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[psychadrellic]

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Kiwi
Are you 16 or older: Older.
Contact: gundamkiwi or PM this journal!
Current Characters: n/a!
Tag: thane krios

IN CHARACTER
Name: Thane Krios
Canon: Mass Effect 2
Canon Point: Post-suicide run in ME2, pre-ME3
Age: 39

History:

Mass Effect Wiki article, for reference.

First, some background about the drell race:

The drell are native to a dry, arid world. About two hundred years prior to the events of the Mass Effect series, the HANAR, a species of big, stupid bio-luminescent, sentient jellyfish, made first contact with the drell, and rescued 375,000 out of 11 billion drell from their dying home world, as overpopulation had driven the planet's ecosystem to collapse.

This is directly relevant to Thane for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is this thing between the drell and the hanar called the COMPACT, which is basically how the descendants of the 375,000 rescued drell refer to their debt of gratitude to the hanar for saving their ancestors' scaly asses from civil war and inevitable extinction. This compact is the reason many drell (happily!) take on tasks that the hanar, as thumbless, squishy jellyfish, are obviously bad at, such as combat.

It's due to this compact that Thane became an assassin-in-training at the tender age of six, and made his first kill at the tender age of twelve.

Secondly, unlike the arid drell home world, the hanar home world was very humid. Drell living there had an unfortunate tendency to develop a noncommunicable lung disease named KEPRAL'S SYNDROME, which erodes a drell's lungs' ability to take in oxygen, and ultimately results in...you guessed it! DEATH!

Guess who has Kepral's Syndrome?

So Thane Krios is a dying assassin. It's poetic.

MOVING ON:

FAMILY

Thane met his wife IRIKAH while on the job. Thane had his target in his (laser) sights, and was just about to pull the trigger, when Irikah, who had spotted the laser, deliberately stepped between him and his target. He was intrigued by a civilian who would step in to save a stranger's life, so he tracked her down, got to know her, and (once the hanar released him from his compact to let him have a family) eventually married her.

Since Thane's marketable job skills started and ended with assassinating, he carried on assassinating people freelance to pay the bills.

Despite his kind of awful profession, though, Thane and Irikah were pretty happy! They had a son named KOLYAT, and life was good for about 10 years or so until a group of BATARIANS (ugly, mishhapen-headed four-eyed asshole aliens), looking for revenge on Thane for an assassination he had done, banded together like a big bunch of manly, ugly assholes and murdered his wife.

Because they didn't have the collective balls to take on Thane.

Which is understandable, because at that point he was rumored to be the most skilled assassin in the galaxy.

But still. Assholes.

So up until this point, Thane had worked really hard to keep his family life separate from his professional life. Which meant that he was gone. A lot. And little Kolyat had no idea how dear old dad put the proverbial bread on the dinner table. So it's probably not a stretch to say that little Kolyat was a wee bit upset when dear old dad reappeared only briefly to attend to Irikah's funeral, and then dumped him on his aunts and uncles and DISAPPEARED INTO SPACE practically before mom's funeral was complete.

The reason Thane did that was to hunt down all of his wife's murderers and kill them until they were dead! This kind of segues nicely into Thane's spirituality and life philosophy, so moving on to

RELIGION

Most drell believe that the soul and the body are separate entities, and recognize that the body and soul together form a WHOLE. When the soul is traumatized or the body is injured, the person is no longer Whole. More relevant to Thane, the drell believe that the body can be directed as a separate entity from themselves, as a tool or, say, a gun.

Because he views his body as a tool directed by others, Thane does not take responsibility for the deaths at his hands which were ordered by the hanar and the clients he accepted during his freelance career. Hunting down and killing the batarians who murdered his wife was the first time Thane had made the choice to kill, and the first time his emotions had affected his actions.

Unlike the majority of drell, Thane follows the old polytheistic religion of his species instead of that of the hanar. He spends a lot of his time in prayer and meditation, even while on the job. To find a target, he prays to Amonkira, the lord of hunters. When defending another, he prays to Arashu, goddess of motherhood and protection; after taking a life, he prays to Kalihira, goddess of oceans and the afterlife.

While the philosophy of Thane's religion absolves him of the murders he's committed at the behest of others, his eidetic memory grants him the (questionable) ability to perfectly remember every murder he's committed over the years. Thane's a decent guy, though, so even without his magical memory he would still feel regret for his actions. His guilt, combined with his impending death (remember Kepral's Syndrome? Yeah, that's still a thing), are what compel him to join COMMANDER SHEPARD'S SUICIDE MISSION.

COMMANDER SHEPARD'S SUICIDE MISSION

COMMANDER SHEPARD is a human in the Earth Alliance Navy, and the main protagonist of the Mass Effect franchise. Since this is a Bioware game, Shepard's gender is up to the player. So for the purposes of this application and for consistency in Thane's canon, I'm going to say that the Commander Shepard he met and worked with was a foxy redheaded femshep.

To summarize, Shepard is on a mission to find out why the COLLECTORS (giant-headed four-eyed bug aliens) are raiding isolated human colonies. While she unravels the mystery, she travels around the galaxy in her super-neat ship, the NORMANDY SR-2, gathering a crack team of broken and emotionally unstable the galaxy's most talented individuals to help her with her SUICIDE MISSION, which involves finding and assaulting the COLLECTOR BASE to find out WTF those damned bugs are doing to all the human colonists they collected (get it? get it?)

Thane is one of the dudes on her LIST O' PEOPLE TO RECRUIT. She tracks him down to the bustling commerce world Illium, and confronts him in the office of Nassana Dantius, a corrupt business woman he had been hired to assassinate. Since Shepard "stormed the castle," as it were, and confronts Nassana directly, he seizes his opportunity to act while Nassana and her guards are distracted, dropping silently from a ceiling vent and killing the guards with space kung-fu. Nassana gets a bullet to the vitals, and as Thane lays her limp and lifeless body reverently on her desk, he says a prayer asking for forgiveness.

Then he acknowledges Shepard.

Even though he's an assassin, Thane holds life pretty sacred. He kills the wicked because it is just, but he does not hold with needless death of innocents, and from the sound of Shepard's story, there's a shitton of needless death happening to a whole crapload of innocents. So he joins her little party, informing her upfront that he is dying of Kepral's Syndrome. As mentioned above, his own looming death, combined with his guilt over past sins, were also motivations for him to join up. If he can help save or avenge innocent lives, that might help him to atone for his own sins.

Thane's a pretty introverted guy, and upon joining Shepard's little crew he spent most of his time meditating and reflecting by himself in the Normandy's life support control room, since that part of the ship tended to have drier air and was therefore easier on his soggy lungs. Since Shepard's a nosy kind of lady, she visited him a lot, and he told her a little bit about himself and his past.

He eventually asked her for her help; he had heard his son, Kolyat (remember him?) was on the CITADEL, which is an enormous space station that serves as the capital of the galaxy's CITADEL COUNCIL (AKA THE SPACE GOVERNMENT). Not only that, but apparently little Kolyat was fixing to try assassinating someone.

Sound familiar?

Obviously Thane doesn't want his son to walk this path, and so, even though they've been sort of estranged since Irikah's death, he asks Shepard take some time off from her SUPER IMPORTANT MISSION to help him find his son.

Shep's a bro, so of course she does.

With Shepard's help, Thane manages to find his son and stop him riiiiiight before he kills some obnoxious politician. Unfortunately, Kolyat is in his flighty rebellious TEENAGE YEARS, and he's not actually too happy to see his father, accusing him of abandoning him and not caring and etcetera.

Since C-Sec (Citadel Security, AKA THA POLICE) kind of got involved with stopping the whole assassination thing, they had to take Kolyat into custody. But because Shepard's such a bro, she talked the C-Sec captain into letting him off for attempted murder with community service.

...Yeah, that totally is a thing she did. Only Commander Shepard.

Grateful for Shepard's help and for the chance to kind of reconnect with his son before possibly dying via suicide mission, Thane was pumped and ready to go!

And wouldn't you know it, because he was so focused and stuff, he survived the suicide mission! In fact, everybody did! ...Well, everybody except for approximately half of Shepard's crew that was kidnapped while Shepard was off running errands for members of her crack team of alien misfits. Oops?

SO THAT IS A VERY LONG SUMMARY of Thane's life up until present.

Personality:

Thane is so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in him for a month. He's reserved, patient, polite and extremely civil. If you think that might make it difficult to get to know him, you'd be right. His impassivity while on the job carries over into his interpersonal relationships - such as they are.

That isn't to say that he's without feeling or emotion, because he's got those by the truckload. He cares deeply, he just rarely expresses it. Which is totally understandable, when you consider how he was raised from a young age.

As mentioned previously, Thane is a very spiritual individual. Despite the fact that he kills people for a living, he has a very strong sense of right and wrong. The innocent should be left to live in peace, and the wicked made to pay for their sins. Pretty simple. He's a very conscientious killer, though, and does his best to ensure that the deaths by his hand are painless and quick. And even though he may be killing some utterly vile and wicked individual, he still says a prayer asking for forgiveness.

While working as an assassin for the hanar, and while freelancing later to support his family, Thane's kills were committed impassively, with no emotional involvement on his part. As per his spiritual beliefs, his body was merely a tool others were using to meet their ends, so his spirit was separate from the deaths committed by his body.

That changed when Irikah was murdered. To say he went a little mad may be putting it lightly; for the first time, in hunting down his wife's murderers, the decision to kill was Thane's. The precise skills he had honed to perfection were being driven by anger and passion. He deliberately dragged out these deaths, where before he had always worked for quick, clean, painless kills. Her death, and the deaths he caused afterward, changed him. His spirit was injured, hurt both by Irikah's death and the anger that had followed and pushed him to torture.

Once he had found and killed every last individual involved with Irikah's murder, he did try to return to his son, but too much had changed, and he couldn't bring himself to do so. So he retreated into himself, and returned to doing the only thing he knew - assassination.

Somewhere between Irikah's death and meeting Shepard, Thane was diagnosed with Kepral's Syndrome. The diagnosis was a rather unpleasant wake-up call. It shook him out of the unthinking autopilot he'd allowed his body to fall into for so many years, and from there a sense of direction emerged. He began choosing targets of his own, seeking out the wicked and the corrupt, and ending the corruption. "The universe is a dark place," he told Shepard during their first meeting in the Dantius tower. "I'm trying to make it brighter before I die."

Commander Shepard became very important to Thane during the course of ME2. She would often visit him, interrupting his solitude, and the two would chat. Bit by bit she got him to tell her about himself, and before he knew it, he had opened up more to her than he had to anyone before, except perhaps Irikah. That was why, even though he hated to ask for help when he discovered what Kolyat was up to, he was able to.

Her assistance, and moreover, her friendship, won his loyalty. Building some semblance of a positive relationship with Kolyat was going to be difficult, given the suicide mission Shep recruited him for, but she gave him the chance to try. Her friendship also had a positive effect on him in other ways, helping him to be more open to the idea of social relationships. For a guy who'd spent the past decade as a lone wolf, and who didn't like to join the crew for meals because he was uncomfortable exposing his back around so many people, that's a pretty big concession.

Thane's relationship with his son, such as it is, is rocky. From Kolyat's point of view, Thane was never around when he was growing up, and then when his mother died, Thane came back for the funeral, but was gone again almost before the rites were even complete. Not knowing the whats and whys, watching his father do that has left Kolyat understandably bitter towards him. Thane, somewhat belatedly, realizes this. "I've taken many bad things out of the world. You're the only good thing I ever added to it." It's not that he didn't care, it's just that he didn't know how to show it. He did what he thought was best by completely withdrawing from Kolyat's life after Irikah's death. Come to find out he was wrong, but, well, live and learn, huh?

Contracts:

Thane's a practical guy, so once things are explained he would accept the contract. It seems like the most logical thing to do - if he was pulled to this place through the Ingress, staying nearby would seem like a solid solution for getting back, as the crew explained. That's really all there is to it for him.

Abilities/Skills:

Thane is a professional ballerina assassin, and possesses all of the physical abilities one might assume come with that job - he's fast and agile, can move silently and unseen, and appears to be a master of some type of space kung-fu.

He's also got some technical know-how, and is most proficient with sniper rifles and submachine guns, although one would assume if it's gun-shaped and has a trigger, he can use it to kill people.

Since he's, you know, a space ninja assassin.

He can mod his gun's ammunition with a power called SHREDDER AMMO, which tears through targets (uh...moreso than regular bullets, I guess!) and does enormous damage to organic enemies.

After THAT, he's also what is known as a BIOTIC in the Mass Effect universe. Biotics are basically space mages, since this is a sci-fi epic and not a fantasy one, the writers had to come up with a fancy science-y sounding term for it. What this basically boils down to is that Thane has the ability to use glowey-blue "mass effect fields" to kill his targets. It's space magic.

Thane's particular abilities consist of a move called THROW, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; he can throw a target and inflict damage if it hits something along the way. His other signature move is an ability called WARP which...also is pretty much as it sounds. When directed at a target protected by biotic barriers or armor, it eats away at the shielding, weakening its effectiveness and making killing the target inside the shielding easier. In addition, when applied to a target already affected by a biotic power, such as THROW, PULL, or SINGULARITY, it creates a neat effect known as a BIOTIC EXPLOSION, which is, again, pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

He also possesses an eidetic memory, the ability to sometimes cause mild rashes in humans who come into physical contact with his skin, and hallucinations in humans (and possibly others?) who come into oral contact with his skin. Technically these are all inherent racial traits and not actual SKILLS, but an individual in the possession of such traits could very well use them for good or for evil, were they so inclined...

(Which, LBR here, Thane is not inclined. At all. So. There's that.)

A NOTE: Thane's not the kind of guy to go around getting into random fights with people he's interacting with. As of his canon point, he still considers himself under Shepard's command; if she directs him to kick some ass, he'll kick some ass, but if she doesn't, it's very unlikely he'll stir himself to do so on his own. OOCly, I'm not the type to throw my characters into IC MORTAL KOMBAT DEATHMATCHES anyway, and as that's not how Thane rolls ICly I doubt it'll come up much, if at all.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

STRENGTHS: -Athletic -Efficient -Discreet -Intelligent -Practical -Ultimate poker face

WEAKNESSES: -Introverted -Terminally ill -Socially awkward -Poor parenting skills -Generally bad at life

Items:

*M-97 Viper sniper rifle
*M-9 Tempest SMG
*Omni-tool
*The clothes on his back

SAMPLES
Network Sample:

[Either somebody's been chain-smoking his whole life, or his voice just naturally sounds that way. Any human-type who's never heard a drell speak before will probably assume the former. Anyone who has heard a drell speak before may also recognize this particular gravely voice:]

If this is the typical conclusion to a night of raucous, drunken celebration, I believe I will abstain in the future.

[Is he joking? Is he being serious? Who can say? Maybe one of his crewmates]

If possible, I would like to locate and get in contact with any crewmembers of the Normandy SR-2 also currently aboard this vessel.

Also, in more general terms, any information about the on-board medical facilities - capacity, location, diversity of clientele, medical knowledge, and application - would be greatly appreciated.

[That's a lot of talking all at once to an audience of strangers; He'll just wrap up here, now.]

Prose/Action Sample:

Prose log @ high_seas
Savrou test drive thread!