Rael'Zorah: Quarian Admiral and Tali's Father

Admiral Rael'Zorah was a member of the quarian Admiralty Board and the father of Tali'Zorah. Consumed by the dream of reclaiming the lost homeworld, he conducted forbidden experiments on reactivated geth aboard the ship Alarei, work that killed him and his research team and left his daughter to face a charge of treason before the fleet.

A demanding father#

Rael rose to the Admiralty Board after a youth marked by daring. As a young trainee he and Han'Gerrel vas Neema had defended the gunship Yaska against a batarian raid, and when ordered to hold formation Rael took the helm in defiance, reasoning that trainees could not be charged with breaking orders. The two recovered the freighter the raiders had drawn off, and the Admiralty awarded them medals and sent them on their Pilgrimages early.

He was a distant and exacting father, set on helping the quarians reclaim the homeworld and on building a house for his family upon it. He was hard on Tali'Zorah through her upbringing, determined that she grow into a capable representative of her people. When Tali set out on her own Pilgrimage he sent her a recorded message pressing upon her its importance and the need for quarians to stand strong against a harsh galaxy. Later, when she joined Commander Shepard's crew aboard the Normandy, he approved the transfer and sent the Commander word of it.

The Alarei and his fall#

In 2185 Rael instructed Tali to send him geth components for a secret project aboard the Alarei. There he deliberately reactivated geth in an effort to find a way to hack their neural network, breaking sacred laws that predated the quarians' flight from the homeworld. Against the advice of his assistants he refused to warn the Admiralty Board, fearing it would only bicker, and would not draw his daughter into the political fallout. The reassembled geth eventually turned on him, killing Rael and his entire research team.

With active geth loose aboard a ship of the Migrant Fleet, Tali was charged with treason and exile. She and Shepard boarded the Alarei to find Rael's corpse among his slain team. Refusing at first to accept his death, Tali at last found a message on his omni-tool explaining how to deactivate the geth and instructing her to show the data to Han'Gerrel and Daro'Xen vas Moreh.

A name that could become infamy#

By Tali's reckoning, were her father's deeds ever made public his punishment would far exceed posthumous exile; his name would be struck from the manifests of every ship he had served on, and he would be remembered as the worst war criminal in quarian history, a monster held up for future generations. Whether Shepard presented the evidence of his work to the Admiralty Board shaped the outcome of her trial. Told the truth in secret, Han'Gerrel was shocked and horrified yet vowed to keep it hidden, unwilling to let Rael's daughter pay for her father's mistakes.

His influence outlived him. His experiments, and the breakthroughs Daro'Xen vas Moreh drew from them, were the direct cause of renewed war between the quarians and the geth, and the seat he left on the board was held temporarily by Tali herself if she had survived and escaped exile. To the end his memory colored his daughter's choices, a presence she carried into the fight to reclaim Rannoch.