Characters / Mass Effect Race Tropes Native Andromeda Races

This page is for listing the tropes related to the species native to the Andromeda galaxy in the Mass Effect universe, introduced in Mass Effect: Andromeda.

There are specifically only four new races as of the first game set in the Andromeda galaxy.

For the pages listing tropes related to specific characters in the trilogy, see the Mass Effect Character Index.

Kett

It's impossible to find common ground with the kett. They either kill you or exalt you. Nothing inbetween.

—Cora Harper

Homeworld: Sarhesen

A highly advanced race of humanoid aliens that invaded the Heleus Cluster eighty years ago and have been at war with the angara ever since. They come into conflict with the Milky Way explorers of the Andromeda Initiative.

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• Absolute Xenophobe: The kett master plan is to kill all non-kett life they can or turn them into kett, even including animals. Most, if not all, kett even use the "It" Is Dehumanizing trope and only use names or titles for the purpose of identification when speaking with or about non-kett. If the kett ever do express any non-xenophobic attitude toward an alien, it's only because they see something useful in them.
• Alien Animals: The Wraiths and Fiends are kett animals which were exalted, and are usually kept under control by pheromones.
• Alien Blood: They bleed green.
• Alternate Company Equivalent:
  • The kett have been compared to another group of Scary Dogmatic Aliens; the Covenant Empire. This is because the kett are also an expansionist empire of Scary Dogmatic Aliens drawing on Type III (Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists), a fixation with ancient technology and eventually fall victim to infighting. They're even technically multi-species, as they are made up of various alien races turned into kett. Not to mention their love of plasma weaponry.
  • They've been compared to the Yuuzhan Vong, being extragalactic Scary Dogmatic Aliens who are Type I (Aliens as Nazis) and Type III (Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists) with an element of Blue-and-Orange Morality. They also share an interest in genetic modification and a strong hatred of AI's.
  • The kett have also been compared to the Daleks (a group of Scary Dogmatic Aliens replete with Nazi parallels - including invasive and deadly scientific experiments on prisoners), albeit somewhat inverted as they use biological sciences and genetic engineering rather than robotization, and make more of themselves using the former two.
  • While they have also been compared to the Cybermen (being Scary Dogmatic Aliens who make more of themselves via an Assimilation Plot, but only if the target has something useful to them), the Daleks have also been known to occasionally turn non-Daleks into Daleks.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Part of the package with being Scary Dogmatic Aliens, but played with as there is an element of Blue-and-Orange Morality (see below). The exaltation process means that all kett are fanatically loyal to their species, and their species is often single-minded and ruthless, but beyond that they can and do have individual personalities that can question orders and wonder if there's really a point to the Archon's war. Furthermore, it isn't entirely known if that is the only way they can reproduce. However, the examples of the Primus and the Cardinal show that some kett do have a sense of honor, being willing to keep to their deal.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Most if not all kett can survive in a vacuum, if at least temporarily. They're also able to survive in the noxious atmosphere of Habitat-7 without any apparent need for helmets.
• The Battlestar: Any larger kett ship serves as a mobile command post / laboratory complex, armed to the teeth and filled with fighters ready to deploy at a moment's notice.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: First contact between the kett and the angara had the kett make peaceful overtures, before abducting their leaders, leaving the angara confused before they were attacked.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The kett look down on all non-kett until they prove their abilities, then they will show respect. This can be seen in the reverence and interest they show in Remnant technology. However showing respect involves taking them and making them into kett, willingly or not via invasive and painful procedures. However, this is heavily implied to be their only method of reproduction. In addition, the kett are forceful and violent with other races. A few brief hints state they do occasionally spare other races, but only to keep them as vassals. No indication is given as to the why, or how the kett treat them.
• Blue Blood: According to information gathered by the salarian Ark show twenty-one lineages descended from the "pure" kett, who lead the Empire.
• Body Horror: Exaltation, which involves a prisoner's body being altered into that of a kett, painfully at that, including adding bones and removing genitalia, rewiring the being so that they're utterly obedient to the kett. Afterwards, next-to-nothing is left of the original DNA.
• Childless Dystopia: A bit of dialogue between Drack and Jaal suggests that, rather than simply being a case of Hide Your Children, there really are no biological kett kids. Worse, it's pointed out kett genetic and biotechnology is so advanced they could fix whatever stopped them from reproducing normally, but are choosing to be this way.
• Clone by Conversion:
  • This is how the kett reproduce. The kett soldiers are abducted angara who are "Exalted" into kett. It is very likely that they have done this with other previous sentient species in the past. In the course of the game, they perform experiments to attempt the procedure on krogan, salarians, and humans (with limited success on the former).
  • The Archon specifically claims to be the "inheritor of a thousand species"; given that he personally dismissed the use of poetry when talking about biology, it's likely he's being literal if perhaps rounding or estimating. Given that the kett empire stretches far beyond the Heleus cluster, where the angara are limited to, there's no doubt that the angara are only some of the latest "recruits".
  • In-universe characters actually point out some Fridge Logic here; even if they don't reproduce in the normal fashion, they have the technology to do it artificially in any number of ways, most of which (like simple cloning) would be much easier. Limiting themselves to Exaltation has to be a deliberate choice.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: They really like their things to be dark green. Their ships are green, their guns are green, their armor is green... even their blood is green (light green, though).
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To the Reapers. They're essentially an organic version of the Reapers with more human personalities and driven by the desire to exalt the worthy rather than preserve all life in starship form. They also reverse the Reapers' prejudice; while Reapers saw organic races as imperfect "accidents" that needed to be roboticized in order to be useful, the kett value genetic traits and dismiss symbiotic and synthetic traits.
• Creative Sterility: The kett don't seem to have any innovating ability of their own. The only way for them to make advances is to just steal or copy technology they've seen elsewhere. At least, when it comes to engineering; medicine and biotech-wise, they're geniuses.
• Dark Action Girl: Every female kett is as much a soldier as her male comrades, and just as evil.
• Dark and Troubled Past: It's only very briefly hinted at, but an audio log of the Primus states that exaltation "lifted [the kett] out of sorrow and tribulation".
• Deflector Shields: Common to leaders are shields generated by an Ascendant's Orb.
• Determinator: An extremely negative example. The kett are every bit as insanely stubborn as the angara, but it's all focused on conquest and exaltation. Notable with their base on Eos, which Ryder's team can even note was established before they knew the Initiative was there, when the planet was a radioactive hellhole not worth trying to eke a living out on.
• Divide and Conquer: One of their first strategies with the angara was to claim that the angara had attacked them, and used the ensuing confusion as the angara blamed one another to cripple their leaders.
• The Empire: The kett in the Heleus Cluster are simply one fleet of an apparently vast empire that's operating throughout the Andromeda Galaxy. It's mentioned that the Archon answers directly to "the Senate"; whether or not there's anything above that, say a Consul or an Emperor, is unknown.
• Energy Weapon: The kett favor plasma weapons for their rank-and-file troopers. Apparently the results when they hit people are... "messy".
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The kett allow their females to lead and fight as much as the males, owing to their lack of sexual dimorphism (since their genders look exactly the same).
• Evil Counterpart: To the Andromeda Initiative. Both the kett and the Initiative are foreigners to the Heleus Cluster, but while the kett are conquerors, the Initiative tries to work with the Cluster's local species. While the Initiative takes pride in the diversity of its species, the kett seek to turn every race they encounter into more kett.
• Evil Evolves:
  • Part of the angara's difficulty fighting the kett is that they adapt their tactics to match their opponents. For example, the angara had been rushing away from the kett to lure them into traps and shoot them, until the kett stopped falling for it. Or when the Resistance started up, the kett responded by ignoring military outposts and going straight for major civilian centers.
  • Technology wise, SAM notes towards the end of Andromeda that the kett have had a chance to study Remnant and Initative tech and have started incorporating it into their own technology.
• Evil Is Bigger: All of the humanoid kett units are bigger than the Milky Way races (except krogan). Their warships are bigger as well (though nowhere near as tough or heavily armed), with their standard cruisers averaging a kilometer long.
• Evil Sounds Deep: While it's unlikely that the kett are Always Chaotic Evil, the kett play an antagonistic role in the story, and all of them have deep voices.
• Evilutionary Biologist: How they come across to the angara and the Milky Way races. While there is Blue-and-Orange Morality in play, the kett do take prisoners and experiment on them, killing those they deem unworthy while turning the worthy into kett.
• False Flag Operation: One angara veteran mentions that early on in the kett attack that they lured angara ships onto Voeld's moon using a false signal in order to capture the crew.
• Fantastic Racism: Outside their attitude to everyone that's not kett, they really seem to hate A.I.. A mission on Voeld has them digging through a frozen city to find an ancient A.I. down there and kill it.
• Great Offscreen War: They're apparently actively engaged in this. The kett in Heleus are just one fleet of a vast Empire. The Archon claims that he's the result of the Empire integrating the genetics from a thousand different species already.
• Happiness in Slavery: Part of the Exaltation process. Angara prisoners are subject to a process that weakens their immune system, but afterwards enter a sort of fugue state, wherein they are fully exalted, before their natural personalities can reassert themselves.
• Higher-Tech Species: Zig-zagged; their ships are actually less advanced than what the Systems Alliance was fielding in the Milky Way prior to the Initiative leaving, which in turn means that they're significantly less advanced than several of the other Milky Way species. However it's noted that their knowledge of genetics and medicine far outstrips that of the Milky Way races. The Moshae actually points out that they probably have enough knowledge of genetics that they could reproduce via cloning, if they wanted.
• A House Divided: Not all the kett answer to the Archon, and there is some internal conflict within their ranks. Most specifically over the Archon's obsession with Remnant technology and his refusal to share his genetic enhancements with other kett.
• Humorless Aliens: One of the straightest examples in the franchise. No kett is ever seen making a joke, or even a basic sarcastic wise-crack. The closest they might possibly come is during one side-quest, where they're hiding a signal underneath music stolen from the Initiative, or a researcher's notes on the krogan (where they take care to emphasize how big krogan are twice).
• Industrialized Evil: The kett tend to establish large, sprawling facilities on planets they attack, so as to exalt their captives. In terms of design, it looks not unlike a disturbing mix of a cult center and a slaughterhouse.
• Irony: The kett consider the Milky Way races a hostile Alien Invasion to the Andromeda Galaxy, doubly ironic given who the Milky Way races are fleeing.
• Insufficiently Advanced Alien: In relative terms. They have faster than light travel, own thousands of planets inhabited by billions if not trillions of sapients, deck their soldiers out in power armor with plasma guns, have mile-long space battleships, and so on. However, they're also noted to be significantly less advanced than the Citadel races in several areas in the codex, such as ship equipment and FTL drives (the Citadel's FTL drives can travel thousands of times faster than light even without mass relays, kett drives apparently aren't up for it), nor does every single kett grunt have a nanofabricator on their wrist like the Citadel races' omni-tools. On the other hand, they are noted to have one technological advantage: genetic engineering, including medicine.
  • This extends to their military technology. Their plasma guns are flashy, but arguably less effective than the Citadel races' railguns, and their standard infantry don't have shielding while this is standard back in the Milky Way (the codex entry for the Anointed implies this is not Gameplay and Story Segregation). Their fighters are also shown to be at somewhat of a disadvantage against the Citadel races' fighters. Nor do their infantry seem to have the useful gadgets that are standard on infantry back in the Milky Way like wrist devices that launch mines or gun-mounts that fire homing incendiary missiles. It's not for nothing that Sloane's crew of mercenary deserters were able to liberate Kadara from the kett garrison with little effort. Most critically, kett capital ships are nowhere near as capable as Milky Way ships: the kett cruiser in Cora's loyalty mission, for example, completely lacks shielding, point-defense weapons, or dozens of broadside turrets, all of which are, again, standard for the warships of the Milky Way races and considered absolutely critical for survival. They don't even have spinal guns that run the whole length of the ship, which the Milky Way races' ships are dependent on to give them nuclear-scale firepower in the form of rapid-fire main cannons. Instead, kett ships favor missile spam (with the one in Cora's loyalty mission taking a mere three seconds to fire dozens of torpedoes each equivalent to about 11 tons of TNT◊) complemented by a handful of small broadside guns (in the mission on the Archon's ship, it only seems to have eight per side in clusters of four, with each gun being ~20 meters in length). Back in the Milky Way, missile spam is considered irrelevant both because of the low firepower of the missiles themselves^note Even if every missile was a multi-megaton nuke, despite having more firepower on paper than (say) a 38-kiloton railgun, only a fraction of the energy of the nuke would be transferred to the target due to it being an energy burst weapon, while the railgun concentrates all its force on its target. It's the difference between a 15 kilojoule AMR bullet and a 1 megajoule hand grenade. The former will penetrate lightly armored vehicles, the latter will do nothing. and because point-defense lasers are so effective. Only the aforementioned spinal guns or technobabble disruptor torpedoes (launched at point-blank by the thousand) are remotely effective.^note Well, that or mass spam of smaller broadside guns- a Kiliminjaro-class dreadnought for example has 156 broadside guns that each fire once a second, and each one is larger and more powerful than a kett broadside gun, running 40% of the ship's width. All things considered, the Andromeda Initiative would have no had no trouble with the kett had they brought so much as a single military-grade cruiser from the Milky Way.
• Invisibility Cloak: Kett Destined are capable of creating a natural one via gas released from their person. Kett Wraiths as well, which they retain from when they were Charyllions.
• Law of Alien Names: Datapads found in the Exaltation Facility show individual kett do have names. When translated into English, they're largely absent of consonants.
• Light Is Not Good: The kett are heavily associated with light-based and religious imagery, some even being given titles from separate real-life religions despite their "religion" having no resemblance to said real-life religions, lacking any moral code beyond revering the scientific genetic assimilation process Extalation and having no theistic or even supernatural elements, with their higher ranks even having dress that resembles a Holy Halo. The Archon even has a crest like an angel's halo (whether this is a natural or modified physical feature is unknown).
• Mad Scientist: The kett have never met a horrifying experiment with biotechnology they didn't like. They have to be, it's how they reproduce.
• Mirroring Factions: The kett's actions and methods for reproduction are directly compared by Lexi and Peebee to be similar to asari. Any child an asari produces with another species will become another asari, meaning it's possible (though greatly improbable) that the asari could assimilate an entire species. While the asari mate via consensual and mutually-loving relationships rather than forced transformation, it's implied in previous games that they have minor Glamour powers which take over other species' sex drives—again, similar to how transformed kett become fully loyal to the species. And lastly, Mass Effect 3 revealed that the asari used soft manipulation and hegemonic power to force other Citadel species into conforming to their culture and laws, while the kett achieve the same thing with military might.
• More Dakka: The Soned rifle is the preferred weapon of all Destined troopers. It's a plasma gatling gun.
• Mysterious Past: As mentioned under Dark and Troubled Past, the kett have a murky backstory, which they refuse to disclose to other races. The angara mention that any accounts of their history given at first contact were contradictory. The only concrete fact is something happened to them at some point... which isn't exactly anything to go on. SAM speculates there might be a shared connection with the Remnant in there somewhere, given their interest in it (that they call it "the old machinery" is another hint it goes back a long way).
• No Name Given: A species-wide example. Though it's shown in datapads found at the exaltation facility that kett do have names, no named kett appear in the game and all kett characters are referred to by titles. While the Archon introduces himself as "Archon" it's unknown if that's his name, his title or both.
• The Noseless: The various kett forms don't have noses, though some appear to have nostrils.
• Obliviously Evil: The kett honestly believe they're giving all those other species a gift by enslaving them, experimenting on them, and turning them into brainwashed kett goons, apparently missing the fact that A: It's not a gift when you force it on someone, B: No-one was asking for it anyway. They don't seem to have pegged on to why the angara and the Initiative are fighting so hard against it. To this extent, the kett consider "rescinding" the offer of exaltation and skipping straight to murdering you one of their higher insults.
• Organic Technology: It's hard to see where their bodies end and their armor begins — if there is a disparity. It's revealed in the Clone by Conversion scene that the kett's rocky-looking features are a form of natural body armor. Averted with their weapons, as their guns are metallic and not connected to, or a part of, kett anatomy.
• Our Archons Are Different: They're the leaders of the Kett hierarchy and from what the Archon we see in the game can tell us they're both angelic looking and the genetic origin of the Kett as a whole.
• Past-Life Memories: Some exalted kett retain memories of who they were before. Exactly how much they recall depends on the kett. Some only vaguely remember brief glimpses, others can retain all their memories, yet have absolutely no remaining connection to them. There are the occasional kett datalogs written by a kett who was conflicted over their past life and the kett cause.
• Planet Looters: How they act. They show up in an area, take whoever and whatever strikes their interest, then go on to the next place. Ryder can find demonstrations of them strip-mining Eos and Voeld for resources.
• Power Floats: High ranking kett like hovering about, with element zero-based assistance.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The kett won't use weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical, biological or nuclear, mainly because this might cause complications with exaltation.
• Proud Warrior Race: The kett are very militaristic and are trying to subjugate the planet via force. Those who they feel are fellow Proud Warrior Races are made into more of them.
• The Right of a Superior Species: Their main belief, as outlined by the Archon - "evolution cannot be left to chance; the superior race dominates." They see themselves as the superior race, uplifting all the uppity inferior species whether they want it or not.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The kett are a combination of all four types, though they mostly represent "aliens as Nazis". This is due to their charismatic psychopath leader (though the Archon is not the leader of the entire kett race, just the kett encountered by the Andromeda Initiative), practicing gruesomely invasive scientific procedures, their deadly literal work camps and their fixation on genetic purity and superiority. They also represent "aliens as religious fundamentalists" as the exaltation process is considered holy and some of their imagery and titles are directly taken from real-life religions (and all that the latter implies). They also represent "aliens as conquistadors" as they have come to a new land to convert the native population and often times has had skirmishes with another foreign civilization. They represent "aliens as communists" to a lesser degree only with the exaltation process making all non-kett into kett an example of literal assimilation.
• Shock and Awe: Kett ascendants have the ability to manipulate electro-magnetic fields. A datapad found during an assignment on Voeld reveals that the kett took this ability from exalted angara.
• Slave Race: The kett do not always kill every race they encounter, sometimes keeping species as vassals. Though given the kett attitude towards most other lifeforms at the best of times, it's probably not much better. Salarian intelligence gathering found there are at least a dozen species living under their thumb.
• Sleeper Ship: As discovered on Liam's loyalty mission, the kett use these to get about the vast distances of Andromeda. Ryder and Liam are disturbed to realize they're not so different from their enemies.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Zigzagged. They're more advanced than the angara, who were just coming off an interstellar dark age when they met, and in some areas they're ahead of the Milky Way species, but they also lack some of the advantages the Intiative has, like the SAMs and biotics.
• They Would Cut You Up: The kett do brutal experiments on their prisoners, usually to see if they can be made into kett.
• Tragic Monster: Most, if not all kett, due to the horror of exaltation. All of the kett used to be another species of some sort and were transformed into more kett. Jaal and many other angara question whether or not they can still fight them knowing that most of the kett used to be friends, family and loved ones. But, since the only options are to Join or Die, they have no choice but to fight.
• Trash Talk: Higher ranking kett love this. Any fight with them seems to consist of them boasting to the enemy about how pathetic and feeble they are, and how it'd be so easier if they just gave up and let themselves be exalted.
• The Virus: Kett exaltation is a genetic process by which their transform those they feel worthy into kett. The exalted retain their personality, but filtered through a Proud Warrior Race mentality loyal to the rest of the species.
• Was Once a Man: They transform angara, and presumably other races, into kett through the exaltation process. It's unknown if the kett are an artificial species who relies on this to increase their numbers or whether they're a normal species that forcibly converts others into themselves.
• We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: How first contact between the Milky Way races and the kett pans out, even if Ryder takes the peaceful option. As later revealed, this is because the Archon decided he wanted to shore up his power.
• We Have Reserves: For all their talk about exaltation being a blessing, kett military doctrine seems to consist largely of throwing exalted troops at the problem. The Elder Invictor even gloats at the climax of Andromeda that for however many Ryder will kill, they can just go exalt more.
• We Will Use Manual Labour in the Future: The kett only exalt some of their captives. If they don't meet whatever standards the kett have, they'll just keep angara in labour camps and work them to death.
• Working for a Body Upgrade: Exaltation can happen more than once. The rank-and-file kett get repaid for work in exchange for further genetic enhancements.
• Your Head Asplode: Headshots make kett heads explode in a gooey green mess. And there's justification for it in the Codex, too - those boney growths on their head are hollow and filled with fluids, which among other things are what allow the kett to survive briefly in a vacuum. So when they get shot there... splat.

Angara

We are a strong people who have only been momentarily burdened.

—Jaal Amal Darav

Homeworld: Havarl

A humanoid race from the Andromeda Galaxy. The angara are very open and free with their emotions. While the angara are quite technologically advanced, they have been in a losing war with the kett for the past eighty years.

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• Absolute Xenophobe: The Roekaar faction want all aliens out of the Heleus cluster — kett and Milky Way species alike.
• Alien Hair: Instead of hair, angara have a growth very similar to a cobra's hood.
• Alien Invasion: Deconstructed. The angara are basically classic invasion fiction, visualized from the outside. They suffered a straight example at the hands of the kett which soured their perceptions of alien life in general, and then the Nexus species come along and the angara treat them with the utmost suspicion. It's hammered home in the letters angara citizens write to the Nexus, in which some are curious, some are terrified, and others are Wrong Genre Savvy (for example, believing the Nexus was trying to escape something terrible back in the Milky Way, and it's following them. They're partly correct about the former, at least).
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Angara (or at least the males) have a bony structure on their chest instead of the normal muscles. They have bio-electricity and are so dependent on sunlight to be awake and healthy, they will "go dark" and die if they spend a long period without it. Their feet, despite looking like those of turians and quarians, are a lot more flexible and actually look more like hands than feet when bare. Meanwhile, their hands have the bone structure for five fingers, but the final three fingers on each hand are densely webbed together into a single digit.
• Cat Folk: In general, their features tend to be similar to Earth's felines.
• Citadel City: Aya is the last major civilian world controlled by the angara. It is surrounded by the Scourge, close to the cluster's local black hole, and not found on any maps that could be stolen to reveal its location. This makes it hard for the kett to find it and even harder for them to travel there. This is the reason that the entire population of the capital have a Mass "Oh, Crap!" when the Tempest finds them.
• Common Tongue: Having been separated across multiple planets across light years for centuries, the angara have hundreds of different languages (and a thousand private family languages beyond that), so when dealing with each other and outsiders, they tend to use their trade language.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The angara did have an army, but after the initial kett attack, it was worn down by internal disputes, followed by seventy five years of attrition until there was nothing left.
• Determinator: Their planets were hit by a Negative Space Wedgie, which screwed up the environment, and separated them for hundreds of years. Then the kett invaded, crippled their leadership and has spent a good part of a century trying to wipe them out. Despite this, they have refused to give up, and had even managed to turn the invasion somewhat around by the time Milky Way species arrived.
• Didn't Think This Through: The angaran habit of acting on their emotions and then dealing with the consequences usually works for them, but sometimes leads to situations like this. Like Jaal's sister trying to kill her brother out of Roekaar zeal and then realizing how horrible of an act it was.
• Drunk with Power: The codex remarks that angara are extremely afraid of this kind of power, and any elected official is only allowed to hold a single term in office.
• Earth That Used to Be Better: The angara have basically become a space-faring species not married to any particular planet as a homeworld. That being said, their ancestral birthplace and original homeworld is believed to be Havarl, which by the time of the story has become a hostile, barely-hospitable wilderness. As such, most angara feel no affection toward Havarl, have written it off as a lost cause, and consider their race's true "home" to be Aya.
• Easily Forgiven: It's part of their culture, due to their extroverted emotions. Angara tend to act on their feelings immediately, or blurt them out aloud, and everyone deals with the consequences afterwards. On some occasions, people get physically or psychologically hurt by the outbursts, but are grateful for the forwardness.
• Explosive Breeder: Downplayed; angara are noted to give birth to litters, although just how many children at a time is never explained. It is at least enough that they tend to be baffled and upset by the idea of someone being an only child.
• Fantastic Racism: Most angara hate, or at least greatly fear, other species, because prior to the Andromeda Initiative's arrival the only other sentient race the angara met was the hostile kett. Most of them lighten up after Ryder proves the Initiative can and will help in the fight against the kett.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: While the asari have a lot in common with Ancient Greece and the turians echo the Romans, the angara seem to have a lot of African influences. Not just their names, but also how they look at nature and the accents they have. There's also a little Australian influence, again in their accents but also in their territory - a lush "paradise" world (the coastal tropics), an icy planet (Antarctica), a Wretched Hive of outcast criminals (as early European colonists were) and a desert planet (central Australia).
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: The angara have very strict rules of war, which they refuse to break for any reason. There is very little angaran culture left, and so they wish to preserve as much of it as possible. Further, they refuse to stoop the level of the kett, including using inhumane methods of warfare against them. Of course, not every angara agrees with this and it often runs at odds with their emotional impulsiveness — the kett are so monstrous in their tactics and how they treat captives that many victims completely snap and and want nothing more than payback.
• Happily Adopted: There is no angara word for "orphan". Kids without families just get adopted into someone else's immediately.
• Healing Hands: The angara electrostatic discharge can be used to accelerate the healing process in other angara. This does not work on non-angara species, although it can ease pain somewhat.
• Hidden Elf Village:
  • A group of angaran sages on Havarl dwell on top of a Remnant structure, refusing to come down and interact with outsiders while maintaining their oral traditions.
  • Several characters speculate, both Initiative and angara, that there are probably more angaran worlds out there, either hidden by the Scourge or the angara themselves.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That: Angara are litter birthers, and often it simply doesn't occur to them that this might not be the case for other sapient species and they're shocked to find out how small most of the families in the Initiative are.
• Land of One City: Though the angara used to have colonies on many worlds before the Scourge and the kett, nowadays their last major world is Aya. It's stated that there are other cities on Voeld and Havarl, but sparsely populated by comparison. They're described as "smaller than cities, but larger than settlements" making them something like minor townships.
• La Résistance: By the time the story takes place, the kett have wiped out any formal angaran military and government. The only surviving combat force is the Resistance, who operate in independent cells and wield no official authority over the rest of their people.
• Last Stand: After the Resistance figured out that the kett want to take angara alive, they changed their tactics to fight to the death and make every mission a Suicide Mission. This reduced the number of kett attacks, but the kett responded by then targeting angaran cities — by destroying their homes and other forms of shelter, they hope to expose the angara to the elements and compel them to surrender. This did not deter most of the rebels, because they would still rather die than let the kett get them.
• Les Collaborateurs: Despite all the kett have done to them, there are apparently some angara who do collaborate, going by a comment of Jaal's. It's implied that they suffer harsh punishment if they're caught.
• Long-Lived: One hundred is around the angaran average for late middle age, judging by Moshae Sjefa, who is over a hundred and only now beginning to consider retirement, while still being amazingly sprightly, even after enduring a prolonged period of torture (and frankly, doesn't sound very old). However, a decades long ground war means there are very few angara who actually manage to last that long.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: Four hundred years, the Scourge, the kett, and even plain old infighting have done a number on their civilization. The angara used to live on the moon of Elaaden, but the only sign of their having any settlement there now is a very small pile of ruins in the midst of the dunes. Besides that wreck, nothing else remains.
• Magic from Technology: Most of their culture and science were lost after the Scourge appeared, and then further lost after the kett invaded. As such, most Lost Technology seems like mysticism to the common angara, which often frustrates their more academic peers.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Angara have much larger families than the average humans. Eighteen siblings is considered small. That someone could have only one sibling, or no siblings at all, is baffling to some of them. Also, their family structures are very different. For example, Jaal and his siblings have five mothers. This social structure is largely for the sake of family stability; the bond between a romantic couple is strong and usually exclusive, but there's no cultural expectation for it to be permanent.
• The McCoy: Averting the trope of Humorless Aliens, angara are quite free and open with their emotions: if they like you, they hug you, if they don't like you, they punch you.
• Mirroring Factions: First Contact between the Nexus races and the angara is compared in-universe to first contact between the Citadel races and humans. Like humans, the angara were attacked by the first alien race they ever encountered and thus became hostile towards aliens in general. They've even formed their own Cerberus equivalent.
• Mundane Utility: One benefit of their electrostatic manipulation and discharge abilities is that angara are very resistant to the cold; Voeld's frozen state is more of a danger because it blocks access to the life-giving sunlight they need to stay healthy, forcing the use of artificial solar ray-lamps to survive.
• Never Be Hurt Again: The angara are very much shaped by how the kett abused their trust and manipulated them when the two species first contacted each other. The kett were welcomed, brought gifts, and made sweet promises to the angara. But, by the time the angara realized that it was a trick, the kett had already wiped out their leaders and conquered several of their worlds. They then suffered decades of brutality at the kett's hands, with every act of kindness the kett offered revealed to be further horror. Nowadays, it will take a herculean effort for the angara to fully trust an alien race again.
• Newer Than They Think: In-Universe. After Ryder finds out about the Jardaan, Avela can reveal to Scott that as far as she can determine, angaran history only goes back about a thousand years (for comparison, that's younger than Drack is).
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: The angara are at war with the kett and want them out of their territory. Some feel the same about the Initiative, the Roekaar faction in particular. The Andromeda Initiative, despite a few bad apples and some friction between the Initiative and the independent colonies, proves to be a valuable ally against the kett.
• The Power of the Sun: Part of their biology. Angara are in a sense solar-powered. After a prolonged period without light, they "go dark". One angara explains to Ryder that this is why there are lamps spread throughout the Resistance base on Voeld. Not just to keep them warm, but to keep them awake and active. The angara even have a disease that strikes in old age which renders them increasingly incapable of processing sunlight, the eventual end result being they slip into a coma and die.
• Proud Scholar Race: Surviving evidence points to the pre-Scourge angara being a scientifically curious and highly cooperative race. While there were undoubtedly disagreements and conflicts amongst them, their culture was based largely on discovery and understanding. Even afterward, when most of their worlds were separated and isolated by the effects of the Scourge, the angara quickly reunited with each other and put their efforts towards studying the past and rebuilding. Then, the kett attacked and took advantage of the angara's curiosity and cooperation. As a result, modern angara are equally scientific and militaristic. In fact, the Codex states that their tactics deliberately try and keep this balance; any remaining pieces of angaran culture are to be preserved and protected, and they're considered more important than their own lives.
• Reincarnation: Angara believe that their souls are reborn in their descendants. The nature of this is greatly contested by the angara themselves, as their scientists believe that this is a superstition created from the usage of pre-Scourge Lost Technology, which contains sensors to allow the descendants of a previous user to remember everything their ancestor knew, felt and thought. Ryder can reunite one such descendant with a guantlet that belonged to their ancestor, and the source indeed seems to be technological. At least one Milky Way scientist suggests that angara possess a form of genetic memory, which would make the angara similar to the rachni queens.
• Revenge Before Reason: Defied Trope. According to the Codex, the angaran Resistance considers revenge the worst motivation or goal for fighting kett. Their primary goal is to defend angaran history and culture, as they feel winning a war against the kett while losing everything that made them unique would be a meaningless victory. This fact is the main point of contention between the Resistance and the Roekkar, with the latter created by Akksul because (after spending a year being tortured by them in a labor camp) all he cared about was getting revenge on the kett.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The main angaran Resistance will pull some dirty tricks while fighting the kett, but the Roekaar will cheerfully skip over the Moral Event Horizon a dozen times to get outsiders out of Heleus. All outsiders.
• Rubber-Forehead Alien: One of the more human-looking aliens we've seen despite being from a different galaxy.
• Shock and Awe: Angara generate electrostatic energy within their bodies, which can be discharged at the angara's will. This ability has quite a few industrial, medicinal, artistic, and combat applications. Several uses appear very similar to biotics, which angara do not have.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Before the kett, the angara used to dream of going to new worlds and meeting aliens. Afterwards... not as much.
• Vestigial Empire: At their height they controlled several worlds. Nobody knows how many because their records are lost. Then a Negative Space Wedgie devastated their space and interfered with the Remnant technology keeping their planets liveable. They were just starting to rebuild from that when the kett invasion came. At the time of the game they've been reduced to one real city and embattled outposts on three other worlds (one of which is their homeworld) that the Initiative know of (there's an implication that there are more out there, though).
• We ARE Struggling Together: The angara's emotional openness means family-wise they're a tight-knit bunch, but society-wise... they're fractious and argumentative. The kett seized advantage of that, and even when it was clear they were at war, the angara lost what was left of their military to infighting and squabbles. Even the Resistance isn't able to court full public support, as a lot of angara are quite happy to keep their head down and ignore the war on their doorstep.

Remnant

Homeworld: N/A

A powerful and mysterious race of mechanical beings who constructed the Vaults found throughout the Heleus Cluster, and who created technology key to establishing humanity's place in the new galaxy.

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• Attack Drone: If you disrupt their Vaults.
• Black Box: No-one's sure exactly how the Remnant terraforming tech works, not even angara who've been literally living on top of it for centuries. All they know is that it does. Numerous angara and Initiative characters remark on how unsettling it is. One angaran sage speculates that the mood and intent of the user might have something to do with it, which is why the kett have had no luck (Ryder may point out they personally have an AI doing the legwork, but the sage doesn't think this precludes his theory).
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: To the geth. They're essentially the geth, but without presence or personality. Where the Heretic geth played an active role in serving, even worshiping, the Reapers, the Remnant seem to not serve anyone other than their programming. Also, where the majority of the geth were open to reconciliation with the quarians, the Remnant seem to have no interest in history or in what happened to the Jardaan. The geth are also very isolationist by choice until the events of the original trilogy while the Remmant were designed and programmed to be user-friendly. Also, where the geth platforms are predominantly humanoid in design, Remnant machines seem to favor more animalistic forms.
• Corrupted Data: Any useful information in their Vaults (or indeed, any information at all) has degraded all to crap by the time Ryder shows up. It's not until they get to Khi Tasira they find anything legible.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Their Vaults, even the smallest of which tend to be spread out both horizontally and vertically. The one on Eos takes the cake, going on for miles, with no clear end in sight, and Ryder only gets to investigate the tiniest portion of it.
• Energy Weapons: Their weapons are almost completely energy based.
• Meaningful Name: Each of the drones is given a name based on what they do. Observes observe, Assemblers build more drones, Creepers creep. Destroyers... destroy you.
• Mook Maker:
  • Assemblers can spawn Breachers if they're not smashed fast enough.
  • Architects can summon up Observers and Grapplers to defend themselves.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Remnant Architects are completely immune to small arms fire. And possibly heavy arms fire as well. Only their sensory nodes are breakable, and even then their self-repair systems will fix them with time. The Remnant Abyssal even more so. The krogan on Elaaden have spent a lot of time trying to get its attention, and haven't even scratched it.
• No OSHA Compliance: Remnant Vaults are designed with massive gaping bottomless pits with no handrails, and rivers of a mysterious electrical fluid with nothing to stop clueless explorers dunking their toes in. Not even a "don't touch" sign.
• Power Floats: Observers and Architects hover thanks to Element Zero cores.
• Precursors: While their Vaults and basic machines remain, they themselves seem to have vanished.
• Purple Is Powerful: The Architects have purple markings on their outer structure, and are ludicrously tough.
• The Remnant: Well... yes? The drones and the vaults are about the only thing remaining of their creators.
• Rogue Drone: On occasion, Ryder encounters drones who haven't been properly formatted, and are non-hostile towards intruders, even doing things for them.
• Sinister Geometry: Remnant sites are a Brutalist playground of sharp angled pillars jutting out of the landscape. The vaults underground even more so.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Remnant Breachers like to swarm enemies and explode. They might also just randomly explode anyway, since SAM determines that they're pretty shoddily made.
• Tron Lines: Covered in them. Blue-green means working normally, red is when it's trying to kill something. On occasion, there's white when the constructs are unprogrammed.

The Remnant's Creators

Homeworld: ???

An incredibly powerful race that inhabited the Heleus Cluster over 500 years before the Andromeda Initiative's arrival. The Jardaan created the artificial planet Meridian, the "Remnant vault" terraforming network, and the entire angara species before either being wiped out or forced to leave the Cluster by an enemy that used a superweapon that created the Scourge.

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• Benevolent Precursors: They are Implied to be such, as logs onboard their massive space station hub states that they considered the angara to be "heirs" or "descendants". Jaal also believes so, as he feels the fact that they gave the angara rich, lush worlds to thrive on proves they had grand plans for the angaran race.
• Bio-Augmentation: Aside from creating the angara, it's also hinted they had tinkered with some of the wildlife of the Heleus cluster.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: They dedicated themselves to a process they referred to as "Renewal", which seems to involve terraforming entire clusters and creating species to live there.
• Capital Letters Are Magic: The Jardaan are an oddity in Mass Effect, in that they're referred to with the first letter of their name consistently capitalised in the game.
• The Ghost: No visual depiction of them is given throughout the game. About the only clue to their appearance is their stuff is built to human scale. A statue that Ryder gives to Avela Kjar might be a representation of a Jardaan; it's different enough from the angara in appearance that Ryder and Avela speculate it represents a deity, which for the angara would be the Jardaan.
• Have You Seen My God?: The thusali, a species elsewhere in Andromeda, worshipped their tech. The angara might have done the same. But no-one's seen them in some time.
• Meaningful Name: Their name sounds like several romance language words for "garden" (most closely the french word, "jardin"). This perfectly fits their intents to terraform worlds into lush environments meant to support life.
• Mile-Long Ship: Their ships are massive, miles long things. The one crashed on Elaaden gives a sense of scale. It's more than halfway buried in the sand, and it still looms over most of the landscape.
• Not So Above It All: Investigating their city-ship, Ryder and their crew note it's raining. Investigating finds a note from the people in charge saying, essentially, that the weather systems aren't working properly and asking that people stop bugging them about it, not unlike the way a modern day office tells everyone that the air conditioning is broken.
• Precursors: They were the ones who built the Remnant Vaults and created the angara race. However, they were driven out of the Heleus Cluster centuries ago.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Their tech is largely pretty durable, with some of it still working by the time Ryder stumbles upon it, even after the Scourge was unleashed to specifically target their tech. However, it's not a hard and fast rule. The vault across Heleus aren't working properly, the Archon's managed to utterly wreck some of the fragments he's acquired, and the Remnant Architects having taken a beating from the conditions of the planets they're on. Also, scanning their structures on Habitat 7 early in the game estimates that most of the tech there only dates back a few hundred years old, just before the Scourge hit.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: The Scourge forced them to flee Heleus entirely, though the Administrator's log stated they did plan to come back eventually. Four hundred years later, and there's no sign of them...
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Jardaan are capable of creating entire species, making them akin to gods. Suvi has a brief criss of faith over this, before realizing that there could still be a being higher than the Jardaan.
• Technology Levels: SAM speculates they're at least somewhere above Level 1 on the Kardeshev Scale. Given they managed to build a miniature, mobile Dyson sphere, not to mention creating an entire species, they're at least Level 2. However, Addison mentions early on in Andromeda that, complexity-wise, their stuff is actually less complicated than Prothean tech.
• Terraforming: The Jardaan built the Vaults to control the weather on several planets. Data found on Khi Tasira indicates the Heleus Cluster wasn't the first time they've done so (and that the worlds they put Vaults on were chosen because of specific attributes that made them suitable).
• The Needs of the Many: If the logs on Khi Tasira are any indication, the Jaardan tend to regard individual life as being less important than life as a whole.
• Walking Spoiler: It is impossible to talk about the Jardaan in any substance without revealing the game's big twist.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: They abandoned Meridian because of an attack, with Ryder finding a note from one of them telling whoever was there to grab what they could and run being the last word on them.

The "Adversaries"

The "Enemy"/"Adversary"/"Opposition"/"Defilers"

Another incredibly powerful race, or entity, who were enemies of the jardaan. They deployed the Scourge, a Eldritch Abomination that attacks Remnant technology and affects both organic and inorganic matter on an interstellar scale. No other information than this is known about them.

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• Creating Life Is Bad: Suvi speculates that this may be the reason the "Adversaries" fought the Jardaan and deployed the Scourge. A lot of people, even in the Milky Way, saw attempts to create life (both synthetic and organic) as dangerous, hubris, and/or sacrilege. She argues that, considering what the Scourge does, it could be that the enemy wanted to target all of the jardaan's work: Remnant and angara alike.
• The Ghost: Like the jardaan, we never see them in the game at all. The only remaining evidence that they existed are the Scourge and vague references to them in jardaan logs. The Codex actually raises the possibility they might have been jardaan too.
• Greater-Scope Villain: They are the true villains of the whole game, as they created the Scourge, which is responsible for the fall of angaran society, Heleus Cluster's habitats, as well as much suffering and initial failure in the Initiative. Liam has some choice words for them.
  Liam: The kett are bad, but whoever deployed the Scourge? Those are some motherfuckers.
• No Kill like Overkill: What the Scourge was designed to do. It doesn't just seek out Remnant technology, it alters entire planets and the laws of physics across the entire Heleus cluster. Liam compares it to a minefield; a weapon that sticks around and makes normal life near-impossible even for people who weren't the intended target. Cora, meanwhile, points out how much it's overkill, and wonders just what was going on that made the Scourge seem like a viable option.
• No Name Given: No name for them is ever stated; the only word which refers to them is something untranslatable in the jardaan language which roughly means "enemy" or "adversary", according to SAM's analyses.
• Walking Spoiler: Similar to the Leviathans, their very existence and having their own entry spoils a huge revelation about the setting's history.

Background Andromeda Races

Eealen

Homeworld: Unknown

A race that once existed in the Andromeda galaxy. They were conquered by the kett.

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• Dying Race: Some eealen still exist that were not subject to Exaltation, but not enough for a viable population.
• Proud Scholar Race: The few remaining eealen are nomads who document knowledge and share it with others as they travel the stars.
• Space Nomads: What's left of the eealen are interstellar nomads.

Thusali

Homeworld: Unknown

A race that once existed in the Andromeda galaxy who worshipped the Remnant. They were conquered by the kett.

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• Machine Worship: The thusali worshipped the Remnant. The kett Exalted their scientists to gain access to their knowledge.

Sirinde

Homeworld: Unknown

A race that existed in the Andromeda galaxy before they were conquered by the kett.

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• Better to Die than Be Killed: The entire race poisoned their genome to prevent Exaltation. The only thing keeping them alive now is kett neuroscience.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Possibly. A term the kett use for the sirinde most closely translates to "eat their dead with reverence," which indicates that the sirinde engaged in ritualistic cannibalism.
• I Die Free: The entire race attempted this to avoid Exaltation. They failed, and are now dependent on kett neuroscience for survival.

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