Lexi T'Perro: Physician of the Tempest

Lexi T'Perro was an asari physician who served as the medical officer of the scout ship Tempest during the Andromeda Initiative's settlement of the Heleus Cluster. At 275 years of age, her experience let her advise the Pathfinder as well as tend the crew's health, and as a specialist in alien biology she found the unfamiliar life of the new galaxy a source of endless fascination. She conducted her work with strict professionalism, though her care for her patients sometimes ran past it.

Early life on Omega#

Lexi grew up on Omega, the lawless station of the Milky Way's Terminus Systems, the daughter of an asari dancer and a turian bouncer. She spent much of her youth patching up her father's injuries and found that she was good at it, a discovery that set the course of her life. Recognizing her gift, her parents spent every credit they had to give her the education she needed to qualify as a doctor. She lost them both in a turf war at some point before she left the Milky Way.

Her thesis on krogan virility and aggression earned her a place in the Andromeda Initiative. She also struck up a friendship with Dr. Harry Carlyle, whom she met at a medical convention on the Citadel. When the two of them joined the Initiative, Carlyle insisted she accompany him aboard the human ark Hyperion, a posting her knowledge of human anatomy made her eligible for.

Physician of the Tempest#

Lexi was among the first to reawaken aboard the Hyperion after its long voyage through dark space, and she helped others through the difficulties that followed their own revival. When a younger member of Alec Ryder's family was gravely injured, with an implanted artificial intelligence overloading and triggering seizures, Lexi oversaw their treatment and stabilization. She later explained that the implant had become bound to its host in ways not fully understood, so that any attempt to separate the two could prove fatal.

After Alec Ryder's death she took over from Dr. Carlyle as the new Pathfinder's personal physician. She had always wanted a field posting and had expected to do little more than wake colonists, but the presence of hostile aliens and environments moved matters faster than she liked. As a specialist in alien biology she found compensation in the work, joining the Tempest's voyages for the chance to study specimens of the kett rather than remaining behind on the Hyperion.

Manner and relationships#

Lexi conducted herself with deliberate professionalism. She declined to flirt with the Pathfinder, explaining that she could not form romantic attachments to her patients, whom she needed to regard objectively. She nonetheless served as a confidante, offering counsel as the Pathfinder uncovered Alec Ryder's hidden memories, and she advised gentleness in the care of others left in fragile states by their ordeals.

Her relations with the asari Peebee were strained despite their shared species; the two either argued, which Lexi insisted on calling debates, or avoided one another. Perceived as overbearing, Lexi grew preoccupied with the friction and took to spending time at a lounge on the Nexus without drinking, a habit that eventually drew the notice of others. She held a dry sense of humor, a rivalry with Peebee, and a quiet fondness for the krogan Nakmor Drack.

Study of the kett#

Lexi's xenobiological work gave her a central part in understanding the kett. Examining the corpse of an exalted kett, she ran hundreds of scans and concluded that nothing of the original species survived the process of exaltation save a few traces of its genome, and that the transformation was permanent. She presented these findings to Jaal Ama Darav and resisted encouraging false hope of reversing it, holding that her duty was to observe and treat rather than to comfort. She admitted that her hands had shaken as she made her first incision into a kett body, calling the work horrible and fascinating in equal measure.

When offered a posting on the Nexus, where her research on kett anatomy had proven useful to its militia, Lexi declined. She judged that she did her best work in the field and reasoned that someone needed to look after the Pathfinder, remaining with the Tempest crew she had come to value.