r/masseffectlore • u/001DeafeningEcho • May 24 '26

Batarian first contact date

When do the Battarians make first contact with the citadel?

The wiki says they were contacted before the Rachni war, but that doesn’t really make sense. One world in the batarian home cluster was only colonized in 2154, while another was noted as being one of their earliest colonies, but only had a little more than six million people, which is only slightly more than some human colonies that are only 30 years old or even younger. There’s also the fact that they were outcompeted by a species apparently two millennia younger than them.

Do y’all have any idea on how to ballpark the actual first contact date and timeline for the batarians?

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u/Bobthemagicc0w May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

I don’t see a discrepancy - the humans are outliers.

Turian space, asari space, salarian space - all quite compact. Human space is almost as big as the rest of the Council combined. That’s despite humans being very new on the scene. Humans seem to have been much much faster to colonize and expand than any of the other species, except maybe the krogan during the rebellions.

The batarians were canonically very very slow to actually colonize the Skyllian Verge despite claiming it - and the Council only recognized settlements as constituting claims, hence why the Council wouldn’t back the batarians when humans started settling the Verge themselves over the batarians’ objections - as far as the Council was concerned, batarian “claims” were pretty empty other than the handful of isolated colonies (like Bahak). The batarians probably had less use for colonies even than the Council species - increasing their power and wealth (internally and externally) depended much more on their ability to abduct slaves, not creating economically productive colonies.

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u/Lord_of_Seven_Kings May 25 '26

It’s also not really clear why humans are like this, but I assume it has something to do with humans reproducing faster, due to having shorter lifespans. Growth rates for populations are exponential, and the rate of growth (and therefore the possibility of more settlements) is drastically higher as well. Combined with huge overpopulation on earth and there were potentially billions of humans ready to survive and thrive in the stars

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u/Bobthemagicc0w May 25 '26

I expect there isn’t a single simple explanation; it’s probably a combination of many things. Maybe, human psychology (risk tolerance, what we value, desire to expand, behavior when we feel threatened), where humans were in their development when they achieved interstellar breakout from Sol, who the leaders & pioneers were while that happened and how they shaped everyone else’s choices, how the First Contact War affected human psychology (maybe: resentment, desire to prove ourselves), and more. It could be a lot of small accidents.

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u/Lord_of_Seven_Kings May 25 '26

That desire to prove themselves is quite compelling, you’re right. It’s one of my favourite pieces of dialogue, in Mass Effect 2. The councillor do earth says “we have to fight for everything we want!” And the turian councillor responds with “So fight for it! But don’t expect us to just let you take it”

It came across to me like a sort of respect from the turians, who are probably the ones who would most understand humanity’s feelings in that moment.