Saren Arterius

"Your species needs to learn its place, Shepard."

Saren Arterius, born 2139, is the longest serving turian member of the Spectres - the elite operatives answering directly to the Citadel Council. For 24 years he has been an agent of the Council's will, a zealous defender of galactic stability in the unsettled border region of the Skyllian Verge.

Official records of Spectres are sealed, but it is known that Saren followed turian tradition and entered the military at the age of 15. In 2155 he was promoted to active service after only a year of training, though it is unclear whether his unit was involved in any of the battles against human forces during the First Contact War of 2157.

In 2159 he became the youngest turian ever accepted into the Spectres. Intelligent, cunning and capable, Saren quickly developed a reputation for ruthless efficiency. Although there were a number of unsettling rumors concerning the brutality of his methods, there was no denying his results.

In recent years, Saren has become an outspoken opponent of human expansion. Like many other non-humans, he believes the Systems Alliance has become overly aggressive in its efforts to establish the people of Earth as a dominant species in Citadel space. Historically, species take centuries to accomplish what humanity has achieved in less than one, and there are several species that have a "lower" standing on the Citadel than humanity, despite being more recent additions to the Citadel community.

His speciesism is speculated to have originated in the First Contact War, when the turians attacked Shanxi. In the novel, Mass Effect: Revelation, Anita Goyle informs David Anderson that Saren lost a brother in the war and has disliked humanity ever since. After their abortive mission together, Saren retained a particular dislike of Captain Anderson.

Saren has little regard for life. He does not see saving lives as a priority unless the Council deems it necessary, or there is information to be gathered. He remains the Council's top agent despite his record: Saren may be ruthless and calculating, but he completes the mission.

Saren is voiced by Fred Tatasciore.

Mass Effect: Revelation
' "I have two rules I follow," Saren explained. "The first is, never kill someone without a reason."   "And the second?" Anderson asked, suspicious.   "You can always find a reason to kill someone." '

In 2165, Saren was investigating illegal arms dealing on Juxhi. A mercenary group called the Grim Skulls, comprised mostly of turians, were selling weapons to humans, something which Saren took personally. After killing almost all of the mercenaries responsible, Saren interrogated the last one, who tried to bargain for his life with information. The weapons were originally intended for the Blue Suns, but they pulled out at the last minute to pursue a bigger job. Saren became interested in their activities, and tracked down a member of the Blue Suns, a batarian named Groto Ib-ba, cornering him at the Sanctuary, an upper-class brothel. Saren patiently tortured Ib-ba for information and learned much of the Blue Suns' actions on Sidon. After Ib-ba told him about Kahlee Sanders, and the krogan bounty hunter whom Edan Had'dah had sent after her, Saren broke Ib-ba's neck and followed Skarr in turn to find Kahlee, wanting proof the Alliance had been acting illegally at Sidon.

Saren found Skarr on Elysium and intervened when the krogan attacked Jon Grissom's home. He saved Kahlee, along with David Anderson and Jon Grissom, then interrogated Kahlee about Sidon. Saren accepted her lie that it had been a training ground for human biotics but remained suspicious. Knowing Skarr was the key to finding the truth, Saren used his contacts to ascertain for the krogan's next move. After Skarr destroyed the Dah'tan Manufacturing Company on Had'dah's orders, there was only one survivor, a batarian female called Jella who had been Had'dah's contact. Jella had been badly burned in the attack, but managed to give Saren Had'dah's name in hospital before Saren let her die.

Wanting to flush out Had'dah, Saren decided to quietly leak news of Kahlee Sanders' extraction from Camala, knowing Had'dah would take the bait. After Kahlee was captured, Saren found himself assigned to work with David Anderson on the Council's orders, supposedly to evaluate Anderson as a possible Spectre candidate. The two disliked each other from the beginning: Saren had a universal dislike of humans, and Anderson resented Saren's brutal methods. In truth, Saren did not care about rescuing Kahlee; he only wanted to find Had'dah, along with Dr. Shu Qian, as he was becoming more interested in the 'artifact' the two had discovered. When Saren and Anderson headed to the element zero refinery where Kahlee was being held, Saren let Anderson go ahead, then abandoned the plan, destroying the refinery. Saren found Had'dah and Dr. Qian in hiding: he killed the doctor on Had'dah's suggestion, then, despite Had'dah's bargaining, shot the batarian too, and took their research.

Later, Saren gave a very negative report on Anderson to the Council, claiming he had alerted the refinery's guards and wrecked the operation. Saren then dedicated himself to using Dr. Qian's research to find this 'artifact' and use it, believing he had found a weapon to control the geth and humble humanity once and for all.

Alliance with the Machines
After the events of Mass Effect: Revelation, Saren's activities are something of a mystery. The only report from that time comes from Wrex, who was hired, with several other mercenaries, to attack freighters, including a volus cargo freighter. While Wrex was looking for valuables, he saw Saren walking through the ship, ignoring the mercenaries who spoke to him. Wrex did not know why Saren chose to attack the freighter; there was nothing particularly valuable on board, at least as far as he was aware, but the krogan had a bad feeling about the job and left without waiting to be paid. His instincts were vindicated: every other mercenary who had been involved was found dead within a week. It is still unknown why Saren attacked the freighter, or if he ever found what he was looking for.

During this time, Saren made his final preparations to discover Dr. Shu Qian's 'artifact', and encountered Sovereign. From the ancient Reaper, he learned the fate of the many civilizations of eons past. Instead of using Sovereign as a weapon, as he had intended, Saren made it his goal to save the races of the galaxy by aiding the Reapers, proving the worth of organics to the Reapers so that they might be spared. He believed that servitude was the logical answer, instead of instinctively fighting to the finish.

However, Sovereign had other plans. The more time Saren spent in service to Sovereign, the more indoctrinated he became. His free will was quickly sapped and supplanted by the desires of the Reaper, and the values of his people that Saren still believed in - that an individual's personal needs are always subordinate to the greater good of the group - were twisted so gradually that Saren remained certain he was right. Slowly, Saren became Sovereign's most powerful, and visible, agent. Able to begin the plans Sovereign had been laying for centuries while the Reaper kept its true nature hidden, Saren acted as Sovereign's agent on the forefront, never revealing the true enemy. The geth were sought out from behind the Perseus Veil to serve Sovereign, looking upon the massive ship as their new machine-god and Saren as their 'prophet'.

Shepard's Intervention
Saren committed horrific crimes against citizens of the galaxy, killing those he had sworn to protect, using people for his private experiments and even murdering his old friend and fellow Spectre, Nihlus Kryik. When a Prothean Beacon was unearthed on the human colony of Eden Prime, Saren led the geth there to use the beacon and find clues that would lead him to the Conduit, as the message sent through the beacon was coded so only organic minds could understand it.

Yet Saren's attempt to destroy the Eden Prime colony to cover his tracks failed when the Alliance ship SSV Normandy responded more quickly than Saren had anticipated. Commander Shepard led a ground team to secure the beacon, only to learn that Saren and the geth had attacked the colony. Later, Saren was informed that Shepard had made contact with the beacon, and decided to eliminate the human.

After the initial reports to the Council of Saren's rogue activities, the Council refused to believe that one of their most highly decorated Spectres had betrayed them. During a hearing, Saren denied killing Nihlus, though it was witnessed by a dockworker, Powell, and claimed he only knew about events on Eden Prime because he had gained access to Nihlus' files after his death. Further, his past with Anderson complicated matters, and the Council found no evidence to convict him. Because of this, Shepard was forced to find more evidence of Saren's treachery while Saren, duly warned that the commander was on his trail, remained free to act.

While avoiding assassins loyal to Saren, Shepard's investigation turned up a young quarian on her Pilgrimage named Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, who carried an audio file taken from a destroyed geth proving Saren attacked Eden Prime. Saren bribed one of the Shadow Broker's contacts, Fist, to make sure the quarian would be silenced, but Shepard saved both Tali and the audio file. With this new-found evidence the Council revoked Saren's Spectre status, but this did little to slow Saren's progress.

The Hunt for the Conduit
Accompanied by Matriarch Benezia - who had tried to guide him back to the right path but ended up partially indoctrinated by Sovereign - Saren continued hunting for the Conduit, while building his army. He intended to supplement the geth with rachni, brought back to life from a queen egg found on a derelict ship, thanks to Saren's influence (and investments) with Binary Helix. A bonus from the Rachni Queen was the genetic knowledge of the Mu Relay's location, which Benezia forcibly extracted from the rachni's mind. Saren believed the Mu Relay would lead him to the Conduit. On Feros, Saren 'sacrificed' a powerful ally, Shiala, to the Thorian to gain the knowledge of the Cipher. This would allow him to comprehend the vision, but parts of it were still missing. Fearing that Shepard might also gain the Cipher, Saren ordered the geth to destroy the Thorian to cover his tracks.

Most significantly, he found a cure for the genophage to breed, control and manipulate the krogan. Alongside the geth, Saren believed he would soon have an unstoppable army to carry out Sovereign's will.

However, Saren became gradually more concerned about the power of Sovereign's indoctrination, fearing that it might be affecting his behavior. At his base of operations on the remote tropical world of Virmire, which housed his krogan breeding facility, Saren added a major lab complex to study the effects of indoctrination. He recruited scientists, such as Rana Thanoptis, and ordered experiments to be performed on the salarians his forces captured from a recon and espionage team.

From the research, Saren discovered that the more control Sovereign exerted over an individual, the less capable they became. As long as Sovereign saw Saren as a useful resource, Saren believed his mind would still be his own. Saren convinced himself Sovereign needed him to find the Conduit and that the Reaper would offer him a reprieve in return. Nevertheless, he grew afraid of indoctrination, afraid that Sovereign was manipulating his thoughts.

After being hunted across several worlds, Saren and Shepard finally met face-to-face on Virmire. During the battle, Saren tried to recruit Shepard to his cause. The commander told Saren that he was indoctrinated, and that Sovereign was manipulating him so subtly he did not realise what was happening to him. Saren denied these accusations and escaped, narrowly escaping the nuclear blast that destroyed the complex.

But Shepard's words bred doubt in Saren's mind. Sovereign saw his conviction beginning to falter, and implanted Saren, making him cybernetic and completely devoted to the Reapers' cause. Saren thought of himself as "the future", a true cyborg, a fusion of both organics and technology, comprising "the strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither."

"Join us."
The next confrontation between Shepard and Saren would be on the lost Prothean world of Ilos, where the Conduit was hidden. While Shepard was delayed by the Council, who thought a blockade would stop Saren from attacking the Citadel, Saren got an early start on Shepard and reached Ilos' surface first. The activated Conduit brought Saren to the Citadel, where his geth and Sovereign mounted a surprise assault. After killing the operators of Citadel Control, Saren made his way toward the Citadel's master control unit. He intended to transfer control of the Citadel to Sovereign to activate the latent mass relay, paving the way for the rest of the Reapers to enter through dark space, but was interrupted when Shepard and the Ilos ground team rushed in.

If Shepard's Charm / Intimidate skills are high enough, the commander can convince Saren that, indoctrinated or not, he still has a way to stop Sovereign. Saren commits suicide by shooting himself in the head, to prevent himself from opening the Citadel relay, but not before whispering, "Goodbye, Shepard. Thank you." If Shepard's Charm / Intimidate skills aren't high enough, Shepard is forced to battle him atop the Council platform. Saren falls through the glass floor of the Council Chambers and is bloodily impaled by a large glass shard.

Despite Saren's injuries, Shepard's team ensured Saren was actually dead by shooting him in the head. However, Sovereign was not ready to relinquish its hold on the misguided turian. Through the implants Saren had received from Sovereign, the Reaper reanimated his body, burning away all of Saren's flesh to reveal the extent of his cybernetic "upgrades".

Controlling Saren's corpse and speaking in his voice, Sovereign had the turian fight one last battle. Shepard and the team managed to destroy this nightmarish construct, and Saren's synthetic remains disintegrated. This avatar's destruction resulted in Sovereign losing control of its shields, allowing the Alliance fleet to destroy it.

However, Shepard knew that, fundamentally, Saren was right. Sooner or later the Reapers would return, and Shepard vowed to find some way to stop them.

Mass Effect: Ascension
Saren's influence outlived him. Publicly, the attack on the Citadel was given as a rogue Spectre leading an army of geth, while Sovereign's true nature remained classified.

But even this was enough to attract the interest of the quarians. They began digging into Saren's personal history, looking for any clue as to how he had managed to supposedly control the geth. They even contacted Kahlee Sanders, who had only met Saren briefly in 2165. After word began to leak suggesting that Saren had used a Reaper to override the geth's intelligence systems, the quarians began to wonder if it was possible for them to find another Reaper and do the same. However, to the galaxy at large, Saren's legacy was still that of a traitor.

Trivia

 * According to The Art of Mass Effect, Saren's left arm is actually a grafted geth arm.
 * Saren may be a member of a turian sub-species as evidenced by his facial "horns". There are five on top (as opposed to three) and two large "ear-horns". The latter could also be part of Saren's cybernetic mods (they have ridges and faint blue lights that appear artificial).
 * There are several cybernetic ports visible in the back of Saren's head during the events on Eden Prime, ports which are not readily noticeable on Saren's hologram during the first meeting of the Council. The port going into his leg also appears to be missing. He may have tried to hide them to avoid suspicion. This may imply that some upgrades were received by  Saren from Sovereign shortly into his indoctrination, although, as suggested by Saren during the attack on the Citadel, their amount was significantly increased after Virmire.
 * The platform that Saren rides when being fought was originally intended to be used by geth troopers (see The Art of Mass Effect) but was later made exclusive to Saren. Like all geth technology, it has a distinctive flashlight 'eye' and may be controlled using Saren's cybernetic implants.
 * Earlier concept art for Mass Effect portrayed Saren in a different outfit that looked more or less inspired by Star Wars, as well as showing him with what appeared to be some kind of sword or at least some form of walking stick, indicating a broader form of combat system that included meele weapons of some sort. Perhaps, if kept, then Shepard could have had the use of a sword, the archtypical weapon of the hero or main protagonist of a fantasy or fantasy inspired story, like Star Wars or Final Fantasy.