The Mechanical Bodyguard

So! Wanted to take a break from all the Ask deviations I've been doing on the side to do this old sketch I found among my pictures.

This is kinda a colab between my sister and me. She drew the lines and original sketch while I colored and shaded it.

These are both two of my OCs from Mass Effect, my Quarian Luxia'Na-eem and my Geth Unit Theta. They are best friends and Theta acts as Lux's loyal bodyguard.
They are often around each other at all times, and many times can be seen talking to each other like this down in the Cargo bay of her team's ship.

She enjoys teaching him things, and Theta finds it interesting how diverse Organics can be.

First, to understand this you must read about Project: Overlord from Mass Effect 2 - [link]

Theta's body is based around a Geth Prime and added onto, hence his size. It has the Overlord Virus, which is why his lights are green instead of blue or red, so it is capable to taking over any Geth or any machine in close proximity. However, since it is a prototype this technique isn't perfect and puts alot of strain on his systems, so he tends to refrain from using this ability unless ordered otherwise.

- Drawn by my sister
- Colored by me
- Lux and Theta belong to me
- Mass effect belongs to Bioware
- Done in GIMP

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If you want a back story of Lux, go here. - [link]

Here is Theta's back story-

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Unit Theta was created by Cerberus(hence the logo)in a special secret project known as Project: Overlord Resurrection.
Project: Overlord Resurrection was conceived by Cerberus to bring back the experiment, due to the catastrophic failure of Project: Overlord.

Originally, without anyone’s knowledge, the Illusive man put failsafes into the database of the Project’s systems. These failsafes would secretly preserve important information on the events of the experiment, just in case the project was going well and someone grew a conscious and decided to destroy the data.
He wanted to ‘make sure his investment had backups’ after all.

As time passed and there were no results, he threatened to shut the project down all together. After(my)Paragon Shepard, Elora, interfered and shut down the project, the Illusive Man received the secret data files on his com automatically when Gavin Archer began destroying the project’s information out of guilt for his brother.
At first, he considered scrapping it because of the failure of the original experiment, but came to the realization that it WAS working, David had indeed gained control over the Geth through a virus, and probably could have been controlled after Shepard had neutralized the situation if she hadn’t shipped David off to get help for his mental condition.

He came to the decision to reactivate the project, this time in a larger foundation in space and with a more controlled subject.

This time, they wouldn’t be using a VI/Organic hybrid. This time, they would be using something that was intelligent, but could be controlled far easier than a human.

They decided to use a Geth Prime.

A Geth Subject would be far better in that it already has a connection to the Geth Consensus and could easily communicate with them, and that was without the Virus. If they adapted a large one, the base body of a prime, it would most certainly be a force to reckon with and with a natural ability to control the Virus, and it will only know it’s master, Cerberus.

It was a brutal process, taking several tries, each naming them after roman letters of the alphabet. They either failed or went mad, but with increasing results every time they took the remaining information from the previous Unit and placed it into the next platform.

The Unit had to be smarter than a regular Geth, given the intelligence needed from David. So, thanks to tech information from the Quarians, they managed to force at least 1000 platforms into the Unit to increase it’s intelligence. It’s not quite as smart as legion, but far smarter than any human prodigy.
Finally, after months, they had a successful hit.

On their 8th try the Cerberus Scientists finally created a Prototype Platform that was able to not only control itself, but the minds of the Geth around it stably.

They codenamed it: Unit Theta.

Theta was successful in that it was strong, intelligent, and able to support the Overlord Virus without completely going haywire. Now that it was proven the Virus could work, they were going to dismantle and replace it with a perfected platform, codenamed: Iota.

Unfortunately, the scientists did not foresee the determination to survive that all Geth possess and underestimated Theta’s intelligence and self awareness. It was thinking clearly, unlike its predecessors, and was smart enough to understand it’s own Consensus. Unlike regular Geth, it also imitates everything thanks to an imitation chip installed into it by Cerberus. They installed it to speed the learning process, but it worked too well because it already learned the human language fluently.
It knew what they were planning on doing, and knew the platform would be shut down and replaced. Theta reached a consensus, and it didn’t want to be shut down.

No longer seeing Cerberus as an ally, Theta became hostile. It resisted and slaughtered several people in a desperate attempt to remain active.

In the struggle, they finally managed to stop Theta by restraining the platform and shutting it down.

It was put into a kind of stasis to be dismantled later so they could work on Iota in the meantime.

However, Lux and her team found the base and managed to inadvertently stop this operation, discovering and activating Theta in the process to interrogate later. Since Lux was the tech expert, she was the one who activated the Mega Geth.
Upon activation, Theta took into account it was Luxia who reawakened him, and saved his platform from permanent deactivation and memory loss. Immediately, it took a protective instinct over it’s savior and proceeded to brutally kill all of the groups attackers without hesitation.

Afterwards it was brought back with them to their ship where Lux volunteered to interrogate it in the ship’s cargo hold.

After an intense conversation, Lux got the information she wanted and a bodyguard she didn’t want. Theta was grateful to her for ‘saving’ their platform, so it personally put itself in her debt. He has no real connections to the Geth archives, and nowhere to go. All it knows is that it will serve what is literately a ‘creator’ of the Geth, the first Quarian it ever met, and will not hesitate to terminate anything, organic or synthetic, that threatens her.

Theta often refers to himself in third person, such as ‘Unit Theta’ or ‘This Platform’ rather than ‘we’ because the units forced into that platform were taken from several other platforms against their will, and therefore don’t consider Theta’s body to be theirs. So they will always refer to it like a separate object, at least until they can accept the body as truly theirs.

Because so little information was given to him and thanks to it's imitation chip, it is naturally curious.
Luxia, always fascinated by the Geth, will attempt to understand Theta and teach him several things that would not normally be taught to synthetics, playing off his curiosity.