KHEI’RRAHN T’RHIAN

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Before logic, before restraint, before the long silence of the mind, there was fire.

In the earliest ages of Vulcan history, the people lived by the blade and the scream of passion. Emotion was not merely felt — it was worshiped. Every force of the soul had a god: wrath, grief, joy, triumph. Power flowed not from restraint but from surrender, and the strongest among them was Ket-cheleb, god of war. Beside him was D’era, the Endless Sky, whose vast wings stretched over battlefields and burning cities alike. In their names, and in the names of countless lesser gods, Vulcan blood was spilled.

This was the Time of Awakening, though awakening came first as violence. Tribe rose against tribe. Brother slew brother. States were forged from the ashes of clans, and two great powers emerged, locked in endless war for dominance of the world. Even the stars did not bring peace. Legends speak of fire in the heavens — of early vessels crossing into space — carrying conflict outward, not leaving it behind. Wherever they went, the old ways followed. The ruins later called Debrune still whisper of this age, their stones marked by a past both Vulcan and proto-Romulan, depending on who dares to remember.

Into this age of fury stepped Surak.

He spoke a heresy both quiet and devastating: that emotion was not divine, that the gods were mirrors forged by desire, and that the mind — not the blade — must rule the body. “Control the mind,” he taught, “that the body may follow.” At first he was mocked, dismissed as weak, as dangerous, as foolish. But words can spread faster than fire. Warriors laid down their weapons. Cities listened. Peace — once unthinkable — became possible.

Not all listened.

Among those who refused was Tellus, a war-leader devoted to Ket-cheleb and D’era, a voice of the old faith. To him, Surak’s teachings were not enlightenment but betrayal. Do not extinguish the fire, he urged. Let it awaken you. To cast off emotion was, in his eyes, to cast off truth, heritage, and strength. Those who followed him took up arms against Surak’s adherents, and the world bled once more — not over territory, but over identity.

In time, Surak’s philosophy prevailed. The peace-makers endured. Logic took root. And Tellus, seeing his world transformed into something unrecognizable, made a choice that would fracture history forever.

He renounced Vulcan.

With his followers — the Children of Ket-cheleb — he turned his gaze upward. Where Vulcan chose silence, they chose D’era. Where others named their emotions shameful, they named them sacred. They did not call their departure exile. They did not call it defeat.

They called it KHEI’RRAHN.

A sundering.
A severing that could never be undone.

As Ket-cheleb embraced D’era, so too did Tellus and his people, stepping into the Endless Sky not in flight, but in purpose. From that choice would rise Rihan. From that wound would endure a people who remembered what Vulcan chose to forget.

D’era nnhu t’Rihan.
Duty binds the future — even when the past is torn apart.