Captain Silas
Name Silas
Position Executive Officer
Rank Captain
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Kriosian | |
| Age | 138 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 6ft | |
| Weight | 190Lb | |
| Hair Color | Brown | |
| Eye Color | Green | |
| Physical Description | Kriosians and Valtese (who are of the same race as Kriosians) are easily mistaken for Trill, as they feature the similar facial lines of spotted patterns. Instead of running down the length of their entire bodies, Kriosian spots run along the face and neck and form a point in a 'v' shape in the mid back. Silas is suffering some balding as he approaches middle age (his species can live 250-300 years of age). |
Family
| Spouse | Valdine of Valt | |
| Children | none |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | He is empathic, which is not unusual for Kriosian males and leads to them being more characteristically insightful and kind, in general. He is generally well mannered, trained as a nobleman, diplomat, and scholar. With the longer life spans, Kriosians (and by extension Valtese) can identify with the life cycles of Vulcans and to some degree, Elaurians. They tend to avoid hurried lifestyles. his wife, Valdine, is not empathic (a trait that is rare among females and if desired takes seven generations to breed and identify an empathic female of the species) instead, Valdine has the pragmatic nature commonly observed among the Valt colonists of cutting through noise and getting to the point (in contrast to her husband’s mellow personality). She is also a few decades younger than her husband and generally seen as brash by Kriosian standards. Silas is familiar with Klingon language and customs. His family paid fealty to a Klingon house, and there was a Klingon government on his world, which held the Krios system as a conquered territory. He also learned Federation Standard and Vulcan, which were central to the diplomacy of House Keon, as well as his greater studies in the sciences. Valdine also speaks and writes in Vulcan, and they have both learned the dialects most common to the chief tribes in the Obsidian city of Kalara. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Emapthic Intellectual Experienced Highly Educated Of a noble family Not a very big risk taker Not highly ambitious outside of his assignment Slow to act, takes time to consider Isn't especially athletic or adventurous Is a bit of a homebody if allowed to be can be lost in thought or study prefers to spend time writing, or in measured discussion understands drama, but avoids it |
| Personal History | Silas was married young on Krios, but was widowed during the civil war between Krios and Valt. During their travels together (while he served as a diplomatic aide in the steps of his father) his first wife, Mariel, was secretly passing information behind enemy lines right under his nose. Dually embarrassed and griefstricken, he left the diplomatic service and lived eighty years in study of ancient Kriosian history, writing and teaching in his hometown of Gemminsdale in the KelphLi province on his homeworld. When the war between Krios and Valt ended in 2367, His family (House Keon) was chief among the nobility in the courts of the Ministry, and so he was called upon to join the marriage reception held on Krios before the newly joined royalty, Aleric of Valt and Kamala of Krios, moved to their permanent residence on Valt. Even after decades, Silas was still bitter and hurt; not even the news of peace between their worlds could solve the pain of betrayal and loss.But on the insistence of his aging father and his brothers and sisters, Silas did attend the month-long celebrations in the courts. During the prolonged stay, he fell in love with a Valtese naturalist who, although of no house and in no position of influence, was a guest of other honored Valtese attendees. As a guest on a strange world, Valdine was reserved, but his empathy helped him to negotiate a gentle companionship between them; as the official holiday was winding down, he asked Valdine to stay on Krios in his guest home and share his studies. Curious about the world her people had originated from and having grown to like Silas, she agreed. In a way, his family was right. The peace between worlds did help him to arrive at a kind of closure over his past. Further, Valdine’s company was a balm for Silas’ loneliness and long held hurts. Like Silas, Valdine had also been deeply hurt by the toll of their planets' centuries of war, having lost family and friends and lovers in the ongoing conflicts, and she learned more immediately on her long visit to Krios of the generations of terror that Klingon occupation had inflicted on the Kriosian homeworld, something that the Valtese had not experienced directly, but only through trade restrictions and tariffs which had contributed to the civil war between the two worlds. Silas and Valdine married on Krios, (2368) echoing the growing new friendship of their worlds. But inevitably, Valdine became homesick for Valt: a colony world of Krios with its own unique sky and landscape, climate and culture. Seeking to relieve her homesickness, Silas brought them to Valt for an extended stay, meeting the Valtaens, whom he found abrasive, overly pragmatic, and difficult to get along with; Silas attempted to acclimate to the ways of a world which had a much younger history, fraught with the difficulties of survival and the demands of a frontier life which had shaped the culture in a very ungenteel way. Not to mention Silas’ irritation of living under twin red suns which left him irritable and drowsy, preferring indoor lighting to the perpetual sunset tones out of doors, and the plants which, rather than green, produced primarily pale blue foliage in massive leaf structures. None of the food tasted right, even though they had been crop strains adapted from Krios. And there was very little in the way of ancient cultural history to study on the relatively young planet by comparison to his own world. After multiple extensions of their stay, when months became years, Silas insisted he wanted to resume his life on Krios, yet his new bride wished to remain on her own world. It fractured the couple badly, the relationship severely strained by the impasse. Harsh words were bandied between their family and friends, accusations growing that Valdine was trying to take Silas from his heritage or that Silas only wanted to own and keep Valdine in his study on his terms. Old faultlines between Krios and Valt seemed to run right through the marriage. After much of this, Silas left Valt without Valdine and returned home to his study on Krios. There Silas found that he could not write a damned thing, and he was not able to return to his professorial life either; his one semester's attempt at teaching proved him to be harsh, inattentive to his students, and unable to maintain any clear order in his thoughts during his lecturing. The university forced him into early retirement at the young age of 110 (2370). He found himself alone in his study, missing his estranged wife and becoming insular once again. One day, one of his former students happened by to ask him to serve as a character reference on her application to Starfleet, where she hoped to serve as a science officer. He grunted his assent and put his name and contact down for her, and then long after his student had departed, stared at the horizon until the sun went down and the stars rose. And he thought: why the hell not? He wondered if Valdine would laugh the commline closed if he invited her to go along, too. If she would even pick up the comm… It took him a week of pacing, pulling up and then closing her contact before he accidentally dialed his wife. Valdine answered immediately. After an awkward pause, he told her he intended to join starfleet's Science division. But only if she would go with him. Impressed that he would try to give up living on his beloved homeworld in favor of their marriage, Valdine decided to commit to the same. They would begin anew, together. They both enrolled in Starfleet Academy, but as it happened, the Dominion War was stirring and by the time they were approaching graduation, the war was ramping up too. The couple realized they had left the fresh wounds of war between their homeworlds in time to see another even broader ranging war up close. Eager for able bodies in the fight, the Academy fast-tracked Silas and Valdine and field commissioned both as Lieutenants, thanks to their decades of prior education and experience. The pair took their first assignments aboard a science vessel which had been retasked to patrol border space. Their ship saw all manner of action, but was never dispatched to the hottest contests, as it was not the best equipped for active battle. Still, with its advanced sensor systems, the ship was often sent in a compliment as a scout, tasked to clear border systems of maquis, remove enemy listening posts, or intercept spy probes crossing the border. By the time the Dominion war ended, they had lost many of their Starfleet friends and even seen the sacrifice of so many of their fresh faced cadet friends who they had barely gotten the chance to know. They grew through these fresh griefs, discovering they were even stronger together on the other side of it, and, having distinguished themselves during the war, quickly climbed ranks. Taking assignments together and becoming something of a coveted duo among Captains looking to fill their billets with experienced officers. In 2388, when the Ninth Fleet needed someone to lead the science station on Planet Obsidian, Silas and Valdine were handpicked for the job. They made the planet their new home, having had their fill of war and travel. Silas welcomed the yellow sun (even if Loki III was a dangerous desert), and Valdine patiently gained the trust of the Obsidianites. Their skills and training as an anthropologist and a naturalist together were ideal in their new roles representing the Federation and spearheading relief projects with the native population. They built a home in David Rabin’s historic posting house and hosted students and guests on an ongoing basis. Together with Valdine, Silas has become an expert in all he could learn about the Obsidian Tribes and their myths, culture and history. With their science teams, the couple have published eleven volumes consisting of history, culture, politics, geography, religion, arts, horticulture, biographical accounts and more: one volume for every year since being posted on the desert world. When the Station disappeared during the Void Incident of 2395, there was a great deal of political unrest and distrust of Starfleet presence. Silas and Valdine were by-and-large cut off from Starfleet and had to maintain a very fragile relationship with the native Obsidianites whose political structures flipped almost overnight. Much of the trust and relationships they had built in the better part of a decade suffered massive setbacks. In many ways they have had to begin again. |