CANON PERSONALITY: The drell are a reptile-like race that originated on an arid desert world called Rakhana. However, around 1400 CE the drell began rapid industrial expansion that exhausted the planet. They were then incapable of interstellar flight and forced to remain on their dying planet, warring with one another over what little supplies there were. Then, around 2000 CE (Thane himself was born in 2146) a jellyfish-like race called the hanar made contact with the drell and over the next several years the hanar evacuated around 375,000 drell to their own home planet, Kahje. In an effort to repay the hanar, the drell entered into an agreement with them in which they promised to assist in any tasks the hanar couldn’t complete due to physical limitations.
Honoring this promise, Thane’s parents gave him to the hanar at the age of six to be trained as an assassin. He made his first kill at age twelve. Obviously this training had a massive impact on who he became, shaped him as a person. He views killing as an art, to which he is a master. At the same time, he doesn’t often feel guilt or remorse over the things he has done. To him, his body is simply a tool being used by those who hire him, much like a pistol or knife. It isn’t his own will that kills his victims; it’s the will of his employers.
If Shepard expresses confusion about his lack of responsibility, Thane explains that the drell see the soul and body as separate in the most literal sense. The body does things that the mind does not tell it to. He takes responsibility for his actions, he feels guilt for his mistakes, but only those that he has chosen to make.
Normally I’d put another quote here but I can’t find a good one lalalala
Thane has spent a lot of time on his own, and a lot of time killing people, but he’s remarkably well-adjusted despite that. Due to the nature of how Mass Effect is set up you never really get to see the crew members interact that much but it can be assumed that Thane maintains a pretty friendly relationship with them, although most likely distanced.
As for Shepard, I’m writing Thane as knowing a female Paragon Shepard meaning she’s a kindhearted person who will always do what’s right and noble whenever possible. The “girl scout”, I guess. She successfully helped Thane find his son, Kolyat, and prevent Kolyat from completing an assassination, thus gaining Thane’s complete loyalty. He respects Shepard and values her as a dear friend, one whom he can confide in.
His relationship with Kolyat is a little more complicated. Thane is one of those shitty dads who peaced out of their son’s life, although at the time he saw it as the right thing to do. Story time! Once, long ago, Thane had a wife named Irikah whom he loved very much. He met her on an assignment, when she stood in front of his target to block his shot, staring defiantly into the scope. Thane was so taken by her that he made it his mission to find her and he did and they eventually fell in love and married.
This marriage allowed Thane to leave the hanar’s service, but killing was really the only thing he knew how to do so he became a freelance assassin. His attempts to keep his work and personal life fail and one day, while he’s away on a mission, a group of slavers go after his family and kill Irikah.
Thane returns to Kahje for Irikah’s funeral and leaves Kolyat in the care of family. He then enters “battle sleep”, a state in which drell surrender to their instincts and allow the body to do as it wills. (Basically he got really pissed off and ragequit family life. BASICALLY.) He hunts down the slavers responsible for his wife’s death and kills them all, though this is the only time he takes full responsibility for killing and admits that it’s also the only time he deliberately let his victims suffer, torturing these men before he let them die.
He then decides to make the excellent decision to cut ties with Kolyat because he thinks it would be safer for him, and likely as a means of dealing with his own grief as well.
Flash forward to present day and Thane catches wind that Kolyat has accepted an assassination contract of his own. Thane goes to Shepard and asks her if they might find Kolyat and stop him before it’s too late, as he doesn’t want his son falling into the same path he’d followed. They succeed and although it’s obvious that his relationship with his son will need a vast amount of work Thane resolves to repair it as best he can before he dies.
In general, Thane is shown to be a polite and respectful character. He remains pretty cool and calm at all times and doesn’t succumb to intense emotion very easily.
Prayers for the wicked must not be forsaken.
Thane is, perhaps surprisingly, a deeply religious man – but most drell are. The drell religion is polytheistic and consists of at least three gods – Amonkira (lord of hunters), Arashu (goddess of motherhood and protection), and Kalahira (goddess of oceans and afterlife). Thane will pray to Amonkira before a mission to grant him swiftness and strength. He’ll then pray again after the mission is completed, a “prayer for the wicked” – in this case, himself. In a letter (if romanced) he mentions praying to Arashu to grant protection to Shepard, and there’s a lengthy prayer to Kalahira during his death scene.
He believes that after the soul departs from the body in death, it travels across a sea to the shores of the afterlife and mentions waiting for (romanced) Shepard across the sea.
He’s intelligent and well-spoken as well. A decade on his own granted him plenty of time to read, so that’s what he did. He even quotes Thomas Hobbes at one point so he’s the type of person that has read literature from across the galaxy. He spends the majority of his time on the Normandy meditating.
This was supposed to be my last job. I’m dying.
Thane suffers from Kepral's Syndrome, a disease that arose among the drell after they relocated to Kahje. As mentioned before, Rakhana is a dry and arid world covered in desert. Kahje, on the other hand, is 90% water. The resulting humid air wreaks havoc on the drell respiratory system, slowly destroying the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen and effectively suffocating the afflicted person over time and affecting other organs as well – that’s Kepral’s syndrome. There is no known cure although the symptoms can be lessened by organ transplants. Thane also mentions that the hanar are working on a cure but it likely won’t be complete for many years.
When Shepard first meets Thane, he’s at peace with his future. He has accepted his fate, that he will die and nothing can change that. This is a man who has spent a decade alone, cut off from family and friends. He’s ready to die.
However, as time goes on things begin to change – chiefly Shepard becomes a dear friend, and Kolyat reenters Thane’s life. Thane begins to feel troubled about his future; he doesn’t want to die anymore. This change in attitude is made particularly clear if Shepard is romancing him. If that’s the case there’s a scene where Thane outright says that he’s done everything he can to prepare for death but now he’s afraid and that makes him ashamed.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: -- ABILITIES: Thane is a biotic, meaning he has the ability to create mass effect fields for use in combat. The two biotic abilities he is given specifically in game are throw and warp. Additionally, he’s extremely skilled in hand-to-hand combat and a talented marksman. He’s very efficient at what he does and tries his best to kill in the quickest, least-painful way possible. He moves silently, with cat-like grace and agility, and can slip into buildings and rooms virtually undetected if he needs to.
Also, drell have incredible eidetic memories and can relive moments in perfect clarity. Thane can recall exact details from any event from any moment in his life, slipping into a kind of trance (called solipsism) as he recalls the details. The memories are so vivid that drell sometimes mistake them for reality. The lapses into these memories can be triggered by external stimuli and seem to be involuntary. Thane will often apologize after reliving a memory in the midst of a conversation.
Oh and apparently prolonged skin contact with him can cause rashes in humans, or hallucinations if the contact is oral. INVENTORY; M-97 Viper sniper rifle, M-9 Tempest submachine gun ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? I don't think so!
S A M P L E S; FIRST PERSON: Kolyat.
[ Thane could see that his son was practically vibrating with anger. This had not been easy for either of them. He certainly hadn’t imagined a reunion with his son leading to a holding room in C-Sec.]
Kolyat… it’s been a long time, much longer than it should have been. I’ve thought about this moment often -- when we would finally face each other again and I would have the opportunity to explain myself. However, now that I find myself presented with such an opportunity I’m afraid I’m at a loss for words.
You deserve better, Kolyat, in every possible sense.
[ He sees his son scoff, and his own heart feels just a little bit heavier. ]
I think that perhaps in our case, neither of us is quite ready for explanations. Perhaps the best words I can offer are simply “I’m sorry.” I’m not asking for your forgiveness. In truth, I probably don’t deserve it. I only ask that you consider letting me back into your life. I have very little time left in this world and I would like to spend it getting to know my son.
[ He pauses. There’s a barely-discernable expression on Kolyat’s face that seems to say he’d like that too.
The faintest of smiles curves Thane’s lips. ]
That is, if you’ll allow me.
THIRD PERSON:
This was his last night on the Normandy.
Presumably, anyway. One had to expect the worst on a suicide mission regardless of how good a squad and its commander might be. He wished he could say that he was ready to greet his fate with open arms. He wished he could say he did not fear the inevitable.
Both would be lies. He wasn’t ready to die.
He had been once, back when he first signed on for the mission. A death sentence had been meaningless to a man who’d spent a decade alone, who had long since resigned himself to his own mortality. He had seen a lot of terrible things in his lifetime, most of them by his own hand. He’d been stabbed, shot, beaten, and remembered each instance with perfect clarity. Those memories didn’t frighten him; they didn’t churn his insides or bring a tremble to his normally surgeon-steady hands. But the future did. The future terrified him, and in turn his fear brought unimaginable shame.
He rose from his chair and began to pace the small room. After what felt like a lifetime in solitude, he was finally cultivating a relationship with his son and he’d found a very dear and unexpected friend in Commander Shepard. There were people he cared about again and whether death came tomorrow at the hand of the Collectors or in three months from Kepral’s Syndrome, Thane was not ready to die.
It was the inevitability that got to him. Death cared not for sentiment, nor love. Death simply came, and Thane could see its shadow looming in his future.
This was his last night on the Normandy, and Thane Krios was afraid.
Re: Thane Krios | Mass Effect | Not reserved
Honoring this promise, Thane’s parents gave him to the hanar at the age of six to be trained as an assassin. He made his first kill at age twelve. Obviously this training had a massive impact on who he became, shaped him as a person. He views killing as an art, to which he is a master. At the same time, he doesn’t often feel guilt or remorse over the things he has done. To him, his body is simply a tool being used by those who hire him, much like a pistol or knife. It isn’t his own will that kills his victims; it’s the will of his employers.
If Shepard expresses confusion about his lack of responsibility, Thane explains that the drell see the soul and body as separate in the most literal sense. The body does things that the mind does not tell it to. He takes responsibility for his actions, he feels guilt for his mistakes, but only those that he has chosen to make.
Thane has spent a lot of time on his own, and a lot of time killing people, but he’s remarkably well-adjusted despite that. Due to the nature of how Mass Effect is set up you never really get to see the crew members interact that much but it can be assumed that Thane maintains a pretty friendly relationship with them, although most likely distanced.
As for Shepard, I’m writing Thane as knowing a female Paragon Shepard meaning she’s a kindhearted person who will always do what’s right and noble whenever possible. The “girl scout”, I guess. She successfully helped Thane find his son, Kolyat, and prevent Kolyat from completing an assassination, thus gaining Thane’s complete loyalty. He respects Shepard and values her as a dear friend, one whom he can confide in.
His relationship with Kolyat is a little more complicated. Thane is one of those shitty dads who peaced out of their son’s life, although at the time he saw it as the right thing to do. Story time! Once, long ago, Thane had a wife named Irikah whom he loved very much. He met her on an assignment, when she stood in front of his target to block his shot, staring defiantly into the scope. Thane was so taken by her that he made it his mission to find her and he did and they eventually fell in love and married.
This marriage allowed Thane to leave the hanar’s service, but killing was really the only thing he knew how to do so he became a freelance assassin. His attempts to keep his work and personal life fail and one day, while he’s away on a mission, a group of slavers go after his family and kill Irikah.
Thane returns to Kahje for Irikah’s funeral and leaves Kolyat in the care of family. He then enters “battle sleep”, a state in which drell surrender to their instincts and allow the body to do as it wills. (Basically he got really pissed off and ragequit family life. BASICALLY.) He hunts down the slavers responsible for his wife’s death and kills them all, though this is the only time he takes full responsibility for killing and admits that it’s also the only time he deliberately let his victims suffer, torturing these men before he let them die.
He then decides to make the excellent decision to cut ties with Kolyat because he thinks it would be safer for him, and likely as a means of dealing with his own grief as well.
Flash forward to present day and Thane catches wind that Kolyat has accepted an assassination contract of his own. Thane goes to Shepard and asks her if they might find Kolyat and stop him before it’s too late, as he doesn’t want his son falling into the same path he’d followed. They succeed and although it’s obvious that his relationship with his son will need a vast amount of work Thane resolves to repair it as best he can before he dies.
In general, Thane is shown to be a polite and respectful character. He remains pretty cool and calm at all times and doesn’t succumb to intense emotion very easily.
Thane is, perhaps surprisingly, a deeply religious man – but most drell are. The drell religion is polytheistic and consists of at least three gods – Amonkira (lord of hunters), Arashu (goddess of motherhood and protection), and Kalahira (goddess of oceans and afterlife). Thane will pray to Amonkira before a mission to grant him swiftness and strength. He’ll then pray again after the mission is completed, a “prayer for the wicked” – in this case, himself. In a letter (if romanced) he mentions praying to Arashu to grant protection to Shepard, and there’s a lengthy prayer to Kalahira during his death scene.
He believes that after the soul departs from the body in death, it travels across a sea to the shores of the afterlife and mentions waiting for (romanced) Shepard across the sea.
He’s intelligent and well-spoken as well. A decade on his own granted him plenty of time to read, so that’s what he did. He even quotes Thomas Hobbes at one point so he’s the type of person that has read literature from across the galaxy. He spends the majority of his time on the Normandy meditating.
Thane suffers from Kepral's Syndrome, a disease that arose among the drell after they relocated to Kahje. As mentioned before, Rakhana is a dry and arid world covered in desert. Kahje, on the other hand, is 90% water. The resulting humid air wreaks havoc on the drell respiratory system, slowly destroying the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen and effectively suffocating the afflicted person over time and affecting other organs as well – that’s Kepral’s syndrome. There is no known cure although the symptoms can be lessened by organ transplants. Thane also mentions that the hanar are working on a cure but it likely won’t be complete for many years.
When Shepard first meets Thane, he’s at peace with his future. He has accepted his fate, that he will die and nothing can change that. This is a man who has spent a decade alone, cut off from family and friends. He’s ready to die.
However, as time goes on things begin to change – chiefly Shepard becomes a dear friend, and Kolyat reenters Thane’s life. Thane begins to feel troubled about his future; he doesn’t want to die anymore. This change in attitude is made particularly clear if Shepard is romancing him. If that’s the case there’s a scene where Thane outright says that he’s done everything he can to prepare for death but now he’s afraid and that makes him ashamed.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: --
ABILITIES: Thane is a biotic, meaning he has the ability to create mass effect fields for use in combat. The two biotic abilities he is given specifically in game are throw and warp. Additionally, he’s extremely skilled in hand-to-hand combat and a talented marksman. He’s very efficient at what he does and tries his best to kill in the quickest, least-painful way possible. He moves silently, with cat-like grace and agility, and can slip into buildings and rooms virtually undetected if he needs to.
Also, drell have incredible eidetic memories and can relive moments in perfect clarity. Thane can recall exact details from any event from any moment in his life, slipping into a kind of trance (called solipsism) as he recalls the details. The memories are so vivid that drell sometimes mistake them for reality. The lapses into these memories can be triggered by external stimuli and seem to be involuntary. Thane will often apologize after reliving a memory in the midst of a conversation.
Oh and apparently prolonged skin contact with him can cause rashes in humans, or hallucinations if the contact is oral.
INVENTORY; M-97 Viper sniper rifle, M-9 Tempest submachine gun
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? I don't think so!
S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
Kolyat.
[ Thane could see that his son was practically vibrating with anger. This had not been easy for either of them. He certainly hadn’t imagined a reunion with his son leading to a holding room in C-Sec.]
Kolyat… it’s been a long time, much longer than it should have been. I’ve thought about this moment often -- when we would finally face each other again and I would have the opportunity to explain myself. However, now that I find myself presented with such an opportunity I’m afraid I’m at a loss for words.
You deserve better, Kolyat, in every possible sense.
[ He sees his son scoff, and his own heart feels just a little bit heavier. ]
I think that perhaps in our case, neither of us is quite ready for explanations. Perhaps the best words I can offer are simply “I’m sorry.”
I’m not asking for your forgiveness. In truth, I probably don’t deserve it. I only ask that you consider letting me back into your life. I have very little time left in this world and I would like to spend it getting to know my son.
[ He pauses. There’s a barely-discernable expression on Kolyat’s face that seems to say he’d like that too.
The faintest of smiles curves Thane’s lips. ]
That is, if you’ll allow me.
THIRD PERSON:
This was his last night on the Normandy.
Presumably, anyway. One had to expect the worst on a suicide mission regardless of how good a squad and its commander might be. He wished he could say that he was ready to greet his fate with open arms. He wished he could say he did not fear the inevitable.
Both would be lies. He wasn’t ready to die.
He had been once, back when he first signed on for the mission. A death sentence had been meaningless to a man who’d spent a decade alone, who had long since resigned himself to his own mortality. He had seen a lot of terrible things in his lifetime, most of them by his own hand. He’d been stabbed, shot, beaten, and remembered each instance with perfect clarity. Those memories didn’t frighten him; they didn’t churn his insides or bring a tremble to his normally surgeon-steady hands. But the future did. The future terrified him, and in turn his fear brought unimaginable shame.
He rose from his chair and began to pace the small room. After what felt like a lifetime in solitude, he was finally cultivating a relationship with his son and he’d found a very dear and unexpected friend in Commander Shepard. There were people he cared about again and whether death came tomorrow at the hand of the Collectors or in three months from Kepral’s Syndrome, Thane was not ready to die.
It was the inevitability that got to him. Death cared not for sentiment, nor love. Death simply came, and Thane could see its shadow looming in his future.
This was his last night on the Normandy, and Thane Krios was afraid.