Mass Relays

Mass Relays are mass transit devices scattered throughout the galaxy, usually located within star systems. They form an enormous network allowing interstellar travel. Created by the Leviathans and repuporesd by the Reapers to serve them, a mass relay can transport starships instantaneously to another relay within the network, allowing for journeys that would otherwise take years or even centuries with only ME FTL drives.

Specifications
Mass relays consist of two fifteen-kilometer long curved metal arms surrounding a set of revolving, gyroscopic rings five-kilometers across. These rings contain a massive, blue-glowing core of element zero. The relays are made of an unknown but incredibly resilient material, the same material that the Citadel is built from, and are protected by a quantum shield that renders them nearly impervious to damage by locking their structure in place at the subatomic level. They are even capable of surviving a supernova's wake without being damaged. They are "cold" objects that don't emit heat or radiation, unlike starships, making them difficult to find if their position changes. Some relays, like the Charon Relay, are "gravitationally anchored" to celestial bodies; others appear to be out in space and are carefully tracked.

Mass relays function by creating a virtually mass-free "corridor" of space-time between each other. This can propel a starship across enormous distances that would take centuries to traverse, even at FTL speeds. Before a vessel can travel, the relay must be given the amount of mass to transit by the ship's pilot before it is moved into the approach corridor. When a relay is activated, it aligns itself with the corresponding relay before propelling the ship across space.

There are two kinds of mass relay, primary and secondary. Primary relays can propel a ship thousands of light years but only link to one other relay, its "partner". Secondary relays can link to any other relay over shorter distances, only a few hundred light years.

After the Rachni Wars, citadel species are not allowed open a primary relay without knowing where it links to, in case they run into another powerful and hostile species like the rachni. A Prothean data cache found on Mars led humans to a mass relay encased in ice and orbiting Pluto, previously thought to be a moon called Charon, which the Charon Relay was eventually named after.

An asari matriarch once suggested that the asari should build new mass relays of their own, and both the Prothean Empire the Systems Alliance has done so, yet both are relatviely inferior to their leviathan counterparts.

Computer Systems
Many mass relays are currently dormant for unknown reasons, though they can be easily reactivated. The rest of the operating system, however, is encrypted to block access and consists of two distinct sets of programming running at the same time, one on top of the other:
 * The 'base' programming set is responsible for the operation of the relay.
 * The less extensive, yet more advanced, secondary set of code limits the relay's operation and links it to the citadel's control module. Without it, Transit drift is cut to nearly nothing, mass limitations are drastically revised upwards and the relays provide sensor telemetry on the destination coordinates.

The Conduit and the Monument
The Prothean-made relays, the Conduit and the Monument, can be found on Ilos and the Presidium respectively. Both are miniature mass relays which the Prothean researchers on Ilos built as a prototype during their experiments into mass relay technology. The form what is essentially a 'back door' onto the hub of the relay network, the Citadel Space Station. They have no connection to the rest of the network, making it independent.

The Monument was first believed to be a piece of artwork, and has been interpreted as either a symbol of Prothean vanity, expressing the relays as their means to build a galaxy-wide empire, or possibly as a symbol of galactic unity, which the relay network also embodies.

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