Morinth

Morinth was an Ardat-Yakshi, an asari born with a rare genetic disorder that caused her to kill her mates while joining minds with them, growing smarter, more powerful, and deadlier with each coupling. Addicted to the sensation, she spent centuries as a fugitive from asari justice, kept alive by cunning, formidable biotics, and a talent for dominating the minds of others. She was the wayward daughter of the justicar Samara, who devoted four hundred years to hunting her down, a pursuit that eventually drew in Commander Shepard.

A daughter condemned#

Morinth was born sometime in the 1700s, one of three daughters of Samara. At the age of forty she, like both of her sisters, was discovered to be an Ardat-Yakshi and offered a choice between a life of comfortable seclusion in a monastery or execution. Already addicted to the rush of melding, Morinth refused both and fled, going by the name Mirala when she first ran. In response Samara took up the oath of a justicar and set out to hunt her own child.

For four hundred years Samara pursued Morinth across asari space as the fugitive grew ever more addicted to killing her mates. On one world Morinth corrupted an entire village into worshipping her, accepting their daughters as sacrifices; when Samara closed in, Morinth ordered her followers to attack in waves to cover her escape, leaving only the village's youngest children alive by the time her mother had cut through them.

The hunt on Omega#

Morinth eventually left asari space for Illium, then secured passage to Omega, believing she had finally outrun her mother. There she became enamored of a young sculptor named Nef, drawn to the artist's talent, and seduced and murdered her, unaware that Samara had picked up the trail with Shepard's help. Because Morinth was famously cautious, with escape routes planned in advance, direct confrontation was useless, so Samara and Shepard devised a subtler plan: Shepard would pose as a kindred spirit, draw Morinth's interest in the VIP section of the Afterlife club, and accompany her back to her apartment, where Samara would corner and kill her.

The trap led to a biotic duel between mother and daughter, the two evenly matched. Seeing her opening, Morinth offered Shepard an alliance, claiming she was as powerful as Samara and could serve the Commander's cause. The Commander then faced a choice. If Shepard sided with Morinth and killed Samara, Morinth took her mother's place on the team.

Impersonating Samara#

Having replaced Samara, Morinth relied on a strong family resemblance and a practiced imitation of her mother to pass unnoticed, taking over Samara's former quarters and even disabling surveillance there so she could speak freely in her own voice. Her disguise was not perfect; the most observant members of the crew, including Kasumi Goto, sensed that something about "Samara" had changed. Morinth resented the upbringing her mother had given her, rejecting Samara's lessons of self-denial and insisting that since everyone died in the end, one might as well take every pleasure offered. She made no secret of her desire to mate with Shepard, claiming the Commander was strong-willed enough to survive a joining, though that claim proved fatally false for any who tested it.

Fate in the Reaper War#

If Morinth survived the assault on the Collector base, she reached out to Shepard again during the war against the Reapers. Records recovered from the Shadow Broker's network showed she had attempted to contact her sisters Rila and Falere, though her messages had been intercepted and deleted before they could be read, confirming her efforts to reach the last of her family. During the assault on Earth she could appear as a Banshee, an Ardat-Yakshi repurposed and transformed by the Reapers into a weapon of war, her long flight from justice ending in the very horror her cycle had failed to escape.