Ilos: Archives - Mass Effect

This guide will help you explore the archives area of Ilos in Mass Effect.

Ilos: Archives Map

Arrival
Geth Rocket Troopers
Vigil
Exit to Trench Run

Ilos: Archives Overview

1 – Arrival

Having successfully shut down the security system, you’re now able to continue your pursuit of Saren. These “archives” are filled with cryogenic stasis pods – the Protheans’ final effort to ensure their species endured through the Reaper onslaught.

2 – Geth Rocket Troopers

Four Geth Rocket Troopers add a little excitement to this otherwise uneventful road trip.

3 – Vigil

Your squad members seem to think that the large force fields that suddenly surrounded the Mako is part of some kind of trap set by Saren, but that’s not the case. Proceed on foot through the hallway to the east and take the elevator down to “The Watcher’s Chamber”. Here, you’ll encounter an advanced “non-organic analysis system” called Vigil.

Vigil has been monitoring your communication since you arrived on Ilos and has constructed its message in a language that you can comprehend. It can also detect that you are not Prothean nor machine, and that you have not been “tainted” by indoctrination. Using personality imprints from Ksad Ishan, chief overseer of the Ilos research facility, Vigil will begin revealing all of the knowledge gathered by the Protheans prior to their extinction.

As it turns out, the Citadel is actually a gigantic mass relay. The Reapers designed it as a trap, as they knew it would be used as the heart of every organic civilization to ever rise up in the galaxy. For millions of years, they have used it as a foothold to return from dark space slaughter countless such civilizations. Now, the task of breaking this cycle rests on your shoulders.

Vigil continues to describe the Reapers’ tactics. After 50,000 years of inactivity in the farthest reaches of space, the Reaper fleets invaded the Citadel, killing their leaders and seizing control of all the mass relays. Over the course of a few centuries, they systematically moved from world to world and system to system killing off every single Prothean in existence and stripping all settled planets of their resources and technology. Once complete, the Reapers simply returned to dark space through the Citadel relay. Any Prothean slaves who had been indoctrinated were simply left to starve or to die from exposure.

According to Vigil, Ilos was used as the foundation of a top secret facility where Prothean scientists were working on the Conduit (rather than being a weapon, it turns out that the Conduit is actually a small-scale version of a mass relay that links directly to the Citadel). All personnel on Ilos went into cryogenic stasis to conserve resources during the invasion, but the genocide lasted for centuries and Vigil was forced to shut the pods down one by one as energy reserves dwindled. When the Reapers finally retreated, only a dozen Prothean scientists remained. Unable to sustain their population, the researches devised a plan to stop the Reapers from returning.

Discovering that the Keepers on the Citadel are the key to activating the relay, the Prothean scientists used the Conduit to alter the signal received by the Keepers so that they would not be able to activate the Citadel relay. Now, Saren intends to use the Conduit to circumvent the Citadel’s defenses and pass control over to Sovereign. Once in control, Sovereign will be able to manually open the relay and trigger another cycle of extinction. To keep this from happening, Vigil offers you a data file that will corrupt the Citadel’s security protocols and grant you temporary control of it.

With a better understanding of what you must do, take a moment to go through your investigation dialogue choices to learn more about Sovereign, the Prothean beacons, the Keepers, and the Prothean scientists. Once the conversation with Vigil concludes, you’ll receive experience and Paragon or Renegade, depending on your responses. Return to the Mako and get moving!