The Bajorans, or Bajora, 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.
History
Stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, Bajoran history is the story of a spiritual people shepherded by supernatural beings. Their mettle was tested as outsiders took an interest in their resources and strategic location.
Bajoran civilization began to flourish more than five hundred thousand years ago. The ancient Bajorans were renowned for their accomplishments in science, mathematics, philosophy, and the arts long before Humans learned to speak or make tools.
By thirty thousand years ago, non-corporeal lifeforms known as the "Prophets" began influencing Bajoran society. They described themselves as "of Bajor", and were worshiped as gods by the Bajorans. The Prophets had enmity for a group of fellow non-corporeals called the "Pah-wraiths". One of each were sealed together in a stone tablet in a city that was abandoned five thousand years later. Here, the beings were imprisoned for tens of thousands of years, awaiting an important religious figure described as the Emissary.
Approximately ten thousand yeas ago, the first of the Tears of the Prophets was discovered above Bajor. Over the years, eight more of these orb-like artifacts appeared and ushered in a new era of spiritual connection between the Bajorans and the Prophets.
By the 16th century, Bajorans had developed sublight space travel employing solar-sail spacecraft called "lightships". Exploring their star system, Bajoran space travelers stumbled upon tachyon eddies, which accelerated their lightships beyond the speed of light and enabled them to reach the Cardassian system five light years away.
During the 22nd century, Bajorans traveling through their star system unknowingly made the first observations of the home of the Prophets, called "Celestial Temple", a stable wormhole located in the Denorios Belt, an area between the ninth and tenth planets of the Bajoran system. Kai Taluno reported a sighting of what was later known as the wormhole when his ship was "almost swallowed by the heavens" near the Denorios Belt. In the Bajoran year 9174 (late 22nd century), Akorem Laan, regarded as one of the planet's greatest poets at the time for works such as Gaudaal's Lament, departed Bajor in a lightship. His vessel was damaged in an ion storm and drifted into the Denorios Belt, where he opened and entered the yet unknown wormhole and stayed with the Prophets until 2372.
By the beginning of the 24th century, Bajorans had established off-world colonies such as Golana. By the 2370s, Bajoran colonies included outlying planets such as Dreon VII, as well as worlds within the Bajor system, like Jeraddo and Bajor VIII.
Despite its high state of development, the Bajoran civilization continued to separate itself into nation-like factions as evidenced by the Paqu-Navot Treaty of 2279, which defined the border between two of them. Until the Occupation by Cardassia, Bajoran society also followed a strict system of castes known as D'jarras. It created a clearly stratified social hierarchy by pre-determining each Bajoran's occupation based on his or her family.
Around 2319, Bajor's neighbor, the imperialistic Cardassian Union, established a military presence on the planet as it considered the Bajoran homeworld to be underdeveloped but rich in natural resources. In 2328, this Occupation of Bajor (or simply called "the Occupation") also led to the formal annexation of Bajor by the Cardassians, who claimed to "help and develop" their neighbor. Despite their high state of cultural development, Cardassian technology was approximately a hundred years ahead of Bajor, explaining why the planet's population inistially surrendered without any serious resistance.
During the Occupation, the Cardassians installed the Bajoran Occupational Government, a puppet of the Cardassian Central Command intended to lend legitimacy. Some Bajorans came to terms with the situation and even collaborated with the occupiers, and public life continued in some fashion including the opening of new businesses and the existence of cultural infrastructure such as the Bajoran Springball Association. The harsh reality, however, was that the Cardassians perpetrated a coordinated scheme of strip-mining, forced labor, and genocide across the planet, with the Gallitep labor camp under Gul Darhe'el being one of the most infamous examples. Less obvious misdeeds included stealing all but one of the Tears of the Prophets, the suppression of Bajoran religion by outlawing religious teaching, medical experiments on Bajoran subjects, like those conducted by Dr. Crell Moset, as well as Bajoran comfort women for Cardassian officers, who essentially represented a form of sexual slavery.
In order to keep the Bajorans in line, Central Command installed a prefect to oversee the planet. The last person to hold this post was the now-infamous Gul Dukat, who assumed office in 2346. He euphemistically considered the Bajorans his "children" and initially attempted a gentle approach by cutting labor camp output quotas and other benevolent measures. As it became clear that the oppressed Bajorans were not interested in his "charity", Dukat oversaw the occupation with an iron fist and, in 2360, assumed command of Terok Nor, an orbital uridium-ore processing station, which had been constructed by Bajoran slave labor between 2346 and 2351.
Over time, the Occupation gave rise to the fierce Bajoran Resistance, which was organized into small cells operating mostly independently from each other, both on and off Bajor. The Resistance used guerrilla as well as terror tactics and also included radical sects like the Kohn-Ma, the members of which would not even shy away from devising and deploying lethal biological weapons.
Formed less than two years after the end of the Occupation, many Bajorans willing to continue the fight against Cardassia also joined the Maquis, a rogue organization operating mostly along the Federation-Cardassian border and determined to resist the stipulations of the Federation-Cardassian Treaty. Some Bajorans also managed to flee their homeworld to join the Federation's Starfleet, which was eager to incorporate Bajorans as a political statement towards Cardassia. It was even said that some instructors overlooked the applicants' shortfalls, and gave them the benefit of the doubt during exams.
A great number of Bajorans who fled the occupation, though, settled on planets all over the known galaxy, but almost everywhere they remained separated from other peoples, living under the poorest circumstances in refugee camps like those on Valo II.
After fifty years of occupation and over ten million Bajoran casualties, the Cardassians finally withdrew from Bajor in 2369, no longer willing to fight the relentless terrorism of the Bajoran Resistance. The withdrawal was strongly opposed by Gul Dukat, the last prefect of Bajor. In their retreat, the Cardassians devastated Bajoran infrastructure and poisoned vast tracts of farmland, threatening a humanitarian catastrophe. The Bajoran Provisional Government was formed in the wake of the Occupation, but few had confidence that it would survive.
Most importantly, though, the Provisional Government requested the United Federation of Planets both as a protector power and to assist in the rebuilding of Bajor. The two governments established joint control of Terok Nor, a former Cardassian space station orbiting Bajor, which they renamed Deep Space 9. While the station officially became a Bajoran installation, it was commanded by Starfleet aside a Bajoran liaison officer, a post first filled by former Resistance fighter Major Kira Nerys. After Commander Benjamin Sisko was assigned to DS9 – both to command the station and to prepare Bajor for eventual Federation membership – Kai Opaka declared Sisko to be the long-awaited Emissary of the Prophets. Ushering in a new era of trade but also strategic importance and danger for the Bajor system, Sisko fulfilled one of the prophecies as Emissary shortly after by (re-)discovering the "Celestial Temple", a nearby wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and home of the Prophets, to whose mouth Deep Space 9 was subsequently moved. With the Federation supporting and enforcing Bajor's claim to the wormhole, it gained incalculable economic importance; anyone who wanted to travel to the Gamma Quadrant had to negotiate for permission, and Bajor became a major hub of commerce. Over the following two years, Federation assistance to Bajor included the reconstruction of its aqueduct system, tapping into the molten core of the Bajoran moon Jeraddo as a new major energy source, and offering some three million Skrreea refugees from the Gamma Quadrant, who initially sought asylum on Bajor, a new planet to colonize.
Despite its benefits for Bajor, the alliance with the Federation remained uneasy at first, as many Bajorans, including former resistance groups such as the radical Kohn-Ma, thought that the interests of the two powers should be kept separate. Certain religious representatives such as Vedek Winn Adami were also skeptical of Commander Sisko, a "non-believer", to be declared the Emissary of the Prophets. She also publicly denounced Federation-inspired school curricula identifying the Prophets as mere "wormhole aliens" and instructed the Vedek Assembly to refuse Sisko's request to discuss the matter. The anti-Federation sentiment grew, even causing a bomb attack on Deep Space 9's school in late 2369, and was exploited by the Bajoran anti-alien Alliance for Global Unity in early 2370. This Alliance, also known as the "Circle", denounced the Federation presence aboard Deep Space 9 as another form of occupation and was secretly led by high-ranking Minister Jaro Essa, who sought to dismantle the Provisional Government and install himself as the new leader of Bajor.
Eventually the Bajoran government stabilized and led to the first joint Federation-Bajoran-Cardassian effort under the new peace treaty, called the Wormhole Comm Relay Project, was to create a Gamma Quadrant relay station to aid communications through the Bajoran wormhole aka the Celestial Temple.
Bajor's petition for Federation membership was eventually accepted in 2373. However, on the eve of the signing ceremony on Deep Space 9, Captain Sisko, the Emissary of the Prophets, received a series of pagh'tem'far predicting disaster for Bajor unless "it stood alone". As a result, the Chamber of Ministers voted to delay the acceptance of Federation membership.
After the Cardassian Union joined the Dominion in mid-2373, quickly driving out the Klingons as well as the Maquis, a major war with the Dominion was on the horizon. Now, the Emissary's earlier intervention allowed a neutral stance for Bajor, which, following Sisko's endorsement, even signed a nonaggression pact with the Dominion. This saved Bajor from coming under foreign occupation when war broke out and Deep Space 9 was quickly captured by Dominion-Cardassian forces, who were officially, though compulsorily, "welcomed" into Bajoran space by Major Kira on behalf of the Bajoran government.
In early 2374, during the first months of the Dominion War, Bajor was cut off from all interstellar trade, leading to economic hardship and supply shortfalls. With no one else to turn to, the Bajoran government allowed the Dominion to send four hundred Vorta facilitators to Bajor to provide technical assistance. Soon after, the Cardassians gifted fifteen industrial replicators to Bajor as a gesture of friendship. The Bajorans also gained a voice on Deep Space 9 through Odo, formally a member of the Bajoran militia, who became part of the station ruling council, along with Gul Dukat and Weyoun.
Deep Space 9 was recaptured by a joint Federation-Klingon task force and a plea to the "prophets" was answered when they disappeared 2,800 Dominion reinforcements traveling through the wormhole.
Despite the limited Bajoran military capabilities, Deep Space 9, with its location by the wormhole, became the strategically most important installation for the Federation Alliance. Both the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire, which joined the Alliance in late 2374, established contact offices on the station and First Minister Shakaar received briefings on the war. In early 2375, the Bajoran Government granted the Romulans permission to build a military hospital on the uninhabited Bajoran moon Derna. However, an attempt by the Romulans to arm the hospital with plasma torpedoes precipitated a crisis among the allies. The Bajorans blockaded Derna and demanded that the Romulans remove the weapons, nearly leading to hostilities until Senator Cretak relented under Federation pressure.
The war was finally brought to an end in late 2375, when the Federation Alliance successfully attacked Cardassia Prime and took the Dominion representative for all forces in the Alpha Quadrant into custody. Soon after, the Bajoran Republic was one of the signatories of the Treaty of Bajor on Deep Space 9, which formally concluded the conflict.
Biology
Bajorans resembled Humans in appearance. They were distinguished by a series of four to seven horizontal creases across their noses. The males also have ridges on their reproductive organs.
Bajoran women gestated for only five months, forming an intricate network of blood vessels between the mother and the fetus. During the pregnancy, Bajoran women were frequently afflicted by bouts of uncontrollable sneezing, roughly analogous to Human women experiencing morning sickness during pregnancy.
Bajoran hearts are mirrored on a horizontal axis instead of a vertical access and a wound to the lower ventricle could result in instantaneous death from blood loss.
Society & Culture
Bajorans are a highly religious people with their faith revolving around the dimensional entities that occupy the Celestial Temple, known a the Bajoran wormhole to others, who are known as the Prophets. The alien race were considered gods by the people of Bajor and believed that they watched over them as well as communicated to them through prophecies that were determined through comets and the eight mysterious Tears of the Prophets. Scientists would state that the Prophets were simply alien entities that resided within a wormhole, however, such a scientific approach has little affect on the bulk of Bajoran society.
This meant that Bajoran religion engulfed their entire society with even those that rejected the faith being able to quote from the Sacred Texts. In addition to this, most Bajorans believe that they possess a lifeforce known as a Pagh with some believing that those who follow the paths dictated in the Texts will possess pure pagh. In contrast, those who turn away from the Prophets and live selfish lives have their pagh become dark as well as corrupt. Its known that some Bajoran mystics are capable of sensing the pagh of a person by close contact with the person.
Originally, the Bajoran race were a pastoral people who lived simple farmer lives while others sought artistic pursuits from folk art to music or story telling. Such pursuits help derive personal satisfaction by such actions. The species have had little interest in the rest of the Galaxy as they focused on being contemplative as they were quite an introverted people despite 30,000 years of history. In all that time, there has been very little development within their culture, remaining almost static for centuries. The typical Bajoran simply wanted to go about their business in peace and expected the same from others. They are indifferent towards alien species, neither liking nor disliking them but remaining friendly to them - this attitude has somewhat remained despite the oppression they faced from the Cardassians.
The biggest changes within the Bajoran mind was brought through the harsh brutality the Cardassians brought about the race during the Occupation of Bajor. In order to gain freedom through any means necessary, the people of Bajor began to resort to assassinations, terrorist attacks and other similar actions in order to remove the alien influence from their world. These harsh lessons turned many Bajorans into ruthless fighters with many becoming scarred after the conflict from seeing the horrors they saw such as friends dying in battle. Others become pugnacious and chauvinistic after the Occupation with suspicion being placed on those who did not fight the Cardassian occupiers. This has also resulted in a great deal of paranoia in regards to outsiders.
The government of Bajor is a republic democracy.
