Nassana Dantius: the asari diplomat who had Shepard kill her sister

Nassana Dantius was an asari diplomatic emissary posted to the Citadel, found in the Embassy Lounge on the Presidium, and a member of the wealthy Dantius family. Her problem was her sister Dahlia, who ran a gang of pirate slavers and was blackmailing her with the threat of going public. Her solution was to point a Spectre at the problem and lie about what the problem was.

Who is Nassana Dantius?#

Nassana Dantius was an asari diplomat on the Citadel who manipulated Commander Shepard into killing her own sister, and who later became a business power on Illium by the same methods, only faster.

The blackmail came first. Dahlia had chosen a career leading pirate slavers and had worked out that her existence, made public, would wreck her sister. Nassana could not report her without ruining herself, so she wrote a story instead: her sister taken prisoner by privateers, the trail followed to Sharjila in the Artemis Tau cluster, and a ransom quietly paid in defiance of the Citadel's refusal to negotiate over kidnappings. The last detail is what explained her silence and made the rest of it plausible.

Shepard hears it from Nassana in person after she sends a request to the SSV Normandy asking for a discreet meeting. Agreeing to save Dahlia is one route. Refusing is another, and she forwards the pirates' coordinates regardless. Finding the base without her help is a third. All three end at the same place, with evidence in Shepard's hands showing that the two women were sisters and that Dahlia commanded the pirates.

The mask coming off#

Put the evidence in front of her and Nassana stops pretending. She thanks Shepard for removing a potential embarrassment and says outright that sister or not, she will not be shedding tears. If Shepard found the mercenary base without her, she sounds almost let down that she never got to run the manipulation properly. If Shepard tells her she should have been honest from the start, she offers a family excuse: the Dantius clan has trust issues.

Then she pays. Refuse the money and she transfers credits anyway, on the grounds that she dislikes owing anyone, with a suggestion that Shepard give it away if the Commander's conscience is troubled. Warn her against short-changing the Spectre and she insists the deal will be fair. Push her for something better than cash and she agrees that anyone can find credits, and puts Shepard on the buyers list for prototype asari mods instead, which comes through as the Armali Council armory licence. How warmly the association ends depends on how politely Shepard handles the conversation about the reward.

Nos Astra#

By 2185 Nassana is on Illium with a great deal of power and a working method that consists of killing anyone who threatens her reputation. That is what put Thane Krios on her.

She had also fired an asari named Seryna for objecting to how she did business, which turned out to be an expensive economy. Seryna went to Thane with everything she knew about her former employer's security.

Nassana knew someone was coming. She sealed herself into the partially built Dantius Towers at the penthouse of Tower One and hired Eclipse mercenaries to hold the building. Shortly before Shepard arrives she orders the LOKI mechs to purge the salarian workers still inside the towers.

The last conversation#

When Shepard finally reaches her, Nassana assumes the Commander is the assassin. If the two of them dealt with each other in 2183 she recognises Shepard and, like everyone else, had believed the Commander dead. Play it flippantly and she settles on irony as an explanation: Shepard killed her sister and has come back for her.

What she cannot accept is that anyone would cut through her entire security detail merely to find the real killer. She wants the problem gone, and she opens with a bribe, double whatever Shepard is being paid to stand down and double again for the name of whoever ordered the hit. When it becomes clear that no figure will work, she turns spiteful and tells Shepard the two of them are not so different, both killing for money, and that the Commander is playing god.

A surviving guard hears something. Nassana tells Shepard to stay where they are, promising to sort matters out once this interruption is dealt with. Thane comes down out of the air ducts, kills the guards, and shoots her at point blank range. As she dies he folds her hands over her chest.

Afterwards Thane remarks that she had believed one of her sisters would kill her, which suggests there were more of them than Dahlia. The news of her death goes public with no suspects, a note that she had made a great many enemies climbing to where she was, and a rise in her corporation's stock price.

Trivia#

Grey DeLisle, who voices Nassana, also voices Lieutenant Durand, Dalatrass Linron and Kahlee Sanders, and worked on BioWare's Baldur's Gate II as Viconia DeVir and on Dragon Age: Origins Awakening as Velanna, Danella and Private. A known bug stops the Armali Council licence from actually being awarded when she offers it.