Taryn

Taryn was an officer of the military forces of the Romulan Star Empire in the mid-to-late 23rd century.

Biography
Taryn was born Vulcan, orphaned in a Romulan attack when he was four years old, and raised as a Romulan; in adulthood, he became an officer. In the 2220s, he became involved in the secret espionage plan involving the "Freelans", an enigmatic people who wore concealing robes and masks, using specially-raised Vulcan telepaths as their aides in order to subject high-ranking officials to telepathic influence with the intention of weakening the Romulans' chief opponents, the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, by forcing both sides into a mutually destructive war. Taryn became the Freelan envoy after the previous envoy, Darov, was unmasked by a Vulcan liaison named Sarek, who was deep in the throes of plak tow, the blood fever that took hold in Vulcan males experiencing pon farr.

Taryn maintained his guise as the Freelan liaison for nearly seventy years, all the while seeking to advance "the Plan". By 2293, the year of the Khitomer Conference, he had become the wing commander of "the Plan", answerable only to the Praetor himself, and commanded a sizeable miliary force from his Bird-of-Prey, the. He was married to a woman named Jolana and had two sons, and had also adopted a young Vulcan woman named Savel, who served as his diplomatic aide while in his "Freelan" guise. He lived in a house on an ancient street on Romulus, and also in a black dome-shaped dwelling on the icy Freelan "homeworld". (TOS novel: Sarek)

Aftermath of Khitomer
Sarek - now a venerated ambassador for his people and the Federation - had become suspicious of the Freelans after the incident seven decades earlier, which he had initially dismissed as a plak tow-induced hallucination. Shortly after the Khitomer Conference and the role of the Romulans in the failed Khitomer Conspiracy, Sarek visited the Freelans' automated space station under the pretense of discussing trade agreements between Freelan and Vulcan; that night, Sarek hacked into the Romulan computer banks and discovered the truth. Taryn, though he did not show suspicion in the next day's meeting, suspected that Sarek had either discovered the truth or was close to doing so.

The Klingon Ambassador to the Federation, Kamarag - who had declared that there would be no peace as long as James T. Kirk lived - had been influenced by Freelan telepaths to lead a squadron over the Klingon Neutral Zone and raid Federation colonies, beginning a new war between the Federation and the Empire. However, the speed of Kamarag's movement, and his ultimate intention of overthrowing Chancellor Azetbur's government, forced Taryn's hand, and he believed that he would not have his invasion force in place to capitalize on the chaos that followed. Seeing that Kirk's ship, the Enterprise, was in the path of Kamarag's invasion force, and learning that Sarek himself was onboard, Taryn attempted to lure Enterprise into the Romulan Neutral Zone by briefly decloaking and appearing on sensors, in a pattern Sarek recognized as a chess move. Deciding to take a gamble to obtain the proof he sought that the Freelans were Romulans, Sarek and his son Spock beamed onto the bridge of Taryn's flagship, confronting him. Sarek sought to negotiate for the lives of the Vulcans raised by the Romulans on Freelan and avert the coming war.

Deciding to raise the stakes, Taryn challenged Sarek to the Toriatal, an ancient Vulcan duel to the death that predated the Reformation. Under the terms of the challenge, Sarek and Spock would place themselves - and the Enterprise - on the line in exchange for the Vulcans on Freelan. If Sarek won, Taryn's ship would not attack the Enterprise and the Vulcans on Freelan would be allowed to go to their people's homeworld, but if Taryn won, Enterprise was fair game. Sarek accepted, and Taryn chose weapons - specifically, the senapa, a curved sword with poisoned blades. Despite Taryn's advantages of size and youth (being at least thirty years younger than Sarek), the ambassador defeated him, but had him beamed to the Enterprise with him and Spock to receive medical treatment for the poison. Honoring the terms of the challenge, Taryn's first officer, Centurion Poldar, pledged the Shardarr into battle alongside the Enterprise against Kamarag's squadron, joined by Klingon commander Keraz (another Freelan dupe) and his Bird-of-Prey, the. The timely arrival of a Klingon fleet under General Korrd resulted in the defeat of Kamarag's squadron, averting a war between the Federation and the Klingons.

Recovering from his near-fatal wounding, Taryn honored the terms of the Toriatal and escorted the Enterprise to Freelan to release the Vulcans there, including Savel, whose welfare Sarek promised to tend to personally. Taryn himself, along with other Vulcan officers assigned to the Shardarr, elected to return to Romulus to face judgment, as they had committed high treason against their Empire. Taryn bade farewell to his old foe, and returned to Romulus. During a new meeting on Khitomer some time later, Romulan envoy Pardek revealed to Spock that Taryn had been executed. (TOS novel: Sarek)