Mrosera : A lance cannon is basically a mass-effect railgun that hurls a ‘lance’ of exploding particle packets. It is a very hard hitting weapon, designed to take out heavy armor and krogan.

No, the year is not the same, it happens a little later, due to things going on elsewhere. Taking out the Milky Way is a real low priority for the Reapers since there are at least two races in other galaxies capable of putting up Inusannon levels of resistance.

In canon, I think Vasir was used and using the Broker, and she did what she did because she felt it was the right thing to do. Without any hard evidence that the Broker was in league with the Collectors, trying to destroy such a figure must have seemed like lunacy to her. She WAS a ruthless opportunist, but based on what we’ve seen of canon Spectres, she probably had no choice.

Miranda’s fate is sort of up in the air. The only people GUARANTEED to survive the mission right now are Garrus, Tali, Grunt, and Kasumi. (And of course, Shepard). The only person who DEFINATELY dies is Zaeed. I would think her fate depends on more how I fit things with Cerberus, which is still working out.

@Metaladdict: Interesting.

Again, keep in mind that Vigil sadly sees most of the cycles as incrementally important. His overall battle plan is to hopefully destroy more Reapers than are created to the point where the Reapers simply wipe the galaxy, giving him the chance to resurrect in the Inusannon in a location the Reapers won’t be looking for them in. He was not given the longer range and more important elements of the plan and has programming preventing him from seeing it’s flaws.

As to why the Inusannon instructed him in this fashion…that’s a secret.

Vasir plays a role, but not the role anyone is expecting. 😀

The High Lords of Sol are somewhat divided on the issue. Without any counterveiling evidence, and with all current understanding of FTL travel suggesting that if the Reapers left their locations the moment Nazara died it would still require two centuries to reach the galaxy at the soonest, they feel they have sufficient time to deal with things. They are more interested in using the build up to increase control over certain aspects of society and hoping that the increase in tensions will result in conflict between the salarians and the asari. Most of what Hades is up to right now is attempting to stir up that pot.

Short term the nobles don’t want to build up the fleets TOO big, because they worry a charismatic fleet commander might be capable of turning the fleets against them. That’s the main reason why they have Commissars hidden in every ship, but the second-phase commissar is developing a lot of issues (which is one reason they came up with the third-gen Commissar type) and they are not sure if the commissars can keep the fleet in their control of news like Novensiles ever got out.

This, by the way, is why they overreacted so badly with Anderson, and why they WOULD have killed Liara given time to do so after Shepard died. The ‘powers that be’ don’t know that Henry Lawson is feeding TIM information (or that Miranda was an actual NOVENSILES prototype and not just a ‘genetic test run’ for Oriana). They think the plan is still intact and secret.

@Himura: A *lot*. Roughly seven to eight million humans and well over a million turians, with millions more wounded, crippled, or otherwise damaged. Another quarter million turians committed suicide due to the death of mates or failure to accomplish missions.

The general aftermath was muted. The war was mostly fought by the families and the ‘core colonies’ — the outer colonies didn’t participate. Most turians are divided. They understand why the Primarch did what he did, and what he was aiming to do, and they feel it was slightly dishonorable. But they also felt the humans acted dishonorably in the war up until the end.

On the other hand, the insane defiance of the Solguard, who were at the end willing to kamakaze themselves or eject in battlesuits with bombs strapped on just to stop a single turian ship, impressed them. They grudingly admire humanity for not buckling, and they are sincerely confused that humans attempted to heal the wounds of the war instead of clinging to them like the krogan (and batarians).

The First Contact War was and was not caused by asari manipulation. The salarians were actually planning to ‘uplift’ humanity (they could not reach the system using the mass relay since it was iced but their FTL ships had explored Sol repeatedly) when their dominion stretched far enough, and the asari discovered hints that the salarians were interested in that region of space. So they had hinted that the turians might want to keep a close eye on relays in the region.

That being said, the asari did NOT expect anything like humans, and if the turians had managed to subjugate humanity, that would have totally ruined the balance of power as they knew it. Even so, the asari were perfectly willing to allow humanity to die if it meant losing the turians, except for Uressa T’Shora, who suggested that humans did not deserve such a fate. As it turns out, her defiant intercession has resulted in the asari having to change their plans multiple times.

Aside from the Legacy Team, not really. There are other minor badasses out there but most of the real heroes are already known (or are dead).

I’m afraid I can’t answer that question as cleanly as you might like.

The best way to look at Uressa is that she is exactly what Aria would have become if her mother hadn’t derailed her life.

Uressa has the capacity for … bad things. At this point in the story, her motivations baffle even other asari matriarchs of the Thirty.

Anything more would spoil a core piece of the ME3 story.