A lot of heavy questions.

1) How hasn’t most of the races’ militaries athropied in 1,000 years?

There have been multiple smaller wars and conflicts. The turian separatists are a lot stronger in the Premiseverse, and control fifteen colonies, scattered around the poorly explored edges of the FTL envelope. That’s always a big source of conflict.

Likewise, the Hanar Ascendency has fought at least two Wars of Refusal over Protehan technology and their resistance to sharing what they know with the asari and salarians.

The were the Second Krogan Rebellions, of course, but also the Uprisings at Tharn, where a krogan PMC made an attempt at seizing an STG facility to find a cure for the genophage rumored to be there, turning into a running fight.

Agents (like Spectres) often do find buildups, but increasingly Aria and the Terminus systems are making money by accepting raw resources to build ships for separtists, terrorists, independant types who want to found wildcats, etc. It’s not so easy to shut the docks down at Omega.

1a) The Terminus systems are EXTREMELY dangerous…if unified.

In weight of ships, Aria is getting close to being on par with the salarians. She has no dreadnaughts yet, but her people captured a geth dreadnaught and are slowly refitting it (and advancing their technology level by a LOT). The bigger problem is that engaging the Terminus is impossible.

The primary lanes to reach the other warlord systems and their mining systems all pass through Omega, which has already (about three hundred years back) stood off one invading Citadel TAsk force, costing them three dreadnaughts.

For now there simply isn’t the political will to take the losses involved in shutting Aria down.

2) How big is the Terminus?

It’s roughly the size of the territory of the turians and asari combined, but so far has a lot fewer colonized worlds. That still gives them two hundred plus worlds and mining camps.

It’s big enough that they have a galactic level GDP. It’s big enough that if it was just the Terminus and the Alliance in a war, the Alliance would be conquered and beaten like a dead horse.

3) Would the Council be stronger if they stopped drinking idiotball tea?

You aren’t asking the right question. I touched on this in an article.

You have three groups of highly cunning behind the scenes leaders operating through three extremely skilled political operators. Do you REALLY think the council is ineffective because it can’t do any better?

There are reasons for it, and the majority of them have to do with conflicting goals on the part of the people BEHIND the Council — that is, the SIX, the Palavanus, and the House of Storms.

4) Would Javik want to airlock ALL THE THINGS?

Surprisingly no. Towards the end of the war Javik became convinced that the centralized control and cultural uniformity (and suppression of other races) is what lead to the Prothean downfall, just as Vigil warned it would.

Javik found the races of the canon ME to be worthless because they could not even unify when they had nothing to fight over and were completely naive as to the costs. Even canon Javik would be impressed by the hardness and willingness to do anything to achieve goals.

More importantly, the Premiseverse council is not ignorant of the Reaper threat — they just think they have more time than they do, and with good reason (the Reapers really are more busy in the Sculptor galaxy, where a race with basic Godpower abilities and tech several times more advanced than the Inusannon just wiped the Reaper vanguard of sixty-five reapers like it was a snack.)

Likewise, the Hanar Ascendency has fought at least two Wars of Refusal over Protehan technology and their resistance to sharing what they know with the asari and salarians.

Look at the balls on those jellyfishes. And here I thought they were nothing but freaky fetish accessories spawned by a mind of some otaku working on ME1. Kidding.

I would really like to hear more about the 2 WoR. Sounds interesting in it self. What did the hanar have that the salarians and the asari wanted so much? Some beacon? Prothean shuttle? A life pod with a dead leaf-head?

Agents (like Spectres) often do find buildups, but increasingly Aria and the Terminus systems are making money by accepting raw resources to build ships for separtists, terrorists, independant types who want to found wildcats, etc. It’s not so easy to shut the docks down at Omega.

Maybe if the asari stopped dragging their heels and got to work, the Aria situation could be resolved a long time ago. As it is the longer she lives the more dangerous and competent she becomes. I wonder if anyone will ever call Tevos on that or just blows the news that Aria is Thana’s child to the media and let the circus spiral out and see what happens. Maybe Hades could do it?

Himura wrote:

Maybe if the asari stopped dragging their heels and got to work, the Aria situation could be resolved a long time ago. As it is the longer she lives the more dangerous and competent she becomes. I wonder if anyone will ever call Tevos on that or just blows the news that Aria is Thana’s child to the media and let the circus spiral out and see what happens. Maybe Hades could do it?

There are a number of reasons the Asari are hesitant to move on Aria…the most important of which is that Thana cannot find the nerve or will to kill her own daughter, and that Uressa T’Shora still holds out hope she can somehow reach Aria and make her reconcile.

A second reason, of almost as much importance as the first, is that Aria holds a number of extremely damaging secrets that the asari cannot allow to become public knowledge and has threatened to release them.

A third reason is the number of asari who have flocked to Aria’s banner. There is a very, very high taboo against asari-on-asari violence, and those of the Council of Matriarchs who want Aria dead have been forced to use catspaws and other aliens against her, which has been less than effective. Up until the point Omega became a valuable asset in his plans, the Broker generally supported Aria and kept more than one scheme from affecting her.