Spoilers: Without the Foe

I guess the beginning is where I have to start: The original idea I had for Without the Foe was really the summary on the story: What would have happened without the Reapers? I first had to ask how, and my answer was: liara's time capsule. Not Liara's specifically, but that of another race, one received by the protheans. This gives the Protheans the nessicary knowledge and technology to finish the crucible, perfecting it in the final days of the war to kill only the reapers, their leaders having refused to trigger it until it wouldn't destroy the empire, inadvertently dooming their people and their civilization to Reaperification.

Because of the capsule, the Protheans never uplift any races seen in the modern cycle, and their war with the reapers also I later decided would have been witnessed sort of by the Batarians, causing huge panic in their primitive society and allowing for a slave revolt to remove the caste system (Look, It's a lot harder to justify them as good guys if they do slavery, okay?) as well as making Quarian cizilization deeply afraid of the Perseus veil, with legends about it being an evil creature that wanted to smother all life. While the superstition died with time, the Quarians would never leave the Perseus veil until forced to thousands of years later.

Most importantly for this galaxy though: The Salarians are first to discover the citadel because Asari never get uplifted by the protheans. First contact by the Salarians is to the Volus, who, while they align with the Slaarians, never form a council with them. Rachni contact sends the Salarians into a panic, and they uplift dozens of races, Asari, Krogan, Hannar, Drell (the Drell homeworld runs out of resources still, but the Drell are already part of the galactic community and thus simply evacuate) Elcor etc. (Not the turians, I'll get there.) They then begin their war against the territorial rachni, decidedly being the instagators. Eventually though, an Asari ship that crashes behind enemy lines accidentally establishes diplomatic contact. Skip a few decades, and the Rachni, while mostly solitary, form half the "head council" alongside the Salarians, while the other races each get a council seat, even though they really hold very little power. Keep in mind that the Volus, Salarians and Rachni are the only races to reach spaceflight on their own at this point, but the Volus are still minor councilors because the Salarians and Rachni are so much more powerful.

Batarian contact goes actually better than you'd expect, they're strong-armed into becoming a council race. But the Volus are still unhappy, and eventually, upon their discovery of the Turians, secede from council space. The Salarians try to beat the crap out of them, but get repelled by Turian forces, who also reached spaceflight independently, but are happy to receive modern galactic technology from the Volus, and for a join government with them.

As you can expect, the Salarians, who pretty much control the known galaxy, weren't looking too hot as leaders. Soon enough, the Batarians jump ship, and the already weakened Salarian fleet fails to stop them too. The final straw is when the krogan rebel, and while they are allowed to secede, the Salarians release the genophage as a warning and a threat to anyone else who tries to abandon the citadel council. Regardless of the devastation it wreaks on the krogan, it holds the council together enough for them to regain their strength.

Quarians only enter the scene at the close of the Geth rebellions, when the newly-formed flotilla flees their space, becoming the first Quarians to leave the veil. They come out in batarian space, and end up running into pirates, whom they promptly exchange a wave of fire with before running back towards the relay. Geth ships then arrive, but curiously only attack the pirates. They then open communtications with the Flotilla, the first of many steps that eventually lead to Geth-Quarian peace, the two races now have equal rights and citizenship throughout Quarian space. This alliance does end up motivating the rest of the galaxy to be less AI-wary that they otherwise would have been, but they're still not openly "Hey guys, AIs are cool dudes!" the Geth-Quarian civilization begins contact with outside races, but for the most part remains within the veil, staying the isolated technological powerhouse of the galaxy. These technical expertise make Quarian technitians extremely valuable throughout the galaxy (Not Geth techs usually, again, the galaxy isn't totally pro-AI)

Humans come onto the scene at the same date they do in ME1, shanxi is not the human garrision the Turians captured, but the site where Ashley's grandfather negotiated a historic treaty 90% through charades. Her family is considered heroic mostly, but some down talk them as being "destined for the diplomats, not the marines".

The Batarians and Humans quickly align, sharing technology and weapons, allowing humanity to expand to encompass almost as much territory as the Turians in only a few decades. The Vol-Turian Hierarchy enters a brief war with the Humans when their territories reach a border, that's where Anderson and Benjamin Shepard served together, some of the first graduates of the then-new N7 program. Hannah "Shepard eventually" was XO on a ship and also served at this time.

Jonathan "I never decided what his actual last name was but it was going to come up at some point" Shepard was born in Vancouver, the prologue explained this, the only family he ever knew was a girl he thinks was his older sister, he doesn't remember what happened to her. The first man he killed was a gang-banger who pulled a gun on him, a few years older than he was. Shepard doesn't remember exactly how, but he knows that by the end of a few moments, he'd taken the kid's gun and shot him with it. A rival gang picked him up immediately. He betrayed them when they were horribly assaulting a woman in the street, shot a few and got them both to the police station, testified in exchange for a full pardon. Bengamin Shepard adopted him at age 12, and raised Jonathan alongside his two older kids, one son, one daughter. He legally got his last name changed at age 13, and remains close to his adopted family.

And now to the actual story of Without the Foe:

Saren is trying to get the Prothean technology because the hierarchy thinks it might be a massive find, something that might give them a huge edge. He's not actually trying to take over Eden Prime, contrary to appearences, but he just needs the pods, which contain a platoon of prothean elites. Yes, and Javik.

Shep's team and balak's were going to land separately, balak and his group go after pods, shep find survivors, balak calls for back up when he finds Garrus Nihlus and Lantar holding them away from the spaceport, so shep puts Kaiden in command while he runs off, mentioning Nihlus' line "I'll move faster on my own. So Kaiden leads Jenkins (Who was not going to die) and Vega (Who I actually also need to say was not going to die) and they find Ash, last surviving soldier around. Not sure how the rest would play on Eden Prime, but Garrus and co get away with all but a few pods, balak's team looses half its number to berserkers, who Shepard and EDI note have no clan markings, appearing to be Juveniles who never joined a clan.

So Cerberus, which in this is the Alliance's space CIA, lead by Director Harper (TIM, except not, well not The Illusive Man) steps in, the pods were going to their cell and the attack is their territory. Normandy gets temporarily transferred into Cerberus command, much to the batarians displeasure. They first go to Sur'Kesh, to the STG base from ME3 to see if the Salarians can identify the pods. Saren attacks and tries to steal the pods on Sur'Kesh, but when he orders Nihlus's team to attack a town as a distraction, specifically trying to kill innocents, they turn on him and try to stop him from getting the pods. Saren's brother, who leads the pod retrieval effort, personally kills Nihlus and Lantar, prompting Garrus to be all ME2 angry at him. Garrus gets captured by Shep, but not killed because Shep saw him take out a couple Turian soldiers. Mordin Padok and Maeleon were going to have a cameo, and Kaiden was going to end up with one of their Locust SMGs, Shep remarks on how wonderful a gun those things are and orders him to keeps it. Kirahee, who was leading the STG guards that were there just because Human/Batarian-Salarian relations aren't great, though the prothean tech no doubt makes them a little better.

They then go to the Citadel to explain themselves to the council, show them their prisoner as proof the Turians are attacking, kirahee joins the team to "represent Council interests." Shepard has them all go to lunch as a team building exercise, specifically choosing a place that does human food only to make the human teammates work with the alien ones to foster companionship. Kirahee remarks on Shep's ingenuity.

Next stop is Tuchanka, to meet a contact of Shepard's about the Berserker krogan (Spoiler alert, the contact is Wrex, because I didn't have a better way to include him, and they're already headed to Tuchanka, so I have no excuse not to.) short version is that he points them to korolus and O'Keer.

They go there, it plays out largely like the ME2 mission, except Grunt comes out on Korolus and kills O'Keer himself, goes with Shep because Shep shows no fear and beats him up with biotics. Grunt is my favorite character, so he'd be doing lots of things from that point on.

Team then flies to respond to an attack on Virmire, get their asses kicked, Saren uses the Virmire beacon before flying off. Garrus is wounded, face scars as well as his arm being screwed up. Tali comes aboard with legion, EDI is fascinated. They get Garrus a cybernetic arm and a Widow sniper rifle, and there is much rejoicing. They chase Saren, after a bit of a healing hiatus, to Feros, where Liara T'soni is studying the prothean ruins. Long story short (again) the Thorian absorbs not Shiala, but Liara, they kill it, get her out but a Liara clone has already given Saren the Cipher. Liara then opens the three Prothean pods on Normandy, revealing Javik and two of his crew, both of who Javik tries to kill on site because they're indoctrinated. Javik does the telepathic thingy to make Shepard understand the Reapers and the threat they were, as Javik doesn't know if the crucible succeeded or not, and neither do his crew. Shep plays a gambit on the indoctrinated, pretending to be sympathetic to them to get them to tell him exactly what their other crewmates would (and/or had) told Saren: That they should go open the citadel relay to bring in the Reapers, "great weapons built by the Protheans" that they could use to control the galaxy.

Shepard is not amused. They get to the Citadel to find Saren and about 40 Prothean Elites have seized the entire presidium and the council chambers, so they divide into teams and spread out. It's during this time that Garrus gets Tali to play bait to drawn Saren's brother out, she relays to him the message "Debt repaid" before Garrus blows his head off with his Widow. Javik, Grunt and Shep storm the Council's tower, taking down several Protheans and Turian commandos. They have their boss fight with Saren as he opens the relay… and nothing happens, because the reapers are all dead.

Story ends with the team leaving the citadel, and Miranda Lawson's first appearance as Director Harper gives her orders to plan the Normandy's destruction, she's shocked, saying that Shepard Anderson and their crew had done everything right and that they were great assets to Cerberus. Then Harper finishes by saying "I have my reason Lawson, if Shepard is what we need him to be, you won't be able to stop him."

So book 2 I hadn't planned as much yet, but it'd start quickly with the deaths of Balak (Ash was going to take his harpoon gun (Oh yeah, Balak has a Kishock) and be very affected by his death) , Anderson and probably vega during a Cerberus attack, with Shep ending up in command of Normandy. They then shoot about putting together the pieces of the puzzle, chased by "Lawson" (Yes, last name. Who else does that happen to?), an her team of Cerberus operative, including Taylor, a not quite as completely off her rocker Jack, and kai Leng, who's not going to be a space ninja, just an assassin/sniper. He's the one who kills Balak.

Grunt's Rite was going to happen at some point. No new team mates in book 2, it'd be more focused on the ones already there. Shep also kinda falls for Miranda, feelings mutual, both brilliant leaders and strategists and such. Mara Jade syndrome. Ish.

Climax has Shepard and team storming Cronos station, with Miranda kind of helping them, but not as in fighting alongside them helping. Ash gets to kill Kai Leng with balak's gun and say "That was for Balak you son of a bitch." Shep ends up in Tim's office alone with the guy, who explains that his whole reason for action was because he knew the Reapers were coming, and he needed someone "Forged in fire" to lead the galaxy to stop them. Note that I say "The galaxy" not "Youmanity". TIM in this isn't quite as dismissive of the value of the rest of the galaxy. Shepard laughs in his face he's so surprised, and is quite reasonably pissed off that TIM killed so many people over a threat that's been dead 50,000 years. So he shoots TIM, the station explodes and Shepard and Miranda escape with faked deaths. Deaths Harper had already set up because he knew he needed Shepard to be able to fight the Reapers on his own terms, and that Lawson was his best agent to help. So they disappear to the citadel, everyone thinks they're dead, and Kaiden kind of assumes Shep's role as the leader.

Garrus goes and, since he can't return to the hierarchy after betraying Saren, lives on Rannoch with Tali. I was thinking about a side story about a Geth-Quarian civil war set after the second book.

Liara might become Shadow Broker, with javik as her assistant most likely. He's involved.

So yeah, that was my ideas, my piece. I fell like I've got nothing left to say on it, even though there's so much more there. Damn summaries.