Luca Vilyan

Authored by Alex Lorien

Character Biography

Exit evaluation from previous posting aboard the USS Paragon.

“When Luca Vilyan joined my department as a young, idealistic and eager Ensign, I would have little idea just how much time I would be spending over the next few years trying to teach him that a counsellor, no matter how dedicated, was not going to be able to solve every crewmember’s problems all of the time, and even now I am not entirely convinced he has accepted this concept. I also didn’t expect this young officer, so keen to be a shoulder for everyone to cry on, to be so stubborn when it came to matters of diplomacy. To no other junior counsellor under my watch have I had to repeat the assertion “You cannot tell your commanding officer they are ‘wrong and will kill everyone if you don’t listen to me’” as many times as I have with Luca Vilyan. I am pleased to say that this is no longer the case … probably.

Vilyan earned his promotion and I happily put forward his recommendation for the position as Chief of Counselling after much hard work and growth. He is diligent, hard-working and very dedicated to the core values of counsellor in Starfleet.

And as long as he can remember to accept the limits of the role and what the repercussions were when, during a training simulation, he called his holographic captain “ridiculous excuse for a commanding officer”, I believe he could go a long way in his career.”

Commander Kell Lyta, Chief of Counselling
USS Paragon

Personal biography:

Luca was born in a prison hospital on a Lumerian colony and placed into foster care, which he remained in until he was adopted at the age of 7 by a couple of good standing in Lumerian society; Dr. Joska Vilyan, a well respected Engineer and a former Councillor on the Council of Responsibility, and Dr. Anfrii Vilyan, (nee. Kashifi) a well regarded psychiatrist who spends her time travelling to treat rare psychiatric disorders. Luca then settled with his new family in the city of Artalla on Lumeria

Even from a young age, Luca had a difficult relationship with Joska despite her being the one out of the two mothers that he spent the most time with due to Anfrii’s professional commitments taking her away from the family home. Joska was not especially strict in her discipline of Luca, but the young boy still resented his mother’s insistence on Luca being attentive to his education (something he found laborious) and assigned him a few household chores which she would ensure he did every day. Anfrii was much more relaxed in that regard, though it was not until much later that Luca realised Anfrii could afford to be more lenient as she was seldom home and did not have to deal with the consequences of letting Luca’s bad behaviour go unchecked.

When Luca reached the age of 13, Joska began taking her son with her to work at a large engineering complex in the hopes that her son would take an interest in the work there, as there were many specialists from many vocations working on various projects.

For the first year, Luca bitterly resented his mother’s insistence on him accompanying her to the complex, and there were many arguments over the dinner table about the decision. But Joska stood firm and this paid off when Luca had a chance encounter with a psychologist who was at the complex conducting research in work-productivity. The psychologist was conducting interviews of the workers in Joska’s department and had come to see Joska in her office, in which Luca was sitting in a corner, sullen and silent after another tense argument with his mother.

However, Luca’s interest was piqued when the visiting psychologist began to talk about her findings with Joska and he marvelled at the man’s ability to get so much information from just watching people work. Anfrii had never put any effort into explaining her work to her son, and so was very surprised when she returned from a long trip away to find that her son had begun reading books and papers on psychology. Though Anfrii had little inclination towards teaching her son beyond recommending papers for him to read (mostly her own), his fascination with the subject continued.

Though he did not find out until he was a young adult, it was Anfrii’s dismissiveness towards her son’s education or interests that caused the breakdown of the women’s relationship. His mothers had seldom fought but even Luca had noticed the lack of affection they shared with each other in the last two years before their separation. In fact, even as a teenager, Luca noticed that Joska seemed to be more relaxed when her wife was away from home.

That said, when Anfrii moved out of the family home, Joska’s pain at the separation was evident even to the point where Luca noticed and caused him to grow concerned. Anfrii had taken it much better and the rare times Luca was to visit her after the separation he would see her more than happy with the situation, even remarking to her son as to the fact that her life was “so much better” on many occasions. This further entrenched the resentment he had begun to feel towards her.

Interestingly, Joska’s sadness and Anfrii seeming not to even care about the breakup of the family changed something in Luca. Though their relationship had always been strained, Luca found it much worse when Joska began to be more willing to let his bad behaviour slide and no longer insisted that he attend the engineering complex with her. Though she did her best to hide her pain, it was evident in other small ways, most especially her silences which Luca hated - she had once filled those with talk of her work or her time on the Council of Responsibility - and one day found herself surprised when Luca asked if he could go back to accompanying her to work. Luca had found himself going from resenting Joska to worrying about her, and had decided one evening when Joska had (again) not ordered him to clear the table after dinner that he decided he was going to make his mother happy again.

Though awkward at first (Luca truly had no interest in engineering) and despite his best efforts to pretend to be engaged when she spoke of the intricacies of the subject, it was during a day when Joska was working on routine evaluations of her team’s work that finally saw the two bond. Luca overheard Joska discussing with a supervisor a worker’s poor attitude to his role and Luca actually dared to interject, defending the worker (whom Luca had spent enough time around, just by chance, to know of him), informing his wide-eyed mother and the supervisor (who had looked very irritated by the teen) that the worker was most likely the way he was due to not having been accepted to the department he had originally applied for and even suggested that the man in question be moved to another area in Joska’s department that Luca thought would be more suitable. Joska, to much surprise, agreed, ordering the transfer. Luca had felt enormous pride when she had praised him on his astuteness (she had had little reason to praise him on much before this, due to his poor attitude and reports from his school teachers).

Within one week, their dynamic completely changed, as Joska invited her son to give his own thoughts on the various members of her team and found that, while he might never be interested in engineering, he had a keen eye and his observations were excellent considering his age and lack of any formal training. Though he was hardly making any truly professional observations, they were such that Joska would spend each night with him, challenging him on those that he did offer, which he did haphazardly at first, vaguely alluding to this theory or idea that he could remember from what he had read. Within a few months he was confidently citing papers and studies as he all but gave his mother full presentations on his ‘findings’ as he spent his time at the complex getting under every manager’s feet while he observed, chatted with, and listened to every person in the entire building. His performance at school changed so drastically that Joska would go on to joke that he had forged the reports that came to her from his school, and when the time came that students were allowed to decide on subjects they wished to study as they entered the last few years of mandatory education, Luca chose psychology and went on to receive not only a distinction in the subject when he finally finished his schooling three years later, but a special commendation from the subject teacher
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Joska throwing her arms around him with tears of happiness in her eyes was one of his happiest memories.

Luca entered university with grand plans to become a clinical psychologist (he was already making plans on where to do his doctorate) when he attended a presentation given by a visiting Starfleet officer in the university’s holo-room. Starfleet had little presence on Lumeria and a Lumerian actually joining Starfleet was mostly unheard of. When the class had finished their tour of the inside of a Federation starship, and the officer had spoke with clear love of his career visiting different worlds and seeing many new and wondrous things, Luca had called home and told a very surprised Joska that he had decided to join Starfleet, and though she had some concerns about him joining the military, years later after much studying and training, she was to be found embarrassing him as she insisted on taking dozens of holo-photos of her son as he graduated from the Counselling Academy on Betazed and then again when he graduated Starfleet officer and earned the rank of Ensign.