DS9 Departures

[Sho-sa Kurita]

One of my methods of Trek campaigning is to take Trek history as given up to a certain point, then diverge from there, letting the series develop naturally rather than constraining it by canon. Here's one such idea I've been pondering.

Deep Space Nine. The Cardassians leave. The Federation comes in to help. The series starts just like the original, with Sisko arriving but ready to resign from Starfleet. Kyra. Odo. Quark. The rest, all there.

And that's where we diverge. No wormhole is discovered. So what happens then?

DS9 stays in orbit of Bajor.
The Cardassians stay away, since there's nothing left to plunder.
Sisko resigns and leaves, thus opening the way for a new station Commander, who doesn't necessarily know how to work with the Bajorans.

Some major campaign issues:
1) The Circle becomes more of a problem.

2) The Maquis (which won't be settled by Dominion fiat this time around). How do they affect UFP / Cardassian relations? I'm thinking once the situation got serious enough, the Federation might want to set up a Cardie liason office on DS9 to facilitate operations in the Badlands, but the Bajorans would obviously be opposed to that. It would be fun to have a Maquis operative (like Eddington) in Starfleet who isn't actually exposed for a long time.

3) Which of the TV series main characters actually stick around? (Quark and Rom were getting the heck out, for instance, while Bashir, Dax and O'brien would still be there since it's their job. I could seen O'brien asking for a transfer after a while, due to his and Keiko's problems. And where else would Garak go?)

Anyway, I'm toying with running this, maybe even finding the wormhole later on, after the series establishes a separate identity for the players. Any ideas, either new, or spinning off what I've spouted already would be cool.

[Tobian]

1) the Circle may or may not beome more of a problem.. The reason the Circle had the force of arms to act as swiftly as they did was because the Cardassians were supplying them via the Cressari.. without the arms, they would just be a bunch of racist thugs, with a small backing.. Do not forget WHY they Cardassians wanted bajor back.. the Wormhole! No Wormhole.. no Cardassians. The reason the Circle existed was because it was run by a political oppertunist who had the force of arms of the army, and cardassian weapons..

2) A huge issue to resolve because it ll depends on how expansionist the Cardassians become.. Genreally speaking especially because of their lack of a treaty with the Dominion, the Cadassians are going to be technologically inferior to the Federation consistently.. so they wouldn't think to threaten them, without forming alliances.. perhaps you could bring in the Breen, but then the Breen are unlikelly to have sufficient motivation to attack the Federation without the backing of the Dominion.. their ships are not nearly as numerous!

3) It's likelly that Quark in some form would stay arround.. he has to he's the comic relief Odo of course may or may not exist.. If he exists he came via a different way and would remain an enigma. Sisko would likelly not stay.. without the binding force of being the Emmisary, and not having his day of therrapy with the Prophets, he may become dissinterested.

4) how do you intend to deal with the issue of the Bajorans and their direct to the Prohpets by a physical and tangible link? No Celestial Temple, No 'Tears of the Prophets' ? yes you could just acribe what the Bajorans have as being something akin to our modern day religions, but that could still be somewhat lacking.. You could, I guess, just have the Celestial Temple be there, it's just 1 way, or it goes no where of consiquence...

To take away the Wormhole take away from the significance of the location. Yes the Cardassan empire is still going tobe sadistic and expansionistic, yes you can still have the dilicious interractions of Kira and Dukat, but without the major plot hook of the Wormhole.. how do you make DS9 an interesting and dynamic location... The thing which helped to answer to the critics of a static startrek show.. the Wormhole brought the interest like a ship in the storm....

[Lezta]

I think the key is it's still there but it hasn't been discovered.

Which means odo can still exist and so do the prophets.

[Tobian]

This is true.. however if Sisko is not the Emissary (he might still be it, but they don't know yet) the Bajorans won't have any reason to like the Federation, so converselly a group like the Circle may grow in power anyway.. they just won't be funded by the Cardassians, and might be a 'real' organisation who want bajor for the Bajorans.

it's very hard to say how all of it could go as it is all tremendously tied into it's self..it's a very complex web of relationships!

[Sho-sa Kurita]

1) the Circle may or may not beome more of a problem.. The reason the Circle had the force of arms to act as swiftly as they did was because the Cardassians were supplying them via the Cressari...snip,snip

As you've already noted, someone else could be supplying them. But who and why? That's the interesting question.

3) It's likelly that Quark in some form would stay arround.. he has to he's the comic relief Odo of course may or may not exist.. If he exists he came via a different way and would remain an enigma. Sisko would likelly not stay.. without the binding force of being the Emmisary, and not having his day of therrapy with the Prophets, he may become dissinterested.

Give me a reason for Quark to stay without Sisko basically forcing him to. I can make up new comic relief. Odo will be around -- the point of departure is basically the beginning where the TV pilot starts. Odo still got to the Alpha Quad through the wormhole, just like he did before, it's just that nobody knows about it. Sisko IS leaving, that's sorta one of the points of being a 'departure.'

4) how do you intend to deal with the issue of the Bajorans and their direct to the Prohpets by a physical and tangible link? No Celestial Temple, No 'Tears of the Prophets' ?

The Bajoran civilization existed for thousands of years without a direct link to the Prophets or knowledge of the location of the Celestial Temple. Their culture and religion is still interesting.

To take away the Wormhole take away from the significance of the location.

Only if I wanted the series to be like the TV show. It has enough of the foundation of the TV series for players to immediately jump in, but then we take if from there. The wormhole exists, it just isn't found at the same time as it was on TV, if at all. That means if I wanted, the Dominion, or someone else, could come through it, perhaps covertly.

Without the wormhole, Bajor may or may not become the focus of Quadrant attention and importance -- depending on what other concepts I come up with. The series will turn into something other than the war epic it was on TV. It becomes definitely two other things, perhaps more -- the story of helping Bajor recover and join the UFP, and the problem of the DMZ. These were both great ideas that more or less got left behind on TV. The intent would be to bring in another, as yet undetermined, completely new storyline into the mix after a while.

Having been on this board for several years, I've come realize that my friends and I are apparently not like the majority of Trek RPGers -- we're not into the military aspects and war stories as much as many, and actually like focusing exploration and mystery, as well as the more humanitarian 'root-beer' Federation -- colonization, aid, cultural exchange. We're not opposed to the military stuff, it's just not why we're into Trek.

[Ezri's Toy]

Originally posted by Sho-sa Kurita
The Bajoran civilization existed for thousands of years without a direct link to the Prophets or knowledge of the location of the Celestial Temple. Their culture and religion is still interesting.

That's not true. The Bajorans had the Orbs that connected them to their deities for millenia. The first of the "Tears of The Prophets" appeared on Bajor 10,000 years before the events in the DS9 ep "Emissary." (Star Trek Chronology, pg 6; References Kai Opaka's quote in the episode)

[Sho-sa Kurita]

You are right of course, ET, but my intended point is still valid. What I really meant to say was that for all those thousands of years, the Bajorans didn't know where the Celestial Temple was, or where the Orbs came from, or have an a real Emissary, but they're still interesting, at least to me.

Actually, perhaps that's the seed of a good arc --

Sometime after the UFP and Starfleet take up residence in DS9 (a good while into the sries), a new Orb appears. Obviously this is a major thing which hasn't happened in a loooong time, and sparks a new search for the Celestial Temple.

Now, what is this Orb's function? what does it's arrival portend?

I'm really asking , but remember it doesn't have to follow anything like the TV series other than the spirit.

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Another mystery to explore, and someone please tell me if this has been dealt with in any books, is the nature of the Prophets' relationship to Bajor. They are 'of Bajor.' What does that mean? Is there an actual physics-based connection, or purely a metaphysical one? If by choice, what prompted them to set themselves up as gods?

[C5]

Originally posted by Sho-sa Kurita
Another mystery to explore, and someone please tell me if this has been dealt with in any books, is the nature of the Prophets' relationship to Bajor. They are 'of Bajor.' What does that mean? Is there an actual physics-based connection, or purely a metaphysical one? If by choice, what prompted them to set themselves up as gods?

Well since you asked, I'll provide my personal explanation of this.

Actually, I had two hypothesis :

First, the Prophets could be a completely different lifeform, who happened to evolve in this wormhole near this planet that hapened to also harbour life. The Prophets took a liking to these creatures, and decided to help them (alternatively, they could simply be conducting some vast experiment on them, like Q would) by guiding some of their decisions. The pagh wraiths are just other Prophets, who wanted to take a different direction in the way the Bajorans were led, and thus were exiled by the other Prophets (alternatively, it could simply be part of the Prophet's experiment, and the wraiths could simply be off shots of the Prophet's race, designed for this purpose).
The "we are of Bajor" comes from the fact that they live in the Bajoran system as well, therefore considering themselves Bajorans.

Another hypothesis would be the Prophets to be the Bajorans from thousands, maybe billions of years into the future. After having undergone an evolution to another plane of existence and consciousness (one particularly for which the concept of time became different), they built the wormhole to house them, and decided to help their forebears to evolve to what they've become (recursive causality here, of course - but that does't frighten anyone in Trek, does it ? Alternatively, they could come from another dimension, having decided to help this particular continuum to evolve like they did to have some company).
The path wraiths would still be "bad" future Bajorans, or perhaps simply wanted to enhance their species to have it become much more powerful than it is (or altnernatively, they'd be Bajorans from another dimensions with a very different agenda).

There must surely be a lot of others, more mystical explanations, but I like those two ones.

[Tobian]

The problem with the Prophets being Bajorans from the future is the Pagh Wraiths.. The Pagh Wraiths appear to be the same species, only outnumbered by the regular Prophets.. If they are then also Bajorans from the future, then by wanting to change the course of the future as they did, they would have ended up dooming the Bajorans, creating a Grandfather paradox (killing themselves in their own past) .. However turning that up on it's head, that might be exactly what they are trying to do, because they exist outside of time, changing the past will not affect them, or perhaps it will only affect them if they remain on Bajor (outside of the extra dimensional celestial temple) hence the prophets removed them from the celestial temple causing them to be affected by their own temporal paradoxes, removing their effectiveness as evildoers

Perhaps the Pagh Wraiths want to shed themselves of their own past, disliking the physical universe, so making it all the more ironic that a) they have been forced to remain there and b) unable to do much untill they retake the celestial temple, or they could wipe themselves out of existence...

The Celestial temple it's self is not so much of a mystery, interest, exploration, need are all valid reasons for them to be there, they may just be trying to further their own comprehenson of themselves through the eyes of other people; The idea of going away to find yourself, and it's very much a 'human' thing to do... quite why the Celestial temple exists as a wormhole is the oddity, but then it may also well be a pre-destination paradox.. it exists because there was to be a war, and the bajorans needed for that to happen, therefore it existed because those events needed to take place. a paradox indeed

Ok my head hurst now

[Tobian]

As a side not to that.. the Bajorans didn't really think of them as 'gods' in the same way we think of 'god' they called them 'prophets' it's just out closest word.. it would I guess be like the equivalent of Jesus or Budda or Mohammed, though in the sense of taking away the prime deities (So more like the Budda concept).. The Wormhole aliens may very well not have set themselves up as gods, but then that is down to the bajorans and not the other way round.. and again it may be they did it because it already happened in their own future and past, therefore it's another predestination paradox