat-Yakshi, as described in canon, invariably devolve to functional sociopathy. The wiki presents this as universal fact; the fact that we see non-sociopath AY tells me that there must be nuance. I conclude that their addiction consumes them, if they do not practice strict abstinence; thus, cloistered AY like Falere who have melded once and never again can resist the urges, but those like Morinth who make no such efforts become an addiction in a skin suit, thinking of nothing but the next kill, and how to survive to reach it. Those in between would hit, "functional sociopath," levels as described in the wiki. Thus, even, "anti-hero," Ardat-Yakshi, as described, would in practice be nothing more than highly-organized serial killers, distinguished from their less principled sisters merely by being willing to use their body counts to tear down tyrants as opposed to becoming them. To compete with the queens, after all, they would need a body count of comparable size.
The era of god-queens and renegades came to a gradual end as societies organized more and more. As asari became able to organize militias and armies, they proved to be able to outright destroy weaker Ardat-Yakshi; as they became more organized and skilled, they became able to slay the mightiest queens in their beds, where they could not fight back. Over time, the queens and heroes died, and by the time of the Asari Iron Age, their era was well and truly over, left to mythology and legends. The newly-developing free societies the asari formed established law enforcement techniques to root out and destroy AY before they could reach critical mass; if nothing else, forcing them to be subtle limited their rate of growth, and better organization meant that even veterans of centuries of feeding could, with effort, coordination, and skill, be brought down. There were still occasional coups, but these inevitably drew invasions from nearby cities or revolutions from within, and in history, the charges of an Ardat-Yakshi overthrow either faded away or were easily dismissed as propaganda demonizing a hostile new dictator. As the Iron Age wore on, even this stopped happening. And, as years upon years passed by...the AY stopped rising up. They stopped trying to overthrow powerful civilizations, contenting themselves with feeding on the underbelly of society or living isolated lives in the hinterlands between large civilizations. This continued, and the stories gave way to legend and myth, although the truth was passed down through ever-smaller groups, refreshed by the odd AY who couldn't help themselves and got sloppy. Fast forward a few millennia, and you have the modern day.
In the modern day, the truth of AY is all but forgotten, and with the asari's primary galactic partner being the ultra-paranoid salarians, the asari who still remember would rather die than see the truth resurface and rip the Council apart at the seams. Law enforcement is presently invested with wide power in dealing with Ardat-Yakshi, including shoot-on-sight authorization at local branch commanders' discretion for lethal-strain AY, although the rank and file do not typically know
why this particular woman has earned that, beyond that she is considered armed, dangerous, and wanted on accidental murder charges. Branch commanders are carefully groomed for election by those asari in the know, and entrusted with the knowledge necessary to authorize lethal force (the incredible, society-shattering secrets the asari keep just
do not work in an e-democracy that lacks a shadow cabal). This necessarily catches some of the less-than-lethal strains; this is acknowledged as a necessary sacrifice.
("Strains," incidentally, is a deliberately charged word choice on my part meant to reflect the stigma attached to the condition in asari society. The act of melding is very culturally significant to them, and the Ardat-Yakshi, whose condition makes it the cause of agony and death, are very easy to hate. "Strain," is the accepted terminology, and its viral connotations are very deliberate on my end. It's one of the uglier parts of the asari.)
At this time, the Justicars lack the broad privileges given them in canon. This is largely on the basis of me taking a look at an order of morally-absolutist warrior monks with unlimited authority to go anywhere and murder anybody who refuses to surrender after a verbal warning, with no exceptions given for members of law enforcement voicing such troublesome opinions as, "hey, this isn't actually Republics jurisdiction and you have no authority to be here, much less killing over a dozen people, at least one of them in cold blood," as
slightly uncharacteristic of a race of legendarily cosmopolitan and xenophilic mind-melders who barely into military at all. Enforcement is relegated to law enforcement, and the premier weapon in the arsenal of police teams tasked with taking down Ardat-Yakshi is a beat cop shouting a warning to stand down, and a sniper team on a roof two hundred yards away. Alternatively, call a Matriarch and feel your skin tingle as you watch an echo of the old myths.
And also bring a sniper rifle for when the Ardat-Yakshi lets her barriers slip.
My headcanon is that this state of affairs is
blatantly unsustainable as a patch for the lethal strain going on terrorist rampages. Either enforcement gives out, or secrecy does. So, over the next millennium or so, law enforcement becomes entrusted with less-than-lethal strains, including rehabilitative means of justice centered around monitoring, with cloistering being an extreme option. For less-than-lethal strains who refuse to moderate and prove impossible to contain, and the lethal strains themselves, the Justicars are an option. The idea goes that, seeing a need for
ideologically reliable enforcers who would never voluntarily spill the secret, while maintaining the power and skill to take down an Ardat-Yakshi in their prime, the religiously-indoctrinated Justicars were an acceptable fit. The cabal promoted an Athamist revival pretty much entirely with the purpose of lionizing the Justicars such that granting them all of this power and privilege became politically palatable to the populace. And, incidentally, you have religious fanatics with incredible skill and biotic power roving the Republics, taking down lethal-strain AY, and never even
considering that they might wish to mention it to anybody.
(Mind, I
also headcanon that after the first few Illium-style massacres that unleashing the Justicars upon a non-monastic setting naturally results in, this prompted massive backlash and is a huge part of the reason for the -- relative to asari lifespan -- rapid rise of the
siari movement. Which, in turn, means
bad fucking things for the Justicar order and the games-era enforcement paradigm for lethal-strain Ardat Yakshi...if the Banshees, the Beacon being revealed, and Thessia being sacked didn't handle that
and give the asari bigger problems to worry about all at once.)
Thus, the history of enforcement: tribes banding together against predators; renegade Ardat-Yakshi challenging the god-queens enslaving entire empires; elite assassins and armies of ordinary asari fighting behind wise matriarchs to tear down the gods; and then a constant effort to drag public opinion and law enforcement into a configuration that suppresses Ardat-Yakshi from their waking breath, and hands as many tools as possible to the ordinary asari to put down their cursed sisters once they awaken.
And Mira has just found out that
at least one Ardat-Yakshi has had
as many as fifty years to roam Virmire, where only a fraction of the population is aware of the risks the condition presents...and the Ardat-Yakshi, if she is keeping up to date on the Republics' forums (sucker's bet) is well aware that
Mira knows.
