Quick, Before LP can discuss this stuff and make me look silly, but I always just assumed Brooks has Multiple Personality Disorder, and the Dog puts up with it because desperation and she’s still competent.

Rasa and Brooks are sisters. (Remember that LP tries to patch as many plot holes as he can. In canon they were they were the same person. In Premiverse they are sisters and Brooks killed their mother.)

I think it’s Pel who notes that cold bitch that she is Brooks would still slit the throat of anyone threatening Rasa. It’s in one of the Files – I think.

I also think someone said that Brooks can assume roles as are needed for Cerberus. A good actress, obviously. Something between a social butterfly if needed and a identity chameleon.

Aish Ashland
Mata Hari?

I bet the STG answers to the Wheel Priests. Those same Wheel Priests who used to be kings before the Dalatrasses deposed them.

The STG and the SIX:

I’m not sure this will even come up until the ME4 piece, or late ME3. Less spoiler, more backgroundy.

The STG’s whole purpose is to asses threat and proffer guidance that allows the SIX to ensure salarian dominance. Not survival, dominance. Anything else is seen as a threat to the race.

Obviously, they’ve always come in second to the asari, even if you don’t factor in the Hanar Ascendancy. The STG faithfully followed every order until the SIX fucked up multiple times in a row (nearly sparking a war with the Asari over the life-extension shit, bad tactical analysis that almost got them wiped against the Rachni, letting Okeer stop them from genociding the Krogan, getting involved in the Second Refusal War).

The STG finally said, no, this is bullshit, and went to the Wheel Priests, pleading that the SIX needed to be deposed.

In canon Mass Effect, the internal wars that tore apart the Union destroyed the Wheel Priesthood and shattered the SIX, with only Linron’s clan and bits of the Solus surviving, and the STG becoming fully independent.

In the Premiseverse, however, the Wheel Priests stated the SIX being deposed would weaken the Union too much. The STG instead reached an understanding with the Priests and the salarian military, called the Inception Agreements.

The salarian people’s survival was the goal of the SIX, the grasping for dominance had endangered the race. The SIX were still in command, but if they failed to provide proper leadership, the STG, Wheel Priests, guilds and the military would depose them and place new dalatrases from younger members.

There was a lot of resistance until the League of Zero threw in with the STG — at that point the SIX had no options. AT the same time they began quietly pooling their own resources and working on the larger aspects of the Alteration Framework, with the ultimate goal of making a shadow-STG loyal only to them — Counterwatch.

In the centuries since then, the SIX have built up private military forces and slowly turned the thinking of the League of Zero back in their direction, but they still are not utterly supreme.

The STG is aware of this, but most feel this is actually a natural state of affairs, and that counter-plotting and scheming keeps the race as a whole more agile and ready.

2) Brooks

So. In the comics, there was a younger woman, an agent of the Shadow Broker who called herself ‘Brooks’. She ended up sort of adopting a boy (who was actually a girl) who called herself Rasa.

In the comics, the woman tried to abandon the girl, and the girl killed her and took her name, eventually becoming Maya Brooks.

In the PV, Brooks was double crossed by the Broker, and ended up going over to Cerberus, taking Rasa with her. Along the way Brooks (who is … severely fucked up) raised Rasa in a very questionalbe, troubling manner.

Basically, to have no real self-identity, and to be loyal, and eventually as a sex partner.

Rasa eventually called herself Maya, and named herself after her adoptive mother/sister/lover whatever, and is indeed suffering from a very bad case of MPD. But the original Brooks now calls herself ‘Rasa Brooks’, although no one is sure why.

Rasa Brooks is now in her early forties, while Maya Brooks is twenty five. Both are fucking crazy, but are so good at imitating other people that Maya holds rank in the Alliance Military and R&D, while Rasa lives a triple life as a Cerberus Agent, ‘resource’ for P., and working for Aloxius Manswell.

Even I’m not sure who Rasa is really loyal to — she’s using Maya for comfort and as some kind of anchor for the shreds of her actual personality that are left. Maya isn’t much more stable as Rasa is her entire life and years of pretending to be people she isn’t, to sleep with aliens she hates, to sleep with men when she’s lesbian, to defend positions she doesn’t hold has also damaged her psychologically.

Cerberus: You literally have to be fucking crazy to work here — Trellani, Maya, Rasa, Kel, Ezno, etc etc etc.

3) Aish Ashland is really the Darkness.

No, seriously — I have bits of a document worked up on the noble houses (it’s not done yet) — here’s the entry on the Ashlands and Eldfells.

The House of Eldfell:

Aesthetic, socially libertine and extremely controversial, the Eldfells are shocking to most nobles. Descended from Bourbons, they are articulate and passionate, but given to excess of all kinds. The family is a set of contrasts – fashionistas and artists who are also brutally efficient businessmen. Their Eldfell Construction Corporation was highly instrumental in the rebuilding of Earth and did most of the work on the colonies before merging with Ashland Energy.

Today most of the younger members bury themselves in partying and entertainment, while older members are patrons of fashion, music, and continue to run elements of Ashland-Eldfell’s construction business. Lesser members are active in the French government and some colonies. Eldfells are in love with attention, and many have entered military service in search of glory and honor.

The Eldfells are known for their wild and atavistic parties, and younger members are encouraged to ‘sow their wild oats’ with asari maidens. While there have been no marriages, the Eldfells and the equally decadent asari House Vabo seem to be having a competition on how many scandals they can get into, with the most recent incident having young Miraud Eldfell and Sisana Vabo arrested for public indecency on the Citadel, along with a highly intoxicated and drug addled Farmas the Denied. That isn’t to say the older Eldfells are any more serene, merely more circumspect.

They disdain the use of the official Bourbon coat of arms, instead using only a fleur-de-lis in gold on a sable field. The family motto is “Ne laissez pas passer la vie par un”, or roughly, ‘Don’t Let Life Pass You By”.

The family color is a wild and passionate red.

The Eldfells do not bother with cadet houses per se – there is the devoir Famile (Family of Duty) and the Déchargé (the Unburdened). Anyone with even a stitch of Eldfell blood – out to the fifteenth degree – is considered part of the Unburdened, and shares in some of the benefits of the noble house. But they are not ‘formal’ members – the children of the current High Lord and those within six degrees of them are the formal house. When there are not enough descendants, members of the Unburdened are adopted into the ranks of the Family of Duty. The Unburdened are mostly tasked with running the French government.

There are more Eldfells than any other noble family – by last rough census, the Family of Duty boasted over four thousand members, and the Unburdened numbered almost twenty thousand. Their Knights Irregular are known as the Chevaliers de l’Amour (Knights of Love) and strangely enough spend much of their time in humanitarian assistance, or participating in mock battles for the entertainment of French children.

The House of Ashland:

Starkly cold, socially liberal and nearly legendary for their avarice, the Ashlands are the most unlikely ally of the Eldfells. The two families are quite close, with over a dozen marriages between the two, mostly of Ashlands who don’t fit the cool, emotionless mould of the rest of the family – this is likely the fate of the wild party girl Aish Ashland, who has already been stripped of her title as heir.

Descended from a motley collection of Scottish and Finnish royalty and nobility, the Ashlands salvaged Canada, turning it from a ravaged wasteland in the aftermath of the Days of Iron to the cultural, economic and financial capital of Earth. Vancouver, in particular, was rebuilt from the ground up by the Ashlands.

The Ashland invention of the hyperscoop, using the science of the Mars Archive, has proven more effective by a factor of thirty than any other HE3 mining device known in the galaxy, ensuring their vast wealth and profits.

The Ashlands are by far the wealthiest Family in humanity, and their riches are only outstripped by the Solus and the T’Armal. For all of this they are incredibly grim, serious and focused on business. Their family name is actually taken from the old American energy company they bought out, as they descended from the admixture of the Scottish family of Kerr in Lothian, and they use the sun-and-chevron symbol of that House, quartered on a shield of argent and sable. Their motto, however, is from their Finnish ancestors, “Ken ci työdy tie, sil ei syvvägi pie” – roughly, “He who does not work shall not eat.”

The family color is, unsurprisingly, gold.

The Ashlands are almost entirely focused on business – both in running Ashland-Eldfell and in many other investment ventures. They disdain patronizing the arts, instead often attending and funding various charitable foundations and gatherings.

They do not have a cadet family or restrictions on who may join, but only recognize relatives out to the third degree of separation as formal members, although many more distantly related than that are employed as middle managers in Ashland-Eldfell.

The family abhors military service and usually only enters in engineering capacities, preferably on Earth itself. There are only about a hundred of them that are properly recognized as nobles, although many distant relatives work for Ashland-Eldfell or in the Canadian government.

The Knights Irregular of the Ashlands are known as the Emberguard, all grimly competent and icy cold as their masters. As an aside, the Ashlands tend to use the most brutally violent types in the Emberguard, and their viciousness is well known and feared. Only a fool attacks an important Ashland-Eldfell facility, although their outlying facilities are much less well guarded.