In the Mass Effect games, Commander Shepard must face a variety of powerful aliens, synthetics, rogue artificial intelligence, mercenaries and more. Starting in 2185, the Collectors became Shepard's enemy as well.

The Collectors are a mysterious and elusive race that few people have ever seen in person. More often, these aliens deal with their clients through proxies, and no one has ever followed them back to their homeworld, wherever it may be. But Commander Shepard is ready to take the fight to these menacing creatures.

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Origins, Biology and Methods

The Collectors are not a natural race like others on the galactic stage. They did not evolve to be like this; instead, they are highly advanced Prothean husks. The Reapers made the Collectors, and thus, the Collectors are utterly loyal to their creators. Near the end of the last Reaper invasion cycle, the Reapers gathered captured Protheans in large numbers and extensively modified them, even cutting out and rearranging pieces of their genome. They also infused the Protheans with advanced cybernetics and gave them an insect hive mentality to make them more coordinated and effective during missions or battles.

Collectors, unlike the original Protheans, also have insect-like wings and chitinous armor plating from head to toe. The Collectors have a general among them, one with an extra-wide head and an especially insect-like appearance. It commands its fellows remotely from aboard the Collector ship or the base as necessary, and it is often possessed by Harbinger, the oldest Reaper. The Collectors tend to collect unusual specimens of many races living in the galaxy, offering serious cash for them. No one knows why the Collectors want these specimens so badly, but it did inspire their name.

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The Collectors are not native to a single planet; instead, they use a massive space station as their home base, hidden in the hazardous galactic core. This haphazard base is within visual distance of a large black hole (possibly the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's core), and this area is hazardous to any intruders.

The Collectors have a single, large battlecruiser to their name, and they will use it and a handful of battle drones to intercept and shoot down any ship that invades their space. As a result, the wreckage of hundreds of ships creates an artificial asteroid field around the Collector base, making an approach even more difficult. As a further layer of security, the Collectors use an advanced IFF signal with the unique Omega 4 Relay, and any other ship that uses the relay will be set upon by Collector forces.

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The Collectors in the Story

For many years, the Collectors have skulked around the galaxy collecting specimens of various races, In 2183, they tried to get their hands on the dead body of Commander Shepard. They shot down the SSV Normandy in an ambush, and the Shadow Broker wanted to hand over the corpse in exchange for fabulous prizes. Liara T'Soni, out of personal loyalty to the Commander, risked her life to whisk Shepard's body away at the last moment, and the Collectors retreated back to the shadows.

By 2185, Commander Shepard was ready to face the Collectors again, and not just for personal revenge. These aliens had been raiding human colonies all over the galaxy and abducting everyone in them, leaving nothing behind but empty buildings. Not even corpses or marks from gunshots or explosions were left, suggesting a bloodless method on the Collectors' part. Shepard found video evidence of the Collectors at work on Horizon, a human colony, and reluctantly worked with Cerberus and the Illusive Man to fight back.

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Mordin Solus, a Salarian scientist, developed a countermeasure to the seeker swarms so Shepard's team would be immune to the flying drones' stun attack. When Freedom's Progress was attacked, seeker swarms were everywhere and had paralyzed all the colonists there for capture. When Shepard arrived, the Collector battlecruiser was already parked, and the Collectors were finishing up their abduction job. Shepard fought them directly and drove off their ship, but it was too late to save the colonists.

The Collectors laid a trap later on, acting as though their battlecruiser had been damaged and shut down. The Illusive Man made sure that Shepard walked into a trap to collect much-needed navigational intel. Fortunately, Shepard's squad was able to fight its way out and escape, and sometime after that, Shepard obtained the Reaper IFF necessary to travel through the Omega 4 Relay.

Shepard faced the Collectors once again when traveling through the Omega 4 Relay, the Normandy-SR2 destroying the Collector fighter drones and the battlecruiser alike. Shepard storms the Collector base and learns why the Collectors had kidnapped so many people: to melt them down to build a humanoid Reaper in their base. Shepard destroys the prototype Reaper and chooses to either destroy the base entirely or set off a pulse that kill all Collectors, leaving the base intact for Cerberus. Either way, the Collector race is finished, and Harbinger gives up in frustration, deciding out load to "find another way" to continue its mission. The menace of the Collectors, at least, is gone for good.

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