Hoshi


 * This article is for the ancient Japanese priestess from the Star Trek Online: Valkyries fan fiction series. For the communications officer from the Star Trek: Enterprise television series, please see Hoshi Sato, Hoshi Sato (mirror), or Hoshi Sato (alternate).

Hoshi was the the tragic hero of an ancient Japanese myth depicting the fall of Sun Queen Himiko. The legend originated in the 3rd or early 4th century and survived into the 24th century as a part of oral tradition. Iku Hayashi told it to her granddaughter Sam, who recalled the story vividly. In 2407, while stranded on the planet Yamatai, Sam discovered that the legend was actually a very close depiction of historical events and that Hoshi had been a real person and was actually responsible for bringing the reign of the Sun Queen Himiko to an end on Earth. (Star Trek Online: Valkyries)

Legend
According to the legend, Hoshi was born in the village of Mino on the north side of Shikoku Island in the Japanese archipelago. Her parents were rice farmers who lived circa the 3rd century AD.

One day Himiko visited the village and chose Hoshi to become one of her Priestesses of the Sun, as well as her adopted daughter. Hoshi's parents were honored and raised in status to nobility. Hoshi herself traveled with the Sun Queen to her capital on Yamatai, where she lived in the palace and studied with the other Priestesses.

Hoshi became the Sun Queen's favorite and, as Himiko was growing old, it soon became clear that she intended Hoshi to be her successor. Rather than being excited at this, Hoshi was afraid. She found that the other priestesses were afraid as well and soon found out that the reason for this was that, every time the Sun Queen grew old she would enter the Chamber of the Sun at the top of her monastery alone with her favorite priestess and later only her favorite would emerge. Her favorite, however, would possess all of the memories, knowledge, and personality of Himiko, retaining only their former face and youth. When the other priestesses entered the Chamber of the Sun, they would find the old queen's body, faceless and decaying.

This caused Hoshi to conclude that Himiko was actually a koh, a face-stealing demon, and that she had been chosen as its next victim. In order to foil the koh 's plans, Hoshi stole a dagger from the general of the Sun Queen's Stormguard, and when Himiko called her to enter the Chamber of the Sun alone with her, she used the dagger to commit suicide, stabbing herself in the heart. Since the koh had already begun to transfer itself to her body, and its old body was faceless and decaying, it's ploy unraveled and it was revealed for what it was. Defeated, the koh fled Earth, never to return. ("Survivors of Yamatai")

Reality
In reality Samantha Hayashi discovered that virtually every part of the legend was true. She discovered Hoshi's body in the Chamber of the Sun on Yamatai, preserved and still bearing a stab wound to the chest. The stab-wound was also present on the remains of Hoshi's kimono, which Sam was forced to wear. The dagger itself was found on the Stormguard general, who committed seppuku to atone for allowing the weapon to fall into Hoshi's hands and outlined how she'd defeated the Sun Queen in his suicide note, corroborating the legend.

There were really only two points of discrepancy. The first was Himiko's identity, as the Sun Queen was not a demon but actually a polaric-energy based non-corporeal lifeform that passed itself from host to host over the generations. The second was that Hoshi's suicide did not banish Himiko from Earth because she was not on Earth at the time, but rather trapped her in her old, decaying body on Yamatai for the next 2,000 years.

In 2407, Sam attempted to complete Hoshi's quest to defeat Himiko by using the same dagger (while wearing the same kimono, no less) to shatter the Star of Yamatai, which was critical to the non-corporeal being's stability. While she failed, her friend Carlin Drel arrived minutes later and was able to retrieve the dagger and shatter the Star herself, effectively killing Himiko and completing Hoshi's 2,000 year-old mission.

Hoshi's body was at ground zero of the resulting polaric energy explosion, and was presumably destroyed. The dagger she used, however, was retrieved from Yamatai before the explosion and preserved by Carlin Drel, who gave it to Sam as a keepsake. ("Survivors of Yamatai")