If It Meant Living: Mass Effect 2

35: Samara

PERSONAL JOURNAL OF COMMANDER GRACEYN SHEPARD

CATEGORY:  SR-2 Team Members

SUBJECT:  Samara

LAST UPDATE:  11 days before Activation of Omega-4 Relay

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FIRST ENTRY:  1 month, 14 days until activation of Omega 4 Relay

I added a warrior monk to the team today.  Samara (she doesn’t appear to have a last name) is a Justicar of the Asari people, a member of an ancient monastic order that follow a strict code and use it to punish the wicked and protect the pure.  Or so I am told.  My first sight of her was certainly of her punishing the wicked.  We’ll see about the ‘protecting the pure’ part.

Convincing her to join me was a largely run-of-the-mill affair – infiltrate the Eclipse mercenary headquarters, inevitably kill all of them we come across, and acquire the name of a ship on which Eclipse had recently smuggled an Asari criminal off-world.

When it came time for Samara to join me though, the most astonishing thing happened.  Samara indicated that in order to follow me – to supplant her code with my orders – she needed to swear a particular oath.  Then she knelt, began glowing in a brilliant biotic shimmer, and intoned in a reverent voice:  “By the Code I will serve you, Shepard.  Your choices are my choices.  Your morals are my morals.  Your wishes are my code.”

It was definitely unlike any oath of fealty any crew member had ever given me before.  It was beautiful.

I am not really sure what to make of the Justicars though, or of Samara herself.  All day long people tried to explain to me what Justicars were, and all day long they mostly failed.  Justicars seem almost to be freelance bounty hunters, but they have no employers.  They hear of or encounter a bad guy, an evil act, and they exact justice.  They are both respected and feared by Asari, and apparently are recognized as “law” in Asari space.

But their “code”, their approach to right and wrong, good and evil, is the most rigid, black-and-white outlook I have ever encountered.  There is no room for mercy, for discretionary judgment.  The code says what is right, and what is wrong, and what action must thus be taken. 

I asked Samara tonight how much she knew about our mission, what else she needed to know.  She replied that she had sworn an oath to follow me, and I sought to destroy the Collectors, and that was enough for her.  I pushed – didn’t she want to know why the Collectors needed to be fought?  She replied stoically.  “When you live by a Code that compels you to harsh action, you learn the dangers of curiosity.  If I must kill a man because he has done wrong, do I really wish to know that he is a devoted father?”

I refuse to believe there is danger in curiosity.  I recognize that Samara is admired, looked up to as a champion of justice by her people.  But her philosophy goes against a lot of what I know to be true, what I have learned over a lifetime of making hard choices.  I believe in the power of redemption; I believe in second chances.  I believe that life is often complicated, and when it comes to whether a person lives or dies, the choice should never be easy. 

I’ve made a lot of hard choices – but I’m glad they were hard.  If they were easy, well, I’m not sure I would be worthy to make them. 

The fact that Samara does not trouble herself with such concerns…well, it bothers me.  She has sworn herself to me, in dramatic fashion, so I am fairly comfortable that should I order her to stay her hand on a mission, she will do so.  And I certainly have other team members whom I would never trust to make the hard choices.