Messenger Leoben

For related information on Kara Thrace's destiny noted in this article, see The Destiny.

The Leoben image and a confused Kara Thrace (Maelstrom)

An unknown entity that takes the form of Leoben Conoy guides Kara Thrace through her past and her unresolved issues with her long-dead mother, Socrata Thrace.

This "virtual Leoben" appears to Kara Thrace as she awakens in what appears to be her old apartment in Delphi. In reality, Starbuck found herself chasing what she believed was a Heavy Raider down a gigantic planetary storm, and was knocked unconscious, alarms blaring from her Viper, when she finds her waking on her bed on Caprica.

The Leoben image partially succeeds in convincing Thrace that she was not captured by the Cylons when the entity changes reality around he and Thrace to Socrata Thrace's apartment (approximately six years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies) on the last day that Thrace saw her mother.

The Leoben image and Thrace soon appear at Socrata's bedside, where Thrace is not only able to say goodbye to her mother before her death (never doing so before her mother died in reality), but also understands why her mother was so abusive to her. Rather than mourning, Thrace smiles.

Thrace realizes that this Leoben was not a Leoben Conoy Cylon at all. "I never said I was," is the image's answer. The Leoben-image tells Thrace that he was there to help guide her to the place "between life and death."

When the vision ends, Starbuck accepts the offer to explore the place "between life and death", does not alter her fighter's course, and seems to die as the Viper explodes (Maelstrom).

Notes

• While it is possible that the virtual Leoben is a figment of Thrace's consciousness, the Leoben Cylon's comments as well as the clarity and detail of Socrata's deathbed, complete with a scrapbook of young Thrace's childhood, makes this possibility less likely.
• The demeanor of this Leoben image is not manipulative like the genuine Leoben Conoy models.
• The virtual Leoben is the fifth instance where visions or other extra-sensory perceptions guide a human to something pre-destined by the Sacred Scrolls or other lore of the Thirteenth Tribe.
  • The first instance is Laura Roslin's prescient visions that lead her to believe her destiny as the "dying leader" (Season 1).
  • The second instance is the Tomb of Athena, where ancient tribal technology creates a hologram that points the general location of Earth (Home, Part II).
  • A third instance involves Galen Tyrol's extrasensory ability to sense and find the Temple of Five on the algae planet (The Eye of Jupiter).
  • As the algae planet's home star begins to nova, the Temple of Five's mechanisms allow a Number Three Cylon to see a persistent vision of who she believes to be the missing five Cylons. The vision may or may not have been intended for Gaius Baltar, also in attendance (Rapture).
  • The Temple of Five, built 4,000 years before, contains a mandala that Kara Thrace has known of and drawn as a child without an external source for the symbol, leading to the fifth instance and the Leoben image.
• While there is, of course, no actual confirmation of this but the revelation of Angels in Virtual Six and Virtual Baltar makes it likely that this Virtual Leoben is also an Angel of God. The facts that he is sent to guide and prepare, he is associated with whatever is beyond life and death, and the fact that Kara is implied to have been returned(and later recalled) by God to fulfill her mission lends support to this.