Listing of chapter start quotes for reference. Some of which show which characters are hinted at being alive in the future.

OSABC

C1:
‘I have to say, when I first heard the news about being made Spectre? I seriously wondered if Anderson was drunk.’ – Major-Commander Sara Shepard, ‘Lay it on me’

C6:
‘I’d just like to point out that while I doubted Shepard at first, I at least had enough sense to change my mind when I saw her do what no one else could. A lesson few seem to be able to comprehend, but one that has saved me, I suspect, from a broken jaw at her hands.’

– Councilor Donnel Udina, ‘”Maybe Later” is Never the Right Answer’

ATTWN

C1:
“Never forget the best weapon any soldier has is their mind, and the worst weakness is their emotions.” – Major Kyle, ‘Reflections of the Lion’

C2:
“There are two sides to everything … unless the very concept of sides is merely our perception,not reality”

– Lady Benezia T’Soni – ‘No single raindrop blames itself for the Flood’

C3:
“You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you can’t pay him to believe.”

– Admiral Steven Hackett, ‘On Conversations with a Hero’

C4:
“If I had a credit for every time the personnel briefing on who I was assigned to work with was accurate… I might have one credit.”

– Saren Arterius , ‘Dying for the Cause’

C5:
“The funny thing about ‘routine’ missions is that those are the ones where it all goes to shit.”

– Admiral Yonis Chu, ‘African Bull in a China Shop’

C6:
“The fact that you are here, in this training, tells me that you’re likely a pathetic piece of varren shit who should be thankful they weren’t shot at birth, or a rear-echelon motherfucker with more rank than brains and the mental capacity of a retarded vorcha. Either way, I’ve forgotten more about war than you’ll ever know. So pay fucking attention!”

– Admiral Tradius Ahern, addressing the N7 cadre of 2182

C7:
‘Training hurts. But you will find the pain of training is less than the agony of defeat or the emptiness of death’ –

Rachel Florez, ‘Not all that glitters is eezo’

C8:
‘Wisdom is rarely the words said, and more the moment in which they are spoken. One cannot behold the beauty of the rainbow save at the perfect moment, from the right angle.’

– Matriarch Benezia T’Soni, ‘No one raindrop blames itself for the flood’

C9:
‘When your bond-mate has won ‘Hottest Male in the Galaxy’ awards from not just his own race, but asari, humans, and drell – yeah, you get a bit smug.’

– Citadel Security Executor Telanya Nasan Vakarian , ‘Don’t Like It? Kiss My Crest’

C10:
‘The fact that James Branson was a puppet didn’t offend me, but his smug voice and that smarmy expression did. Honestly? Every time I had to listen to him I wanted to punch him in the mouth.’

– Councilor Donnel Udina, ”Maybe Later’ is Never the Right Answer’

C11:
‘Human engineering is much like volus military responses: something they’d rather leave to someone else, but will surprise you when they come up something on their own.’

– Clan Matriarch Thessial Ayrixis of Steelshape, ‘Dances With M-Strings and G-Strings’

C12:
‘Victory and valor are not always nestmates. Duty is often sacrificing glory for goals.’

– Saren Arterius , ‘Dying for the Cause’

C13:
‘People talk about opening up as if it was easy. How can you explain what you don’t understand yourself, when every word out of your mouth sounds stupid?’

– Major-Commander Sara Shepard, ‘Lay it on me’

C14:
‘Politics? Shit. That’s when a person with two good eyes and perfectly good hearing manages not to fucking see or hear anything they disagree with.’

– Matriarch Aethyta Vasir, ‘Oh, Now You Want to Hear My Wisdom?’

C15:
‘What is this shit? Why does anything think I can be killed?’

– Admiral Tradius Ahern, quoted at the Second Battle of Sol (ground) after taking out an entire pack of Brutes

C16:
‘Illogical deduction and data-extrapolation based on inaccurate and incomplete assessments appear to be the primary organic method of decision making.’

– Prime 302, from the Broker’s Personal Files

C17:
“One often finds the straightforward things in life rarely are, and the complicated things in life are that way for a reason.” – Benezia T’Soni, ‘No one raindrop blames itself for the flood’

C18:
“The Quarian people have endured a great deal of trauma and suffering – most of it, sadly, self-inflicted. We never seem to understand when to stop.” – Rear Admiral Tali’Zorah vas Normandy , “Reflected Light: Viewpoints behind the facemask”

C19:
‘When Shepard did that interview with Wong, Garrus and I were sitting in a cafe. The entire place when completely quiet, then one old Marine chuckled and said “This should go over well”.’

– Citadel Security Executor Telanya Nasan Vakarian , ‘Don’t Like It? Kiss My Crest’

C20:
‘The wedding? Oh god. The best part had to have been when Sara and Liara got completely smashed and tried to dance. They actually had to call for medics because someone hurt themselves laughing. They definately had moved I’d never seen before.’ – Commodore Jeffrey’Zorah vas Normandy, ‘Don’t Hate, Appreciate : The memoirs of a pilot’

C21:
‘ I think the scariest moment in my life was when Liara figured out I was the one who breached security at Arcturus. Oh, and since Shep didn’t know, here’s hoping she doesn’t read this. If she does…um, taicho, it was an oopsie?’

– Kasumi Goto, ‘Nihilistic, Voyeuristic, and Fantastic : a History of the Secret Wars (co-written by Jacob Taylor)

C22:
‘In hindsight, I have no idea why I let Joker talk me into dancing. And if I find out which of my so-called friends recorded that vid and put it on the extranet, they’ll need reconstructive surgery. A decade later and I’m still getting shit over that.’

– Major-Commander Sara Shepard, ‘Lay it on me’

C23:
‘Life has a funny way of surprising you with the little things. Maybe all that siari crap about everything being connected for a reason is right. After all, if I hadn’t run into Shepard the first time we met on Negation, she’d have killed my ass dead-bang the second time we met.’

– Morinth of New Omega, ‘Chasing Zero to Infinity’

C24:
‘I’m going to choke the shit out of that thing one day if it keeps calling me a herb-smoking jump monkey.’

– Major-Commander Sara Shepard to Garrus Vakarian, overheard comments regarding Vigil, during the Battle of Earth

C25:
‘Like I told the Boss Lady, I ain’t much for begging. Ain’t nobody coming to help us. We’re all gonna die, but we ain’t going to die quiet. Shepard wouldn’t go out that way, crying on her knees. She’d fight. She’d spit in their face. And that’s what we’re gonna do. I say fuck those Reapers, we die on our damned feet.’

– Mayor John Inman, just prior to the Battle of Pinnacle and Intei’sai

C26:
“The distasteful and unpleasant is often seen as required. History has shown us that it very rarely is, yet leaders are all too often poor students of history.”

– Major Preston Kyle, “Reflections of the Lion”

C27:
“The Damocles Incident – ugh, what a stupid name. Who could have guess in less than a year, all three heroes of that mess – Shepard, Ross, and Solez – would be dead?”

– Spectre Jason Delacor, “Struck Six Times By Lightning”

C28:
“I fought with that crazy broad enough times to tell you was a right hellcat in a fight. God, what I wouldn’t have given to get her in the sack once. I saw her kill a squint once by backhanding him with an omni while killing two more with that boomstick of hers. Guddamned beautiful, made me hard just watching.”

– Zaeed Massani, in a private interview with Emily Wong, 2185

C29:
The prophecy which said the house would fall
And thereby crush me, must bring down the sky,
The only roof above me where I sit,
Or ere it prove its oracle today.
Stand fast, ye pillars of the constant Heavens,
As Life doth in me—I who did not die

– Robert Browning, Aeschylus’ Soliloquy
(not a character quote, but it’s here)

C30:
‘Any who can face death without fear or regret is already dead.’

– batarian proverb

C31:
‘The difference between batarian politics and krogan politics is that the krogan are polite enough to not eat their own kind after a disagreement.’

– Accumulated Writings of Doctor Ganar Okeer, as recovered by Urdnot Shepard Grunt

C32:
“I fear, most of all, the things I will inevitably leave unsaid, undone, and unattended to when I pass into the Beyond.”

– Benezia T’Soni, ‘No one raindrop blames itself for the flood’

C33:
“Conspiracies are often successful because so many discount them as being real, due to those who foolishly attribute everything to a conspiracy.”

– Anita Doyle, ‘Notes on Human Psychopolitical Theory’

C34:
“I find the moment I love the most is when all the assorted pieces and segments of a carefully constructed plan snap into place … and no one even sees the hand that moved them. It is as thrilling as any hunt, and much more satisfying.”

– The Shadow Broker’s Personal Files, as recovered by Liara T’soni

C35:”The first time? Yeah, that was bad. The second time was worse, but shit, I’d already bitchslapped Death out of my way once already.”

– Sara Shepard, “Lay It On Me”

C36:
“I am Omega. The beginning and the end, the source and the sea. Beyond me, there is nothing. Below me, only enemies. Above me…only whoever I’m fucking this week.”

– Aria T’Loak, Queen of Omega.

C37:
‘Move your enemy. Do not let them move you. If you dictate the location and the time of when you have to fight, the other person has already lost, be it a single soldier or a general’.

– Rachel Florez, ‘Tactical Considerations’, unpublished

C38:
‘The beauty of chaos is in it’s sheer economy of time. It is entertainment, suspense, and excitement, wrapped in a package of curiosity and, well, sometimes death. But nothing of value aside from taxes benefits from pure order, after all.’

-The P’s Truth, Segment 14,392 – six weeks prior to the Burning of Omega

C39:’There is no valor in death. Only tears, and the fading memories of those left behind. Valor is in dying. Death itself has no modifiers.’

– Tetrimus Rakora, personal files, date unknown

C40:
‘Dead? Bitch, please.’

– Sara Ying Shepard to Tevos

TWCD

C1:
‘You may want to rethink your clever plan. You had her killed once already and all you did was piss her off.’

-Garrus Vakarian to Harbinger

C2:
‘I have to admit, having an angry Shepard staring down at you with a clenched fist is not exactly something you can face totally calmly.’

– Jack Harper to Trellani

C3:
‘You want me to beg, Aria? Fine. *spits in face* I beg your pardon’

– Aethyta to Aria, Omega

C4:
‘He killed nine krogan in thirty seconds – in melee. Fuck the money. I’m not staying another day on this spirits-damned deathtrap of a station with that lunatic on it.’

– Valfaran, turian slaver, to a pit boss, ten minutes before he was killed by Archangel at the Omega Lower Docks.

C5:
‘At some point, they started calling the base the Butcher’s Shop, which was just the tackiest shit I’d ever heard. It was probably that bosh’tet Vigil’s idea.’

– Kiala’Dost, Cerberus Engineer, to David Anderson

C6:
‘They killed Vanthus – cut his head off, in the middle of his own secured enclave, no one saw anything. Goddamn it, I just left Omega to get away from scary bullshit like this and it’s on Ilium too?’

– Michael Vinfrost, Broker technical expert, to another Broker agent

C7:
‘Whoever it is can use singularities and the blade – possibly a renegade priestess of Athame? Need more information’

– Agent Decann, STG Forward Observer on Korlus at one the first sightings of the Butcher

C8:
‘The only truly limited commodity is time, for it can only spent, never purchased.’

– volus Book of Plenix

C9:
‘Now we’re being hunted on Omega, on Ilium, and in open fucking space?’

– Captain Thtek Erala, salarian ‘organ facilitator’ for Eclipse

C10:
‘The problem with monsters is that they rarely start that way. The forces that shape them and turn them into such rarely leave them capable of realizing what they have become, and make the immune to the sort of hesitancy of conscience that restrains the rest of us. Turning them back from the path is therefore only possible when you know why they became a monster in the first place.’

– Benezia T’Soni, ‘No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For the Flood’

C11:
‘…what in the actual fuck?’

– Spectre Jason Delacor, upon seeing the wreckage of the Vetra-sath war robot on Freedom’s Progress

C12:
‘The guy’s last partner got killed by a fucking meteor strike. IN SPACE. What in the Five Oceans did I do to piss you off now?’

-Tela Vasir, upon learning she was partnered with Jason Delacor

C13:
‘The beauty of the unexpected is not in shock, but in direction. One can overcome shock, after all, but one cannot prevent being backstabbed when surrounded by daggers.’

– STG Considerations Manual Six

C14:
‘There can be no rights allowed for a mob that are forbidden for an individual, nor moral stances that are valid in the name of revenge but not justice, unless one lies to one’s self. Self-deception is the tool of all dictators, vigilantes, and idealists throughout history.’

– Saint Victor Manswell, ‘The Second Fall of Eden’

C15:
‘The true danger of so-called ‘pragmatic politics’ – better known as tyranny – is that one loses sight of decency in the name of expediency. Moral relativism is an oxymoron, yet one embraced by every being who ever thought evil means justified noble ends, and only to late realized evil can only lead to further evil. ‘

– Admiral Charles Pressly, ‘At the Right Hand of Justice’

C16:
‘Ultimately, evil is rarely found in the intentions one puts forth. It evolves through acts, through roads best left untravelled, through intentions that start off noble and fall by the waysides of expediency, fear, and doubt. As the ancient poem goes, no tragedy stalks about in dramatic black robes, seeking out souls to trouble – it is all to often sought out by the acts of those whose grasp exceeds their vision.’

Matriarch Benezia T’Soni, ‘No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For The Flood’

C17:
‘The guidance I am most often asked to provide is how one should deal with privation and loss. I could offer trite bits of wisdom, pithy exclamations that sound fair to the ear yet fall empty upon the soul. Instead, I will give the answer my own mother told me. To grow in life requires suffering. One must simply identify the people it is worth suffering for in order to find the strength and will to endure. To avoid suffering is to avoid the lessons the universe teaches us, an act of hubris that has undone countless fools.’

Matriarch Benezia T’Soni, ‘No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For The Flood’

C18:
‘Balance is a concept many free-thinkers and philosophers like to delude themselves about, but it is often imbalance that results in motion, in action, in life. The balanced equation is equal, the balanced reaction inert. It is in the imbalances we find that which drives and catalyzes us. The more balanced a person becomes, I have found, the less likely they are to achieve that which they set out to do.’

Matriarch Benezia T’Soni, ‘No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For The Flood’

C19:
‘There are those who argue, in the feeble and limited perspective of those who value such things as ‘fairness’, that the krogan are not responsible for their own downfall. It is the nature of krogan to seek vengeance in a time of tragedy. It is considered noble for us to rage against fate, instead of succumbing to destiny. Inevitably, many shall no doubt fault the hands upon the sword of the Genophage that struck us down – the turians. Others will fault its creators, the salarians who uplifted us. But they merely performed such to save their own weak races. To fear them is to give them a power they do not deserve…and to hate them is to ignore the ugly lesson we as krogan have all learned. Yet ultimately, it was I who set these events into motion…with a single blow of my hammer, God-Splitter.’

Doctor Ganar Okeer, ‘The Irrelevance of Perspective’, one of the few literary works produced by krogan

C20:
‘Every warrior dies, and how one dies is utterly meaningless. It is the when and the why that separates fool from hero, that defines a failure to the race from one who strides across legend and eternity to sit at the foot of the gods of myth and song.’

Doctor Ganar Okeer, ‘The Irrelevance of Perspective’, one of the few literary works produced by krogan

C21:
‘My dear Broker. I am not some pathetic, formulaic villain from a turian melodrama. I set my plan in motion long before you were even born.’

Doctor Ganar Okeer, in discussion with the Shadow Broker

C22:
‘Cerberus not expected environment. Low tolerances for failure, excuses, bad puns. Also subpar access to exotic foods. Other than, conditions excellent. Except for … crazy associates.’

– Doctor Mordin Solus, recollections and notes, passed onto T’veah Solus.

C23:
‘My mother taught me three things. Never back down when you know you are right. Never let your strength lead you from using it to protect those without strength. And never bother with any thing but asari females in bed. She said the last was the most important of the rules…heh heh heh.’

– Urdnot Shepard Grunt, recollections as told by Loresingers to the younglings of the clan.

C24:
‘Might always makes right. Fear of punishment, fear of the law, and fear of those stronger is all that enables laws to work. Those who forget to fear are criminals, those who let such fear master them are productive members of society.’

– Saint Victor Manswell, ‘The Perspective from Above’

C25:
‘I fear there are crimes for which there can be no pardon, and works so vile no amount of apology or remuneration will redeem. When the means are a worse atrocity than the ends pursued seek to correct, what you have left over is not sacrifice, but defilement.’

– Jacen Manswell, Actual Suicide Manifesto (unpublished)

C26:’I’m never letting you drive again, Sheep. Death only made you drive crazier than before.’

– ‘Archangel’ to ‘Butcher’, during the Archangel’s Ascent incident.

C27:
‘Fire, bright like the kiss of a dying star, flew across Omega’s limbs, searing as the kisses of a lover made of starstuff. Dancing in the flames, a stick figure of bright light, of wings and claws and a single cold blue eye that made me long for death, for silence, for anything than to stand under that gaze and know … I would suffer and scream before the Bright One would allow me to die…’

– Vesah Jedthrien, clanless asari Eclipse Sister, poetry written for a contest, from her lift chair about the Archangel’s Ascent Incident on Omega

C28:
‘Oh fucking God…it’s the Butcher! Run! RUN!’

– Mihkale Cordson, Blue Suns Engineer during the Archangel’s Ascent Incident

C29:
‘…you have to be fucking shitting me!’

– Brent Raley, Blue Suns Acting CO, during the Archangel’s Ascent Incident

C30:
‘Being aboard the Butcher’s ship, wounded and alone, was probably even more terrifying than facing down the gangs of Omega. I knew, intellectually, that she probably wouldn’t harm me. But I also knew who she really was…and Shepard was never a friend of batarians. Even today, she claims I’m the only one of my kind she can stand. I don’t know if that’s an honor or an indication something is wrong with me.’

– Sensat Vhaelk, ‘Recollections of a mere Angel’

C31:
‘The nature of revenge is the pursuit of perceived fairness, while justice is only concerned with maintaining order and preventing chaos. Those who confuse the two are rarely truthful with themselves when it comes to why they pursue revenge. Justice does not mute the pain in one’s soul nor erase the memories of better times now smeared with loss and pain.’

– Benezia T’Soni, ‘No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For the Flood’

C32:
‘A common belief is that history is written by the victors. It is, like many so-called words of wisdom, a comforting lie wrapped in a lack of discernment. You will find if you examine most conflicts that such self-delusional views of reality is why governments make the same mistakes over and over again. Asari, turian, salarian, volus – hubris is the weakness we all share, that moment of ignoring what one has overcome in favor of empty self-congratulation. ‘

– Benezia T’Soni, ‘No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For the Flood’

C33:
‘I’ve often found that the various clowns who threaten the security of the galaxy hold unrealistically high opinions of themselves and their so-called plans. When these are foiled, most have a tendency to throw a temper tantrum… but a few, the dangerous ones, take it as the keening of a vakar and get serious. I hate it when they get serious.’

– Saren Arterius, ‘Dying for the Cause’

C34:
‘The word ‘impossible’ is one used by those with a failure of imagination, will, and knowledge of Murphy’s Law. When I’m told it’s impossible for something to happen, I start planning for it to go wrong immediately if not sooner.’

– Admiral Charles Pressly, ‘At the Right Hand of Justice’

C35:
‘The fundamental nature of warfare is one at odds with what I would term strategic use of force. Any cretin with hands can pick up a rifle, but force in and of itself fails when not coupled with vision, elan, and purpose. Sadly, that doesn’t stop the foes of Mankind from trying.’

– General Jason von Grath, ‘Memoirs of Those Days’

• This topic was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by mrosera.