Vice Admiral D'Galan Kassus

voxius

Biography

D'Galan was a young man in his 20s and only a lowly Uhlan at the time of the Norkan campaign in 2307 when he composed himself with honor in the field of battle when he saved his commanding officer, Commander Jarok (who would later become the traitor Admiral Jarok) from a photon grenade. He has given a field promotion to Centurion which later became his full promotion. Through the years D'Galan rose through the ranks of the Romulan Star Empire's military and carried out campaigns in several of the most notable battles of the Empire's history.

D'Galan, Commander at this point, suffered a blow to his military career when Admiral Jarok defected to federation space as Jarok had been one of his closest friends. D'Galan was questioned for involvement by the Tal Shiar but found innocent and formally cursed Jarok as a traitor before the senate to prove his loyalty.

D'Galan was growing discontent with the Empire all the while though as the might of the Tal Shiar grew to overshadow the Romulan Military. D'Galan fought against rising Tal Shiar, politically, where he could but to no avail. He found their methods appaling and loathed the shadow of paranoia they cast over the castes of the Romulan empire from high to low. D'Galan's mistrust and resentment of the Tal Shiar continued to cripple his career which had never recovered from the Jarok incident, stunting his growth at the rank of Subadmiral I.

When Spock and the miner Nero urged the Senate into action to stop the Hobus supernova, D'Galan found himself conflicted. He was loathe to ask for aid from other planets, clinging to the xenophobic style of his Romulan upbringing, but cursed the senate for laziness in that they had done nothing. At this point D'Galan had grown completely discontent with the senate, its reliance on the Tal Shiar to instill fear and suspicion in every shadow, and the self-serving Tal Shiar as well, reflecting back on Jarok and wondering if sometimes being a traitor is a noble action in and of itself.

When the Supernova engulfed Romulus D'Galan had been off planet running military exercises. D'Galan had never been a family man, and as such he lost no loved family in the destruction of the planet, but D'Galan had forever been a loyalist to his world and peoples, despite his rising discontent, and mourned for the loss of his world, his peoples and their culture. When news of the senate's destruction reached his ship and the collapse of the Empire's government, D'Galan saw his way out. Since there was no government, there was no one to charge him with desertion, and there was no war to fight, no enemy to face. D'Galan shuttled off.

D'Galan was among some of the first refugees to settle Virinat, seeking to live out the rest of his years there in whatever capacity he could be useful, however when the booming population of refugees all but destroyed the quality of life on Virinat, D'Galan decided to stay behind and help rebuild. He was content to put a life of war and politics behind him...Up until the joint Tal Shiar/Elachi attack. D'Galan barely escaped the razed colony on one of the shuttles and was brought to the Romulan Flotilla and presented himself to D'Tan, reporting for duty."

A bit of a Story

"The attack on Virinat seems like ages ago," D'Galan reflected, mulling his past over in his head. He found himself unable to sleep this night and so he had left his captain's quarters for the ready room to go over reports and the duty list for the day but had found his mind wandering to his past, against his wishes. He had recently taken command of a Scimitar-Class warbird, the R.R.W. Hatham, and as such the ready room felt foreign to him, not yet broken in and familiar. He reclined back in his chair, remembering the conference on Khitomer that had bound the Romulan Republic to Klingon and Federation alike. "D'Tan is a fool," he thought to himself, "idealistic, optimistic, but a fool nonetheless...I'm the bigger fool, for giving him my loyalty. He would throw away our achievements, dilute our culture, surrender our technology and bed us with warring factions just to keep us protected from the Tal Shiar dogs and their masters."

D'Galan had loathed the Tal Shiar long even before the destruction of Romulus, but the Klingons were blood enemies and the Federation was never a friend to the Empire either. Old hates, old grudges, old rivalries do not die easily, not even in the face of so much rebirth. It didn't help that D'Galan was a consummate Romulan; arrogant, proud, racist in the way he viewed the Romulans as superior to everyone else, suspicious and xenophobic. "The Federation and Klingons both will mine us for everything we can give them, from our singularity drives to our cloaking technology and then they will leave us stripped and bare, abandoned to face our enemies alone. I've warned D'Tan, he takes them under advisement but chooses to believe in a brighter future..." He sighed, mulling this long dead horse over in his head.

"It would be best to close our borders to them all, focus on building our world and infrastructure, handle the Tal Shiar ourselves...But even in that D'Tan is foolish. We fight an enemy who fights without rules of engagement yet we are mandated to adhere to rules of our own." He thought this over even as he pondered the thalaron generator his ship, and how that might reflect on their relations with the Federation and the Klingon. If the Tal Shiar and their enemies were willing to stoop to whatever means might bring them victory, should not the Republic do the same? They could write the history when they won, impose their rules and terms then but for now it was a fight for their way of life, their world, their very rights to exist and shouldn't you defend those rights with every weapon in your arsenal? Fight them with planet killers and mine fields, fight them with torpedos and heavy cannons, with rifles, pistols, grenades, swords...And when those means are exhausted you fight them with sticks, rocks, down to your very tooth and nail. Victory by any means, because if you strike for peace you must first prepare war.