Captain Qetsi'Olam vas Keelah Si'yah

Captain Qetsi'Olam vas Keelah Si'yah commands the ark Keelah Si'yah, an Andromeda Initiative colonization vessel transporting a multispecies contingent through 600 years of dark space to the Andromeda galaxy. She is hyperopic on most issues and is overly serious about everything, from nutrient paste to the destiny of the quarian race, though she has the drive and magnetic personality to charm people into following her dreams.

Background
Qetsi was born on the liveship Chayym. Her mother died when she was a kid. When Chayym was attacked by the geth during the Battle of the Citadel in 2183 she and childhood friend Malak'Rafa vas Keelah Si'yah were considered to be the only survivors from it.

She and Malak spent their Pilgrimage at a salarian biodiversity station on Erinle. The salarians pranked her one time by compromising her suit during a group outing, which resulted in her lungs getting infected by yelik algae. She and Malak developed a vapor-biotic to purge the algae then brought it back to the Migrant Fleet, where they were both assigned to the mid-range freighter Pallu'Kaziel.

Aboard the freighter Qetsi went into a relationship with Senna'Nir vas Pallu'Kaziel, which became a love triangle between her, Senna, and a lower-ranking officer named Telem'Yered. Qetsi chose Telem in the end, but remained amicable exes with Senna.

Back when Qetsi and Senna were still young and together they and Malak radicalized and joined the Nedas Movement, branding themselves with its motto on their biceps after weeks of preparing for a shared sterile environment: a Pallu'Kaziel closet. While Senna drifted away from politics, Qetsi and Malak eventually rose to become the leaders of Nedas.

Qetsi saw an opportunity to turn Nedas ideals into reality upon learning of the Andromeda Initiative. After she was given command of the Keelah Si'yah, she talked Senna into becoming her second in command, promising each other to set aside racial biases for the good of the passengers. Artificial intelligence was still out of the question, however; Qetsi did not see herself as that progressive. She did not allow an unshackled SAM to run the ship and let the staunchly anti-geth Telem assume the mantle of quarian Pathfinder.

During her tenure as ship captain, Qetsi wore a black suit with gray mesh and a purple/violet hood.

Mass Effect: Annihilation
Qetsi is revived by Senna during a shipwide emergency 30 years before projected arrival in Andromeda, using the authorization passkey indigo-9-9-white-architect-4-1-1-6-nedas. Brought up to speed by the elcor doctor Yorrik, Qetsi learns about the system malfunctions and the infectious pathogen plaguing the ship. She goes to Senna's quarters where she allows herself a few moments of vulnerability she dares not let out in public, then encourages him to focus on fixing the ship's datacore.

Before she could return to Yorrik the main VI K informs her of a complication in the cargo hold. People have revived en masse and congregated there. Two Sleepwalker Team Blue-7 members are there, but the captain could not reach them through comms when she tries to do so. This forces Qetsi and Senna to try manually reaching the others via trams, but even the transport system breaks down while they're in it. When Senna patches the trams, Qetsi splits off from him to return to the medbay via crawlspace access panels.

Assessing the infected batarian Jalosk Dal'Virra in quarantine and judging him ready to be put out of his misery, Qetsi suggests to Yorrik they should kill him already, but the elcor still thinks Jalosk can be saved. The way she conducts herself when conversing with the people in the area later makes Yorrik think Senna was onto something regarding her charisma. She asks Yorrik for his report on the contagion, which he dubs the Fortinbras Plague, silently absorbing the information as he drones on.

Qetsi expresses strong opinions when Jalosk touches upon the subject of caste and inequality. When Yorrik points out that castes are a batarian obsession, Qetsi cites various examples of alien prejudice left unlabeled whereas the batarians had the decency to call it as it is. She swears on Jalosk's ravaged form that things will be different once they arrive in Andromeda. When he finally dies, Qetsi whispers "I should go" and excuses herself from the medbay.

With interpersonal comms down, Qetsi uses the public address system hotwired by Senna to inform the awakened passengers of the situation: the symptoms and progression of the disease, the damaged systems, and ongoing efforts at repair. The captain's message cycles every hour; people still continue to be revived as time goes by. Despite believing the other arks would rather cut them loose, Qetsi also sets up a repeating distress message on all frequencies.

When Qetsi returns to the medbay later, her suit is examined by Irit Non and found to be compromised with microfractures. The captain was near the bridge when the delirious hanar Ysses coiled its tentacles around her body, then when it was pried off from her someone else tried to stab her because she didn't have any food. When she hears that Yorrik has preliminary ideas for the ingredients of a cure, Qetsi rewires a nearby panel to override her hourly address and tell everyone to proceed to the medbay for treatment.

On Senna's quarters in the quarian zone, Qetsi learns about her former boyfriend's greatest secret: a working ancestor VI. Liat'Nir had helped them out of a few predicaments earlier when the captain wasn't looking, such as the software patch that temporarily restored the trams. Qetsi is horrified; unable to accept the machine's benefits, she furiously orders Senna to dispose of the abomination, but her first officer refuses. Qetsi reaches for the VI's hardware to destroy it herself, but Senna prompts Liat to transfer into Keelah Si'yah in the hopes that she purges the cascading malfunctions. Comms are restored, then Yorrik informs the captain that she is actually immune to the plague and therefore a vital ingredient of the cure.

After hearing from Yorrik that she needs to be injected with the only sample of retrovirus and exposed to people to fast-track cure propagation, Qetsi and Senna are summoned to Anax Therion's quarters in the drell zone, where she keeps Ysses immobilized. Earlier in Senna's room, Qetsi tried to tell him the hanar doomsday cult were responsible for the plague. When Anax queries the captain for the next course of action, Qetsi suggests reviving the ship's Quorum for a tribunal. She suggests setting up in Engineering since nobody's been there since the beginning of the outbreak, then leaves the group to see to the arrangements.

The Truth
Instead of going to Engineering, Qetsi meets with Malak to discuss what they concocted together. It turns out that the captain herself designed the bioweapon while Malak wrote the computer worm instructed to let the virus incubate in drell hosts while it covered its tracks. Prior to launch, Qetsi studied the drell contingent and infected the most outgoing among them via usharet-scented perfumes installed on their cryopods. She only wanted to depopulate the dominant Milky Way races and give quarians a shot at being on top for once, but Malak's improper coding of temperature controls resulted in the virus mutating for decades and turning lethal and contagious to everyone. The hanar believers in the Day of Extinguishment merely formed the perfect patsy for the quarians' deeds.

However, after studying the captain's movements Anax was able to recall a murder she witnessed on Hephaestus Station. The tech Oliver Barthes was shot by someone with the same figure and voice as Qetsi. Distrusting her afterward, Anax advised Senna to join her in tailing the captain where they finally heard for themselves what Qetsi and Malak had planned. Upon discovery Malak was able to run from them, but the captain was forced to disclose the truth of the matter.

Qetsi developed a burning hatred for the dominant races during the prank on her on Erinle. The salarians actually stripped off her suit and left her outside the habitat bubble for a few minutes, enough for the algae to infect her lungs. During her months-long convalescence she learned to make her own bioweapon and solidify her beliefs in an extragalactic home.

The captain doesn't hold any animosity for the drell and the other minor races, though when Anax asks why she used the drell she has no answer. She only knows she isn't a genocidal maniac, hence why she didn't release the plague back home. Fearing the backlash against the quarians if her involvement is to be discovered, Qetsi begs Anax and Senna not to tell anyone, preferring death over being outed. Senna proceeds with the original plan and drags her to medbay to be injected with the retrovirus.

Instead of waking the Quorum Senna decides he, Yorrik, and Anax are enough to pass judgement on their captain. Yorrik is already in the final stages of the plague and barely cognizant, slamming the captain against the wall in a Fortinbras-induced rage. Despite the pain, Qetsi agrees to mend what she had done.

The captain strips off her suit and ventures into the six environmental zones of the Keelah Si'yah near-naked, making sure to at least touch the passengers to expose them to the retrovirus. She tries to imagine they were forgiving her, but it's more difficult to do so with the batarians' swearing and rough treatment of her. She endures the high gravity of the elcor environment and finally expires in the ammonia-saturated volus zone, weeping and singing the quarian lullaby My Suit and Me all the while.

Qetsi's final thoughts are of the deaths of her parents, the feeling of the creeping Erinle algae in her lungs, and her relationships with Senna and Malak.

Mass Effect: Andromeda
Qetsi's distress message is received by the Hyperion in the Heleus Cluster over 3 decades after her demise. There is some difficulty in tracing the origin of the signal, however, rendering Keelah Si'yah's present location and status unknown.