Talk:Sovereign

How many people think that it would be great that you can actually pilot one of the 100,000,000,000,000 Reapers in Mass Effect 2 or 3? You should be able to do that.


 * Uh... they kind of 'pilot' themselves, considering they are conscious entities. I'm sure your suggestions as to where they should go are ... interpreted. I'm certain most would simply tell them to 'go to hell'.
 * Such a thing I seriously - make that 100% - doubt that it will be a gameplay mechanic. It may be possible with modifications, even in ME1.

Leviathan of Dis
Could Sovereign have been the "Leviathan of Dis" mentioned in passing in the information about the planet Jartar?

The stories seem to closely match:


 * The Leviathan of Dis, the apparent corpse of a genetically engineered living starship estimated at nearly a billion years old, "disappears" from the bottom of a crater on the planet Jartar after a visit by a batarian survey team twenty years ago (2160s, since current year is 2183). The batarians that witnessed it vociferously denied it ever existed, even as salarian researchers had recorded evidence of the Leviathan while it was dormant on the planet.


 * Sovereign, a Reaper with the appearance of an enormous dreadnought, was discovered in the mid-2100s (perhaps the 2160s) by one of the survey teams of aristocrat Edan Had'dah (a batarian). Sovereign, which has gone through untold cycles of the devouring and rebirth of galactic life at intervals of approximately 50,000 years, may have had a lifespan similar to the Leviathan's. It spends the 50,000 year gap hidden and dormant within the galaxy.

Coincidence?

I agree but could the Reapers have transformed themselvs from Leviathans to Reapers for some reason.

Abased Fear 06:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems plausible, given the similar timings and evidence at hand.

As Sovereign stated on Vermire, the beings like it have no name, they were only labelled as 'Reapers' by the Protheans. Thus it doesn't really require any 'transformation', just different people referring to the same object as different things. Leviathan is a logical name for something really, really big that seems to be a ship or structure. It was also discovered by the Batarians, and a survey team at that, which makes me think maybe those Batarians were Had'dah's survey team. It was also strenuously denied, and seemed to disappear. This could have been the result of Sovereign's indoctrination being used to hide it's position, and of course Sovereign eventually became space-bourne, meaning it would have left the crater.

Looking further into the more dispersed evidence, David Anderson told Shepard that the mission he went on with Saren (that lead to Saren capturing the scientific work on Sovereign and ultimately ceasing Sovereign for himself) was 'about 20 years ago'. That puts Saren's involvement slap-bang in the mid-2160s. From Kahlee Sanders's accounts of Dr Shu Qian's discovery and obsession with the artifact, it was only a relatively short while before the Sidon massacre, maybe a year or so. That means the artifact Shu Qian was looking at was discovered at the beginning of the 2160s, a time that by general logic would be said to be 'mid-2100s'. Also the Leviathan was discovered in a crater on Jartar. We see from Eden Prime that Soverign's landing on a planet causes a crater and massive damage to the surface. It would seem plausible therefore that Soverign could have buried itself at the end of the Prothean extinction, when the Reapers had finished harvesting and wiping out the Protheans. Perhaps by flying into the planets surface creating what looked like a large celestial impact crater, or by creating a 'hole' in which to lay dormant using it's immense power and mass effect fields.

It's still very much unclear what Sovereign actually was and how it was constructed. Although it is a 'machine', it is well known in our own contemporary theory that biological constructs can be used to create computer and biomechanical systems. With the vastly advanced technology at the disposal of Sovereign's kind it is logical to assume such rudimentary boundaries as those between mechanical and biological would break down. The likely originals of these sentient beings of such enormous size and complex construction, in my opinion, is either a civilisation that created them to act as their guadrians, and the guardians turned on them, or the members of the civilisation themselves became so advanced and powerful that they evolved through their advances in technology and pursuit of immortality to be these enormous beings with seemingly infinite lifespan.

--LeathamGrant 15:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I would have to say that the Reapers may not even know who their creators are. Perhaps there is a more mysterious force working behind the scenes, or they were once and organic races from the beginning of the universe and augmented themselves as cyborg before they got engulf by their own enhancements and may want someone to end their misery. Just saying, it's only my theory.

--Unic of the borg 19:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you. They may have had creators who died out, or they may have gotten a superiority complex and destroyed the race that created them and kept on doing so, or they could even have created themselves, as you said, by self augmentation to the point of becoming a giant sentient machine themselves. Whoever or whatever created them was adept in the art of telepathy and Mass Effect manipulation to the point of being able to use both overwhelmingly against any other organic or mechanical species. Who knows. This could be the ultimate pinnacle of what the Geth would develop into over millions of years of evolution, perhaps?

One hypothesis I developed on the matter is that the Husk spikes (Dragon's Teeth) that the Geth used are actually a tool used by Sovereign's kind. The Codex states they extract the meagre small amounts of resources from the bodies and then turn them into terror troops. This mechanism might not be so effective for resource gathering on the scale it was used in during the Sovereign incident, but used en mass during the Prothean extinction they would have sucked the very essence from 100s of Trillions of beings from across the galaxy. That to me sounds like a pretty efficient way to wipe out organic life and then gather the resources from them and use those to self repair. Be honest, even a machine as good as Sovereign is likely to wear over the course of 50,000 years, or at the very least the batteries will run down a bit (although I guess they probably run off eezo). --LeathamGrant 00:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Trivia: In Sovereign's conversation with Sheppard on Virmire, one of his responses to Sheppard's questions is "We are each a nation." Sovereign's name seems to be a play on that.--69.200.247.132 18:26, December 1, 2009 (UTC)


 * But if anything, since (regardless of how you play the game) you know the name Sovereign long before you have the chance to hear him say "We are each a nation", wouldn't it be the phrase that is a play on the name? And it is worth remembering that unless the word national or something to that effect is tacked onto it, the word sovereign on it's own, whether as a noun or an adjective, doesn't really have anything to do with nations or countries, it refers more to a ruler, a defunct currency, or an abstract concept of supreme authority. Now sovereignty, on the other hand, does have meaning pertaining to a nation w/out having to tack anything on, but his name isn't Sovereignty, now is it? :P SpartHawg948 20:38, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

Discovery
I'm putting a tentative date on the discovery of Sovereign as being 2162. Evidence for that: Had'dah claims he's put in 'three years of groundwork' on unlocking Sovereign's secrets (see ME:R pg310). In addition, Kahlee started working with Dr. Qian in 2163 (pg175) but he didn't start acting oddly until 'a few months ago' in 2165. That allows enough time for Had'dah to find Sovereign, realise he needed an expert, and spend a year getting in touch with Qian (p245). --Tullis 07:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Sovereign pictures
Since the screen shots in this article are rather small I have made a few that could eventually replace them, in 720p resolution. Have no fear or copyrights, I assure you these are made by me from the in-game cut scenes played with a Bink video player and captured with "Print Screen". Anyone could have done the same :) I have posted across a few articles, so be sure to check them out as well (Sovereign, Destiny Ascension, FTL, M35 Mako, Mass Relay and Citadel). Here are the HD screen shots for Sovereign. As I have no idea how to upload images here I will let you do it.

http://c.imagehost.org/0498/SovereingClose.png http://c.imagehost.org/0613/SovereingGeth.png http://c.imagehost.org/view/0398/SovereingUplink.png

69.159.102.144 17:12, 24 July 2008 (UTC)Darkdrium

Sovereign's Dimensions
Hi, does someone knows the exact dimensions of the Sovereign (especially the lenght), i would really appreaciate if someone posts them. Cgs93 19:59, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Length is given in the main article as 2km but the rest is a mystery unfortunately. --Tullis 23:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a problem with this: "Sovereign's power of indoctrination is also myth-like, further connecting it to a demon." So it's myth-like. It's also Force-like, but that doesn't mean there's a connection between Emperor Palpatine and Sovereign. This is just too tenuous.--HighTime 20:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Character Box
Should we add a character box to the page to complete the characters set? Since he's already in the adversaries section on the characters page, it probably wouldn't ruin much. He has some pretty cool villain quotes to choose from too.--TheWilsonator 01:50, October 14, 2009 (UTC)
 * The idea of this article is to keep data about Sovereign being the actual villain below the spoiler line. And this page should already have a quote on it for Sovereign... --Tullis 12:43, October 14, 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It was a pretty cool twist. Probably best not for the benefit of those who haven't go round to playing ME yet.--TheWilsonator 12:57, October 14, 2009 (UTC)

Acquisition of the name Sovereign
So, as there wasn't quite enough room in the summary to flesh out my reasoning, and as I was going to quote the relevant passage from Mass Effect: Revelation here anyways, here it is. I removed the bit about how Legion states that Saren gave Sovereign the name Sovereign for a couple reasons. It just doesn't jive with the other source we have on the subject, Mass Effect: Revelation, which states that when Saren first found out about it, the Reaper was already being referred to as Sovereign, implying the name was bestowed on it by either Edan Had'dah or Shu Qian. As stated on page 320 of Revelation:
 * "In the privacy of his small one man craft, Saren had been studying the data on the flash drive inside Qian's metal case for hours. His suspicions had been correct: the alien technology was a vessel of some sort. It was called Sovereign; a magnificent relic from the time of the Prothean extinction; an enormous warship of tremendous power.

This is well before Saren ever laid eyes on Sovereign itself. He was simply reviewing the data acquired from Dr Qian. Factor into this the fact that we have, here on this very site, a statement from a (former) writer for BioWare, who worked on ME and ME2, writing much of the material for Legion, where he points out that there are often-times statements made by characters who really aren't in any position to know for sure what they're talking about, so these comments need to be taken with a grain of salt. How would Legion and the geth know for sure that it was Saren who coined the name Sovereign, and that he didn't just appropriate the name from the people he killed for the data? And that is my reasoning. SpartHawg948 01:40, March 2, 2010 (UTC)

We completely agree. --Dark Scion

Opposition to move
Moving Soveriegn to Nazara was a bad idea. Whatever it called itself, it went by Sovereign for all of ME and was not refered to by any other name until near the end of ME2 and that was in conversation with only one character. Nazara is not used more, every one will be looking for Sovereign first because it is much more common. The page should be moved back.


 * And it was, for exactly those reasons. Moves of this nature need to be discussed on the talk page first, not just done on a whim. There's usually a reason (or several reasons) that the move in question had not been done already. SpartHawg948 21:05, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Ahhh... is it not simple to just have the term "Soveriegn" redirect to page Nazara. Dark Scion 23:29, March 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Simple, but the move itself to the new name is a spoiler, and article names should not contain spoilers. --silverstrike 00:01, March 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yup. The more appropriate course of action would be to have the term "Nazara" redirect to the Sovereign page. Wait a tick, it does already! Huzzah! And yes, it is a spoiler issue. Same reason the Tali'Zorah nar Rayya article is called Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, and not Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, and vas Normandy and vas Neema redirect to it. SpartHawg948 00:45, March 9, 2010 (UTC)