By the time I wake up, the Normandy is already making straight for the Citadel, the seat of galactic government, to make a direct report to the Council. I'm pretty convinced that the vision was of the ancient Prothean race, getting obliterated by a race of sentient machines called Reapers. The Council scoffs at the very notion, AND at my accusations that Saren has gone rogue and is behind the re-appearance of the geth (another race of sentient machines, not actually related to the Reapers, more on that later). They kept the politics part of it mercifully short, but to summarize, the human race has only been on the scene in a faster-than-light sense for 26 years, a baby compared to the other races. And even other races that have been represented by embassies on the Citadel for hundreds of years don't have a seat on the extremely exclusive, important-decision-making Council. Being the American-flavored humans we are, we're pushing hard to get a seat, despite our youth, and a brief war with the turians after First Contact. I imagine we're seen as a bunch of young hotheads by these older races, but aren't we always portrayed that way in sci fi?
At any rate, time to find me some proof. Naturally there's a couple paths that lead to the same thing - me getting more teammates. I hope you weren't expecting something else. I pick up three new team members, all of different races and backgrounds. Hurray for diversity! (Actually the human members of my crew aren't all that open-armed with their welcome, but surely we can work together and overcome our differences, etc etc). Garrus is a turian member of Citadel security (C-Sec) but he's pretty disillusioned with the amount of bureaucracy that is involved with stopping the bad guys, so he signs up with me instead. Wrex is a krogan, a race of warrior-like, somewhat toad-looking creatures. And Tali is the one with the actual evidence; a seldom-seen race called quarians, who wear full enviro-suits, so you can't really see anything about her, except that she likes the color purple, I guess. She has an audio recording that she took out of one of the geth before it self-destructed on her, which clearly has Saren's voice on it, giving orders to geth. The Council is forced to agree to name Saren rogue, and dismays at who could possibly go after him! Why, Shepard, of course! After Shepard helps every last person on this god-forsaken floating fortress find their lost dog and reconcile with their significant others. Gotta love me some sidequests.
I actually messaged Xian late in the night, asking how I change party members (you can only bring two along with you at a time) and he said, "you go back to your ship". I said, "what ship" and that's when we all realized that I was doing too many sidequests and not enough actual game. If you just go back to the Council a second time, they finally promote you to Spectre status, and the human Alliance representatives name you captain of the Normandy - forced retirement for Captain Andersen! Sorry! Anyway, this is how I break games. Hang on while I wrap up all the rest of the missions to be found on the Citadel.
