The inadvertent First Contact with the denizens of PA-HA-SA was made in 35009 by crew members of the USS BASTET while the starship was investigating a distress call from the dimension where the planet exists.
Prior to contact with the Federation, the inhabitants had been raided by an interdimensional race known at The Masters. The Masters apparently discovered the negative energy crystals within the planetary crust. Without negotiating with or otherwise ignoring the wishes of the Pa-Ha-Saians, the Masters deployed autonomous mining machines to collect the crystals for likely use in weapons or other technology. Underestimating the desire of the Pa-Ha-Saians to be left alone, two full battle cruisers and all crew disappeared under suspicious circumstances. It was the Master’s distress call that the USS BASTET followed to the planet.
The Pa-Ha-Saians live simply, in huts, wearing tunics, fulfilling all needs by use of telepathy and telekinesis. While their spoken language is fragmentary, they can communicate via various geometrical shapes and colors. Voths and Saurians possess a brain chemistry, linked to their auditory and visual senses, that allows them to pick up these messages.
The inhabitants overarching message is that they want to be left alone. Insular, they are a people perfectly content with running their own lives. They need nothing from anyone else. They live in small groups, centered on one leader from the group known as The Catton. The Catton and the other members of the group combine their mental energy to accomplish all that is necessary for daily living and for defense. While they appear pastoral, they are willing to kill outsiders, if that is deemed needed. Pa-Ha-Saians are not dangerous per se, but they have a low tolerance for interference with their lives.
Their culture and religion are metaphysical. They refer to their star as Suroh The Exalted, Giver of Light and Warmth. The members of the group refer to themselves as The Faithful. The Catton, their leader, is considered Wise and All Seeing. A Catton can issue A Call to Gather or The Call that requires every member to come immediately to their Catton.
The pattern of geometric shapes and colors is not simply a method of communication. Each member has a unique set of symbols and colors that make up that being’s soul or Tessellation. Upon a member’s death, her or his tessellation is aided by the group to join all the tessellations of ancestors they call All That Were. The group draws on this pool of accumulated knowledge and experience as well as the living members of the group’s power to accomplish everything they do. The experience of a joined Trill benefiting from the lives of past hosts is similar to that for the Pa-Ha-Saians.
The Pa-Ha-Saians should be approached with the utmost of caution. They want nothing that they do not already have. They are loathe to interfere with the lives of other beings. They brook no interference from others. For as rustic as they appear to be, they have proven capable of defending themselves against planetary threats from spacefaring races. They possess the mental ability to control the actions of other beings, perhaps even to the extent of deceiving a starship into flying into the planet or its star.