Mass Effect Salarian

**Name**: Salarian
**Dice**: 12D
**Dexterity**: 1D / 4D+2
**Knowledge**: 1D / 4D+1
**Mechanical**: 1D+1 / 5D
**Perception**: 1D / 3D+1
**Strength**: 1D / 3D
**Technical**: 1D / 4D+1

**Move**: 11 / 13
**Size**: 1.47 - 1.88 m
**Weight**: 29 - 92 kg

**Special Abilities**:

* **Amphibious**: Salarian can breathe underwater and have a swim speed of 8 / 10. They can take 10 on all Swim checks even if they normally couldn’t.
* **Photographic memory**: Salarians never forget a face. Whenever they wish to remember someone, it just “pops up” in their minds where and when they met that person. When remembering other facts they lived and experienced, they gain a +5D bonus on the check.
* **Rapid Metabolism**: The salarian’s rapid metabolism ensures they only need to rest for 1 hour to gain the benefits of an 8 hour rest.

**Description**: The second species to join the Citadel, the salarians are warm-blooded amphibians native to the planet Sur'Kesh. Salarians possess a hyperactive metabolism; they think fast, talk fast, and move fast. To salarians, other species seem sluggish and dull-witted, especially the elcor. Unfortunately, their metabolic speed leaves them with a relatively short lifespan; salarians over the age of 40 are a rarity. Salarians are known for their observational capability and non-linear thinking. This manifests as an aptitude for research and espionage. They are constantly experimenting and inventing, and it is generally accepted that they always know more than they are letting on. Salarians are noted for their high-speed metabolism, which allows them to function on just one hour of sleep a day. Their minds and bodies work faster than most sapient races, making them seem restless or hyperactive. The drawback of this active metabolism is a short lifespan of around 40 human years. The salarians are amphibian haplo-diploid egg-layers; unfertilized eggs produce males and fertilized eggs produce females. Once a year, a salarian female will lay a clutch of dozens of eggs. Social rules prevent all but a fraction from being fertilized. As a result, 90% of the species is male.

Salarians have photographic memories and rarely forget a fact. They also possess a form of psychological "imprinting", tending to defer to those they knew in their youth. salarian hatching is a solemn ritual in which the clan Dalatrass (matriarch) isolates herself with the eggs. The young salarians psychologically imprint on her and tend to defer to her wishes. During the hatching of daughters, the Dalatrasses of the mother and father’s clans are present at the imprinting. This ensures the offspring have equal loyalty to both, ensuring the desired dynastic and political unity. Salarian sex drive and reproduction differ from that of humans, it is not hormonebased. Reproduction is more of a necessity and salarians do not seem to desire sex for pleasure.

Salarians excel at invention, preferring to use cutting-edge technology rather than settle for anything less. For example, their GARDIAN starship defenses put emphasis on high performance over reliability even though a malfunction could cost lives. Even Schells rejected a cheating device that used "brute force," spending five years to refine it into a more sophisticated, undetectable system. The salarians see information gathering and even spying as a matter of course when dealing with other races, but this is not underhanded: they simply embrace the dictum of "knowledge is power". Alliance counterintelligence agencies are constantly uncovering salarian agents and cyber-warfare incursions, but there is little they can do to stop them. As a salarian information broker once told David Anderson, "Your species has been transmitting data across the extranet for less than a decade. My species has been directing the primary espionage and intelligence operations for the Council for two thousand years."

Normally, the rare salarian females are cloistered on their worlds out of tradition and respect. Powerful female Dalatrasses are dynasts and political kingpins. They determine the political course of their respective regions through shrewd negotiation.

**Personality**: Salarians have a faster than normal metabolism, often appearing jittery. They also possess a keen intellect, rarely forgetting any fact or figure.

**Physical Description**: The salarians are a bipedal race of amphibians, with tall, elongated bodies well-suited for their high metabolism, and skeletons composed of more cartilage than those of other races such as humans. Salarian heads are long and thin, and have a pair of horns protruding from the top of their skulls. Skin varies in color, from bright reds and greens to the more common shades of blue or grey. Their blood is a greenish color. Salarian eyes are large and oval and have thin membranes in place of eyelids. The pupils are a wide slit, oriented horizontally, and the irises can be dark green, purple, or brown. Salarians blink upwards, rather than downwards as humans do.

**Homeworld**: Sur'Kesh
**Religion**: Salarians are not notably religious, but as free-willed sentients there are exceptions. One of the less favored salarian religions worships a goddess, and claims that a certain pattern of overlapping craters in the southern hemisphere of Trelyn resembles her.
**Biotics**: Salarian biotics are unusual and highly prized.
**Example Names**: Kirrahe, Schells, Chorban, Anoleis.

**Source**:

* Mass Effect Wiki: Salarian
* Mass Effect d20 RPG (pages 31-33)
* thedemonapostle