Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 13 – Mordin: Old Blood and Grunt: Rite of Passage

The plan for this Mass Effect Friday sounded straightforward enough: get to Tuchanka, finish Mordin and Grunt’s loyalty missions, clear the remaining side quests and leave the Krogan homeworld more or less complete.

As usual, that plan survived for about five minutes. Before we were properly underway there were planets to scan, upgrades to check, fish to keep alive, a hamster to visit and chat to deal with. Somewhere in the middle of all that, AIDA also appeared to develop a very specific problem with Penguin.

The result was one of those streams where some of Mass Effect 2’s heaviest moral decisions somehow shared the evening with pyjak artillery, dysentery, compulsive saving and repeated attempts to assassinate the same member of chat.

🎮 About the Game

Mass Effect Legendary Edition brings together the single-player content from Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, along with more than 40 DLC packs, weapons and armour sets, all remastered and optimised for 4K Ultra HD.

Across the trilogy we follow Commander Shepard through a galaxy full of competing species, political tensions and decisions that can carry forward from one game into the next. In Mass Effect 2, much of the journey revolves around building a crew and earning their loyalty before taking on the suicide mission waiting ahead.

🛰️ Where We Are in the Journey

This is Episode 13 of my Mass Effect 2 playthrough, and by this stage the Normandy crew is growing while the list of loyalty missions is becoming increasingly important. Tuchanka gave us two major jobs in one place: Mordin needed help finding his former student Maelon, while Grunt had reached the point where he needed to understand exactly what being Krogan meant.

The aim for the evening was to complete both Mordin: Old Blood and Grunt: Rite of Passage, while also clearing Tuchanka’s remaining side objectives. If everything went to plan, we could leave the planet behind and move another step closer to having the crew prepared for what is coming.

🔥 What Happens in This Episode

Before Shepard could set foot on Tuchanka, there was the usual Normandy housekeeping to deal with. The fish needed feeding after the previous batch had met an unfortunate end when they were forgotten, the hamster received a quick check, and the upgrade station got the customary inspection. From there it was out into the system for some planetary scanning and resource gathering, because even with two loyalty missions waiting, leaving useful deposits behind was never really an option on a 100% run.

Chat was already creating its own side story alongside the exploration. Heists, challenges, dysentery commands and Bouncy, Marry & Kill rolls were firing off while Dr Ravenholm searched planets for element zero, platinum and anything else worth launching a probe at. The Bouncy, Marry & Kill game quickly developed a very specific pattern: AIDA seemed determined to kill IThinkImAPenguin8P at every possible opportunity.

The executions kept coming until even chat started keeping count. Penguin went from confusion to resignation as Frodo, KB and everyone else watched AIDA repeatedly arrive at the same conclusion. At one point Penguin described the evening as a “toxic penguin environment”, which seemed fair after multiple deaths and a double serving of dysentery. Dr Ravenholm compared the whole thing to Murder on the Orient Express and the “For the Watch” scene from Game of Thrones, with the rest of chat apparently taking turns to finish Penguin off. When the cycle finally broke, it felt less like mercy and more like a temporary fault in the system.

Eventually the actual mission began and Shepard landed on Tuchanka with Mordin and Grunt. The ruined Krogan homeworld immediately brought one of the highlights of the evening: a reunion with Urdnot Wrex. Wrex was now trying to pull the clans together under Urdnot rule, balancing old Krogan traditions against the need for the species to have some kind of future after generations of war and the genophage.

Grunt’s strange behaviour also finally had an explanation. He was not sick at all; he was reaching adulthood. For a Krogan, that meant undergoing the rite of passage and proving that he deserved a place within a clan. Wrex was willing to let a tank-bred Krogan attempt the rite, but first Shepard needed to speak with the shaman.

There was another loyalty mission waiting as well. Mordin’s former student Maelon had apparently been taken by the Blood Pack and Clan Weyrloc, giving Shepard a second major reason to be on Tuchanka. Before either mission could completely take over, however, there were side jobs to collect.

A Krogan mechanic was missing the combustion manifold from one of the clan’s vehicles and was not particularly impressed that his fellow Krogan had managed to return without it. He asked Shepard to keep an eye out for the part in the field. Merchant Ratch had a different problem: pyjaks were helping themselves to his supplies, and anyone willing to use the mounted defence cannons to reduce the local population could earn a discount in his shop.

That resulted in a short but satisfying shooting gallery as Dr Ravenholm tried to account for the slight delay and catch each wave of pyjaks before they reached the food. One shot managed to take out two at once—“you explode one, you get one free”—before the last few finally went down. With the side quest complete, Ratch handed over the promised discount, which naturally meant it was time to investigate everything he had for sale.

With Tuchanka’s smaller jobs underway, attention finally shifted to Mordin’s Old Blood loyalty mission. Shepard headed out with Mordin and Miranda—Miranda once again being selected “for reasons”—and the trip into Weyrloc territory became a mixture of heavy fighting, scavenging and growing frustration with the squad AI. Companions had an unfortunate habit of going down or failing to provide much useful fire when things became difficult, leaving Dr Ravenholm wondering exactly what they were contributing.

Chat proved more useful during the search for the missing combustion manifold. Gary spotted the overturned vehicle containing the part, saving it from becoming one of those objectives discovered twenty minutes after leaving the area. With the manifold safely collected, Shepard continued deeper toward the hospital where Maelon was supposedly being held.

The atmosphere changed once the group entered the research facility. What had begun as a straightforward rescue mission turned into something much more uncomfortable as Shepard and Mordin found the remains of experiments carried out in pursuit of a cure for the genophage. Krogan had been used as test subjects, and humans had been caught up in the work as well.

For Mordin, the discoveries were particularly difficult. He had been part of the salarian team responsible for modifying the genophage when the Krogan began adapting to it, and he had always defended that work as necessary. Seeing the consequences directly was something else. The body of a Krogan female who had willingly submitted herself to the experiments brought that conflict into focus, forcing Mordin to confront the gap between calculations made at a distance and the individual lives affected by them.

Amid all of that, there was still one wonderfully direct Shepard moment. An injured Urdnot scout had been persuaded that remaining with the researchers was somehow the best way he could help his clan. Shepard’s response was not exactly gentle counselling. If he wanted to help Urdnot, he needed to stop sitting there, get back on his feet and prove he was enough of a badass to make it home.

Somehow, that worked perfectly. The scout left the facility, and later on Tuchanka his commander confirmed that he had made it back alive. It turned an aggressive dialogue choice into one of the more satisfying little successes of the evening.

The real confrontation came when Shepard finally reached Maelon. The assumption had been that Mordin’s former student was a prisoner, but that was not the case. Maelon had chosen to be there. He believed curing the genophage was necessary and saw his research as a way to address what the salarians had done to the Krogan.

Mordin was furious—not only at Maelon’s decision, but at the methods used to obtain the results. For a moment it looked as though he might kill his former student himself, until Shepard intervened. That still left the more important decision: what to do with the research.

Dr Ravenholm chose to keep the data. The work behind it had been horrific, but destroying the results would not undo what had happened, and the information might one day provide the Krogan with a route toward a cure. It was one of the evening’s major Paragon decisions and left Mordin with plenty to think about once the mission was over.

Back at the Urdnot camp, the missing combustion manifold was returned and the surviving scout was confirmed safely home. That cleared the smaller objectives and left one major piece of unfinished business on Tuchanka: Grunt’s rite of passage.

The ceremony brought its own resistance. Uvenk objected to a tank-bred Krogan being accepted into Clan Urdnot, but Shepard stood behind Grunt and the shaman allowed the rite to continue. Dr Ravenholm prepared for the trial, equipped the Cain heavy weapon and brought Miranda along once again—still “for reasons”.

Naturally, the rite itself did not begin immediately. There was an arena to inspect and loot to collect first, because even an ancient Krogan trial of strength apparently has to wait until every useful container has been checked.

Once the fighting started, the difficulty climbed steadily. Varren came first, followed by increasingly dangerous enemies as ammunition became more of a concern and the squad once again failed to inspire complete confidence. Then the real test arrived: a thresher maw.

The Cain seemed like the obvious answer, but it did not end the fight as cleanly as hoped. Shepard came dangerously close to death while trying to stay out of the maw’s attacks and keep enough damage going to bring it down. Eventually the creature fell, unlocking the Big Game Hunter achievement and turning Grunt’s rite into something far more impressive than simply surviving the allotted time.

For the Krogan, killing a thresher maw during the rite was the sort of feat that became a story of its own. Unfortunately, Uvenk was still not prepared to accept the outcome. He and his followers confronted Shepard and Grunt after the trial, turning the political argument into one final fight. That ended rather more decisively.

Grunt returned to Urdnot as a full member of the clan and proudly declared Shepard his battlemaster. For a character who had spent much of his early time aboard the Normandy unsure what he was supposed to be, the rite finally gave him an identity that made sense to him.

Back on the Normandy, Dr Ravenholm checked in with both of the evening’s loyalty-mission stars. Mordin reflected on Maelon, the genophage and the research Shepard had chosen to preserve. Grunt, meanwhile, seemed considerably more settled now that he had a clan—although in Krogan terms, “settled” still involved being extremely interested in whatever there was to fight next.

There was time for the usual post-mission upgrades, plus a brief conversation with Joker about the Normandy apparently already being at “head-butting capacity”. More importantly, the fish were fed before the final save, avoiding a repeat of the previous aquarium disaster.

Somewhere among all of this, chat continued its own parallel campaign. The AIDA-versus-Penguin storyline carried on, heists came and went, snack discussions appeared between firefights, and a Hunger Games diversion eventually ended with EntertainJD victorious—an achievement chat naturally decided must have been assisted by all the dysentery.

By the end of the stream, though, the original objective had genuinely been completed. Tuchanka’s major business was finished, Mordin and Grunt were both loyal, the combustion manifold and pyjak side quests were cleared, Maelon’s research had been preserved, and Grunt had killed a thresher maw on his way into Clan Urdnot.

With the Normandy that little bit more prepared for the suicide mission ahead, the stream wrapped up and headed into a raid with VanillaBean58. Assassin’s Creed was on the schedule for the following day, while the next Mass Effect Friday was already beginning to point toward Tali’s missions.

For an evening centred on the genophage, Krogan politics and some of Mass Effect 2’s heavier moral choices, it also somehow became a stream about pyjak artillery, obsessive saving, fish welfare and the repeated assassination of one extremely unfortunate penguin.

🎬 Watch the Episode

This one covers everything from our Normandy preparations and planetary exploration through both Tuchanka loyalty missions, with plenty of distractions from chat along the way.

You can watch the full episode on YouTube below:

If you are following the complete playthrough, you can continue through the Mass Effect series playlist, and you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for the next episode.

If you enjoyed this one, leave a like and let me know in the comments what you would have done with Maelon’s research.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The recorded episode has the missions, but the livestream is where AIDA decides who has offended her, chat reminds me to save and apparently no penguin is ever completely safe.

You can join us live on Twitch or YouTube and be part of whatever happens next. This stream finished with us raiding into VanillaBean58, carrying everyone across to another community at the end of the night.

🧭 Community & Links

The stream may end, but there are plenty of places to stay connected between episodes, follow what is coming next and join the rest of the community.

Live — Join us when the next stream goes live:
Twitch | YouTube

Community — Come and join the conversation between streams:
Discord

Socials — Follow the various signals coming out of Ravenholm:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X

Music — There is also music when I am not getting Shepard shot at:
Spotify | Apple Music

Support — If you would like to help support the channel:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs

More — For the other projects happening beyond the streams:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

🐟 Tuchanka Done, Fish Still Alive

Tuchanka gave us two loyalty missions, one thresher maw, several uncomfortable decisions and considerably more trouble for Penguin than anybody planned at the beginning of the evening. More importantly, both Mordin and Grunt are now loyal and the crew is becoming better prepared for what lies ahead.

Next time we return to Mass Effect 2, Tali’s missions are waiting. Until then, at least the fish survived this episode.

— Dr Ravenholm