Codex/The Reaper War

The Fall of Khar'Shan
For every thousand batarian refugees, there are a thousand and one stories about how the Reapers invaded the batarian systems. A few elements are common to almost every version, however. The Reapers arrived first in the Vular system and immediately destroyed its communications network. The Hegemony's Department of Information Control blamed the loss of signal on space weather, but scrambled ships to the system nonetheless. Within a day, Reaper capital ships appeared in the Harsa system and descended on the batarian homeworld, Khar'shan.

For all the rhetoric about the Hegemony's military prowess, their response to the Reapers was uncoordinated. Moments after the information minister took to the extranet and announced that unknown ships were destroying all traffic near Khar'shan, the defense minister declared there was no reason to panic. The planet's comm buoys were destroyed next, creating an ominous silence that has persisted ever since.

Fearing they were next, batarian colonies across Hegemony space began evacuations. SO many refugees poured into the human-occupied Exodus Cluster that Systems Alliance officials at first thought the batarians were invading.

More systems have gone dark as their comm buoys were destroyed, and millions more batarians, trapped on their planets, sit waiting for the Reapers.