The Kett, Jardaan, and Angara are all one in the same.

I could be wrong but I thought the Kett is part of Andromeda but not originally from the Heleus cluster(where the andromeda initiative is currently based)?

The Kett are not from Andromeda at all. Several points in the game show they are an intergalactic species who came to andromeda to exault the native races. This is why there is more than one Archon.

Also its pretty much a given the Jaardan are not native to Andromeda either. You don't build a self powered Dyson sphere that can travel around and act as a pan galactic terraforming hub just to plop it down in your own galaxy. If they were native, they would have been around a lot longer than the 600 years its taken the Initiative to get there. We would have seen evidence of "ancient" ruins, not just a few hundred year old ones if they were native.

Cut and pasted for your reference.

Sarhesen is the homeworld of the kett, located in an unknown system of the Andromeda galaxy. It is the capital of the Kett Empire and seat of its Senate. According to kett history, Sarhesen was united by the invention of exaltation.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Sarhesen

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Kett

I stand corrected. None of the data I read mentioned the homeworld as in the Andromeda system itself. However, I would like to reserve my opinion simply as its a wiki and anyone can edit it. If someone could point toward where in the game the info is, I would happily check it myself.

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@lexandro_Albion wrote:

The Kett are not from Andromeda at all. Several points in the game show they are an intergalactic species who came to andromeda to exault the native races. This is why there is more than one Archon.

Also its pretty much a given the Jaardan are not native to Andromeda either. You don't build a self powered Dyson sphere that can travel around and act as a pan galactic terraforming hub just to plop it down in your own galaxy. If they were native, they would have been around a lot longer than the 600 years its taken the Initiative to get there. We would have seen evidence of "ancient" ruins, not just a few hundred year old ones if they were native.

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They are native to Andromeda, just not the Heleus cluster. On top of that, there are theories that the Jardaan were a Type II civilization. This would line up with the Kett. Since the Kett are still alive, there's reason to thinking that they are grasping a deep understanding of their own technology and are coincidentally making the push to become a Type III. The making of a Dyson Sphere comes at Type II and is essentially a prerequisite to become Type III per energy requirements. If they didn't have a Dyson Sphere or something comparable, there's no way we'd see them in the Heleus cluster-let alone Andromeda-at this level at all. They would have a miniscule presence like the Initiative. As for ancient ruins, we have no idea where their home planet actually is. We may not have seen it yet. That's where they'd be. Again, it's all speculation. It sounds plausible in my head.

I think you learn about the kett empire more during the side quests "Know Your Enemy and Dissension in the Ranks" There is comms recordings between the kett as you progress iirc.

I know I'm replying to a dated post here, but we see the religious affinity of the Kett in indoctrination and exaltation and we see the wide variety of base species who are exalted. I don't think we'll ever know what the original Kett was, whether it started as a religion or as a species, but it's almost the bioengineering equivalent to the Borg assimilation from Star Trek.

The Jardaan we see similar bioengineering skill and technology, but the evidence we see suggests they are either creating a new worker race (like the Quarians did with the Geth, just using biological constructs as opposed to synthetic ones) or creating the next wave of their own species. Centuries of isolation from the Jardaan could have caused refugees they left behind to adopt a new social system and culture where they identify as something entirely separated from the reality of their original species.

We saw the Angaran helmet in the downed Remnant ship on Havarl that was hit by the Scourge, and the Angaran talk of time before the Scourge. To me that suggests they ARE Jardaan, but the pods filled with incomplete Angarans on Khi Tasira suggests they were intended as workers and the slight differences in representation in the statue discovered in "Forgotten History" that "suggested it may be a deity carving" to Avela Kjar may actually have been their progenitors who with slight modifications to the genes became the Angara. 

Personally, I think the truth about the Jardaan-Angara connection lies somewhere in the middle of those two fields. Whereas I see the Kett as a separate entity with no shared history other than perhaps having 'assimilated' some Jardaan into their ranks. If the Kett were both the Angara and the Jardaan, they would've had the genomic data for the Angara and not been in awe of the bioelectricity of the Angarans, as shown in several datapads and audiologs.

If they had previously had run-ins with the Jardaan, and the Angarans ARE the Jardaan (with slight genomic modifications) ; however, it would explain why the Archon was so certain that the Moshae knew how to work Meridian while he had her captive and why they were unfamiliar with the bioelectricity aspect. But it would leave the question as to why the stasis fields on Havarl ONLY affect Angarans, as mentioned by Ryder in conversation with the Initiative scientists who join Havarl's scientists at Pelaav Research Station.

I know this is an old topic but regardless of all of the flack Andromeda got I really liked it. I loved the newer gameplay system and I thought the narrative was really intriguing. It seemed like the creators put in more effort to explore spatial phenomena like the scourge and went towards more organic focused concepts like terraforming and genetic engineering, etc..

I loved it, and felt like the narrative they were setting up could have been far more interesting and climactic than what they did with the end of Mass Effect 3. I wish people weren’t so pissy and incessant about their criticisms of Andromeda.

The only two things I really didn’t like that I think they could’ve done a bit better would be to set the Andromeda initiative up more as a mission for the survival of life outside of the Milky Way as a safeguard from the impending reaper genocide rather than some wealthy philanthropists pet project. I mean, it could’ve initially started out as a plan to explore outside our own galaxy but even if when tied to the first trilogies timeline they could’ve played it as an inter species escape plan a parallel to the story of Noah and the Arc.

I know they kind of angled it towards that but it was kind of weak. And yes, they definitely could’ve done that; after reading more of the lore Shepard and Saren weren’t the only ones that knew about the Reapers and there was enough material to play that angle and make for a better story.

The second was that I felt it was a little too “Open World” too much like an extra-galactic tourist trip and less like an expedition of survivors trying to find their way in a war zone of a hostile environment.

It really got on my nerves how people reacted, didn’t even give BioWare a chance and forced them to nix a potential Andromeda series because they had no imagination of where they could’ve went with it.

Anything from introducing other spacefaring races drawn to the Nexus from further outside Andromeda to the Benefactor being an AI trying to save mankind or even the Leviathan themselves, discovering less advanced races and either enlightening them or conscripting them to fight the ensuing Kett Armada.

They basically had a blank slate, an entirely new star system with enough lore founded to do anything they wanted with it. A whole new galaxy and rather than look at where they potentially could’ve gone with it folks bitched about where they didn’t.

In comparison to ME 1 and 3 Andromeda was better, hands down. ME3 was more action packed and climactic but it’s hard not to be when the premise is an apocalyptic, intergalactic war against extinction itself.

I’m saying all of this because I have a hypothesis on this theory that I think they were building up to and if they were then an Andromeda series would’ve been way, way more narratively cohesive and better:

The Jardaan were an Interstellar or Intergalactic, migratory race of benign life forms that traveled throughout the universe terraforming worlds and seeding planets. Highly scientifically advanced but rather than sending Arcs from star system to star system to populate the galaxy they used Meridian, Artificial Intelligence and the Revenant. The Angara are the genetic prodigy of the Jardaan; created and planted to populate the Heleus cluster.

The scourge comes about, not as an “attack” at all but the product of some cataclysmic event that ravaged these terraformed worlds, decimated colonies overnight and caused the Jardaan tech to malfunction or shutdown. Whether a strange spatial anomaly or the product of the terraforming technology gone awry or of playing god, I haven’t figured that out yet.

And so the Jardaan leave Meridian adrift and for the time being, abandoned their efforts in the Heleus cluster considering the event too catastrophic to ensure the Angaran’s survival. 

Elsewhere in Andromeda on the Jardaan home world of Sarhesen in the distant past the Scourge has spread all throughout the galaxy. Leaving the Jardaan in a state of a long suspended dark age.

Overtime the Jardaan regress technologically, intellectually, and spiritually. Turned to desperation and civil war over dwindling resources, facing the brink of extinction they use their advancements in genetic engineering and manipulation to recreate themselves through a process they call “exaltation” with a new capacity for imperialism, waging war, and conscription to ensure their survival and prosperity.

The Jardaan have slowly all but forgotten themselves; now a cultish and dystopian society ensuring their reproduction and prosperity via conquest the Jardaan are no more...there is only the Kett.

They travel from system to system, unknowingly retracing the steps of their proginetors. Unable to reproduce naturally after tampering and melding their own genetic material with that of the exalted until they come to the Heleus Cluster.  There the Archon discovers the revenant tech, the Angara, and pieces together that the tech can be used to manipulate the planet if not the galaxy itself.

Maybe my theory is a little loose fitting but it makes sense to me. Why the Angara would be fitting to exalt but not many of the colony races. Why there’s not much left of the Jardaan themselves but ironically enough to create a living world with intelligent life. Why the pathfinder needed an AI to use the revenant tech but the Angaran one went mad. Why the scourge decimated these planets but could also be cleared using the tech....but no one could do that before the pathfinder? Why the Jardaan never returned but the Kett did and throughout all of their conquest they never interacted?

And to me that’s the natural way to tell Mass Effects story after the Synthetic/Organic focused theme.

Instead of a near omnipotent being that cleanses life a technologically advanced race that creates it and then is the genesis for their own undoing.

It’s not so insurmountable and hopeless as the reaper war. Not as systematic and patterned, predetermined and controlled.

The natural order is chaotic, merciless, and ironic. 

It just makes sense to me that all of these variables and life forms are a divergence of the same being. The way the Kett treated the Angarans almost like family...long lost cousins but hated the initiative. Even the Krogan are exalted to be used as a weapon against the pathfinders, not kin like the Angara.

It could’ve been soooo much better if that’s where they were going with it.

"The scourge comes about, not as an “attack” at all but the product of some cataclysmic event that ravaged these terraformed worlds"

There are Jardaan recordings aboard the Meridian command module, describing the Scourge as:

"The Opposition's weapon may cause widespread damage. All our weapons, our ships, will not be able to protect us… protect my goal."

"We need to disengage Meridian from command core, which will remain here to draw fire. Meridian contains all the work of the Jardaan. Nothing else matters. I will send it far. We can return one day. Continue the process of renewal. End of log."

"And so the Jardaan leave Meridian adrift and for the time being, abandoned their efforts in the Heleus cluster considering the event too catastrophic to ensure the Angaran’s survival."

It did not take much effort from a Pathfinder - someone who does not fully understand Jardaan tech - to operate/fix all the broken Remnant machines with relative ease up to 600 years after the Jardaan left (or vanished from) Heleus. It is not a difficult thing for the Jardaan to return and fix the cluster if they are still around. The far more "primitive" Initiative did it.

"The Jardaan have slowly all but forgotten themselves; now a cultish and dystopian society ensuring their reproduction and prosperity via conquest the Jardaan are no more...there is only the Kett."

As suggested by every Kett recording about this topic in the game: The Kett have no reproductive organs, their survival and/or evolution depend on the process of Exaltation, it's just how the Kett empire grows since the discovery of Exaltation.

There are many more Archons hitting different clusters in Andromeda, The Kett had already consumed hundreds if not thousands of species before Heleus.

Alec Ryder said at the start of the game - before the Initiative left the Milky Way, the golden worlds were perfectly fine. The game made it perfectly clear that they were deemed golden worlds because they were habitable planets and the Scourge happened during the trip. So...

1) Construction of the terraforming installations.

2) Creation of the Angara prototype race.

3) War with the "Opposition" - which could be another alien race known as the Jheln OR, more likely, the Jardaan and the Jheln are opposing factions in a civil war.

4) Scourge attack and the Jardaan people's mysterious disappearance.

5) Kett invasion.

... all happened in the span of 600 years while the Arks are crossing over.

Also to support this - something I already said: the Kett already finished off thousands of species prior to Heleus therefor the Jardaan really could not "slowly become Kett" over time and "forget who they were" in 600-700 years, that would be an absurd story if true.

"Elsewhere in Andromeda on the Jardaan home world of Sarhesen in the distant past the Scourge has spread all throughout the galaxy. Leaving the Jardaan in a state of a long suspended dark age."

"Maybe my theory is a little loose fitting but it makes sense to me. Why the Angara would be fitting to exalt but not many of the colony races."

The initial goal of this game's Archon in particular is to gain knowledge of Jardaan tech and dominate the Heleus cluster and beyond so they can slowly convert all the sentient species with genes that benefit the Kett's evolution, Milky Way races included. This is shown in the holo displays of the various captured Andromeda and Milky Way races on the Archon's ship, highlighting the species' genetic advantages - the Kett's interest is very clear cut as to why they do this. The idea of weaponizing the Meridian only came as a late game decision by an agitated Archon. In either case it's not about the survival of a dying empire due to the Scourge.

While I cannot answer the question, the theories so far can all be disproved by information available and mostly told through voice by SAM to the player in the game.