Tali’Zorah vas Alarei nar Rayya

## Appearances

### Portrayed by

Ash Sroka (Mass Effect 1-3; credited as Liz Sroka in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2)

### Appears in

Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Every One That Asketh

### Early Life

Tali was born in 2161 on board the QFV *Rayya* to her father Admiral Rael'Zorah and her mother. Growing up, Tali would later admit, she likely got some extra privileges due to her father's position on the Admiralty Board- but it came at the cost of her father not being around as often. Rael'Zorah was a very strict father, and when his wife died, he threw himself into his work to cope, though he promised his only daughter that he would get her a house on their homeworld. Additionally, she had enormous pressure placed on her to return with an amazing Pilgrimage Gift.

While on her Pilgrimage in 2183, she and her friend Keenah'Breizh detected a geth presence and were able to successfully extract it's memory core and discovered a recording of two people discussing an attack of the human colonial world of Eden Prime. While the two of them decided to try to get this recording to the authorities, they found themselves being hunted by mercenaries sent by rouge Spectre Saren Arterius. Eventually they found their way to the Citadel, but their pleas were ignored by C-Sec, and the Council would not see them for months. While she was able to kill the mercenary stalking them, Keenah was killed and Tali was wounded. She sought help at a medical clinic on the Citadel, who in turn put her in contact with an agent for the Shadow Broker in hopes of trading her recording for protection.

## Mass Effect

Unfortunately one of the Shadow Broker's intermediaries, Fist, had betrayed them and gave Saren her location. Saren sent more agents to kill her and destroy her incriminating data. Fortunately, Commander Shepard discovered the existence of Tali and her evidence and came to her rescue. As a thank you, Tali delivered the evidence necessary to strip Saren of his Council Spectre status to the Citadel Council and requested to join Shepard on her mission. Shepard accepted, and Tali quickly became a valued member, not only on Shepard's squad but also in the engineering room, with Greg Adams extremely pleased with how talented she was.

During the hunt for Saren, Shepard came across a cache of data that detailed the geth's evolution since exiling the quarians. Tali asked for, and received a copy for use as a Pilgrimage Gift.

### Post Mass Effect

Tali returned to the fleet and chose to join the crew of the QFV *Neema*, where her gift of data was joyfully received. Within the next two years, Tali was leading squads of her own.

## Mass Effect 2

In 2185, two years after the destruction of the *Normandy* SR-1, Tali lead a group of quarians to the human colony of Freedom's Progress to rescue Veetor'Nara, a young quarian on Pilgrimage after the colony went dark. While there she encountered a resurrected Commander Shepard, working with Cerberus. Shepard remembering the geth data she had given the young quarian reassured Tali that she was in fact speaking to the real Commander Shepard. Despite her distrust of Cerberus, due to the horrific experiments the *Normandy* crew uncovered in 2183 and recent act of sabotage against the Flotilla, she agreed to work with Shepard to reach Veetor and find out if he knows what was happening to the disappearing human colonies. Unfortunately, Tali's team ignored her orders and walked right into a heavy mech attack. Shepard along with Jacob Taylor and Miranda Lawson reached, calmed and debriefed Veetor, discovering The Collectors were behind the disappearances. Under Shepard's order, Veetor was released to Tali's care to be returned to the Migrant Fleet, and Tali gave Shepard the large amount of data Veetor had recorded with his omni-tool. Tali refused Shepard's offer to return with her due to having a sensitive mission ahead of her that she could not openly discuss near Cerberus agents.

Tali's next assignment was to investigate the star Dholen in the Far Rim, deep in geth space, along with a contingent of quarian marines. Their goal was to try to gather data on why the star was rapidly aging. Unfortunately, they were discovered, and most of the marines died trying to get Tali to safety. When all hope seemed lost Shepard arrived in-system, looking to recruit her quarian friend. Shepard and her squad came to Tali's rescue, also saving the last member of her team- Kal'Reegar. Her mission complete, Tali gave their findings to Reegar to return to the Fleet and agreed to join Shepard. Her father gave her official permission for the ship transfer after the fact, though he firmly stated that he expected Shepard to keep Tali safe.

Tali made it absolutely clear that she was only on the new Normandy to assist her old Commander and friend, and was particularly disturbed by EDI's presence. Over time however she intergraded well into the crew. As they went through their various missions, Tali continued to send her father back bits and pieces of Geth platforms as she had for some time, though she made absolutely certain that nothing could have reactivate on its own.

### Loyalty

After she had been on board the SR-2 for a while, Tali received a message from the Flotilla informing her that she had been charged with treason against the fleet and she needed to return home to discover the particulars of the charges and defend herself. Shepard agreed and accompanied her to support her quarian friend.

On board the QFV *Rayya*, Tali learned that the Admiralty Board was accusing her of smuggling active geth on to the fleet, she had been striped of her ship name and instead given the name "vas Normandy", and her father along with the entire crew of the *Alarei* are presumed dead due to a squadron of geth having taken over the ship. Tali is horrified- she had been very careful to send nothing that was dangerous, her father might be dead, and the removal of her quarian ship name signals that most of the Admiralty Board had already made up their minds. However, due to quarian law Shepard was allowed to act as Tali's "lawyer" as her ship's captain. Shepard immediately moved to attempt to retake the *Alarei* in hopes of finding Tali's father alive and exonerating evidence.

On board the Alarei, they fought through hordes of geth and discovered all hands dead, along with proof that Rael'Zorah had been deliberately reassembling geth and linking them in order to perform weapons tests on them- a crime so heinous that he would be forever branded a traitor. Tali begged Shepard not to bring this data to trial to protect her father's name, even though it would clear her own. Shepard and Tali returned before the Admiralty Board could render judgment. Shepard used her own considerable charisma to force the admirals to declare Tali not guilty without using the evidence, clearing Tali's name without destroying her father's.

### Legion

While attempting to recover a Reaper IFF for safe passage through the Omega-4 Relay, Shepard discovered a geth platform acting on it's own. It attempted to help them, and called Shepard by name before being deactivated. Shepard brought it on board and reactivated it. EDI helped it name itself "Legion", and it became a member of Shepard's squad- though this caused friction with Tali.

After assisting Legion with it's problem of heretic geth, Tali discovered Legion scanning her omni-tool for information on the Flotilla to be sent back to its people due to its discovery of Rael'Zorah's weapon tests. Tali held the platform at gunpoint but Shepard intervened- reminding them that the tests were wrong but they couldn't go to war with the Reapers on the way. Tali and Legion reluctantly stood down. Legion agreed to not transmit the data and Tali offered some non-classified data to send instead.

Tali returned to her people after returning from beyond the Omega-4 Relay and the destruction of the Alpha Relay.

## Mass Effect 3

In 2186 the quarrian people launched their attack to try to retake Rannoch. Due to her experience with the geth, Tali was appointed to her father's spot on the Admiralty Board on a interim basis. The war was not going well due to the geth being backed into a corner and being forced to accept Reaper help. The *Normandy* arrived to try to acquire the quarians' assistance in the Reaper War and retaking Earth. Tali admitted that after working with Legion she had hoped that peace might have been possible, but while she privately disagreed with the attack her people couldn't chance being divided.

Tali and Shepard infiltrated a geth dreadnought to try to deactivate the Reaper signal controlling the geth and discovered Legion being used as a kind of antenna to transmit the signal. Shepard and Tali rescued Legion and terminated the signal.

After the destruction of the Reaper on Rannoch, Admiral Han'Gerrel launched a full strike on the remaining geth. In an attempt to save his people Legion began to upload a Reaper Code that would allow the geth to fight as effectively as before, without the Reaper control. Shepard convinced the quarians to cease their attack on the geth as Legion sacrificed itself so the other geth could achieve autonomy. Before it died, Tali assured Legion that the answer to if "this unit" had a soul was yes. In the aftermath of the conflict Tali removed her face plate and breathed the air of Rannoch for the first time.

Afterwards, Tali returned to the Normandy to assist Shepard, coordinating her people whenever they stopped at the Citadel.

## Every One That Asketh

### Act I

In the aftermath of the Crucible firing, EDI shorted out and Tali was forced to try to bring her and any other systems so affected while Joker held on for dear life and steered for all he was worth. The *Normandy* was badly damaged by the crash, and Tali was a major factor in working to fix the ship enough to make her spaceworthy again. While she was able to bring EDI back on line, the geth that had taken up residence in her suit to help her rebuild her immune system appeared to be gone. The work took four months, and Tali and Garrus lost considerable weight despite Dr. Chakwas using some data left behind by Mordin to try to allow them to ingest levo-grade rations by using an enzyme to rebuild them into dextro-amino chains. When they managed to limp their way back toward the Mass Relay they had came through, Tali sent up a string of cusswords due to it being offline. While they limped their way to Eden Prime, Tali began working on trying to solve the problem of reactivating the relay.

To begin, she commandeered the Normandy's conference room, which used to be the tech lab. The quarian ripped open walls and utilized the unused connections there to build a lab for herself to work. After a couple of days Tali came to the conclusion that the Reaper tech had received a 'stop' signal, and the relays needed to be powered back on with a start command of some sort. Liara and Tali extrapolated the relays communicated via their network, and to create a start message they would need to just take the stop code and replace it with a start command and mimic the sender frequency. Fortunately, Liara had received the data the humans sent to the initial activation of the Charon relay half a second before everything was shut down. After carefully constructing her code, Tali sent it to the relay- three minutes later the relay powered on.

While at the L5 Lagrange Point of Themis in the Arcturus Cluster, Tali iterated on her work by approximating the *Normandy* as a mass relay to assist in reactivating other mass relays. When Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard, mother of Commander Shepard, stopped by the ship, Tali happily went through the theory with her.

Tali worked for days on her project, attempting to reactivate the Arcturus Relay. Garrus, having finally gotten some decent sleep under his belt double checked Tali's work and pointed out to her that she needed to calibrate for *Normandy's* slight movement in space as mass relays as a rule are perfectly still. After getting some sleep herself, Tali was able to send the appropriate signal and reactivate the relay, allowing their return to the Local Cluster.

After reaching Earth, Tali rejoined her fellow quarian Admirals. After dissuading Admiral Han'Gerrel from attempting to make their way back to Rannoch on their own, Admirals Han and Xen made the argument that Tali's mass relay reactivation technology should be a quarian state secret. Tali was able to point out to her fellow admirals how close all of the assembled fleet was to starving and convinced them to back a fleet wide effort for mass relay activation.

Roughtly ten days after Shepard awoke from her coma and gave birth to her and Garrus' daughter, Tali's human commander found herself in danger from a militant group. Tali was able to assist in covering their digital tracks. Once the three had made it back to the Normandy, Tali assisted in briefing Shepard on some of what she had missed while unconscious before hugging Shepard- expressing the whole crew's joy and relief to have their Commander back.