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Yo, it's ya girl, Gideon.

So I kinda wanted to just bounce this off a bunch of people, you know? To get an impartial perspective. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but I wanna hear other takes on this please and thanks.

Say there's this Empire of necromancers, right? The Empire stretches over a whole bunch of planets, nine home planets and then lots of others that act as necromancy fuel or some shit.

The Empire is ruled by this one guy, who is God. He was also just some dude at some point before the resurrection but now he's God. For reasons. Don't ask me about the reasons, I don't know the answer.

Like 10, 000 or so years ago there was some catastrophe that wiped out all life on all these planets, and then God came along - he's also a necromancer, by the way - and resurrected everyone.

So now he has this Empire where a bunch of people are necromancers and some are just regular folk with no aptitude for necromancy. And he's got like, this huge military force made up of necros and soldiers and battle ships and weapons and stuff. And this military force fights to protect God and the Empire from his enemies who wanna destroy him and all his people for like, no good reason at all. Jealousy, maybe.

This is a very condensed version, but yeah. What I wanna know is, what does this sound like to you? Totally reasonable behaviour or like...something else?

Anyway, come at me.

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I hear what's you're saying: What's normal to you is normal. Even if it's pretty messed up when you take a step back and see it from the outside.

That said, if anybody ever tries to bring any part of me back... [Or, well, does it again anyways.] ...They better hope they can run pretty damn fast.

Because I've seen gods die before, and they go down just like everybody else.

Edited (dang typos) 2023-06-14 18:55 (UTC)

Yeah. So much of the shit I've seen here just kinda makes me wonder, you know? Like all that shit with the cult. They thought they were doing the right thing, all those acolytes. Like for the greater good. It was fucked up but they thought it was right.

I just kinda wonder if maybe we were the cult all along. Not just the actual cult I was in. I mean like, the whole Empire.

And I don't know, man. I guess he must be able to die, but you'd have to get near him first. Past the Cohort, past the lyctors...although lyctors can die. I should know. Me and my necromancer took one out.

You're still thinking like a swordfighter; You'd be surprised how far away "near" can get, when it comes to it. Not that I'm recommending you take up a career in assassination by mass-casualty event or anything.

You might have a point about the cult idea, though. Then again, some people call the marines a cult, too, so I might not be the best judge.

[Real power tends to be quieter; a proper god, if any existed, would never need to argue its own veracity, and wouldn't need guards or empires to protect its interests.]

So Lyctors are pretty tough? Beating one of them sounds like a story.

I don't know. Maybe? I don't know if anyone's ever even got passed the Cohort before. No ones ever made it into our system before. But like, academia makes me wanna die. I never paid attention. And I was living on a shitty heretical rock on the far edge of the system. There's a ton of shit I just don't know.

It just makes me wonder who the enemy really was. Like, why did they wanna destroy us? Being here and all the shit that's happened, it makes it obvious war is more complicated than it was made out to be.

But yeah, lyctors are the most powerful beings after God. It kinda takes a lyctor to beat a lyctor. It's a hell of a story but kind of has a bummer of an ending.

Well, you'll never make an officer if you can't hit the books, but if I know you at all you'd make one hell of a grunt. Sometimes that's what's most needed.

[Assuming Gideon still has a military career in mind, at least. But from what she's hearing, that might no longer be on her to-do list, or at least not so highly-ranked as before.]

Wars are... costly. Most enemies can be placated or intimidated, at least to a point— that's why Free Cities keeps such a big army, for example.

Real, existential war, conflicts where it's fight or die, are rare— but they have the advantage of being straightforward in purpose. But you're right: usually it's not about survival of the fittest, it's about not being willing to put up with the other side's shit any more.

[No point in existing as a sovereign government if you roll over and give up power the moment your neighbors start showing their teeth, after all. Pacifism is all well and good, but the rules only apply to those who agree to abide by them; war is the definition of what happens when all of society's fine rules go right to hell.]

Trade you stories? Tell me about the Lyctor fight. Make it good, and I'll tell you about the First Contact War.

Yeeeeaaah, that kinda makes me wonder even more. Like, who started the fighting in the first place? Was it us, or them? Who are they, anyway? They've always just been 'God's enemies' so they must be my enemies too, but like...why? If it was them who had enough of our shit...what did we do that pissed them off so much they wanna kill us all? Was it the necromancy?

I know these are kinda pointless questions when I'm this far out of my own system and there's no one around who actually knows the answer. I'm just trying to figure some stuff out for myself, I guess. Shit here is complicated. I just figured this place was weird. But like...maybe it was always complicated all along.

I'm up for trading stories though. But I've gotta warn you, if you're not keen on the kind where the dead don't stay dead you are not gonna enjoy this one.

[It was probably the necromancy. But, Shepard doesn't say that; Gideon's gotten herself on a roll, and not in a bad way.]

Sounds like you've been doing some growing up. Good for you.

[She's a good kid.]

Look, if I were going to complain about a story with undead stuff in it, I wouldn't solicit a report from the woman raised on Necromancy Planet. You don't have to share if you don't want to, but I know what I'm about.

Yup. That's me all over. The epitome of maturity.

But I don't mind talking about it. Just like, not over this connection, you know? It isn't something I've told a lot of people about. It didn't wanna freak anyone out.

Fair enough. I'll meet you at the usual place, then. See you there, Gid.

[She'll be at The Surly Wench, at a corner table tucked into the dark recesses of the bar. Maybe she doesn't live here anymore, but it's still a regular haunt, regular enough that this is where other Summoned frequently know where to find her.

She looks up when Shepard approaches, two tankards of ale already placed on the table in front of her. It's going to be that kind of story.]

Yo.

Hey.

[She slides into the space marked out for her by the angle of the tankard. Alright, Gideon, you have her full attention. Well, not full-full, there's still the crowd, and the door to watch. And she'll never be 100% on anything, when there's food-smell in the air. But it's as close as anyone is ever likely to get.]

You want to do the small-talk thing, or just get into it?

[She watches as the other woman sinks into her seat, takes a long swig from her tankard before giving an answer.]

Let's dive right in.

[She says, and takes a breath. Is it a hard story to tell? She isn't quite sure. It isn't one she's recounted out loud very often at all.]

So you know I'm cavalier primary to the Ninth House, and the cavalier primary is always attached to the heir of a House, right? Well all the heirs and their cavs got called to Canaan House on the First...it's like, God's home world. Beautiful beyond all reason, just the most amazing blue and green when you see it on approach. But it's pretty much a ruin...there's nothing there but Canaan House. Anyway, that's not really the relevant bit. We all got called there so that our necros could try to become Lyctors, saints to serve the King Undying. You get like, mega necro powers and something super close to immortality, and we kinda went in there thinking the cavs are just there to follow their necros about looking fierce while they sit in on a lot of dry as fuck lectures about theorems until they attain sainthood.

With me so far?

[If blue and green are that unusual, that tells Shepard a lot about the garden worlds of Gideon's acquaintance— as does the fact that it's in ruins. A waste of resources, by any measure, if it were truly undeveloped. Still, she waits, and nods when prompted.]

So the Cavaliers are like the body-guards, so the necromancers can do the work without worrying about watching their backs all the time— especially if they think that getting to them before they actually get to be one of these Lyctors.

[Whether it was a competition for limited positions, or just people being ready to revolt against their political leadership, or even just garden-variety terrorism, it's not hard to imagine a circumstance in which a well-trained personal bodyguard might prove necessary.]

Go on, I'm following.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

[She says, rocking back on her chair.]

Only, once we got there it quickly became apparent that things were totally fucked. People kept dying, no one really knew what the fuck was going on. Everyone became super suspicious of everyone else, all the necros were treating it like a competition rather than something they could help each other out with, and the crazy deaths were not helping. A cluster-fuck, basically.

[A cluster-fuck, indeed. Her mind veers sharply away from Magnus’ shattered body, from what had happened to Jeannemary and Isaac. Slowly, she shakes her head.]

Anyway, it turns out a Lyctor had arrived on the planet along with the rest of us, posing as the Seventh House adept and puppeting around her dead cavalier. She'd killed him and the real adept before the shuttle even docked. Turns out this Lyctor was like, super pissed with God and didn't want any new Lyctors being made. So she went on a killing spree, finished off most of us before we even knew she was there. She revealed herself in the end, and those of us who were left tried our hardest to kick her ass, but like...we're talking Lyctor here. Almost God-tier powers, and then us, a bunch of young necros and their cavs. The best in the whole system, sure, but this Lyctor was like, ten thousand years old. We were celestially screwed.

[This is getting long though, so she decides to skip over some details. Sticks with the things that - to her mind - matter most.]

Anyway, we put up a good fight. But me, my adept, and the Sixth House cav wound up backed into a corner. We were all half-dead, hiding behind a bone shield, trying to figure out what to do. But like, remember the thing about cavs and their necros? Well, we figured out right before the Lyctor fight that the true meaning of the creepy 'one flesh, one end' vow we're both meant to take when adept and cav are sword to each other is waaaaay more literal than we thought. To become a Lyctor, the cav's gotta die, and through a bunch of theorems and shit the necro has gotta like, chow down on their soul as it leaves their body and absorb them into themselves. The cav becomes like an eternal battery pack and battle ability for their necro.

[She lets out a lot breath, brings her gaze up to meet Shepard's.]

Soooooooo. You can probably guess where this is going. We either all died pointlessly hiding behind a bone, or someone had to Lyctor up. I wasn't about to watch Harrow and Cam die. So I did the only sensible thing left. I forced Harrow's hand…killed myself so she had to eat me or let my death be for nothing. And then we kicked that fucking Lyctor's ass. But yeeeeah, that kinda left me dead. Or like, absorbed into Harrow. However you wanna look at it.

[And because she isn't one to dwell on hardship, or to allow a tense atmosphere to linger, she sparks Shepard a grin.]

I always did wanna get inside her.

[It's a lot to swallow, and there's more to it the more she tries to read between the lines, Gideon's casual knowledge of her own fucked-up culture seiving through in disturbing little dribbles of information.

Ten thousand years; more than enough to fuck up all sense of normal morality beyond repair. Asari and Krogan lived a tenth of that, and at the end they were divorced enough from good sense that Shepard had more than once been certain that Asari Matriarchs came from a different universe than the rest of them. Creepy death vows, bone shields— it's not the idea of some kind of rapidly-deployed bone barrier that's necessarily unbelievable, it's that bones are considered defense enough to begin with that catches her— but Gideon is still talking.

It's the casual way she talks about her own suicide that does it for Shepard. Tough as she is, Gideon is still so damned young. It isn't right. Shepard holds up a hand to stop the joke, when it seems Gid's finished. Then, she has a long drink, considers her options, and drinks again— to the dregs, this time.]

You know, you and me, we have a weird amount in common. [Which is weird both because they have anything at all in common, and weird also that there are so many fucking points of similarity between the death planet muscle-girl and the dumb earthborn jarhead.] So, I assume it got sorted out at a later date, since I notice you're not actually dead at the moment.

[She points at Gid's drink. Do you want that? Because she wants it, very badly.]

So this Harrow chick. You must think she's pretty hot shit if you trusted her that much, in a crisis. [Shepard can't parse many of the specifics, but she thinks she gets the gist; desperate fight, one way out, but only if you could turn it all over to someone else, at the highest possible personal cost. She's been there.] What's she like?

[She pushes her drink across the sticky tabletop with one finger, holds up two to the girl behind the bar to indicate they're gonna need a couple more.]

Harrow? She was an absolute shit-heel. We're talking vicious and horrible beyond all reason, just the worst kind of villain you could possibly imagine. That girl was made up entirely of vinegar and spite.

[She says it, but there's a slant to her lips that threatens to turn into a smile.]

I fucking hated her for most of my life. But she was the best god-damned necromancer you've ever fucking seen. Total badass. Plus under all the grave-dirt and grease paint she was kinda cute. I'm a sucker for cute.

[She says it with a shrug, just as the barmaid begins to head their way.]

About that other thing though...I died, and then I was here. I kinda had the impression that what we did, the whole lyctor thing? That it isn't reversable. Fuck knows how, but here I am, I guess. Definitely alive.

[Shepard's already halfway down the tankard by the time Gideon's gotten to calling Harrow a badass, and she stops. Oh. Oh, Gideon Nav, you're in love love with this girl, whatever else you say. That'd be pretty cute, if it weren't so damned tragic.]

Look, I don't know how the summoning works. [And in her opinion anyone who does is probably lying.] But I have no reason to believe that I died to get here. But I have died before, and it wasn't anything like all this.

[She gestures with the tankard, now only a third full, and its swirls encompass the entire sticky, stinking, mess of the place, and by association the Free Cities and all of Abraxas by association.]

So. If Harrow shows up, you point her out to me. We'll see what we can work out. I know how important it is to watch your partner's back, and a little help can't hurt. [She has Garrus, after all.] Now. Do you wanna hear about the First Contact War, or what?

[The barmaid arrives with their fresh drinks, and Gideon tosses her a coin and a smile. She's glad of it, that little distraction, the moment it takes to pay for their drinks and lift the tankard to her lips. Because yeah she's a simp for Harrow. Always will be, and if she ever shows back up here fuck knows she'd lay down her life all over again if she had to. So she acknowledges Shepard's offer with a nod, likes her all the better for it. But she says nothing, and once her drinks hits the table again, she's quick to turn their focus to other things.]

Yeah, hit me. And I mean allll the gory details.

Right. This was all before my time, so keep that in mind.

[A drink, to clear her thoughts, or to at least give her time to think.]

So, you have Earth; it's the homeworld, where humans evolved, where we come from. Eventually, it gets crowded, polluted, people want out— so we start making colonies on other planets, places to expand to and live. Farm life. Once we discovered FTL travel, and then Mass Relays, we started doing it other star-clusters.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, the aliens have had this tech for thousands of years. They've got empires, militaries, laws, ancient wars between each other, the whole thing. And after a rough couple of wars with species that came through unmarked parts of the relay system, they have a law; nobody uses unmapped relays. Fair enough.

Problem is, Earth is on the other side of one of those unmapped relays. So when the first scouting ships come through, and see the whole Turian fleet? The Turians open fire, no questions asked. Those scouts never come home. But I ask you, do you think humans quit that easy?

[Of course they don't. Humans are stupidly stubborn; it's one of the species' best qualities, truly.]

Anyways, that was our first encounter with non-human intelligent species. Show up, get a gun to our heads just for having the gal to exist. Not a good start. Garrus is Turian, by the way— so you see how far we've come. [And drink. This story is getting a bit long.] The Turians decide, fuck it, and even though they had to know that this was a First Contact situation, and that we were no more aware of what their laws were than we were that they existed in the first place, that apparently didn't count as an excuse in their books. So they go right back through that unmapped relay, and they bring a fleet. They start doing their damndest to bomb everything to hell that won't surrender, and to subjugate anyone who does.

But what they don't expect is, humans basically never accept that kind of treatment; so the whole time they're beating us down, we're stealing their weapons and developing our own. Inside of a hundred years, we've gone from being the most technologically backward species in the galaxy to being one of the most advanced. That's humanity. And they choke on us, long enough that even they can't pretend this is a legitimate military action anymore. The Citadel council steps in, and puts a stop to the fighting.

A lot of people are still pissed about the whole thing, to be honest. It's not hard to see why: the Counsel made it clear that they had no intention of following their own rules, and that they expected us to follow them despite that, even if we weren't technically a Citadel species at all. Leads to a lot of anti-alien sentiment... honestly, I can't even say they're wrong, most of the time. You want to know the real crock of shit? Most Turians won't even call it a war. The Relay 413 Incident, they call it; the most important war in human history and it's an incident.

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