Saren Arterius is a former Spectre agent of the Citadel Council and the primary antagonist of the first Mass Effect game. A member of the Turian race, Saren was the longest-serving Turian Spectre and became well-known for his zealous views and ruthless methods. In the game, he has abandoned his position as a Spectre and leads an army of Geth heretics on a mission to summon forth the Reapers and annihilate all organic life in the galaxy.
History[]
Mass Effect[]
Prior to the events of the game, Saren's exact activities were unknown. What is known is that he had come by information regarding an ancient technological artifact and sought to find it. The artifact in question turned out to be the Reaper vanguard Sovereign. Through Sovereign, Saren learned of the Reapers and their eons-spanning cycle of genocide. Initially, Saren had planned to use the dreadnought as a means of controlling the Geth and dominating the Humans he despised so much. He soon considered the possibility of saving the galaxy's races from destruction by convincing them to surrender to the Reapers as slaves. Little did he realise that Sovereign had begun to indoctrinate him, corrupting his mind the longer he remained in proximity to the ancient machine.
Saren accompanied by a platoon of Geth
As part of his plan to prepare the races of the Milky Way for Reaper domination, Saren established deals with a number of scientific establishments and set up a research facility on the planet Virmire, where he began producing an army of programmed Krogan clones and studied the effects of indoctrination on different organic races. He would later launch an assault on the Alliance colony of Eden Prime where a Prothean relic had been excavated, hoping it would contain information regarding the Conduit: a device that would allow the Reapers to emerge from dark space. The Prothean beacon was activated by Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance before Saren could acquire it and self-destructed immediately after.
Over the course of the game, Saren would send his agents to various planets to acquire resources and information to advance his goals. He would eventually discover the location of the Conduit on the planet Ilos, a former Prothean colony and research centre, and used it to gain access to the Citadel station and bypass its defenses. Once aboard the Citadel, Saren attempted to re-activate the signal that would inform the station's Keepers to open the Citadel mass relay into dark space, allowing the Reapers to invade. Saren is ultimately stopped by Commander Shepard, who - depending on the actions and choices of the player - either battles Saren and kills him, or manages to persuade Saren to stop and fight Sovereign's indoctrination. If the latter option is taken, Saren will commit suicide to free himself from Sovereign's control.
Moments after Saren's death, however, Sovereign itself possesses the Turian's body, which radiates an aura of energy that disintegrates all of Saren's flesh, leaving only a nightmarish cybernetic alien skeleton. Saren's possessed husk attacks Shepard's squad, but they are ultimately able to destroy it. The feedback from Saren's destruction disrupts the systems of Sovereign's own starship body, causing its defenses to drop and allowing the Citadel defense fleet to destroy the Reaper.