Protheans

The **Protheans** are an ancient alien race which mysteriously vanished over 50,000 years ago. The Protheans arose from a single planet, known to them as Protheamon, and developed an immense galaxy-wide empire encompassing many other spacefaring species. Not much is known about them, but many of their artifacts, ruins and technology have apparently survived the ages.

The Protheans have been credited with creating the Citadel and the mass relays, feats of engineering that have never been equaled and whose core mass effect field technology forms the basis of contemporary civilization. Prothean artifacts, therefore, have immense scientific value and are seen as belonging to the entire galactic community.

Unbeknownst to the current cycle the protheans sacrificed themselves in their war against the reapers. Their sacrifice gave the Milky Way races a chance to free themselves from the cycle of harvesting and death perpetuated by the reapers.

## History

### Forging an Empire

After achieving spaceflight, the Protheans discovered the ruins of a previous spacefaring race, the Inusannon, and from those ruins learned about mass effect physics and developed FTL technology. The Protheans would expand throughout the galaxy with the help of the mass relay network and make the Citadel their capital.

Early in their development, the Protheans encountered a hostile machine intelligence which threatened to overwhelm them. To defeat the machines, the Protheans decided to unite all of the galaxy's sentient organic life under their empire. The other organic races were free to resist, but those that tried were crushed, and none ever managed to best the Protheans' might. In time, each of the subjugated races assimilated into Prothean culture and came to think of themselves as Prothean. United under a single cause, the Prothean Empire successfully held off the enemy machines in a conflict known as the "Metacon War".

The Protheans extensively observed primitive species such as the asari, hanar, humans, quarians, salarians, and turians during their time. They cultivated species they deemed to have potential. Numerous outposts were placed on or near the primitives' homeworlds, with Prothean interference and activities kept beyond their subjects' comprehension. In time, the Protheans would have given these primitives the "choice" to be part of their empire.

### Beginning of the End

The Protheans' belief that they could hold their own against machine intelligence was shattered with the arrival of the Reapers in approximately 48,000 BCE, who were far more advanced than the machines the Protheans had been battling. They were caught completely off-guard by the scale and rapidity of the assault. The Reapers entered the galaxy through the Citadel, instantly decapitating the Protheans' government and disrupting the mass relay network, isolating Prothean systems from one another. Worse, records on the Citadel provided the Reapers with access to all of the Protheans' census data and star charts, allowing them to effectively track every Prothean in the galaxy.

The Protheans' greatest strength, their unified empire, proved to be their downfall. As the Protheans were united under the leadership of a single governing species with a series of subordinate races, the Reapers were able to quickly undermine the Prothean hierarchy and cause Prothean forces to become scattered when their ruling body had been compromised. In addition, as all the races within the Empire conformed to a single military doctrine, they proved unable to adapt when the Reapers identified and exploited their weaknesses.

While their domain crumbled, the Protheans were powerless to defend other races from the Reapers' predations. They ceased all study of primitive species in the hope that the Reapers would deem them too primitive for harvest. It was hoped that some Protheans would survive the Reapers' purge and go on to unite these species to create a new empire. The Protheans' primitive subjects survived and went on to become the present cycle's dominant ones. Other races subjugated under them, however, weren't as lucky.

The densorin, a race who had mastered sciences beyond even the Protheans' understanding, attempted to pacify the Reapers by sacrificing their children to them, but this only allowed the Reapers to destroy them more quickly. The zha'til, symbiotic AIs that had been created by a race called the zha to keep themselves alive on their dying homeworld, were subjugated by the Reapers and formed hostile mechanical swarms. They became such a threat that the Protheans were forced to obliterate the zha'til entirely by sending the star of the zha's home system into supernova.

Over the next several centuries, the Protheans fought the Reapers from system to system, world to world, and city to city. If necessary, whole colonies were sacrificed and abandoned to the Reapers; while the Reapers concentrated on subsuming the inhabitants of those colonies, the Protheans had time to regroup. In the long run, however, this strategy was extremely costly, depriving the remaining Protheans of whatever infrastructure and manpower they had given up. Inexorably, the Reapers conquered, enslaved, or destroyed Prothean-controlled planets. Growing desperate, some Protheans made repeated offers of surrender to the Reapers, but these were always met with silence.

In addition to the overt threat of the Reapers, the Protheans had to increasingly deal with enemies from within their own ranks. Indoctrinated Protheans acted as sleeper agents for the Reapers, infiltrating and swiftly betraying their own kind and revealing the Protheans' dwindling hiding places and carefully-laid plans to survive the destruction.

### Ultimate Sacrifice

It was on the planet known to them as Ifor that the Protheans discovered the plans for the Crucible, using an information cache that had been left behind by the long-extinct Rakfeeli to both find and translate the schematics for the weapon. Having reconquered the Citadel late in their war during a last-ditch effort, the Protheans moved it to the space near Ifor to unite the two pieces and fire the weapon. Heroically defending their engineering teams, the Prothean fleets held their ground while the process was completed. The energy wave that pulsed out upon firing of the weapon destroyed both the Reaper and Prothean fleets, spreading through the Mass Relays to every corner of the galaxy and doing the same to any modern technology it encountered. Although the reapers had finally been defeated, the small pockets of protheans that remained were too insubstantial in population and vastly spread out to continue. Within a century, the last living prothean vanished from the galaxy.

## Biology

Protheans are an anthropoidal race. They have two pairs of eyes with each eye possessing dual pupils, and three pairs of nostrils. Much like turians, Protheans have a similar flangingeffect in their voices. Their eyes have some ability to see through cloaked objects or entities. Their heads are covered in a thick, layered carapace that gives them a distinctive shape. The skin surrounding this carapace can be a pale blue-gray or brown color mottled with muted yellow spots. Their hands each have three fingers, and their feet each have two widely-spaced toes. Prothean blood is red.

A unique attribute of Prothean physiology is an experiential exchange system based on physical touch. By touching something or someone, a Prothean could recall its experiences. This system can transfer complex ideas, with a Prothean being capable of learning a new skill or foreign language with a single touch. This sensory mechanism arose because the Protheans evolved as hunters and needed to be thoroughly aware of their environment. This is similar to the idea of psychometry.

From the few specimens of Prothean genetic material that have been found, modern scientists have learned that Protheans have a unique "quad-strand" DNA structure. It has also been hypothesized that Protheans were resistant to low levels of radiation because of the discovery that Prothean comm towers produced small but significant amounts of ionizing radiation, enough to damage the DNA of Earth creatures such as fruit flies and bees.

## Culture

The Citadel was the Prothean seat of government, and the heart of their galaxy-wide empire. Although the Protheans were a single race, as they expanded and assimilated other spacefaring races into their empire, those servant races adopted the name "Prothean" for themselves as well. This assimilation was not always peaceful, as advanced species who attempted to deny or oppose their admittance into the empire were forcibly conquered and assimilated into Prothean society.

The Protheans justified this cultural reconditioning by claiming that if the races who opposed them were actually stronger than the Protheans, then they would take the Protheans' place as the galaxy's dominant civilization. It was in keeping with their belief that evolution, or the 'Cosmic Imperative' as they termed it, was the driving force in the universe and that the strong must flourish by dominating the weak for the greater good of all.

This ideology was also dictated by necessity. After the Protheans encountered hostile machine intelligences, they ultimately decided that all organic races should join together for the sake of survival. Efforts to smoothly integrate newly-inducted servant races into the empire were made, like Prothean language tutorial programs.

Early Prothean architecture tended to be functional yet decorative, with eras of their history organized into dynasties producing distinctions of their own, though the designs tended to become simpler at the time of their extinction. Archaeologists always wondered about the reason, and one of the theories is that the Protheans were too busy fighting the Reapers to care about aesthetics.

The beacons and the Eletania ruins suggest that, like the asari, the Protheans were comfortable with the notion of transferring data to an individual's mind. They invested heavily in their scientific research, a policy that eventually paid off, if too late to save their own species.

Prothean society was heavily regulated. Staring contests were a common pastime, made all the more challenging due to the Protheans' four eyes. Females would also use these eyes to begin foreplay.

The Protheans did not "date" species considered primitive in their time, though they did regard some primitive species, such as quarians, as attractive. Mating between species was considered a pointless exercise. They were conquered and enslaved much like the others under the empire, and sometimes they were eaten as well.

Protheans had few compunctions with eating sentient species, apparently regardless of chemical makeup. Dextro-amino-acid-based races like primitive turians and quarians were just as likely to be made ingredients in Prothean cuisines as primitive humans, asari, hanar, salarians, or even krogan. Hanar were either boiled or fried, and salarian liver was considered a delicacy.

Before the coming of the Reapers, known testaments to Prothean civilization included the quasar fortress of the Tirandi Veil, the ice canals of Judor IV, and the Palisades of the Verom Anjelik. These were known even by the last remaining Protheans due to the memory shards, handheld devices used to relive memories stored in them, although they were also capable of accepting new memories from Protheans and non-Protheans alike. Such devices were passed down from soldier to soldier during their war against the Reapers, reminding them of the stark contrast between their magnificent past and their hellish present.

## Technology

Though the Protheans did not create the mass relays or the Citadel, they were still very technologically capable and scientifically curious. As well as studying developing races like humans and the hanar, they built a galaxy-wide communications network using beacons that transmitted information directly from mind to mind, and created data storage devices that still worked fifty thousand years later. They also developed a form of VI technology and used cryogenic preservation techniques, which could help an occupant survive a neutron bombardment, as well as advanced architectural design and intricate holographic interfaces.

Another significant technology the Protheans developed is the detection of indoctrinated individuals, as integrated in their VI systems. Despite this breakthrough and their natural ability to read others, however, the Protheans still fell prey to traitors within their ranks.

The architecture on Feros and Ilos shows the Protheans were able to build and maintain enormous cities and arcologies. However, given the fact that the Protheans were victims of the Reapers' trap, using their technology without knowing they would eventually be harvested as a result, much of Prothean architecture seems to have been influenced by structures like the Citadel, blurring the line between what the Protheans built and what they found. In addition, at least some of their cities - those of Ilos in particular - were built upon the ruins of a previous civilization, the inusannon, which had been wiped out by the Reapers 50,000 years prior.

The Protheans were also skilled at creating kinetic barriers. They built elaborate mass-effect defense grids using barrier curtains and a kind of personal defense shield that acted like an energy bubble, surrounding and levitating the individual who activated it. While inside, the person was impervious to harm but helpless, similar to a biotic stasis field.

Perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology developed by the Protheans was the Conduit, a miniature, prototype mass relay designed to reach the Citadel from Ilos. This was a feat unequaled by any known contemporary or precedent race; given the complexity of the relays and other Reaper technology, reverse-engineering a mass relay is believed to be extremely difficult.

While little is known of the Prothean military, it is known that they possessed fleets capable of defending their empire from threats. The flagship of the Prothean navy, Penumbra Apex, was equipped with a cannon similar in power to that of a Geth Dreadnought. Fighter craft of the empire were entrusted to pilots who had sole responsibility for the upkeep of their ships, and it was considered a great honor to be buried with one's fighter.

During the height of the Reaper invasion that destroyed the Prothean Empire, the Protheans produced the Particle Rifle, a stripped-down, powerful assault rifle modified to fire without specialized ammunition such as thermal clips. This was a necessary innovation after the Reapers obliterated the Empire's warships, forcing the Prothean resistance to develop weapons that did not rely on intact supply lines.