Shepard Residence

From FABT

Shepard Residence
Historical information

Built:

5 March 2189 CE

Closed:

2 January 2253 CE

Purpose:

Home of the Shepard family

Facility information

Affiliation:

Shepard family

Armament:

Dozens of sentry turrets
Micro-filament explosive doorways
Electrified fences
Explosive charges along house support beams

Equipment:

Armoury stocked with weapons, heavy ordinance and armor.

Vehicles:

Room for 5 medium-sized vehicles, 3 skycars

 

The Shepard Residence, also known as the Estate of the Shepards, was the home and residence of the Shepard family, last owned by Tali'Shepard pav Rannoch. The house was located 32 kilometers south of El'Tivv on the Uma'Waz subcontinent and situated on cliffside on the southern coast of Uma'Waz, overlooking the Shan'o. Prior to the Reaper War, quarian admiral Rael'Zorah, the father of Tali'Zorah, made a promise to his daughter and to his wife that he would build them a house on their homeworld, dedicating his life's purpose to finding a way to reclaim Rannoch from the geth, although he would lose his wife, and ultimately his own life, before he could fulfill his promise. In 2186 CE, after the conclusion of the Second Morning War, Marcus L. Shepard, by then married to Tali, made a promise to her to personally build the house once the Reaper War was over, and the two of them spent some time planning out and designing the house's floor plan and organizing zoning permissions prior to having to leave to continue fighting the war. Unfortunately, Shepard would ultimately die at the war's conclusion, and Tali returned to Rannoch alone. With help from the geth, she used the blueprints she designed with him to build the house anyway, and by 2189 CE, the house was fully completed, and Tali would proceed to live there for many decades with her children, and long after all of them had moved out.

The house was essentially a mansion. Built on the very edge of a cliffside, the house had natural access to its own private stretch of beach, not far from where Shepard had taken down the Reaper Oblivion. The house itself was two levels tall with an underground basement, with a large living room, connecting kitchen, dining room and home theater on the first level, and the bathrooms and bedrooms located on the second, as well as a private gym and balcony. The basement was designed to contain an armoury, firing range and a workshop, with the former intended to be used by Shepard to keep his skills sharp and the latter by Tali for her own personal projects. The house sat on a property spanning 110 acres of land, although in the grand scheme it occupied very little of it. A fence occupied the outermost boundaries of the house itself, electrified at night to keep out wildlife, and much of the front yard would later be occupied by a garden Tali began following her retirement after the Post-Apocalyptic War, with the quarian taking up gardening as a hobby in addition to her tech projects. A large pool occupied the western side of the house, and a double-door garage on the eastern side. A small grove was later added in 2195 CE to the western side of the property containing a sheet of hull removed from the late Normandy SR-2, along with the names of Thane Krios, Mordin Solus, Legion, Rael'Zorah, Jeff Moreau, Ashley M. Williams, EDI and, finally, Commander Shepard, etched into the metal.

The house came with a series of defensive systems which could be remotely activated and/or manually controlled at an occupant's discretion. Deployable cover could be sprouted from the floor, micro-filament concussive explosives lined the doorways, sentry turrets were built into the ceiling of levels 1 and 2, as well as into the ground at the front (all of which could be deployed at a whim), and a strong kinetic barrier, later energy shield, could be activated to shroud the house in an extra layer of protection. Cameras lined the entire house to provide surveillance of every room and square inch of the property, proximity alarms that were keyed to Shepard's biometrics so they set off a silent alarm on Tali's omni-tool the moment an intruder entered and immediately placed all defensive armaments on standby. The basement was actually contained within a fully sealable, airtight fallout bunker for use as a panic room, and a secret control room was housed behind a fake door that an occupant could retreat into during a crisis and fully control all defenses and monitor cameras from, essentially turning the property into a veritable fortress. More and more defensive armaments and improvements would be added over the years by Tali, further solidifying the property as one of the safest places on the planet.

The Residence would be used as the site of Commander Shepard's interrogation by Prometheus, with Tali's assistance, in late 2252 CE as part of Operation Streisand. When Tali assisted Shepard in escaping when Prometheus was prepared to execute him, a firefight was exchanged across the property, with Shepard and an injured Tali making use of the house's armaments to fend off the Promethean blitztroopers led by Reia'Inas. Finally, about to be overwhelmed by the Prometheus reinforcements, Tali keyed every explosive in the house to detonate, and both her and Shepard just managed to escape as the house was torn apart by explosions, Reia'Inas herself barely surviving as she was caught in the blast, but suffering severe injuries and burns to most of her face. Following the Dominion Civil War, Thane'Shepard would return to his former home, now a charred debris field, and had all of it cleaned up, having a dedicated Normandy shrine built on the site, honoring both Shepard and Tali, but also every other member of the former Normandy Squad. Tali would be buried at the site, with Shepard's cenotaph placed next to her, absent of a body due to its loss on Eos.

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