The Crossbow Test — Proof of Mortality
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Liko, torn by doubt, raises a crossbow at Troi, demanding divine guidance from Picard.
Picard enters plainly, denying his divinity and asserting his humanity to Liko.
Liko demands Picard resurrect his wife, revealing his desperate grief and misplaced faith.
Picard offers his mortality as proof, challenging Liko to shoot him with the crossbow.
Liko fires the crossbow, wounding Picard, shattering the Mintakans' belief in his divinity.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Uneasy and conflicted — intellectually skeptical but socially swept up and reluctant to intervene forcefully.
Fento appears among the gathered Mintakans as a spectating elder: previously cautious skepticism gives way to uneasy complicity, watching the confrontation with a mixture of cultural duty and discomfort at the unfolding violence.
- • Maintain communal ritual and order while interpreting events through ancestral narrative
- • Avoid direct confrontation that would fracture the assembly
- • Observe and later recount the incident within cultural memory
- • Ancestral stories provide frameworks for understanding extraordinary events
- • Community cohesion is maintained through deference to emergent authority
- • Violence is a last resort but may be sanctioned if perceived as commanded by the Overseer
Agonized and fanatical at the outset, then stunned and grief-stricken when the evidence of mortality appears.
Liko, torn between faith and desperation, seizes a crossbow, invokes Picard's will, aims at Picard to compel a miracle, fires the bolt, then drops the weapon and collapses into shock and grief as he sees Picard wounded.
- • Obtain incontrovertible proof that Picard can reverse death by an extreme, demonstrable test
- • Restore his wife by transferring the perceived boon given to him back to her
- • Reinstate certainty for himself and his community through a decisive miracle
- • Picard performed a supernatural restoration and thus has power over life and death
- • If proof is required, a public, physical test will settle communal doubt
- • Personal sacrifice or obedience will curry favor with the Overseer
From awed reverence to stunned disbelief and communal mourning — uncertainty replacing the previous security of belief.
The Mintakan populace assembles around the confrontation, initially reverent and fearful, then clustering around Picard with curiosity and confusion after the wound is revealed; their collective attitude collapses from worship to shock and grief.
- • Seek explanation and social leadership after a traumatic revelation
- • Protect the social fabric by demanding answers and assigning responsibility
- • Reconcile prior worship with the newly visible evidence of mortality
- • Physical, public signs (wounds, blood) are authoritative evidence
- • Communal rituals and leaders should restore order after shocks
- • A single miraculous event can redefine social structures
Determined and alarmed; immediately moves from advocacy to urgent caregiver and public witness, shaken by the violence but focused on restoring social order.
Nuria accompanies Picard into the hall, supports his truthful framing, attempts to intervene when Liko readies the crossbow, then rushes to Picard after the bolt strikes and holds up her bloody hand to the crowd — using the visceral image to break the spell of worship.
- • Defend her people from dangerous superstition and the consequences of blind worship
- • Protect lives in the immediate moment (Troi, Picard) and avert further violence
- • Reassert rational leadership to re-stabilize the community
- • Picard is not a god but a man with superior knowledge
- • The community must be protected from actions that could destroy its social fabric
- • Visible, undeniable evidence (blood, injury) is necessary to counter religious fervor
Frightened and pleading, motivated by filial love and panic at the prospect of violence.
Oji stands beside Liko, voices fear and grabs her father's arm trying to stop him — a clear small, human attempt to prevent catastrophe and protect both Troi and her father from making an irreversible choice.
- • Physically stop Liko from firing the crossbow
- • Prevent harm to Picard and Troi
- • Preserve her community from escalation into bloodshed
- • Her father's actions will cause irreversible harm
- • Physical intervention can avert disaster
- • The community's cohesion depends on avoiding violent acts
Resolute and morally focused — composed acceptance of personal danger to prevent cultural harm, registering physical pain after being shot.
Picard enters calmly, refuses worship publicly, challenges Liko to shoot if only proof will convince him, accepts the risk of violence to demonstrate his mortality, is struck in the shoulder and falls, writhing in pain but having severed the myth by his bleeding.
- • Prevent the deification of himself and halt cultural contamination
- • Expose the truth of his humanity to reframe the Mintakans' understanding
- • Protect Troi and the community by forcing a reality check even at personal cost
- • Deification of a stranger will irrevocably damage a developing culture
- • Honesty and moral clarity are necessary even when personally costly
- • Empirical, painful proof of mortality will break the dangerous myth
Fearful and pleading externally, while internally calculating how to de-escalate the crisis and signal allies.
Troi stands bound and frightened near the center of action, pleading with Liko not to kill her and trying to inject doubt into his certainty; she is a living focal point of the situation he believes needs divine judgment.
- • Prevent her own death and reduce immediate threat to others
- • Appeal to reason and conscience to break Liko's conviction
- • Buy time for Picard and Nuria to defuse the situation
- • Violence will deepen the cultural harm already caused
- • Appeals to personal conscience and moral reasoning can alter behavior
- • Her presence humanizes the stakes and may curb fanaticism
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The crossbow bolt is the literal catalyst: it pierces Picard's shoulder, producing blood that Nuria uses to visually disconfirm divinity. The bolt converts ideological dispute into corporeal reality and becomes the undeniable evidence that collapses the nascent cult.
A Mintakan crossbow is seized by Liko and becomes the instrument of the test — its elevation and discharge are the climactic act that transforms belief into measurable consequence. As a crafted communal weapon, it functions narratively as both tool and tribunal.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Themes This Exemplifies
Thematic resonance and meaning
Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"PICARD: "No, Liko -- I am not the Overseer. I am a man... a traveller from a faraway land. Nothing more.""
"LIKO: "You can bring people back from the dead. Show them, Picard. You can bring my wife back to me.""
"PICARD: "Go ahead, Liko. If I am all-powerful, you can't hurt me. If, however, I am telling the truth and I am mortal... you will kill me. But if the only proof you will believe is my life -- then shoot.""