Doctor Liara T’Soni

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History

I am stretched on your grave

The crew of the Normandy was purposefully dispersed by the Systems Alliance. And with Shepard dead, nobody had STR clearance.

Without the Commander to hold it together her hand-picked team drifted apart. Its members had to address their own priorities, or were assigned to new units. The Council decided to suppress the truth about the Reapers, besmirching research about them.

From a comment made by the Avina VI , it seems likely that they wrecked Dr. T’Soni academic credibility. The Council’s goal was to prevent her from revealing the truth, making her look like a crackpot. Dr. T’soni’s papers were published, but obviously not in journals of Prothean research.

However, a handful of scientists did stumble upon T’Soni’s research. They realised that she was an academic powerhouse with access to an immense amount of authentic, virgin primary sources. This material was unprecedented since the Mars discovery.

One example was a Human academic named Dr. Faiza Haikal T’kele, working on the Mars dig. T’kele was trying to convince her colleagues that Dr. T’Soni was, as she put it, “the real deal” and that it was important that they read her papers.

And will lie there forever

However, the grieving Liara’s attention was focused elsewhere. A shifty Drell named Feron , operating on the lawless space hub Omega, told her that Commander Shepard’s smashed corpse had been recovered. Irrationally hoping that her lover might somehow still be alive, T’Soni walked right into the trap.

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However, the sting did not quite work out. The parties interested in capturing Shepard’s bondmate were presumably expecting a depressed, sheltered academic. What they got was angry, powerful biotic fighter with razor-sharp smarts.

Liara deduced that Feron was actually working for the Shadow Broker, a feared underworld intelligence agency. She also allied herself with Cerberus, a Human supremacist organisation determined to find Shepard’s body. They told Liara that they would “bring back” the Commander.

Cerberus then determined that the Shadow Broker had been the ones hired to recover Commander Shepard’s corpse. They also established that the Broker’s client was the mysterious alien species called the Collectors.

Liara forced Feron to work for her. She then used his access to infiltrate the Shadow Broker’s operations. Halfway through she discovered that Feron was not just pretending to work for the Shadow Broker whilst working for her. He *also* was on the payroll of Cerberus in case Liara betrayed them.

Dr. T’Soni forced the triple agent to play straight, and the Drell agreed. That was apparently out of hatred toward the Collectors, though the awareness that Liara could smash him to a pulp just by looking at him may have played a role.

Feron and Doctor T’Soni located Shepard’s corpse. They came in just as a Collector envoy was taking hold of it. Feron’s fast-talking gambit failed, but Liara charged in and killed the powerful Collector. She narrowly escaped the Shadow Broker’s base with the stasis pod holding the corpse. However, Liara had to leave Feron behind.

Seeing how Cerberus was the only agency that might somehow bring Commander Shepard back, Liara left the corpse of her love to Miranda Lawson and her Lazarus Cell. This was a difficult decision to take. Liara knew full well that Cerberus were a self-righteous bunch of thugs, terrorists, murderers and torturers.

However, Cerberus was for some reason pouring billions into a huge project whose sole goal was to resurrect her bondmate. This tiny bit of hope was better than nothing.

If your hands were in mine

At this point Liara had very little left. It seemed unlikely that Lawson could bring Shepard back. Her academic career was apparently wrecked. Her mother Benezia was dead. And Commander Shepard’s dream team had dispersed.

Liara decided to destroy the Shadow Broker. She needed to break something, and the Broker had tried to kidnap her. Furthermore the Collectors and thus the Broker were obviously enemies of Shepard seeking to desecrate her body. Lastly T’Soni was wracked with guilt over leaving Feron behind, and wanted to avenge him.

She came to Illium, an Asari-dominated planet in the Terminus Systems. She established herself as an information broker in the capital, Nos Astra .

Illium is a “business-friendly” planet. In other words almost everything is legal, including slavery and hard drugs such as red sand. Major Asari corporations use Illium for their shadier business, and there are next to no labour rights. As a result, the planet features a motley milieu of middlemen, fixers, spies, deniable operatives and hitmen.

Intelligence of various kinds, particularly industrial espionage and information of interest to the underworld, is one of the key commodities on Illium.

I’d be sure they’d not sever

How Liara T’Soni set up and ran her business is undocumented. But the results were startling. Within about a year she was a major, respected player with eyes, fingers and ears everywhere. Liara did business with major clients and was making obscene amounts of money.

Her overall plan was to become so embedded in the intelligence market as to root out her competitor the Shadow Broker. Then she’d destroy it as they’d wield equal power. From later events, it seems likely that this rise to power required a significant amount of bloody violence.

The Shadow Broker was soon aware of her. However, it became obvious that sending ordinary hitmen after Dr. T’Soni would just result in dead hitmen.

A complex, chess-like game evolved with Liara and the Shadow Broker manoeuvring around each other. Both sought to execute on a bloody checkmate and to gain insight into each other’s operations.

The overconfident Broker did not hire the sort of talent that could actually kill T’Soni. He had arrogantly decided that this upstart wasn’t worth the money and would never be able to actually threaten him.

Her revenge became central to Liara’s life, making her a hardened spymistress and killer and consuming her waking hours for months on end. By this point she had little in common with adorkable, Protheans-obsessed, socially clumsy young academic she was but months before.

My apple tree, my brightness

About two years and two months after the destruction of the Normandy, Liara received shocking news. Miranda Lawson’s Cerberus cell had succeeded. Shepard had been spotted on Omega.

Dr. T’Soni didn’t even bother investigating whether there was a link between the sudden end of a plague ravaging the slums of Omega and a series of devastating gunfights in the quarantined zone. She knew it was Shepard.

Liara tracked down the new Normandy. When the ship headed for the Crescent Nebula she correctly assumed that it would soon be docking in Nos Astra and handled the registration and docking fees in advance.

The part of her that would have greeted the return of her lover was buried under the permafrost of her new self, however. The shock of Commander Shepard’s death had been so devastating, and Shepard being back and on a very dangerous mission meant that Liara might lose her again.

Dr. T’Soni thus did not want to talk. She wanted to hire Commander Shepard as an invincible fighter who would help with her all-consuming revenge against the Shadow Broker.

It’s time we were together

Though taken aback, Shepard agreed to work with the distant Liara. They swapped services and information, with Shepard obtaining intelligence about the Shadow Broker.

In turn Liara dug up the location of two persons whom Shepard wanted to recruit for her tactical force. The unstoppable Drell hitman Thane Krios, and the overwhelming Asari paladin Samara.

During her investigation Shepard came to the conclusion that Liara’s assistant was a Shadow Broker plant who had been injecting disinformation in Liara’s network. The Commander was again taken aback when Liara simply got up, confronted the spy and slew her outright in a biotic duel.

Spotting an opportunity to get rid of Liara’s intelligence ring and/or the Shadow Broker, Cerberus used its vast intelligence resources to provide Shepard with precious information about the Broker. Shepard, predictably, told T’Soni.

With this data on hand, Liara decided to go straight for the throat, knowing that Shepard would be at her side.

The priests and the friars approach me in dread

As she stopped by her luxurious apartment to prepare for this strike, Liara came under sniper fire. It didn’t work. Though the shooter had planned for armoured windows, Liara had already been through several assassination attempts and there was a kinetic barrier backing the bullet-resistant glass.

T’Soni left a secret message for Shepard, left, then doubled back to observe who’d check the attempted kill. She memorised the face of the would-be killer then left to get the results of an analysis of the Cerberus intelligence Shepard had given her.

As she was working with the analyst, the building office they were in was bombed and armoured mercenaries came in, looking to kill Liara if she had survived the blast. Liara survived and hid.

Meanwhile Shepard and her operatives stormed the scene of the carnage to prevent the mercenaries from killing off the survivors. An Asari joined the assaulters. Though Shepard seemed to trust her, Liara recognised the sniper.

Stepping out the shadows, Dr. T’Soni denounced the Asari Spectre Tela Vasir as an agent of the Broker, and the Commander realised that Vasir had been manipulating her to find Liara. Vasir almost hit Shepard with a powerful biotic onslaught, but T’Soni countered her and forced her to flee as she had lost the advantage of surprise.

Calling out to the air / With tears hot and wild

Vasir fled in her flying car, but Shepard commandeered a taxi and gave chase, with the livid Liara praying the Goddess that Shepard’s balls-to-the-walls driving wouldn’t kill them.

The Commander eventually forced Vasir to crash. Despite a score of reinforcements from the Shadow Broker, and Vasir’s extraordinary biotic power, T’Soni and Shepard took her down. Liara took the intelligence analysis disc from the dying Vasir. She now had the coordinates to the Shadow Broker’s hidden fortress.

The flying base was operating above the planet Hagalaz , forever surfing on the titanic storm along the terminator  as oceans that had frozen during the night boiled during the day.

Shepard led the assault for Liara. After particularly heavy fighting T’Soni discovered that Feron was still alive, though he had been held and tortured for two years. Liara was elated – she could rescue Feron, not just avenge him, and end her guilt over having had to leave him behind.

The assault team then reached the Shadow Broker himself – a member of a nearly unknown alien species. The Broker smugly assumed he still held all the cards. However, Dr. T’Soni enraged him by precisely guessing his species and his provenance and deducing the rough chronology of his takeover of the Shadow Broker organisation.

The Broker charged to kill T’Soni and Shepard, who eventually took him down through a remarkable demonstration of teamwork.

My grief for the girl / That I loved as a child

As she was trying to deal with the end of an obsessive vengeance of two years, Liara pretty much sleepwalked to the control console of the Broker. It was abuzz with communications from operatives waiting to make their report or having detected a major disturbance in the hidden fortress.

Glancing at the console, Liara saw no security or cameras, but extensive voice masking software. She impulsively announced that the disturbance on the Broker’s fortress had been a technical glitch now brought under control, and rescheduled all operations reports.

Liara was now the Shadow Broker, and none of the Broker operatives could tell a new person was in charge.

Within a ten minutes span Feron had been found alive then rescued, the Shadow Broker had been unmasked then killed, and Dr. T’Soni had become the Shadow Broker.

Having difficulties emotionally coping with these developments T’Soni then started stammering something about wanting to give to Shepard all the resources she now controlled, then melted in tears. Shepard took Liara in her arms and they ended sharing a long kiss in the ravaged command and control center of the fortress.

While the assault team was receiving medical care, Liara worked on assessing and taking over her new responsibilities as the boss of the most dreaded underworld intelligence network, while simultaneously setting up resources for Shepard to use.

The Shadow Broker’s ship/base above Hagalaz.

Once Shepard and T’Soni had been healed they finally had their reunion, having a romantic dinner in Shepard’s cabin on the Normandy and resuming their relationship.

Though she was terrified that Commander Shepard would die within the next few days in her mission against the Collectors, Liara made a leap of faith. She trusted that her bondmate would once again beat manifestly impossible odds and come back to her.

As she continued rummaging through Broker intelligence, Liara realised that he had known about the Reapers all along. This is presumably why he had wanted to help Shepard find Saren back in 2183.

Reflexively looking for info about the Protheans, she found some extremely interesting leads. The Broker thought there were Prothean resources beyond the base T’Soni and Shepard had found on Ilos. These might hold more data about the galactic extinction cycle and the last stand of the Protheans against oblivion.

While the anxious Liara dove into her new work organising and managing a colossal amount of intelligence and a vast shadow network of agents, Shepard and the Normandy left for the last leg of their near-suicide mission beyond the Omega Four relay.

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Description

Unless she’s threatening someone or under acute stress, T’Soni’s voice is very soft, feminine and soothing. She sounds more mature, and her speech flows more freely than before.

Liara is still voice-acted by actress Ali Hillis, though her Liara voice is very specific and doesn’t sound like her normal voice. It is also different from her voice for Lightning in Final Fantasy, though there are similarities.

The more Liara spends time with Shepard, the less stiff and emotionless she sounds. Though she no longer expounds in her super-doctoral tone, she tends to speak in a very even and controlled manner, without contractions.

Dr. T’Soni is obviously more open, vital and relaxed around Shepard, and this livelier behaviour and voice reassert themselves in direct proportion with the restoration of her emotional bonds with the Commander.

In contrast, before their romantic reunion and while she was obsessing over the Shadow Broker, Liara sounded tense, obsessive and feverish when talking with the Commander.

Liara speaks with a soft, breathy voice, like a sort of stage whisper. Speaking that way is unusual in English, though it plays a role in the pronunciation of some other languages.

This might be the translation software’s way to approximate Liara speaking in an Asari language that is not the dominant one, since other Asari speak in a modal voice when translated by Shepard’s omni-tool. Perhaps Liara speaks in the Asari equivalent of some South-East Asian languages.

Amusingly, Shepard occasionally speaks in murmuring tones when she’s with Liara, catching her inflexions through proximity.

Red hot + blue

Liara no longer wears her doctoral uniform. She dresses according to Illium upper class fashions. These beautiful artisanal dresses are apparently the Asari equivalent of a business suit, and usually feature warm but not loud colours and intricate details in patterns and tailoring.

Dr. T’Soni occasionally appears to be a bit taller than Cdr. Shepard. Presumably that’s when she’s wearing high heels, since usually they’re the same height.

Several Humans describe Asari as having a “tentacle head” during Mass Effect 2. This is a poor description. AAsari cranial crests are cartilage, though given the similarities between Asari and Humans it is possible that the crests of Asari babies are somewhat flexible.

Liara now looks a bit more like her late mother, though it’s mostly apparent when one is looking for a resemblance.

Video

Since this is such a modern world, here’s a 3-minutes video of Liara speaking at length and wearing an Asari dress. Due to a continuity mistake in the game, Liara still has her youthful pink-ish dermal patterns and smooth skin in this video (this has been fixed in our screenshots).

 

We assume that Liara’s eyes still become solid black with a silver ring when she initiates a psychic melding.

Oooh… growin’ up (part 1)

Back in 2183 Liara still looked slightly baby-faced – though it wasn’t so much her features as the lack of hair, which to Human eyes made her face look a bit rounder than it actually is.

Her features are now sharper, and her skin texture is no longer baby-smooth. It now has the slightly leathery texture that most Asari skins have, and isn’t shiny anymore. She generally looks harsher and significantly more mature.

Liara’s facial patterns and lips used to be in tones of China pink with a bit of purple. Now they’re darker and less saturated, contrasting less against her skin. She still has a cute little shade of purple on the tip of her nose, but the purple shades under her eyes have become bluer, making them much less visible.

The effect is enhanced by the dark blue-green lipstick she’s now usually using.

The changes may be in part caused by cosmetics. It would make sense for Asari to have cosmetics to modify the colour of their facial markings.

Oooh… growin’ up (part 2)

However, almost all the changes are consistent, based on what little we know about Asari life stages, with Liara having aged by several decades if not centuries. Darker facial patterns with more blue-grey in the mix, more textured skin in a slightly less saturated hue, larger chest, more intense eye colour, higher biotic output.

The change in lips colour may also be natural rather than a change of lipstick. One brief shot of a Matriarch as she was as a Maiden shows her with much pinker lips, so it is possible that lips colour evolves with age like any other Asari skin marking.

This might be tied to the psychological shock of losing Shepard, and thus comparable to fictional characters having their hair turn white from shock and fright. The evolution of Liara’s appearance is never explained in-game, and her ME2 appearance was significantly retconned by a DLC released well after the main game (then slightly altered again for ME3 to, quote, make her sexier, unquote).

Some particularly powerful Asari biotics do not seem to age normally. Benezia apparently looked the normal age for an older Matriarch, but Matriarch Aethyta looked more like a Matron despite her grumblings that her body had “gone Matriarchal” and the Justicar Samara still looks Matronly and is stated to be a Matron whereas chronologically she should be a Matriarch.

Liara T’Soni is still 108 and thus a young Maiden, but she may have prematurely adopted some Matronly traits due to her biotic puissance. Perhaps there is a “sweet spot” in physical maturity toward which the most powerful Asari biotics tend to gravitate.

As she storms the hidden fortress of the Shadow Broker, Liara is wearing a suit of light armour similar to the one she’ll be wearing in Mass Effect 3 and has the same eye colour – see the next entry for more.

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Personality

Liara was shattered by Commander Shepard’s death, experiencing a vicious case of survivor’s syndrome and mourning her every minute. One gets the impression that it was a crucial part of herself that was torn away.

She put herself back together as she had to move on, but the pieces are clearly not in the same order as before the Normandy was destroyed.

Liara is no longer an adorable doctoral dork, or a lovely but awkward xenoarchaeology enthusiast. She’s a ruthless mastermind and manipulator, a determined fighter and if need be a remorseless killer. This is a shell built around the old Liara, but even the old Liara has matured and hardened.

Much like Shepard was regrown around a metallic skeleton, Liara has regrown inside a mental exoskeleton to hold herself together.

Obsessive

Unfortunately, the core personality trait this shell is made of is her main character flaw – her obsessiveness. Her all-consuming, decades-long passion for Protheans research has simply been replaced by an obsession with vengeance of Edmond Dantès -like proportions.

Liara being Liara she relentlessly focuses her superior intelligence and computer-like efficiency on her revenge, day and night, and lets everything else fall on the wayside.

Dr. T’Soni has drawn and quartered her old limitations. She no longer has foot-in-mouth disease, and is in fact a proficient negotiator who routinely plays hardball. She’s no longer timid and virginal, being icily focused and more inured to violence than most soldiers.

She’s no longer hampered by her age, as people who underestimated her due to her youth ended up dead. She’s no longer hiding from her mother’s shadow – she’s quickly becoming an Asari leader of her own, and is famous and admired on Illium.

Part of her persona seems patterned after Benezia. At one point she threatens a business contact using a line uttered by her mother shortly before her tragic death, though she later states that it was a bluff.

Even her passion for the Protheans has mostly fallen by the wayside. Her apartment is decorated with priceless Prothean relics carefully kept under glass, but that’s about all that remains of a decades-long obsession. Prothean archaeology reminds her too much of her lost love, and she has a new obsession to forget her grief.

Love, love will tear us apart, again

When Liara learns that Shepard is indeed back and working for Cerberus, another part of her freezes. T’Soni correctly deduces that the Commander has once again embarked on some suicide mission to save the galaxy, and she knows that she couldn’t stand to lose Shepard again.

She may be stronger than ever, but this strength is built on her loss. Her first reflex is to kiss and hug Shepard, but within a few seconds she goes into a sort of brainlock that prevents her from relating emotionally with her lover.

Liara thus coldly keeps Shepard at arm’s length and treats her as a trusted business associate. She’s focused on her obsessive vengeance, feverishly angry, and more than willing to kill to advance her agenda.

Some fleeting hints of tenderness toward Shepard occasionally emerge in her tone, but are immediately pushed back. As Shepard is unaware of what happened whilst she was dead, this comes as quite a shock.

T’Soni undoubtedly senses that this is devastating for Shepard, but she can’t allow herself to let Shepard back in. Allowing her Human back in her heart and see her die mere weeks later would destroy Liara – and given the mission the Commander is undertaking, the odds of that happening are high.

Liara also fears some revolting development such as Shepard now being a different person or no longer loving her – she was *dead*.

Even after events and Shepard force a discussion about where they stand, T’Soni is visibly scared of resuming their relationship. This is ironic given her heroic efforts to make Shepard’s resurrection possible.

Shepard is Liara’s first love and will quite possibly remain the big romance and best years of her life. Yet it will be but a small sliver of Liara’s centuries-long life, especially since Shepard is not going to die of old age.

The thought that she’s going to lose Shepard so soon is difficult to bear for Liara. The conventional Asari wisdom of living in the present — and enjoying life with a short-lived partner whilst it lasts — is easier said than done.

Healing hands, part 1

As Shepard confronts Liara, parts of the Asari’s old personality become evident again.

It is a fact that Dr. T’Soni cannot afford to be her younger self again. She grew up too much over two years. However, like Liara can discern that Shepard is still the same person, Shepard can see the old Liara under the new persona and help her reconnect with what was lost in the destruction of the Normandy.

As Shepard and T’Soni clear the mess so they can talk and see where they stand, Liara stops behaving like she’s an angry mastermind whose beringed fingers are stroking a white cat in her secret volcano base. As she spends time with Shepard there are numerous flashes of the old Liara.

She’s still tough, capable and remarkably collected under fire – but there are little moments of naïveté, bits where she misses jokes, and her resurfacing tenderness toward Shepard.

Shepard and T’Soni quickly relearn to work together and almost subconsciously recover their sympatico and their mutual trust. Some words exchanged in the heat of action are those of a couple – even before they actually get back together.

As the healing and reunion continue after the Shadow Broker’s death, Liara even rekindles her old passion about Prothean archaeology, reclaiming the parts of herself that froze when Shepard died – and making them a part of whom she has become.

Doctor T’Soni emerges from these two years and her belaboured reunion with her bondmate as a much more mature, far more decisive person and general badass. Shepard may be a giantess striding the Earth, but after Liara matures the power equilibrium within their couple is much more equitable and sustainable than it was at first.

Increasingly, the situation goes from Commander Shepard being the most badass person in the galaxy to Mandala and Liara being the most badass couple in the galaxy.

Healing hands, part 2

By the end of ME2 Liara is still emotionally dealing with Shepard’s return, the end of her vengeance against the Shadow Broker, her reunion with her bondmate and the end of an all-consuming obsession of two years.

She’s still picking up the pieces and rebuilding herself, but Dr. T’Soni conducts that work with her customary efficiency and finds her new footing within weeks.

Helpfully, her work as the Shadow Broker is exactly what she loves doing, what sparked her vocation as an historian and archaeologist – organising and processing information. Deep down, she is a librarian or a writeups.org contributor .

However Liara is troubled by the great power that she now wields as the Shadow Broker, she knows that she isn’t above temptation, and it is implied that she did some pretty bad things during her shadow war against the Broker.

Thankfully, her bondmate is as close to a moral paragon as it gets, and Dr. T’Soni knows that she is thus not really threatened by her own dark side.

Bondmates, part 1

Liara is happy to be reunited with Joker, Tali, Garrus and Dr. Chakwas – though she’s a bit perplexed as Joker keeps spouting heavy-handed innuendo about lesbian relationships that goes way over her head.

Generally, she’s still not very good at understanding Humans who aren’t Shepard. It’s certainly not her intelligence that is the problem – it’s more that Humans tend not to make much sense.

Dr. T’Soni and Cdr. Shepard often call each other by their family names, apparently as a private joke.

Thanks to the level of intimacy and communication that psychic melding represents, T’Soni and Shepard’s relationship quickly resumes as before once they’re fully reunited — once again, after a week or so, they think and act as if they had been living together full-time for months.

“Extra-strength saccharine” is a fair description of how they behave toward each other. It’s even schmaltzier than before as they need to heal together from the consequences of Shepard’s death through an extra dose of sweetness. Apparently, Thessia’s ecology supports a remarkable number of cute animal species that can be used as pet names for a lover.

Curiously, while both Commander Shepard and Doctor T’Soni have the so-called “Asari sense of humour” (i.e., they don’t make jokes) their dialogue together is often funny, in a low-key manner.

Most of the humour comes from the couple’s sense of sympatico, and flippant remarks making light of the dangers they are currently facing in order to support each other.

Bondmates, part 2

Dr. T’Soni is annoyed by the Commander’s somewhat overprotective attitude toward her. Ironically, she’s herself protective of Shepard, and for the exact same reasons – as a consequence of having already lost each other once.

Part of Liara’s irritation toward her bondmate’s attitude stems from her mother Benezia having also been overprotective of Liara when she was a child.

After Shepard’s exposure to Object Rho, she starts having nightmares where Liara suddenly turns out to be ardat-yakshi and kills her, and Liara soon gets nightmares where Shepard suddenly turns out to be Reapers-indoctrinated and kills her. Dr. T’Soni is nearly certain that it’s a very early stage of indoctrination due to repeated contacts between Cdr. Shepard and Reapers technology.

However, the couple is well-equipped to deal with these nightmares, especially since experience suggests that these will fade as Reapers exposure recedes in the past.

Liara particularly likes stroking Shepard’s hair, even when it’s not quite appropriate. She originally assumed that it would be an icky alien thing (none of the other major alien species has hair), but grew quite fond of them.

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Quotes

The Illusive Man (recruiting Liara to recover Shepard’s corpse): “Will you work with [us] ? Can we count on you ?”
Liara T’Soni: “No.” (long pause) “But Shepard can.”

(To an unseen client, quoting her mother) “Have you faced an Asari commando unit before ? Few humans have. I’ll make it simple. Either you pay me, or I flay you alive. With my mind.”

(To Shepard) “I’m working as an… information broker now. It’s been paying the bills since you…” (Liara is briefly unable to continue) “… since the past two years.”

Shepard: “You knew all of that off the top of your head ?”
Liara: “I’m a very good information broker. The world of intelligence isn’t that different from a dig site. Except that the dead bodies still smell.”

Shepard: “Are you on the run from the Shadow Broker ? I can help you.”
Liara: “Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the Shadow Broker is on the run from me. […] And when I find him, I’ll hit him with a singularity so strong that what’s left of his body will fit into a coffee cup.”

Shepard: “You know Liara, some days it feels like the entire galaxy is out to kill me.”
Liara (gently): “Maybe they should pick an easier fight.”

(Shepard and Liara are storming the Shadow Broker’s hidden fortress)
Liara: “Hang on, I’ve got a bypass shunt program that can crack this gate open.”
Shepard (under heavy fire): “How long will it take ?”
Liara: “I don’t know, Commander. I’ve never broken into the Shadow Broker’s base before.”

(Commenting about her assistant trying to murder her) “She was very talented […] but her barriers needed practice. Practice I’m afraid she won’t be getting.”

“I didn’t know who you’d be if you came back, Shepard. If you’d still feel…” (Liara trails off and doesn’t finish her sentence ; her eyes drift toward Shepard’s dog tags framed on her intelligence brokerage work desk)

Liara (answering Shepard’s weirdly random question): “’Azure‘ is slang for… a part of the Asari body… in some areas of Illium.”
Shepard (even more interested): “Where ?”
Liara: “Mainly the lower reaches, near the bottom.”
Shepard: “No, I meant ’where on the Asari body ?‘”
Liara (not realising the humour): “So did I.”

“I’ve spent two years plotting revenge. Now I have a chance to make it a rescue.”

Shepard (after commandeering a flying car to give chase, while putting the figurative pedal to the figurative metal): “What sort of guns does this thing have ?”
Liara: “Shepard, it’s a taxi. It has a fare meter.”
Shepard: “Wonderful.“

Liara (Checking her gun): “We get in. We get out. We kill anyone who tries to stop us.”
(Awkward moment of silence as Shepard stares at Liara in disbelief)

“It’s not that easy ! You can’t come back and have two years of mourning suddenly vanish !”

(During a high-speed chase in the midst of Illium’s flying cars traffic, a livid Liara sits next to Shepard who’s piloting like a maniac)
Liara (terrified): “Truck !”
Shepard (calm): “I know.”
Liara: “TRUCK !!!”
Shepard: “I know !” (avoids the collision by mere metres at about Mach .5)
Liara (reflexively covering her face in terror): “Yaaaaaaah !”
Shepard (triumphantly accelerating): “There we go !”
(T’Soni looks at Shepard between her fingers ; Shepard is grinning like a lunatic)
Liara (resigned and mildly accusatory): “You’re enjoying this.”

Shadow Broker: “It’s pointless to challenge me, Asari. I know your every secret, while you fumble in the dark.”
Liara: “Oh yeah ?” (proceeds to flawlessly guess a series of facts about the Broker based on her doctoral research, enraging him).

(As she assesses the Shadow Broker’s resources) “I’ve got all the secrets of the galaxy at my fingertips. Give me ten minutes and I could start a war. But I’ve got a purpose… helping you stop the Reapers. That will keep me honest.” (beat, playfully looks at Shepard) “Well, relatively speaking.”

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By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Mass Effect video game trilogy (including the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC), plus the events in the Mass Effect: Redemption comics.

Helper(s): Dr. Peter Piispanen, Eric Langendorff, Darci. Enhanced textures by Jean-Luc Fortier .

Writeup completed on the 16^th of March, 2013.