Shala'Raan vas Tonbay: The Quarian Admiral

Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay was a member of the quarian Admiralty Board and a long-time friend of the family of Tali'Zorah, having known the Zorah family for more than twenty-five years. Tali called her Auntie Raan. Raan presided over Tali's trial for treason and later served as a quarian envoy aboard the Normandy SR-2 during the war to reclaim the homeworld of Rannoch from the geth.

Auntie Raan#

Raan was an old friend of Tali'Zorah's father and had known the Zorah family for over twenty-five years, so closely that Tali called her Auntie Raan. She and Tali's mother had synchronized their environmental suits so that they could share a clean room for Tali's birth, an act that left Raan ill for a week afterward, and it was Raan who placed the infant Tali into her bubble, the sealed environmental unit that quarian children wear.

Moderator of Tali's trial#

When Tali'Zorah was accused of treason against the quarian people, Raan was seen presiding over her hearing, but her relationship with the Zorah family obliged her to recuse herself from taking part in the judgment. She instead acted as the trial's moderator and spokesman. Hoping to give Tali the best chance of proving her innocence, she withheld the news of a geth attack on the family ship Alarei until the proceedings had begun, so that Tali's surprise and dismay would be genuine and visible to the judges. Raan herself was undecided on the question of the geth and sided with none of the other admirals. Depending on how Commander Shepard spoke and acted on Tali's behalf, the trial ended either with Tali found guilty and sentenced to exile, or with the Board acquitting her of all charges.

Envoy at Rannoch#

During the missions on Rannoch, Raan served as the quarian envoy aboard the Normandy SR-2, remaining in the War Room for the duration of the campaign. If Tali had not survived the strike on the Collector Base, Raan filled her place in the key events that followed. She had given provisional support to the admirals pressing for war with the geth, but in the field she sought to restrain them. When Admiral Han'Gerrel ordered the Heavy Fleet to fire on the geth dreadnought, endangering Shepard's team, Raan tried to stop him and, when forced to comply for the sake of the fleet, was outraged enough to threaten him with charges of treason.

She coordinated the fleet through the campaign, weighing hard choices such as converting the quarian liveships into warships, and asked Shepard to rescue a fellow admiral stranded on the surface. In time she provided the Commander with a targeting laser and the coordinates of the elusive Reaper base on Rannoch, and during the assault that followed her own ship was shot down and she crash-landed on the planet.

Fates on the homeworld#

Raan's ultimate fate turned on Shepard's decisions and on whether Tali still lived. Had she taken Tali's place and Shepard chosen the geth over the quarians, she took her own life. Had Shepard chosen the quarians and Tali was gone, Raan reluctantly cut down the geth Legion or its successor when a geth platform rejected the decision, expressing regret at having to do so.

If peace was secured between the quarians and the geth, a newly sentient geth approached Raan and welcomed her people home to Rannoch, and she suggested the southern continent for settlement for its excellent farmland. In the aftermath she sent Shepard a message and changed her name to Shala'Raan vas Rannoch, taking the name of the reclaimed homeworld in place of her ship's, though even then she carried some wariness about the new peace. Had the geth instead been destroyed, her message was a different one, and should Tali have died she stood ready on Earth at the forward base, prepared to commit the quarian forces to the final battle.