A corporate world where anyone can do as they please as long as no other business is impeded, Noveria is Matriarch Benezia’s current location. She landed with heavy crates and a phalanx of Asari Commandos, and headed for a remote research site.
After negotiating the politics of the docking station, we finally get a garage pass and take the Mako out onto the mountain road. It’s a snowy planet under blizzard conditions, but the real danger is that Peak 15, Benezia’s destination, is under lockdown because of a biohazard containment breach.
Of course we must fight Geth. Benezia brought them in those mysterious crates. The surprise is what else we find: Rachni. This is a species thought extinct that now infests Peak 15. They’re a kind of giant scorpion thing with an alleged intelligence. Before we can confront the Matriarch, we must deal with the Rachni.
From a gameplay perspective, this mission has always been confusing. If I go into the hot labs too soon (which is what I mistakenly did with Tag) I lose a lot of side quests. If I meet Benezia first it’s easy to miss killing the Rachni in the hot lab. Ideally, I will settle with Benezia, kill the Rachni horde, and help the medical team as a side quest. The game doesn’t always help with getting me to every mission.
First, Benezia. She attacks us with her Asari Commandos and Geth, but when we defeat them we see that she resists Saren’s mind control. For a moment she has clarity and is repentant. From the Rachni (a species from another part of the galaxy) Saren has learned about the Mu Relay, a space location related to his pursuit of the Reapers. The Matriarch also gives us the coordinates, but where within the Relay we need to go is still a mystery.
Then Benezia, her control failing, attacks us and we must kill her. Tag didn’t take the daughter, but when Ace does we get a tiny, tender reunion. As Benezia dies she calls Liara “Little Wing”.
As we prepare to leave, a dead Asari on the ground rises up and starts to talk, mind-controlled by the Rachni queen in her glass cage. The queen argues gracefully that we should let her go. She is a sentient being, and who are we to commit genocide?
Well, this is Tag the renegade. She injects an acid bath into the box and kills the queen. It was quite easy for me to role play a disgust of mind-controlling beings (again) and their wants.
But, in wonderful replay-ability, I also took the chance to let Ace release the queen. Her talk of singing, of the color of sound the Rachni use to communicate, is beautifully written (even for a bug). It’s really a masterful scene of characters speaking of a history that we in this time barely know.
Regardless of decisions, either way Saren and Shepard now have the same information, and both of them seek specific coordinates within the Mu Relay to further their pursuit of the Conduit.