Personnel Records
Liara T'Soni was born in 2077 CE (Earth, Julian Calendar) to Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, Peeress, Member of the Thirty, Scribe of Athame and Honored Protector of the City of Sonalere. According to the Republican Health Institute records, her 'father' is unnamed but listed as an asari of 'late matron or early matriarch' age.
The city state of Sonalere is the closest non-urban area to two largest Thessian city-states and most populous Republics: Armali on the equatorial part of the western coast and Serrice to the south, stretching across most of the temperate zone to reach Sonalere's borders. Sonalere Republic was named by ancient asari who left their raft-based villages and settled in the valley filled with rich volcanic soil the same distinct color as the mountains, which they named 'son' ("foam") and with it, the valley Son. With the exception of the Soneska ("mouth of foam") port and de facto capital city, are residential community preferred by those who want luxury without the bustle and chaos of the predominant cities of Thessia. The city claims foundership and descent from ancient T'Soni and clanless huntresses, Paladins, and priestesses. Following the wars during the Malari Queendom, Matriarch Cellinis T'Soni would found the Justicar Order with her bondmate Kanyru, though the latter would leave her bondmate to liberate Serrice and receive the name T'Sere. Alliances between the T'Sonis and the families in the Serrice Triumvirate are ironclad, with smaller Sonalere free to take bolder positions in the Forum of the Thirty Student. This has earned them the nickname 'the malyk's fourth paw' amongst those opposing the polices of the Serraci bloc.
Owing in part to the prominence and House T'Soni within Athamic religion and Thessian religious and military history, Sonalere's residents have long been dominated by academics, successful artists, scholars, and monastic enclaves.
Nestled in a broad valley in the ex-volcanic Whitescale Mountains, it is an idyllic area with mild-to-cold climate by Thessian standards, with temperatures on the lower peaks averaging -2 Celsius (28 Fahrenheit) and summer highs reaching 25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) in at sea level or in the foothills.
Local nature reserves are renowned for the old-growth forests composed of the ancient and sky-scraping knifetrees between which grow wild clumps of the ever popular maiden's blush and dawnflower. Wild ajahe ("lovely flesh") fruit trees and kaff thornbushes can also be found. Kaff is believed to have first been cultivated into trees here and yielded the ingredients to two iconic asari beverages: Kaffe and sirutanna tea which are made from the kaff bush's seeds and the seedpod shells and leaves, respectively. These valuable crops and orchards of ajahe formed the economic base in ancient times, exported through the naturally enclosed port.
In more recent times, well-to-do businesspeople eager for more quiet than Serrice offers often settle here. Part-year residents are also common for those seeking a more rugged backdrop or excellent hiking and small game hunting for their winter home. The number of matriarchs in residence is disproportionate to population and likely related to the opportunities to access to ancient libraries, museums and landmarks as well as the surroundings which lend themselves to contemplative professions like memoir-writing and teaching small groups of pilgrims.
Local industry is minimal, though a few high-end labs exist in the city and no doubt countless more are secreted away in the matriarchal residences. By city law, all spaceport traffic approaches and leaves ocean-ward and takes off under maneuvering thrusters, preserving the quiet.
Liara was raised primarily on the sprawling T'Soni estate (actually a heavily upgraded citadel first built by the founding T'Sonis) that sits in the heavily wooded hills above Sonalere. In her youth and into her fifties, she traveled with her mother to places where Benezia taught Athamic philosophy and did business, such as the Armali penthouse, their compound on Nos Astra, and a small residence they kept on Palaven to visit relatives whose identities were not disclosed to Asari High Command's Intelligence Group.
She was educated by private tutors on various topics, sometimes leveraging the extensive library of the House. Given her mother's focus on integrating Athamic teachings into a largely post-religion culture, the collection is rich in rare texts of ancient asari and even works on pre-written asari history of the pre-Athamic and early Athamic theocratic period.
Liara did not leave the compound without the company of her First Huntress (Slaere K'Literis, formerly Armali High Guard) or her mother's Archon of the Guard (Shiala K'Vyane, former Eclipse processed through a probation with Asari Republican High Command). These elite warriors were her tutors in self-defense, biotics, and small arms.
This sheltered upbringing ended in her fifties when she enrolled in university shortly after she reached physical maturity, embarking on a 'cooled off' lifestyle centuries earlier than most maidens.
She enrolled in the University of Serrice against her family's wishes and traditional academic focus in Armali, feeling it was superior in technical fields like Xenobiology, Xenoculture, and Xenotechnology. Liara was the minimum enrollment age yet pursued an intense field of study encompassing language, theoretical engineering, and xenocultural studies with an undergraduate focus on a comparative analysis of krogan and turians. In her graduate studies, forensic archeology, speculation on recovered technology, and linguistic and artistic analysis is where the young T'Soni excelled, gradually pivoting the bulk of her research publications towards studies of the Protheans.
In her third year of graduate studies, she suffered mental exhaustion to the point where her physician offered her a choice: Hospitalization or a hobby.
She pursued and quickly won a place on the Waveball Exhibition League Team the Serrice Storms, establishing a solid record as a 'dancer', a mid-field position requiring rapid generation and pinpoint control of multiple biotic fields. Liara eventually earned the nickname "Justicar" from her teammates though not it was not meant flatteringly, as they respected her on-field prowess but felt her style lacked the flair typical of the exhibition league's broadcast matches and found it odd that she never attended afterparties or engaged romantically or sexually with the team or fans. Many news outlets speculated that shame about her pureblood status was why Liara did not indulge. This line of speculation was later dropped amid a barrage of lawsuits against these outlets, many of them filed and even argued by Matriarch Benezia herself, well-versed in the older Athamic and Justicar Code-influenced law and skilled at getting changes of venue out of Thessian standard civil courts.
Despite having access to both the generational wealth gathered by the T'Soni line since before the last ice age on Earth and access to the Sonalere Republic's tax system's payments directed to her as the sole Heiress of the founding House and the Protector-in-waiting, (not to mention the option to attain various positions in family businesses) her Serrice Storms salary and her University of Serrice research grants are her only income as an adult.
Katherine Elizabeth Shepard was born 2154 CE (Earth, Julian Calendar) to Hannah Shepard. The first and only child of Hannah and the recently deceased Thomas Shepard was born in the medbay of the SSV Venice (a Geneva-class heavy cruiser) assigned to the Second Fleet. Her father Thomas had died in a "reactor leak" on a transport three weeks before her birth, an accident that Alliance Intelligence later matched to a Cerberus 'sanitation team' mission to execute a defecting operative. Due to a severe Element Zero-exposure in the womb at six weeks' fetal development-Hannah survived a shuttle crash-and a subsequent and more severe re-exposure during a shipboard accident at age three, Kate had survived eezo contamination well in excess of typical fatal doses for adults before she could read.
She showed indicators of future biotic potential as young as eighteen months.
Her mother transferred to the SSV Einstein (Hawking-class carrier) when Kate was two. Her first amp was installed at age five, shortly before kindergarten and as a purely precautionary measure. It nonetheless represented the first successful operation on a child so young and the first in a mass effect-ambient environment like a ship's medbay. Her case study made Dr. Nicholas Chakwas a noted expert. For the rest of his career he was often requested as a consultant in pediatric biotic and neurosurgery. Due to a lack of human designs for non-adult patients, surgeons used a Serrice Council amp provided by an asari charity. This created a minor diplomatic incident when a member of the anti-alien Terra Firma party publicly accused the Asari Republics of 'violating children's bodies' in a lurid statement. The contrast between the screed published by the party and the asari ambassador praising Kate for her resilience and offering prayers for her health was stark and did not go unnoticed. Polling and analysis suggests it led to the defeat of several Terra Firma-aligned candidates in the next election.
Following in the footsteps of both her parents, her paternal grandmother, an uncle, an aunt, two great-grandparents and no fewer than nine of her great-great grandparents, she chose a military path in life. Cadet Shepard applied to and was accepted by the Systems Alliance Naval Academy as an officer candidate, a rare feat at age 18.
As an untested officer on her first planetside shore leave, she was swept up in the Skyllian Blitz's first and most iconic engagement. Shepard was at a local bar frequented by marines and the local LGBTQ+ community and unarmed when the alarms went off. She led a small group of off-duty personnel through the streets to the nearest armory before launching a counterattack. The first wave of pirate attacks targeted the local garrison and decapitated the chain of command, leaving Kate as the third-highest ranking officer in the vicinity. By the end of the following night, she was the highest-ranked Systems Alliance officer on the planet, and in fact, the only officer.
After the pirate armada broke the colony's orbital defenses, she gathered a group of six of her fellow marines, several reservists, and various locals with either biotics or access to small arms and evacuated almost half the population of the capital city of Illyria into the old mining tunnels west of the city. Using a combination of hit-and-run tactics, deliberate demolition of local infrastructure, and sniper work, the militia held the city center for fourteen days and created additional opportunities for civilian escape. Eventually, two hundred and four thousand civilians (including a majority of the reproductive-age women and children, the preferred targets of the slavers) took refuge in the colony's sewer systems, aqueducts, and mines.
For six days, Shepard led multiple harassment, demolition and assassination raids aided by two civilians: Amani Al-Esseh, a sixteen-year-old girl who worked with local wildlife safaris, and Harry Collins, a retired police officer who emigrated from the Boston-area megacities. On day nine of the occupation, an opportunity arose to reach the communications tower and contact Alliance Command to report the attack. Shepard and the civilian volunteers took it while other Alliance personnel remained behind to secure the civilian shelters. They were ambushed just outside the city wall and forced to hold a demolished checkpoint for seven hours until an opportunity arose for retreat.
The tactics used in Kate's "Stand at the Breach" are now required training for all biotic-capable human infantry. The tactics used by Al-Esseh revolutionized thought for utilizing heavy sniper weapons and close-range biotic infantry in close proximity.
The trio broke the enemy line in the middle of the next night and pressed onward to complete their objective. During their retreat heavy-weapons fire killed Amani while she was on overwatch clearing a path for Shepard to retrieve an injured Collins. Collins died of his wounds before Shepard could stabilize him.
Responding Alliance forces located Ensign Shepard in the middle of a twenty-meter blast crater in the city administration building after following a trail of batarian and turian corpses killed with a mixture of biotics, blunt force trauma, and combat knife wounds. The colonial flag had been repurposed as a burial shroud for Amani.
Despite the destruction of most of the capital city and the deaths of much of the local police and nearly the entire garrison, the Skyllian Blitz and the Siege of Elysium were unquestionably victories: The largest pirate fleet ever seen attacked a lightly defended world held by a newcomer species, but took no slaves and stole only a few thousand tons of cargo. The infantry holding action was the key: The batarian slavers were unable to leave without slaves to sell and the turian and krogan pirates accompanying them unwilling to leave the protection of the pirate warships. The vast majority of the pirate fleet was on the surface or in orbit when reinforcements arrived and were annihilated by the Alliance Navy. Only ships that had already fled survived. Evacuating the city meant it was a free-fire zone for orbital bombardment with the exception of City Hall. Estimated losses taken by the Terminus and Traverse slavers and pirates were 93% of their ground force and 99% of their ships. Large pirate bands have yet to resurface after this depletion.
Ensign Shepard was awarded the Star of Terra by the military along with various civilian honors and mentions by the friends and family of victims and survivors. Most bars on Elysium not only serve all service members at discount, but they serve "Biotic Blast", the drink she was attempting to explain to the bartender when the attack began. For an average male, one glass is sufficient to go from 0.0 to 0.12 blood alcohol and comprises two days of calories. Consumption by those without biotics is dangerous, as they lack the increased metabolic rate.
A sculpture just outside the re-constructed defense wall is titled Lioness and the location where Al-Esseh died is now an Islamic community center. Collin's family hosts a charity event yearly on behalf of the Alliance Army's Military Police division.
Following extensive psychological evaluations, Shepard was re-approved for active duty and fast-tracked for more extensive training at the Interplanetary Combatives Training (ICT) facility Vila Militar located in Rio de Janeiro, the home of the Alliances N-program special forces. She tested into the Biotics/Assault ("Vanguard") framework at N4 and cleared through the N6 courses for Biotic Assault, and Infiltration/Demolition/Wetwork ("Infiltrator") along with earning a certification for Multi-Species Operations in her first attempt. She returned with the following class to pursue and earn her N7 in both Vanguard and Infiltrator and succeeded-to prevent accusations of favoritism, her service record lists N7 Vanguard and N6* Infiltrator plus an entry only high-clearance personnel can view-with several instructors remarking on her tactical creativity and grasp of alien gestures and languages.
Taking note of a prominent female soldier with exceptional potential and huntress-like biotic, infiltration and sabotage training, Asari High Command offered her a slot in Project Valkyrie, an attempt to cross train human biotic soldiers-female, at Thessia's request-alongside their own Huntresses. Six soldiers were selected. One was later pulled for ties to the racist Terra Firma group, one washed out and four proceeded. Of those four, two cleared first-rank (Initiate) and two reached second-rank (Commando) but only Kate Shepard would receive the third and final rank, the Mark of Kurinth: The indicator of someone bearing the title of a Huntress trained and approved by the Republics. The program continues intermittently as candidates are found but to date, no other human has been awarded this honor. In fact, only eight aliens over the centuries of allied asari-alien warfare have received it, five of those during the Rachni War.
Shortly upon returning to Alliance space and roughly four years after Elysium, she was part of a counter-terrorism operation on Torfan, leading a quick-response force pursuing the warlord who masterminded not only the Blitz but also the infamous raid on the farming colony of Mindoir. Tasked with clearing a heavily defended position manned by a large force of batarian irregulars while unable to contact her own, elite and properly trained team, she made use of all available Alliance personnel-soldiers, clerks, mechanics-and cleared the bunker. She eradicated the entire batarian unit that had planned the attack despite the loss of two-thirds of her forces. A clip of leaked helmet-cam footage of her executing the batarian terrorist known as Bahak earned Kate the nickname "Butcher of Torfan", which she does not answer to, as several tabloid reporters have learned fist-first.
Following Torfan, she requested a leave of absence and received it on the condition she used it for training. Shepard attended a civilian university, attaining a Bachelor's and then a Master's in Psychology at Trinity College in Dublin, the alma mater of many of her non-military family members. Her graduating class was the first to have coursework on non-human species and joint instruction with non-human faculty off-world.
After graduation, she was re-activated and placed in a series of postings on small flotillas at the edge of human space, designed to maximize her visibility and discourage pirates by intimidation.
In 2182, following what was reportedly a nasty inter-service squabble, Kate was transferred from the Systems Alliance Navy to the Marines and placed under the command of Captain David Anderson and in 2183, she was posted to the SSV Normandy SR-1 for its shakedown cruise.