The Lore of Romulus

bcstar · January 12

Curiosity as well as a solo ambitious project i want to undertake has me wondering something in regards to the lore of The Romulan Empire. Has there Ever been documentation or actual concept Art of a Bird of Prey from Planet Romulus? I would assume a Roman Like empire with its core symbolization of the Iconic ships was from a actual creature known in Romulus as a Bird of Prey. I would also assume that such a creature in the Lore of this planet to be so awe stricken that an actual second Alien Empire attuned there ships to the same fearsome creature the Klingon Empire.

I do know that there is some lore regarding this but otherwise seldom discussed? Actual concept art if there is any i would love to see. Secondly this brings me to a solo project i want to work on. Because these days with my friends too busy or not able to invest in a PC, and not withstanding my own personal introvert nature. I have decided to place a Sort of RP narrative to my characters, My goal over the next few months is a rotation of 5 accounts, 1 being a lifetime the other 4 will get lifetime over the next few months Most likely completing by April. With this many accounts the idea i have after doing a bit of research is a Complete Armada consisting of 13 Fleets (Cap?) of 5 characters each. With a story based Hierarchy, With the Romulan being the corner stone to my personal Story base.

Atm i am tediously running 5 characters through the Romulan tutorial, whew. thusly my first Fleet will be based in KDF. I Do have 4 itinerary Side Projects as goals to accomplish for my first set of characters. 1. Fully completing all Story missions, 2. Fully Crafting each characters schools, 3. Completion of each reputation. 4. Fully completing Endeavors.

I am retired so yes I have the time. After this stage of a full Armada is complete over time. I plan to incorporate side story's for the Klingon, Delta etc. Recruit opportunity's when they become available. Sort of like the Special forces segments of my Armada.

When this is all built. I am down the road thinking of making a fully Secondary Armada on Star Fleet side eventually. and following the same criteria and knowledge I learn on the first.

TL:DR. I am not running all 5 at the same time i am too old for that. The only time i will do this is only for forming the Fleets. otherwise I will only play one at a time at any given time. Like i said this will be on a character account rotation.

Lastly i wanted to finish off if anyone has tips to keep this idea lore based I.E. how to run my Romulan characters in Full Disruptor sets, gear. or any other races i could run aside from Reman, yes i have one. Or lore related Side fleets in KDF i could make story wise to add context to my Armada, would be much Appreciated. Thanks in advance for any advice or tips. I am hoping on once the first Armada is complete to share what i learn along the way for tips for others if they so choose to try this out for themselves. Cheers!

lemminger83 · January 12

Hi there!
Very impressive, what you plan to do here. Might take some time... well... years I'd assume.
If you're looking for another species to incorporate into your all Romulan themed team: why not try out a Garidian?
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Garidian
They're not in the game, so you had to use an "Alien" character to realize this. Also, they're only semi-canon...

To answer your lore question...
Real world lore:
The Bird of Prey actually IS a Romulan design! It puzzles me, that people keep forgetting about this.
The (very Romulan) Bird of Prey, appeared for the first time, in the TOS episode "Balance Of Terror".
This ship was reffered to as a "Bird of Prey" from that moment onwards.
The Klingon BoP is actually a pretty interesting story...
The script of "The Search For Spock" included a scene, where a Klingon commando team, boarded a Romulan facility, to steal the newest Romulan ship prototype. An all new Bird of Prey.
So the Klingon BoP, was actually supposed to be a Romulan ship, that the Klingons stole! That's why it's bird shaped.
Those scenes, with the Klingon boarding party, where actually even realized, but never used in the finished movie.
Since this part of the story got cut out, the ship was simply turned into a Klingon design...
One might notice, that this is the ONLY bird shaped vessel, the Klingons ever designed...

In universe lore:
The bird of prey animal, the Romulans are so obsessed with, are known as "Mogai".
There's even a Romulan starship class named after them.
To quote Memory Beta: "They have been known to fly near the firefalls on Romulus, as well as being spotted hovering in the skies above Ki Baratan."

I hope I was able to help you out a little.
Cheers!

phoenixc · January 12

I am not sure about the spinoffs, but according to behind-the-scenes documents from TOS and anecdotes from the people involved in its production, Romulans didn't actually call their ships "warbirds" or "bird of prey", that was a Federation reporting convention, like how today's NATO calls the Russian SU-25 "Frogfoot" and the TU-95 "Bear", though in this case it is used for Romulan ships in general because of their habit of painting them with bird motifs.

Later on, there is one exception to that, in TNG the Romulans actually did field a class named "warbird" (D'Deridex translates to that). They do name their ships after birds though, so the D'Deridex class implies that there probably is a bird with that name on one of the RSE planets somewhere.

Balance of Terror was an adaptation of The Enemy Below with the Romulans adapted from the German U-boat crew and their society was in flux the same way Germany was at the time, with some touches from the Roman empire layered over it because D.C. Fontana told the episode's writer that Roddenberry had a thing for the ancient Romans and both of those nations had that republic-falling-to-empire thing in common. In fact, you could probably take some general ideas from Star Wars since it dealt with the same general situation.

If you listen to the dialog between the Romulan commander and centurion they reminisce about the old days of honor and duty and hint about how far the government has fallen since then and the rampant corruption where who you curry favor with is more important than competence, etc.

By the time of TNG the flux is all but gone and the corrupt completely control the government and the armed services via the iron fist of the Tal Shiar (think of the WWII SS), though there is still a small, scattered underground that ambassador Spock eventually makes contact with. Their preference of dogma over competence probably explains how the Enterprise and DS9 crews made fools of them so often. That's not to say they are all idiots, but chances are the competent commanders probably receive a lot of idiotic orders from above and have to deal a lot with morons like Decius who they have to be careful with because they have dangerously powerful friends.

Of course, NuTrek will (as usual) probably ignore most of the existing lore considering how they portrayed them in the one SNW episode they were in so far, though it was an alternate timeline so it isn't set in stone yet.

bcstar · January 12

Wow all this is very interesting, I appreciate the info and its entirety of detail. For the first poster my project is daunting to say the least and enthusiasm is a daily endeavor in itself lol. The starting of all the Romulan areas plus its subsequent Jargon is very shall i say boring and unnecessary. plus half the context cutscenes are not skippable. I tend to say FFS a lot once i hit these cutscenes lol. Never the less I have to hype myself up at the overall goals i want to accomplish and it tends to get me more enthused about such a project. i will have to look into that Alien race more to add perhaps in the future of my plans, thanks for that tip! I would love to have a secondary partner in this inception project building there own armada to bounce ideas from and gaining knowledge on its specifics. but i don't think anyone is ambitious or as crazy as i am wanting to complete this lol.

The Lore of Romulus

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