| abstract | - Rishala was a Fabrini female who lived in the 23rd century. She was born on the Fabrini worldship Yonada during the final years of the Yonada's journey to Lorina. She would later become the High Priestess of the Fabrini people. When Natira became aware of the true nature of the Oracle, she gave up the title of High Priestess. Rishala, already having been a popular religious figure amongst the Fabrini people, was selected as her replacement. Rather than focus strictly on the Oracle, Rishala included all the Creators of Fabrini mythology. Rishala was opposed to Natira's attempts to purge the Fabrini of their religious traditions, mainly by using peaceful resistance and working with the children of the colony to ensure knowledge of the Creators was passed on. A former minor functionary named Dovraku favored more violent means, and quickly rose to the leadership of the Faithful - a group committed to reimposing the Oracle's rule over the Lorini colonists. His group committed a number of terrorist acts in the colony, culminating in the bombing of a school which killed a number of both children and adults. Shortly after the bombing of the school Captain James T. Kirk authorized security forces on the USS Enterprise to assist Lorini security in finding and arresting the terrorists responsible for the school bombing. When the combined security forces tried to search Rishala's temple Security Minister Tasari attempted to have Rishala arrested. When one of Tasari's guards hit her a full fledged riot broke out. Rishala was nearly killed in the riot, but was quickly beamed on board the Enterprise and after treatment in sickbay made a full recovery. Kirk gave her sanctuary on his ship, declining Natira's requests to turn Rishala over to Lorini custody. Leonard McCoy confronted Natira over her leadership decisions, and got her to cancel the warrant for Rishala's arrest. He was able to convince her that it was time to talk to the religious leaders in the community instead of trying to force them to change to her liking. Rishala also realized that further violence would accomplish nothing, and only lead to an escalation of the conflict. She convinced several community leaders to accompany her to peace talks sponsored by Natira and Captain Kirk on board Yonada. One of the community leaders Rishala invited to the peace talks - Sonoya - smuggled Dovakru and his people up to Yonada on her shuttle. He and his group were able to disrupt the peace talks, and take Rishala and a number of others hostage. After the hostages were freed and Spock stopped Dovakru a lost data archive was rediscovered that had data going all the way back to the launch of Yonada. The lost archive made it clear that the Oracle was never meant to enslave the people on Yonada but instead to bring them together and pass on the knowledge of the builders to each successive generation. Using it and other evidence the Enterprise was able to determine that the Oracle had been reprogrammed during the course of the journey with a strict disciplinarian regimen in order to keep the Yonada alive as its biosphere had badly deteriorated over the centuries. With this new found knowledge both Rishala and Natira felt that perhaps the Oracle could once again be a common ground for all the Lorini. Feeling that Federation Commissioner Soreth was too judgmental and arrogant, Rishala informed the Vulcan that the Lorini relations with the Federation would go more smoothly with a different representative. Soreth agreed to step down and returned to Federation space on the Enterprise. Rishala was also able to help Kirk work through his feelings in the aftermath of taking command from Will Decker and the V'Ger incident. (TOS novel: Ex Machina)
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