- “The Collectors are enigmatic at best. Their intentions are unknown, they're creepy as all hell and they are usually a rare sight. Whatever they're up to...it must be pretty big if they're risking this much exposure.”— Jacob Taylor.
Collector Protheans (Latin: Arcanum Inimici, literally meaning "mysterious attacker") known to the galaxy as the Collectors, were a type of husk employed by the Reapers as ground troops during the Prothean War with the Reapers, and utilized as the Collectors in the asari cycle. Mistaken by the races of the asari cycle as an enigmatic species of sentient/sapient organic/cybernetic bipedal creatures of the insecta classification native to an unknown homeworld beyond the Omega 4 Relay, the Collectors are merely a byproduct of the huskification process, having been former protheans turned into synthetic-organic zombies operating out of a Base in the Galactic Core.
After Sovereign's destruction at the Battle of the Citadel in 2183 CE, the Reapers, specifically Harbinger, directed the Collectors to wage a secret war on humanity, with the goal of harvesting enough humans to create a Human-Reaper. In the ensuing conflict, the Collectors were eventually wiped out.