Chapter 12 - Lirpa (Patreon)

"The only analog in the modern day for Vulcan, arguably, would be the lirpa, a traditional melee weapon consisting of a metal staff with a fan-shaped blade on one end and a club on the other. Lirpas were still used by a scant few who traveled into the most inhospitable parts of Vulcan’s Forge, locations in the vast area whose unstable electromagnetic properties rendered modern energy weapons useless. Outside of that rare and limited circumstance, lirpas were also still used in the ‘kal-if-fee,’ the traditional mating challenge during the ponn farr. To the best of her knowledge, though, there hadn’t been a true mating challenge for over a century at the very least and even longer before that single isolated incident involving Ambassador Spock when he served aboard the Enterprise."