What Ever Happened To...

[WavesHaveBroken*]

And time moves on, or people move through it (as physicists might prefer).

Let us imagine a time many centuries removed from the Reaper War. The galaxy has long recovered, moved on, established a new status quo. It will probably look rather different from what we imagined. A very few familiar faces might be around. Perhaps Liria T'Remi, an aged Matriarch, is settled on Thessia supplying tales of her wild, mercenary-heavy youth. Perhaps Flash of Light is wandering the civilized spacelanes in a new chassis, collecting personal accounts for an ever-growing databank. And although the faces have changed, it's likely that there are still Illums and Murtags and Emons, scattered among the vast array of people living unknown, probably fascinating lives.

Assuming the galaxy is still intact, that there wasn't some huge disaster. No Reaper recurrence-rebellion; no dark matter induced supernovae chains; no Andromedan invasion; Skrat didn't leave the gas on at some critical power station deep in the galaxy's core.

What would be known of the oddballs and outcasts who once graced Cerberus Daily News? Not much, in most cases, despite the often surprising persistence of their involvement in affairs of some interest to the historian. They were rather the background cast of the galaxy. But assuming some very committed and partly deranged investigator wanted to know, perhaps somewhere in a vast server orbiting Rannoch or Sur'Kesh or even Earth, they might uncover the following:

Of Joset Phraag, we already know. He passed in an Illium hospital bed, leaving last farewells and a small book recounting his adventures. This book slipped into the vast sea of memoirs seen by very few, lost amid the information overload, but perhaps a person here or there read it, and derived some meaning from it. Or at least amusement. Phraag died having achieved some form of wisdom, in a state somewhere between befuddlement and contentment, having surprised himself in his last years by diving headfirst into a galaxy that scared him, and despite all odds doing... not terribly. He even did some good here and there.

His nephew Finlin had his own adventures, of course, some with Relin Chossa the pilot, some on his own. He was one of the majority of male salarians never to win a mating contract, but he probably didn't mind.

Vulsen Khor'Shanak, who insisted on the name G'tul'tan'eth, lived another few decades after his time on Cerberus Daily News. He wandered between many systems and nations, much as he wandered between religious clarity and religious mania. At times he was a sort of iterant preacher, seeking to inspire or impart his experiences of crime and charity, evil and redemption. Sometimes he settled into a community somewhere (he tended to pick batarian settlements with well-integrated alien minorities); he was a reasonably productive if bizarre citizen for most of these. At one point he even tried to enter politics, running for office in one of the ever-restless Batarian Confederation border states; he didn't get very far. In a galaxy looking to distance itself from the madness and pain of those early post-War years, he was rather too many spores short of a QoroQ, to spawn a phrase. He died younger than might be expected, though not so young as to be tragic if one cared, and whether he achieved a personal redemption only he could say -- he, or possible the Beings of Light.

He also bred rabbits, and General Ignac's genetically superior heritage lives on across a dozen systems. Perhaps there's something meaningful to be found in that, perhaps not.

Chak Zi'Kratarg parlayed her early engagement with the wider galaxy into lucrative deals with pharmaceutical providers and Parnack-based shipping companies, once those became a thing. She returned in time to Parnack, to renew the relationship with her son and prepare him for his eventual role in managing her new empire, once she stepped out of the limelight to work behind the scenes. Yahg political and economic jostling would put Illium to shame, and no doubt a great many schemes, bold plans, betrayals and reconciliations shaped the history of Zi'Kratarg Providers. The company lived on in some form for a couple of centuries, though Chak's final fate is hard to pinpoint. Her personal ship, the Spectre of Irune (which she always claimed had a double meaning amusing only to her) was recorded lost around eighty years after the Reaper War, but that might have been misdirection. Some of her kin maintain that she still secretly runs things on Parnack behind the scenes; of course, every yahg family says that about their ancestors.

Xuumo-kalashasi, having been humbled by his small-fish efforts to improve elcor political standing, and wishing no more to do with strange precursor cults or galactic skullduggery, kept a relatively low profile, and grumbling aside he wasn't unhappy. He managed to get out of his much-resented salarian job after a few years, returning to Dekuuna to serve an advisory role in the administration of a spaceport-city Elder. His experience with so many species, his ties to humans, salarians, and even krogan clans making him genuinely valuable, he concerned himself with home and his own place within it. He was a wiser elcor than he had been, and perhaps he was living the life he should have lived all along, without vague resentments and misplaced bitterness. He married late in life (no, it wasn't Vornyl; nor was it his old business associate Jinnarn), and fathered a daughter. By all accounts he was a doting father.

(Alonso Cutri reconciled with Xuumo eventually, by which point he had rather firmly entrenched himself as an active agent of a semi-legal organization dedicated to putting out fires -- or at times starting small ones to preempt larger conflagrations. The group had unofficial ties to the Systems Alliance and the Salarian Union, and Alonso specifically was a known asset of Dalatrass Nasurn Aegohr Finissot Jemesh Hillian Vess. While it's not known if Xuumo's daughter called him "Uncle Alonso", it's certainly possible.)

(As for Brazen the varren, she served loyally for some years -- against the odds, one might say -- but was eventually killed in the line of varren duty, defending her master).

Laykalar (Grace of the Boundless Current) spent several more years in charity work. Having wound up running Leaving the Ducts with the departure of its other employees, and having persevered despite the exasperation of agencies Citadel, turian, and drell, he eventually turned it over to a new, truly qualified management team (yes, Hie Neum checked their background carefully). He returned to Kahje, having made some contacts among other less traditional hanar interested in alien cultures. He entered academia, a sort of quirky, happily gushing professor of the sort that many students love and others can't stand. He wrote some papers -- nothing ground-breaking, but cited often enough by other hanar scholars -- and generally did his utmost to bring the wonders of the galaxy to young hanar who had never left the ocean.

Hanar are secretive about such things -- even talkative hanar of endless enthusiasm -- but it is believed that he mated and had polyps at some point. Perhaps a part of Laykalar drifts around the galaxy still in any number of other jellies, sticking its ever-cheerful non-existent nose into everyone's business.

Laykalar never did learn that the original Leaving the Ducts had been a scam.

[republic_dad]

2193

Juhani watches the Earth's disc spin past the Citadel's wards. He tries to recall how it used to look inside Serpent Nebula bathed in Widow's diffuse light. A pity shuttle ticket from a jerk of a rich classmate and the university student with primary in history was whisked off to the heart of the galaxy. Young 20-something adults do what they do. There was sex and alcohol and older men, and one of them seduced him to a interstellar international career that set him on a path to present. There was a war somewhere between that and the very minute ticking forward.

He had not mustered courage to search if his parents had lived through it all, the shame of a turncoat son and world on fire. It was easier to wear a different face and name than crawl home to beg for forgiveness.

Sharp snap. The shot glass was slapped back down to the table. Bitter taste of lingonberry, liquorice and alcohol washed down Juhani's throat. There was a shuttle to catch. The intelligence service had found a new hole to bury him into.

2198

The seasons are all wrong here. Lauri's Earthly human mammal body is out of its element on this hothouse world's equator. The separatists are out of their element too. This clan, these Sabridists, they thought they could just de-camp out of the authorities' way and go hide at their cousins' place outside the Hierarchy. One doesn't settle a hundred heads into a township of six hundred without severe problems.

Everyone's too busy fighting to hold onto their house right now right here to think about sticking it to the Hierarchy now. Rather there was a more pressing issue. Posse comitatus. Funny old latin term. No one here even knew of it but for Lauri. However, that's what they were facing. A magistrate from the town across the hills had raised such thing, a posse, to resolve the years-lingered question of the Sabridi takeover of the township.

Lauri had a mostly real university degree, engineering experience he refused to disclose to his Sabridi compatriots and Finnish and Hierarchy conscription armed service skills. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead and fell down over the rough map of the township and its surroundings. He was a rare perspiring specimen in this lot of aliens. Killboxes. Ambush zones. Bandaging station, fallback positions. A manifesto and list of demands. Not all his work alone. The Sabridists had their own grizzled battlescarred veterans calling the final shots. However, they appreciated the hidden dimensions this human loner set apart yet following them had summoned in these stressful weeks.

Juhani wanted to get out of this bind. He had no idea if the Turian Hierarchy was even listening.

2215

In Earth's 23rd century, the Turian Hierarchy was in crisis.

The War Primarch was no more. Health complications had set Victus aside from the line of duty. Old grudges and competing factions had deadlocked the line of succession. The clients' aggrievances still hadn't been addressed to their satisfaction. Vol Protectorate was vocal about being real of its threats to distance itself from its overlord. Accusations and denials of being the 'Next Invictus' were thrown between Hierarchy colonization clusters.

Amidst all of this, a human client who had once used 'hammers-sickles' as his extranet forum username unironically found himself in a new mess. A renewed sense of idealism had chosen a poor time to manifest itself for Juhani. Between the mainstream choices of Palaven Turian Heart Order and Prosperity From Pluralism (Acknowledge and Aid Clients) parties, the eternal non-conformist cast his lot with the marginal New Colonization Cluster With Gaffno Yap Characteristics, who had accumulated all sorts of malcontents and deviants outside the Hierarchy's mainstream.

They had also accumulated ships, supplies, people and other things needed in setting up new centers of population and industry. All they were missing was approval and recognition. It was unlikely to come in this time and situation where new primarchships could tip the balance the wrong way.

It was better to act first and beg forgivance later, Juhani had assured his mentor and leader, who in turn had worked to convince the other ring leaders towards the same conclusion.

They hadn't considered the time for begging to come so soon and before the deed. The world's primarch had ordered the wayward faction's assets raided, and the military police, reinforced by reservists stormed the ships and ringleaders' homes.

Pulled out of bed by cold claws to stare at levelled tasers and guns, Juhani blinked with bleary eyes and panic and confusion. He had forgotten the face of his adoptive daughter. She had not. Behind those gun barrels, Aira felt something die inside her as she snapped handcuffs around her once-adoptive father's wrists.

[Fog of War]

The New Migrant Kel'Jaran vas Tevesani (9/20/2167-10/11/2216), who for a short time posted on CDN as Wayfarer, would remain a nomad for the next two decades, never forgiving the geth for their actions in the Morning War nor returning to Rannoch. He would eventually suffer a fatal heart attack at the age of 49, while off-ship surveying an asteroid. He would never have children of his own, born or adopted, but he would fall in love with a fellow New Migrant in the last decade of his life.

The vorcha pyro Akkam (6/26/2189-1/13/2210) would give birth to a litter of five children in late 2198. She did what she could to protect them from her Blood Pack overlords, but when they came of age in the year 2202, the Blood Pack sent her three sons on a suicide mission against the Blue Suns. Enraged, Akkam would rally her clan, and Vorcha all across Omega, against the Blood Pack, and in time established the "Omega Pack" as a gang that rivaled the Blood Pack itself on Omega (though at the time, its weakened state from the ongoing war against the Maw's Dominated had seen it fall far from its status as one of the Big Three in the 2180s). In the end, as happens to all great vorcha leaders, she died too soon, and her successors would proceed to lose everything she fought to achieve. Her carefully-constructed web of alliances among Omega's vorcha quickly fell apart, and the Blood Pack reestablished control within the year. Her elder daughter perished in the aftermath of her death, but her younger daughter Iresk, her last surviving child, evacuated her clan to Heshtok and became a great leader among the Hatashk vorcha in her own right.

The batarian accountant Grenak Khraia (12/05/2164-6/18/2290) would eventually leave Illium after a span of five years, once batarian space had been rebuilt enough that she was comfortable returning. With her native Khar'shan under Na'hesit rule, she would elect to instead move to the planet Greklon, whose ruler, the monarch Mano’har-Mohak Vorkhet Jagdish-Dasharathak X, was much more aligned with her own political views. Liberal enough to have abolished slavery, but still traditional enough to have kept the caste system going. She would eventually marry a well-off Merchant Caste batarian, raise their three children, and live a relatively uneventful life. She would, for a period of time, become estranged from her son Goronak after he chose to wed a Warrior Caste woman, but eventually reconciled in later years.

Finally, Matriarch Nara (9/1/2098-), who posted on CDN as Pterion when she was merely a Maiden, would live to see the new future we speak of today. Her tale is a long one, but not one of import to the galaxy at large. She would take a half dozen different surnames over the course of her life, defend her home during the few major wars that occurred in the rest of the Third Millennium, and eventually settle down on the Citadel. She had unwittingly sterilized herself in her maidenhood through the improper use of biotic Charges, and would never father any children with another asari for fear that her latent Ardat-Yakshi gene would be passed on to a pureblood child, but she would be a loving stepmother to a dozen children of various non-asari species. She never quite got over the various traumas of her Maiden years, and would never return to Thessia, but she would keep in touch with her surviving friends from CDN throughout her entire life, even after the site itself was long gone.