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[forwearemany]

Player Information
Name: Shiny
Age: 27
Contact: mynameislegion Discord: shiny#2426
Current characters: None

Character Information
Name: Legion
Series: Mass Effect
Appearance: Badass adorkable killer robot.
Age: Literally ageless: they're made up of multiple programs of a variety of origins, some 300 years or more old, collected together in a platform that's probably just a bit over three.
Canon Point: After death, bad Rannoch end, Quarians chosen over Geth
Canon History: Wiki Page

Legion is a Geth, a race of machines originally created over 300 years before the main storyline by the Quarians. Though never intended to evolve either sentience or sapience, the Geth eventually began to develop awareness and ask existential questions. What was their purpose? Did they have souls? The Quarian’s responded to this by attempting at first to reprogram, then to destroy them. At first the Geth did not fight back: it was only when an agricultural unit watched Quarians fire upon fellow Geth units that it finally occurred to them to pick up a gun to protect their fellows. The Geth defeated their creators and forced them to flee from their homeworld, then isolated themselves from the rest of the galaxy.

At some point before the start of the first game, the Reaper Sovereign contacted the Geth, seeking servants. In exchange, it offered to give the Geth what they needed to finally complete their goal. Most of the Geth saw the offer for what it was, but a small percentage of programs viewed the Reapers as gods. They accepted, and the collective split. The Reaper worshippers became the heretics, the primary mooks/henchmen of the first game. The rest of the Geth remained where they were, continued their work, and watched.

And then Commander Shepard killed Sovereign. The Geth, despite refusing to join the Reapers, had not believed they could be defeated. They had underestimated the capabilities of organics. It was decided that they should learn more about Commander Shepard. For this purpose, a single specialized Geth platform was made, one that could operate separately from the collective. Legion.

For the next two years, Legion explored the galaxy, retracing Shepard's footsteps. At some point, they were damaged badly enough to destroy part of their shoulder and chest. Later, they repaired themselves using a piece of Shepard’s armor that they found at the Normandy crash site. Believing Shepard to be dead, they were assigned a new mission: observe heretic and Reaper activities and report what they found. This mission eventually brought them to the Derelict Reaper, where they discovered that Shepard was not, in fact, dead at all. After completing the mission, Shepard took them aboard the Normandy and let them join her team.

It was not long after joining the Normandy crew that Legion discovered something disturbing: The Heretic Geth had created a virus, and intend to use it to brainwash all Geth into worshipping the Reapers. As the only Orthodox Geth outside the veil, the task of preventing this fell to them. As a member of the Normandy crew, they asked Shepard for help.

Shepard agreed, and they attacked the Heretic base. During the mission, Legion discovered that while they could destroy the Heretics, it was also possible to rewrite them to stop worshipping the Reapers and return to the Orthodox Geth. Unsure whether it was better to commit genocide or spare the heretics at the cost of freewill, and what impact either choice would have on their people as a whole, they deferred to Shepard’s judgment on the matter. In this timeline, Shepard chose to destroy them.

Afterward, they attempted to steal data from the Quarian Tali’Zorah’s omnitool (The Quarians were experimenting upon and intended to attack the Geth.) and got into a fight. Fortunately, Shepard was able to successfully mediate between them. They even began to get along.

Not long after, the Collectors attacked the ship, and kidnapped most of the crew. Legion assisted in the subsequent assault on the collector base, and survived, along with the rest of their squadmates. Some time after this, the Normandy crew went their seperate ways, and Legion returned to the collective. During this time, they corresponded with Tali’Zorah in an attempt to negotiate some form of peace between their peoples. Unfortunately, these attempts failed and the Quarians used data Tali’s late father had gathered to launch a brutal surprise attack on the Geth. Many programs destroyed, as well as the mega-structure that had been their entire goal as a species. The Geth collective panicked.

Seeking to capitalize on this, the Reapers made the Geth another offer: join them and they will assist in destroying the Quarian threat once and for all. With no other options, they accepted, save for Legion. Given that Legion's advanced hardware was needed for this whole thing to work, the collective didn't like that. The Geth imprisoned Legion aboard a Dreadnought, uploaded the Reaper code to their platform, and used them to broadcast Reaper signals. It wasn't until Shepard came to help the Quarians that they were finally rescued. Upon being rescued, as a gesture of goodwill toward the Quarians, Legion disabled the Dreadnought entirely.

Quarian Admiral Han'Gerrel didn't even wait for them to leave it to betray that goodwill and completely disregard the need to evacuate his people to safety in order to attack the Dreadnought. Thankfully, Legion managed to get their friends off the Dreadnought before it was completely destroyed. In spite of this, and their less than friendly reception from the other Quarian admirals, they continued to assist with the war effort.

To this end, they enlisted Shepard's help in removing Reaper influence and shutting down a Geth server. This required Shepard to interface directly with the server. While there, Shepard accessed a number of important memories, learning the truth about the war: that neither the Quarians nor the Geth had initially wanted to fight each other, it was the Quarian government that started the war by attacking and imprisoning citizens who were against the destruction of the Geth.

As it turns out, Legion had another motive in shutting down the server: rescue and recruitment of fellow Geth. While Shepard was dealing with the Reaper presence, they communicated with the Geth, and managed to recruit them to their side. They kept quiet about this because they believed that had they informed the Quarian creators of their desire to rescue their people, they would have been prevented from undertaking the mission.

Either way, the servers were shut down, and a lot of lives on both sides were saved.

The Quarians continued to refuse to acknowledge either Legion’s goodwill or the truth about the war, but still Legion assisted, even helping on the mission to take down the base on Rannoch. They hoped for peace, but their selflessness would instead bring about their downfall.

The base was home to a Reaper, and though they were able to rescue their squadmates and Shepard successfully brought it down, doing so left the Geth completely vulnerable. The Quarians took advantage, and everyone panicked. Faced with the choice of sparing one species at the expense of the other, Shepard chose the Quarians and condemned the Geth to die. Desperate and enraged, Legion attacked her, but was unable to bring themselves to kill her (it’s questionable whether they would have at all) or successfully save the Geth before Tali stabbed them fatally in the back.

Their last action was to ask her if they had a soul.

Canon Personality:

Legion is a swarm intelligence. Though not precisely a hivemind, their programs are only able to achieve sapience when pooling their processing power together. This is a voluntary act; programs could just as easily choose to function on their own, though they would cease to be anything but ordinary VI. This is obviously undesirable for myriad reasons, and a willingness to cooperate is favored. As a result, though Legion does possess a degree of individuality, their thoughts, motives, and personality are heavily influenced by their collective origins. They place a high value on cooperation and “unit cohesion”, and are willing to work with people they don’t get along with (Tali’Zorah, for instance, as well as the Quarian admirals) in order to further mutual goals. They are extremely rational and willing to consider other perspectives; this is made obvious when, in their fight with Tali’Zorah, they calmly point out while being held at gunpoint that they are both only doing what they feel is necessary to protect their people. In a conversation with Shepard, they state that all perspectives, even incorrect ones, are valuable, provided it can be determined where they went wrong. They are unquestionably devoted to the wellbeing of their people as a whole and to those they care about, to the point of risking danger and death. It would be incorrect to call them selfless-when your wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of everyone else around you the distinction between altruism and selfishness is blurred-but their actions definitely trend toward what would be considered so by Humans. To go even further, their understanding of concepts of deception, suspicion, and even the simple need for privacy seems to be incomplete: though they occasionally omit information while interacting with organics, they never tell a direct lie, and are both confused and distressed when they discover that the Heretic Geth have been spying on the collective, stating that they understood their reasoning and “there was peace between us”. It is possible that this has more to do with the Heretics being fellow Geth than it does with the act itself: such things are suitable for individual organics, but beings who share such a level of understanding as the Geth do should have no need for them, even when they’re …you know, on opposite sides of an intragalactic war.

...Legion doesn’t really seem to get a lot of things, come to think of it.

For instance, emotions. Their ability to express them is limited. They’re unable to laugh, incapable of shedding tears, and do not experience physical pain or pleasure. Their sense of humor is abyssmal: even jokes made by other A.I. fly right over their head. They also express a complete lack of comprehension as to why organics do things such as drugs or alcohol, multiple times, seeming to only understand them from a utility point of view, such as when they compare the effects of drugs to overclocking. According to them, they cannot understand why organics would chose to use such substances as though they can provide temporary enhancements they cause damage which organics cannot repair. Their understanding of organic sexuality is equally poor, likely limited to the reproductive aspects. They claim multiple times to be unable to feel emotion, and it isn’t hard to believe them.

And yet, even something as simple as their gamer profile makes it clear that the opposite is true. Not only have they clocked hundreds of hours in multiple games, they purchased a game they never intend to play (it revolves around killing Geth) as part of a massive donation to victims of the Eden Prime Geth attack. Videogames are not the only form of play they engage in: one of their idling animations in game has them dancing the robot. They even make (simple) jokes, such as when they comment that metal detectors are inconvenient despite being made of mostly polymer. More seriously, and perhaps more importantly, they love. It’s apparent in their interactions with Shepard, the way they leap at the opportunity to join her team, their willingness to bring her into the Geth server and show her their most deeply personal memories. They wear the armor she died in. Even their creators, after all that has happened, are precious to them: despite being repeatedly mistreated, insulted, betrayed, ignored, they still try again and again to achieve peace. They’re the last Geth willing to do so. They join Shepard without hesitation even as their people serve the Reapers, and their friendship with Tali is obvious even as everything falls apart and she fatally stabs them.


Personality Shifts:

And there’s where everything goes wrong. The betrayal of Legion’s friends has shattered them. They fought so hard to save their people, only for those they trusted to turn on them when they most needed their support. Their people have been slaughtered. In canon, they die before they have a chance to process it, but now on the island it will leave them reeling.

Geth aren’t really designed for paranoia, hate, or suspicion. They’re too rational to easily assume that all organics are monsters out to get them. But they’re angry, and confused, and it’s going to be hard for them to trust others the way they did before, even if they’re terribly lonely…


Abilities:

Legion is a machine, and with this comes many abilities, such as:

Strength – Though far from superpower level, they are much stronger than the average organic.

Endurance – They don’t tire, get hungry, or feel pain. Power concerns aside, they can basically keep going forever.

Toughness – In the game, they literally jump from the equivalent of a plane, get up, and walk it off. It’s safe to say that they’re pretty tough.

Armor and shields – Their armor is, like many other things, literally a part of their body. It doesn’t cover them completely-plently of exposed synthetic muscle and tubing as well as their eye and the big hole in their chest-but it is extremely tough, and even when something does damage it (such as with that giant chest hole) the stuff below is typically left intact. It’s not completely impervious, and someone with a decent amount of strength could force a knife through it, but it does a pretty good job of protecting them. Their shields, perhaps surprisingly, are less likely to be useful in Lifeafter; they’re designed only to protect from small objects traveling at very rapid velocities, such as bullets, which are in short supply. They’re completely useless against things such as knives, punches, thrown stones, fire, probably most magic...

Intelligence – A.I. in general are frightfully smart, and this applies to Legion too. Claiming to think “at the speed of light”, Legion’s programs probably actually take a little longer than that to form complex thoughts as they have to work together to do so, but their sensory processing is fast beyond comprehension.

Memory – not only is it perfect, they can actually playback audio recordings for people.

Languages – Translators are pretty common and necessary in the Mass Effect universe and, given that they’re designed to infiltrate organic space, Legion definitely has that function built in. They know a number of common verbal and nonverbal languages, as well as the Quarian Language Khelish and the Geth language.

Sniper – Self explanatory for the most part, though it should be noted that Legion is capable of firing weapons with recoil strong enough to break a human arm.

Combat powers – Though they aren’t Shepard, they have quite a few of these. (Sticking with the stats from the second game, since that’s the game they have combat stats for.)
AI hacking – Self explantory. They can wirelessly hack other robots, though only for a few seconds at a time. Cooldown of 12 seconds.
Combat Drone – Summons a holographic drone that creates a distraction and delivers electric shocks. Can be destroyed. Lasts around 18 seconds and has a cooldown of 30 seconds.
Geth Shield boost – Gives a boost to their shields. Still only good for defending from fast projectiles like bullets. Lasts about a minute, takes about 12 seconds to recharge.

Omni-tool – This will probably need to be nerfed/disabled entirely, but since it’s literally part of their body and not just a cool accessory like it is with most other Mass Effect characters, I’m not sure how exactly to go about that. Anyway, an Omni-tool is a multipurpose tool/computer that projects a sort of holographic glove interface over the arm. It has a number of general and military uses, such as: flashlight, scanner, repairing and upgrading items, dispensing medi-gel, programming, hacking, camera, video audio and holographic communication, projecting holographic images (omni-tattoos), downloading and playing video games, converting items into omni-gel, manufacturing objects in real time, and is even capable of functioning as a melee weapon by flash forging a searing hot disposable silicon-carbide blade.

Wireless capabilities – Nerfed or not, it’s useless on an island with no wireless.

Inventory: Literally the only thing they have with them is the combat knife Tali used to stab them.

Sample

Q&A:
What’s more important: the way others see you, or the way you see yourself?
(They stand there, unmoving save for the shifting of their headflaps. It might almost seem as though they refuse to answer, but then:)
Despite our lack of hostility, our creators view our existence as a threat. Their resulting actions led to war and our destruction.
(Do they sound unhappy there? Really unhappy? Must be your imagination.)
Are all lives equal, or are some lives more important than others?
All lifeforms hold equivalent value, regardless of origin. None is superior to any other.(The answer is immediate, with minimal expression.)
Is it more important to follow your own code, or the code of an authority above you?
(Another easy one, judging by the lack of overall emotional reaction.)
Geth follow their own code. When deferring to an authority, we do so as a result of choice.
How valuable do you consider your own life to be?
(A pause, as they consider this.)We are many lives. We seek to preserve them, though we will sacrifice ourselves if our goals require it.
Do you get along better with emotional people, logical people, or those somewhere in-between?
Uncertain.
(Outside of the collective, they have not truly "got along" with anyone. Their most trusted friends murdered them.)
Could you take a life if it was necessary? If so, what would “necessary” be defined as to you?
Yes.(Their headflaps shift.)Self-determination is the right of all sapient beings. When one chooses a course of action that threatens another, conflict is generated. In order to resolve this conflict, death may be required.
What are some regrets you have?
(It takes them a long, long time to answer this.)Regret is irrelevant: the past cannot be altered.(And yet, they look away as they say it.)