Legacy of ch'Rihan
is a Star Trek Online fanfic by StarSword, a novelization of the Romulan tutorial levels inspired by the prompt for Literary Challenge #42 on the STO forums.
It's January 2409, harvest-time in the village of i'Haanikh on the planet Virinat. Morgan t'Thavrau, the best vintner and brewer on the planet, has always been secretive about her past, a past which violently collides with the present when the Tal'Shiar intrude upon the Tapping festival. These chapters alternate with "interludes" explaining how Morgan ended up on Virinat in the first place.
The fic borrows even more heavily from the Romulan worldbuilding groundwork laid down by Diane Duane's novels than the actual game does, with among other things canonical characters with Only One Name given surnames with Rihannsu stylization.
This work contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptation Expansion: The first chapter is actually set prior to the first mission of the tutorial.
- Call to Agriculture: Morgan was the Number Two of a Romulan Star Navy warbird at the time of Hobus, but she's been farming on Virinat for 21 years.
- Call-Back: There's a mention of a Ferengi named Pel who runs the spaceport in Ahalris on Virinat. Pel was a Ferengi female who pulled a Sweet Polly Oliver in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Rules of Acquisition".
- Continuous Decompression: The first interlude has the communications officer get sucked out of the bridge through a hull breach.
- Fantastic Naming Convention: The fix takes the convention established in the Rihannsu books and applies it retroactively to a number of Romulan characters that are given Only One Name in the official material. For example, Nero becomes Nero ir-Benheris tr'Sihalian.
- Fantastic Racism: Several of the Rihannsu in i'Haanikh display at least mild Romulan supremacism. D'Vex at least recognizes that it's not exactly a good attitude to have.Morgan: You got a problem with Havrannsu, D’Vex?
D'Vex: Hrmph, I’m old-fashioned. Bloody goblins are all right but I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one. - Gratuitous Foreign Language: Words and sometimes entire phrases of Rihannsu liberally pepper the dialog, and nowhere are the words "Romulan" and "Reman" found ("Rihannsu" and "Havrannsu" are used instead).
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: D'Vex gets mildly annoyed at Morgan when she can't tell him more specifically what the problem with her tractor is.Morgan: Hey, I'm a farmer, not a mechanic.
- Klingons Love Shakespeare: There's an offhand mention that despite their usual disdain for anything not of Rihan origin, the Rihannsu developed a taste for tomatoes when they got their hands on some during the Empire's alliance with the Federation in the Dominion War.
- Ludicrous Gibs: In the first interlude:"A structural member explodes out of the floor and the operations officer vanishes in a fountain of copper-green."
- Mythology Gag: To Star Trek (2009), borrowing a line which the author mentioned in a forum post just kills him every time.Nero: Hello, Saeihr, I'm Nero.
- Younger Than They Look: Morgan is 49, which is barely middle-aged for the Vulcan-descended Romulans, but twenty-one years working in field and vineyard aged her prematurely.
