Maea Abrudas

> ***"My son is the last Arterius. In his veins runs the blood of Aurelion, Markus, and Pallix; the progenitors of a thousand primarchs. You are nothing. A desert waif, with no past and no future."*** - Maea to Nihlus, upon learning of his impending marriage to Desolas
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Maea Arterius Abrudiana Ursivina was the bonded wife of the late General Desolas Arterius I and mother to their son, Desolas Arterius II. She was murdered during the Night of Martyrs on the orders of *Primarch* Astraea Mehrkuri of Digeris, giving her life to save her son from political assassination. She was a direct descendant of both Aurelion Aurelos and Markus Abrudas, the latter being her house's founder.

## Biography

### Childhood

Born into House Abrudas, Maea was the only daughter and youngest child of Marcia Abrudas and Decimus Ursivus. She had one sibling - an older brother named Markus, with whom she was very close. She spent her childhood on Palaven, growing up on her family's ancestral estate in Cipritine. Alongside her brother, her mother taught her how to shoot while her father taught her self-defence and hand-to-hand combat. This meticulous training regimen provided her with an advantage when it came to Bootcamp, which she passed with a commendation from her commanding officer and an invitation to partake in officer training, which she accepted. Two years later, at the age of 18, she graduated from officer training with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant and entered into the turian military proper.

### Marriage

Maea's marriage was arranged by her brother. With their house's lineage already secure, Markus chose to marry his younger sister off to a higher-ranking suitor for political capital. The man he chose was Major Desolas Arterius, a career soldier from House Arterius who had presided over multiple military victories.

The couple were wed in Cipritine in 2149 CE. Maea was aged twenty-two, while Desolas was eight years her senior. While the pair were acquainted with each other's families, they knew next to nothing about each other. Despite this, Maea remarked in correspondence with her brother that her new husband had been *"...a consummate gentleman, who show[ed] great kindness towards [her]..."* during their official courtship. As is Palavenian tradition, Maea was required to consummate her marriage with Desolas in the presence of her brother, who was her house's *parriarch*.

### Pregnancy

Four years after her wedding, Maea was involved in a troop transport crash which killed half of her unit. For several weeks after the accident, she experienced symptoms of a mystery illness which required her to be hospitalised. There she was diagnosed with eezo-poisoning. Further tests concluded that she was also pregnant with her husband's child.

Maea's pregnancy was a difficult one. In addition to the effects of chronic eezo poisoning, she suffered from hyperemesis - prolonged episodes of vomiting which caused dehydration and dizziness. She also experienced painful cramps and bleeding during the first half of her pregnancy. She was later diagnosed with uterine cancer, which had been triggered by her accidental exposure to eezo. Terrified of losing her unborn child, Maea confined herself behind the walls of the Arterius family's estate, refusing medical treatment for her cancer as she knew it would most likely kill her chick.

On the 28th of May 2152 CE, Maea went into premature labour. She was rushed to hospital by her husband and brother, where she experienced an exceedingly dangerous delivery that almost killed her. After several hours of labour she gave birth to a son, whom she named in honour of his father. The boy, Desolas Arterius II, had inherited the pale gene from both his parents and bore a striking family resemblance to his paternal uncle. Following the birth of her son, Maea underwent an emergency hysterectomy to stop her cancer from spreading any further, which rendered her completely infertile. She was awarded a medal for her sacrifice by *Primarch* Regnaltus Fedorian, albeit it was intended as an insult rather than a reward.

The tragic circumstances surrounding Maea's pregnancy unwittingly threw the future of House Arterius into jeopardy; she could no longer have children and the son she had produced was pale. As pales are near infertile, the likelihood of her son siring children of his own in the future was minuscule at best. This left her husband with a fateful decision - divorce Maea and marry another woman, with whom he could have more children, or stay with her and potentially condemn his bloodline to extinction. Unable to part from the woman he loved, Desolas chose to remain with his wife and marked her as his bondmate. Following her mandatory maternity leave from the military, Desolas had Maea reassigned to his unit to serve under him as his new lieutenant, allowing the pair of them to always be together.

### Widowhood

After her husband died, Maea tried her best to be strong for her son. She was supported by her brother and her sister-in-law, who helped her to raise him. For a time, it appeared Maea might recover from her sudden bereavement. But when her son was taken from her, Maea collapsed in on herself once again. Spouseless and now childless, she fell into a state of utter despair. Her brother worried about leaving her alone in such a state, fearing she would take her own life and thus moved in with her for a time to care for her.

Maea was unanimously ridiculed within her social strata, causing her to retire from public life. Markus tried to get her out more but she struggled to engage, eventually giving up altogether. She retired from the military and lived off her widow's pension behind closed doors, only letting her brother, sister-in-law and nephew see her. She notably kept her son's room pristine, leaving his childhood possessions exactly where he had left them on the day he was taken away. Maea never let anyone else into this room, not even her brother.

Due to the blackout of information regarding biotic individuals, Maea had no idea where her son was or whether he was even still alive. This affected her greatly. In her grief she latched onto her nephew, Gaius, trying to fill the void within her by mothering him. This caused friction between Markus and his wife, Sedia. Sedia believed Maea needed to be institutionalised but Markus was more tolerant of his sister's behaviour. Tensions grew until Sedia and Maea eventually came to blows, Sedia accusing Maea of trying to steal her son to replace her own. Markus tried to broker peace between the two women but Sedia refused to listen, instead choosing to sever all contact between her son and his grieving aunt. The rift between Sedia and Markus only widened, the pair having already begun to drift apart under the stress of Maea's circumstances.

Things only got worse when Sedia suffered an ectopic pregnancy. Tearfully, she and Markus decided to remain friends within their marriage bonds and stop trying for more children. They instead focused on raising their son together as best they could. Markus had a few extramarital relations but they were short-lived and burned out quickly, purely physical in nature; he always returned to his wife in the end. Not knowing who else to turn to with such a sensitive matter, Sedia took a gamble by confiding in Maea about her husband's infidelity, telling her how she and Markus used to be happy together and that she missed those times. Maea told her that Markus too missed how close they used to be and that he was struggling to cope with their distance; in a misguided way, his affairs were an attempt to win Sedia back through jealousy. She helped Sedia to reconcile with Markus, after which Sedia forgave her and let her see little Gaius again. Maea and Sedia became closer as sisters-in-law and, with her friendship, Maea began to slowly heal by being a good aunt to Gaius.

Despite her progress, Maea would never forsake the memory of her lost husband and son. She continued to wear her marital hood, despite being a widow, as well as House Arterius' sigil and colours for the rest of her life. She also wore a hololocket engraved with a corivel clasping a broken chain in each set of talons, which contained holos of her husband and their son as a child.

### Reunion with Desolas

Following the events of the Eden Prime War and the Battle for the Citadel, Desolas' face was on every vid screen across the galaxy. Not even the insular Maea could avoid the headline news. Upon seeing his face, she knew in her heart that he was her long-lost boy. She rewatched several interviews Desolas had done with galactic media outlets, including an hour-long exploratory segment on who Desolas was before his rise to fame. As a Spectre Desolas' files were classified but he did open up about a few things, including that his last name was Arterius, albeit he was not used to using it as surnames aren't used in the Cabals. This, combined with his confirmation of kinship with Saren, was all the information Maea needed to confirm his identity as her son.

Maea paid a salarian information broker to tail Desolas while he was on the Citadel, to gather more information about him. While Desolas was oblivious to this, Nihlus was not. He confronted the salarian, demanding to know who he was and why he was stalking his bondmate. Terrified in the presence of the armed Spectre, the salarian confessed that he had been hired to confirm Desolas' identity for an interested party but refused to name his employer. After Nihlus forcibly pressed the barrel of his pistol to the man's head, he quickly gave up a name - Maea Abrudas. The name sounded familiar to Nihlus, albeit he had never met the woman before in his life. He questioned the salarian further, promising to let him go if he handed over all the information he had on Maea, in addition to that which he had collected on Desolas. The salarian agreed to the terms, handing over everything. Nihlus kept his word and let him go in exchange, unharmed.

Nihlus read through the files the salarian had amassed, quickly learning the motive behind Maea's interest in his mate. He broached the subject with Desolas in private, telling him that he strongly believed Maea was his mother and that she was alive. Desolas initially reacted with anger, his repressed childhood memories flooding his heart with pain. He called his mother a bitch for having let the authorities take him away after he had first displayed biotic talent, tearfully ranting about how she had blindly chosen the empire over her son and left him to the mercy of the Cabals. Nihlus attempted to soothe his mate's anger by gently explaining how, if Maea *had* resisted, they likely would have both been killed, as agents of the *Dicasterum Mutarius* are mandated to use lethal force if necessary. He also tried to frame the situation from a mother's point of view, asking Desolas to think of how he would feel if he was presented with the same choice - being forced at gunpoint to choose between your child being killed for what they are or letting them live, at the expense of their freedom.

Desolas, however, remained stubborn in his convictions, arguing that everyone has a choice and that, with hindsight, he would have rather been shot than be shipped off to Taetrus, to be turned into a mindless weapon. His blunt, blinkered response hurt Nihlus, who quietly retorted that *"...if [he] had died, Sovereign would have succeeded. And [they] never would have met..."* Nihlus' response made Desolas take a step backwards, prompting him to reevaluate his thoughts and sieve through his many painful childhood memories. He was silent for a long time. Eventually, Nihlus asked whether or not he wished to meet Maea. He added that hearing her side of the story might give him a new perspective or, at the very least, some long-needed closure. Feeling overwhelmed, Desolas began rapidly flitting between volatile states of childlike fear and defensive denial, prompting Nihlus to wordlessly hold him. After Nihlus had calmed him down, Desolas agreed to meet with the woman, albeit he made it clear that he was only doing so *"...for answers."*

### Death

Like many of her son's staunchest allies, Maea was murdered during the Night of Martyrs. At the age of 97, she managed to kill the woman who had been sent to assassinate her, albeit at the cost of sustaining serious injuries in the process. Her first instinct was to warn Desolas, theorising that whoever was behind the attack was deliberately targeting people connected to him. When she reached him, Desolas was in the war room, pouring over a chaotic sprawl of star charts and operational reports on the ongoing conflict between the turians and leviathan. When he looked up from his work at the sound of her uneven footsteps, the sight of her injuries horrified him and sent him into a state of panic. He immediately began to administer medi-gel to her, demanding to know who had dared to attack her. Maea described to her son how an unknown turian woman had attempted to kill her, their face purposefully concealed behind a tinted visor, and only by sheer dumb luck had she managed to survive. She warned him it was highly likely that someone was attempting to eliminate him and the people close to him, and urged him to evacuate their family from the palace immediately.

Fearing for the lives of his family and wanting to get his mother to a hospital as fast as possible, Desolas agreed to her request without hesitation. Knowing that there was an emergency evacuation shuttle concealed within the palace's garage, he carefully lifted his grievously wounded mother into his arms and began to carry her through the maze of hallways, running as fast as he could. He encountered several members of the praetorian guard along the way, who assumed a defensive position around him, shooting at anything that appeared to move with hostile intent. When they finally reached the shuttle, Desolas gently set his mother down into one of the awaiting passenger seats and began fumbling with the safety harness, telling her to wait for him whilst he went to rescue Nihlus and their children. But Maea's thoughts were elsewhere; in her peripheral vision, she had caught a glimpse of the Digerian member of the praetorian guard unsheathing a serrated blade. Realising that the man was a traitor who intended to kill her son, Maea shoved Desolas out of the way and threw herself between him and the assassin's blade, the blade piercing her heart.

After the assassin had been violently dispatched by Desolas and the remaining loyal members of the praetorian guard, Desolas wept into her chest, wretchedly pleading for her life and begging her not to allow herself to be taken away from him again. But Maea's wounds were fatal. With her last breath, she spoke of her undying love for Desolas as her only child, telling him that she was proud to have been his mother, before bleeding to death in his arms.

## Legacy

To the Cultus Desolae, Maea is viewed as a blessed figure, having been the one to give birth to the saviour of the galaxy. Her story of the harrowing personal sacrifice required to deliver her fated son is often used as a religious teaching, reaffirming the turian belief in self-sacrifice in the name of the greater good and that pain born of sacrifice is a sacred virtue.

Outside of the Cult, Maea's spirit is often looked to for guidance by turian mothers struggling with the cruel reality of infertility, in a society which views procreation as an act of patriotism. On Carthaan, Maea is openly venerated as *Maea Sancta* for being the mother of the saviour of the galaxy. This title puts her on par with her ancestor, Markus Abrudas, who is revered as *Markus Sanctus*.

Maea is remembered as one of the murdered victims of the Night of Martyrs. Her name is engraved alongside those of her fellow victims on the memorial erected in their memory by her son, who was *Primarch* of Palaven at the time of her murder. Every year, on the anniversary of the attack, the incumbent *Primarch* of Palaven reads the names aloud in a ceremony of remembrance before lighting candles with the crowds and singing *Die For The Cause; Stars Behind Me* - the Aurelian Empire's national anthem. While the memorial was built by Desolas, the ceremony itself originated with his successor, *Primarch* Fidellion Victus. Reading the names of the dead aloud isn't only a mark of respect; it ties in heavily with the turian religious belief that the spirits of the deceased must be continually remembered to keep their spirits alive and thus able to commune with the living.

## Relationships

Maea shared a close relationship with her husband's younger brother. Saren viewed her as the mother figure he'd never had, as his mother had died in childbirth. Maea was also close to her brother's family, especially her nephew Gaius, with whom her son would play.