ch'Tesh, Tharok

PRC	STAR FLEET PERSONNEL COMMAND FILE  SECURITY RATING 3, CONFIDENTIAL

RETIRED
Tharok ch'Tesh
Career Occupation
Position:	Science Officer
Assignment:	USS Sheridan, DD-4086
Rank:	Midshipman
Biographical Attributes
Species:	Andorian
Gender:	Male (Chan)
Height:	168 cm (5 ft. 6 in.)	Weight:	64.4 kg (142 lb.)
Eye Color:	Brown with small flecks of amber
Hair Color:	Chalk-White
Hairstyle:	Mid-length and slightly wild
Physique:	Slight / Lithe
Complexion:	Powder Blue
Voice:	Tharok has a strong and deep voice but this rises several octaves when he is discussing a subject he is particularly enthusiastic about.
Affiliation:	United Federation of Planets
Birthplace:	Lestar Colony on the moon of Kristaka in the Sellis Sector
Born:	19208.23	Age:	31
Familial Relationships
Father:	Trakir (chan) and Lokath (thaan)
Mother:	Berash (zhen) and Ashti (shen)
Status of Parents:	Alive and living at the Lestar Colony. Berash and Ashti work in a matter reclamation facility while Trakir is a miner and Ashti is a member of the Imperial Guard.
Siblings:	One sister, Altash (15)
Marital Status:	Single
Children:	None

Personal History

Born in an Andorian colony on the moon of Kristaka in the Sellis Sector, Tharok displayed an inquisitive mind from a young age; one that his parents nurtured by arranging for him to apprentice with an Andorian physicist, Sharest ch'Veln, living at the colony. The work was hard-going at first but Tharok found himself enjoying it more each day and, without truly realising it, he set himself on his path to Starfleet.

His mentor had a daughter, Lauress, living with him who was about Tharoks age and the two became friends. She would help him with the duties her father gave him and in return he taught her what little he had learned of sculpting from his father, Trakir. During their free time, they would spend hours playing in the hills outside the colony and, as they grew, so too did their love for one another.

At the age of seven, his mentor took him on an expedition to a remote planetoid in the Nervalan sector. They intended to collect some geological samples of a rare mineral and a trader dropped them off, promising to return the next day. While there, Tharok disturbed a nest of Nervalan Crater Beetles and one of them bit his left arm, delivering a powerful toxin that began to necrotise his flesh.

Acting quickly, Sharest administered a metabolic suppressant from their first aid kit and managed to slow the spread of the toxin. Unfortunately, it did not stop it completely and by the time a Federation vessel (the USS Hokkaido) responded to their distress signal the poison had badly damaged the nerves in his arm. Such was the nature of the toxin that, although the medical staff aboard the Hokkaido were able to halt it's advance they were unable to reverse the damage already caused. To this day, Tharok has very little feeling in that arm.

However, he didn't let this stop his studies and he returned home to continue his apprenticeship. Two years later, he impressed the scientific community by rewriting a formula that Sharest had given him to complete. It was a test to see if Tharok would realise that the formula could not be solved; a test in which Tharok surpassed Sharest's expectations by not only realising it was unsolvable but by rewriting the formula so that it could be solved.

Such was Sharest's amazement at this outcome that he forwarded Tharok's work to Starfleet who had it published and it is still in use to this day as part of the calculations used in the construction of moisture collectors on inhabited desert worlds around the Federation.

As he grew, his feelings for Lauress did likewise. The first time he realised that he was in love with her was shortly after his fourteenth birthday. They had been collecting soil samples for her father in the foothills of the mountains near their settlement. A Trazzik Beast (a large, bear-like creature) chased them through a fissure in the rockface and into a cave.

As darkness fell, the temperature dropped but they could hear the sounds of the Beast outside. Both scared out of their wits, they huddled together for warmth until the Beast left in the morning.

There was no magical first kiss or declaration of undying love (that would come later) but Tharok realised as he held Lauress in his arms that he had been in love with her for quite some time.

When they were old enough, he and Lauress began to talk about the possibility of marriage. Tharok was a chan and Lauress was a shen so, along with their friends Naras (a thaan) and Elokis (a zhen), they planned to form a shelthreth and become bonded for life. It would have ended at that if it were not for Tharok's passion for learning.

He loved his bondmates-to-be dearly but he had also retained the inquisitive mind of his formative years and he'd applied for a position at Starfleet. When the acceptance to the Academy came through, he talked it over with Lauress and the others and it was decided (after a heated debate) that as they were still two years away from being allowed to perform the shelthreth ceremony it would have to wait until after he graduated.

Unfortunately, the bonding was not meant to be and, while he was still en route to Earth, he received word that the colony had been raided by unknown hostiles and both Lauress and Naras had been killed in the attack. Later, he would also learn that Elokis had, in a fit of grief, stolen a transport vessel and gone after the attackers. The colony had lost communication with her shortly after and she hasn't been heard from since.

When the communication came through on the transport to Starfleet Academy regarding the attack on his colony, his world crashed in around him. The situation was made worse because he couldn't escape the confines of the ship, the pilot (while sympathetic) would not turn back and he didn't have anyone familiar around him to whom he could turn.

As soon as he landed on Earth, he wanted to book passage home but was in no fit state to make the arrangements. The admirals at Starfleet allowed him a couple of weeks to get his head together, by which time he had decided going home was an unproductive decision but the grief stayed with him for months.

Eventually, he broke down in the Academy cafeteria and was called in for a disciplinary after damaging several pieces of furniture and nearly injuring a fellow cadet. The senior staff understood his grief but could not allow the matter to go unpunished so they gave him the choice of leaving the Academy or repeating the year.

Needless to say, he decided to stay at the Academy.

A few weeks after his disciplinary, Tharok met Lewis Kramer and, through him, the rest of the cadets that would form his circle of friends throughout the next four years. None of them had yet started at the Academy and, when they did, Tharok would be restarting with them.

Lewis had an infectious appetite for living life to its fullest despite his own personal tragedies (his father and he had been prisoners of Romulan agents for 3 years. Upon release, they discovered that Lewis' mother and sister had died in a shuttle accident while they were prisoners). Lewis taught Tharok to relax a little and inspired him to live every day of his life as a tribute to his fallen bondmates-to-be. Without a friend like Lewis to help him through dark times, it is doubtful that Tharok would have been able to graduate.

As part of his grieving process, Tharok decided to honour his loved ones by performing an ancient Andorian scarification ceremony. The ritual required that he ask those closest to him to take a ceremonial blade and carve the names of those he wished to honour onto his body while he spoke of his memories of them. Since his family were all still living at Lestar Colony, it fell to Lewis and the other cadets to help him perform this ceremony. Under the watchful eyes of several Medical Officers at the Academy, they carved the names into the back of Tharok's left hand.

Since then, he has tried hard (and not always successfully) to pull himself together and to excel in whichever endeavours he might be working on. He has not returned to the colony despite several opportunities between semesters and he seems to have adopted Earth as a surrogate home for the time being, even going so far as to develop an interest in human cultures and history after a drunken party in which his classmates convinced him to parade around the Academy gardens dressed in a Japanese kimono (which he decided ot keep, claiming it allowed him "much more freedom of movement than most Terran clothing").

Although he had managed to pull himself back from the brink of despair and begin to move on with his life, it still wasn't all plain sailing at the Academy. In one particular incident, Tharok was so embaressed after a prank some of the other cadets pulled on him that he nearly slid back into his earlier depression. The other cadets had rigged the shower heads of the public showers at the swimming pool to douse him with a chemical that reacted with the pigment in his skin. It was a harmless reaction but did result in his skin turning purple and, believing something catastrophic was happening to him, he rushed through the Academy grounds in nothing but a towel desperately trying to reach the Medical Centre.

The medics quickly gave him an antidote for the chemical reaction and he regained his natural blue skin tone within a few hours but by the time he returned to his dorm-room, there were pictures of his half-naked sprint all over the computer terminals on campus.

He locked himself away, too embaressed to be seen in public for several days. Eventually, another Andorian cadet slipped a note under his door claiming that several other members of their species had suffered the same fate and were plotting revenge on those responsible if he wanted to help. Meeting with the group, a plan was hatched to pump tetrabellazine, an odourless gas, into the pranksters rooms while they slept. The gas did not seriously harm the cadets but each of them woke up with scalps as smooth as a snooker ball; their hair had been completely dissolved.

After that, Tharok suffered fewer and less embaressing pranks from the other cadets, each of them fearing any retaliation from "The Andorian Science Corps" as he and his accomplices came to be known. If anything, the prank appealed to the other cadets and Tharok found himself becoming more popular. He got closer to several Terrans at the Academy and began to learn about their cultures (although he was always surprised at the diversity of culture produced by this single species).

While at a party in his second year, he drunkenly agreed to a proposal from his friend, Lewis, that he should immerse himself in Terran customs. This took the form of the two of them replicating Japanese kimonos and katana blades and re-enacting scenes from some of Lewis' favourite holovids of the 20th century. Unfortunately, they made the alcohol-induced decision to do this on the Academy grounds and were both given formal reprimands by the Academy Commodore the next day. Despite this, the memory of that night is fond in Tharok's memory and has led to him enjoying the traditional clothing of several Terran cultures.

These were isolated incidents for Tharok and, most of the time, he behaved as a model student. By the time he reached his third year at the Academy, he was beginning to make a name for himself as something of a scientific prodigy. So much so that one of the guest speakers (Captain Leanee Rirodan) in a Warp Propulsion seminar invited him to attend a function usually reserved solely for Tutors and senior officers.

While there, he mingled with some of the most brilliant minds of the Federation as well as several crew members of ships from throughout the quadrant. Three of the guests were so impressed with his grasp of scientific theories that each of them extended an invitation for him to join their respective crews upon his graduation.

In his final year at the Academy, Tharok was stationed aboard the USS Tortuga, a science vessel exploring the fringes of Federation space near the borders of the Tholian Assembly. He was there as part of a training exercise and his class were placed on a routine away mission to an L-class planet to collect geological samples. He was stranded along with his team after the Tortuga went missing and they were forced to survive by their wits alone.

Due to frequent chlorine clouds, the team were forced into a system of caves and lava tubes to await rescue after they failed to check in. It would be three days before help arrived and, during that time, each member of the team suffered some unexplained missing time. This was dismissed as a form of hypoxia caused by the atmosphere but, after their return to the Academy, they each experienced recurring nightmares involving a shadowy crab-like creature. Eventually, the dreams faded but the memory of them could still bring a collective shiver to their spines.

The Tortuga was never found.

Three months from his graduation date, Tharok's class were given an assignment to come up with an original scientific theory and either prove or disprove it. To ask this of a cadet was a tall order and most cadets were only able to come up with something that had already been suggested by the scientific community at some point in history. Those that didn't inevitably had their theories proven incorrect.

Tharok developed a theory that telepathy was the product of a natural form of quantum entanglement; that somehow telepaths were able to sense the atomic spin of neurons in the brains of other people and manipulate their own neurons to mimic this spin, thereby creating a quantum entanglement and producing matching thoughts and ideas in both brains.

He was, like so many of his classmates, disappointed to hear that this theory had been suggested several centuries before and had been neither proven nor disproven. The thought stayed with him, even after the assignment was concluded, that he might one day prove the theory's veracity and he continued to work on it whenever he had the free time.

As he prepared for his final exams, Tharok was hopeful for the future. Like every inexperienced cadet, he had aspirations of heroic missions and noble discoveries. He doubted that he would be disappointed.

Personality Profile

Academy Major(s): Physics
Academy Minor(s): Warp Field Theory and Temporal Mechanics
Hobbies and Pastimes: Tharok has immersed himself in Terran culture and spends a lot of free time researching the history and culture of its various people. Additionally, he enjoys sculpting from time to time, although he is not nearly as skilled as he would like to be.
Short-Term Goals: Tharok would like to make a significant breakthrough in his research and quantification of telepathy. If he can discover exactly how this works, he hopes he can reproduce the effect or find a way to disrupt it temporarily.
Long-Term Goals: Tharok would like to track down and punish the raiders that killed his future bondmates and discover what happened to Elokis after she tried to find them herself. He has also set himself the goal of becoming the next Zephram Cochrane or Henry Archer by studying new or theoretical forms of warp fields in the hopes of increasing propulsion technology.
Personality: Tharok, like most of his people, can seem abrupt or distracted to outsiders. This is partly due to genetics and partly due to his preoccupation with whichever scientific experiment or theory he is currently puzzling over. While never rude, the mental distractions he allows himself to experience can make him seem distant to others. This is merely a defence mechanism designed to keep him from dwelling on the death of his bondmates-to-be. During the odd occasions that he does take leisure time he can surprise those who know him with his wit and inventive interpretations of seemingly mundane events or situations. This infrequent frivolity has led to him making a few personal friends that can see the decency within him.
Sense of Humor: Tharok has a very dry sense of humour when he is trying to be funny and not many people get the subtlety of his jokes. When he is not trying to be funny, others find him very amusing indeed. He's always bumping into things, saying the wrong thing or not quite understanding when someone is kidding around with him.
Phobias: Losing those close to him, Nervalan Crater Beetles and Commander Brian Dane (the Academy Hand-to-Hand Combat Instructor).
Likes: Terran styles of clothing, working with like-minded scientists, mint and choc-chip ice-cream, re-enacting famous Andorian battles in the holo-deck (as a form of stress relief).
Dislikes: Public showers and the colour purple.
Pet Peeves or Gripes: He doesn't like or trust telepaths. Also, he has an intense dislike for those who can't see or own up to their mistakes or shortcomings. He believes that everyone has them and they can be dealt with more quickly if people would just admit to them.
Bad Habits or Vices: While making progress with whichever project he is currently working on, he often locks himself away and loses track of time.
Achievements: Having his equation used in the development of a more efficient moisture collector; Captain Leanne Riordan inviting him to a science symposium normally reserved only for Academy staff members and other officers.
Disappointments: He had to repeat the first year of the Academy while he was in mourning.
Illnesses: Crater Beetle Mitosis Syndrome (CBMS) when he was a child that caused some minor but irreperable nerve damage to his left arm.
Strengths: Tharok has an inability to give up even when the odds seem insurmountable. He is loyal to a fault but shrewd enough to place that loyalty in people that deserve it. His mind is razor-sharp and he can usually focus on the heart of the matter in order to solve most problems.
Weaknesses: Tharok can be a little bit arrogant in his thinking. It is rare that he is the least intelligent person in the room and he knows it. This can sometimes result in him talking down to those who don't understand the subject although he is aware of this and does try to limit this behaviour. He also distrusts telepaths and will actively seek to avoid them where possible. His greatest weakness, however, is that he hyper-focusses on subjects he finds interesting to the exclusion of all else. This leads to some awkward moments such as blurting out a reply to a comment he has been mulling over in his mind after the conversation has already moved on.
Fears: Being alone. Growing old before he can make a name for himself in the scientific community.
Prejudices: He distrusts telepaths, fearing and resenting their use of an ability he does not possess. He hates Orions and any other race or group that are largely seen as pirates.
Off Duty Clothing Tastes: Tharok has developed an appreciation for Terran culture and clothing. This includes the brightly coloured dashikis of South Africa, the tartan kilts of Scotland and the Japanese kimonos. The latter of these garments is his favourite.
Distinguishing Features: Tharok's features are particularly gaunt for an Andorian and lead many to believe he isn't eating properly. Additionally, he has three stylized scars arranged in a triangle on the back of his left hand.
Pets: A Terran budgie named "Twitter."
Friends: Lewis Kramer, a cadet at the Academy.

Personal Paradigm Shifts

Most Painful Experience: Losing his future bondmates to an attack on their colony.
Best Time: The first time he realised that he was in love with Lauress.
Most Crucial Experience: Meeting Cadet Lewis Kramer.
Role Model: Sharest ch'Veln, his mentor at Lestar Colony and the man who set him on the path of scientific discovery. He taught Tharok to question everything and to never stop until he discovered true and meaningful answers. While Sharest was often considered reclusive amongst the adults of the colony, he loved children and would spend as much time as was necessary to teach them things. He had an inquisitive and insightful mind that was tempered with a playful and mischevious heart.

Career History

Position	Assignment	Date(s)	Event
Cadet	Star Fleet Academy	21511.05 – 21512.09	Star Fleet Academy Graduate Ribbon
Science Officer	USS Sheridan, DD-4086	21512.09	Midshipman
Science Officer	USS Sheridan, DD-4086	21602.01	Role Player of the Month

Medals Tally:

Service Medals Awarded
Image	Description	Qty.
	Star Fleet Academy Graduate Ribbon	1
Achievement Medals Awarded
Image	Description	Qty.
	Role Player of the Month	1

---