

The mercenary reveals that the mage is heading to Sundermount, and Josmael offers to show the party a shortcut through the mountains. Tallis hires Nyree using money she stole from Josmael's clan. Saarebas then escapes and seals the group in the cave, alongside one of his cohorts: a reaver mercenary named Nyree. Tallis locates the Saarebas in a cave, where he uses the blood of Josmael's love to complete part of the Mask of Fen'Harel. Setting out again, she joins forces with Cairn the templar, who is also tracking the Qunari magi they are joined by the First to the Keeper of the ravaged clan, Josmael. She discovers that the Saarebas and his accomplices stole a precious and dangerous elven artifact: Mask of Fen'Harel. She attempts to intercept her target at a Dalish camp, only to discover that they have been decimated by the Saarebas. The two battle briefly before Tallis finally extracts the needed information from her captive mage, killing him shortly afterwards. She harries an accomplice of the fugitive mage and encounters a Templar named Cairn. A Qunari informs her that she has been reinstated as Tallis, and must track down a Tal-Vashoth Saarebas who escaped a Chantry prison. When she is first seen she is working as an Athlok in a ship moored in the docks of Kirkwall. She was offered a chance to redeem herself two years later. She was assigned as a kitchen-hand on a boat docked in Kirkwall, during the Arishok's stay in Kirkwall. Tallis had failed to steal the Qunari artifact without leaving any trace as she had been ordered, and she was therefore demoted to the rank of "Athlok" - a laborer. This caused a diplomatic incident that almost led to a war between the Qunari and Orlais. During the heist, Tallis found human and elven children being kept as sex slaves and set them free, killing the Count and several of his guards in the process.

Tallis finally pushed her superiors over the edge during a mission to retrieve a Qunari artifact in the possession of Count Alphonse Valmont in Arlesans. They would have preferred the mission be abandoned rather than completed imperfectly. She always completed those missions successfully, though never to the complete specifications of her superiors. Her duties involved travelling to non-Qunari lands, primarily Orlais and Nevarra, where she was tasked with burglaries, heists, and assassinations. Tallis was initially deemed an unsuitable convert, and would have been rendered a mindless laborer if not for the intervention of Salit, a high-ranking Ben-Hassrath agent, who formally requested that the tammasrans turn the girl over to him so he could train her to become a Tallis, "those who solve". Everyone aboard was brought to the island fortress of Qunathras, to the east of Seheron. She was on a slaver ship bound for the city of Carastes when the Qunari boarded and captured the ship. In Minrathous, she was sold into slavery by her parents so they could pay off their debts.

Tallis was born in Tevinter, where slavery is legal.
