Hi guys! I’m going to play a Mass Effect RPG adaptation with my friends and I decided to look for headcanons or opinions about everything drell-related Bioware don’t tell us. I think I already read everything in the Drell/Thane tag but if you always imagined something and never shared with the fandom before, feel free to do it now and tag me <3
My character will be a female drell called Khadija Sarraf, born in Rakhana! According to the wikis, after the hanar “helped” the drells and made a home for them in Kahje the remaining drells were left behind fighting for food and other resources. After 800 years there are only a few hundreds of drells who live in Rakhana + there is a time of the year the drells have a “pilgrimage” to visit their homeworld, during this time there are almost the double of drells.
Here, by friends, is where my headcanons started. My dear @arkvenor posted a screenshot here showing us that in the codex there is absolutely no information about Rakhana, which means that besides the hanar NO ONE KNOWS WHERE IS RAKHANA. So, all the drells who still live there are excluded from the rest of the galaxy! No contact with other species! Even if someone wanted to help, they can’t ‘cause most of them (like 95%) probably thinks there’s no one in the planet!!! They are TRAPED in there planet, without resources, technology or even knowledge to heal Rakhana.
Which leads to: Why the drells living with the hanar doesn’t help?
My theory is: They don’t want to.
After 800 years drells are conformed they lost their home planet and accommodate living in the cities the hanar build for them. Let’s try to see from their eyes, Kahje is the description of their paradise, it’s understandable they want to live there but after sometime the Kepral’s Syndrome appeared and even so they didn’t try to go back home. Why? Why live with this disease without a cure? After some generations the drells started believing that the hanar were indeed their saviors and they should be grateful for only being able to live, grateful to work for them(even killing for them), it’s an honor to live and work for them. With the ecstasy of living in their paradise + the memory of the war for resources in Rakhana they decided to not go back. After 800 years the drells who still want to know more about their homeland just go there to remember why they should be grateful to live in Kahje and a few to connect with their old gods.
So the drells who still live in Rakhana don’t have anyone to ask for help. They start to live in clans, like in the ancient times, with 30-50 drell per clan, trying to hunt food and find water and just live the best they can. Of course, they have technologies from their past and some the drell/hanar from Kahje gave them, but nothing like a spaceship or to reverse their planet state. Living in this conditions this drells grew closer to their gods, as their guides in this difficult times.
They started to not like the hanar as before because they were left to die and their brothers and sisters never tried to find another world where all their specie could live together, it’s a feeling of betrayal after so much time. During the pilgrimage they show the other drells what happened and convince they should help to find a way to heal Rakhana or to those who still belive in their old gods they should find another planet to all of them but they never succeeded; sometimes a drell decides to live there but it’s really really rare.
Talking about Khadija a little, she was born in Rakhana but here father is a drell from Kahje! They met during his pilgrimage but he didn’t want to live in Rakhana neither her mother wanted to leave her homeland, so they married and lived apart, meeting every year. Her clan didn’t really like it but respected her decision to love an outer-drell and in this conditions Khadija was raised, worshiping her ancient gods, learning how to hunt and find water, how to survive in their deserts. When she was 15 years old her mother got sick and died, her father came and asked for Khadija to come live with him; she went with he, respecting her mother wishes. They stayed a few weeks in Kahje, in which her father tried to make her believe in their society and way of living (of course she didn’t change her mind, she still thinks it’s a type of slavery) before start traveling across the galaxy.
Her father worked for a hanar, who dealt with illegal weapons, and in this jobs he teach her how to sneak in the shadows, to seduces another species, to be always perceptive of her surroundings and how to shoot to kill. Khadija didn’t like but knew this was her only option to obtain money (a thing didn’t existed in Rakhana, where they traded food, stones and other things instead of “imaginary money”, how she likes to call the credits) in the space. After her 18 birthday her father went on a mission without her and never came back, a week after his last message she contacted his coworkers and discovered he died in action; without even the body to make the passage rituals she decided to revenge his death and the suffer this hanar have made in life.
Khadija took her father credits and started to track him and received a lead he have business in Omega. So know she lives there, working in a dance club, called ExoNights, well known for having dancers from different species, hoping to hear and find more clues from another hanar who shows up there from time to time.
For my gameplay I’m also using @askkoliana tale for why the drells have a distinction of body and mind, thank you dear <3 And thank you @turianmailman for the drell tutorial! I’m not that great with drawing but your tips are helping A LOT to draw Khadija! Thanks to @geniusbee for your amazing drell art, I’ll definitely use it during the rpg if I have a chance to make Khadija talk about her people + thanks to @dgcatanisiri for your post it helped me with the first ideas for my headcanon! This fandom is full of wonderful people <3
And a HUGE thanks to my Game Master @pokenerd-girl who gave me free pass to use all the fandom headcanons! I’m so excited!
