Rana Thanoptis is a neurospecialist working for Saren Arterius in his base of operations on Virmire.
Mass Effect[]
Commander Shepard encounters Rana during the assault on Saren's base. She's hiding under her desk when Shepard and the squad enter her office. She begs them not to shoot her, and offers information in exchange for her life.
Rana was employed by Saren and assigned to Virmire to study Sovereign's effect on organic minds. She discovered that indoctrination does not just affect the subjects, such as the captive salarians, but the support staff too: Rana's first test subject was her predecessor. She can tell Shepard more about indoctrination and Saren fearing it might be affecting him too.
She claims to have little choice working under Saren as she found her position to be more "permanent" than she expected. She wants to escape the facility to avoid becoming another test subject herself, figuring the job isn't worth dying for. She offers the squad access to Saren's private lab, where another Prothean Beacon is stored.
Once Rana has divulged everything the squad needs to know, Shepard may shoot her as punishment for her actions or suggest she start running. If it's the latter, Rana is horrified to hear they are planning to destroy the facility and flees, much to the squad and Shepard's amusement. If the former, she claims she was just following orders and pleads in vain until Shepard kills her.
Mass Effect 2[]
If Rana was allowed to leave Virmire, Shepard will encounter the asari on Korlus in 2185 while seeking Dr. Okeer. She has mixed feelings about crossing Shepard's path once again, but insists she did not put the second chance she was given to waste — despite being a part of the project involved on Korlus. She created a mental imprint routine to educate Okeer's tank-bred krogan, but most of them don't make it. She also tells them a little about Okeer's work, saying that although the warlord is not trying to cure the genophage, he is trying to help his people somehow. Rana mentions that she had shut off the security cameras once she saw Shepard's approach to the facility.
Once allowed to escape, she quips that she "knows how Shepard works", and expresses her intentions to get as far away from the facility as possible — this is likely referring to the nuke that Shepard had set off on Virmire. One of Shepard's squadmates sarcastically comments on Shepard's decision to let her go again.
Mass Effect 3[]
If Rana survived the assault on Virmire, she is mentioned in an ANN Report on indoctrination in 2186. She has apparently murdered several top asari military officials and then committed suicide. While in custody, Thanoptis reported "voices" in her head (a typical symptom of indoctrination) to investigators.
Trivia[]
- Belinda Cornish also provides the voices for a number of characters in BioWare's Dragon Age Series: Chanter Farrah, Chanter Rosamund, Goldanna, and Melora in Dragon Age: Origins; The Baroness and Sergeant Joanna in Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening; and Ser Marlein Selbrech in Dragon Age II.
- The name Thanoptis may be a reference to "thanatopsis", a neologism coined by American poet William Cullen Bryant in his poem of the same name, to mean "a view of or musing upon death". The player contemplates Thanoptis' death in a very literal sense in the first Mass Effect game.