Thanatoksia, stellar cartographic designation MW-DQ-088-K2003-Beta, is now a world divided against itself. After many years of a determined genocide by the Thanatoksin majority against the primitive Rheger Tuhg culture, the Rheger Tuhg have recently been armed by disgraced captain Alcar Dovan of the U.S.S. Excelsior, causing the conflict to spill over into all-out world war. Given the Thanatoksin's associate membership status in the Perenalthorias Union, the matter has been a simmering point of concern for several decades.

Overview

Thanatoksia is a mild M-class world located in the heart of the Ly'bven'tho magnetic phenomenon near the intersection of the Jathlin Arm and the Star Desert of the Round Table. Like most planets of its type, it is home to a variety of climates and terrains. Its chief landmasses consist of four continents: a single large continent in the southern hemisphere, and three smaller, more distributed continents in the north.

Physiologically, Thanatoksin almost exactly resemble humans, but for their somewhat more tanned skin and their hair colors, which sit exclusively on the warm side of the spectrum (yellow, orange, red, etc.). The Thanatoksin majority themes much of their aesthetic on an admiration of birds and especially feathers, whereas the Rheger Tuhg reverence trees and plant life and base their art on that.

History

Federation databanks know relatively little about Thantoksin history prior to contact with the Divitians. It is understood that the Rheger Tuhg represent a specific but significant ethnic minority which was native to the southern continent prior to the technological development of the planet. After first contact between the Tuhg and the rest of the world, the Thanatoksin species--including the Tuhg--lived together in peace, moving gradually toward political consolidation as is normal on most worlds (Earth being the notable exception). During this process, considerable concessions were made to the Tuhg, reserving their lands and culture to them even as all peoples over the planet moved towards one-world government. Worldwide democracy was in its nascent stages when, in the late twenty-third century, the Divitians made contact.

The Divitian Republic made formal contact with the Thanatoksin Permanent Presider via radio a few days before its first official deputation landed on the planet. It was Thanatoksia's first verfied encounter with alien life, and the Perenalthorias Union estimates that it predated Thanatoksin's independent development of warp drive by more than three hundred fifty years. The Divitians, per their usual policy of "civilization welfare", immediately enacted the usual trade arrangements and generous contributions to Thanatoksin infrastructure, technology, and public health. The Thanatoksin, always a deeply industrial people, commenced a grand project to impress their local galactic community and become a vital part of the proud Perenalthorias Union... perhaps even with an eye towards one day becoming a full voting member of the Council. That overwhelming goal--and the contempt held by the bulk of the Thanatoksin population for anyone who would impede it, for any reason--remains perhaps the defining characteristic of modern Thanatoksin culture.

Roughly twenty years after contact, a serious resource crisis developed. For a number of reasons, most unusual or peculiar to Thanatoksin society, the predictable population explosion following the public health revolution was not accompanied by equivalent leaps in agricultural technology. Widespread famine ensued. Requiring additional farming territory, the Thanatoksin majority began to encroach on land reserved to the Rheger Tuhg, just as the Tuhg found it necessary to request additional territory in order to survive. War was, perhaps, ineveitable.

The Genocide of the Rheger Tuhg

Even after the first shots were fired--no one knows anymore who fired them--the conflict built only slowly. An incident every few years, then every few months. At first, they would cost a life or two; ten years into the fighting, the first mass grave appeared. Three decades later, hiding and gurreilla warfare had become a way of life for the Tuhg; a fourth brought the first sporadic acts of terrorism.

By the conflict's peak in the mid-2380's, all attempts at peace negotiation had ended, and all ties between the Tuhg and the Thanatoksin government had been severed. Reverting to their primitive languages as an act of protest, the Tuhg began to refer to their enemy as "Lindalai" (meaning "men in boots," for the loud noise made by the black battle boots worn by the heavily-armored Thanatoksin military). The "Lindalai," in turn, referred to the Tuhg by the slur "Fòòrà", meaning "fur people," which had not been used since around the time of first contact between northern and southern continents. The extermination of Tuhg villages had long since become routine, with a few women being spared as "comfort women" and a few children survivors taken back for reindoctrination and integration into the Lindalai fighting force.

The outgunned Tuhg, of course, stood no chance. The Thanatoksin were by now associate members of the Perenalthorias Union, had constructed a modest space fleet, and profited greatly from trade with the Divitians. Though still lagging behind modern technology, the Thanatoksin military has gained at least a century's technological advantage over the Tuhg, who are still grateful to be armed with primitive gunpowder weapons. For themselves, the Tuhg had taken to scavenging or stealing whatever advanced technology they could, and devoted most of their energies to hiding and sending out distress calls with stolen subspace beacons. Those transmissions, which pleaded with the Perenalthorias Council to intercede in the conflict, only infrequently penetrated the edge of the Ly'bven'tho Field, but the Council did receive quite a number of desperate calls over the years, eventually leading the Divitians to unilaterally cease trading with the Thanatoksin. The Council took no further action, though general economic sanctions were ferociously debated on several occasions between 2377 and 2384.

World War

In 2384, Captain Alcar Dovan and Lt. Cmdr. Alecz Lorhrok of the U.S.S. Excelsior were exploring the Ly'bven'tho region when they received just such a distress call. Arriving just in time to witness the near-slaughtering of a few survivors in the ruins of the village of Elpam, the Lindalai soon secured their shuttle, trapping the officers on the planet in the care of the Fòòrà. Witnessing the brutality deployed against the Tuhg, Captain Dovan resolved to "bend the Prime Directive a little" when he was offered a way off world--use the advanced Starfleet tricorders to provide reconnaissance for a Rheger Tuhg attack on an important Thanatoksin spaceport, and the Tuhg would help him secure a ship to take off-world, on condition that Dovan would see that he reached the Perenalthorias Council to plead the case on behalf of the Tuhg. As Dovan himself observed, the Lindalai had already gotten him involved when they impounded his ship, so the Prime Directive was technically still intact.

Unfortunately, during a relief effort at nearby Divitia, the Excelsior herself (still unaware of her missing officers) had become quite friendly with the Thanatoksin detachment, especially its commander, the honor-bound Fleet Admiral Cynoll. Lt. Cmdr. Neeva, in command, agreed to assist the Thanatoksin with what was described to them as an ongoing string of vicious terrorist attacks against civilians. Thus, Excelsior crewmembers turned out to be providing logistic support to the very spaceport that Dovan and Lorhrok, along with the entire Tuhg fighting force (marching in force for the first time) were attacking. When the Thanatoksin observed Dovan, in a Starfleet uniform, gunning down one of their wounded corporals, they immediately classified the Starfleet officers as enemy combatants. Although Dovan and several others escaped the planet, Lorhrok, Neeva, and more than a dozen others were taken into custody as the Thanatoksin fled the field. They were quickly tried for treason and espionage, found guilty, and sentenced to death. When Dovan returned to the Excelsior, he found the entire Thantoksin military arrayed against any attempt to rescue his officers. Even Dovan, a man known for reckless actions, could recognize a hopeless situation.

When the leader of the village of Kao, an old man known only as "The Man" (apparently an honorific) and now Speaker for all Tuhg, asked Dovan to provide his people with advanced Federation weapons, Dovan was presented an opportunity. If he could provoke all-out war between the Tuhg and the Lindalai, the Thanatoksin military would be diverted, and a rescue would become possible. Additionally, Dovan saw the Rheger Tuhg cause as just. The Tuhg stood for the principle:

We, the Rootbrothers of the Rheger Tuhg proclaim, eternally, without concession, without compromise: that all men are free; that all men are valuable; that all men earn their right to live simply by having been placed beneath the firmament to live; and that this right does not rest upon the needs or desires or definitions of any other man or group of men, however powerful, however willful."

and had died by the millions, whereas the First Law of the Thanatoksin Unity was:

"The mystery and value of life, inexplicable and beyond the knowledge of any One, shall be given to the People, who shall decide its worth according the needs of the All."

and had applied the principle to the near-extinction of the Rheger Tuhg.

Unfortunately, intervention in this matter, even to equalize the conflict and save the Tuhg from certain annihilation, would be a flagrant violation of the Prime Directive in the highest order. Unwilling to give up his officers to death, however, Dovan made his decision. Giving The Man his personal access codes, Dovan staged a robbery of the Excelsior's own weapon stores, thereby providing the Tuhg with weapons while keeping his crew out of the loop--thereby saving their careers.

War followed. The Thanatoksin, caught completely off-balance by the sudden and "accidental" advanced armaments wielded by the Fòòrà terrorists, had (as of June 2384) just been routed across the entire southern continent, likely to be forced to retreat back into the north before regrouping. Despite an impassioned plea by Dovan before the Council, the Council promised only to reconsider the matter and possible solutions. Meanwhile, the death toll from the now-world war has already reached into the low millions--not nearly as high as the death toll of the preceding decades, but considerably less lopsided against the Rheger Tuhg.

Testimony from Rheger Tuhg defectors and various Thanatoksin played a key role in the downfall of Captain Dovan five months later in his court-martial at Starbase 911. The Thanatoksin attitude towards the Federation nonetheless remains well below the freezing point, and they have made it clear that, despite the imprisonment of Captain Dovan, they consider the Federation its enemy. The Rheger Tuhg, on the other hand (thanks in part to a promise made between The Man and Captain Dovan), maintain that they stole the weapons themselves and that Captain Dovan is innocent. They have been very friendly towards the Federation, but the UFP has chosen not to send any signs of support or friendliness to the ethnic group they armed.

Credits

Original information created by the players of the U.S.S. Excelsior-C simm. Permission for its use on the SB900 websites given by Alcar Dovan.