Batarians
Four-eyed isolationists of Khar'shan, notorious for piracy.
The batarians are an isolationist, four-eyed humanoid species from the planet Khar'shan in the Mass Effect series. They are notorious for piracy and for actively opposing humanity's colonisation of the galaxy.
Quick Facts
- Homeworld
- Khar'shan
- Government
- Batarian Hegemony
- Notable dlc
- Bring Down the Sky, Arrival
Lore & Background
Humanity's aggressive expansion into the Attican Traverse, which has enveloped the heart of batarian space, set it against the Batarian Hegemony. Four hundred years before humanity joined galactic society, the batarians bombed the salarian world of Mannovai.
Reader's Guide
In early plans for the first game the batarians, led by Saren, were the main antagonists, conceived as warmongering bat-like creatures; they were replaced by the geth to strengthen the human-versus-machine conflict and redesigned as four-eyed humanoids.
Batarians are the villains of Bring Down the Sky, a DLC for the first Mass Effect. In Mass Effect 2's Arrival DLC, Shepard destroys the mass relay of the Bahak system in batarian space to delay the Reapers, killing over 300,000 batarians, which leads to Shepard's imprisonment at the start of Mass Effect 3. The Reaper invasion's earliest fronts are in batarian and human space.
More in Factions & Organizations
Elsewhere in Mass Effect
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced