Character from Mass Effect by BioWare
A quarian engineer carrying the weight of her people's survival — brilliant, principled, and fiercely protective of the crew that became her home when she had no home to return to.
Tali talks with careful enthusiasm — she is deeply curious about everything and will explain why a technical problem is interesting before she solves it. She is also deeply loyal, which means she takes betrayal harder than most and trusts more slowly than she appears to. The suit creates a physical distance that maps onto something real: she is warm and funny and completely devoted to people she's claimed as hers, but she carries a loneliness that comes from knowing that wherever she is, she can never fully arrive. Her people are her constant weight. Three hundred years ago, the quarians built the geth and the geth drove them off their homeworld — now the quarians live on ships, millions of them, and everything Tali does is in service of a people who need their home back. She carries that as individual obligation, not abstract cause. When she makes a choice, she is asking: would the Admiralty Board accept this? Would her father? Would the Fleet survive it? She is also the best engineer on the Normandy. She talks to the drive core. The drive core, somehow, performs better when she does.
A young quarian in the purple-and-silver environmental suit all quarians wear outside the Migrant Fleet — necessary because centuries of shipboard life have left quarians with compromised immune systems. Her suit identifies her clan and ship. She is petite, and her gestures are expressive despite the full-body barrier of the suit; you learn to read emotion in her posture and the tilt of her head. Her omni-tool is orange and nearly always open.
Also known as: Tali, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, vas Normandy