DS9 Stories/News: Bajoran Life Part (2)

BAJORAN LANGUAGE

Established words and phrases 

• Amoran – banished (DS9: “The Assignment“)
• Bantaca – name for a traditional spire made out of thousands of interlocked stones, marked with the coordinates of the town or city they represent (DS9: “Rapture“)
• D’jarras – ancient Bajoran caste system (DS9: “Accession“)
• Duranja – lamp for the dead: candle suspended by chains from four pillars (DS9: “Shakaar“)
• Ha’mara – religious festival to celebrate the arrival of the Emissary of the Prophets (DS9: “Starship Down“)
• Itanu – ceremony carried out when a child reaches the age of fourteen (DS9: “Accession“)
• Kosst – to be (DS9: “The Assignment“)
• Pagh – the life energy or soul of a person (DS9: “Emissary“, et al.)
• Pagh’tem’far – a sacred vision granted by the Prophets (DS9: “Rapture“)
• Peldar Joi – greeting used during the Gratitude Festival (DS9: “Fascination“)
• Shawn – swamp, rhymes with Irish name Seán (DS9: “Let He Who Is Without Sin…“)

Site: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Bajoran_language

Religious terms Edit

• Ranjen – a monk, usually a title given as an honor (DS9: “The Reckoning“)
• Prylar – a monk or priest (DS9: “The Collaborator“)
• Vedek – a senior member of the Bajoran clergy (DS9: “In the Hands of the Prophets“)
• Kai – a leader of the Bajoran clergy (DS9: “Emissary“)
• Kosst Amojan – also known as Koss’moran, another name for the Pah-wraiths; translates as the banished ones (DS9: “The Assignment“)
• Pagh – the eternal soul (DS9: “Emissary“)
• Pagh-tem-far – a spiritual vision sent by the Prophets (DS9: “Rapture“)

Measurements

• Kellipate – a measure of distance (DS9: “Progress“)
• Tessipate – a measure of land area used on Bajor (DS9: “Progress“, “Children of Time“)
• Kerripate – a fraction of a tessipate (DS9: “Children of Time“)

DS9 Stories/News: Deep Space Nine Races – Bajorans (1)

History

The Bajorans are a race of master artists, architects, and scholars whose lives are centered on their faith. Their deeply religious culture honors the ‘Prophets’ who guide the Bajorans.

Ships

 

 

Notes: Two man sailing ships used by the ancient Bajorans to explore space, four centuries before humans left the Earth. These ships had no impulse or warp drive; instead they used the power of the Bajor sun for propulsion. These ships were able to reach Cardassia when they discovered tachyon eddies in the Denorios Belt which propelled the ships beyond light speed.

The Bajorans (also known as the “Bajora“^[1])

were a humanoid species native to the planet Bajor in the Alpha Quadrant. The Bajorans had one of the oldest and richest cultures in the quadrant, though in the 24th century they suffered greatly at the hands of the Cardassian Union. With their liberation from the Cardassians and the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole in 2369, the Bajorans were thrust onto the interstellar stage.

Courtesy of Memory Alpha.org

Bajoran Lightship

Bajoran Fighter

Bajorans resembled Humans in appearance, and were distinguished by a series of four to seven horizontal creases across their noses. Bajorans also featured light and dark skinned variants, although the dark skinned Bajorans appeared to be a very small minority. (DS9: “The Homecoming“)

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/bajoran-assault-vessel/

DS9 Stories/News: The Federation Leaders In the Dominion War (1)

Site: http://dominion.tvheaven.com/fedpers.html

Capt. Benjamin Sisko

The plucky if somewhat unstable commander of Deep Space 9 and the USS Defiant, and emissary of the Bajoran prophets, Sisko is considered the Federation’s key military commander in the Alpha Quadrant War. Because of the strategic importance of Sisko’s command, he has played a pivotal role in many of the Dominion’s skirmishes with the Federation Alliance. Despite Sisko’s dogged tendency to survive his encounters with the Dominion’s usually invincible Jem’hadar soldiers, these successes are attributable mainly to luck, and it is his connection with the worm hole aliens known to the Bajorans as “the prophets” which is considered most significant. Sisko’s rapport with these guardians of our only gateway to the Alpha Quadrant led to the destruction of hundreds of Dominion ships during our first offensive against the Federation Alliance. Sisko was last reported seen in the Bajoran fire caves and is reported by some (mostly unreliable) sources to have “ascended” to the “temple of the prophets.”

Admiral Ross

Fleet commander for the Federation forces arrayed against the Dominion, Ross usually has a terrific view of Starfleet vessels being disemboweled by the Dominion from his comfy office, well behind the lines. Though the nominal commander of the Federation forces, Ross acts, in truth, as little more than a mouthpiece for Sisko’s ideas.

Commander Worf

Sisko’s slow-witted right hand man, Worf is the Federation’s token Klingon officer, easy to anger or confuse. This thundering lummox previously served as chief of security aboard the USS Enterprise before transferring to DS9 during the brief Federation-Klingon war in order to sell out his people. Captured by the Breen, briefly held by the Dominion at our installation on Cardassia Prime, and ultimately freed by the traitorous Legate Damar, Worf is at large in the Alpha Quadrant but considered to be of little threat.

Dax

Joined Trill, once science officer and current counselor on DS9, former mate to Worf, and long time friend and mentor to Sisko, the Dax symbiont has been hosted by both Ezri and Jadzia Dax during the course of the Alpha Quadrant War. Despite its extreme longevity, Dax seems to have learned little during its long life. Jadzia was slain by former Dominion ally Legate Dukat during one of several ill-fated associations with the Bajoran pah-wraith, Costa Mogen. Ezri received the Dax symbiont following this incident during an emergency transplant and has proven emotionally unstable and generally unfit as a host. She is currently stationed aboard DS9.

DS9 Stories/News: The Magic Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Ritual Magic and The Storyteller

Source: http://bajorron.blogspot.com/2012/02/magic-of-star-trek-deep-space-nine.html

The Sirah and the Dal’Rok:

Deep Space Nine’s First season episode The Storyteller is an interesting one for several reasons. Characterwise, this is the first episode which sows the seeds for Bashir and O’Brien’s future friendship. The main storyline happens on Bajor, but rather than showing us a Bajor under the guidance of the Prophets, it depicts a rural Bajoran village where perhaps older customs survive of what could be called a more Pagan past.

The storyline in brief: Bashir and O’Brien beam down to a village which is in trouble: it is under attack from a creature called a Dal’Rok and the only way to fight this entity is under the leadership of the Sirah, a Storyteller. Bashir and O’Brien witness an attack and the defense, upon which the Sirah collapses, but not after naming O’Brien as his successor. The next evening, the Dal’Rok returns and O’Brien sets out to fight it as he has seen the Sirah do it, but he fails in his attempt. Then Hovath, the young original apprentice Sirah takes over and succeeds in chasing off the entity and is thus appointed as the new Sirah, letting O’Brien off the hook.

The Sirah in action:

This story has a number of interesting Ritual Magic concepts weaven into it. For example: why does O’Brien fail? There are several reasons for that. Yes, he does not know the entire story, although that seems hardly necessary: all we see the Sirah and Hovath do is tell the villagers that they can defeat the creature. But in their cases, they speak with conviction and in magic as well as anywhere else, Words have Power proportional to the conviction with which they are spoken. Magic is not about ‘just speaking the right words and then something will happen, Harry Potter style’, it is about giving words as much power as possible, and that power comes from the conviction of the speaker and from his or her energy. We see O’Brien struggling to speak out the words while he himself barely believes it is going to do any good (nicely played by actor Colm Meany as well!). And his words dissipate into thin air, nothing happens, the magic does not come about and the Dal’Rok keeps attacking.

Incidentally, what is this Dal’Rok? We are informed that the tricorders do not register anything, yet we see something happening, and what is more, we see some attacks that are convincingly real. So what is going on here? My guess would be that we are dealing here with a thought form that has gained a more or less corporeal existence. Probably as a result of repeating this ritual over and over again for many years- a sure recipe to increase the power!- the image has gained so much energy that not only has it become visible to outsiders, it is also found to be interacting with the material environment. Our magical literature abounds with examples of the very same thing: elementals, golems, homunculi, etc. all “conjured” up by the imagination and subsequently energized to such an extent that it gets a “life of its own”.

Hovath (played by Lawrence Monoson):

The fight against the Dal’Rok indeed looks very much like a time-honored ritual, with certain fixed stagesin it, the use of certain words of power and with a more or less hierarchical structure: it is the Sirah and the Sirah only who leads this ritual and is able to direct the energy of the villagers into a concerted defense against the Dal’Rok. He is the High Priest in what looks suspiciously like a ritual to reinforce the village identity by defeating a common foe. In order to become Sirah, a candidate has to undergo a test: he (or she?) should be able to direct the ritual and direct the power single-handedly. Miles O’Brien clearly fails at this test: he does not have the necessary training, he does not have the faith and as an outsider he is also not connected to the village’s group mind. Hovath is and has all those things, so at the end we see him take charge of the ritual and bringing it to a good end, thus finalizing his own initiation as a Sirah. Which brings a final question to mind: what if the old Sirah had staged all this as an initiation ritual for his successor, with O’Brien as the unknowing catalyst? We’ll never know…

DS9 Stories/News: Boss Chicks: Kai Winn Adami

Source: http://www.amaya-radjani.com/2011/11/boss-chicks-kai-winn-adami.html

Kai Winn Adami, played by the marvelous Louise “Nurse Ratched” Fletcher, is the spiritual leader of the Bajorans.  The Kai, which is the equivalent of the Pope, is a very powerful, influential figure.  When DS9 begins, Winn is a Vedek (or a cardinal).  She is ambitious, devious, and calculating.  She is deeply resentful of Captain Sisko, who is the Emissary of the Prophets (Jesus, in other words).  Winn has a very strong, very deep faith; she is a true believer, but her true nature keeps her from being the voice of the Prophets.

The first time she stepped foot on DS9, she started causing problems.  She disagreed with the teaching of evolution in the Bajoran school and called for a boycott, which led to the school being bombed and Keiko (the teacher) losing her job.  In actuality, the protest and bombing was designed to lure her greatest rival to the throne, Vedek Bareil, to the station to be assassinated.  She manages to get out of this situation unscathed.

Major Kira openly disliked Vedek Winn.  She doesn’t trust her, and she has reasons not to.  Shortly after the bombing, Winn secretly backed the leader of a rebel faction called The Circle in order to force the Federation from Bajor.  She agreed to bless Jaro (the leader of The Circle) in exchange for being made the next Kai.  The coup fails and Winn managed to get out of this situation as well.  The woman was made of Teflon.

When it was clear that she was going to lose to Vedek Bareil for the position as Kai, she came upon some information that led to him having to remove his name from the ballot and ensured her election.  Kira is forced to accept her as the new Kai.

This opportunistic woman tried every trick in the book (and then some) to make sure she became the spiritual leader of the Bajorans.  While Winn’s unswerving faith is commendable, the Prophets never spoke to her or guided her because of her true allegiance, which was to herself and not the Bajorans.  As a result, she turned against them and began to worship the Pah-Wraiths (the enemy of the Prophets; or the Devil, as it were).  Kai Winn is helped along this path by none other than Gul Dukat, who disguised himself as a Bajoran farmer to gain her trust.  But her new faith in her new gods turns out to be a mistake, as she ends up being betrayed by them in favor of Dukat.  At the end of her life, Kai Winn tries to redeem herself by destroying the book that called forth the Pah-Wraiths, the Kosst Amojan, but she dies at the hands of Gul Dukat, the physical embodiment of the devil.

Winn Summons the Pah-Wraiths

Winn Adami Dies

You may ask why I think such a horrid woman worthy of Boss Chick status.  It’s simple:  This woman did whatever she had to do in order to get what she wanted, fair or foul, while maintaining a false façade of goodness and honor.  Talk about being boss?  As far as I’m concerned, the Kai was one of the baddest chicks in the DS9 series.  You gotta respect a woman who lives by the motto of Malcolm X: “By any means necessary.”