Karen's costume persona is T'Kar, an orphaned human female raised and educated on Vulcan. Her parents, STARFLEET planetary geologists, were stationed on a remote planet, doing a detailed mineral survey prior to establishing mining operations, when T'Kar was born. When the child was a year old, the survey team was destroyed by unknown attackers, and she alone survived to be found by a Vulcan supply crew who arrived two days later. Reasoning that news of the child's survival might bring the attackers looking for her, the crew's captain, S'Rikai, secretly took her home to be raised by his wife, G'Ana and himself.
Following her intensive study of xenolinguistics, T'Kar left Vulcan to join STARFLEET as a First Contact Specialist and to perhaps search for insights into her heritage. However, she found living among emotional humans to be difficult and requested assignment to a deep-space observation ship, Vigilance. During her four-year tour in little-explored regions bordering Federation space, T'Kar developed a close--and closely guarded--relationship with the ship's mysterious captain, known only as "the C.O."
Upon her return to Earth at the completion of their mission aboard Vigilance, T'Kar and the C.O. requested--and were surprisingly granted--permission to be reassigned together. They now serve aboard Athena; T'Kar is in communications, and the C.O. serves in the science department (no one knows why he no longer commands--perhaps we will find out in a later issue?). Although still sometimes seeming to observe more than participate fully in human interactions, T''Kar seems to be quite content to be once again among her people. [written November, 1996]