I'm starting off this Casual Week with three of my batarian girls, from top to bottom Hsho, Meprit and Prrachiat (you can read more about them here if you are interested)! Life can be harsh living on Omega as migrants and refugees, so it's important to stay focused on the basics.
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He might have sounded as mad as he felt, because Khocress smiled. The bad type: door-less and sinking.
“What do you want to leave? This?” He gestured at the ashes, the brittle softness in an aftermath of violence. Flakes of things that had been. Embers, losing oxygen. “That’s not a thing that can be left. That’s what we are. Everywhere we go, it comes along.”
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Halfway Homes, my WIP fanfiction series centered around the Mass Effect Original Trilogy, will be comprised of stories trying to account for many perspectives: from the abandoned hangars of Omega to the Council chamber, the trade centers of Illium and the deep countryside of Thessia, the ancient Houses of Sur'kesh and many other places in between.
One of these struggles specifically will involve itself in the plight of the batarian people. Batarians have always gotten me curious, especially in the way they are never considered legitimate enough by the games to allow their voices to be heard. They tend to be flattened to their lowest common denominator, despite the obvious tensions that exist underneath their identity. And so I have come up with a full cast of them! They exist within various degrees of importance, relevancy and bastardness: I tried to provide a range that showcase what they could be, without ushering down the very worst of their characteristics (some of these guys are involved in some really, really nasty business ._.).
I am also going to try and avoid as many spoilers as I can!
(and I will post drawings of them separately, as Tumblr decided this post shall not be illustrated >:( )
[TW for non-descriptive mentions of slavery, suicide, addiction, violence, sexual harassment]
Khocress Kam'gestar is a relatively minor mystery in Omega's great scheme of things, and a rather common one at that. Khocress arrives in the station a decade ago, another batarian face hoping for something better and finding themselves bitterly disappointed by the harsh reality. Those who survived long enough to remember him back then might have seen him slip into a hallex addiction, the softest kind of self-destruction available to the likes of him. What prompts him to stop that path and carve his name into Omega's bloody history instead is unknown, but Khocress abandons his slow suicide and decides to roam the streets and assemble the lost and discontent, batarians like him with nothing to lose but their last agonizing glimpse of hope. His gang grows in size steadily, and over time the survivors begin to attack slavers preying on batarian newcomers in particular.
This behavior attracts Aria T'loak's attention, then growing displeasure as her business partners fall prey to their actions. And while the first contact between Khocress and Aria's interests can hardly be considered peaceful, Aria takes the man seriously enough to propose him an alliance rather than taking his gang head-on (not out of fear for a war she'd have easily won, but due to her legendary sense of opportunity). Said alliance is never officialized, but ends up greatly beneficial for both parties. Renowned to oppose any gang that starts dealing in batarian slavery without Aria T'loak's blessing, Khocress' gang welcomes any and every batarian regardless of caste, origin, belief or background --including runaway slaves, freed and begrudgingly considered equals. Khocress' main argument for unity is the call to numbers, that batarians can't survive a world that hates them if they hunt and destroy each other systematically; he hopes to give his people an opportunity to reclaim batarian identity outside the Hegemony's borders. The specifics of what that identity should be are, however, somewhat left to personal interpretation.
Khocress is respected by his people, feared and hated by his enemies, and is known to indulge in a tense and complex relationship to Aria T'loak and her negectful laisser-faire regarding the growing influx of batarian refugees to the station that Khocress is then stuck dealing with. His demeanor oscillates between stoic mercilessness and disarming empathy, and some consider the latter part a weakness that will, one day, prove to be his downfall.
Shorkhal is a young man like many others on Omega. Born on Khar'shan to a comfortable caste, young Shorkhal spent a childhood in a dysfunctional (but sadly common) household with an absentee father, a dissatisfied mother and a couple of slaves to care for him and his sister Prrachiat. The normalcy of his adolescence as a privileged batarian boy shatters when his father comes home one day with an unfathomable debt, admitting they never had the means to afford their caste and its tax and are now on the verge of losing everything. At fifteen, Shorkhal has to exfiltrate himself from his homeplanet to find a job and help his father out --taking his sister with him out of fear his father would sell her out of desperation. At sixteen, Shorkhal becomes a slaver himself, cruising the Terminus Systems with a ruthless crew with a port to Omega for the markets, leisure and occasional capture. Shorkhal greatly struggles to adjust to his new life: his crew pokes, probes, steals from him and test him to the point of bullying and cruelty. Shorkhal stomachs it all for the sake of his sister, turning himself into a monster to gain control and respect and passing his frustration and humiliation on the slaves he captures.
His limits are finally hit when his sister starts growing enough to warrant his crew's attention, and he knows too well the many ways they can hurt those they don't respect --especially if that involves humiliating him. Despite an ongoing war with Khocress' gang on Omega, Shorkhal swallows his pride and deserts to find his enemies, begging Khocress to take them in and grant them protection. They are welcomed in. A few weeks later, Shorkhal helps coordinating an attack that kills most of his old crewmates.
Despite gaining Khocress' trust and his unique insight into the mind of a slaver, Shorkhal never quite finds his footing in Khocress' gang, self-conscious that his sister grows more free and wild than he can manage, and never certain that he's respected enough. Because of this, he occasionally throws childish fits of violence as a mean to express dominance. His understated competition with Khocress over his sister's attention and Khocress' unwillingness to enforce the caste hierarchy enough to give Shorkhal natural authority doesn't help his mental stability either. Shorkhal isn't quite capable of healing or finding his own purpose in the world, and so he compensates with his deadly penknife and a twitchy penchant for irreparable violence.
Prrachiat is a young batarian girl born on Khar'shan. Just like her brother Shorkhal, she has the benefit of a comfortable life for half her childhood, until her father explains to the family they live their comfort on borrowed money and have to severely downgrade their caste. She is plucked off her bed by her brother Shorkhal, whom she loves very much, and is made to undergo the dangerous trials of leaving Hegemony Space as a civilian refugee at nine years old to avoid the risk of her father selling her off to the loan sharks.
She spends her early teenage years living in the hull of spaceships, going cold and hungry most nights. Her brother does everything he can to provide, and she's crafty and resourceful. It's the two of them against the world, until it's not anymore and she's left on Omega while Shorkhal is out there working as a slaver. She creates a little home for herself and start adopting wayward puppies and varrens to keep her company, a practice Shorkhal hates but cannot stop when he's not on shoreleave. She learns to fight by herself, dirty and efficient; she steals the food she needs and kills for the first time at fourteen. But whenever Shorkhal gets back and she goes to meet him, now as a grown teenager, his colleagues begin to watch her a little too hard, a little too aware that nobody can protect her but her brother.
After a particularly bad night, Shorkhal takes her hand and leads her to Khocress' gang, where he begs their leader to take them in. Khocress welcomes both of them, feeds them, gives them a community Prrachiat hadn't known since childhood; Khocress is protective with a dangerous edge, and year after year, Prrachiat's admiration turns into confused infatuation. And after so many years as a street rat girl, Prrachiat is almost uncontrollable. She burns bright, plays with grown varrens with the absolute knowledge they'll obey her, and doesn't respect her brother as much as she used to (or he would like her to). Her only frustration lies with Khocress, who doesn't seem to see her as anything but a child who grew too fast.
Hsho is a batarian woman born into slavery on Khar'shan to a slave woman and her master. As practice goes, she is taken from her mother immediately and put into a state-sponsored nursery. She grows up without much fuss, following the standard course of a state-owned slave: her education extremely limited and supervised, the demands placed on her immediate and crushing. She starts being rented as a domestic slave at age nine, passed from owner to owner at the five year mark of her contracted rotation cycle. She is never considered particularly talented, pretty or smart, so she remains tasked with basic responsabilities and never ascends from domestic work; but is never punished and downcast to a status that would have her dead or severly maimed by the violence of the labor either. Hsho is fearful, and never challenges her lot in life.
Her latest owner, a batarian woman of high caste, decides to take her along the rest of her possessions to evade her abusive husband and have them both escape to Omega, where she hopes to find a thriving community to start life anew.
The reality slams into them both, and Hsho is forced to help her mistress commit suicide so she wouldn't face potential dishonor and risk becoming a slave herself, which lead to Hsho finding herself alone and vulnerable in Omega's streets. The first person to take active interest in her is the infamous elcor crook Harrot, who takes her in and uses her labor for free in exchange for a roof, food and the protection of his emporium.
Tached is born to a high-tier caste in a less populated region of Khar'shan to an atypical couple: his father is a powerful land owner and farmer, and his mother an acclaimed poet and writer who used to teach at the Citadel before relationships tensed and she was forced to sever the ties to her old livelihood and conform to the restrictive demands of the Hegemony. Both support his studies, provide him with everything he needs; but once Tached is away from the familiar and thrown into the surprisingly violent reality of Khar'shan's academic life, the young man starts to form his own political opinions and follow in his mother's footsteps. He makes friends with subversive group of thinkers, students and teachers who question the establishment of the Hegemony, the legitimacy of the slave trade, and their tense economical relationship with the rest of the galaxy. Tached falls in love with critical thought and becomes involved in counter-cultural circles with revolutionary ideations; there he also falls in love with another man, one of many love stories shattered by government repression, incarceration and police violence. Tached manages to never be caught while remaining a passionate advocate for unbiased education, learning to fly under the radar of the censorship and earning a chaire in his local university as a scholar in socio-economic theories (the ones mandated by the government, that he can't help but subtly critique).
But over time his frustration at the degradation of their situation becomes too much to endure. After the untimely and dubious death of his mother, Tached grows bolder and considers entering armed resistance --on the verge of being found out, he decides to flee Khar'shan as a refugee with the hope change can be made from outside. Once on the Citadel, helped by progressive circles, he is smacked by the reality: batarians are being strawmanned as a threat that can't be negotiated with, or they are legitimately slavers and pirates with no political plan besides their own immediate survival. Nobody cares for them, not even themselves. Tached is found out by C-Sec months after his arrival, held in detention for half a year on grounds of invalid ID, and then thrown out of Council Space. He wanders from refueling station to another, begging his Citadel friends for money and sinking into a corrosive depression.
His meanderings leave him eventually stranded on Omega, the promised land of batarians stuck under the Hegemony's rule unmasked as the scam that it is. Tached sweet-talks his way into working for a batarian fastfood shack. From this vantage point, he hears about Khocress' gang and his interest is sparked for the first time since he left Khar'shan: Tached searches for him and proposes his services as a cook. Despite initially not trusting him due to his high caste and obvious cunning, Khocress lowers his guard around Tached little by little. Tached, in turn, is fascinated by Khocress' profile and works at unraveling him until he becomes a close confident as well as his prime advisor. Using his experience avoiding the scrutiny of an all-powerful regime and his passionate knowledge of sociopolitics, Tached tries his best to hone Khocress' instincts as a leader without overstepping his authority, concealing his true influence to avoid being targeted by their enemies as he knows himself to be a potent asset in their march towards reconstruction.
Içalec is a batarian man born in the Terminus Systems, outside of the Batarian Hegemony's control, on the planet of Caleston. He's the second son of a six children family, technically considered of middle range caste even though there isn't active caste enforcement on Caleston. They live traditionally, and everyone in the family works for the Eldfell-Ashland mining corporation who basically controls the neighborhood. Içalec spends a non-negligeable part of his youth dipping in drug-dealing --for the thrills rather than out of necessity, as he finds himself dreadfully bored by his education, the expectations placed on him and the general routine of his life. He puts his little siblings to good use, having them delivering packages for him and sending messages to his friends as he follows the gang in increasingly high-stake gambits, driven by the thrill, the money and the fast life first and foremost. He begins to be fed anti-alien ideas and Batarian Hegemony propaganda that he laps up, lamenting the mediocrity his family seems content puddling in.
The situation escalates to the point where Içalec's gang touches red sand trafficking in collaboration with slavers trying to grab wayward addicted alien youth; they are however busted, and Içalec abandons the rest of the gang and his little siblings to be arrested by the local authorities. He flees with his accumulated money and manages to zip out of Caleston in the nick of time. He will never recontact his family or see the planet ever again.
Içalec isn't a leader, and his experience taught him the importance of laying low and switching sides, as he feels very little towards concepts such as loyalty or sacrifice, persuaded that batarians shouldn't owe anything to lesser species anyway. He takes jobs from various pirate crews, avoiding the front line if he can but accumulating goods and safety nets. His jobs take him to Omega often. He decides to join Khocress' after surviving an attack on his current employers and assuming he'd better be on the winning side of that. Içalec doesn't particularly believe in Khocress' vision, but enjoys reaping the benefits of being part of a respected gang on Aria T'loak's good side, and Omega provides surprising safety once you get yourself in the right spot. He ogles on Prrachiat like many others, because she's young and wouldn't know any better. His self-preservation battles with his urge to seek for the next dangerous thrill, and he spends most his time balancing the two and being hated almost universally (which doesn't affect him terribly as long as he's not actively in danger).
Meprit is a middle-aged batarian woman and a second generation immigrant from Aratoth. She's born from a family of low-caste miners disgruntled by the awful working conditions on the planet, and who decided to immigrate right before the batarians closed their embassies and cut contact with Council Space. Her upbringing on Omega allowed her to be more open-minded about aliens than her parents ever were, but she wasn't afforded the best education and care due to their ongoing poverty and her father's chronic illnesses.
She has a first tumultuous marriage to a batarian of a slightly higher caste who give her two sons, but her husband dies in a pirate attack when both of her children are still toddlers. In the panic and overwhelm of her loneliness and crushing responsabilities, Meprit starts to lose her way in a local club and slumber into alcoholism and bad life choices --but is caught mid-fall by an unexpected romance with one of the club's strippers, a half-batarian asari named Lur.
They've been living together for six years since, fending for their little piece of happiness in the middle of the chaos as Lur powers her way from a low-level strip club into Afterlife itself, and Meprit keeps working in the last remaining eezo processing factories of the asteroid. A major part of Meprit's family, though not all, cut contact with her when they learned of her relationship with Lur, but despite it all the couple keeps working its hardest to give Meprit's little boys all the stability, safety, comfort and education they wish they had growing up on the lawless space station.
An old, retired pirate and scavenger who cruised the Terminus Systems for most of his youth, specialized in salvaging hulls of ships attacked by others. Exhausted by the fights and too old to push through them anyway, Amaan looks at Khocress' project as his only possible chance at retirement. He doesn't trust the safety of colonies he saw raided multiple times, nor his chances at standing alone with an army of enemies with longer memories than his; Khocress' gang provides community and a relative sense of peace he longed for most of his life, even when he was too brash and unruly to notice it himself.
Amaan is neither fond of nor is he actively hostile against aliens. Considered casteless due to his spacer background and a scavenger father who raised him on a crumbling ship, Amaan has the privilege to exist mostly outside pre-existing ideas of inherent values, which spares him the worst of what batarian xenophobia could look like, but he also doesn't respect them particularly either. Some of his previous crewmates were aliens, and they were just fine until they died. As a rule of thumb, Amaan is suspicious of anyone too young and dumb to realize they're going to get themselves killed. But he is content existing in Khocress' gang, his skills useful but not over-utilized. At long last, he can rest.
