do the impossible, no pressure.

General things about all 3 games:

The performances by all the actors. They’re all so wonderful and bring so much life to these characters

The music! Love love love

The vistas and environments are so interesting and varied

Your choices feel meaningful. Large or small I feel like I’m making a difference and I can try to build a better galaxy

Getting to know your squad and fall in love with them and your crew and the Normandy itself. Each story is so personal, each character so lovingly crafted with depth and contradictions and flaws. It’s such a joy getting to delve into their lives

Exploring new worlds and scaring the hoes with my amazing driving skills in the Mako

Elevator conversations!!

The Citadel. The best design of the 3 games. It feels so lively and real

Slap some omni-gel on that thang

The copy and paste bases on planets because yeah it was probably due to hardware limits of 2007, it feels real to mass produced prefab construction for cheap space flight and colonization

Everything about the Noveria mission up until the final battle. Gianna Parasini is the GOAT

“Big place!”

Kaidan. My beautiful Kaidan. Here’s a guy adept with his biotic powers who chooses to be kind, soft, and gentle because he knows the consequences of violence - even if you’re going it to protect someone you love. You can’t change your actions but you can make different choices next time. He’s like Waymond in EEAAO - he chooses to see the good side because it’s how he survives. But he’s not a pushover, either. Kaidan respects Shepard but he isn’t afraid to disagree or question her. I just love him so much. Plus he suffers from migraines which is entirely too relatable for me

Virmire. The mission itself, the choice with Wrex, “Hold the line,” the conversation with Sovereign, the final choice. Just heartbreaking.

There are so many weapons and armor choices!

Emily Wong!!!!!

My baby. My comfort game. My beloved ME2. The first Mass Effect I played. This will always have a special place in my heart.

You just fucking die in the prologue. Dead. Spaced. Get rekt, Shep!

Cerberus really puts their best face forward to draw Shepard in. Ignore all the awful experiments from the first game, don’t pay attention to the thresher maw attacks and mad scientists and what happened to Kahoku. We’re fighting for humanity because the galaxy is ignoring us! It’s so much propaganda, down to the crew members placed on the SR-2.

[heavy sigh] “Probing Uranus”

Even more characters to get to know and love. My little suicide squad A-Team of killers with hearts of gold!

Mordin Solus. He’s a scientist, a former espionage agent, a doctor, a singer. He can ruthlessly kill mercenaries attacking his clinic then wax poetic about how the Collectors don’t have souls. He rationalizes his past choices but also changes his mind. Plus he’ll educate you about safe alien sex if you wanna bang Thane or Garrus

I enjoy planet scanning for the first part of the game. Scanning + “new worlds” = relaxation

The DLCSs are absolutely amazing (excluding Firewalker). Lair of the Shadow Broker is top tier and Overlord will make you cry unless you’re dead inside

“I am a biotic god!”

Aria T’Loak. A powerful badass who can be very unlikable and that’s exactly why I adore her. Plus Carrie-Anne Moss

The confrontation between Shepard and Kaidan on Horizon (I always save him sorry not sorry). Because he’s not wrong. It’s super sketchy that Shepard is working with Cerberus! He remembers what they did in the first game. How could Shepard work with them after all that? He remains loyal to the alliance over Shepard, no matter how much he loves her.

The side quests! The little ones like helping the quarian on the Citadel when she’s unfairly accused of stealing, finding out if there’s fish in the presidium lake, reading Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jalani for filth, Matriarch Aethyta on Illium…

Loyalty missions. Let’s process our trauma with mama! 💕

The Normandy SR-2 reveal. Chills every time.

Getting drunk with Karin

The Suicide Mission. It’s so so good. You spend hours building this elite team then get to actually assign them to their specialized tasks during the assault. And there are consequences! People can die! Forever!!!! What,??,???

I always play as femshep and I love the friendship with Miranda. Miranda is so closed off at first - Wilson’s recording even call her an ice queen. But as you earn her trust she opens up more and more, even asking you to help rescue her sister. By the end you are two bad ass besties and she even chooses you over the Illusive Man.

Oh and him! That fuckin guy. I love him. I hate him. Thank you, Martin Sheen!!!!!

This is getting too long but one last thing: playing as Joker for a little!

The combat! It’s so much fun with biotic and tech explosions. More weapons as well.

Speaking of weapons: the black widow sniper rifle. My babygirl. My comfort rifle. My beloved forever <3

Your squad moves through the ship as you progress and they have these lovely ambient conversations with each other. It’s fantastic! The ship feels so alive. You can hear Garrus and Liara catching up, James and Kaidan playing poker, Tali and Adams talking shop, Javik insulting EDI…

The culmination of so many storylines. The Reapers are here and things are fucked. Everyone is running, looking out for themselves. You’re trying to broker an alliance between races who have a very long history of animosity and betrayal. It feels insurmountable but we have the power of friendship! 💕

“Anthropocentric bag of dicks” - Matriarch Aethyta is the best

My beautiful Kaidan returns to me! And he’s a bit of a bitch at first (rightfully so). There are gratuitous tiddy shots in Huerta and when he rejoins the Normandy, a lingering look at his shapely bum. He and Shepard work through their issues and end up in a much stronger place. And he’s even hotter somehow??? Gray hair for sure.

All of the DLCs. Javik is fascinating. Leviathan has so much lore. Omega is like going home plus Aria as a squad mate is dope. And of course the Citadel is bar-none the best of them all. The mission itself is so campy, outlandish, and fun, reuniting your squads from both games. Then you get to have a party and one on one time with all of them before the true final mission. Tears. Perfection. Absolute cinema.

“You big stupid jellyfish!”

Reading Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jalani for filth again but then offering her hope.

Punching Han’Gerrel in the stomach then kicking him off my ship

The mission where you enter the geth data frame to free squadrons from Reaper control. It’s like Tron and a fuck ton of lore dumping. It’s a nice change of pace to a non-combat mission

“Does this unit have a soul?”

So many moral choices with far reaching ramifications. Do you cure the genophage or not? Do you save the geth? Do they have souls or not? Sacrifice two million here to save four million there? It’s A Lot.

The ambient conversations on the Citadel. The soldier trying to send her daughter to Thessia. The asari commando in Huerta with Joker’s sister Hillary (sobbing now). The human teenager waiting for her parents on the docks. The soldier requesting a transfer to Reaper zones because she believes her brother joined Cerberus

Cerberus is evil again! The Illusive man goes full villain and it’s awesome.

“Emeeeergency induction port”

“It’s Jokin’ time”

In one of the ambient conversations Garrus talks about the genius of how the Reapers repurpose the races they’re harvesting. The friend who fought next to you yesterday is now a maurauder in front of you. How do you kill them? It’s a sort of psychological warfare

Samantha Traynor!!! My girl! Such a nerd and oh I love her voice. She can hit on EDI all she wants. I feel the same about Sam’s voice though less horny

“You did good, child”

Destroy forever. My Shepard lives

VANCOUVER, 2186

It’s the radio that wakes her, most days, if not some sound from outside or her own thoughts clamouring inside her skull. She set it to some music station, but more often than not it’s advertisements that drag her into consciousness: a gravelly action-hero voice advertising the latest flavour of Blast-Ohs (all-new dextro flavours so the whole family can enjoy!), an upbeat male urging listeners to add her another subscription to the never-ending list of subscriptions to various apps and streaming services, or a sultry female voice listing the various plumping qualities of some Nos Astra socialite’s new line of lipsticks. Some days she can barely drag herself out of bed, and lets the advert play, feeling sour resentment towards these clueless people who do not know or care how close they’d been to losing everything, or how soon before death will come sweeping in from dark space to swallow them all.

One morning, it’s an excerpt from Francis Kitt’s elcor-led production of Hamlet. The famous soliloquy, “to be, or not to be.” Shepard lets it play while her mind lingers in the vestige of sleep. By all accounts, it could very well be a gripping performance, were it not for the elcor actor’s monotonous tone. She drifts, but the words grip at her, pluck at her nerves like fingers. She’s really never been into Shakespeare—that kind of thing tended to come with a more permanent approach to education than she had.

But as she listens, adrift in almost-consciousness like space junk, to the universal question of whether death is preferable to suffering despite the paralysing fear of the unknown, her mind turns over and over without respite, and her thoughts become as sharp and bitingly hot as her omni-blade.

Hamlet never reaches the final line. The radio ends up in pieces on the floor, her bed is empty, and she’s all but scalding herself in a hot shower, hot enough to scald her brown skin red, while the blue flames of her biotics lick up her arms.

Meat and tubes, Jacob told her. A burned-up slab.

_

She pleads guilty to the destruction of the Bahak relay and murder of hundreds of thousands of batarian civilians. Sweating under her dress blues in front of the tribunal, she forces steel into her voice and mettle up her spine, and glares up at the stuffed shirts who look down their noses at her like she’s a rabid varren. They’re thinking of the bureaucracy of it all—race relations, a brewing war between the Hegemony and the Alliance, whether or not the Council would back humanity against the batarians or bow out completely. Whether her Spectre status is even worth anything if she is nothing but a war criminal and a murderer. Anderson loses his patience; he paces up and down, looking as caged as she feels, and reminds them of the lives she’s saved. Elysium. Eden Prime. The Citadel. Countless colonists abandoned by the Alliance—though, one Alliance official snidely remarks, she saved them while working with terrorists. She’s a snake, some say. A traitor, the tool of a heretical madman, a fool. A thug not worthy of her station, her Star of Terra merely a trinket for a street rat.

Sometimes she doesn’t blame them. The existence of Cerberus is an inconvenient stain on their dress blues. A failing on their part. There’s an attraction Cerberus holds—she saw it in people like Kelly and Gardner, Miranda and Jacob, Gabby and Ken. And the fact that Cerberus rescued the human colonists is another boon to their ideological war. Cerberus will save you when the Alliance won’t. Humans looking out for humans. Isn’t that what we’ve always done?

She brings home again and again, why she did it. The Reapers are coming. The Reapers are coming. She has dreams about them. The Collectors. The visions from the beacon haunt her dreams. Meat and tubes. Some nights she nearly cries with frustration. Wishing, stupidly, that someone would hold her. That she could escape all of this, just for a moment. She snaps at James when he visits. He’s too chipper, then too solemn. When she’s given clearance to go to the gym she works out obsessively. Carves herself into a sharp point. Because she will never escape, and wishing she can is a betrayal to all the dead.

The press are a rabid pack of shatha frothing for the barest scraps of her. The elusive Shepard. She’s a rags-to-riches story for the brass: a feral, drug-addicted kid who turned her back on the Tenth Street Reds and became the poster child for the Alliance. The Hero of Elysium turned Cerberus traitor and savage murderer of hundreds of millions. Some lucky journalist managed to get a shot of her with his camera drone. It was in the first few weeks after she turned herself in, and she was drowning in frustration, rage, and guilt. In the holo, she looks like freeze-dried meat. Her eyes are tired and furious, shadowed by dark circles of fatigue. A singlet doing little to hide the topography of glowing scars crisscrossing her once-dead skin. Frankenstein’s monster, smoking a cigarette and drinking shitty coffee. It’s three in the morning and she hasn’t slept, and she sure fucking looks like it.

She was tempted to flip the camera off as the shutter clicked in quick staccato like submachine gun fire, but instead she just fixed it with her best mulish glare, a relic from her days on the streets, lifting her chin, and saluted the watchful lens with her coffee cup and a long drag of her cig.

The photo goes viral on the extranet. She can only wonder what Garrus or Liara think when they see it. She’s not allowed correspondence. She gets the daily news and that’s it. Some days, all she can think about is how she wants to get the fuck out. Steal a shuttle, a skycar, a fucking taxi, whatever, and fly out of Vancouver. She looks up at the sky and dreams, only to remember again, again, again, what will come roaring out from the ether to raze everything to ash.

Instead, she returns to her cell. Drinks her Paragade like a good little soldier and waits for the sword of judgement to cleave her into useful pieces, all while the shadows from dark space settle all their blood-soaked heaviness on her shoulders and crush her spine.

_

COUNCIL CHAMBERS, THE CITADEL, 2183

Her heart still thudding loud in her ears, her nerves prickling with the stress of what she’d just done—what she’s just sacrificed—Shepard leans forward and looks down through the glass at Saren. She watched those creepy blue lights leave his eyes when he pulled the trigger under his chin, but in a world where giant bugs can puppeteer dying asari commandos and giant plants can spawn vomiting plant zombies and green asari clones… best to err on the side of caution. In the past few months, she’s seen too many things get up when they shouldn’t.

“Make sure he’s dead,” she says to Liara and Garrus. They jump down. She watches as Garrus draws his pistol and stands over the corpse. Pulls the trigger. The lifeless head jerks.

Liara’s voice, soft and decisive over the comms. “He is dead.”

Shepard swallows. Under her helmet, her scalp prickles. It feels like static, like the near-imperceptible burn of relay travel. A cold-hot breeze, the scent of iron.

Red lightning cracks the air. The podium beneath her feet breaks, and she loses her footing, rolling and smashing through the glass, the wind knocked out of her as she lands on the manicured grass below.

Saren’s body shakes. It writhes. He—the body—begins to scream, as air is pushed by some unseen force through the vocal cords. Liara and Garrus are staring in horror, guns at the ready. Shepard’s whole body turns cold. Her heart hammers against her ribcage. But she’s ready. She plants her feet, shores up her barrier with a sweep of her hand, and draws her Mattock. As Saren’s flesh is burned away, leaving only Sovereign’s implants, a cybernetic skeleton with half a skull and talons the size of daggers, she bares her teeth with an answering snarl and aligns one glowing red eye with the sights of her rifle.

“Beep, beep, beep, beep.” A heart monitor is the first thing she hears after that crash of red slammed into her. Then the pain sets in. Every single piece of her screams even laying perfectly still. Her eyes flutter open to darkness, then the right side flickers on before fading again. The left tries and fails. She can’t feel her right arm or leg. The parts she can sense feel weak and atrophied. Did I do it? Is it over?

Blind she calls, barely a whisper, “Anyone?” It’s all she can get out. If not for the heart monitor she would think she’s deep in rumble waiting for death to take her once again.

A voice she never expected greets her, “Commander! You are awake!” Javik? She feels his fingers graze her left arm. “It is as the doctors said, you cannot see… Then the blast destroyed your eyes as well. No matter, we shall fix that.” There’s a kindness in him that feels wrong, but then she gets the best news she every has, “You did it Commander. The Reapers are dead. You are truly the Avatar of Victory.”

Delirious with pain she groans, “Free. No more loops.” Before passing out.

Overview: Liska Shepard (she/they) is an N7 infiltrator, Earthborn, and Hero of the Skyllian Blitz.

She was youngest to graduate N7 school (beating the previous one by 1 month) and the reason why now the regulations say you can't "challenge" vocation tests. Her class was the first to have every N7 candidate that came in pass the Astroid Test, in large part due to her leadership. She has an uncanny ability to get people to work together and that kind of aura that makes you want to spill your life story.

Her favorite weapons are a sniper rifle and heavy pistol.

Personality/Philosophy: As far as most Shepard's go, Liska is very chill and laid back. She likes to joke, enjoys a good quips, is often sarcastic, and wears her signature wry smile most of the time. She's an excellent people person, usually opting for diplomacy or talking well before violence, if she can help it. Morally, she's a paragon with a sharp tongue. A lot of people would look at what she's been throigh and wonder how she's managed to stay relatively cool and even headed. Her secret? Don't think about it! Keep moving forward! This eventually does come to bite her in the ass. She never looks back at her past and doesn't even blink at the future, which allows her to be able to respond to things like suicide missions with the air of "just another tuesday." Because if she survives, it is. If she doesn't, well, she'll be too dead to care.

Her entire shtick is teamwork. She's always been a great people person, and even as a child, she was used for this ability in the Reds. The reason why her N7 class was as successful as they were was because she got them to work together. She's a deep believer that if you can come together, anything is possible. Even after the Reaper War, Liska still considers getting the ME2 gang to get along her greatest accomplishment.

Identity: If you asked her what she identified as she'd shrug. There's a word out there for what she feels like (it's bi gender), but she isn't too concerned with it. She identifies as Shepard. Her mannerisms often with masculine in presence (she loves to man-spread. Jokes that it's assert dominance) but won't say no to a cute dress or a girl's night out. Her primary pronouns are she/her, but she isn't opposed to they/them if some feel inclined.

Early Childhood: Liska was born Jane Weaver and found on the steps of a fire station still covered in blood with her placenta attached on April 11, 2154, in Seattleside, Vancouver-Seattle. Per privacy laws, DNA tests to discover parentage on surrendered children aren't allowed until the child is 18 and makes a request. (Which she never bothers with). Shepard then spends the first 12 years of her life going from foster home to foster home, encountering a string of sub-par foster parents who end up dropping her for a variety of reasons and causing her to develop a need to be seen as useful. Her last foster home had the potential to be everything she needed to grow up normal, but the fear of eventually disappointing or being dropped led her to run away.

Middle-childhood/Early teens: After an encounter with a couple of gang members that left one dead, Liska is tracked down by the leader of what is now known as the 10th Street Reds. At the time, they were just the Reds, and their rival gang were the 10th Streets. Impressed by the child's ability to take out a grown man and then evade Padre in his own territroy for nearly 12 hours, Padre Shepard decided to offer Liska a place to stay, a living wage, and his name if she worked for him. She had refused to tell him her original name of Jane, for fear he'd turn her back over to the police knowing she was a runaway, and so he dubbed her Red Shepard.

Liska wouldn't pick up the name Liska until she was 14, when their arms dealer, a man from Czechoslovakia simply known as R, called her one after she snuck off with a sniper rifle he was selling to Padre, and nearly killing Padre's wannabe right hand man. He had informed her it meant Fox in his mother tongue, and considering her ability to be quiet, sneaky, and to trick people, Padre was inclined to admit it was fitting. Even after, though, some of Shepard's closest friends from the gang still called her Red.

When she was 16, there was a coup lead by this wannabe right-hand man. He had teamed up with the rival gang, the 10th Streets, and slowly took out Padre's pillars of strength before finally coming after him. After gunning Padre down in his home, in a flurry of choas, Shepard took out 3 of the 4 men who had broken in and made a break for it. After running for who knows how long, she ran into a man stumbling out of a bar. He brought to her attention that she was bleeding perfusely, to which she looked down, said "So I am," and passed out.

That man was Commander David Anderson, the first N7, and one of Liska's heroes. After she helped him with tracking down the source of Alliance Guns being sold on the street (a fic i'm toying with) he helped her get into the Alliance's Ward program, and took temporary custody of her. He also helped her get her documents changed to her name of Liska Shepard and trained her when he was home. He saw her as his unofficial kid after that, and she saw him as a father figure.

Pre-ME: As mentioned above, Shepard was the youngest to graduate the N7 program, and this was primarily because she challenged the first 3 N school tests. She had been obsessed with the idea of becoming a N7 since she was 10/11 after being fostered by an Injured Alliance Vet, and during her time in the Reds, would pirate leaked Alliance training videos off the dark extranet and study them. With Anderson also training her since she was 16, she was more than prepared to skip those ranks and jump to the tests. At the time, the Admiralty Board allowed, thinking nothing of it, but after she passed the rank 3 test, they began to get nervous that this could set a dangerous precedent and allow others to skip crucial training for their vocations just to pass the test and earn the rank. They revised the regulations, and she had to proceed the rest of the ranks traditionally. Anderson further teased her for being the first person to get the Admiralty Board to review the regulations since the Alliance's conception.

Skyllian Blitz: When she was 23, Shepard went on shore leave with her friend and posting's doctor, Dr. Chakwas, to Elysium. Shepard's main goal is to spend the entire week "drunk and in the arms of hunks."

After her first one night stand fails spectacularly, Shepard is pulled aside and asked to investigate a claim of an illegal weapons dealer by the local authority. Begrudgingly, she does and meets charming smuggler Calhad Malcom fronting as a quarian rug dealer, and "his" pet varren, Fish, that he was desperately trying to get rid of (and the source of the weapon allegation). Calhad, however, had been hired by Haliat to break into the Elysium defense tower and turn off/trick their defenses and comm buoys. Calhad had assumed it was so Haliat could sneak a large illicit package in and didn't realize it was for a large-scale attack.

Calhad sees Shepard as an opportunity to get his job done and using his charm and a variety of misadventures (and a night of deep passion), he steals her N7 access card to get into the defense tower and uploads a virus that scrambles everything.

When he returns to ship, planning his exit, he picks up stray radio frequencies and learns of the impending batarian raid. He quickly warns Shepard, revealing to her his hand in the dealings, and the two of them prepare the city to defend itself. During the attack, Shepard and Calhad have to undo the damage to the defense tower to send out a distress beacon, which the ssv Agincourt responds to.

During the celebration, Calhad and Fish say goodbye to Shepard, and she gives him her dogtags as a way to remember her.

ME 1: Shepard becomes Anderson's XO for the Normandy, something they joke was bound to happen eventually.

Shepard becomes smitten with the ships Head of Marine Detail, Lt. Kaidan Alenko, even before the Normandy leaves port. She had heard some things about him from Anderson while Kaidan had served with him on the Tokyo, and straight face humor and ability to get flustered easily won her over.

Shepard treats the visions and Nightmares like everything else in life, with a balsé "Well, I'm not dead yet," attitude.

She becomes close to her new crew, surprising all of them with her willingness to care about them. They observe her and Kaidan falling for each other with bemusment, often talking amongst themselves about it or teasing one or the other about it.

After the battle of the Citidel and saving the Council, they take a 4 week shore leave where Shepard and Kaidan solidify their relationship.

Some of the crew go their separate ways and don't see each other again until Shepard's memorial.

ME 2: Shepard has a hard time grappling with her resurrection, primarily the concept of "what makes you, you". She's easily manipulated by TIM in the beginning, falling for his narrative.

She tries her hardest to convince herself she's the same (after all, she feels the same, mostly looks the same). But struggles with the concept of how much time has passed and her emotions around feeling betrayed by most of her friends, which TIM absolutely feeds into. For her, she took a nap and woke up to everyone gone. For a while, she has a hard time wrapping her head around it and finds herself acting as if no time had passed, having to be reminded of it often.

She bounces violently between existential crisis and abandonment issues for most of the game.

After Horizon, she decides she is going to somehow prove to Kaidan she's still her, and hopefully, in the process, prove it to herself as well. She becomes even closer to Joker, Chakwas, Garrus and Tali who all become her rocks in the storm. And eventually becomes close with most of the other crew members. Especially as she struggles to get them to get along with each other.

Kaidan and Shepard circle each other throughout ME 2, as Kaidan "coincidentally" keeps ending up cleaning up her messes. (Anytime the mission says something to the effect of 'we're sending the Alliance in to do xyz' at the end, I headcanon that its Kaidan).

After a successful suicide mission (or maybe unsuccessful, considering they're alive), Shepard allows everyone who doesn't want to be turned in to the Alliance to get off on Omega. She forces Garrus and Tali to go, with Donnelly, Gabby, Chakwas and Joker vowing to follow her. (Donnelly and Gabby claim they can't leave the ship or else who would keep the engines running? Joker points out that there was no way Shepard could pilot the ship back, hushing EDI when she tries to chime in that she could autopilot it, and Chakwas says she has to be there to take care of everyone. And also she isn't too concerned with being court martialed)

6 months between ME 2 and 3: Shepard is court martialed almost immediately, and the case becomes international news. Anderson represents her in the court and manages to wrangle Kaidan into testifying in her favor. Anderson paints the event as something that was out of Shepard's control (leaving out the part where she turned on the thrusters for the astroid). Kaidan is able to testify that despite her involvement with Cerberus, she still managed to do a lot of good. With everything considered, and the Batarian Hedgemony breathing down their necks, the Admirality Board give Shepard house arrest for an indeterminate amount of time, citing they needed to have deliberations with the batarians to decide. They set her up in an apartment at the Alliance HQ and Anderson gets Vega to be her gaurd.

She spends that time largely trying to keep her physique up, becoming good friends with Vega, and even shortly getting back in contact with her old friend Liam just before the Reapers hit. Unfortunately, the reunion ends up disastrous.

ME 3: Shepard's ability to keep things moving forward, because 'its just another tuesday', is beginning to unravel rapidly. The weight of uniting an entire galaxy weighs heavy on her and her failures and mistakes begin haunt her nightmares in the form of her childhood self (I headcanon that she's dreaming of her child self, and not some random kid).

Her and Kaidan reunite, and his presence back on the Normandy provides Shepard with a rock and safe haven from the chaos. Along with the added benefit of being able to blow of steam often.

The final assault comes, Shepard destroys the Reapers, and the Normandy ends up on a strange tropical palnet.

Immediately after the Reaper War: With Liam Daniels unique skillset in both special ops and search and Rescue, Hackett assigns him to retreive Shepard and Anderson's remains from the wreckage of the citidel with a crew of his choosing.

Liam asks for volunteers among the celebrating soliders informing them that Shepard and Anderson are presumed dead. Two come forth and correct him. She most certainly isn't dead. The two are Urdont Wrex and Jack with her varren Eezo. They volunteer to help Liam, and the three take the beam into the wreckage.

After finding Anderson and TIMs body, Eezo begins circling a spot while looking up. Shortly after a large pile of debris fall on the varren. After using biotics to stabilize the platform that was now threatening to collapse beneath them, Liam and Wrex uncover Eezo projecting a protective bubble around itself and a battered (an understatement) and unconscious Shepard.

They are able to extract from the ruins and the shuttle takes them to the asari medical ship (a near dreadnaught sized ship used as a mobile hospital for fleets).

Jack gets in contact with Miranda enroute to the medical ship, and Miranda meets them there, impersonating a medical doctor and taking charge of Shepards recovery. With the help of Liam and Westie, she's able to retrieve all the things needed to bring Shepard back to full health, though it takes a couple of months to do.

Once awake, and moving Shepard has to face the reality that the Normandy and her crew are assumed KIA. Everything unravels, and all the things Shepard had been trying move away from come crashing in like a tidal wave.

Her and Liam face their past together, and with the help of Westie she begins to piece herself back together again.

(4-6) months after the Reaper War, the Normandy returns, limping home.

Post-War: There is a 1 year gap between the Normandy returning and when its repairs are complete. Rebuilding efforts take almost no time, as just about everyone who was in the battle are still stranded in the Local Cluster with a handful of ships braving the long journey home without a mass relay to begin rebuilding there.

Hackett assures Shepard that she will still be able to head the Normandy, and gives her his word that he won't break up the crew on it. Garrus, Tali, and Liara decide to stay with her, and Liam and Westie join (taking Aller's and Javick's quarters respectively).

During the year of repairs, the crew take time to help rebuild, patch up old wounds, and rest. Kaidan proposes to Shepard (after a Citidel DLC like misadventure), and they begin planning their wedding, with Miranda insisting she do the planning for them.

With the Charon Relay also almost completed, Project Grissom begins form. With no way to tell if the Charon Relay will connect with its sister Relay, or even if it would work properly, or what is even on the otherside, Project Grissom plans to send the Normandy and her crew through to establish comm buoys back to the Local Cluster and pave a way to repairing the other Relays.

Shepard and Kaidan are married a week before the mission.

With the completion of the Charon Relay, the Normandy is shot through it into the unknown, essentially bringing Shepard's story to a close in a flash of birllant blue and white light.