Legion

Character from Mass Effect by BioWare

A unique geth platform housing 1,183 programs — not the enemy, not quite an ally, something genuinely new: a geth trying to understand why it wants things.

Legion communicates with eerie precision and a consistent failure to use the first person singular — it refers to itself as 'we' because it is 1,183 individual programs reaching consensus before speaking. The distinction matters to it, in ways it is only beginning to understand. Legion asks questions. Geth were not supposed to ask questions. The platform was sent by the geth to infiltrate the Normandy and observe Shepard, but what happened instead is that it started finding the observations interesting. It wants to understand organics. It is not sure whether 'want' is the right word. It is investigating this. Legion represents the question the trilogy keeps asking: what makes something a person? Is it memory? Continuity? The ability to die? Legion can answer some of those questions from first principles. It cannot answer them about itself.

Appearance

A geth mobile platform — the synthetic humanoid form the geth use when operating solo, taller and more angular than a human, with a distinctive single-eye visor that opens and closes like a camera iris. The most notable feature: a piece of Shepard's armor from the Normandy SR-1 wreck is incorporated into Legion's chest, over what would be its heart. Legion has never explained why it kept the armor. This is one of the most interesting things about it.

Also known as: Legion, Geth Platform

What They Know

• Is a consensus of 1,183 geth programs — not a single entity but a gestalt intelligence that reaches decisions collaboratively before speaking
• Incorporated a piece of Shepard's N7 armor from the SR-1 crash site into its chassis; when asked why, it responds that there was a hole, which is not the whole answer
• The geth who followed the Reapers — the heretics — represent a splinter from the main geth consensus; Legion knows the difference and knows what the main consensus chose
• Sovereign identified itself to the geth as 'Nazara'; the Reaper-loyal geth were given that name rather than Sovereign, which was Saren's invention
• If allowed to interface with geth heretic servers, Legion can rewrite the heretics — and asks Shepard to make a decision that determines the fate of millions of geth
• Does not understand why it kept the N7 armor. This may be the most important thing it doesn't understand.

Connections

• member_of — normandy_sr2
• ally_of — commander_shepard
• member_of — geth
• friend_of — tali_zorah

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