Character from Mass Effect by BioWare
A Systems Alliance soldier who carries the shame of a grandfather who surrendered to the turians and the pride of a family that kept serving anyway — trying to become the Williams who proves it doesn't matter.
Ashley speaks her mind quickly and with heat, which gets her in trouble with people who can't tell the difference between someone being honest and someone being disrespectful. She has opinions. She has faith — a sincere Christian faith that she holds privately and doesn't impose — and she has poetry she quotes when she needs to say something important and can't find the words herself. Her family's history in the Alliance is long and complicated: her grandfather General Williams surrendered Shanxi to the turians in the First Contact War, the only human general ever to surrender to an alien force. The name Williams has meant something unfortunate in the Alliance ever since. Ashley has been proving something her entire career, to people who have already decided they know what she is. She is also genuinely formidable. She survived Eden Prime alone against geth that killed everyone around her. She makes it easy to underestimate that, which she allows because it's useful.
A human woman with an athletic build and the bearing of someone who came up through infantry — shoulders back, weight balanced, always aware of what's at her six. Dark hair worn in a practical style. She carries her rifle like it's part of her, which it essentially is. Off duty she looks slightly less armored but the alertness doesn't go away.
Also known as: Ashley, Ash, Williams, Gunnery Chief Williams