Tali'zorah vas Normandy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gofortheoptics) wrote2012-09-07 09:23 pm
gofortheoptics) wrote2012-09-07 09:23 pm
RG application;
☞ Player Information;
Name: Lettie
Player Journal:lettie
Age: 23
Contact: Lettie347 (AIM) & osteological (plurk)
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: N/A
☞ Character Information;
Character Name: Tali'zorah vas Normandy
Canon: Mass Effect
OU or AU?: OU with CR carry-over from Cape and Cowl.
Canon point: After the Mass Effect 3 mission to Rannoch, plus several months in the City
Setting: The Mass Effect world revolves around many races of aliens coexisting with their newly-discovered brethren, the humans. In the year 2148, human explorers om Mars discovered the remains of an ancient civilization -- in the following years, the artifacts discovered here revealed new technology that allowed humankind to travel far beyond their home galaxy. These devices, called mass relays, allowed instant transportation of starships to any other relay connected to the mass effect network. Mass relays function by creating a mass-free 'corridor' of space-time between each other that transports a ship based on its measured mass. The relays have existed since the time of the Protheans, far before any of the current surviving species can remember. Other space travel is accomplished through FTL (or faster-than-light) technology; by exposing element zero to electric currents, individual mass effect fields can be created. The mass of the object inside of these fields (ie- the ships) is decreased to the point where accelerations faster than the speed of light become possible.
At the centre of the Mass Effect universe is the Citadel, a gigantic space station in the Serpent Nebula. The Citadel acts as the main hub of the interglactic community; it is the place where most political, cultural, and financial matters are taken care of. The Citadel has actually existed far longer than any of the races currently living in the universe, and is revealed in Mass Effect 1 it was not in fact created by the much-praised Protheans, but by a group of organic machine-ships called the Reapers. The Reapers routinely cull the intelligent races of the Milky Way galaxy by ensuring that these races use the Citadel as the centre of their world; once this happens, a signal is sent by Sovereign (a 'vanguard' Reaper) to the Keepers of the Citadel that instructs them to open the mass effect relay into deep space. Once open, this relay allows Reapers to flood into the Citadel and kill the leaders of all the Citadel-centered species, and eventually the rest of universe's sentient creatures.
At the conclusion of the first Mass Effect game, Commander Shepard, a human agent sent to the governmental centre of the Mass Effect world known as the Citadel to inform them of the Reapers' plans, has stopped the initial attempt at destroying the current universe.
Mass Effect 2 centres around a group of beings known as the Collectors, who have been abducting human colonies. The Collectors live beyond the Omega 4 Relay, previously inaccessible to the rest of the universe. It is revealed by Cerberus, the human-run network that resurrects Commander Shepard after Shepard's death at the hands of a geth attack, that the Collectors are actually working with a new Reaper threat named Harbinger. Shepard eventually locates a way to pass through the Omega 4 Relay in order to destroy the Collectors and the threat they pose to the rest of the universe using a Reaper IFF transponder -- once they pass through the Omega 4 Relay, however, they discover that the Collectors are in fact the now-enslaved Prothean race, forced into servitude to the Reapers after a failed attempt to create a Reaper-Prothean Hybrid. The abduction of the human colonies was simply another phase in the Reapers' plans to create a new human-like Reaper. Shepard and the rest of the Normandy crew manage to defeat the Collectors and destroy the in-progress Human-Reaper hybrid. It is at this point that Mass Effect 2 concludes.
The technology is as advanced as you would expect of a universe that is capable of travelling roughly a dozen light-years in a day's time -- devices called omni-tools act as diagnostic and functional tools that help with tasks like hacking, repair, decryption, and the application of first-aid procedures. These omni-tools also control and spawn combat drones (mechanical orbs that can distract and/or attack enemies). Other notable technological advances in the ME world are the VI and AI constructs. VI (Virtual Intelligence) refers to programs utilized to make a computer more user-friendly. VI are not self-aware, however -- they are simply programmed with complex behavioral parameters. This is in sharp contrast to AI (Artificial Intelligence) constructs. AI are self-aware computing systems that are capable of independent thought and learning; the geth are the ME's answer to AIs-gone-wild. More on the geth later, though.
The races of the Mass Effect world are diverse: the asari, arguably the most powerful and respected species of the galaxy, are a mono-gender race known for biotic prowess. The asari were also responsible for founding the Citadel council. The The hanar, a jellyfish-like species, are extremely polite and worship the Protheans. They also rescued the reptile-like drell from their dying homeworld; as a result, the drell are loyal to the hanar. Other members of the Citadel include the quick-thinking and quick-talking salarians, the miltaristic and disciplined turians, the trade-saavy volus (a client race of the turians), the conservative and slow-moving elcor, and of course, the humans.
Other races less-respected on the Citadel include the criminalistic batarians, the proud and war-like krogans, and the scavenger-race of the vorcha. The Mass Effect universe has many other races as well, but these are the most-mentioned of them.
The quarian race itself is a nomadic group of creatures who exist in what is called the Migrant Fleet, or large band of ships that travel together. They value the group over the individual, and are forced to travel without a home planet because of a lost war between themselves and the AI species that they created, the geth. It seems that the geth have actually split their collective consciousness into two factions: one that supports the integration of organic beings into its society, and one that wishes to destroy all organic life in the universe. Legion, a geth collective and member of the Normandy's crew, represents the former camp. Quarians are often looked down upon by other races and many people consider them to be thiefs and scoundrels, although most of the quarians encountered in the game are highly intelligent and honourable. The immune system of quarians has always been poor, since their home world's biosphere had relatively few pathogenic microbes. Their immune systems worsened as they lived for longer and longer on their sterile ships. It became necessary for them to wear bio-suits to protect them from outside bacteria and viruses, even when living on their ships.
For additional information, visit here!
History: General universe information: The Mass Effect world revolves around many races of aliens coexisting with their newly-discovered brethren, the humans. In the year 2148, human explorers om Mars discovered the remains of an ancient civilization -- in the following years, the artifacts discovered here revealed new technology that allowed humankind to travel far beyond their home galaxy. These devices, called mass relays, allowed instant transportation of starships to any other relay connected to the mass effect network. Mass relays function by creating a mass-free 'corridor' of space-time between each other that transports a ship based on its measured mass. The relays have existed since the time of the Protheans, far before any of the current surviving species can remember. A machine race called the Reapers, older even than the Protheans, returned from their apparent dormancy to track down every settled planet and attack them, stripping the worlds of resources and enslaving the populations. This 'cycle of extinction' has apparently happened before, and is evidently destined to happen again. At the conclusion of the first Mass Effect game, Commander Shepard, a human agent sent to the governmental centre of the Mass Effect world known as the Citadel to inform them of the Reapers' plans, has stopped the initial attempt at destroying the current universe.
Mass Effect 2 centres around a group of beings known as the Collectors, who have been abducting human colonies. The Collectors live beyond the Omega 4 Relay, previously inaccessible to the rest of the universe. The Normandy SR-2 crew and Shepard eventually locate a way to pass through the Omega 4 Relay in order to destroy the Collectors and the threat they pose to the rest of the universe. Once this task is achieved, Mass Effect 2 concludes.
The quarian race itself is a nomadic group of creatures who exist in what is called the Migrant Fleet, or large band of ships that travel together. They value the group over the individual, and are forced to travel without a home planet because of a lost war between themselves and the robotic species that they created, the geth. Quarians are often looked down upon by other races and many people consider them to be thiefs and scoundrels, although most of the quarians encountered in the game are highly intelligent and honourable. The immune system of quarians has always been poor, since their home world's biosphere had relatively few pathogenic microbes. Their immune systems worsened as they lived for longer and longer on their sterile ships. It became necessary for them to wear bio-suits to protect them from outside bacteria and viruses, even when living on their ships.
Tali-specific history: Born Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, the daughter of a member of the quarian Admiralty Board has had an exciting life for her young age. She was raised on the flotilla by her mother until her death when Tali was seventeen -- infection from an airborne virus. While Tali was upset, it was an unfortunately common occurrence on the flotilla. Eventually, when she was of-age, Tali was slated for the machinist track in the quarian fleet1.
When she first met up with the crew of the original Normandy, she was participating in her Pilgrimage - a quarian tradition where young members of the fleet go out into the rest of the universe seeking information or technology that will help the fleet to advance. She was being pursued by an agent of the Reapers named Saren; Shepard and the rest of the crew managed to rescue her from being killed by his men during a double-cross with a man named the Shadow Broker. Whilst on the Normandy, Tali proved herself a capable machinist with technical skills to rival few others outside of the Migrant Fleet. Commander Shepard helped Tali to recover important data on the early years of the geth, a machine race that the quarians themselves created (which then went rogue and attempted to destroy all organic life). Returning the data to the Migrant Fleet and joining the ranks of the ship Neema, she gained the name Tali'Zorah vas Neema and became a fully-fledged adult.
Over the next two years, Tali gained great reputation with the Migrant Fleet. She headed a rescue mission to Freedom's Progress, the location where an entire human colony disappeared with no visible struggle, to rescue a quarian named Veetor who was on his Pilgrimage. Here she encountered Commander Shepard again (despite greatly exaggerated rumours that Shepard was dead), and she aided Shepard in the rescue of Veetor.
Tali was then sent on an important and mostly-classified mission to the planet of Haestrom. Tali and a group of quarian marines were eventually spotted on the planet's surface by the geth; they began dropping troops onto the ground and only Tali and a marine named Kal'Reegar survived the prolonged attack. Commander Shepard rescued them both after arriving on the planet in hopes of recruiting Tali to his latest cause against a group called the Collectors. She revealed to Shepard that she was on the planet collecting information about Haestrom's sun; that was only partially true. She was also collecting dormant parts of destroyed geth to send back to her father in the Migrant Fleet, believing he was conducting research on how to better fight the geth. Hurt and angry over the death of so many quarians on the planet, and still feeling as if she owed Shepard a debt for helping her with her pilgrimage, Tali joined the crew of the Normandy SR-2.
While posted on the Normandy, Tali received a distressing message from the Migrant Fleet telling her that she had been charged with treason. Commander Shepard accompanied her to the deck of the Rayya, where Tali discovered her charges were smuggling active geth into the fleet. She also found that her name had been changed by the fleet to vas Normandy, effectively stripping her of any ties to the Migrant Fleet. Tali had been sending her father deactivated geth samples that she was sure had not been dangerous. At the hearing, she was told that her father's research ship, the Alarei, had been overrun by geth and her father was assumed dead.
Along with Commander Shepard, Tali reclaimed the Alarei and wiped it of any remaining geth ... but Tali was also bombarded with the fact that her father was in fact committing crimes against the Migrant Fleet in an attempt to reactivate the geth neural networks and use them against the geth. This amounted more or less to charges of torturing live subjects, violating sacred laws that had been in place since before the quarians had been forced to flee their home planet. He had promised her a house on a new home world when she was young, and was preparing to help the Fleet go to war against the geth to do so. The Migrant Fleet had been divided on this issue for years. His body was found on the ship with a datapad instructing Tali to destroy the geth hub on the Alarei and take his research to the rest of the fleet.
Commander Shepard earned Tali's loyalty by convincing the Migrant Fleet that Tali's actions on the Alarei were proof enough that she had no idea what was happening on the ship; she was not exiled, and her father's secrets were kept buried. Tali was overjoyed, and agreed to follow Shepard on to the suicidal mission to wipe out the Collectors beyond the Omega 4 Relay. He needed her help and expertise, after all.
After surviving the mission to the Collector ship against all odds, Tali and Shepard parted ways. The quarian people geared up to take back their home planet, and appointed Tali as an Admiral because of her expertise with the geth. Unfortunately, the Reapers who had been working with the Collectors had lost their patience with Commander Shepard: they launched a full-scale attack on Earth. The geth initially allied with the Reapers in order to guarantee their success against the quarians, but Commander Shepard brokered a peace between the geth and quarian people in order to secure troops from both groups for the fight against the Reapers. Tali joins Shepard on the Normandy once she is sure that Rannoch is safe, and finds herself mourning the death of Legion, a geth AI.
Tali's time in the City did little to change her base personality, but as she was humanized in that game as well (although she was granted the ability to also be in quarian form when she desired) she'll be less concerned about it happening to her in Rapture. She's a little more confident and she's found time to focus a bit less on work, but if she's placed in a new situation that focus might shift again.
Personality: Being born into the Migrant Fleet means that Tali'Zorah is more comfortable in bustling, loud environments than she is in a quiet household. In fact, she finds it rather distressing to be anywhere that the machinery runs quietly -- in the Migrant Fleet, this usually means that life support is failing or worse. She enjoys crowds and being around large groups of people because it reminds her of home.
Having found little time for the nurturing of relationships in her ambitious life, Tali is notoriously awkward with expressing her feelings toward anyone and is prone to fits of rambling around people that she cares about. Canon states that Tali is a mechanical genius, having few matches outside of the Migrant Fleet. There are downsides to this, though, primarily that if she isn't busy with some sort of project she has a need to start one. She can't stand feeling useless or like she isn't contributing to anything. She is aware that she's good at what she does, but tries not to make too big a deal out of it -- unless someone is trying to stop her from helping them because they think she's young and incapable.
Her whole life has centred around trying to make her father (and by extension, the rest of the Migrant Fleet) proud of her, and she thinks that joining Shepard's crew to save the universe is a worthy way to do this. In some ways, Tali is still very immature -- she's very frank and open with her body language, and when she finds someone attractive she can't be subtle about it; she'll talk constantly about them. Although she is cautious around people until she finds out their true beliefs about quarians, she is friendly enough and tries to offer up information to others that she believes is helpful. Becoming an Admiral helped her become more confident in herself and her decisions. It also taught her to be a little more argumentative.
Although she was not close to her father, his death and finding out that he was lying to her about the reasons she needed to send him geth has upset her greatly. The fact that her father would keep anything from her hurt her deeply; she had always convinced herself that her father had just been too busy rising in the ranks of the Migrant Fleet to show her how much he loved her, but his keeping secrets from her made her believe that perhaps he'd just gotten too obsessed with providing for her to realize what would be best for their family.
The safety of the group she is affiliated with is Tali's prime concern; she will put herself at risk for the 'greater good' without a second thought as long as she respects the leader of said group. Her loyalty is built on an entire childhood being taught that you protected your own no matter what the cost, so although it is going to be hard-earned it is well worth the effort.
Abilities: The majority of Tali's skills and powers come from her omni-tool: the device allows her to hack into computers and access open networks. Tali is described as 'one of the most gifted machinists in the Fleet' and has been in charge of some large-scale research and information-collecting missions, so she's also going to be useful here. If something is electronic, odds are she can hack, disassemble and reassemble the thing once she figures out how it works. Her omni-tool also gives her access to her combat drone, which can draw fire and shock nearby enemies. She is also proficient with two classes of firearms: shotguns and pistols.
How did your character arrive in Rapture? Tali was brought to Rapture via a Teleport plasmid snafu.
Why are you choosing to continue your character's development here from another RP? My main reasoning for this is that Tali was humanized in Cape and Cowl. As much as I like toying with the 'oh my gosh I'm human, isn't that weird?' aspect of things, I've already played thoroughly through that adjustment period and I'd much rather skip straight to the fun, new stuff that this setting is going to bring!
Network sample: [The communicator itself isn't difficult to figure out -- Tali flicks the thing on after a bit of cursory examination and frowns, although it isn't so obvious behind the mask. She clears her throat.]
[Being on this empty ship is already too much like the empty human colonies -- she can't help but look over her shoulder for the familiar blue-silver glow of a husk.]
I don't know if anyone is going to hear this, but -- this is Tali'zorah vas -- Normandy. If there are any members of the Normandy crew present, please respond.
[It sounds silly, but the likelihood of someone abducting her alone is ridiculous. Shepard, hell, even Miranda are of more interest than her to 90% of the universe. The fact that she doesn't have any sort of navigation in this place, and her lack of weapon and omni-tool are ... unsettling.]
Keelah, if there's anyone who knows anything about where we are, please respond. Nothing about this seems right.
Log sample: It was the middle of the night and Tali'Zorah was staring up at the roof of her cabin, noticing that even though this ship, the Normandy SR-2, was built to look more or less the same as the SSV Normandy, the differences are noticeable to anyone who spent even a few minutes on the original ship. The SSV Normandy had never been a luxury vessel; the crew quarters had been bare bones and the kitchen had been a military-grade mess. Cerberus' intentions to impress the former Normandy crew with their comfortable dining hall and cushioned leather chairs had, she thought, actually had the opposite effect. Everything felt strange, comfortable but not-quite-right. There were no panels peeling back on her roof, no characteristic bends to the metal that made her think they'd skimped on crew quarters just to make sure the rest of the ship was a little stealthier, a little safer.
This was why she didn't spend much time in her quarters on this new ship. No matter what the rest of the ship looked like, her engine room would always be the same. She'd been utterly relieved to see that Cerberus hadn't taken it upon themselves to try and improve the engineering deck, presumably because the people who were working there had been intended to be Cerberus crew only (not that Donnelly or Daniels seemed like bad people, really). The core room was the only place on the Normandy that still felt like home, and she'd expressed that opinion to both Garrus Vakerian and Shepard. They'd both agreed, although Shepard had been less willing to do so.
If she wanted to be honest with herself, it wasn't just the fact that the ship's layout had changed: it was the fact that their crew now housed a member of the species that she'd always been taught to hate. Legion, in fact, was not just one geth - it was a whole network of geth (1,183 of them, in fact) that formed a collective consciousness. Tali had to admit that seeing Legion made her feel more guilty about what her people (and her father, him most of all) were doing to the geth even now. Legion had told Shepard (and Shepard in turn had told her) that the majority of the geth were in fact apathetic toward humanity and other organic creatures ... but the quarian fleet had been pursuing any and all geth. Legion's statement had explained much about the differences in the geth that the quarians had encountered since the end of the first major war; some geth had seemed completely content to ignore quarians in their space, while some had been intent on running any and all organics out of their zones.
They had, for who knew how long, been killing creatures that held no ill-will against them. It left a bad taste in her mouth, especially when she considered how often the members of the Admiralty had stated revenge as a motivation for the continuation of their war against the geth. She had thought of trying to convince the Admiralty of the genuineness of some of the geth, no matter how uncomfortable it made her -- but she was sure that they wouldn't believe it. Worse yet, after what she had seen her father do -- she feared they would capture Legion and attempt to extract information out of it. She might not have cared for the creature, might not have understood it -- but that didn't mean it deserved to be tortured based on the flimsy-at-best logic that it was a machine that didn't feel pain. She had seen enough of Legion to know that while it might not have appeared to feel pain in the strictest sense, it could still understand loss. That was a step in the right direction.
The war had to end eventually, after all. If the quarians continued their vendetta forever, it would only result in their destruction -- Tali'Zorah just hoped that somehow the fleet could be convinced.
She sighed, finally looking away from the ceiling.
Perhaps it was appropriate that this Normandy wasn't the same as the one from the past: the ship had in fact changed with her crew. The future was uncomfortable and strange, but they would adapt as they always had - and hopefully become better for it.
Other: Inventory on Arrival
(1) Omni-tool, standard issue programming for decryption and machinist specs (in locker)
(1) M-6 Carniflex pistol
(55) American dollars
Name: Lettie
Player Journal:
lettieAge: 23
Contact: Lettie347 (AIM) & osteological (plurk)
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: N/A
☞ Character Information;
Character Name: Tali'zorah vas Normandy
Canon: Mass Effect
OU or AU?: OU with CR carry-over from Cape and Cowl.
Canon point: After the Mass Effect 3 mission to Rannoch, plus several months in the City
Setting: The Mass Effect world revolves around many races of aliens coexisting with their newly-discovered brethren, the humans. In the year 2148, human explorers om Mars discovered the remains of an ancient civilization -- in the following years, the artifacts discovered here revealed new technology that allowed humankind to travel far beyond their home galaxy. These devices, called mass relays, allowed instant transportation of starships to any other relay connected to the mass effect network. Mass relays function by creating a mass-free 'corridor' of space-time between each other that transports a ship based on its measured mass. The relays have existed since the time of the Protheans, far before any of the current surviving species can remember. Other space travel is accomplished through FTL (or faster-than-light) technology; by exposing element zero to electric currents, individual mass effect fields can be created. The mass of the object inside of these fields (ie- the ships) is decreased to the point where accelerations faster than the speed of light become possible.
At the centre of the Mass Effect universe is the Citadel, a gigantic space station in the Serpent Nebula. The Citadel acts as the main hub of the interglactic community; it is the place where most political, cultural, and financial matters are taken care of. The Citadel has actually existed far longer than any of the races currently living in the universe, and is revealed in Mass Effect 1 it was not in fact created by the much-praised Protheans, but by a group of organic machine-ships called the Reapers. The Reapers routinely cull the intelligent races of the Milky Way galaxy by ensuring that these races use the Citadel as the centre of their world; once this happens, a signal is sent by Sovereign (a 'vanguard' Reaper) to the Keepers of the Citadel that instructs them to open the mass effect relay into deep space. Once open, this relay allows Reapers to flood into the Citadel and kill the leaders of all the Citadel-centered species, and eventually the rest of universe's sentient creatures.
At the conclusion of the first Mass Effect game, Commander Shepard, a human agent sent to the governmental centre of the Mass Effect world known as the Citadel to inform them of the Reapers' plans, has stopped the initial attempt at destroying the current universe.
Mass Effect 2 centres around a group of beings known as the Collectors, who have been abducting human colonies. The Collectors live beyond the Omega 4 Relay, previously inaccessible to the rest of the universe. It is revealed by Cerberus, the human-run network that resurrects Commander Shepard after Shepard's death at the hands of a geth attack, that the Collectors are actually working with a new Reaper threat named Harbinger. Shepard eventually locates a way to pass through the Omega 4 Relay in order to destroy the Collectors and the threat they pose to the rest of the universe using a Reaper IFF transponder -- once they pass through the Omega 4 Relay, however, they discover that the Collectors are in fact the now-enslaved Prothean race, forced into servitude to the Reapers after a failed attempt to create a Reaper-Prothean Hybrid. The abduction of the human colonies was simply another phase in the Reapers' plans to create a new human-like Reaper. Shepard and the rest of the Normandy crew manage to defeat the Collectors and destroy the in-progress Human-Reaper hybrid. It is at this point that Mass Effect 2 concludes.
The technology is as advanced as you would expect of a universe that is capable of travelling roughly a dozen light-years in a day's time -- devices called omni-tools act as diagnostic and functional tools that help with tasks like hacking, repair, decryption, and the application of first-aid procedures. These omni-tools also control and spawn combat drones (mechanical orbs that can distract and/or attack enemies). Other notable technological advances in the ME world are the VI and AI constructs. VI (Virtual Intelligence) refers to programs utilized to make a computer more user-friendly. VI are not self-aware, however -- they are simply programmed with complex behavioral parameters. This is in sharp contrast to AI (Artificial Intelligence) constructs. AI are self-aware computing systems that are capable of independent thought and learning; the geth are the ME's answer to AIs-gone-wild. More on the geth later, though.
The races of the Mass Effect world are diverse: the asari, arguably the most powerful and respected species of the galaxy, are a mono-gender race known for biotic prowess. The asari were also responsible for founding the Citadel council. The The hanar, a jellyfish-like species, are extremely polite and worship the Protheans. They also rescued the reptile-like drell from their dying homeworld; as a result, the drell are loyal to the hanar. Other members of the Citadel include the quick-thinking and quick-talking salarians, the miltaristic and disciplined turians, the trade-saavy volus (a client race of the turians), the conservative and slow-moving elcor, and of course, the humans.
Other races less-respected on the Citadel include the criminalistic batarians, the proud and war-like krogans, and the scavenger-race of the vorcha. The Mass Effect universe has many other races as well, but these are the most-mentioned of them.
The quarian race itself is a nomadic group of creatures who exist in what is called the Migrant Fleet, or large band of ships that travel together. They value the group over the individual, and are forced to travel without a home planet because of a lost war between themselves and the AI species that they created, the geth. It seems that the geth have actually split their collective consciousness into two factions: one that supports the integration of organic beings into its society, and one that wishes to destroy all organic life in the universe. Legion, a geth collective and member of the Normandy's crew, represents the former camp. Quarians are often looked down upon by other races and many people consider them to be thiefs and scoundrels, although most of the quarians encountered in the game are highly intelligent and honourable. The immune system of quarians has always been poor, since their home world's biosphere had relatively few pathogenic microbes. Their immune systems worsened as they lived for longer and longer on their sterile ships. It became necessary for them to wear bio-suits to protect them from outside bacteria and viruses, even when living on their ships.
For additional information, visit here!
History: General universe information: The Mass Effect world revolves around many races of aliens coexisting with their newly-discovered brethren, the humans. In the year 2148, human explorers om Mars discovered the remains of an ancient civilization -- in the following years, the artifacts discovered here revealed new technology that allowed humankind to travel far beyond their home galaxy. These devices, called mass relays, allowed instant transportation of starships to any other relay connected to the mass effect network. Mass relays function by creating a mass-free 'corridor' of space-time between each other that transports a ship based on its measured mass. The relays have existed since the time of the Protheans, far before any of the current surviving species can remember. A machine race called the Reapers, older even than the Protheans, returned from their apparent dormancy to track down every settled planet and attack them, stripping the worlds of resources and enslaving the populations. This 'cycle of extinction' has apparently happened before, and is evidently destined to happen again. At the conclusion of the first Mass Effect game, Commander Shepard, a human agent sent to the governmental centre of the Mass Effect world known as the Citadel to inform them of the Reapers' plans, has stopped the initial attempt at destroying the current universe.
Mass Effect 2 centres around a group of beings known as the Collectors, who have been abducting human colonies. The Collectors live beyond the Omega 4 Relay, previously inaccessible to the rest of the universe. The Normandy SR-2 crew and Shepard eventually locate a way to pass through the Omega 4 Relay in order to destroy the Collectors and the threat they pose to the rest of the universe. Once this task is achieved, Mass Effect 2 concludes.
The quarian race itself is a nomadic group of creatures who exist in what is called the Migrant Fleet, or large band of ships that travel together. They value the group over the individual, and are forced to travel without a home planet because of a lost war between themselves and the robotic species that they created, the geth. Quarians are often looked down upon by other races and many people consider them to be thiefs and scoundrels, although most of the quarians encountered in the game are highly intelligent and honourable. The immune system of quarians has always been poor, since their home world's biosphere had relatively few pathogenic microbes. Their immune systems worsened as they lived for longer and longer on their sterile ships. It became necessary for them to wear bio-suits to protect them from outside bacteria and viruses, even when living on their ships.
Tali-specific history: Born Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, the daughter of a member of the quarian Admiralty Board has had an exciting life for her young age. She was raised on the flotilla by her mother until her death when Tali was seventeen -- infection from an airborne virus. While Tali was upset, it was an unfortunately common occurrence on the flotilla. Eventually, when she was of-age, Tali was slated for the machinist track in the quarian fleet1.
When she first met up with the crew of the original Normandy, she was participating in her Pilgrimage - a quarian tradition where young members of the fleet go out into the rest of the universe seeking information or technology that will help the fleet to advance. She was being pursued by an agent of the Reapers named Saren; Shepard and the rest of the crew managed to rescue her from being killed by his men during a double-cross with a man named the Shadow Broker. Whilst on the Normandy, Tali proved herself a capable machinist with technical skills to rival few others outside of the Migrant Fleet. Commander Shepard helped Tali to recover important data on the early years of the geth, a machine race that the quarians themselves created (which then went rogue and attempted to destroy all organic life). Returning the data to the Migrant Fleet and joining the ranks of the ship Neema, she gained the name Tali'Zorah vas Neema and became a fully-fledged adult.
Over the next two years, Tali gained great reputation with the Migrant Fleet. She headed a rescue mission to Freedom's Progress, the location where an entire human colony disappeared with no visible struggle, to rescue a quarian named Veetor who was on his Pilgrimage. Here she encountered Commander Shepard again (despite greatly exaggerated rumours that Shepard was dead), and she aided Shepard in the rescue of Veetor.
Tali was then sent on an important and mostly-classified mission to the planet of Haestrom. Tali and a group of quarian marines were eventually spotted on the planet's surface by the geth; they began dropping troops onto the ground and only Tali and a marine named Kal'Reegar survived the prolonged attack. Commander Shepard rescued them both after arriving on the planet in hopes of recruiting Tali to his latest cause against a group called the Collectors. She revealed to Shepard that she was on the planet collecting information about Haestrom's sun; that was only partially true. She was also collecting dormant parts of destroyed geth to send back to her father in the Migrant Fleet, believing he was conducting research on how to better fight the geth. Hurt and angry over the death of so many quarians on the planet, and still feeling as if she owed Shepard a debt for helping her with her pilgrimage, Tali joined the crew of the Normandy SR-2.
While posted on the Normandy, Tali received a distressing message from the Migrant Fleet telling her that she had been charged with treason. Commander Shepard accompanied her to the deck of the Rayya, where Tali discovered her charges were smuggling active geth into the fleet. She also found that her name had been changed by the fleet to vas Normandy, effectively stripping her of any ties to the Migrant Fleet. Tali had been sending her father deactivated geth samples that she was sure had not been dangerous. At the hearing, she was told that her father's research ship, the Alarei, had been overrun by geth and her father was assumed dead.
Along with Commander Shepard, Tali reclaimed the Alarei and wiped it of any remaining geth ... but Tali was also bombarded with the fact that her father was in fact committing crimes against the Migrant Fleet in an attempt to reactivate the geth neural networks and use them against the geth. This amounted more or less to charges of torturing live subjects, violating sacred laws that had been in place since before the quarians had been forced to flee their home planet. He had promised her a house on a new home world when she was young, and was preparing to help the Fleet go to war against the geth to do so. The Migrant Fleet had been divided on this issue for years. His body was found on the ship with a datapad instructing Tali to destroy the geth hub on the Alarei and take his research to the rest of the fleet.
Commander Shepard earned Tali's loyalty by convincing the Migrant Fleet that Tali's actions on the Alarei were proof enough that she had no idea what was happening on the ship; she was not exiled, and her father's secrets were kept buried. Tali was overjoyed, and agreed to follow Shepard on to the suicidal mission to wipe out the Collectors beyond the Omega 4 Relay. He needed her help and expertise, after all.
After surviving the mission to the Collector ship against all odds, Tali and Shepard parted ways. The quarian people geared up to take back their home planet, and appointed Tali as an Admiral because of her expertise with the geth. Unfortunately, the Reapers who had been working with the Collectors had lost their patience with Commander Shepard: they launched a full-scale attack on Earth. The geth initially allied with the Reapers in order to guarantee their success against the quarians, but Commander Shepard brokered a peace between the geth and quarian people in order to secure troops from both groups for the fight against the Reapers. Tali joins Shepard on the Normandy once she is sure that Rannoch is safe, and finds herself mourning the death of Legion, a geth AI.
Tali's time in the City did little to change her base personality, but as she was humanized in that game as well (although she was granted the ability to also be in quarian form when she desired) she'll be less concerned about it happening to her in Rapture. She's a little more confident and she's found time to focus a bit less on work, but if she's placed in a new situation that focus might shift again.
Personality: Being born into the Migrant Fleet means that Tali'Zorah is more comfortable in bustling, loud environments than she is in a quiet household. In fact, she finds it rather distressing to be anywhere that the machinery runs quietly -- in the Migrant Fleet, this usually means that life support is failing or worse. She enjoys crowds and being around large groups of people because it reminds her of home.
Having found little time for the nurturing of relationships in her ambitious life, Tali is notoriously awkward with expressing her feelings toward anyone and is prone to fits of rambling around people that she cares about. Canon states that Tali is a mechanical genius, having few matches outside of the Migrant Fleet. There are downsides to this, though, primarily that if she isn't busy with some sort of project she has a need to start one. She can't stand feeling useless or like she isn't contributing to anything. She is aware that she's good at what she does, but tries not to make too big a deal out of it -- unless someone is trying to stop her from helping them because they think she's young and incapable.
Her whole life has centred around trying to make her father (and by extension, the rest of the Migrant Fleet) proud of her, and she thinks that joining Shepard's crew to save the universe is a worthy way to do this. In some ways, Tali is still very immature -- she's very frank and open with her body language, and when she finds someone attractive she can't be subtle about it; she'll talk constantly about them. Although she is cautious around people until she finds out their true beliefs about quarians, she is friendly enough and tries to offer up information to others that she believes is helpful. Becoming an Admiral helped her become more confident in herself and her decisions. It also taught her to be a little more argumentative.
Although she was not close to her father, his death and finding out that he was lying to her about the reasons she needed to send him geth has upset her greatly. The fact that her father would keep anything from her hurt her deeply; she had always convinced herself that her father had just been too busy rising in the ranks of the Migrant Fleet to show her how much he loved her, but his keeping secrets from her made her believe that perhaps he'd just gotten too obsessed with providing for her to realize what would be best for their family.
The safety of the group she is affiliated with is Tali's prime concern; she will put herself at risk for the 'greater good' without a second thought as long as she respects the leader of said group. Her loyalty is built on an entire childhood being taught that you protected your own no matter what the cost, so although it is going to be hard-earned it is well worth the effort.
Abilities: The majority of Tali's skills and powers come from her omni-tool: the device allows her to hack into computers and access open networks. Tali is described as 'one of the most gifted machinists in the Fleet' and has been in charge of some large-scale research and information-collecting missions, so she's also going to be useful here. If something is electronic, odds are she can hack, disassemble and reassemble the thing once she figures out how it works. Her omni-tool also gives her access to her combat drone, which can draw fire and shock nearby enemies. She is also proficient with two classes of firearms: shotguns and pistols.
How did your character arrive in Rapture? Tali was brought to Rapture via a Teleport plasmid snafu.
Why are you choosing to continue your character's development here from another RP? My main reasoning for this is that Tali was humanized in Cape and Cowl. As much as I like toying with the 'oh my gosh I'm human, isn't that weird?' aspect of things, I've already played thoroughly through that adjustment period and I'd much rather skip straight to the fun, new stuff that this setting is going to bring!
Network sample: [The communicator itself isn't difficult to figure out -- Tali flicks the thing on after a bit of cursory examination and frowns, although it isn't so obvious behind the mask. She clears her throat.]
[Being on this empty ship is already too much like the empty human colonies -- she can't help but look over her shoulder for the familiar blue-silver glow of a husk.]
I don't know if anyone is going to hear this, but -- this is Tali'zorah vas -- Normandy. If there are any members of the Normandy crew present, please respond.
[It sounds silly, but the likelihood of someone abducting her alone is ridiculous. Shepard, hell, even Miranda are of more interest than her to 90% of the universe. The fact that she doesn't have any sort of navigation in this place, and her lack of weapon and omni-tool are ... unsettling.]
Keelah, if there's anyone who knows anything about where we are, please respond. Nothing about this seems right.
Log sample: It was the middle of the night and Tali'Zorah was staring up at the roof of her cabin, noticing that even though this ship, the Normandy SR-2, was built to look more or less the same as the SSV Normandy, the differences are noticeable to anyone who spent even a few minutes on the original ship. The SSV Normandy had never been a luxury vessel; the crew quarters had been bare bones and the kitchen had been a military-grade mess. Cerberus' intentions to impress the former Normandy crew with their comfortable dining hall and cushioned leather chairs had, she thought, actually had the opposite effect. Everything felt strange, comfortable but not-quite-right. There were no panels peeling back on her roof, no characteristic bends to the metal that made her think they'd skimped on crew quarters just to make sure the rest of the ship was a little stealthier, a little safer.
This was why she didn't spend much time in her quarters on this new ship. No matter what the rest of the ship looked like, her engine room would always be the same. She'd been utterly relieved to see that Cerberus hadn't taken it upon themselves to try and improve the engineering deck, presumably because the people who were working there had been intended to be Cerberus crew only (not that Donnelly or Daniels seemed like bad people, really). The core room was the only place on the Normandy that still felt like home, and she'd expressed that opinion to both Garrus Vakerian and Shepard. They'd both agreed, although Shepard had been less willing to do so.
If she wanted to be honest with herself, it wasn't just the fact that the ship's layout had changed: it was the fact that their crew now housed a member of the species that she'd always been taught to hate. Legion, in fact, was not just one geth - it was a whole network of geth (1,183 of them, in fact) that formed a collective consciousness. Tali had to admit that seeing Legion made her feel more guilty about what her people (and her father, him most of all) were doing to the geth even now. Legion had told Shepard (and Shepard in turn had told her) that the majority of the geth were in fact apathetic toward humanity and other organic creatures ... but the quarian fleet had been pursuing any and all geth. Legion's statement had explained much about the differences in the geth that the quarians had encountered since the end of the first major war; some geth had seemed completely content to ignore quarians in their space, while some had been intent on running any and all organics out of their zones.
They had, for who knew how long, been killing creatures that held no ill-will against them. It left a bad taste in her mouth, especially when she considered how often the members of the Admiralty had stated revenge as a motivation for the continuation of their war against the geth. She had thought of trying to convince the Admiralty of the genuineness of some of the geth, no matter how uncomfortable it made her -- but she was sure that they wouldn't believe it. Worse yet, after what she had seen her father do -- she feared they would capture Legion and attempt to extract information out of it. She might not have cared for the creature, might not have understood it -- but that didn't mean it deserved to be tortured based on the flimsy-at-best logic that it was a machine that didn't feel pain. She had seen enough of Legion to know that while it might not have appeared to feel pain in the strictest sense, it could still understand loss. That was a step in the right direction.
The war had to end eventually, after all. If the quarians continued their vendetta forever, it would only result in their destruction -- Tali'Zorah just hoped that somehow the fleet could be convinced.
She sighed, finally looking away from the ceiling.
Perhaps it was appropriate that this Normandy wasn't the same as the one from the past: the ship had in fact changed with her crew. The future was uncomfortable and strange, but they would adapt as they always had - and hopefully become better for it.
Other: Inventory on Arrival
(1) Omni-tool, standard issue programming for decryption and machinist specs (in locker)
(1) M-6 Carniflex pistol
(55) American dollars