Romulan and Klingon Empires
Klingon Empire
By 2215, Klingon technology allowed them to maintain a speed of warp 4 on their interstellar vessels. First contact between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets took place in 2218, a disastrous event that led to nearly a century of hostilities between the two powers. In 2267 negotiations between the Federation and the Empire were on the verge of breaking down. The Klingons had issued an ultimatum to the Federation to withdraw from disputed areas, claimed by both the UFP and the Klingon Empire or face war. The hostilities came to a head at the planet Organia, the only Class M world in the disputed region. Unknown to either side, the Organians incredibly advanced non-coporeal lifeforms who imposed the Organian Peace Treaty on both parties, thus effectively ending armed hostilities.
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Around 2268, the Klingons entered into a brief alliance with the Romulan Star Empire, when an agreement between the two powers resulted in the sharing of military technology and spacecraft designs, providing the Romulans with Klingon battle cruisers. By the mid 2280's, Klingons were using ships described as birds-of-prey (traditionally a Romulan term) that were equipped with cloaking devices. Utilizing photon distortion fields to bend light around the vessel to render it visually undetectable, and a cloak of particle scattering fields, the effect creates a impenetrable camouflage so a vessel cannot be picked up by traditional EM sensor sweeps. This alliance was more of a friendship of convenience, and when both side got what they wanted, the alliance was dissolved in 2292. The terms on which the two sides parted remains unclear, but they would become bitter foes for the next 75 years.
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Bilateral talks between the Klingons and the Federation continued through 2289, taking place at the Korvat Colony. Even though the meetings did not result in any breakthroughs, some small progress was made when Federation negotiator Curzon Dax earned the respect of his Klingon colleagues. However, encounters with the Federation remained unpleasant at best, when the Klingon Empire launched a covert operation to poison emergency quadrotriticale supplies crucial to the Sherman Planet. The K-7 plant that was storing the hybrid wheat sent a distress call answered by the Enterprise. With the help of numerous tribbles, the Klingon sabotage was revealed and terminated. Klingon hatred for the furry and enormously prolific creatures was immediate after their first contact. The Klingons considered tribbles to be an ecological menace, a plague to be wiped out. In the latter part of the 23rd century, hundreds of Klingon warriors were sent to track them down throughout the galaxy. An armada obliterated the tribble homeworld, and before the 24th century, tribbles had been eradicated.
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Romulan Star Empire
Ancient Vulcans were not at all like Spock, the most well known Star Trek Vulcan. Early Vulcans were an extremely emotional, violent and warlike people. The planet was divided into hundreds of small clans and city-states, each with diverse governmental structures and religions. Because Vulcan was (and is) an extremely dry world, water and resources were scarce. Clans and cities fought violently to acquire the resources to continue to survive. In fact, during any given period on the planet, it was unlikely that any more than 10% of the planet was not at war.Around 80 BC, in Terran dating, a Vulcan named Surak began publicly espousing the mental practice of logic, and the philosophies of peace. As one could expect, in a turbulent world filled with wars and warriors, his philosophies were slow to spread. However, spread they did, and Surak gradually gathered a small following of devoted followers, the first true Vulcans, as we now know them. Among these followers was one named S’Task, keen of mind and heart, and Surak’s finest pupil.
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In the year 20 BC, Vulcan received its first contact with aliens from other stars. The signals beamed in from the edge of the Vulcan system by alien vessels so shocked the Vulcans that several wars and declarations of war were put on hold until the matter could be settled one way or another. Officials met, and it was decided that the planet would meet the aliens united. Contact was made via transmissions from Vulcan, and a time and place of meeting agreed upon. On the day of the meeting Surak was detained by vehicle troubles, but his pupil S’Task was there in his stead.Unfortunately, the aliens were not true to their word of peace, for they were Orion pirates, intent on enslaving the unsuspecting world. When the aliens landed, the Vulcan emissaries were greeted with stun rays and blasters, rather than overtures of friendship, and a large proportion on the leadership of Vulcan was taken prisoner and held for ransom, among them S’Task.
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Thus began the “Ahk”, the greatest of all Vulcan’s wars, which they fought in their primitive ships using their not at all primitive psionic powers. With their mind talents, Vulcan adepts could force Orion pilots to attack each other, or dive their ships into the sun, and the Orions quickly learned that they should not have tangled with this superficially primitive species. S’Task himself escaped captivity during the war, organized an in-ship rebellion, overpowered his captors, and eventually crashed the ship into the Orion mothership, narrowly escaping in a rescue pod. He was found, many weeks later, drifting in space, half-starved, and clinging to life only through the force of his own anger.In this way began the split between Surak and his student S’Task. After his experience with the Orions, S’Task renounced the teachings of Surak, saying that pacifism was inappropriate in the hostile universe waiting in interstellar space. However, S’Task was not willing to promote his philosophies actively against Surak, for fear of prodding Vulcan back into a state of war and anarchy. Surak had long preached that “The structure of space/time is more concerned with means than ends: beginnings must be clean to be of profit”, and S’Task agreed with his old master. It was with this in mind that S’Task proposed an alternate solution. The world was not working as it was, said S’Task, so a clean beginning was in order. The followers of S’Task would use Vulcan’s newly advanced space technology and venture out into interstellar space to find a new world and make a clean beginning.
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