Saren Arterius

Saren Arterius is the longest serving turian member of the Spectres - the elite military 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 about 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. As a Spectre it is generally believed he will continue to follow the will of the Council in this matter, but there are some - particularly among the Alliance - who fear Saren may soon decide to take matters into his own hands.

Saren is voiced by Fred Tatasciore

Sometime after the events of Mass Effect: Revelation, Saren discovered (or was discovered by) the Reaper designated Sovereign. Saren learned of the fate of the cultures of eons past, and made it his goal to spare the races of the galaxy by aiding the Reapers, and thus proving the worth of organics to them so that they might be spared. This, of course, was a pipe-dream. The more time Saren spent in service to Sovereign, the more indoctrinated he became. His free will was quickly being sapped and supplanted by the desires of the Reaper. The geth were called from behind the Perseus Veil to serve their new machine-god and its chosen 'prophet'. Saren committed terrible acts of genocide, killing those he had sworn to protect; even murdering his old friend and fellow Spectre, Nihlus. After destroying the human colony of Eden Prime in order to recover a Prothean beacon that would lead him to the Conduit, Commander Shepard began the mission to hunt down and stop the rogue Spectre; whatever the cost. After being hunted across several worlds, Shepard and Saren finally met face-to-face on the tropical world of Virmire, where Saren had established his base of operations. Saren fled after a brief scuffle with Shepard and company, narrowly escpaing the nuclear blast that destroyed the complex. The next confrontation would be on the lost Prothean world of Illos. This is where the Conduit was located, and where all things would be revealed. The activated Conduit brought Saren to the Citadel where his geth and Sovereign mounted a surprise assault. He was just about to activate the Citadel's latent mass relay, paving the way for the rest of the Reapers to enter through dark space, when he was interrupted by Shepard. In the end, Saren was killed; some reports say he took his own life, others that Shepard was forced to battle him atop the Council platform. Whatever the case, Sovereign was not ready to relinquish its hold on the misguided turian just yet. It reanimated his body, stripping away all of Saren's organic flesh and controlling the skeletal assemblage of implants through some unknown process. Shepard and crew managed to destroy this nightmarish construct, ending Saren, and Sovereign, forever.