Liara T'Soni

Liara T'Soni is a character from the Mass Effect games.

Liara is an asari researcher who has spent the past fifty years of her life studying Prothean technology and culture, specialising in the Prothean extinction. She was born on Thessia in 2077, making her "only" 106—barely an adult in asari terms. She already has a great deal of insight into the Protheans and is a highly trained user of biotics. She is a potential romance interest for either a male or female Shepard.

Personality
Initially, Liara is very shy, naive and inexperienced. She often prefers to be alone, which is why she spends much of her time on remote digs, unearthing items. This can be explained by the discrimination she suffers due to being a "pureblood", a racial slur used for children born from two asari. She is socially awkward and not good with people, a fault she admits and is proven when she makes a fool of herself by telling Shepard that, due to being touched by a Prothean beacon, he/she would make an interesting specimen for an in-depth study, only to realise afterwards how wrong that sounds. She's still beating herself up over this even when Shepard comes to talk to her again, to the point that she's done a background check on Shepard behind his/her back so that she doesn't say something else stupid, though she does apologise for this. After Benezia's death, Liara claims that she is fine, and that she prefers to remember her mother as who she was before she got indoctrinated.

A defining trait of Liara's is her lifelong passion of studying Protheans, describing them as 'wondrous, mysterious creatures'. She speculates that her fascination with the past is due to being a Matriarch's daughter; matriarchs guide their followers into the future and seek the truth of what is yet to come, and so she is more interested in the secrets of the past, though this sounds like she became an archaeologist simply to spite her mother. As a result, she is very excited when she finally gets to meet a Prothean in the form of Javik, only to discover that Protheans are a far cry from the benevolent entities she thought they were, and were in fact very severe and controlling. Occasionally, however, Liara forgets that there are some things you learn simply by spending time with the people you care about, an example in her case being a song she learned from a friend during one of her first archaeology digs.

When Shepard first reunites with her on Illium, Liara imposes a radically changed personality; she is far more distant and cold, even repeating a line once spoken by her mother ("Have you ever faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have.") and even threatening to flay a human male alive with her mind, though she insists that it was just a bluff to get him to take her seriously. She also shows a very vengeful side, having devoted the past two years of her life hunting down the Shadow Broker with the intention to kill him, which Shepard can describe as "insane." Regardless, she is delighted to see Shepard alive again, giving him/her a hug upon seeing him/her (or kissing him/her if romanced). Eventually, during the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, this frosty personality is revealed to be little more than a facade, though her increased maturity and cynicism is real. She shows no signs of her former awkwardness and is far more confident in her abilities, describing herself as a "very good information broker" on more than one occasion. Liara also becomes progressively more sarcastic overtime, to the point that by the time she rejoins Shepard during the Reaper invasion in 2186, she is arguably the most sarcastic out of any of Shepard's crew besides Garrus and Joker.

Despite her increased maturity, Liara shows on occasion that she is, in some ways, still the same naive scientist she was when Shepard first met her; not only is she completely shocked to learn what Protheans were really like, but she is also unable to believe that her species were keeping a Prothean beacon hidden for millennia and using the knowledge of it for themselves, even though, as every other squad member points out to her, that's a perfectly logical explanation as to why asari are so advanced. She also occasionally has to be reminded of reality by more world-weary characters; if she is taken on the Ardat-Yakshi Monastery mission alongside Ashley, they get into an argument over the capabilities of a seasoned asari veteran. Liara, having been told that asari commandos are the best soldiers in the galaxy, brags that the asari's centuries worth of experience makes them immune to fear and disorganisation. Ashley, using her greater knowledge of military matters, counter-argues that when a mission goes bad, there's no knowing how a soldier might react, and that the asari are no more immune to this than anyone else.

Liara also has a habit of blaming others for problems that stem as a result of her own mistakes. An example of this is when she criticises the Virmire Survivor for their distrust of Shepard, calling them short-sighted. It apparently never occurs to her that that entire conflict could have been avoided if she had simply taken the time to inform them of how she recovered Shepard's body and gave it to Cerberus for repairs (as opposed to being so obsessed with getting revenge on the Shadow Broker), and her decision not to allowed the Illusive Man to poison them with false information. This tendency is also shown by her early treatment of Javik, repeatedly criticising him for not living up to her extremely over-idealised image of Protheans. Eventually, however, she realises she can't keep judging Javik based on what she thinks Protheans should be like, and that it was childish and naive for her to think that way in the first place.

Abilities
Although she'd rather just be an archaeologist. She occasionally makes references to encounters with pirate gangs and hostile wildlife in unexplored systems. Which is actually shooting closer to the actual archaeologist's life in parts of the world.

Trivia

 * Liara's face and body model is actress Jillian Murray.
 * BioWare revealed at the 2009 GDC that originally Liara T'Soni was supposed to be discovered on the mining planet Caleston in addition to several side missions, in a section of the game comparable to the size of Feros. Due to scheduling and coding issues, Caleston saw severe content cuts during the development of Mass Effect before being eventually changed to Therum. Originally there was a human mining station that served as a hub; much of the architecture for this station was later repurposed as the final fight location in Bring Down the Sky.
 * In the PlayStation 3 version of Mass Effect 2, Liara is always seen at the start of the game when attacked by forces unknown, even if one has imported a save from the original Mass Effect where she was not the love interest.
 * Liara's voice actress Ali Hillis also provides the voice for Harding in BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition.
 * If Liara is invited to Shepard's Personal Apartment in the Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC, the song she plays on the piano is a version of "Vigil" from the Mass Effect soundtrack.
 * Liara's age in Mass Effect 3 is given as 109, and while it took place in 2186, her year of birth is stated as 2077 - matching her age for 109 in 2186... except that the solar orbital period for Thessia is 0.9 Earth years, so either she should have actually been around 98 Earth years (therefore born 2088) or by her own races' homeworld calendar, about 121 years old. It doesn't seem much of a stretch to consider that she may have already converted the numbers for the sake of a crew that mostly use the earth calendar.
 * As with all squad members, Liara has unique dialogue that can be heard at various locations, during missions or assignments, or if a specific squad member is in the selected team.