Director and Chief Scientist

LANGUAGES: Federation Standard, El Aurian, Klingon, some Vulcan and Romulan, a functional amount of Stagnorian and Cardassian.

HOBBIES: Reading, especially classic earth novels and plays (Dickens, Shakespeare, Doyle, Cooper), listening to Klingon Opera. Ecturian history and culture.

EDUCATION:
El Aurian Private Schooling
Collegiate Institute of Auriel
Romulan College of Science and Medicine
Oxford University, Earth
Vulcan Scientific Institute

BACKGROUND:
Born on the elusive El Aurian homeworld, Tolian Soran had the benefit of a large and wealthy family during his formative years. He grew up into a strong, happy young man, from an easy, but productive childhood.

As a youth Tolian had always marvelled at the stars, and his ultimate desire was to travel there. To this end, he entered the Collegiate Institute of Auriel, the El Aurian's premier educational facility on their homeworld.

Tolian excelled in his studies there, and upon his graduation was chosen to receive a scholarship to the Romulan College, on special agreement with the El Aurian government, during a cultural exchange program. Tolian chose to study medicine and biological science with the Romulans and after 11 years, he graduated the Romulan College with honors, holding a degree in medicine and a doctorate.

Seeing it as a challenge, Tolian enrolled in Oxford University's medical program, and graduated in the top 5% of his class.

During this time, the dashing young El Aurian, his hair already a shade of frosty white, became a regular at some of the highest strata of society. His elegant speech and cultured manner made him a favorite at parties given by the families of his fellow students, as well as the occasional get-together thrown by a member of the faculty.

At one of these parties, Soran met an elderly woman named Hattie Ferncliffe. Mrs. Ferncliffe had just recently lost her husband to what medical science of the time called "consumption". Mrs. Ferncliffe herself was confined to a wheelchair from a horseriding accident 20 years before, and it was hard for her to care for herself. Her husband had left a large endowment to the College, and she was considered a matriarch of London society.

At Hattie's request, Tolian moved into her spacious home, and took care of her and her estate, always handling things fairly and honestly. A year after Tolian's graduation from Oxford, while he was working a fairly lucrative practice out of an East London office, Hattie contracted cancer. She was 86. Tolian did all he could for her, but she died within the month. In all her long life, Mrs. Ferncliffe had never prepared a will, so her substantial estate was claimed by the government, as she and her late husband had no children.

But, she did leave Tolian Soran with a token of her fondness for him:  her husband's pocket watch, that had been his father's before him.

A year later, Soran's assignment on Earth came to an end and he was secretly repatriated back to the El Aurian homeworld. For a time, Soran worked as an instructor at the Auriel College, until his own desire for expansion and self-betterment caused him to enroll in physics studies at the Scientific Institute on Vulcan. Soran spent the next 8 years studying physics and cybernetics, on the track to becoming one of the highest rated graduates of the Insitute's Astrophysics and Biomedical curriculums in history.

After his graduation on Vulcan, Tolian returned home and in time took a position as the Administrator of the Pri'mas Observatory on the planet's Qalmath Ocean. It was during this blissful period in his life that he married. He and his wife, Shoral, had five children, including a daughter who grew up to attend college at the Auriel as well, following in her father's footsteps.

It was on the day of his daughter's wedding that tragedy struck. The Borg attacked the El-Aurian homeworld, and massacred the inhabitants. Very few survived, and those that did were forced to flee for their very lives from the cybernetic aliens. Soran was among the survivors, but none of his family made it off of the Alabast Island, where the Observatory was located, alive.

The El Aurian survivors crammed aboard two transport ships, and made a hasty retreat, only to get caught in an energy ribbon known as The Nexus. Though the ships were only in the ribbon for a matter of moments, the Nexus experience affected the occupants deeply. The Nexus is a gateway, of sorts, to a rip in the temporal-dimensional vortex, and anyone caught in it is suddenly transported into their own fondest dreams or memories where time has no meaning.

For Soran this meant being reunited with his family, or so he expected. Instead, he met a young woman named Mika, who claimed to be a Time Traveller. Soran spent his time in the Nexus with her, and in the span of the few moments the S. S. Lakul, the ship Tolian Soran was on, was actually in the Nexus, he spent the equivalent of 30 years with Mika.... even having children, twin sons.

Of course, when the USS Enterprise B rescued the occupants of the Lakul, Soran was ripped away from this pleasing fantasy. Suddenly he was forced back into the real world of a universe where his wife, Shoral, and all his children, were dead... and Mika, as far as he knew, didn't even exist.

Tolian became obsessed with returning to the Nexus and finding Mika. Since she was not beamed to the "B" with the El Aurians, he could only assume she lived  and so remained  in the Nexus. He spent the better part of the next century contriving a plan to return to the Nexus. Even making deals with the treacherous Duras sisters to supply them with a Trilithium weapon, if they would assist him in his plan.

In the end, Soran destroyed a star, and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of the personnel of the Amargosa Observatory, and the destruction of the federation starship, USS Enterprise-D, under Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Picard, in the meantime, with the help of Federation Captain James Tiberius Kirk, retrieved from the Nexus, stopped Tolian in carrying out his plan and destroying the Veridian star, so to alter the path of the Nexus and reenter it.

Soran recovered in Mika's company and soon learned that the Mika he knew in the Nexus was a mere echo of the true Mika, something generated as her TARDIS passed through the Nexus as part of the Temporal vortex. Mika and Soran chose to travel together for a time, and after a near-deadly encounter with Rogue Klingon Captain Krax, and the Andorian Pirate leader, Thress - who wanted to harness the power of the Nexus for their own purposes - Mika and Soran began to develop feelings for one another nearly as deep as those they had shared in the Nexus.

PERSONALITY:
Tolian Soran has been considered many things. A charitable medico, a psychotic star-killer, a demented madman, a scientific genius. And in a way he is, or has been all of these at one point. His obsession with the Nexus, though purged from his mind now, drove him to commit acts of violence and degredation that would be unforgiveable by some peoples.

The Federation, though they do not seem to actually acknowledge that he survived Veridian III, still considers him an outlaw, and dangerous. Yet Soran will not change his name or cloak his identity.
He prefers to let his reputation speak for itself, and try his best to better his reputation. And to this end he runs the Donojii Observatory in quiet seclusion on New Edinburgh.

A man of great knowledge and many talents, Soran is also a man for appreciating culture and the arts. He is strongly enamoured of the gothic paintings that adorn the ceiling of his observatory, and often wishes he could capture some of his own feelings and passions with a brush and canvas.

Soran is a a man of average height and build. In excellent physical condition for his age and hardships. His hair is solid white and worn in a teased shock, cut short in the back. He has a noticeable scar on his forehead, running from the bridge of his nose to over his right eye, from an injury he received aboard the Lakul.

His eyes are a piercing shade of bright blue, and can hold anyone's gaze for as long as he wants.

The most obvious example of this is his taking in of the human Hermit, Arvel Mostyn. A former scientist himself, Mostyn was driven mad by torture at the hands of the Dominion. The two men now share in each other's lives and troubles as they work the Donojii Observatory together.

Soran is, at times, a stern taskmaster, but Mostyn does not seem to mind. Tolian is also given to fits of gloom, brought on, no doubt by the memories of his past hardships... especially the terror of the Borg.

All in all, a man of strong mind and will, whose past contains some sordid deeds of selfish obsession, Tolian Soran is, for all intents and purposes reformed. It's just that he has yet to prove this to the Federation, and the decendents of those whose deaths he can be held accountable for. And so, he finds contentment in his semi-solitiude on New Edinburgh.

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