Feros

 

Zhu's Hope colony on Feros.

Drawn to Feros by rogue geth activity, Shepard and the squad arrive at the Zhu's Hope colony, owned by ExoGeni Corporation. The colony has been suffering repeated geth attacks and the settlers there are acting strangely. Shepard, Wrex, and Kaidan clear the geth for the colonists and takes a Mako along the Prothean Skyway to the main geth base. The squad finds a small group of colonists who have become separated from the others, led by Juliana Baynham and a nervous ExoGeni rep, Ethan Jeong. Despite their situation these survivors seem to be coping better than Zhu's Hope. Before they leave, Juliana asks Shepard to look for her daughter Lizbeth, whom she believes to be still inside ExoGeni Headquarters.

Lizbeth Baynham.

After making their way inside the ExoGeni Headquarters, Shepard's squad finds Lizbeth, scared but alive. From the company Virtual Intelligence, Shepard discovers that the corporation has been experimenting with a mind-controlling plant, the Thorian, and that Zhu's Hope is actually a testing ground for ExoGeni to study its abilities. Shepard disables the force fields that the geth have set up by knocking the geth dropship off the headquarters and returns to the Skyway group. Jeong has received word that ExoGeni wants Zhu's Hope destroyed. Shepard is forced to kill Jeong and heads back to Zhu's Hope to find the Thorian.



The Thorian.

Controlled by the Thorian, the colonists attack Shepard on sight. Some have been turned into Thorian Creepers. Shepard can use special gas grenades that instantly kill the creepers and harmlessly paralyse the colonists, then descends beneath Zhu's Hope to find the Thorian. It is an enormous creature that looks nothing like a plant. It creates an asari clone to speak for it, but only to tell Shepard it's not interested in bargaining with 'meat'. After battling waves of Thorian Creepers and clones, Shepard manages to destroy the Thorian's neural nodes and kill it.

Shiala.

Thorian Creeper.

An asari emerges from a Thorian pod, and manages to explain what happened. Shepard learns that Saren sacrificed this asari ally, Shiala, to the Thorian to gain the Cipher. This is the cultural and ancestral experience of the Protheans, which is necessary to understand the vision that the Eden Prime beacon put into Shepard's mind. Freed from the Thorian, Shiala transfers the Cipher to Shepard. With it, once Shepard has had time to adjust, the vision will make more sense and hopefully lead them to the Conduit before Saren.