Admiral Rael'Zorah

Rael'Zorah is Tali's father and a member of the Admiralty Board. When Tali'Zorah transfers to the Normandy, he approves of her transfer and sends Commander Shepard a message detailing her transfer.

According to Han'Gerrel vas Neema, Rael and he were both young trainees when they had to defend the gunship Yaska against batarians. During a batarian attack, Rael managed to fight off the batarians in defiance of orders, saying that they couldn't get in trouble for breaking formation as trainees. The result was both the Admiralty Board slapped medals on their chests and sent them out on pilgrimage early.

Rael eventually rose to a position on the Admiralty Board. He was distant from his daughter Tali, determined to help the quarians reclaim their homeworld and build a house for his family on it.

During the events of Mass Effect 2, Rael'Zorah told Tali to send him parts and pieces of geth for a secret project on the Alarei. When Tali had completed her mission on Haestrom and joined Commander Shepard's crew, Rael approved of her transfer. Unfortunately, some time after his message was send, the geth he reassembled attacked both him and the other quarian scientists on board the ship, and Tali faced treason and exile on the charge of sending active geth into the Migrant Fleet. Tali returned to the flotilla to face trial, and she and Commander Shepard boarded the Alarei. They found Rael'Zorah's corpse, dead along with all of his research team. Tali tried to deny that he was dead, trying to rationalize that he was trying to fake his death. After breaking down crying, she find a message recorded on his omni-tool explaining how to deactivate the geth and to show the date to Han'Gerrel and Daro'Xen. Evidence showed that Rael'Zorah was deliberately activating geth to perform experiments, in order to find a way to disable their neural network. He was willing to do whatever it took to accelerate the quarian people's desire to return to their homeworld, even refusing to contact the Admirality Board as a precaution. However, he told his subordinates that he will not involve Tali in any political blowback. Whether Shepard presents this evidence to the Admiralty Board affects the outcome of Tali's loyalty mission. If the Commander presents the evidence, then Rael's name is stripped from the manifests of every ship he had ever served on and he would be portrayed to children as a monster.