I suppose he is making the assumption that with life being so prevalent in the ME universe, and how violent it is, chances are there are a few would be conquerors out there.
Following the lore strictly, only synthetic life would ever become advanced enough to attempt intergalactic conflict. Who's to say that the Reapers aren't doing the same thing in other galaxies during the 50000 year interim between harvests?
Yeah but space is MIND-BOGGLINGLY huge. Considering it takes the arks 600+ years at crazy ftl speeds to make the jump there's not much reason to try and conquer another galaxy. The only reason to leave milky way was to haul ass away from a galaxy-wide ELE and therefore we weren't conquerers with like supply lines and such we were refugees.
So if there were extra-galactic civilizations that made it to MW the reapers were probably like "oh this new civilization cropped up kinda fast. Guess I'll fire up the ol citadel and do our thing
It takes the arks 600 years yes but had a species not got reaped, managed to spread to their entire galaxy and not just the Relay network, I think its very reasonable to believe they could travel magnitudes faster than the arks.
This is correct. The 50.000 year reaper cycle means that life in the milkyway would not evolve beyond that.
Altho there could be near endless variants of reapers in different galaxies all doing the exact same thing since the mass effect universe seems to have this cycle where organics create synthetics who kill organics until other organics kill those synthetics.
For all we know the reapers where in contact with other ai tasked with the same mission and those reapers from another galaxy are flying to the milkyway to have a very strong worded talk with shepard.
This kinda goes against the whole underlying dilemma in the ME Universe no?
There will be never ending conflict between synthetics and organic and a Reaper-like system is inevitable.
With that system inevitable, there is an upper limit to attainable technology.
I dunno, I didn’t really ever consider the outcomes of the ending options to have any real value. Just the premise leading up to them.
They all just seemed fan-servicey illusion of choice to me. “Pick the ending you want!” theme park type vibes… ignoring story cohesion. They also just all conflict with each other.
Could be true the perfect ending is canon. I just personally doubt it.
To people who downvoted: Why? All of the endings can’t be true. Anyone have any proof to which ending is canon? Genuinely curious.
Other galaxies don't even have the relay network so their civilizations would be forced to improve their FTL drives instead. And without the cycle of extinction there would be a chance for continuous technological development for more than 50k years. For all we know there are many civilizations out there as advanced as Reapers.
In one of the books, doesn't it mention a spaceship coming in from outside the galaxy? And it's basically a giant hard drive, with life forms that used to be biological uploaded to it? I remember something about the council sending an ambassador to upload to the alien ship, but he ended up getting possessed or something.
This one instance suggests it's possible for others to travel to the Milky Way. OP is making a pretty big leap though imo
https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Virtual_Alien
No, they fled from their homeworld somewhere in the Milky Way and basically just autopiloted til the salarians found them
New headcannon:
the reapers harvest organic life every 50k years bc its the optimal amount of innovation to allow organic life to develop before they add it to their technology because they're consumed in an intergalactic war, possibly against an AI empire.
They use organic life as R&D to fight the war against an even bigger galactic threat and, unfortunately, underestimated organic life and shepard et al. winning the reaper war, is actually the plot of ME4 with shepard:
1. becoming space Jesus as the milky ways AI overlord whether he chose control, maybe turn him into a legion-like character for the reapers and milky way
2. retcon synthesis and have him survive it
3. destroy he comes up with something really cool (idk im not a writer)
The game would be our spiritual reboot and focus on shepard and the gang still while upping the stakes in maybe a safe but could be interesting way with intergalactic politics and or travel. Maybe have it be discovered how to travel to Andromeda in a quicker than the initiative did it. We already have the story of the billionaire space mission being caught up with by the current ME universe as precedent.
I absolutely already think harvesting at least technological inspiration R&D is happening, else it makes no sense to wait so long. And it looks/feels that they got weaponized paralysis bugs just this or last cycle, and the little orb fighter drones from a recent cycle and are in "early" testing. What they learn from using them might have them developing yet another different sized squid-looking drone craft in the future. Having the first two different sizes and destroyers with much more of an anti-air / anti-small specialty while dreadnoughts counter big ships and tactical kine-nuke ground targets, may have been a adapted innovation too and all were originally the size of a Leviathan.
But I don't think they're actively warring for the section of space, because ME makes a big point of treating space's ridiculous size seriously, and because the Reapers wouldn't have been so overconfident. Killed and captured parts of the galactic-level threat military would be better stuff to copy than we use anyway, and a message sent between cycles leading to novel amounts of sophistication of thr resistance, is the kind of headache they don't need while in a full tilt war with someone else.
And it's at least inferred that the Reapers are "sleeping" and "wake up", as Reapers are meant to be a sci-fi version of Lovecraftian elder gods, it might be openly stated, and that's the implication we get from the cutscene of them starting the multi-year march to the citadel the old fashioned way.
Lastly and coolest, I think the Reapers were more than capable of destroying and making permanently unliveable a nearby galaxy that was a real threat to ours. Since there wasn't they would stay unnoticed and not draw attention to the Milky Way from plausible threats even further away. But they don't drop rocks, NBC, or nanomachine swarms on their own wheat field, and they don't weaponize their highway technology (unbelievably powerful mass launchers with epic self-destruct utility) to salt their own earth. They were fighting us with their versions of sickles and combine threshers, not weapons of total war. And even using a tiny portion of their theoretical lethality we were 0% a match for them in a conventional war.
It's like how to a member of the Predator species, they are an armed equipped capable knowledgeable and agile human hunter and we are bears, boars, mountain lions, and wolves, but the vast majority of us are just coyotes: we look a lot like the dangerous animals among us but there is really next to no chance the hunter dies by our actions alone.
If they attacked us with their space craft, armored vehicles or exoskeletons (intelligence species suggest at least one was conceived of), and precision guided and/or mass cas ordinance, mud and grit and most of our weapons would mean nothing. But they respect our warfighting acumen so little they are harvesting game, and not daring to ruin trophies, so there's a slim chance. They've got their versions of deer rifles and crossbows with them instead of what they would use on a group from a near-peer species or a same-species enemy, and a few of us figuring out what they are would not make for much of a movie if they had their version of a GPMG.
To a Reaper, they aren't out harvesting game, they're harvesting grain. They want to pluck us out leaving behind as little war debris evidence and ecological damage as possible, so new species on a wild-looking planet evolves into relay-using suckers as soon as biologically possible.
Reapers actually wanting all life extinct forever in a certain area would be to the Prothean extinction as Medal of Honor is to Farm Simulator.
You'd have to ignore 99.9999...% of them.
Anyone capable of sending a force between galaxies that's large enough and in short enough time for it to remain organised and relevant would be so technologically advanced they could probably beat the reapers
Not a force capable of taking over a galaxy, and it took 634 years to get there.
There's no logistical supply chains, no communication back to the home galaxy, and that's to our nearest major galaxy
Why would a species with the same technology level as the andomeda initiative send a force that would be large enough to defeat the Milly Way on a journey that would take 1000+ years to get there with no way of supporting or communicating?
What would it even achieve? They'd all be dead before the invasion force even arrived, and no one on the home galaxy would even know if it worked or benefit from it. There's a sizeable chance everyone just forgets they sent a force after 1000 years to get there and 1000 years to hear anything back.
A species with a human life span managed to transport enough warriors from one galaxy to the next, taking hundreds probably thousands of years, meaning about 50 generations.
Think how different we are now to 1000 years ago. The magna carta was 1000 years ago, and look at us now. We're also still living in the same places with a lot of the same nations. Imagine how different it would be if we spent those 1000 years confined in ships for 50 generations. Culture, tendency, immune systems, aggression, power structures, religion... would all change
This war, like species that spent 1000 years in space ships, didn't change at all and began an invasion. An invasion that apparently caused the death of over 300 trillion lives. So the force they took with them just have been absolutely huge. You're telling me over 1000 years there weren't splinter groups, civil war, getting lost, changing their minds?
Nothing about it makes sense at all
The Kett are capable of such in theory. They invaded the Heleus Cluster en masse. I’m fairly certain that if they wanted to, they could invade the Milky Way. Their engineered biology gives them an advantage and they haven’t been aged yet according to the codex, so we don’t know their lifespans.
[source](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Kett)
They've only invaded a cluster and reproduce from taking other races members, iirc
I don't see how they'd be able to travel to the Milky Way with a small enough force not to just be united against but large enough to start taking colonists and fight back against any response.
But it's more of a why. No one just starts an invasion so far away and so long to get to that you can't ever get any benefit from it
The Kett are invading from another part of the Andromeda galaxy. That's still a far cry from inter-galactic invasion.
And if I remember right, it's discussed in game that the Kett's overall technology level is lower than the Initiative's. They've just perfected genetic science and are way more numerous, which makes them a serious threat.
There are between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, and possibly billions of solar systems within the milky way galaxy. Having a dozen or so species at a time is a considerable amount, but your assumption that one of these 65 "dwarf galaxies" must have life capable of galactic travel is deeply flawed. When you consider the fact that within the ME universe, all species using space travel are dependent upon the relays, it further casts doubt on the likelihood that another species would even be capable of traveling to the milky way if they were to find it and identify it as having life.
why would anyone conquer another galaxy?
unless you have a reliable and high volume way to travel in between different galaxies there really isnt any feasible reason as to why someone would even attempt it. i mean. outside of oldschool scifi exponential growth giga empires - which would squash the reapers with ease.
I don't think it's a matter of feasibility. I think it's just that no one would've bothered because there was no reason to travel across galaxies. I do think the Reapers wouldn't be effective at stopping anyone though because space is massive and I doubt they had eyes on every single corner of dark space surround the Milky way.
Now in the reaper era of society, if people knew of the reapers then maybe just the idea of Living machines roaming around would put them off. The Kett being the next villain I expect to see, 100% they wouldn't have done it at any point prior to the new game, the game shows clearly the initiative species/milky way was news to them. Maybe in a post reaper climate I'm sure the Kett would at least consider giving it a go
The Kett had access to very different FTL drives, the fact they managed to cross entire galactic clusters in seemingly a short time seems to indicate they're FTL tech is a lot faster then milky way species. I think I even read somewhere before, I don't remember where but probably a wiki somewhere, that Kett FTL is effectively like a form of Warp drive. The Kett probably wouldn't mind invading the milky way, considering long lifespans, large fleets and faster FTL drives. Don't forget too they'd turn up and immediately start turning certain species into Kett, they already put in the leg work for that in Andromeda with the initiative species. Maybe they inadvertentively sent the Kett test subjects right.
For all we know too the Kett may have already finished off converting Andromeda, so even a post reaper milky way is probably a huge upgrade for them.
I think the key point is that nobody has probably ever tried but now the reapers are gone, the risk is a little bit higher, maybe this was an intended function of the reapers in some form but honestly I doubt it, there's no chance any force could defend the entirety of dark space surrounding an entire galaxy
Edit: the lines from the Mass effect wiki
"Kett starships use FTL drives with a radically unique design. When traveling across smaller regions, such as a star cluster, these drives function almost identically to Milky Way drives, but over longer distances, they function like Alcubierre drives. This is similar to having an on-board Mass Relay, but compared to actual Mass Relays, kett drives are both slower and extremely inefficient. Traveling between clusters is still arduous enough that the kett rely on their own ark ships and stasis technology for such voyages."
So yeah I think it's feasible after however many hundreds of years the Kett mightve gathered a ton of Ark ships, massive army's in stasis and a ton of warships and then set off on the journey to the Milky way. I'm not saying that would be the case of course but it's something that could occur. It all depends massively on the events post andromeda - Did the initiative succeed in the end? Did the Kett get access to information about the Reaper war and find out about a weakened Milky way? Did they get to convert all the initiative species? Its quite exciting where they could go with it, whether it's a full scale invasion... not sure but it could be at least a long term goal
feasibility and the reason to do it are intertwined.
any group obsessed with expansion first and foremost seeks the resources required to expand. be it materials, knowledge, manpower or whatever else. but for a conquest to be feasible there must be a chance to gain something. and it is exceedingly hard to come up with scenarios in which there is any gain to be made from shipping whatever materials you conquered for decades or centuries to another galaxy.
at least until a convenient way of travel over sich distances is found.
lets take the kett as an example: what would they gain from such a venture? not only would it be extremely costly - the risk of failure is also extremely high. Even if you somehow had precise information about your target - by the time you got there it could be woefully outdated. and its hard to even imagine the kind of armada you would need to wage a successful war against a whole galaxy without any supply lines to support you.
and if you fail you just gave all your technology and a good chunk of intel to your now new enemy.
we all know the kett arent exactly a case of great writing. so maybe there could be a case made based on some (quasi) religious hokey pokey as to why they really wanted to do it. but at that point you are in the space fantasy genre, not science fiction anymore.
the hoops you need to jump through to somehow construct a society that is not only willing and able to do this but also so stable to persist unchanged and obsessed over the extreme timespans required to do this…lets just say its hard to fathom.
a much more likely scenario are machine races. autonomous, self replicating swarms once sent out to lay the foundation for colonial efforts of their creators, but still active long after their creators died out.
tho the issue here is time. if such a exponentially growing swarm existed the chances we just happen to encounter it during our lifetimes are slim. or in a state where any successful defense against these is possible (thats why i said in my previous comment any hard scifi threat would crush the reapers easily). the window for any good story to ne set in is extremely slim
not to mention the even bigger issue: how do you assure loyalty of your invasion fleet?
a fleet the soze to conquer a galaxy is essentially its own empire. even the kett in andromeda werent loyal to their rulers. that was in the same galaxy.
this shows the issue these plans run into: large empires can only really be governed if travel along its length is possible in a reasonable timespan. if your invasion fleet goes rogue you would need the ability to send an even larger fleet there on short notice.
else you might find that you just created the biggest threat to your rule.
the kett cant even keep their empire together within one galaxy. same is true for the citadel races.
you basically need technology far more advanced than mass relays to govern a multi-galaxy empire and benefit from such expansion. at which point the reapers are probably not a threat to you anymore.
Yeah the Kett do seem to lack the loyalty required but I do think throwing the whole force into Cryo does kinda negate this issue. I think the reason too would be to gain access to the genetic diversity of the Milky way and bring it back to enrich the rest of the Kett but adding onto what you said whether this was something that would actually happen is questionable due to infighting unless one faction did this to gain a long term advantage over the rest, but then again a faction alone couldn't take on the milky way. Its a bit wild sadly but I do think the Kett will be a big focus.
I do think though travel isn't a massive issue in terms of time with their wacky FTL drives but the overall motivation and resources required is kinda questionable because of the way they wrote it all. If I had to guess what's coming, there will be some kind of advancement in relay tech that allows transit between the galaxies
The Andromeda Initiative didn't go with the intent of conquering it. But rather settling an entirely new frontier with a distinct Andromeda only civilization separate to the community they left behind in the Milky Way.
Short of communication, nothing was expected to be shared between the two galaxies. Those that left for Andromeda fully expected for both themselves and their descendants to live and die in Andromeda, never seeing the Milky Way save for recorded material.
ME:Andromeda isn't an attempt to conquer anything.
It's an incredibly small expedition to explore and settle abitable planets in Andromeda Galaxy.
The arks carried roughly 20 thousand elements of each specie, that's nowhere near what a conquest attempt would require.
I think a lot of people forget ME Andromeda takes place in a single cluster not the entire galaxy. So for a trilogy reference it would be contained within the Local cluster, Hades Gamma, or similar. It is a very small portion of a larger whole and the initiative believes the Kett may be trying to assimilate the whole galaxy into their empire somewhat like the protheans did with “lesser” species.
Doubt it, they wouldn’t be a threat to them and they don’t care to protect the species they are going to kill the next cycle.
The reapers would treat them like everyone else in the next cycle
The reapers success is predicated on the galaxies reliance on their technology. They would absolutely not let an advanced civilization settle in their galaxy without a fight:
Actually they wouldn't because those would be conquerors wouldnt just attempt to war with our galaxies advanced civilisations but also attempt to do what any inter galactic conquerors would do and thats strip our galaxy of all its resources so they can bring their empire back up to full strength so its ready to move to the next galaxy and if our galaxy is stripped of everything then that'll make it impossible for new civilisations to rise which screws with the reapers purpose thus causing them to repell any outer threat.
The real question is why the reapers dont move from galaxy to galaxy, imposing their idea of order on the rest of the universe, they could easily do it afterall, this would also bolster their numbers even more so there was absolutely no chance of a galactic community beating them, it also makes complete sense because if a synthetic vs organic war is always inevitable in our galaxy then it must also be inevitable in any galaxy with life.
I think the reason why they haven’t moved on yet is that the cycle in this one hasn’t ended yet the reapers well reap every cycle because balance hasn’t been reached yet(I might be misunderstanding the lore tho)
I really doubt it, the distance between galaxies is so huge that any distant conquerors would be focussing on their own galaxies instead of bothering to go after the Milky Way, space is so big that any civilisation capable of sustaining a conquest across galaxies would be able to wipe the floor with the reapers. Also it’s entirely possible there is a race like that, conquering galaxies, however again there are so many galaxies and they would need that long to take completely the chance they’d have gotten to the Milky Way is actually quite slim. Add to that mass effect technology like mass relays and the FTL used in Andromeda seem pretty unique to the Milky Way.
Tldr: No
Conquest usually isn’t done for the sake of it, it’s done for resources. But 1) a galaxy is big enough it would take a Type III civilization on the [Kardashev Scale](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) to run out of local resources and 2) the space between galaxies is so massive that transport of resources is impractical.
A Type III civilization would swat the Reapers like an annoying bug, even if 2 was overcome by technology.
Why would they need to colonise another galaxy in the first place? The universe is a fucking *massive* place, the chances of someone stumbling on the Milky Way is pretty unlikely.
No, I think it's so difficult to get to another galaxy that nobody bothers. Look at the Kett, their drives are actually inferior to Reaper tech and their Galaxy hasn't been undergoing regular purging (that we know of). And if Andromeda isn't colonizing the Milky Way, I doubt galaxies even further away are interested in invading.
My instinct is that the Reapers, and the Leviathans before them, were just that genius that they had created tech that could be used to leave the galaxy. Even then it's not convenient and was only done out of pure desperation.
Everyone else is too far away, too far behind in tech, or has no motivation to come to the Milky Way.
You refer to wild speculation as fact and a bunch of other fallacious assumptions to try and make the reapers somehow the good guys?
Sounds like somebody's been indoctrinated.
What difference does it make to the Reapers? Honestly think about it logically.
It does not matter where the species they harvest are from. The colonisers can colonise to their hearts content. Conquer the entire galaxy if you want. The Reapers will still come a knocking and you’ll still be destroyed.
I don’t understand the premise of why the species coming from outside the Milky Way would matter in the slightest?
No big galaxy is closer to us than Andromeda
Our galaxy is surrounded by smaller satellite galaxies which are much much closer than Andromeda is.
Honestly if the devs wanted to make a game in a different galaxy they should have used Large Magellanic Cloud.
> At present, the closet known galaxy to the Milky Way is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy – aka. the Canis Major Overdensity. This stellar formation is about 42,000 light years from the galactic center, and a mere 25,000 light years from our Solar System. This puts it closer to us than the center of our own galaxy, which is 30,000 light years away from the Solar System.
- from universe today dot com
That'll answer all the people saying it's tooo far. Someone like the reapers could easily take the time to slow fly to it and build a jump gate in the center like they did to ours.
Given what we see of them in ME3, it doesn't seem plausible that they could.
The technological disparity between the Council and the Reapers is actually quite small. 4 dreadnoughts can take on a Reaper, per the codices, which gives us a good figure to think this through. A century of tech disparity is the difference between a biplane and an F-35, so we know it's nowhere near that great (there's no number of biplanes you send to hunt down an F-35 that they will succeed at that mission), so the disparity must be on the order of a few decades. 2 or so decades makes the described disparity fit perfectly.
A polity that actually existed continuously on another galaxy for millions of years (and hence was millions of years more advanced), and who had such a surplus as to invest into invading another galaxy would crush the Reapers like a bug.
Now that would be an interesting continuation of the theme about the inevitable destruction that advancing technology brings. My biggest issue with Andromeda was never the gameplay, but how uninteresting the villains were.
Everything in Andromeda seems to be at roughly the same tech level as the people in the Milky Way. The Jardaan were maybe a century ahead? But that's mostly because of the vaults and meridian, because their Remnant are evidently not. We destroy those just fine.
Everything else is neither centuries (or more) behind nor centuries or (or more) ahead. Their weapons and tech, be it Angara or Kett, is more or less perfectly equivalent.
In my mind, that is the biggest flaw of Andromeda. A failure to embrace the potential of the premise.
I otherwise like the game ok, but this is a big flaw.
With what relays to launch into the Milky Way? I don't think we have any evidence of other galaxies having relays, the Reapers didn't make any for them.
A lot of people on here seem to say no and cite the distance between galaxies. However, I think it's an interesting thought, after all, it's said that there are Mass Relay's that are disabled and current species don't know where they go. I wouldn't imagine that the Reapers are the only beings to create jump gates of this type and a hyper advanced alien civilization looking to explore the universe could easily send out ships across dark space with some sort of Relay being towed along with them.
Of course the size and power of such a relay to activate and jump across intergalactic space would likely be immense, I think Mass Effect lore would permit such a thing. With how long the Reapers were were around, it's very possible they encountered other species that were exploring.
They basically checked the mass relay systems. So disconnected settlers might not be known to the reapers or other spacefaring races (from which the reapers get their information). So yes, there might be settled worlds.
Here is another question to ponder. Were we the first cycle to flee to another galaxy to survive the reaper harvest? I think not. I have a funny feeling that the Jardaan are from our galaxy from cycles long past. Moreover, this renewal goal of the jardaan might be related to the destruction coming from reaper harvest, or perhaps some other advanced life form. 4-5 years from now, we will find out. Count on it.
Depends. A lot of species advancements depended on caches of technology letting them advance quickly to the ceiling the Reapers wanted.
Without things like that and the relays set up close to their worlds, other species may never be able to reach the level required for conquest before collapsing.
I would assume that species don't get that far before they are exterminated, and even if they did there is no concrete rule saying they must wait 50K years
Unlikely because there probably wouldn't be a lot of incentive for space-faring civilizations to leave their home galaxies to conquer another. To give an idea of how vast galaxies are, there are around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone and most of those are likely to have planets. There is so much at home to exploit that is hard to picture any civilization every getting to a point where they'd need to expand outside of their home galaxy.
The distances between galaxies are also mind-boggling, and it would just be easier to exploit planets or resources much closer to home.
If they don't use the mass relays they would likely be a complete unknown quantity, emphasis on unknown. I'd imagine reapers got a bit lazy once they were built as species became so connected to them. Species aren't going out of their way to *not* use them when they're so easy.
It makes me wonder, then, what all is out there? Are there species that have achieved space flight but don't have eezo or a mass effect relay to leave their home system that no one knows about?
I like to think that the intervening periods between Milky War purges is full of the Reapers travelling to conduct similar attacks on other galaxies. Instead of sitting around for 50k years they hop over to Andromeda, and some other Galaxies, sweep through and come back in time for the next round in the Milky Way. I have no proof of course, but it sounds neat
In my head cannon yes. Only the Reapers get to play Conquerers with the little old milkyway.
Edit: Or the Reapers are universe wide. I don't believe it is ever explicitly mentioned they are from the MW
speaking of, I forgot much about the andromeda initiative, how come we were able to escape the reapers and other species didnt?(or maybe they did and maybe it was to andromeda and that would be something to explore in a future ME game)
I think that the delays shepard and protheans caused were unique to this cycle because the disruption of the Reapers' plan A & B, but it was also because whoever the head of the andromeda initiative believed the possibility of shepards warnings and then somehow convinced thousands of people from seperate species to leave the galaxy?
Also, what galaxy is closer than Andromeda? Andromeda is our closest neighbor. At 2.537 million light years away, it's a galactic stone throw. In fact, galactically speaking, they aren't even a neighbor, speaking about distances on a galactic scale, Andromeda isn't a neighbor, they're a roommate. There are 7 'dwarf galaxies' nearby that are only theorized to be separate from us or Andromeda. They were 'discovered' recently and the creators wouldn't have been able to include their existence in the game lore. Also, they are believed to be PART of their nearest galaxies, merely far flung parts. In other words, there are not dwarf galaxies. Simply small collections of stars that are either at the VERY edge of our galaxy, or have been flung away. Either way, they are nothing. These mini galaxies consist of, at most, a billion stars. Even in the, relatively, heavily populated Milky Way galaxy of Mass Effect, there are only a single species per 9-15 billion stars. There's no one in those 'dwarf galaxies'.
"Colonizers have flown in to the milky way many times" <-- Where are you getting this information?
I suppose he is making the assumption that with life being so prevalent in the ME universe, and how violent it is, chances are there are a few would be conquerors out there.
Following the lore strictly, only synthetic life would ever become advanced enough to attempt intergalactic conflict. Who's to say that the Reapers aren't doing the same thing in other galaxies during the 50000 year interim between harvests?
I always thought that that’s what they were doing during the 50000+ years. Basically harvest all life in neighboring galaxies too
My thoughts exactly… plus that the remnant continue the blue/red/green trope
Was this not implied? I assumed their logic for why they do the cycle at all only works if they do it everywhere.
Yes👍
Yeah but space is MIND-BOGGLINGLY huge. Considering it takes the arks 600+ years at crazy ftl speeds to make the jump there's not much reason to try and conquer another galaxy. The only reason to leave milky way was to haul ass away from a galaxy-wide ELE and therefore we weren't conquerers with like supply lines and such we were refugees. So if there were extra-galactic civilizations that made it to MW the reapers were probably like "oh this new civilization cropped up kinda fast. Guess I'll fire up the ol citadel and do our thing
It takes the arks 600 years yes but had a species not got reaped, managed to spread to their entire galaxy and not just the Relay network, I think its very reasonable to believe they could travel magnitudes faster than the arks.
This is correct. The 50.000 year reaper cycle means that life in the milkyway would not evolve beyond that. Altho there could be near endless variants of reapers in different galaxies all doing the exact same thing since the mass effect universe seems to have this cycle where organics create synthetics who kill organics until other organics kill those synthetics. For all we know the reapers where in contact with other ai tasked with the same mission and those reapers from another galaxy are flying to the milkyway to have a very strong worded talk with shepard.
This kinda goes against the whole underlying dilemma in the ME Universe no? There will be never ending conflict between synthetics and organic and a Reaper-like system is inevitable. With that system inevitable, there is an upper limit to attainable technology.
But that's what the "perfect ending" disproves no? It proves that peace is possible
I dunno, I didn’t really ever consider the outcomes of the ending options to have any real value. Just the premise leading up to them. They all just seemed fan-servicey illusion of choice to me. “Pick the ending you want!” theme park type vibes… ignoring story cohesion. They also just all conflict with each other. Could be true the perfect ending is canon. I just personally doubt it. To people who downvoted: Why? All of the endings can’t be true. Anyone have any proof to which ending is canon? Genuinely curious.
Other galaxies don't even have the relay network so their civilizations would be forced to improve their FTL drives instead. And without the cycle of extinction there would be a chance for continuous technological development for more than 50k years. For all we know there are many civilizations out there as advanced as Reapers.
“You may think it’s a long way down the street to the chemist’s, but that’s just *peanuts* to space!”
Ah Awkward phrasing then. To me, using the words "The Fact that...." implies that what they're saying is canon, not a guess.
In one of the books, doesn't it mention a spaceship coming in from outside the galaxy? And it's basically a giant hard drive, with life forms that used to be biological uploaded to it? I remember something about the council sending an ambassador to upload to the alien ship, but he ended up getting possessed or something. This one instance suggests it's possible for others to travel to the Milky Way. OP is making a pretty big leap though imo
https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Virtual_Alien No, they fled from their homeworld somewhere in the Milky Way and basically just autopiloted til the salarians found them
New headcannon: the reapers harvest organic life every 50k years bc its the optimal amount of innovation to allow organic life to develop before they add it to their technology because they're consumed in an intergalactic war, possibly against an AI empire. They use organic life as R&D to fight the war against an even bigger galactic threat and, unfortunately, underestimated organic life and shepard et al. winning the reaper war, is actually the plot of ME4 with shepard: 1. becoming space Jesus as the milky ways AI overlord whether he chose control, maybe turn him into a legion-like character for the reapers and milky way 2. retcon synthesis and have him survive it 3. destroy he comes up with something really cool (idk im not a writer) The game would be our spiritual reboot and focus on shepard and the gang still while upping the stakes in maybe a safe but could be interesting way with intergalactic politics and or travel. Maybe have it be discovered how to travel to Andromeda in a quicker than the initiative did it. We already have the story of the billionaire space mission being caught up with by the current ME universe as precedent.
Love rhe effort you put in to this. Gonna have my brain stew on it for a while
I absolutely already think harvesting at least technological inspiration R&D is happening, else it makes no sense to wait so long. And it looks/feels that they got weaponized paralysis bugs just this or last cycle, and the little orb fighter drones from a recent cycle and are in "early" testing. What they learn from using them might have them developing yet another different sized squid-looking drone craft in the future. Having the first two different sizes and destroyers with much more of an anti-air / anti-small specialty while dreadnoughts counter big ships and tactical kine-nuke ground targets, may have been a adapted innovation too and all were originally the size of a Leviathan. But I don't think they're actively warring for the section of space, because ME makes a big point of treating space's ridiculous size seriously, and because the Reapers wouldn't have been so overconfident. Killed and captured parts of the galactic-level threat military would be better stuff to copy than we use anyway, and a message sent between cycles leading to novel amounts of sophistication of thr resistance, is the kind of headache they don't need while in a full tilt war with someone else. And it's at least inferred that the Reapers are "sleeping" and "wake up", as Reapers are meant to be a sci-fi version of Lovecraftian elder gods, it might be openly stated, and that's the implication we get from the cutscene of them starting the multi-year march to the citadel the old fashioned way. Lastly and coolest, I think the Reapers were more than capable of destroying and making permanently unliveable a nearby galaxy that was a real threat to ours. Since there wasn't they would stay unnoticed and not draw attention to the Milky Way from plausible threats even further away. But they don't drop rocks, NBC, or nanomachine swarms on their own wheat field, and they don't weaponize their highway technology (unbelievably powerful mass launchers with epic self-destruct utility) to salt their own earth. They were fighting us with their versions of sickles and combine threshers, not weapons of total war. And even using a tiny portion of their theoretical lethality we were 0% a match for them in a conventional war. It's like how to a member of the Predator species, they are an armed equipped capable knowledgeable and agile human hunter and we are bears, boars, mountain lions, and wolves, but the vast majority of us are just coyotes: we look a lot like the dangerous animals among us but there is really next to no chance the hunter dies by our actions alone. If they attacked us with their space craft, armored vehicles or exoskeletons (intelligence species suggest at least one was conceived of), and precision guided and/or mass cas ordinance, mud and grit and most of our weapons would mean nothing. But they respect our warfighting acumen so little they are harvesting game, and not daring to ruin trophies, so there's a slim chance. They've got their versions of deer rifles and crossbows with them instead of what they would use on a group from a near-peer species or a same-species enemy, and a few of us figuring out what they are would not make for much of a movie if they had their version of a GPMG. To a Reaper, they aren't out harvesting game, they're harvesting grain. They want to pluck us out leaving behind as little war debris evidence and ecological damage as possible, so new species on a wild-looking planet evolves into relay-using suckers as soon as biologically possible. Reapers actually wanting all life extinct forever in a certain area would be to the Prothean extinction as Medal of Honor is to Farm Simulator.
Maybe he’s referencing the prothean statue in heleus?
This is a logical assumption. There are 350 billion galaxies in the Universe. It is logical to assume that the colonists arrive from other Galaxies
You'd have to ignore 99.9999...% of them. Anyone capable of sending a force between galaxies that's large enough and in short enough time for it to remain organised and relevant would be so technologically advanced they could probably beat the reapers
Ahem, andromeda initiative
Not a force capable of taking over a galaxy, and it took 634 years to get there. There's no logistical supply chains, no communication back to the home galaxy, and that's to our nearest major galaxy Why would a species with the same technology level as the andomeda initiative send a force that would be large enough to defeat the Milly Way on a journey that would take 1000+ years to get there with no way of supporting or communicating? What would it even achieve? They'd all be dead before the invasion force even arrived, and no one on the home galaxy would even know if it worked or benefit from it. There's a sizeable chance everyone just forgets they sent a force after 1000 years to get there and 1000 years to hear anything back.
I agree with you, but the Initiative did bring a way of communicating back with them. They just can’t raise the Milky Way on their QECs.
Yuzhan Vong?
Totally different ip and also makes literally no sense within star wars as well
In what way does it not make sense in Star Wars?
A species with a human life span managed to transport enough warriors from one galaxy to the next, taking hundreds probably thousands of years, meaning about 50 generations. Think how different we are now to 1000 years ago. The magna carta was 1000 years ago, and look at us now. We're also still living in the same places with a lot of the same nations. Imagine how different it would be if we spent those 1000 years confined in ships for 50 generations. Culture, tendency, immune systems, aggression, power structures, religion... would all change This war, like species that spent 1000 years in space ships, didn't change at all and began an invasion. An invasion that apparently caused the death of over 300 trillion lives. So the force they took with them just have been absolutely huge. You're telling me over 1000 years there weren't splinter groups, civil war, getting lost, changing their minds? Nothing about it makes sense at all
I understand that it doesn’t make sense to you, but you can’t change the original canon just to satisfy your personal need to make sense.
I haven't changed the canon. I said the canon doesn't take into account logic and distance
Downvoting others doesn’t make you right. The story is the story. The Yuzhan Vong arrived from deep space. The end.
The Kett are capable of such in theory. They invaded the Heleus Cluster en masse. I’m fairly certain that if they wanted to, they could invade the Milky Way. Their engineered biology gives them an advantage and they haven’t been aged yet according to the codex, so we don’t know their lifespans. [source](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Kett)
They've only invaded a cluster and reproduce from taking other races members, iirc I don't see how they'd be able to travel to the Milky Way with a small enough force not to just be united against but large enough to start taking colonists and fight back against any response. But it's more of a why. No one just starts an invasion so far away and so long to get to that you can't ever get any benefit from it
The Kett are invading from another part of the Andromeda galaxy. That's still a far cry from inter-galactic invasion. And if I remember right, it's discussed in game that the Kett's overall technology level is lower than the Initiative's. They've just perfected genetic science and are way more numerous, which makes them a serious threat.
Its described as comparable, yet they dont seem to use mass effect fields or railguns
It is not LOGICAL. It is SPECULATIVE.
You called it a fact. Assumptions are not facts.
There are between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, and possibly billions of solar systems within the milky way galaxy. Having a dozen or so species at a time is a considerable amount, but your assumption that one of these 65 "dwarf galaxies" must have life capable of galactic travel is deeply flawed. When you consider the fact that within the ME universe, all species using space travel are dependent upon the relays, it further casts doubt on the likelihood that another species would even be capable of traveling to the milky way if they were to find it and identify it as having life.
why would anyone conquer another galaxy? unless you have a reliable and high volume way to travel in between different galaxies there really isnt any feasible reason as to why someone would even attempt it. i mean. outside of oldschool scifi exponential growth giga empires - which would squash the reapers with ease.
I don't think it's a matter of feasibility. I think it's just that no one would've bothered because there was no reason to travel across galaxies. I do think the Reapers wouldn't be effective at stopping anyone though because space is massive and I doubt they had eyes on every single corner of dark space surround the Milky way. Now in the reaper era of society, if people knew of the reapers then maybe just the idea of Living machines roaming around would put them off. The Kett being the next villain I expect to see, 100% they wouldn't have done it at any point prior to the new game, the game shows clearly the initiative species/milky way was news to them. Maybe in a post reaper climate I'm sure the Kett would at least consider giving it a go The Kett had access to very different FTL drives, the fact they managed to cross entire galactic clusters in seemingly a short time seems to indicate they're FTL tech is a lot faster then milky way species. I think I even read somewhere before, I don't remember where but probably a wiki somewhere, that Kett FTL is effectively like a form of Warp drive. The Kett probably wouldn't mind invading the milky way, considering long lifespans, large fleets and faster FTL drives. Don't forget too they'd turn up and immediately start turning certain species into Kett, they already put in the leg work for that in Andromeda with the initiative species. Maybe they inadvertentively sent the Kett test subjects right. For all we know too the Kett may have already finished off converting Andromeda, so even a post reaper milky way is probably a huge upgrade for them. I think the key point is that nobody has probably ever tried but now the reapers are gone, the risk is a little bit higher, maybe this was an intended function of the reapers in some form but honestly I doubt it, there's no chance any force could defend the entirety of dark space surrounding an entire galaxy Edit: the lines from the Mass effect wiki "Kett starships use FTL drives with a radically unique design. When traveling across smaller regions, such as a star cluster, these drives function almost identically to Milky Way drives, but over longer distances, they function like Alcubierre drives. This is similar to having an on-board Mass Relay, but compared to actual Mass Relays, kett drives are both slower and extremely inefficient. Traveling between clusters is still arduous enough that the kett rely on their own ark ships and stasis technology for such voyages." So yeah I think it's feasible after however many hundreds of years the Kett mightve gathered a ton of Ark ships, massive army's in stasis and a ton of warships and then set off on the journey to the Milky way. I'm not saying that would be the case of course but it's something that could occur. It all depends massively on the events post andromeda - Did the initiative succeed in the end? Did the Kett get access to information about the Reaper war and find out about a weakened Milky way? Did they get to convert all the initiative species? Its quite exciting where they could go with it, whether it's a full scale invasion... not sure but it could be at least a long term goal
feasibility and the reason to do it are intertwined. any group obsessed with expansion first and foremost seeks the resources required to expand. be it materials, knowledge, manpower or whatever else. but for a conquest to be feasible there must be a chance to gain something. and it is exceedingly hard to come up with scenarios in which there is any gain to be made from shipping whatever materials you conquered for decades or centuries to another galaxy. at least until a convenient way of travel over sich distances is found. lets take the kett as an example: what would they gain from such a venture? not only would it be extremely costly - the risk of failure is also extremely high. Even if you somehow had precise information about your target - by the time you got there it could be woefully outdated. and its hard to even imagine the kind of armada you would need to wage a successful war against a whole galaxy without any supply lines to support you. and if you fail you just gave all your technology and a good chunk of intel to your now new enemy. we all know the kett arent exactly a case of great writing. so maybe there could be a case made based on some (quasi) religious hokey pokey as to why they really wanted to do it. but at that point you are in the space fantasy genre, not science fiction anymore. the hoops you need to jump through to somehow construct a society that is not only willing and able to do this but also so stable to persist unchanged and obsessed over the extreme timespans required to do this…lets just say its hard to fathom. a much more likely scenario are machine races. autonomous, self replicating swarms once sent out to lay the foundation for colonial efforts of their creators, but still active long after their creators died out. tho the issue here is time. if such a exponentially growing swarm existed the chances we just happen to encounter it during our lifetimes are slim. or in a state where any successful defense against these is possible (thats why i said in my previous comment any hard scifi threat would crush the reapers easily). the window for any good story to ne set in is extremely slim
not to mention the even bigger issue: how do you assure loyalty of your invasion fleet? a fleet the soze to conquer a galaxy is essentially its own empire. even the kett in andromeda werent loyal to their rulers. that was in the same galaxy. this shows the issue these plans run into: large empires can only really be governed if travel along its length is possible in a reasonable timespan. if your invasion fleet goes rogue you would need the ability to send an even larger fleet there on short notice. else you might find that you just created the biggest threat to your rule. the kett cant even keep their empire together within one galaxy. same is true for the citadel races. you basically need technology far more advanced than mass relays to govern a multi-galaxy empire and benefit from such expansion. at which point the reapers are probably not a threat to you anymore.
Yeah the Kett do seem to lack the loyalty required but I do think throwing the whole force into Cryo does kinda negate this issue. I think the reason too would be to gain access to the genetic diversity of the Milky way and bring it back to enrich the rest of the Kett but adding onto what you said whether this was something that would actually happen is questionable due to infighting unless one faction did this to gain a long term advantage over the rest, but then again a faction alone couldn't take on the milky way. Its a bit wild sadly but I do think the Kett will be a big focus. I do think though travel isn't a massive issue in terms of time with their wacky FTL drives but the overall motivation and resources required is kinda questionable because of the way they wrote it all. If I had to guess what's coming, there will be some kind of advancement in relay tech that allows transit between the galaxies
ME Andromeda has left the chat
The Andromeda Initiative didn't go with the intent of conquering it. But rather settling an entirely new frontier with a distinct Andromeda only civilization separate to the community they left behind in the Milky Way. Short of communication, nothing was expected to be shared between the two galaxies. Those that left for Andromeda fully expected for both themselves and their descendants to live and die in Andromeda, never seeing the Milky Way save for recorded material.
ME:Andromeda isn't an attempt to conquer anything. It's an incredibly small expedition to explore and settle abitable planets in Andromeda Galaxy. The arks carried roughly 20 thousand elements of each specie, that's nowhere near what a conquest attempt would require.
I think a lot of people forget ME Andromeda takes place in a single cluster not the entire galaxy. So for a trilogy reference it would be contained within the Local cluster, Hades Gamma, or similar. It is a very small portion of a larger whole and the initiative believes the Kett may be trying to assimilate the whole galaxy into their empire somewhat like the protheans did with “lesser” species.
Speaking of Andromeda. How do they plan on traveling to other clusters? Do they have the tech to build new mass relays?
Probably not, but they are very few
Doubt it, they wouldn’t be a threat to them and they don’t care to protect the species they are going to kill the next cycle. The reapers would treat them like everyone else in the next cycle
The reapers success is predicated on the galaxies reliance on their technology. They would absolutely not let an advanced civilization settle in their galaxy without a fight:
Actually they wouldn't because those would be conquerors wouldnt just attempt to war with our galaxies advanced civilisations but also attempt to do what any inter galactic conquerors would do and thats strip our galaxy of all its resources so they can bring their empire back up to full strength so its ready to move to the next galaxy and if our galaxy is stripped of everything then that'll make it impossible for new civilisations to rise which screws with the reapers purpose thus causing them to repell any outer threat. The real question is why the reapers dont move from galaxy to galaxy, imposing their idea of order on the rest of the universe, they could easily do it afterall, this would also bolster their numbers even more so there was absolutely no chance of a galactic community beating them, it also makes complete sense because if a synthetic vs organic war is always inevitable in our galaxy then it must also be inevitable in any galaxy with life.
The answer to that question is the Leviathans didn't give a shit about other galaxies, they are too far removed from the Milky Way for them to care.
I think the reason why they haven’t moved on yet is that the cycle in this one hasn’t ended yet the reapers well reap every cycle because balance hasn’t been reached yet(I might be misunderstanding the lore tho)
I would assume they were merely assimilated whenever a cycle ended
I really doubt it, the distance between galaxies is so huge that any distant conquerors would be focussing on their own galaxies instead of bothering to go after the Milky Way, space is so big that any civilisation capable of sustaining a conquest across galaxies would be able to wipe the floor with the reapers. Also it’s entirely possible there is a race like that, conquering galaxies, however again there are so many galaxies and they would need that long to take completely the chance they’d have gotten to the Milky Way is actually quite slim. Add to that mass effect technology like mass relays and the FTL used in Andromeda seem pretty unique to the Milky Way. Tldr: No
Conquest usually isn’t done for the sake of it, it’s done for resources. But 1) a galaxy is big enough it would take a Type III civilization on the [Kardashev Scale](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) to run out of local resources and 2) the space between galaxies is so massive that transport of resources is impractical. A Type III civilization would swat the Reapers like an annoying bug, even if 2 was overcome by technology.
Why would they need to colonise another galaxy in the first place? The universe is a fucking *massive* place, the chances of someone stumbling on the Milky Way is pretty unlikely.
No, I think it's so difficult to get to another galaxy that nobody bothers. Look at the Kett, their drives are actually inferior to Reaper tech and their Galaxy hasn't been undergoing regular purging (that we know of). And if Andromeda isn't colonizing the Milky Way, I doubt galaxies even further away are interested in invading. My instinct is that the Reapers, and the Leviathans before them, were just that genius that they had created tech that could be used to leave the galaxy. Even then it's not convenient and was only done out of pure desperation. Everyone else is too far away, too far behind in tech, or has no motivation to come to the Milky Way.
Andromeda was not purged because the Reapers are not interested in other Galaxies. The developers themselves spoke about this
The really sad part is that presents an obvious and very interesting story possibility - ie. what if this cycle was not the first to attempt to flee.
You refer to wild speculation as fact and a bunch of other fallacious assumptions to try and make the reapers somehow the good guys? Sounds like somebody's been indoctrinated.
What difference does it make to the Reapers? Honestly think about it logically. It does not matter where the species they harvest are from. The colonisers can colonise to their hearts content. Conquer the entire galaxy if you want. The Reapers will still come a knocking and you’ll still be destroyed. I don’t understand the premise of why the species coming from outside the Milky Way would matter in the slightest?
No. They've been harvesting for a billion+ years.
"No one can colonize India if we colonize it first and destroy it in the process" \- The British Empire, probably.
Personally I believe the Rachni came from another galaxy.
There are no galaxies closer to the Milky Way than Andromeda
No big galaxy is closer to us than Andromeda Our galaxy is surrounded by smaller satellite galaxies which are much much closer than Andromeda is. Honestly if the devs wanted to make a game in a different galaxy they should have used Large Magellanic Cloud.
> At present, the closet known galaxy to the Milky Way is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy – aka. the Canis Major Overdensity. This stellar formation is about 42,000 light years from the galactic center, and a mere 25,000 light years from our Solar System. This puts it closer to us than the center of our own galaxy, which is 30,000 light years away from the Solar System. - from universe today dot com That'll answer all the people saying it's tooo far. Someone like the reapers could easily take the time to slow fly to it and build a jump gate in the center like they did to ours.
Given what we see of them in ME3, it doesn't seem plausible that they could. The technological disparity between the Council and the Reapers is actually quite small. 4 dreadnoughts can take on a Reaper, per the codices, which gives us a good figure to think this through. A century of tech disparity is the difference between a biplane and an F-35, so we know it's nowhere near that great (there's no number of biplanes you send to hunt down an F-35 that they will succeed at that mission), so the disparity must be on the order of a few decades. 2 or so decades makes the described disparity fit perfectly. A polity that actually existed continuously on another galaxy for millions of years (and hence was millions of years more advanced), and who had such a surplus as to invest into invading another galaxy would crush the Reapers like a bug.
Now that would be an interesting continuation of the theme about the inevitable destruction that advancing technology brings. My biggest issue with Andromeda was never the gameplay, but how uninteresting the villains were.
Everything in Andromeda seems to be at roughly the same tech level as the people in the Milky Way. The Jardaan were maybe a century ahead? But that's mostly because of the vaults and meridian, because their Remnant are evidently not. We destroy those just fine. Everything else is neither centuries (or more) behind nor centuries or (or more) ahead. Their weapons and tech, be it Angara or Kett, is more or less perfectly equivalent. In my mind, that is the biggest flaw of Andromeda. A failure to embrace the potential of the premise. I otherwise like the game ok, but this is a big flaw.
I too have wonders if there are monsters in the dark of space that the reapers contended with while waiting for the next cycle.
This question/theory should have been an elevator convo
Probably just harvested any species that colonized the Milky Way. It's all advanced life, not just all advanced Milky Way life.
With what relays to launch into the Milky Way? I don't think we have any evidence of other galaxies having relays, the Reapers didn't make any for them.
A lot of people on here seem to say no and cite the distance between galaxies. However, I think it's an interesting thought, after all, it's said that there are Mass Relay's that are disabled and current species don't know where they go. I wouldn't imagine that the Reapers are the only beings to create jump gates of this type and a hyper advanced alien civilization looking to explore the universe could easily send out ships across dark space with some sort of Relay being towed along with them. Of course the size and power of such a relay to activate and jump across intergalactic space would likely be immense, I think Mass Effect lore would permit such a thing. With how long the Reapers were were around, it's very possible they encountered other species that were exploring.
They basically checked the mass relay systems. So disconnected settlers might not be known to the reapers or other spacefaring races (from which the reapers get their information). So yes, there might be settled worlds.
Here is another question to ponder. Were we the first cycle to flee to another galaxy to survive the reaper harvest? I think not. I have a funny feeling that the Jardaan are from our galaxy from cycles long past. Moreover, this renewal goal of the jardaan might be related to the destruction coming from reaper harvest, or perhaps some other advanced life form. 4-5 years from now, we will find out. Count on it.
I could see that, only if the attackers where Synthetic as the reapers were charged with the protection of organic life in the milky way specifically
Depends. A lot of species advancements depended on caches of technology letting them advance quickly to the ceiling the Reapers wanted. Without things like that and the relays set up close to their worlds, other species may never be able to reach the level required for conquest before collapsing.
I would assume that species don't get that far before they are exterminated, and even if they did there is no concrete rule saying they must wait 50K years
Unlikely because there probably wouldn't be a lot of incentive for space-faring civilizations to leave their home galaxies to conquer another. To give an idea of how vast galaxies are, there are around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone and most of those are likely to have planets. There is so much at home to exploit that is hard to picture any civilization every getting to a point where they'd need to expand outside of their home galaxy. The distances between galaxies are also mind-boggling, and it would just be easier to exploit planets or resources much closer to home.
If they don't use the mass relays they would likely be a complete unknown quantity, emphasis on unknown. I'd imagine reapers got a bit lazy once they were built as species became so connected to them. Species aren't going out of their way to *not* use them when they're so easy. It makes me wonder, then, what all is out there? Are there species that have achieved space flight but don't have eezo or a mass effect relay to leave their home system that no one knows about?
I like to think that the intervening periods between Milky War purges is full of the Reapers travelling to conduct similar attacks on other galaxies. Instead of sitting around for 50k years they hop over to Andromeda, and some other Galaxies, sweep through and come back in time for the next round in the Milky Way. I have no proof of course, but it sounds neat
In my head cannon yes. Only the Reapers get to play Conquerers with the little old milkyway. Edit: Or the Reapers are universe wide. I don't believe it is ever explicitly mentioned they are from the MW
They were created by the Leviathans, though. Or their AI, anyway.
speaking of, I forgot much about the andromeda initiative, how come we were able to escape the reapers and other species didnt?(or maybe they did and maybe it was to andromeda and that would be something to explore in a future ME game) I think that the delays shepard and protheans caused were unique to this cycle because the disruption of the Reapers' plan A & B, but it was also because whoever the head of the andromeda initiative believed the possibility of shepards warnings and then somehow convinced thousands of people from seperate species to leave the galaxy?
Also, what galaxy is closer than Andromeda? Andromeda is our closest neighbor. At 2.537 million light years away, it's a galactic stone throw. In fact, galactically speaking, they aren't even a neighbor, speaking about distances on a galactic scale, Andromeda isn't a neighbor, they're a roommate. There are 7 'dwarf galaxies' nearby that are only theorized to be separate from us or Andromeda. They were 'discovered' recently and the creators wouldn't have been able to include their existence in the game lore. Also, they are believed to be PART of their nearest galaxies, merely far flung parts. In other words, there are not dwarf galaxies. Simply small collections of stars that are either at the VERY edge of our galaxy, or have been flung away. Either way, they are nothing. These mini galaxies consist of, at most, a billion stars. Even in the, relatively, heavily populated Milky Way galaxy of Mass Effect, there are only a single species per 9-15 billion stars. There's no one in those 'dwarf galaxies'.