Panicked, the quarian government ordered the immediate termination of all geth in the hopes of preventing a revolution. While this was not the first time a geth unit had asked if it had a soul, it was the first time doing so had caused fear. One day, a geth unit began asking its overseer questions about the nature of its existence. But as the quarians gradually modified the geth to do more complex tasks, developing a sophisticated neural network, these changes altered the geth to such an extent that they became sentient. The quarians kept their programming as limited as that of any VI, nothing close to an AI, remaining mindful of the Citadel Council's laws against artificial intelligence. They created the geth around the late 1850s CE to be used as labourers and tools of war.

Hailing from the world of Rannoch, the quarians were always a technologically capable species. Quarians live within environmental suits almost all of their lives, only leaving in tightly-controlled environmental chambers or in the most desperate of circumstances. Forced to live in sterile environments aboard ships after their exile, the situation has only worsened. As they became starbound and ventured from world to world, it was realized that this symbiosis, while strengthening them on their own planet, weakened their immune systems abroad. Rannoch held no natural insect species, and as such the quarians evolved in symbiosis with the natural flora of the planet. An amalgamation of whatever salvaged vessels they can scrounge up and repaired and overhauled variants of ancient ships, the Migrant Fleet is the wandering home of the scrappy species. Forced into exile after losing their homeworld Rannoch and their colonies to their own Artificial Intelligence creations, the Geth, the quarians are born and spend their lives centered around the wellbeing of the Migrant Fleet. Nomads on a galactic scale, the Quarians are a people with no home.

Mass effect quarian armor