Messenger Leoben

Messenger Leoben and a confused Kara Thrace (TRS: "Maelstrom").

An spectral 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 "Messenger Leoben" appears to Kara Thrace as she awakens in what appears to be her old apartment in Delphi. In reality, Thrace 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.

Messenger Leoben 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.

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

When the vision ends, Thrace 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 (TRS: "Maelstrom").

Notes

• While it is possible that Messenger Leoben is a figment of Thrace's consciousness, "his" 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 Messenger Leoben is not manipulative like the genuine Leoben Conoy models.
• Messenger 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 (TRS: "Home, Part II").
  • A third instance involves Galen Tyrol's extrasensory ability to sense and find the Temple of Five on the algae planet (TRS: "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 (TRS: "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 Messenger Leoben.
• The revelation of Messenger Six and Messenger Baltar as agents of a higher power (TRS: "Daybreak, Part II") supports the probability that Messenger Leoben is also such an agent, preparing Thrace for her destiny for the Fleet.