#headcanon says his appearance was miss vidals work

[haenels]

unreal that people can think rio did anything but love nicholas unconditionally

even IF they don't go down the route that she and agatha actually parented him together, he was still an extension of the love of her life. with agatha's blood running in his veins, how could she anything but treasure him?

seeing how fiercely protective rio is of agatha – i mean try imagining her with a smaller more vulnerable version of her. it must have absolutely broken her that she couldn't protect him and then on top of that she was tasked with sending him away 🥲

[millenniumfae]

Mass Effect: Andromeda Headcanons: Allies And Friends

Evfra de Tershaav

His backstory says that ‘his family was taken by the kett’. And that means his whole family. Immediate family. All parents, siblings, most first cousins. It didn’t happen all at once, and he had joined his family members in trying to get them back, or trying to hide themselves away. It didn’t work, and he’s one of the last to remain.

Evfra’s known to be surly, suspicious, and very private. The first two aren’t rare amongst the Angara, but being so closed off about himself is a rarity. It’s a sign of extreme anti-socialism to flat-out refuse to share harmless tidbits about yourself, even to strangers. Ryder couldn’t get any whiff of his personal life, but it wasn’t just because they were human. Evfra doesn’t allow anyone close anymore.

Because losing one’s entire family is so utterly devastating to an Angara. It’s akin to seeing your homeworld being blown apart by Reapers. After the Kett, Evfra came away a much different man that he used to be. 

If you read a terminal in Paaran Shie’s office, Evfra says he set up their usual restaurant table (with security to ensure maximum privacy) and expects to see her there. Some take this as a sign that they’re in a casual relationship, and while I think that’s possible, Evfra’s probably too pragmatic to set up a date as a precursor to casual sex when he could just show up at Paaran’s apartment afterhours instead. I think Evfra actually really likes Paaran, and is kinda courting her.

Which Paaran doesn’t fully realize, because she’s just under the impression Evfra simply respects her candor and tolerates her better than most. Hence why Ryder can ask her out of the blue if being a governor allows time for relationships. But Evfra likes spending time with her, and if he wasn’t so closed-off and gruff and strict he’d just up and say it to her.

Reyes Vidal

Born and raised in El Salvador (not Spain), and eventually went to the Citadel to become an Alliance shuttle pilot. He had lots of commendations under his belt before he was asked to join the Andromeda Initiative. Because he was a particularly good shuttle pilot - and keep in mind, a ‘shuttle’ in the Mass Effect universe basically translates to ‘flying car’, so you can say he’s an expert racer or something - and had no history of crime or insubordination.

Obviously that didn’t last. And he’s more hung up about his crime career than he appears to be. Because he was once a very moral, very law-abiding soldier who joined the Alliance to ‘be someone’. And when he instead became a faceless soldier who had to answer to an apathetic chain of command, he joined the Initiative to ‘be someone’ in a new galaxy. And when the Nexus failed him, he finally decided to play dirty and ‘become’ the Charlatan. That’s why he likes it when Ryder believes him to be a moral person, rather than a dirty liar. In Andromeda, he got to ‘become someone’, but he lost his worthiness for a hero’s love.

His mother passed in an accident when he was in his late teens. His father was already dying from sickness when he needed to board the Nexus, and only lasted three months after the Nexus departed. Reyes had little to leave behind, but he’ll always miss his mother, who died much too soon and Reyes never got over her passing.

Reyes’ writer says he’s in his late twenties, but I want to make him a bit older and say he’s in his early thirties. His stint as shuttle pilot of ‘Anubis’ involved a lot of military training, then years of field work. He’s good with explosives, firearms, and fighter aircrafts, but he got to exercise his smuggling skills and political intrigue years before Andromeda - when he had to negotiate with the Batarian rebels and save some slaves under their noses. His higher-ups couldn’t do anything because of red tape, so Reyes took matters into his own hands. 

SAM

As an AI, SAM can’t experience emotions the same way we do. But with Ryder, he can ‘feel’ their emotions kinda like how we can ‘taste’ smell - subtle, not always accurate. If he wasn’t bonded to a human, it’d be completely overwhelming to him. But Ryder’s calmness is his calmness, their panic is his panic. 

Because SAM can understand not wanting to perish. Desiring the continuation of one’s existence comes with the territory when you’re sapient. He’s familiar with wanting to continue your existence. But he doesn’t understand that organic life isn’t just fueled by the desire to keep living. Not until later.

SAM is most interested in love, and how it affects the Ryder family. He was created out of a broken heart. He sees how Ryder reacts to their twin in a coma. He’ll probably witness Ryder romance somebody. It’s one of those emotions people can’t explain, so SAM can’t either. That’s one of the traits of being symbiotically bonded to a human; if humankind can’t define it, than neither can he. No words are sufficient to describe the love between two orphaned siblings. No mathematical formulas can explain a soulmate’s effect on you.

He eventually doesn’t see Ryder as someone else, he sees them as an extension of himself. Like how he has a router in the Tempest while SAM Node is on the Hyperion. Ryder shaped his existence by being themselves, every step of the way. As a sapient AI, SAM doesn’t just become an individual, they become the spirit bonded with Ryder’s. 

SAM eventually uses the word ‘luck’ as a measure. Luck isn’t entirely irrational, its based off of chance. But to an AI, ‘luck’ doesn’t exist because something either is, or isn’t, and it takes data to figure out which is which. To a human, however, luck is what fills in those gaps when we don’t know what the future holds. SAM never wanted to fill those gaps before, but suddenly he found himself seeing that luck could fit in those empty spaces. It was a new thing he learned. Possibility.

Tiran Kandros

He’s older than most people think, about the equivalent of a human’s 40. But other Turians can tell, because he’s got some of that withering in his plates. But it matters little to him, because while he might hem and haw about being the ‘perfect one’ of his family, he really does follow the Turian golden standard almost to a T; he’s a completely dedicated civil servant, always thinking of the many above the few, good with weapons and war. Disciplined. Controlled. 

But even he’s not perfect. Because he likes other races ‘a little too much.’ AKA, he’s critical of other Turians (and Turian culture) in a way that would rattle the conservatives in charge. He doesn’t like how militarized everything is, he doesn’t want Turian citizenship being hinged on military service, more than once he’s vocally criticized the shadier parts of Turian history (the Genophage, human’s First Contact war, etc). He’s definitely not the only Turian to do so, of course, but his family was never thrilled.

So while he may be talented, he was never quite happy in Turian society. The immigrants to Andromeda consisted of a lot of people who wanted to escape the system back home, and he was one of them. Andromeda was a chance where he, a so-called ‘model Turian’, could achieve more than that. 

After the events of the game, and the Nexus is a lot more stable, Tiran actually becomes a bit broody and begins to wish for a partner (he’s bi, like most Turians and humans are). And he eventually finds one, and raises children in an actual home. 

His future partner is either non-Turian (even Angaran, possibly), or another Turian that shares his radicalism and open-mindedness. Which in the Milky Way was hard to find, but he soon finds out that they’re a lot more plentiful in Andromeda. For very similar reasons to his own.