The apothecary Ysses serves in Sleepwalker Team Blue-7 aboard the Andromeda Initiative vessel Keelah Si'yah. It specializes in administering pleasant narcotics rather than the expulsion of unpleasant ones. It believes in a fringe interpretation of the Enkindler religion where the end of all things is embraced but doing anything is a sin. Like many of its ilk, Ysses tends to speak in a polite but longwinded manner, often to the impatience and annoyance of its peers.
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“By the homeworld I hope to find one day.” — Spoilers for Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation follow. |
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Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation[]
Ysses along with the rest of its team is revived 567 years after departure from the Milky Way in response to a significant number of deaths in cryosleep. The first thing it observes is that the flower arrangement at the center of the ark's Radial still hasn't died, and is seemingly disappointed.
With Blue-7 discussing the problem amongst themselves, Ysses points out nobody ever died before in the entire history of cryostasis. Its suggests waking the Pathfinders and employing SAM assistance, but Commander Senna'Nir vas Keelah Si'yah deems their job too important and out of the scope of their current predicament. The quarian designates a division of labor amongst the Sleepwalkers and partners Ysses with their doctor Yorrik in "Team What" to autopsy three corpses and learn what they can about how they died.
Because none of their tech in the medbay would display accurate readings due to inexplicable system failures, Ysses and Yorrik can do little else but wait and stare at dead bodies while their other teammates Anax Therion and Borbala Ferank scrounge up resources from the cargo bay. Ysses learns the backstory behind Yorrik's name change, but mistakes the elcor's current name to be his soul name, and with that in mind thought it was unseemly of the doctor to just share his soul name to a stranger. Yorrik doesn't want to wait around in the dark with corpses in silence, but Ysses disagrees.
Ysses identifies one of the victims as Kholai, the one and only prophet of their particular brand of Enkindler worship. The apothecary didn't know the priest personally, but it was the reason Ysses signed up for the trip. During the status updates marking the halfway point of the voyage, Ysses and its fellow cultists were intent on the preacher's sermons while the other Sleepwalkers celebrated the milestone. Ysses grieves for its leader and doesn't want to discuss much else about the deceased or its personal details to Yorrik.
When Anax and Borbala make comm contact from the cargo bay, Ysses is repeatedly shot down or ignored whenever it tries to speak since it takes too long to get to the point. It blurts out Yorrik's former name Naumm over comms, offending the doctor. Because it thought Yorrik is a soul name and reflects the elcor's true being, it concluded Naumm is a face name that can be shared freely.
Moving past the gaffe, Yorrik presents a complicated procedure for pathogen identification. Ysses gets fed up with being ignored and directly asks the ship's VI K for the things they need for a blood analysis without a medical scan, proving that the ship may be blind but it is not yet stupid when K responds accurately.
Ysses and Yorrik set to work after receiving the items Borbala and Anax procured, turning the medbay into something out of a mad science abbattoir at first glance when the other Sleepwalkers return to check on their progress. When Irit Non objects to the presence of a volus doll in their project, Ysses claims they only used its eyes and doesn't even know where one can be bought. The volus again complains why they didn't use the available krogan microscope, and Ysses demonstrates why: its VI is an aggressively boisterous drill sergeant and lacks in-depth analytical capability.
After taking blood samples from the dead subjects, the hanar uses its ability to see color gradations with the naked eye to spare it and Yorrik the task of listening to the microscope. Ysses is proud of its part, but flimsily masks it with yet another intonation of its nihilistic beliefs. Borbala begins to suspect Ysses' cult may have something to do with this when the hanar professes admiration for the pathogen, but Ysses claims innocence and would rather have the galaxies burn than see harm done to Kholai.
Ysses and Yorrik are tasked to continue their analysis after the initial report. When Jalosk Dal'Virra stumbles into the medbay, the apothecary floats on with no comment observing how the situation unfolds. It only expresses irritation in response to Anax generalizing how the hanar prefer the drell to do the dirty work like interrogating the newcomer. Later, Ysses excuses itself to prepare Kholai's body for eternal rest, preferring to airlock it separately from unbelievers. Despite the somber affair Ysses is apparently happy: Anax interprets the hanar's bioluminescence as "pulsating with joy" when describing the funeral rites.
After airlocking Kholai, Ysses returns to the medbay and sleeps throughout Jalosk's deterioration. The jellyfish wakes up during the batarian's death throes, finding it can stare for hours at his "pretty" corpse. Ysses and Yorrik are already infected with the pathogen that killed Jalosk and the others, and Yorrik has already enacted quarantine protocols, but as soon as the doctor falls asleep from exhaustion the apothecary breaks out of the medbay. Ysses believes the "Day of Extinguishment" has come, and deliberately wanders around the ship filled now with passengers forced out of cryosleep.
Fully gone insane now due to the Fortinbras Plague, Ysses ambushes Captain Qetsi'Olam vas Keelah Si'yah near the bridge, giggling maniacally to let the worst happen. It floats away when someone rips its tentacles off the captain, but the attack leaves microfractures throughout her suit. Ysses next appears in the cargo bay sucking on Borbala's red sand stash, reacting with joy on seeing Anax again and offering to share its soul name and the drug in an end-of-the-world celebration. The investigator snatches the jellyfish up into a stasis field and imprisons it in cabin 788B on the drell zone to await the captain's judgement.
While Ysses clearly rejoices in the chaos and sees no need to explain itself further, the Sleepwalkers initially conclude the cultists are responsible for the plague. Anax has other ideas and soon exposes Qetsi as the actual mastermind, with the hanar being unwitting patsies in her botched plan to depopulate the Council races once they arrive in Andromeda. A retrovirus is developed against the plague although it is not known if Ysses receives it before it dies.
Trivia[]
- Author Cat Valente based hanar names on English ones with the first syllable lopped off. "Ysses" is derived from Ulysses.[1]