Star Trek Sim/ Star Trek RPG
USS Eagle, NCC 2185
LOGS
Guest
Alien Log: L'Asaha
Title: More Questions Than Answers: The Call to Mourn,
Part Six
Location: Sandokhan Alpha Base
Setting: At entrance the Holy Catacombs
L'Asaha, the mighty high priestess of the Sandokhans
continues the rites for their newly dead. The Sandokhan faithful carry their
dead in biers laden with exotic flowers and waving banners with images of
their dead and favorite saints. The chanting is reverential and the incense
inviting. The biers, banners and people sway back in forth to the music. The
smoke from the censor wafts lazily into the air making a series of interconnected
half circles. The candles flicker slowly.
They all process in a grand stately manner toward the
Holy Catacombs. L'Asaha motions to the others to begin a new part of the
funerary services called, "The Call to Mourn". They will gather up both believers
and non-believers to mourn and honor the dead as the dead join their ancestors
in entombment. The cantors change the chants and deaconess changes the incense.
The candles seem to respond to those changes and flicker faster in response
to the heightened pace.
The funeral procession winds along the tunnels until
the High Priestess feels something unusual ... something ... something ...
alien. She stops.
She looks around with her physical eyes and does not
see anything. Through her role as priestess she "sees" an alien somewhere
nearby, a female or maybe two. She steps up the ritual to draw her/them out.
(Note: She doesn't "see" a picture of someone, just feel their presence.)
Unknown to the Sandokhans, the CMO and AMO are hiding
just barely out of site in a crevice right behind them. Both of the doctors
are having a hard time not giving into "The Call " but the Moeban had the
hardest struggle as those with telepathic abilities and closest to the chanting
are the most vulnerable.
The CMO is not a strong telepath but the cantors are
practically standing on her feet. She tries hard to resist but finally succumbs,
leaving the AMO behind.
LCDR Laleia-Lii emerges from behind the sloping rock
and joins the mourners in the back. She sways and chants with them, fully
caught up in "The Call". They become as one people and one voice.
L'Asaha turns and sees "the alien child" appear. She
smiles. It was that the female child that those newly captured aliens brought
with them. She moves the procession along and tries not to dwell on how sad
a race these new aliens must be to bring children with them on their evil
missions.
The mourning party continues to call others to join
in their sorrow and to entomb the dead. Then those newly called get others
to join. The sphere of influence under control of "The Call" grows and grows
like ripples in a pond.
Suddenly, L'Asaha feels it again. Another alien!
Whoever this alien woman was she was not nearby and fought her attempts
to draw her to them. This one she could tell from prior experience was highly
telepathic and Galadonese. She smiles, that will make it easy to "Call"
her.
The Priestess turns her focus to catch this alien also.
She increases the strength of "the Call". L'Asaha leans further herself
into the ritual to "see" this person. She tries to extend her sphere of
influence and get her to invite others near her if any.
There was something odd in the victim's reaction to
her. It is hard to pinpoint. Almost like a mother protecting a child. "How
odd," she thinks. She continues to draw her will about her and press the
woman with it and the will of everyone present. L'Asaha knows of no one who
could escape "The Call" once it was "heard". She increases its strength again.
The candles flicker wildly, casting dangerous looking
shapes on the walls. The smoke from the incense roils furiously out of the
censor into the air. The mourners reach a frenzied state. Success! The Empress
is unable to resist any longer.
Guest
Alien Log: L'Asaha
Title: More Questions Than Answers: The Call to Mourn, Part Seven
Location: Sandokhan Alpha Base
Setting: At entrance the Holy Catacombs
L'Asaha enters the Holy Catacombs first. Done! The alien
woman is broken. She now knows what she was protecting! There was another
alien!!! A man...
She leans in further to the ritual trying to differentiate
between the two aliens. The woman's spiritual wounds were very fresh. The
man's ran deep. "Good," she thinks. She could use those weaknesses to draw
them to her.
The rest of the mourning party enters with the CMO in
tow. Her tricorder, still dangling from her hand, is still recording everything.
L'Asaha shivers and nods to her deaconess to take over.
"Could now be time of the Last Prophecy?" she wonders. She needed to get
some answers.
L'Asaha runs the ancient poem, "The Last Prophecy of
Tarrook", through her head.
She lingers on this part:
"In the darkness,
where the dead things grow,
Among the dead, the six trying go
Among the dead, the four dying go
Is taken the one who shines blue. "
"After I catch the man and woman
and compel them to join us, there will be three aliens who will be in the
Holy Catacombs," she thinks. (She does not know yet that the CO and Empress
are already there and who came with them.) L'Asaha tries to find out what
is happening and if there are three more people involved in this to give a
count of six. She turns to the alien child that they captured a few days ago.
"Tell me about yourself," she asks gently but firmly.
The CMO is strangely compelled to tell her everything.
"I am a Moeban... a doctor, the Chief Medical Officer of the USS Eagle..."
she hears herself say as if it was someone else was talking.
The Priestess reigns in her surprise and smiles. Now
she was going to get some more answers and figure this all out! She nods to
her deaconess to proceed without her. Then suddenly ... she feels the
woman she was trying to catch disappear and then the man. "What happened???"
she wonders. She could not feel them any longer. "Where did they go? How could
they get away?" she asks herself.
"Why are you here?" the high priestess demands from
the CMO hoping she might have some answers.
"I was fleeing the Sandokhans with two small, sick Sandokhan
children. I was trying to help them. They were both ill.
The youngest was very sick, nearly about to die. I was trying to save
his life...Your people are being poisoned. I couldn't help him. His
sister seemed to believe in a Lady In Blue who would 'save us all,'" the
doctor explains.
"Where is the Lady and what happened? " the priestess
asks eagerly.
"Hiding ... on a ledge ... with the Captain and the
children...The youngest was healed ... by the Lady... " the CMO still under
the spell of "The Call" continues to answer.
"Who are the four dying?" L'Asaha asks trying to make
sense of this in light of the Prophecy.
"The Captain ... and the children ... and the Empress..."
she lists.
L'Asaha is both surprised and vindicated. "So the Lady
is an Empress!" she thought. That could satisfy the part of the Prophecy
that said "product of ancient king and queen".
L'Asaha of course has no idea yet that the maid was
the Empress of all Galadon in disguise. (Zahrina had done this to both protect
herself and the peace proceedings. She had lied heavily about her true identity
when she was captured to keep her people from paying a ransom or wiping
out the Sandokhans. The Empress believed that if the Galadonese people knew
what the Sandokhans had done to her and those with her that they'd be out
for blood. Her people could easily transfer their hatred of the Tureth and
their wishes to eliminate that race on the Sandokhans.)
"Why are they dying? Take me to them!" L'Asaha both
asks and orders.
"They are dying because of a... a... ritual...that they
could not complete immediately. They could not rest as we were fleeing and
began to die. They had to rest then or die so we came here," she explains.
Then LCDR Laleia-Lii still in a trancelike state, begins walking toward
the CO, Empress, and children. L'Asaha follows her and thinks hard.
L'Asaha counted to herself, Lady in Blue, two children,
one captain, this doctor makes five". "I count only five where is the other
one that was with you?" L'Asaha asks.
"Other one?" the CMO replies distantly.
"The other who came to you to this place where our honored
dead are?" L'Asaha asks.
"The AMO?" the CMO says hesitating. There were others
on the Eagle that came to the tunnels but not to this place.
"Yes. Where is she and were their others who came here?"
the priestess asks.
"She was on the ledge where I was...She did not join..."
Dr. Laleia-Lii replies
"And who else was with you?" she asks, hoping to find
that there were only six.
"No one. There is no one else," the Moeban finishes.
L'Asaha smiles triumphantly. That was six with four
dying! The Prophecy will come true now! The Sandokhans will be saved. She
needed to speak with the Lady in Blue immediately. She would ask the doctor
about the poison along the way. The Prophecy took precedence over all.
Guest Alien Log:
L'Asaha
Title: More Questions Than Answers: The Call to
Mourn, Part Eight
Location: Sandokhan Alpha Base
Setting: At entrance the Holy Catacombs
The CMO, who appears totally under L'Asaha control, not only answers
her questions but takes her to where she left the four. The Priestess
is satisfied that the basic requirements of the Prophecies are met.
L'Asaha peers in the recess where the four sought sanctuary. She could
see nothing but darkness. She hoists herself up onto the ledge. SPARKLE!
The CO's wedding ring reflects the light from the torches into her eye.
She looks harder and sees a ring then an outstretched hand. She moves to
see the body it belonged to and discovers three others.
The priestess reaches to a pocket in her sari and takes out a small
highly phosphorescent rock. She shines its light on the four bodies on the
ledge. It casts an eerie green color on them. She examines the faces. She
recognizes two of them - the Sandokhan children who had been a handful to
control since they lost their parents. She knew that the boy was dying.
He appears fine now. She is excited. "The time of the Prophecy is now!"
she thinks.
L'Asaha went to move the inert bodies of the adult aliens. Their faces
were hidden. She turns the male over to see his face. The man was a Galadon
that she did not recognize. She removed a blanket from the face of the
other. The woman was easily identifiable as the Empress of All Galadon!
Her heart and hopes sink. L'Asaha is disappointed. She had hoped that
the woman was the Lady in Blue (Saffira) and that the man was the human
captain. From the reports of the guards she had, they had both shone blue.
She revisits these parts of the poem in her head:
"In the
darkness, where the dead things grow,
Things ne'er alive
multiply
While wrongs of dead
multiply
Is caught, the one who
shines blue."
AND
"In the darkness where
the dead things grow,
Trapped by the paths that
wind
Trapped by the things that
bind
Suffers, the one who shines
blue."
"The prophecy is not fulfilled, K'Arak has not taken any more people
since the Federation aliens" she thinks. She could not understand why
she was wrong. She had been so sure that the time was now. Maybe she misinterpreted
caught and trapped as being captured? She struggles for a moment to reconcile
her beliefs and interpretations.
L'Asaha of course did not know that the Empress had been traveling
in disguise when she was captured as Saffira. When Zahrina accidentally
partook of the Ankhanahkstoi she resumed her natural appearance. Neither
did L'Asaha know that the Captain, to help keep the Tureth from attacking
him on the planet, had been surgically altered to look like his old human
self. The Ankhanahkstoi had "restored" him to what the it believed was
his normal state according to the majority of his DNA - a Galadon. So when
she looked at the two she did not recognize them as the two captured earlier
by K'Arak.
"Perhaps it is not impossible after all for someone to lie to me who
was
caught up in "The Call" or to feign being "Called". If these Federation
aliens knew of the Prophecy they could fake all this easily with their technology.
Perhaps that fool Kvark was right," she speculates. "If K'Arak find this
out, his anger will be unbounded," she despairs.
The spiritual leader of the Sandokhans sighs. She already had enough
trouble restraining him and the others from trying to wipe out all the
aliens on her world.
L'Asaha prostrates herself and supplicates the Great One for guidance.
She desperately wants peace and fears it would never come.
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