#mass effectyrath

[words-writ-in-starlight]

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MASS EFFECTYRATH???

So when I play ME sometimes my partner hangs out in my room with me and I commentate to him, and he was hanging out with me while I was doing the Reaper IFF mission in ME2. And if you click around during that mission you can find the journal fragments from the scientists who boarded the dead Reaper and fell under its indoctrination, which features one of the most DOWNRIGHT CHILLING lines of the entire series: "Chandana said the ship was dead....but even a dead god can dream. A god--a real god--is a verb....it's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does."

And I paused the game, abominations and husks all over my team, and turned to my partner who knew nothing about the Kencyrath, and said very intensely "I AM GOING TO WRITE A KENCYRATH AU OF THIS WHERE TORI IS SHEPARD AND THE REAPERS ARE PERIMAL DARKLING AND JAME IS THE VANGUARD OF THEIR INVASION WHO BROKE FREE AND RAN, AND I AM GOING TO TITLE IT 'EVEN DEAD GODS DREAM'"

And now I am doing exactly that. Some high points below the cut, in which I approach Mass Effect canon with my usual tender disregard for the rules and Kencyrath with an uncommon disregard for spoilers.

High Councillor Gerridon was one of a long-extinct, broadly human-like alien species, looked to as brilliant scientists and the creators of the mass relays and the Citadel by the current Council races.  His people, the Shanir, were wiped from existence mysteriously about fifty thousand years ago, and no one knows why.  The truth of the matter is that Gerridon betrayed the previous Citadel to the Reapers in return for immortality.  He sort of got it--he's the heart of the Master, a Reaper made from the genetic material of his people.  Jamethiel Dream-weaver was his twin and consort, who aided him in the annihilation of the Citadel and everyone aboard by using her species' natural biotic abilities to hold the entire populace in thrall until the Reapers came.  For this service, and for the potential she showed to be a weapon in future cycles, she was spared.  However, this massive expenditure of power began to erode her control over her abilities, and in turn her mind, and so Jamethiel was placed in stasis when it became too much for her to bear, until the next cycle came to an end and the Master decided to try a new method of harvest.

The new method of harvesting a cycle is named Jamethiel, for her mother, and when she's seven years old, the blood of her mother's ancient race finally comes to full bloom.  Jame sees her father, the disgraced general of the First Contact War who has been court martialed and drummed out of the Alliance for his recklessness that obliterated the Fifth Fleet, point a gun at her nursemaid's head, and without help, without an implant, without anything, she throws up a suddenly clawed hand and hurls Ganth into a bulkhead with a biotic shove.  The explosion of power is gone as quickly as it appears, and when Ganth picks himself up, he drives his daughter out into the void in an escape pod.  Aliens are less than animals, in Ganth's opinion, and while lashing out against him might be an unforgivable betrayal, it's the new, strange claws on Jame's hands that earns her exile.

Jame hasn't lost all her memories entirely, although they're horrifically hazy for the first decade and change after her escape pod is lost in the black.  Something about indoctrination at such a young age seems to have eaten away her ability to form memories at the time, although she's retained quite a few skills whose origins she's not quite sure of.  Somewhere in that fuzzy time period, she was given a biotic implant lightyears more advanced than anything the Council races can boast, so that she could focus her abilities with more ease--the splice of human and Shanir is dicey at times, and she seems to have gotten all the power and none of the biological road blocks that would normally keep her from becoming a living supernova.  It took a long time, the labor of years, for Jame to pull herself out of the endless black water of indoctrination.  One breath at a time, building biotic walls around herself.  It was impossible.  She did it anyway.  Then she heard that the latest cycle was almost ready for harvest....

Back on Ganth's ship of exile, Torisen grows up.  People die.  Torisen is not a biotic, is not an alien, is nothing like his sister.  He is a loyal and obedient son.  Until he's not.  Torisen Talissen, possessing the clothes on his back and not a single credit more, finds the turians before he finds the Alliance, and it's Primarch Adric Ardeth who sees to it that this young boy doesn't starve before he's old enough to become a soldier.  It's also Primarch Ardeth who gets him into the Alliance.  There are more strings on that arrangement than Torisen knows.

His father's name is Torisen Talissen's greatest secret, when he finally reaches Earth, the Alliance, because Ganth Knorth is a war criminal whose methods in the First Contact War were notoriously brutal, whose final stand with the Fifth Fleet cost thousands upon thousands of lives and left every ship under his command shattered and drifting.  Only a small handful of his commanders know the truth, and then Torisen is hand-selected for N-7 and half his life is classified anyway.  He's not a biotic, he's not an alien, he's a good soldier and the most stubborn bastard any of his comrades have ever seen, and the mystery of where he came from fades under the glamour of his exploits.  The Urakarn colony is the one everyone knows about.  No one questions why Torisen fights tooth and nail to take Burr, his most trusted lieutenant, and Rowan, the medic he dragged from the sand, everywhere with him, after Urakarn.  Even when he's assigned as XO on the Gothregor, second in command to Captain Sheth Sharptongue, they go with him.  

On the Gothregor's maiden voyage, they're assigned to Spectre Ashe, no last name given, an asari that Torisen knows as a friend of a friend (the friend is Harn, he's already on board because Ashe requested some muscle), and orders to take her to Eden Prime.

While the Gothregor plots her jump to the first mass relay, Jame steals a data chip and her armor and the first assault rifle she gets her hands on, and runs, not stopping even when she blunders into a Beacon that the Master has been experimenting with.  Her shuttle's navigation doesn't survive her rather explosive escape from the Master, so she slaves the thing to the first geth ship she sees and hopes for the best.

The geth ship is headed for Eden Prime.

Other highlights:

Tori actually super is a biotic, don't tell him, Shanir bloodlines allow limited biotic use without an implant and he's been unintentionally using it for years

I wanted Harn to be the captain of the Gothregor before she's given to Tori, but then I realized that the Best Outcome here is that Harn and Marc are both krogans but on diametrically opposed ends of the Self Control Spectrum.  Harn is your classic krogan berserker, Marc is a really good cook who is also prepared to fuck you up with a shotgun if you mess with Jame.  Also I just.  Really love Sheth and wanted him to be here.

Pereden is Saren, the Ardeths are all turians, you know I'm right

Torisen is the first human Spectre

The first narrative arc here (the contents of the first game) mostly feature Tori's in-group as squad mates, ft: 

Lt Burr, a sniper/assault rifle specialist

Kirien J'ran, an asari biotic who specializes in the history of the Shanir

Harn Griphard, a krogan mercenary whose record is actually pretty legit, shotgun specialist and berserker

Lt Cmdr Donkerri Caineron, disgraced grandson of an Alliance admiral, assigned to the Gothregor as a spy, pistol/shotgun specialist, he dies on Virmire

Grimly nar Weald, an upbeat quarian machinist, a friend of Tori's who's been on his Pilgrimage for a bit, a shotgun/tech specialist

Not a squadmate, but in the whole first arc the pilot of the ship is very quiet and unwilling to talk but over the course of the narrative Bel-tairi warms up to people a little

Jame is not a squadmate, she and Tori are both main characters in the first arc and if this was a game you'd have to take both always, but Jame is a biotic powerhouse and Tori is an assault rifle/melee specialist, don't question me

Tori and Jame stop Sovereign the Horde and still no one believes them about the Reapers, even though they make Torisen a whole-ass Council member and Jame a whole-ass Spectre (she doesn't even HAVE a military rank, she's not even PART of the Alliance, everyone on her ship calls her "boss" or "Jame")

It somehow does not improve things, re: Jame and Tori's relationship, to be more or less imprisoned on a ship together fighting the geth, and they'd die for each other but also everyone learns real quick to keep their heads down when they start fighting, until....

The Gothregor is destroyed not long after the Horde, and Jame Knorth (Tori and Jame take their real last name again, after everything, might as well redeem the family line while they're at it) is one of the casualties, killed saving Bel-tairi.  Tori has two years to become intimately familiar with the fact that he may, actually, have fucked up.  Then his sister shows up in his office with a new ship called the Tagmeth, new scars lacing her face and shoulder, and new horrible information about the fate of the galaxy.

Admiral Caineron is not actually running nearly as much as he thinks he is, he is being puppeteered by Matriarch Rawneth of the asari, but he's the one bankrolling the Tentir program and technically speaking Brier and Rue are his spies.  In the second arc, squadmates include:

Marcarn, an unnaturally calm krogan mercenary who's an intermittent presence in the first game and takes an intense interest in making sure Jame eats regular meals, shotgun specialist and Local Tank

Brier Ironthorn, genetically engineered perfect soldier, stolen from her father by her mother at a young age, orphaned not that much later (Tori brought her mother’s tags back to her), Tentir officer assigned as Jame's XO who turns on Caineron pretty quick-like, biotic mostly specializing in your standard push/lift/slam assortment rather than Jame's more intense reave/warp/singularity skillset, she refused to place a control chip in Jame's implant during the resurrection

Rue Mindrear, Tentir officer and self-appointed quartermaster of the Tagmeth because Jame has no idea what she's doing, assault rifle/tech specialist

Bane, ex-prisoner with unusually erratic biotic abilities (Jack, okay, he's Jack, Ishtier tried to replicate legends of Shanir biotic powers and Bane hates/loves Jame enormously even before they figure out that they're related, he dies on the suicide run no matter what)

Grimly again, he and Jame are kinda tight by now and she politely pretends not to know that he's keeping Tori elaborately posted on their activities

Timmon Ardeth, grandson of the Primarch, looking to prove his father's ultimate innocence, sniper/electronics specialist, insufferable due to constantly hitting on Jame

Kindrie Walker, not a squadmate but the new medic, who grows a spine over the course of a year of yelling at Jame to sit down and let him look at her broken ribs, Rowan got a job at Huerta so she could be close to Torisen

Aerulan, a geth mobile platform named after the quarian word for Legion, sniper/electronics specialist

Probably some other people but Jesus this is long already

Tori comes back to the Tagmeth for the third arc, after the Reapers start to hit hard, because he's in some minor-to-moderate hot water with the Council on account of using his accesses to help Bel steal the Tagmeth and break his sister out of her own trial.  This is also where they finally get to make full use of the datachip Jame stole waaaaaay back at the beginning, because the Reapers are here and she is the only person in the galaxy who has a record of previous cycles, including some odd schematics they can’t unravel.

They find a Shanir in stasis, his name is Terribend, and while he's too weak to fight for them, he might be able to help decode some of those schematics...especially the one labeled as the Ivory Knife.

The third game includes a Greatest Hits squad assembly of those left living and also features Jame and Tori actually functionally working together for once.

Um...I have no idea if I'll ever write this whole thing because I’m realizing it would be forty bazillion words, but I'll probably yeet snippets of it into the void from time to time.

#aeondeug #replies #mass effect #kencyrath #mass effectyrath #me: 'i'll just write a quick rundown of what i'm picturing' #LITERALLY TWO THOUSAND WORDS LATER #anyway yeah i'm writing A Scene right now #(it's jame and burr waiting for tori to wake up after his first encounter with a beacon) #but YEAH anyway jame and tori are both shepard and they mutually save the galaxy #i impulsively finished this massive write-up because (you guessed it) i have feelings after reading by demons possessed! #take it away from me #if you want any SPECIFIC scenes from this i would be happy to fill specific requests but otherwise idk #i'll just write whatever my little heart craves most from it #(......what my heart craves most is tori getting the report about the gothregor) #(proooooobably gonna write that one) #(ANGST! HELL! NOW!) #(i'm very tired because i slept terribly so my brain just spat out 'my tyr-ridan my tyr-ridan and me') #(mtmtam? MUH-TIM-TAM????) #(please stop me) #(i'm a monster) #queue deeper than the sea of stars

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I'm thinking of reading Kencyrath, but I'm not sure whether i'll like it. What do you like about the series? Who would you recommend it for?

OKAY SO, first, the people I would recommend it to:

Anyone who read or watched more than half a book/four episodes of Game of Thrones--the Kencyrath has a similar list of trigger warnings, but commits much harder to the fantasy angle, and in my opinion deals more directly with the ethical problems raised by those trigger warnings

People who like those posts picking apart the minutiae of how high fantasy worlds work--the Kencyrath is one of the only series I’m familiar with that answers the question of “okay great you have a warrior race, so how does that actually work” with “it kind of doesn’t, everyone is starving half the time because we’re all warriors and our land can barely grow food, so if our mercenaries don’t get paid, we don’t eat”

People who like a mix of “low fantasy” moral questions (the first book is kind of like...hm, Lies of Locke Lamora?) with classic “high fantasy” political machinations and battles of good vs evil and such--the Kencyrath HAVE a grand sweeping destiny more or less on their doorstep, but they’ve sort of fallen down on the job about it

People who like books that deal with trauma recovery--Jame, the main character, spends most of her time trying to drag herself (and, ideally, her brother, cousin, and entire race) out of the cycle of abuse that they’ve all lived through, and every character has, to some extent, a trauma that shapes their actions one way or another

People who don’t mind a big cast as long as there are a couple main characters to focus on--the Kencyrath ends up being a pretty expansive cast, with a lot of schemes running at any given time, but it always revolves around Jame and her twin brother Tori

People who like complex societal worldbuilding and Loyalty Stuff--the Kendar/Highborn dynamic (warrior class/ruling class) is so wonderfully messed up and I love how seriously the books take both the advantages and massive pitfalls of that kind of society

People who listened to TAZ Balance and thought that the Hunger was really cool and terrifying and wanted a whole book series about the sequence where the world is fighting it

Anyone who ever read a standard high fantasy book with a Rambunctious Young Lady as the lead and went “this is fine, but if you’re going to spend 250 pages telling me that this girl is wild and uncontrollable, I would like to see her go completely feral, please”--Jame’s brain plays Yakety Sax 24/7 and you can TELL, so if you ever wanted a book where the Unladylike Lead Character goes genuinely apeshit, but also learns how to make friends and respect the value of traditionally feminine work even if it’s not for her

People I would recommend NOT read the Kencyrath:

Anyone who knows they are triggered by written discussion of assault, abuse, sexism, coercion, torture, flashbacks, racism, murder, or basically any other major trigger warning--I personally think the books deal with things pretty well, and they’re never grimdark, but they deal with a lot of incredibly heavy material, including child abuse, sexual assault, coercion, and torture.  If you know you have a major trigger that really messes you up when you read about it, please exercise caution and feel free to contact me for more details.  Also, if you have a specific trigger and want a different book recommendation, I have them on tap.  

Anyone who struggles to read or connect with “problematic” characters--pretty much every character in this series will EVENTUALLY do something you don’t like, including Jame.  The books go very hard on “who you are is defined by how you handle making an irreparable mistake,” so be prepared for that.  If this is your hard stop but everything else is fine, I would recommend the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie (spaceships and war crimes and found family), or something by Robin McKinley (mostly fantasy), especially the Damar books or Sunshine!

Anyone for whom incest between twins is a hard stop--the primary romantic relationship is Jame/Tori, and while I would consider it easily the healthiest relationship in the series, that’s the ship and you should be aware of it.  If this is your hard stop but everything else is fine, I would recommend the Captive Prince series by CS Pacat (political scheming and romance) or the Winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden (fairy tale fantasy)!

The stuff I like about the series:

Jame.  I love that she’s allowed to be completely unhinged.  I love that she faces consequences for her actions.  I love her determination to slit reality open and lay it all out like a scientist in her search for the truth.  I love her willingness to face unpleasant realities, and I love the times when she can’t bear them and has to figure out how to deal.  I love every second she spends trying to figure out how honor works, and whether it’s even possible for a Highborn to be honorable, and how she can save her people without sacrificing who she is.  I love to watch people pick a fight with her and immediately learn the error of her ways.

Tori.  I know I pick on him a lot, and he deserves to be picked on, but Tori is really one of my favorite characters.  He struggles a lot more than Jame to move past their father’s abuse, and he makes a lot of genuinely harmful choices in the depths of that struggle, but I love watching the times where he wins.  It makes me frustrated beyond words when he caves to what he was taught, but I’m always elated when he can push past that and reveal the deeply loyal, sincerely honorable, incredibly good person that he became in spite of their father.  He’s a good leader, despite everyone’s best efforts, and I love to see him fight for his people.  Love to see him consider HIMSELF one of “his people” someday.

Kindrie.  I won’t say too much about him, except that I didn’t actually like him that much when I first read the books, for basically the exact reasons Jame didn’t like him much at first--he’s someone doing trauma recovery in the exact opposite way that I was comfortable with.  But god I love him so much, he is doing his best and his best is so much better than anyone would expect, from his past.  Truly the best boy in the Kencyrath, wise beyond his years and just insane enough to get into the disasters where he’s most needed.

The Kendar.  Instead of making this post 4k with individual bullet points about every Kendar I love, here is a brief litany.  I love Marc because he’s the only stable person in the Kencyrath.  I love Brier because she’s doing her best and it would be okay if everyone (including her) admitted that she doesn’t always know what that actually means.  I love Burr and Rue because their rabid determination to turn Tori and Jame (Confirmed Feral Cats) into real nobility will never NOT be funny to me.  I love Sheth Sharp-tongue because he’s the only person with his shit so together that not even Jame can ruffle him.  I love the Randir Kendar who didn’t move, at the start of Bound in Blood.  The Kendar are the most nuanced take on the concept of an eternally loyal warrior caste I’ve ever seen and I love them.

The Villains.  I believe I have established that I love a nuanced villain.  The Master is a pretty straight up and down villain figure, the voice of the darkness, John Hunger or Saruman or whatever else you might like to compare him to, but no one else is that simple.  I love the Dreamweaver, who didn’t know what she was doing and paid for it anyway.  I love Tyrandis, who knew what he was doing and did it and spent his eternity trying to fix it without breaking a single rule.  I do NOT love Caldane, but he’s a kind of viscerally real, slimy evil that is exceptionally well executed.  Likewise, I would like Rawneth to die, painfully, in short order, but godDAMN watching her chessboard unfold over the course of the books is hypnotic. The villains in this are GOOD, folks, and I like them.

I really need to wrap this up, so my last pick for what I like is Overpowered Characters.  I complain a lot about media that panics over powerful characters, and responds by taking that power away, or having unstable worldbuilding that means the character is weak when the narrative demands it.  The Kencyrath doesn’t do that.  Jame is bonkers powerful from day one, and pretty much maintains that level through the series.  Instead of focusing on characters building their power, like leveling in DnD, the Kencyrath focuses on the question of using power.  Jame’s power in the first book is terrifying not just because she’s insanely strong, but because she has no idea how to use it.  Likewise, Tori is determined pretty quickly to be at the same level that she is, but he’s in such deep denial that he’s as likely to kill himself as do anything useful.  It’s just very SATISFYING, okay, to have a series actually do interesting things with OP characters.  Sure, in a weird way Jame seems less like a magical nuke in book 8 than in book 1, but it’s because she’s not just throwing power around like someone playing darts blindfolded.  And watching her figure out how to harness her power into something useful is so gratifying.

#kencyrath #chronicles of the kencyrath #book rec #my a+ number one alternative book rec if you don't think you want to read the kencyrath because of jame/tori is the captive prince #also i know those other book recs seem arbitrary but they're NOT okay i've thought about this #ANYWAY #A N Y W A Y #i hope this was enlightening anon #i'm sorry it got so long but i would need to know a little more about you personally to be more specific #if you have specific concerns please feel free to hit me up #anyway i'm listening to tam lin by tricky pixie and thinking big thoughts about some kencyrath aus after writing this #i need to get back into the me trilogy so i can actually write some stuff for the mass effectyrath au #or maybe go through the books and find a place to spin off that buddy cop jame & archiem arranged marriage fic #OH or to shove a lotus eater plot in there #what are some other good settings...hm actually i'd love to do a hanahaki au of gates of tagmeth #Let Torisen Be Aggressively Confronted With The Reality Of His Feelings 2021 #(i should try and figure out what i was doing with this three pages of soulmate su actually) #(i have no idea what past me was doing) #(but 'you get a mark for your soulmate and also for every lord you're bound to' kinda slaps as a concept) #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #ALSO MY QUEUE TAG IS FROM THE KENCYRATH #Anonymous #asked and answered