Times of Vulcan Chaos

Era of Chaos
In the 3rd millennium BC, some Vulcans began to mentally train themselves to suppress their emotions. One of the leading Vulcan philosophers in logic and science was T'Plana-Hath who was the head of a school of historians in ShirKahr.

By the 4th century, Vulcan was rife with violence and war, as the Vulcan people fought one another in countless battles that stained the sand of the deserts with their green blood. Wars arose from the desire for conquest and need for water resources, which were scarce on the planet.

The most well-recorded of the Vulcan warlords was the tyrant Sudoc, who gained power by assassinating the previous ruling leader. Using his powerful psionic abilities and skilled tactical mind, he led his vicious barbarian armies in campaigns that dominated most of the homeworld. Those who resisted were slaughtered, and those who fell under his rule were subjected to telepathic 'adjustments' to make them loyal.

Rise of Surak
Into this time was born a boy named Surak, in the city state of Shi'Kahr. His home city was one of Sudoc's chief rivals, and the warlord attempted to assassinate the ruling generals, who included members of Surak's family. Surak became a skilled computer scientist, but his creations were used as weapons of war, which provoked him into developing the goals of logic and peace.

In the desert, gazing upon Mount Seleya, Surak received an epiphany when he encountered an Underlier. Afterwards, he returned to civilization and did not initially speak of his experience. He later met numerous sects and groups in order to learn from them, and to develop his own philosophies, which he began to write daily, and to spread through the populace.

According to legend, he also gained healing techniques and teachings from the Adepts of Seleya, along with the Adepts of Gol. He formed a circle of colleagues that sought to wage peace and master emotions, with this group consisting of Jarok, Nirak, T'mor and Vithek. While the Vulcan people were initially resistant, the teachings of peace and logic began to rapidly take hold, eventually ending the period known as the 'Years of Chaos'. During his time, Surak gained another pupil, S'task.

Eventually, the chief councilors of Lhai called upon Surak to advise their emissaries to Irik, in order to prevent a full-scale war from erupting between the two nation-states. Surak gladly joined the emissaries and shut himself with them for a day and a night, whereupon he sent them on their way. After two days they returned, and the Lhai councilors were shocked to see that they brought with them the High Council of Irik, who had signed a peace treaty following a week-long negotiation.

Each nation made major concessions to the other, and many were dazed at this remarkable change, except for Surak. His peace ultimately held until the unification of the entire planet, despite the maneuvering of various belligerent power blocs in both nations. The warlords of other nations began to lose, and the captured territories of Sudoc began to fracture as his empire disintegrated. Sudoc's rule and empire finally ended with the tyrant's death, though members of his loyal cadre did and survive formed the Children of Ket-Cheleb, who were led by the warrior Tellus.

At some point, a group of devotees to the new Vulcan philosophy of logic decided to seek perfection by developing a method of removing their emotions and sealing them within bottles. However, this process diminished the soul of the individual and thus the device that accomplished this was destroyed. The philosophers abandoned the experiment and devoted their lives to teaching the value of logic. The bottles that contained the removed emotions survived through the centuries, and in honor of their mentors, the Vulcan people created a shrine on the planet Beta IV where the artifacts remained hidden in Room 101, where they were meant to be preserved for all of life.

Etosha First Contact
In the climate that followed, the Vulcan people were still fractured into various groups while Surak spread his message. It was at this time that the species made their first contact with another form of life, the people of Etosha, who appeared at Shi'kahr before the assembled delegates as a peaceful race.

In actuality, the Etoshans were pirates who used deception to capture slaves and hold planetary leaders for ransom. At Vulcan, they took hold of numerous leaders, along with Surak's student S'task. Surak himself was spared this fate due to transportation difficulties at a port facility, which prevented him from attending the meeting. The conflict that followed was labeled 'the Ahkh', also known as the War.

This action reduced all previous conflicts to simple skirmishes as the Vulcan species worked to defeat the invaders. S'task proved instrumental, liberating many of his kinsmen and killing thousands of pirates in his escape from their vessel. While primitive compared to the advanced technology of the pirates, the Vulcans had well-developed skills in the psionic arts, which allowed them to unravel the metal ships of the enemy or set their pilots on suicidal courses. Through such actions, Vulcan freed itself from the invaders that had terrorized them.

Sundering
Though Surak had worked hard to ensure peace and spread logic, the Etoshan invasion had taken their toll on the Vulcan race, which once more became divided over the issue of pacifism. Numerous factions still competed with one another, including the Northeastern Alliance and the Southern Hegemony, both of whom wanted to acquire dominance over the other by developing space capable warships.

The climate was further complicated by the vicious raids and attacks by the aggressive Te-Vikram Brotherhood that lived deep in the deserts. All these actions threatened to destabilize the planet and bring about the destruction of Vulcan-kind. While Surak still believed he could save Vulcan, the very real chance of self-annihilation prompted him travel to ShiKahr in order to meet the engineer Karatek. Befriending him, Surak asked the engineer to re-purpose the starships he was creating into long-range colony ships, in order to continue their civilization elsewhere in case Vulcan destroyed itself. He even gave Karatek a special psionic coronet to record his memories of the journey in order to bring it back to Vulcan, if it still existed.

While Surak managed to convince the various competing factions to allow the conversion of the starships, a surprise attack came on the day of the launch. Chaos ensued, and both families and friends were separated, with some accidentally being left behind while others mistakenly boarded the transport ships. One such group was Tellus and his Children of Ket-Cheleb; Surak attempted to dissuade them from leaving but he failed. The failure would forever haunt him, and his colleague Jarok never let him forget it. Remaining groups that opposed Surak's logic fought a final war with the rest of Vulcan. They were known as 'Those who marched beneath the Raptor's wing', who were eventually forced to leave the planet.

Eventually, Surak died as a result of radiation sickness as he stood at Mount Seleya. This era became known as the Sundering, and was one of the most traumatic periods to befall Vulcan civilization. Though Vulcan survived, the colony ships in space splintered, with many being lost along the way. The largest contingent traveled through a wormhole to a distant star system, with a habitable world they called Romulus, and its sister planet, Remus. They were the genesis of the Romulan race, who visited cruel slavery on some of their kin by leaving them on Remus, where genetic engineering was used to create the offshoot race called the Remans. A small group attempted to flee Remus and later crash-landed on a hostile planet, where they formed their own colony and called themselves the Watraii.

Other of the colony ships departed under the command of Admiral Debrune and formed their own colonies, naming themselves after their leader, though none of these colonies survived. However, at least one branch of this fleet made it into the Rigel-system system, where it forcibly conquered Rigel V and became known as the Rigelians.