"Okay, so this isn't actually my home universe or whatever," Harry begins. At least, as far as he knows, it's not. "So this is mostly secondhand stuff. But apparently, way back when, someone made these giant eldritch Artificial Intelligence horrors called Reapers to destroy all spacefaring civilization every fifty thousand years. We're still not entirely sure why. But most advanced technology is built on what people thought was Prothean tech, the civilization that was around the last time the Reapers came to call. Turns out it's really Reaper tech, and they leave it around so galactic society develops in a way that makes them easy to take out."

"No one really believes in the Reapers, even though one attacked the Citadel a couple years ago. People would rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend it's a geth creation, something less scary than 'giant unknown Cthulhu critters' anyway. Shepard - that's my commanding officer," and his girlfriend, but never mind that, "is one of the only ones who's been trying to get to the bottom of it since this whole mess started. The Alliance, that's the Earth's space navy, were behind her at first but then the ship blew up and she died officially, and it just was easier to deny the whole thing I guess."