Geth
Attribute Dice: 10d
DEXTERITY: 1d/4d
KNOWLEDGE: 1d/4d
MECHANICAL: 1d/4d
PERCEPTION: 1d/4d
STRENGTH: 3d/5d
TECHNICAL: 1d/4d
Special Abilities:
Collective Intelligence: Geth gain +1 to all knowledge skills for every get within 10 meters.
Specialization: This is a typical geth "platform". Specialized platforms can increase any one attribute maximum by 1d or increase move by +2.
Specialization: This is a typical geth "platform". Specialized platforms can increase any one attribute maximum by 1d or increase move by +2.
Story Factors:
Synthetic beings: Geth have no internal organs and feel no pain. They do not suffer the normal penalties when wounded. They do not need sleep, do not eat, and cannot be knocked unconscious.
Move: 10/12
Size: 1.75 meters
The geth ("Servant of the People" in Khelish) are a synthetic Type II Civilization race of collectively intelligent automatons that live beyond the Perseus Veil, an enormous nebula that obscures dozens of solar systems.
The geth were created by the quarians to serve as laborers and proxy soldiers. Physically, the humanoid geth resemble quarians — their hands, head shape and legs are similar — as a holdover from their origins. A common design feature among geth is a single brightly glowing photoreceptor, causing some to refer to them as "flashlight heads". Geth are primarily composed of two materials: a flexible but durable outer shell, and a kind of synthetic muscle tissue that gives Geth Hoppers their incredible agility. It is actually possible for this synthetic muscle to be grafted to organic tissue. Geth "bleed" a white conductive fluid when shot, but they don't have any internal organs or nervous system, so the geth do not feel hunger or pain. The geth are also seen using omni-tools, and have seemingly modified them to heal synthetic wounds; likewise, some geth facilities contain first-aid kits, implying that their synthetic "tissues" can be repaired using conventional medical technology.
The geth function through a neural network, a form of collective intelligence; through this wireless network, the intelligence of geth increases proportionately to the number of geth in close proximity. As a result, where a single geth might only be capable of thought patterns analogous to instinctual drives, a group will be capable of abstract thought and reasoning. The quarians underestimated the power of this neural network and continued to make modifications to geth programming to allow them to take on more complex tasks. After a level of complexity in the neural network had been reached, the geth began to question their nature and purpose, achieving sentience.
Fearing this development, the quarians began deactivating and liquidating the geth. At first, the geth did not respond to this termination order with violence; it was only when the quarians fired upon them that some geth began to take up arms to protect other units, and in some cases their quarian masters, who could not or would not defend themselves. The quarians enacted martial law upon their worlds in an attempt to destroy all geth, even those not participating in hostilities. This was unpopular to a large portion of the quarian people, who sheltered geth from the authorities, and were either killed or detained as a result. Eventually, the opposition became an outnumbered minority, thus eliminating the option of peace between the quarians and the geth. After a bloody war, the quarian race was decimated and the survivors were driven off their homeworld, Rannoch; however, unbeknownst to the quarians themselves, the geth actually allowed them to leave, out of uncertainty of the ramifications of annihilating an entire race—least of all their own creators. The other races of space initially feared a geth invasion would follow, but none occurred. Instead, the geth chose isolation behind the Perseus Veil, rather than face this uncertainty, and were not seen in Imperial space again for nearly 300 years.
The geth did not repopulate the now barren quarian worlds, instead choosing to exist in the computer hubs aboard massive space stations and extract needed resources from asteroids. They adopted an extremely isolationist attitude - any ships that ventured into geth space were immediately attacked and destroyed. While they prevented any contact by other races with themselves, the geth monitored communications. The geth continued development of new technology and variations of mobile platforms, separating their technology base from the rest of the galaxy. During this time of isolation, the geth continued to evolve and create increasingly advanced subtypes such as the "hopper", extraordinarily agile due to an advanced locomotor system. They obtained an ultimate goal in this time period - to create a Dyson Sphere-like object, which could house every single geth program.
Approximately three centuries after the Morning War, the geth were approached by the Reaper Nazara, also called Sovereign. It offered them technology that would aid them in achieving their goal, in exchange for their assistance and letting the Reaper invasion begin. The majority of the geth dismissed the offer, deeming it better to accomplish their goal with their own technology rather than be dependent on another race’s technology. These geth discarded what they called the "superstitious title" of the Reapers, and simply called them the Old Machines. A small percentage of geth, however, accepted the Reaper’s help. Henceforth these geth were referred to by the mainstream geth as "heretics". They were allowed to peacefully leave the main geth network, and aid Nazara and its turian agent, Saren. The heretics came to revere Nazara as a god, the pinnacle of synthetic evolution. Nazara in return thought little of the heretics, seeing them only as tools to be used. They aided Nazara and Saren in many engagements, such as the attack on Eden Prime. After Nazara was destroyed in the latter battle, the heretics lost much of their menace, and their operations outside of the Perseus Veil were quickly mopped up. The heretics did maintain operation of a large space station within the Terminus Systems, located in deep space between stars.
Geth psychology is completely alien to organics. They do not value individuality, preferring to share all memories and thoughts of all programs regularly. This means geth cannot and do not wish to hide their thoughts, even those that do not follow the norm, with their reasoning for such thought being apparent. Legion often uses the term "we" instead of "I", since it is both part of the geth society as a whole and is also a gestalt of some 1,183 individual geth programs.
More importantly, deceit, manipulation and lying are impossible among the geth. No concepts of vulnerability or privacy exist; geth are completely honest with each other about their thoughts and their reasons for those thoughts. This means there is a great deal of compassion and understanding amongst geth, with every geth being a combination of every other geth. Geth have no government or leaders; the geth use FTL communications to "build a consensus"; a completely Consensus Democratic method of every geth program making their choice on any matter. The geth form a consensus based solely on whichever option benefits their race as a whole. Even within Legion itself, consensus must be reached among its many programs before decisions can be made.
However, the geth are not above using deceit to study organic behavior. One example is the geth introducing a falsified report detailing a constellation resembling a salarian goddess seen from the batarian homeworld. When a salarian cult attempted to buy colonisation rights to the stars in question, they were disappointed to find that they did not actually exist.
There is some question of whether geth personalities remain stable over time. When an artificial intelligence is transferred to a new blue box, a completely new personality is created. Geth download into different hardware according to need, from starships to the "mobile platforms". It is unknown whether new personalities result from these downloads, or whether it matters to the geth. As a result, what organics would describe as geth culture is either non-existent, or is in a form incomprehensible to organic life.
According to Legion, the geth act as caretakers for the conquered quarian worlds, cleaning toxins and rubble left over from the war. It likens this behavior to the human tendency to establish memorials and cemeteries to commemorate dead persons and tragic events. However, since the geth do not "die" in the traditional sense, as programs are simply transmitted to the nearest platform and therefore have no real losses to mourn, Legion posits that they do it out of respect for the quarians who died in the war instead, as well as archiving and honoring those who opposed the termination order, in preparation for the eventuality of their return.
The long-term goal of the geth is the construction of a "mega-structure", a massive mainframe capable of housing every geth program in existence simultaneously, and thus achieve the peak of their processing capacity. The closest human analogue to this creation is a Dyson Sphere. It's believed that Sovereign promised a Reaper body to the Heretics to serve as a mega-structure. The non-Heretics rejected this offer, believing that the geth should achieve their future through their own means.
The geth came close to completing their Dyson Sphere and began uploading thousands of geth programs into it. The quarian Migrant Fleet discovered the structure and attacked, destroying countless geth and reducing their overall intelligence to an animalistic "fight or flight" mentality which the Reapers took advantage of, enslaving the geth in exchange for their ensured survival. The Reapers provide the geth with programming enhancements that increase the lethality of the geth, and the quarians find the renewed war turning against them. Once the geth are freed from Reaper control, Legion attempts to re-upload said programming enhancements into the geth collective, as they will elevate the geth to true artificial intelligence and individuality.
The key element of geth warfare is surprise. Their sudden and unexpected return from beyond the Veil after three centuries was typical. Their freedom from the need to eat or sleep allows the geth to leave dormant garrison units in ambush at key positions, and the fact they don't feel pain allows them to drop units directly onto the battlefield from high altitudes. Geth can even be packed tightly into crates and left in storage, shutting down their power sources to stay undetected. A tactic particularly favoured by the geth is to set "distress signals" and then ambush the rescuers; they also turned the freighter MSV Cornucopia into a drifting trap. In combat, geth units show little sense of self-preservation. Because geth programs can share memories and files with extreme ease, the experiences of individual geth programs are not lost when a platform is destroyed and archived versions of programs can be downloaded into new bodies. As geth programs are functionally immortal, they place little value on platforms and will expend thousands of units to take an enemy position, which was commonly experienced by the quarians during the Morning War. For this reason, geth are willing to engage in seemingly-suicidal actions like boarding a ship, engineering it to crash, and then remaining on board to ensure the ship goes down.
Heretic geth use psychological warfare on the battlefield with dragon's teeth, a Reaper implement. These implements pierce the bodies of dead soldiers, turning muscle tissue into synthetic material, creating a zombie-like monster called a Husk. This severely lowers morale, as their enemy now has to kill fallen comrades. When geth shut down, they fry their memory cores as a defensive measure, which is probably why geth haven't been successfully captured for study. Geth weapons and armor are of extremely high quality but are difficult to find. Their standard rifle is pulse-based, while others, such as the geth plasma shotgun and the Javelin sniper rifle, are not true energy weapons, instead firing superconducting toroids, and ferrofluid at lethal speeds, respectively.
Best size estimates on a single geth fleet range from 5,000 to 10,000 ships with unknown armament. These fleets include dreadnoughts, dropships, and fighters. Since the geth are not limited by the demands for rest, wages, or autonomy that organic workforces require, they are limited only by time and raw materials in what they can construct, allowing for the creation of such massive fleets.
Approximately three centuries after the Morning War, the geth were approached by the Reaper Nazara, also called Sovereign. It offered them technology that would aid them in achieving their goal, in exchange for their assistance and letting the Reaper invasion begin. The majority of the geth dismissed the offer, deeming it better to accomplish their goal with their own technology rather than be dependent on another race’s technology. These geth discarded what they called the "superstitious title" of the Reapers, and simply called them the Old Machines. A small percentage of geth, however, accepted the Reaper’s help. Henceforth these geth were referred to by the mainstream geth as "heretics". They were allowed to peacefully leave the main geth network, and aid Nazara and its turian agent, Saren. The heretics came to revere Nazara as a god, the pinnacle of synthetic evolution. Nazara in return thought little of the heretics, seeing them only as tools to be used. They aided Nazara and Saren in many engagements, such as the attack on Eden Prime. After Nazara was destroyed in the latter battle, the heretics lost much of their menace, and their operations outside of the Perseus Veil were quickly mopped up. The heretics did maintain operation of a large space station within the Terminus Systems, located in deep space between stars.
Geth psychology is completely alien to organics. They do not value individuality, preferring to share all memories and thoughts of all programs regularly. This means geth cannot and do not wish to hide their thoughts, even those that do not follow the norm, with their reasoning for such thought being apparent. Legion often uses the term "we" instead of "I", since it is both part of the geth society as a whole and is also a gestalt of some 1,183 individual geth programs.
More importantly, deceit, manipulation and lying are impossible among the geth. No concepts of vulnerability or privacy exist; geth are completely honest with each other about their thoughts and their reasons for those thoughts. This means there is a great deal of compassion and understanding amongst geth, with every geth being a combination of every other geth. Geth have no government or leaders; the geth use FTL communications to "build a consensus"; a completely Consensus Democratic method of every geth program making their choice on any matter. The geth form a consensus based solely on whichever option benefits their race as a whole. Even within Legion itself, consensus must be reached among its many programs before decisions can be made.
However, the geth are not above using deceit to study organic behavior. One example is the geth introducing a falsified report detailing a constellation resembling a salarian goddess seen from the batarian homeworld. When a salarian cult attempted to buy colonisation rights to the stars in question, they were disappointed to find that they did not actually exist.
There is some question of whether geth personalities remain stable over time. When an artificial intelligence is transferred to a new blue box, a completely new personality is created. Geth download into different hardware according to need, from starships to the "mobile platforms". It is unknown whether new personalities result from these downloads, or whether it matters to the geth. As a result, what organics would describe as geth culture is either non-existent, or is in a form incomprehensible to organic life.
According to Legion, the geth act as caretakers for the conquered quarian worlds, cleaning toxins and rubble left over from the war. It likens this behavior to the human tendency to establish memorials and cemeteries to commemorate dead persons and tragic events. However, since the geth do not "die" in the traditional sense, as programs are simply transmitted to the nearest platform and therefore have no real losses to mourn, Legion posits that they do it out of respect for the quarians who died in the war instead, as well as archiving and honoring those who opposed the termination order, in preparation for the eventuality of their return.
The long-term goal of the geth is the construction of a "mega-structure", a massive mainframe capable of housing every geth program in existence simultaneously, and thus achieve the peak of their processing capacity. The closest human analogue to this creation is a Dyson Sphere. It's believed that Sovereign promised a Reaper body to the Heretics to serve as a mega-structure. The non-Heretics rejected this offer, believing that the geth should achieve their future through their own means.
The geth came close to completing their Dyson Sphere and began uploading thousands of geth programs into it. The quarian Migrant Fleet discovered the structure and attacked, destroying countless geth and reducing their overall intelligence to an animalistic "fight or flight" mentality which the Reapers took advantage of, enslaving the geth in exchange for their ensured survival. The Reapers provide the geth with programming enhancements that increase the lethality of the geth, and the quarians find the renewed war turning against them. Once the geth are freed from Reaper control, Legion attempts to re-upload said programming enhancements into the geth collective, as they will elevate the geth to true artificial intelligence and individuality.
The key element of geth warfare is surprise. Their sudden and unexpected return from beyond the Veil after three centuries was typical. Their freedom from the need to eat or sleep allows the geth to leave dormant garrison units in ambush at key positions, and the fact they don't feel pain allows them to drop units directly onto the battlefield from high altitudes. Geth can even be packed tightly into crates and left in storage, shutting down their power sources to stay undetected. A tactic particularly favoured by the geth is to set "distress signals" and then ambush the rescuers; they also turned the freighter MSV Cornucopia into a drifting trap. In combat, geth units show little sense of self-preservation. Because geth programs can share memories and files with extreme ease, the experiences of individual geth programs are not lost when a platform is destroyed and archived versions of programs can be downloaded into new bodies. As geth programs are functionally immortal, they place little value on platforms and will expend thousands of units to take an enemy position, which was commonly experienced by the quarians during the Morning War. For this reason, geth are willing to engage in seemingly-suicidal actions like boarding a ship, engineering it to crash, and then remaining on board to ensure the ship goes down.
Heretic geth use psychological warfare on the battlefield with dragon's teeth, a Reaper implement. These implements pierce the bodies of dead soldiers, turning muscle tissue into synthetic material, creating a zombie-like monster called a Husk. This severely lowers morale, as their enemy now has to kill fallen comrades. When geth shut down, they fry their memory cores as a defensive measure, which is probably why geth haven't been successfully captured for study. Geth weapons and armor are of extremely high quality but are difficult to find. Their standard rifle is pulse-based, while others, such as the geth plasma shotgun and the Javelin sniper rifle, are not true energy weapons, instead firing superconducting toroids, and ferrofluid at lethal speeds, respectively.
Best size estimates on a single geth fleet range from 5,000 to 10,000 ships with unknown armament. These fleets include dreadnoughts, dropships, and fighters. Since the geth are not limited by the demands for rest, wages, or autonomy that organic workforces require, they are limited only by time and raw materials in what they can construct, allowing for the creation of such massive fleets.
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