Born from the genetic stock of the Asari Commando
Shiala, Lokea was created under strange circumstances by the
Thorian found on the planet of
Feros. While the Thorian exerted its influence and control of the populace of the nearby
Zhu's Hope, it created
strange green-skinned clones of Shiala in order to speak for it and defend it. While quite a few were deployed when Commander Shepard arrived in search of the conduit, some were stored in sacks for a quick response measure, and deployed some in order to quickly stop Shepard, as the Thorian resisted Shepard's attempts to deal with it. However, Shepard's squad was able to quickly dispatch the clones, the creepers and the nodes that held the Thorian in the building, and because of this, the Thorian was doomed. The Thorian was killed, Shiala and the Zhu's Hope colonists were freed, and Shepard was able to use the conduit as planned, getting closer to Saren.
However, not all of the sacs were destroyed, and not all of the clones were killed. Hours after the incident, Lokea surfaced from one of these sacs, free from the grasp of the Thorian. While she had a mixture of memories given to her by the Thorian when she was created, these memories were all scrambled, all from different minds and different bodies. She struggled to figure out who she was, what her name was, and who to speak
for. She struggled to unscramble her thoughts, even as she walked amongst the corpses of the creepers and clones that had fallen in the battle earlier. Once she got hungry, she remembered what needed to be done. Using her commando skills that was granted to her through muscle memory, she managed to stalk and kill quite a few varren with her biotic abilities, finding her innate talents granted to her from Shiala's muscle memory. She wandered around the ruins of Feros for at least a week, attempting in solitude to unscramble her memories, and try to learn who she really was. It wasn't long before she stumbled into an Exogeni salvage crew, who gave her immediate medical attention, and sent her to a proper medical facility in Terra Nova for further treatment and study. She made a full recovery, but medics and eventually scientists were a bit shocked by the developments they found when treating her and examining her.
While all of Lokea's anatomy resembles that of an Asari, her green skin coloration was rather odd, though it was due to the mixed green pigment that came natural with most plants. When asked for a name, Lokea could only come up with many, being that of Shiala, Ian, Fai and many others, matching the records of those who were last recorded as those in Zhu's Hope. The interviewers asked her what she would come up with for herself, and after careful deliberation, Lokea called herself as such, as it meant 'hope' in the Asari language. 'Zhu' was added in as a suggestion, which Lokea took. Careful research and questioning, as well as corroboration with statements given from the colonists and salvage teams, suggested that she was one of the few surviving clones from it, and that she shared a mind with the Thorian. This gave her memories and skills that were possessed by the others (biotics, combat abilities, technical skills, languages, and vague history). While it did give Lokea a head start, she still needed to learn how to figure out which memories were hers and which ones weren't. Further tests have shown that the creation of clones such as herself, while creating a perfectly capable asari with biotic ability, gave them some strange form of accelerated degeneration, with doctors giving Lokea an estimation of about 60 years left to live. After an extended stay at the hospital, with some research done by Alliance scientists, Lokea was given medicine and treatment for her strange degeneration (medicine not normally used for this purpose but ended up helping Lokea regardless), regular doses allowing her to live about to an estimated of 90 years old before her organs fail. To this day, Lokea takes her weekly doses of her medication to keep her degeneration at bay.
Having spent six months at Terra Nova, she learned all about the Battle of the Citadel and Shepard's exploits, as well as the various stories that happened around the galaxy. It took her a while to piece everything together, but she was able to get a decent history of the galaxy and it's denizens in her head, connecting the dots between all of the accounts she had in her mind. Government officials on Terra Nova advised her to travel to an Asari world in order to find better treatment (as almost all of the medical facilities in Terra Nova were human), so Lokea immediately boarded a ship to Illium. She arrived there without incident, and settled down in a poorer neighborhood in Nos Astra. She spent her time on Illium learning about herself and her talents, trying to paint a better, clearer picture of herself from the many planted memories that came with her. She also spent her time using the skills she inherited from these planted memories, perfecting them. These skills were also used to help her with employment as well, having a slightly difficult time adjusting to work life but with a set routine, she was able to get the hang of things. She spent the next two and a half years in Nos Astra working at one of the shipping facilities, using her biotic abilities to help with package handling. She spent her free time tapping into her other talents of gardening, painting and playing musical instruments, learning how to express herself in fun, creative ways. She made quite a few friends in Illium, but that all changed when the Reapers arrived.
Lokea remained on Illium when the Reapers arrived, and when it happened, it was chaos. Lokea, having honed some of her biotic abilities at this point, decided to put them to good use, protecting the few friends she made with her biotic spheres, and forcing the invading reapers back. A local resistance was organized within weeks, and Lokea quickly became an active part of what was known as the Nos Astra Freedom Battalion. Using her skills as a commando to strike hard and strike fast at important enemy installations, she was able to help the Freedom Battalion keep Reaper troops off their planet for a while. Lokea used her time in battle to learn more and more about her biotic potential, finding out new ways to use her abilities. Often times, she would use them for more defensive purposes, but her abilities were effective at bringing troops out of cover and keeping husks at bay. While she enjoyed fighting with her biotic abilities as well as with her assault rifles and pistols, she didn't enjoy seeing what few friends she had perish in the war. Seeing bodies litter the streets, watching friends and loves ones burn away, it only made things worse for her already fragile mental state. In the months ensuing, Lokea continued to fight against the Reapers, until they fell.
All that was left to do was to rebuild. No more fighting, no more suffering, just rebuilding. Taking back what is lost. Lokea spent most her time in the efforts to rebuild Nos Astra with what was left of the Freedom Battalion, trying to cope with the scars that the war left her. While she rebuilt the homes of her own and her loved ones, she grieved with the survivors, and used her biotics to heal the wounds and scars that the Reapers left on the city. When there was nothing left to rebuild, Lokea took some time to revitalize the art that was abandoned during the war, and used her hobbyist skills to help bring back the culture she loved dearly. The art, the music, and the gardens that used to be there, she helped bring back with some of her living friends that she now considered family. Her distinction during the Reaper War and reconstruction within the Nos Astra Freedom Battalion made her a recognized hero of sorts, having used her talents to help the downtrodden. Even after the war was over and during reconstruction, there were still people who never learned, and there were still entities that preyed on the innocent. While the Freedom Battalion downsized since many of its members went home to rebuild, the militia was still an effective fighting force, keeping criminals away from the innocent. Due to the Freedom Battalion interfering with the interests of Nos Astra's corporate elite, the local government forcefully shut down the Freedom Battalion, leaving Lokea without a job. Thanks to being blacklisted in Illium, Lokea had no where else to go, and had no income to keep her medicated, and to keep her home. She sold her home to her friends, and she was rendered homeless for about a few weeks. Things were looking down until she got that fateful message from Saris Fen...