Quarians discover STC.

[Dlan the Wizard]

It's year 2157 and several ships of the Migrant Fleet encounters giant space station of unidentified origin, the space station is comparable in size to Citadel itself.

Several search teams are send to find out just what's going on. The station seems to be empty and abandoned, with the only discovery of note being a large machine: STC or Standard Template Construct from Warhammer 40k.

The STC has blueprints for almost every Imperium weapon. From common lasgun and bolter, to Volkite weaponry and Graviton Gun. It has also blueprints for variety of vehicles and spaceships, anything from Leman Russ to Baneblade and even Gloriana Class Battleship.

And finally, the STC has unique blueprint in it's database: Material Converter Engine or MCE. MCE can convert any material put into it into another, chosen by the user material. For example, MCE can convert organic material like wood into inorganic like iron, the conversion is 1 to 1, in other words, if you put into it X amount of wood the same amount of iron will be produced . MCE is programmed to produce even the rarest of substances from 40k, including but not limited to: Ceramite, Plasteel, Adamantium or even Necron Living Metal. MCE is flexible thought, so user can input new materials into it's database. No psytech, for obvious reasons, so no Power Sword blueprints or Wraithbone produced by MCE.

There's no informations about Humanity or anything else from 40k, neither on station nor in STC database.

What happens now?

 

[Fission Battery]

It's always fun seeing these oddly specific yet open ended scenarios pop up.

What happens next? Depends on the story the author's trying to tell with this set up.

The Migrant Fleet obviously begins building and testing stuff to study it. They'll probably start upgrading their ships in a few years or decades once they determine its safe to use and figure out a way to integrate it into their existing systems. The STC has no information on the Imperium, but the real question is if all the blueprints still have skulls, eagles, and gothic towers on them. Are machine spirits part of the hardware/software in electronics built by the STC? Does it contain instructions on how to create a servitor? Is there a little floating skull speaker bot in there? That's going to raise a lot of questions!

The Migrant Fleet trying to discern the history and culture of whoever built the STC and the inferred conclusions they come to based off what limited evidence they have is more interesting than them rolling the Geth.

 

[Dlan the Wizard]

Honestly, when I was writing this, the MCE was frankly what I thought is the most OP of the things they will get from this. I even wondered if it wouldn't be better to just get rid off other stuff. MCE is just ridiculous game changer, and will allow Quarians to mass produce the rarest of substances in the galaxy. They literally can throw rocks into it and produce eezo.

About the other questions, I always assumed skulls and eagles are added later and aren't part of the blueprints themselves, after all, Imperium technology still originates from another civilization, and it's pretty clear DAOT didn't decorate everything with skulls.

The rest I rather leave open ended and up to interpretation, I myself like when even nature of things like Machine Spirits is ambiguous, just know that nothing hinders Quarians from producing things nor using them.

But yeah, I have to agree, Quarians will start slowly integrating the stuff into their own use. It's mostly weapons, including weapons for spaceships, so they will be happy having extra things to defend themselves with. Also, the space station itself is a game changer, it's of similar size to Citadel, and although looking abandoned, it's perfectly intact.

Factions among Quarians who want to settle somewhere else, instead of drinking "retake Rannoch!" kool-aid would most likely, argue to take the station and make it into space-habitat for Quarians, even if not fully self-sustainable, nor something that can be done in short amount of time, it would still be better than nothing. The more military factions, on the other hand, could reuse it into a space dock for the Migrant Fleet.

Of course, again, in both cases we are talking about a effort that will take years, and there's question of defending such large structure for example, so I can also imagine a very likely outcome in which Quarians, decide that it isn't worth the trouble and will just harvest as much, materials they can from the station and just sell them for more spaceships or use it to build them themselves.

 

[Ford Prefect]

The STC seems largely useless. Almost everything that would be in it would be categorically worse than even the recycled generation before last garbage that the quarians have to make do with, and much of what it can produce would be basically incompatible with the specific needs of the ships in the Migrant Fleet. Maybe some of the weapons filter out but they're hardly much to write home about by Mass Effect standards. What good would a Gloriana class battleship? It would be a comparatively huge use of resources and manpower to produce a ship that would itself be extremely manpower intensive to operate, even if it would be useful, which seems improbable. Nothing that involves having to physically push a big torpedo around is going to be much use against anyone, even before getting into how how the quarians do not have the population for it.

This 'material converter engine' is more useful and more valuable (ironic given it's not actually something from 40k lol), but even then the main value would be in selling it to an asari republic for a large number of components they can actually use. This is hardly like digging up a prothean cache.

 

[Dlan the Wizard]

Nothing that involves having to physically push a big torpedo around is going to be much use against anyone, even before getting into how how the quarians do not have the population for it.

Click to shrink...

You know, that stuff like this is because of technological stagnation in the Imperium and the mentality of it, right? The STC is perfectly intact, the spaceships do have automated systems, it's just because of the Imperium mentality stuff like physically pushing torpedoes by thousands of people, happen.

There also other spaceships, that are comparable in size to Mass Effect Dreadnoughts, like Turbulent Class Heavy Frigate. The Gloriana is just a example I given, because it's stuff that is ancient, priceless relic that Imperium can't produce anymore, with only very few remaining, the stuff was rare and considered artifacts of a different age even during the Great Crusade. I just wanted this way, point out that there's lot of stuff in the STC, but by no means that's the only spaceship, Quarians can get from the STC, there's smaller voidcraft as well.

 

[Ford Prefect]

There also other spaceships, that are comparable in size to Mass Effect Dreadnoughts, like Turbulent Class Heavy Frigate.

Click to shrink...

Okay. The quarians don't have the capacity to build one of those, either. Their vessels are typically second hand or salvaged even though they have extensive capacity for space-based mining and access to Mass Effect manufacturing technology. They just do not have the industrial capacity to build ships of serious scale, otherwise they'd probably try building a fourth liveship.

It's unclear whether they can build any spacecraft, but even if they could build smaller ships in the STC then by inference they should be able to build smaller Mass Effect vessels, which would be better for general use anyway.

 

[Battlestar Starg]

They would just need to put in the ships that were basically being held together by hopes dreams toothpaste and duct tape to get a brand new ship that they can use.