Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 16 – Dossier: The Assassin – Thane and The Justicar – Samara

Mandatory Mass Effect Friday was back, and the plan was to tidy up Illium, clear some side quests and make solid progress through Mass Effect 2. That sensible plan soon became mercenary firefights, criminal investigations, relationship counselling, bad squad AI and regular concern over whether the Normandy’s fish were still alive.

By the end, we had recruited both Thane and Samara, pushed Liara’s Shadow Broker thread forward and cleared several lingering jobs. Between all that came tea, SnowRunner threats, Star Trek commands and one drugged volus absolutely convinced he was a biotic god.

🌌 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, remastered and optimised for 4K Ultra HD.

Here we are in Mass Effect 2, with Commander Shepard building a crew to confront the Collectors, who have been abducting human colonies. Every recruit matters because the path ahead ultimately leads towards the Omega-4 Relay.

🛰️ Where We Are in the Journey

We are still working through Illium and trying to clear it properly rather than leave half the journal unfinished. We began aboard the Normandy with a few upgrades, the essential fish-feeding routine, then headed back to Nos Astra.

The main targets were Thane Krios and Samara, but several smaller Illium jobs were still waiting between those recruitment missions. By the end of this episode, the Normandy had gained two major new crew members and quite a few loose ends had finally disappeared.

🔥 What Happens in This Episode

The first job on Illium was one of the quieter loose ends. Shepard returned a lost locket to an asari whose daughter had been left with very little to remember her father by, giving us a brief moment of calm before the evening moved onto considerably more dangerous business. With the journal already looking a little healthier, it was time to start tracking down Thane Krios.

The trail led to Nasana Dantius, who had surrounded herself with Eclipse mercenaries inside the Dantius Towers. Thane was already coming for her, and the best route to the penthouse involved entering the neighbouring tower, climbing through the construction site and crossing between the buildings. Miranda and Mordin joined Shepard for the trip, and it quickly became obvious that Nasana had decided ordinary workers were completely expendable. Mercenaries had been clearing the building by force, shooting anyone who had not escaped quickly enough.

Shepard stopped to help one badly injured worker and learned just how ugly the situation had become. Others had been caught between the mercenaries and the sheer drop outside, with some apparently choosing to jump rather than face Nasana’s people. It made the climb towards the penthouse feel less like breaking into a secure tower and more like moving through the aftermath of somebody trying to erase an entire workforce.

The Eclipse resistance became heavier the further we climbed, while our own squad occasionally seemed determined to make life harder. Mordin spent enough time on the floor to earn “come on, Mordin, you’ve been sleeping on the job,” and there were repeated requests for the companions to perhaps consider shooting the people actively firing rockets at us. Eventually the frustration reached the inevitable “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

The tower itself was not helping. Exposed platforms and walkways provided some excellent views of Illium but very little in the way of sensible safety features, particularly once rockets started flying. At one point the complete absence of a railing brought back memories of the Death Star. Apparently once a civilisation has mastered interstellar travel, basic workplace health and safety becomes optional.

All of this was happening while chat carried on with an entirely separate collection of problems. EntertainJD was still haunted by the spider that had disappeared somewhere at home, to the point where every itch apparently felt like the thing crawling back. Conversations about Starfield, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and No Man’s Sky continued between firefights, including memories of an old No Man’s Sky ship that looked like a chicken’s head and a reminder being set to check out the new Avatar gameplay footage after the stream.

SnowRunner, naturally, was never far away either. Chat continued insisting that Dr Ravenholm secretly loved it, while the channel-point challenge remained an ever-present threat. The evening had also been raided by asmith501, bringing more people directly into Mandatory Mass Effect Friday just in time to discover that attendance was apparently compulsory and penalties for absence remained severe.

The final approach to Nasana involved another heavy fight across the exposed bridge before Shepard reached the penthouse. Nasana immediately assumed Shepard had come to kill her, which was understandable considering the trail of destroyed security and mercenaries left behind. Before that discussion could go very far, Thane made his entrance and completed the contract himself.

Compared with the chaos required to reach him, Thane was remarkably calm. He explained that he preferred to work quietly and that all the gunfire and explosions had disrupted his original plan, although Shepard’s rather noticeable distraction had eventually worked in his favour. More importantly, he revealed that he was dying. With only limited time left, however, the dangerous mission through the Omega-4 Relay did not frighten him. He wanted the opportunity to do something meaningful before the end, and helping stop the Collectors gave him exactly that. Thane joined the Normandy without even asking for payment.

Back aboard ship, the usual post-mission tour followed. Thane had been given the life-support room because the drier environment was better suited to his condition, and Shepard learned more about Kepral’s Syndrome and why prolonged exposure to humid environments was slowly destroying his ability to breathe.

Chat, meanwhile, had discovered another mission entirely: finding the Star Trek Easter egg commands hidden inside AIDA. “Tea, Earl Grey, hot,” “Shut up, Wesley,” “Khaaannn,” “Make it so,” and several other attempts appeared as everyone tried to uncover commands that had apparently survived undiscovered for around eighteen months. Tea itself remained almost as important as the Collectors, with kettles, milk, biscuits and the deeply questionable concept of microwave tea all appearing during the evening.

With Thane aboard, Shepard headed back to Illium to clean up more of the journal. The Blue Rose of Illium turned into unexpected relationship counselling when an asari shopkeeper admitted that the krogan loudly reciting poetry nearby was actually her boyfriend, Char. They were on a break while she tried to decide whether he genuinely wanted a future with her or simply wanted children because of the genophage. Shepard pointed out that if she believed him when he said he would love their daughters regardless, the real issue came down to whether she trusted him. She did, and Char’s very public poetry campaign finally had a chance of paying off.

Conrad Verner’s latest attempt at being a hero was also brought to an end. The woman claiming to be an undercover officer and sending him after the Eternity Lounge was exposed as a member of a terrorist cell instead. Conrad had, somehow, helped provide the evidence needed to get her arrested, allowing him to walk away believing he had once again done something useful alongside Commander Shepard.

The medical-scan dispute was less ridiculous. The representative responsible for the invasive testing was acting out of anger and grief after losing family, but Shepard challenged whether they would really have wanted her treating innocent people that way. She eventually agreed to stop the scans and cancel the associated fees, removing another problem for Zhu’s Hope.

Liara’s system-hacking work then pushed a much larger storyline forward. The information gathered from terminals around Illium produced a connection to the Shadow Broker and, more importantly, suggested that Feron might still be alive. What had looked like a straightforward desire for revenge suddenly became a possible rescue mission, leaving another substantial thread waiting for later.

The second major recruitment began at the commercial spaceport, where a detective had a particularly uncomfortable problem: Samara, an asari Justicar, was investigating a murder and searching for a dangerous fugitive. Her code meant that simply attempting to arrest her could force Samara to kill the officers involved, something the detective understandably wanted to avoid. Shepard offered a convenient solution by recruiting her instead.

Samara would leave, but first she needed the name of the ship her target had used to escape Illium. That sent Shepard after the local Eclipse operation and into the orbit of Pitne For, a volus merchant whose nervous explanations did very little to make him look innocent.

Inside the Eclipse base, Shepard encountered Elnora, a young recruit who insisted she had not killed anyone and seemed terrified enough to be believable. Shepard let her leave. Not much later, a recording revealed that Elnora had actually murdered the volus victim specifically to earn her Eclipse uniform. The evidence was kept for the detective, turning what had initially looked like a merciful decision into a reminder that appearances in Mass Effect are not always reliable.

The base became steadily more dangerous, including a fight with an Eclipse gunship that came uncomfortably close to ending the mission. Then, after all the mercenaries, toxic clouds and gunfire, we met the evening’s most confident character: a drugged volus who had become absolutely convinced that he was a biotic god.

He promised unstoppable power, revenge and the ability to throw the Eclipse leader around like a ragdoll. Shepard’s response was considerably more practical: perhaps have a nap first. The mighty biotic god agreed, deciding that destroying the universe could wait until after he had rested.

Chat was enjoying its own chaos by this point. Frodo and Sam appeared from a long road trip, with Sam taking control of Frodo’s phone while they still had hours of driving ahead. Gary’s repeated appreciation of the characters’ boots eventually became a group discussion, while another round of SnowRunner campaigning encouraged viewers to keep feeding channel points into the challenge designed to make Dr Ravenholm play it.

A chat-run Hunger Games also unfolded alongside the Eclipse firefights, with viewers volunteering as tributes before Dr Ravenholm somehow emerged as the winner. That naturally raised questions about whether the entire thing had been rigged. Elsewhere, talk of game-themed cookbooks somehow drifted towards the possibility of a future cooking stream under the name “Only Pans,” immediately followed by predictions involving broken plates, mustard-covered worktops and the amount of cleaning that would probably be required afterwards.

Eventually the Eclipse leader was defeated and the evidence inside the base started fitting together. Shepard found the shipping record Samara needed, along with proof connecting Pitne For to the red sand and illegal weapons operation. Rather than hand his stolen manifest back for a profitable reward, the evidence went to the detective. Elnora’s recording was also turned over, finally proving her involvement in the murder.

With the fugitive traced to the AML Demeter, Samara considered her work on Illium complete. She formally swore herself into Shepard’s service, making her the second major recruit of the evening. Her oath was absolute: Shepard’s choices would become her choices and Shepard’s morals her morals for as long as she remained bound to the mission—although she also made it perfectly clear that extremely dishonourable orders could create problems once the oath ended.

The final Normandy circuit was much quieter but opened up several important character threads. Kelly joined Shepard for a private meal, while Thane admitted that his thoughts had turned towards the son he had abandoned years earlier. His son, Kolyat, had now travelled to the Citadel and apparently accepted work as a hitman. Thane asked Shepard for help stopping him from following the same path, setting up another personal mission for a later episode.

Samara, now settled in the observation deck, spoke about the Justicar Code, her long years travelling alone and her willingness to follow Shepard against the Collectors. She was less willing to discuss the criminal she had been pursuing on Illium, making it clear that the subject was deeply personal and tied closely to her beliefs.

After two recruitment missions, several completed Illium side quests, Liara’s new Shadow Broker lead and another loyalty problem waiting on the Citadel, the Normandy was considerably better prepared for what lay ahead.

More importantly, after all that time away from the ship, the aquarium inspection delivered the result everybody really needed.

The fish were still alive.

With Mandatory Mass Effect Friday successfully completed, the stream wrapped up by sending the community over to OurChickenLife, passing the evening’s chaos on before calling it a night.

🎬 Watch the Episode

You can see the complete Illium session, including Thane, Samara and the biotic god, in the full episode on YouTube.

Continue the journey with the Mass Effect Legendary Edition playlist and find more videos on my YouTube channel. If you enjoy the series, likes, comments and subscriptions always help.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The live streams are where the side conversations, raids and running jokes become part of the journey. asmith501 brought their community into this one, and at the end we passed everyone across to OurChickenLife.

Come aboard live on Twitch or YouTube and see what goes wrong next.

🌐 Community & Links

The Normandy may be docked for now, but the community carries on between streams.

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More — Find my other projects and work here:
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🐟 Two Recruits and Living Fish

We finished with Thane and Samara aboard, Illium considerably tidier, Liara holding a promising new lead and Thane already giving us another problem to deal with on the Citadel. That is a good evening’s progress.

For now, the Normandy is stronger, the journal is shorter, and the fish remain alive.

— Dr Ravenholm