Talos IV
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WARNING: Keep in mind that any or all of the knowledge that Starfleet, or anyone else for that matter, has of Talos IV could be completely untrue. The events of Captain Pike's encounter demonstrated that the Talosians have the ability to broadcast their illusions far off planet into passing starships, and can delude Starfleet officers with false log recordings, distorted sensor readings, and even illusionary fellow-crewmen! The record tapes from the U.S.S. Enterprise’s first mission there in 2254 must reflect some of the data reflected in this entry, if only on automatic recordings from passive sensors. The mission logs were obviously sufficiently alarming to convince Starfleet to not only interdict Talos IV but also to make breaking the quarantine warrant a unique death sentence. However, they can hardly be trusted in their entirety given the possibility that Pike’s crew may have altered them while under Talosian influence. Perhaps the Talosians manipulated the entire episode to gain an impenetrable space defense manned by Starfleet — and they still got Captain Pike back only twelve years later, with the active (and mutinous) cooperation of the Enterprise’s most powerful psionic!
Unless the entire beam-down episode was also illusionary, Talos IV most likely has a Class-M surface, at least in places — but it might not! Talos IV might actually be a Class-K or Class-Y world like Excalbia I made briefly habitable by Talosian technologies; Class-G and -H are unlikely given the planet’s independently (and automatically) confirmable orbit and gravity. Talosians may have other powers kept out of the record by such tampering, and might be driven by entirely other sets of goals and needs than kidnapping Human “illusion generators.” The Talosians may also have a different real appearance; they may be entirely non-humanoid crab creatures or even energy beings taking illusionary form to further disguise their purposes. If the Talosians are actually the decadent remnant of an illusion-saturated culture, even they might not know what their real forms are!
Talos IV, a radioactive waste of a world, has the dubious distinction of being the sole recipient of a regulation death penalty — General Order Seven prohibits any and all contact with this world, upon pain of death.
As far as Starfleet knows human contact with the planet began in 2236 with the crash of the S.S. Columbia there, and ended after the events of Christopher Pike’s visit thirty years later. Traveling to Talos IV is the only capital offense in Starfleet regulations, which will cut down on some travel possibilities, for Starfleet crews at least.
The Talos system is a binary system of Type K V orange main-sequence stars between Rigel and Altair, approximately 80 light-years from Vulcan. Talos IV is the fourth of eleven planets, and the only one in the system capable of supporting humanoid life.
Climate
Talos IV suffers from the aftereffects of a “nuclear winter” extended by its static-filled thin atmosphere. Dust storms can last for months, especially in the northern hemisphere. Even in the southern hemisphere, the greenish-gray skies are usually cloudy with dust. A few life forms survive on the surface, among them a fairly delicate-looking (but very resilient) chiming plant and a startling red flower.
Geography
The two dwindling Talosian seas rest in the middle of immense salt flats just below the equator. Caustic chemicals poison most of the drying rivers; mountains and chasms seemingly run in series latitudinally around the globe. The main surviving Talosian underground complex is on the edge of a salt flat on a high, stable tableland.
Civilization and History
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Talosian civilization reached heights roughly equal, in many ways, to that of the Federation, with advanced metal alloys, force fields, fusion piles, and sophisticated machines for generating illusions (similar to holodeck technology). However, the Talosians failed to establish a workable social order, perhaps due to the coarsening of personal interactions caused by increased withdrawal into private, illusory fantasies. If the Talosians were psionic originally, they might have withdrawn into illusion as a respite from constant unwilling exposure to each others’ thoughts. Be that as it may, without a common society, Talos IV erupted in a global atomic cataclysm, wrecking the planetary ecology and devastating Talosian civilization. The few survivors retreated to an underground cavern complex, where they took even more constant refuge in their illusion machines, avoiding the blighted and scarred surface of their planet. If Talos IV ever had a chance to recover, the survivors squandered it.
Constant use of the illusion devices left the Talosians utterly dependent on them to survive. They used these devices to develop illusion-creating powers on their own; their society now exists solely to nurture, maintain, and elaborate on their illusionary fantasy lives. The Talosians took to kidnapping members of other species in order to keep their illusions fresh and interesting, building a large menagerie of such subjects in their underground complex. In 2236, the Talosians lured the Federation science vessel S.S. Columbia into a crash-landing and obtained the human girl Vina. In 2245, when the U.S.S. Enterprise arrived to investigate the crash, the Talosians attempted to kidnap Captain Christopher Pike to create a mated breeding pair and guarantee themselves a constant flow of human-generated illusions. Captain Pike’s stubbornness demonstrated the unsuitability of humans for Talosian captivity, and they released him unharmed. Nonetheless, Starfleet immediately quarantined Talos IV; no ship may approach the planet on penalty of death. The sole exception, apparently, was the U.S.S. Enterprise’s return in 2266, when Commander Spock returned Fleet Captain Pike (against his will) to Talos IV to enjoy a life of illusion after a crippling accident. The ongoing quarantine causes Starfleet no end of trouble with Romulan spies, Ferengi prospectors, and others totally convinced that the Federation has something on Talos IV that it will kill to keep hidden. Worse yet, Klingon agents attempted at least one kidnapping operation to capture Pike and drain him of the classified information he knew — other kidnapped aliens may have their own partisans or enemies hunting them down even now.
Places of Interest
The only place of immediate interest on Talos IV is the menagerie complex buried underneath a rocky outcropping in the northernmost salt flat. It contains kilometers of tunnels, a number of living pods for Talosians, and the immense machines that power the complex and keep the illusions at full strength. Archaeologists and xenopsychiatrists might find much of interest in the other ruined cities on Talos IV — assuming that rogue Talosians don’t dwell there, ravenous for fresh minds.
Reference(s)
- Burns, Eric, Kenneth A. Hite & Doug Sun. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 7: Worlds, Decipher, 2005. ISBN: 1582369097.