Batarian/Volus First Contact

**Batarian/Volus First Contact** was a historical event in which the batarian species first encountered the volus species, both of which had never met another civilization before. The initial contact on the world of Bumi led to a formal relationship between the Hegemony of Khar'shan and the Vol Protectorate, a mainly mercantile affair that would continue even after both species were later discovered by the Citadel Council.

## Description

Scouring Dabo’s Knot for possible mining prospects, the independent volus mining vessel *USG Ishi Mura* noted the world of Bumi within the Shuoma System. A dense, rocky world with an atmosphere similar to that of Irune, the starship-weary crew took the rare opportunity to disembark from their far-flung vessel.

Mere light-minutes away, orbiting the gas giant they called Nukvarn, the *HVC Raddok*, a batarian scouting frigate, was surveying the moons for valuable resources. While they had noted the telltale signs of a vessel dropping from FTL hours prior, the Raddok was an old vessel, her captain lax in procedure. The blip was given the label of a ‘computer malfunction’ and the lunar surveys continued, allowing the crew of the Ishi Mura to reach Bumi and leave their ship.

After hours leisurely exploring the frigid world, the mining crew got to the business at hand. Geological scanning equipment was unloaded next, the land-based equipment more accurate than scans they could achieve from orbit. The Raddok, having concluded their survey of the moons, moved forth to Bumi. As soon as the heavy equipment was started up, readings flared up across all terminals on the batarians’ bridge.

As results began filtering back to the mining equipment, the volus crew noted the descent of another, smaller vessel through the dense, foggy atmosphere. Lights from the underside of the ship scoured the ground, locking on to two of the miners as the descent continued. Recognizing the harsh angles and almost coiled look of the vessel as alien, two of the less starstruck miners hustled into the Ishi Mura, returning with ingots of precious metals, the standard gift elected to be doled out in the event of first contact by the Volus Interplanetary Guild.

The batarians on the bridge were awestruck by the rotund, tusked creatures that gazed up at their vessel as they descended, the captain herself joining a team of three to introduce themselves to the creatures. The volus ship, bloated in appearance, signified all they needed to know about these animals. Spacefaring. Intelligent. Arming themselves for the probability of combat, the batarian away team was fully prepared for a hostile first contact. What greeted them as they stepped off of the landing ramp, however, was not quite the meeting they had in mind.

Unsuited, the pink-faced volus gave traditional gestures of greeting, their hands clasped before them, then spreading outwards in mirroring arcs before their fingers interlocked before them and returned to their bellies. The captain, again choosing a more relaxed approach than her government would approve of, ordered her troopers to remain disarmed as she attempted to communicate. Her head high, chin up in a sign of superiority over the squat creatures, she clumsily repeated the gesture. Smiling to the suited humanoids, the foreman of the volus mining operation then allowed his crew to bestow upon the batarians gifts of friendship. Ingots of gold and platinum, and some of the finest of volus belly chains made of fine silver rings. Appreciative but caught unawares, the batarian captain accepted kindly and the gifts were stored, but not before she took a set of ornate platinum eyebrow rings for herself.

After a couple hours worth of hand gestures, grunts and other physical signals, one of the batarian engineers and a volus counterpart began attempting to sync up the translation devices of their species. It would be another half-day before the translation software began networking together, though differences in code and operating systems would make proper translation difficult until linguists and computer scientists of both species formally made contact. In the time between, both parties had contacted their governing bodies. A mercantile armada from Irune had departed hours earlier, a beaureaucrat-filled ambassadorial fleet from Khar’shan.

In the two days before the fleets arrived, the crews began regaling each other with broken stories of their homeworlds and their people. Bartering for random knick-knacks became a popular past time, though the volus more often than not proved to be the better traders. Excursions were taken into each others’ vessels, both amazed that life could actually occur in such drastically different environments from one another.

## Legacy

One of the few noted examples of a first contact situation happening outside the purview of the Citadel Council, Batarian/Volus First Contact forged the beginnings of one of the longest-running and most stable mercantile agreements in the known galaxy. Despite the disagreements about capitalistic ethics between species, particularly in the matters of slavery, the volus and batarians have been locked in beneficial trade agreements for millennia since.

Captain Zhara Nar'koba, the batarian captain, would become a legend within the Hegemony's Naval Forces, swiftly moving upwards in rank as a result of her discovery. Though an undisciplined and thoroughly unconventional captain by batarian standards, she was popular with those under her, even the slaves working aboard her vessels.

The gift she selected from the volus mining crew, the platinum eyebrow rings, would eventually become a part of a great mystery surrounding the captain herself. On a mission nearly twenty years later, she and her new vessel completely vanished from the Milky Way, never to be seen again. By all accounts she had been wearing those rings upon departure, and they were not among the belongings left behind after the disappearance. However in 263 BCE, a few years after Batarian/Council First Contact, the rings appeared to show up in a high-society relic auction held in the Aseya T'Mae Ballroom on the Citadel. One of the few batarians in attendance at the auction, Bragha Novour, purchased the rings for a ludicrous sum, but when he returned hours later the package had been stolen. Since that time the rings have remained incognito, leading to many questions about the fate of Captain Zhara, and whether she made another first contact on her own decades prior.