Migrant Fleet

Also known as the Flotilla, the Migrant Fleet is the massive fleet that became home to the quarians after they were driven from their home world by the geth. The Migrant Fleet consists of roughly fifty thousand starships that house seventeen million quarians. The Fleet is so large it can take days for all the ships to pass through a mass relay. Some of the vessels date from the original flight from the geth, three centuries ago.

The Migrant Fleet is rarely welcoming to outsiders, as any risk to the Fleet is a risk to the quarian species. Quarians rarely leave except to go on Pilgrimage; ships sometimes leave on an individual basis to pursue their own goals, on missions that can last days or years, but usually return eventually. As Tali'Zorah nar Rayya describes her culture: "Home is a state of mind."

Life in the Migrant Fleet
The Migrant Fleet is broken up into various clans, sometimes spread over several ships. Each individual ship has long been retrofitted to house as large a crew as possible. Over time the quarians thin out the vessels they can't use or are too damaged to repair, pooling the credits to buy and convert new ships.

Conditions aboard every vessel in the Migrant Fleet are extremely cramped. One cruiser, the Idenna, had a quarian population of nearly seven hundred, while an Alliance cruiser of comparative size would have only around eighty crewmen. Space is at a premium because of the sheer numbers of quarians living aboard the Flotilla. Captains are also keen to increase the size of their crew, as this increases their status in quarian society. Living space is therefore priority; the cargo holds of freighters, for example, are converted into small compartments for individuals to live in, often lined with colourful fabrics to make it an individual space and reduce noise.

Due to the high value of ships, stealing one is a capital crime among the quarians.

Quarians also serve volunteer rotations aboard the three Liveships which form the heart of the Fleet. Enormous vessels which are recognised as being incredible feats of aerospace and agricultural engineering, the Liveships are the source of food for the entire Flotilla. Losing any one of them would be a catastrophe and doom millions of quarians to starvation, so the Liveships are under heavy guard and protected at all costs.

Everything the quarians do must help to ensure the continued survival of the Migrant Fleet. The Pilgrimage forms a large part of this, as well as being a cultural rite of passage and a safeguard against inbreeding. The Pilgrimage also gives quarians a chance to explore galactic society and appreciate their own people back on the Flotilla. Young quarians are prepared for their Pilgrimage by having lessons in life outside the Migrant Fleet, receiving gifts to help them, and being treated for immunodeficiency before they are allowed to leave.

Apart from their Pilgrimages, quarians typically spend their entire lives living shipboard and contributing to the Flotilla. In addition, quarians do not normally welcome outsiders onto the Migrant Fleet, because visitors carry an unacceptable risk of contagion; taken together, these factors mean quarians tend to be quite insular, caring little about the galaxy outside the Fleet.

Politics and Military Policy
In theory the Migrant Fleet is still under martial law, meaning the captain of a ship has the final say on disputes, but in practice the quarians are quite democratic. Each ship has an elected civilian council and the captain often defers to their judgment. Overruling the council without a good reason is grounds for the captain to be removed.

Representatives from each ship serve on the Conclave, the civilian government. The Conclave makes the day-to-day decisions about Fleet business: collection of resources, the current course of the Flotilla, policing and so on. Opposition comes from a group called the Outriders' Coalition. The Conclave is overseen by the Admiralty Board, five quarians who can override the Conclave's decisions.

Once they have chosen to override the decision, the entire Admiralty Board must resign their posts or be arrested by the quarian military. This rule is in place to ensure that the Admiralty overrides the Conclave only in the most dire situations, when the Conclave is making a mistake that threatens the survival of the quarians as a species. This policy has served the quarians well. In three centuries, the Admiralty Board has only overridden the Conclave four times.

Outside the internal politics of the Migrant Fleet, the quarian navy is small, but highly aggressive due to the need to protect ships that effectively safeguard the future of their entire race. If the motives of approaching ships cannot be established, they will shoot to kill.

The quarian policy of strip-mining systems for resources, and often being hired 'under the table' for their specialised skills, replacing existing workers, makes the approach of the Migrant Fleet very unpopular. Some species will make a 'gift' of fuel, food or ships if they know the Flotilla is approaching, to discourage the quarians from entering their system.

Mass Effect: Ascension
At the time of Mass Effect: Ascension, the Migrant Fleet was passing close to a volus-controlled system, including the planet Daleon. The volus were appealing to the Citadel to help them hasten the quarians' departure, but the Citadel was too busy taking out pockets of geth resistance and handling the restructuring of the Council to deal with the perennial problem of the Migrant Fleet.

In the middle of this, three humans - Kahlee Sanders, Gillian Grayson and Hendel Mitra - were brought to the Fleet by Lemm'Shal nar Tesleya for protection from Cerberus. Lemm, a young quarian on his Pilgrimage, took them aboard the Idenna, hoping that by arranging a meeting between the captain and Kahlee, he would have found a suitable Pilgrimage gift to join the crew. The quarians, astonished at having outsiders aboard the Fleet, initially confined them to their shuttle out of fear of contamination, and later asked their visitors to wear environmental suits at all times.

During her tours of the Idenna, Kahlee saw the huge living quarters, the ship's trading deck, and the bridge where she was met by the captain, Ysin'Mal vas Idenna. Captain Mal was described by Seeto'Hodda nar Idenna as a proponent for change in the Fleet, wanting to send ships on long-term missions to find new homeworlds rather than focusing on simply maintaining the status quo. This often brought the captain into conflict with more conservative quarians.

Kahlee soon discovered that the quarians, after seeing Saren Arterius control the geth, had been investigating every scrap of information about his past, and come up with her name. She was invited to a conference and interviewed by members of the Admiralty Board. They wanted to find out what she knew about the so-called Reapers, and if there was any chance the quarians could use a Reaper to control the geth themselves. Despite being an expert on synthetic intelligence, Kahlee knew very little about Saren and had few answers for them.

After the meeting, Kahlee had a private audience with Captain Mal of the Idenna. He told her soberly that the Migrant Fleet was dying. Although the quarians had maintained zero population growth aboard the Flotilla quite successfully in the three centuries since their exile, their problem was the lack of spaceworthy vessels. They were unable to replace old ships as fast as they were losing them, and within ninety years, their population would be unsustainable. Unfortunately the conservative policies of the Conclave and the Admiralty Board meant little was being done to prevent it, when Captain Mal knew that exploratory missions could be the answer. He asked for Kahlee's help, but was interrupted when the Idenna was attacked by Cerberus and the traitor Golo.

The assault was eventually repelled, but the simple fact of it sent ripples through the whole Fleet. The quarians realised that they were vulnerable to a determined attack, and that the Flotilla itself was more fragile than they had thought. The voices of captains like Mal were finally heard. Proposals were quickly drafted to send cruisers - including the Idenna - on long-term missions outside the Fleet, either to find new worlds to settle, or a way to finally drive the geth from the Perseus Veil and allow the quarians to return home.

Mass Effect 2
In Mass Effect 2, Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy head to the Migrant Fleet where they find Tali on trial for treason and facing exile. Depending on Shepard's actions on her behalf Tali may be exiled for her alleged crimes or found innocent.

Notable Vessels

 * Idenna and her scout vessel, Cyniad
 * Rayya: notable for being Tali'Zorah nar Rayya's birth ship. Seeto'Hodda nar Idenna's sister also joined the Rayya after completing her Pilgrimage.
 * Tesleya: the birth ship of Lemm'Shal nar Tesleya.
 * Usela: the quarian traitor Golo, as 'Golo'Mekk vas Usela', was accepted into the Usela's crew after his Pilgrimage. He was exiled after trying to sell his fellow quarians to the Collectors.
 * Tonbay: a vessel which Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay joined after going on Pilgrimage.
 * Neema: the vessel Tali'Zorah joined after completing her Pilgrimage, taking the name Tali'Zorah vas Neema.

Trivia

 * The Migrant Fleet is not featured in Mass Effect, apart from being mentioned in conversations with Tali. In Bring Down the Sky, if Shepard suggests evacuating Terra Nova, Simon Atwell claims that only the Flotilla has the number of ships they'd need "and I don't see the quarians showing up to give us a lift."
 * An abandoned quarian vessel can be found in the carbonaceous asteroid field in the Phoenix system during a survey, but is never seen.
 * The Migrant Fleet's situation is similar to that of the humans in the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica (both classic and new), and the Travelers from Stargate Atlantis, who have a similar system of government with a governing council and ship captains who have final say on what happens on their own vessels.
 * In the Mass Effect 2 trailer about Tali, you can see a part of the flotilla. It includes some possible cruisers and a large, spherical vessel.

Source

 * in-game Codex
 * Mass Effect: Ascension