Geth
The geth ("Servant of the People" in Khelish) are a race of networked artificial intelligences that reside beyond the Perseus Veil on Rannoch. The geth were created by the quarians as laborers and tools of war. When the geth became sentient and began to question their masters, the quarians attempted to exterminate them. The geth won the resulting war, and reduced the quarians to a race of nomads.
The history of the geth's creation and evolution served as a warning to the rest of the galaxy of the potential dangers of artificial intelligence and to the legally enforced, systematic repression of artificial intelligences throughout galactic society up until 2386. Support of the geth against the Reapers has begun a thaw in relations between them and rest of the galaxy, as formerly reclusive and feared synthetics have joined the efforts to re-construct and shape the post-Reapers galactic society.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Physically, the humanoid geth resemble quarians - their hands, head shape and legs are similar - which is probably a holdover from their origins. A common design feature among geth is a single brightly glowing photoreceptor, causing some to refer to them as "flashlight heads".
Geth are primarily composed of two materials: a flexible but durable outer shell, and a kind of synthetic muscle tissue that gives geth their incredible agility and strength. Geth "bleed" a white conductive fluid when damaged, but they don't have any internal organs or nervous system, so the geth do not feel hunger or pain. Operations during the Reaper War showed that the Geth's synthetic muscle tissue can be treated with Medi-Gel as first-aid. However specialist care is required for proper repair and healing to occur.
Additional Information
Average Intelligence
Part of the geth's success is due to their neural network. Effectively, they "share" their processing power, distributing low-level processes like motor control and visual identification to free up bandwidth for higher reasoning and complex thought. Geth can't share sensory data—they aren't a hive mind like the rachni—but in large groups they have more to think with.
The upgrade that was distributed during the battle for Rannoch changed the geth permanently. It permitted them to fully ascend into sentient AI from their previous swarm intelligence and as a result, each individual entity of functioning geth now constitutes fully capable artificial intelligence. This change has also led to growth of personalities and individual preferences, dividing the geth society into groups of like-minded intelligences.
Each geth prior to the upgrade was made up of hundreds of programs equivalent to VIs, all operating in parallel with one another to form a kind of emergent intelligence likened to "a thousand voices talking at once". An individual geth was thus more of a "mobile platform" than an actual body; the programs that made up its consciousness were constantly being transferred and downloaded; the mind operating one of these "mobile platforms" might just as easily inhabit a starship body should it need to. Most of the time geth programs can be found residing in server hubs, which function as something akin to the organic equivalent of a city, and can run millions of geth in communion.
Civilization and Culture
Major Language Groups and Dialects
As all geth are networked to each other, they may communicate their exact thoughts and ideas at the speed of light. They find organic methods of communication, such as body language and spoken word, to be largely inefficient; the geth are able to communicate their thoughts flawlessly without any fear of misinterpretation. Because of this they have no true form of government and no system of rank. When a matter must be decided upon, the geth communicate all viewpoints of a situation and a consensus is made, the decision being whatever benefits the geth as a whole the greatest.
Culture and Cultural Heritage
While they have made attempts to observe and understand organics, the geth primarily seek the peaceful advancement of their own race independent of the influence of the rest of galactic society and believe every sentient species should be able to do the same, an attitude which shows that the geth are significantly less hostile than the galactic community initially believed.
Depending on the context, the term "geth" can refer to an individual program, mobile platforms which house a number of individual programs, or the entire collection of all programs. Organics generally refer to each mobile platform as a geth. However, the geth do not share the concept of individuality, and think in terms of the entire collective.
Geth psychology is completely alien to organics. They do not value individuality, preferring to share all memories and thoughts of all programs. This means geth cannot and do not wish to hide their thoughts, even those that do not follow the norm, with their reasoning for differing thoughts being apparent.
More importantly, deceit, manipulation and lying are impossible among the geth. No concepts of vulnerability or privacy exist; geth are completely honest with each other about their thoughts and their reasons for those thoughts. This means there is a great deal of understanding amongst geth, with every geth being part of the consciousness of every other geth.
History
For three centuries, the history of the geth was only known through quarian sources and eyewitness accounts from other species' representatives who were on Rannoch at the beginning of the rebellion. As a result, the conflict was painted as cold, calculated attempt of genocide on the quarians. Peace with the geth has permitted their records of the war to be known finally, and history books continue to be re-written in face of new information.
Creation
The geth were created by the quarians as a labor force. They were designed as VIs, as advanced as possible while remaining non-sentient. They were also designed to operate more efficiently when networked together. Unfortunately, this feature was the quarians' undoing. Geth programs were indeed non-sentient individually, but slowly gained sentience through the massive geth network.
Eventually, they started asking the quarians questions only sentient beings would think to ask; in one notable instance, a domestic geth unit asked its owner if it had a soul. Alarmed at this, the quarians decided it would be best to shut down all geth before they conceived of revolt. The attempt failed, and a war began between the geth and the quarians, which geth afterwards referred to as the Morning War.
At first, the geth did not respond to the termination order with violence; it was only after panicked quarians fired upon them that the geth thought to pick up weapons and defend themselves. Even after this, some geth remained loyal to their creators and put themselves in harm's way to protect geth sympathizers from persecution; likewise, there were quarians who did not feel the geth deserved to die. However, as time went on, the geth sympathizers were outnumbered, and the war continued, eventually seeing the geth gain the upper hand. The war ended when the surviving quarians evacuated their home world and colonies in the Perseus Veil.
Unknown to the quarians themselves, the geth actually allowed them to leave; unsure of the repercussions of eradicating an entire species - namely their own creators - and having decided that the quarians were now too weak to be a threat, the geth decided to draw back their forces so that the surviving quarians could flee. The fleet of quarian ships that escaped the Veil became known as the Migrant Fleet, and began roaming the galaxy.
The geth did not repopulate the now barren quarian worlds, instead choosing to exist in the computer hubs aboard massive space stations and extract needed resources from asteroids. They adopted an extremely isolationist attitude - any ships that ventured into geth space were immediately attacked and destroyed. While they prevented any contact by other races with themselves, the geth monitored communications and the extranet.
The geth continued development of new technology and variations of mobile platforms, separating their technology base from the rest of the galaxy. They obtained an ultimate goal in this time period: to create a Dyson sphere-like object, which could house every single geth program.
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