The Romulan haven’t been portrayed as very intelligent…

Klingons shooting first or being aggressive up front, and the Romulans being suspicious of everyone, in a universe where anyone can warp in above your planet and start shooting, is a valid and intelligent path to take. Just like how the Federation decides to be friends with as many people as possible. The Klingons were occupied and took the lesson that, to never be occupied again, they had to be aggressive. The Romulans lost a civil war/civil strife and were exiled or fled Vulcan, and local space a thousand years ago (which was right around the Hurq too?) probably wasn't filled with happy, friendly civilizations either.

 

The "Hur'q occupied Qo'noS" thing is something exclusive to the novels. In the episodes themselves, the Hur'q were mere raiders, escaping with their loot to parts unknown, at least one of which turned out to be in the Gamma Quadrant.

Would these raiders have conducted a brief occupation on the side, too? Possibly. Probably not, or the Klingons would use stronger language to establish this. But getting raided would be a valid reason to go (even more) warriorlike.

As for the dating, the Hur'q supposedly came and went in the 1300s, by which time the Sword of Kahless would have been growing mold. Klingon history writing being what it is, we don't really know when (or if!) Kahless lived, and whether the Klingons were warriors back then - perhaps the famed artifact originally was the Plow of Kahless?

Timo Saloniemi

 

“United” my bad

 

So, besides the Ferengi, is there anything you do like about Star Trek?

 

Wait, the Hurq are actually canon and not just some novel verse stuff?
What episodes are they mentioned in? (I tend to get bored with Klingon episodes, so I really don't know)

 

"THE SWORD OF KAHLESS" is where they are mentioned. Hur'q is Klingon for "outsiders".

 

They are also name-dropped in ENT "Affliction" as high-caliber ancient baddies. And it's unlikely LDS would be able to resist making a reference in the near future.

The idea that they would have

a) occupied Qo'noS and enslaved the Klingons
b) taught their slaves how to go to the stars, for practical reasons, or
c) left behind the secret of star travel when the Klingons drove them away, and
d) been the same folks as the Karsids in Barbara Hambly's popular crossover novel Ishmael

is one of those things the aired stuff leaves well within the realm of possible, and the novels and computer games love to run with. It's just never established on screen, or even suggested.

Romulans never get such ancient arch-enemies in the episodes or movies. Even the novels fail to establish any, despite giving the Klingons a ton of those (Kinshaya, say). Presumably Romulus just got lucky and never attracted any attention. Or then the Romulans, when leaving Vulcan, very carefully selected their new home so that everybody else would turn away in disgust long before coming to sensor let alone phaser range.

Timo Saloniemi

 

One thing I would love to know about the Romulans...

What 'matters more urgent' kept their attention for decades before appearing again in "The Neutral Zone"?

This may sound like a wild theory, but I wonder if they were keeping a terrible enemy back from the rest of the galaxy. Essentially doing us all a favor.

And the reason they don't boast about their altruistic deed is because in doing so, it pretty well crippled their empire and lost a lot of resources, and needed to focus on getting back up to snuff. Given their secretive nature, Romulans certainly wouldn't want to appear weakened, even if they did do the galaxy a favor.

Maybe they took some of the unknown aliens' technology and reverse engineered it, which would explain why their ships use artificial gravity wells as a warp core. (I'm not sure we encountered another species that used this type of power source for ships.)

I feel like there could be a great series set in that lost era, but from the Romulans' point of view.

 

Might have been the Borg or Borg incursions. After all it was the Borg who were scooping up Romulan and Federation outposts along the neutral zone in season 1, so the Romulans might have been fighting Borg advances into the far end of their Empire.
Or they might have just gone through an era of isolation, like Japan had them at some points in their history and their attention was solely/primarily turned inward for a time, maybe they focused on research and experiments into forbidden/dangerous technology, and/or perhaps they had rebellions to put down, maybe even a civil war. A lot of civilian Romulans sure seem fed up with their brutal and secretive government by the time frame of the later seasons of TNG so maybe there has been an unsuccessful revolution/civil war that occupied the Empires attention that we have never heard of.

 

Yeah, that’s an interesting period. I like your alien threat idea. Why should the Federation be the ones dealing with these things exclusively? Maybe the secretive Romulans had a massive story there we just never knew about. Certainly would have to be significant to keep them quiet so so long. What would you make the threat aliens be like?

I don’t like the idea of the Borg. One, I’d like the variety of someone new, but also Two, the Borg incursions that both the Romulans and the Federation were experiencing on their outposts seemed new and alarming to both.

My thoughts on what kept them away were more internally based. The Romulans physically look pretty different, and their ships are very different, after they open up again, so I imagined a massive civil/ethnic war.

 

I also prefer it not to be the Borg, pretty much for your stated reasons.

Interesting idea about civil unrest. It is certainly plausible, given their society.

 

“Conspiracy” aliens?

I like the idea of a zone of spacetime itself becoming hostile…cosmological defects like textures coming out of it on occasion

 

I would chalk that up to not being in enough serial shows to be allowed by the narrative to win. In TNG they needed to lose because the action had to be wrapped up every episode. And they were smart enough to trick the Federation into not developing cloaks.

Paranoid doesn’t mean stupid. Just rationally scared of being accused of disloyalty.

 

Did they get the Federation to sign that treaty the same way Radar tricked Henry Blake into signing R&R forms or whatever Hawkeye and company needed for their latest scheme?

 

I always felt the Romulans lost most of their "devilishly clever mind-games" role to the Cardassians and that they should have been portrayed pretty much as Deep Space Nine developed the spoonheads.

However, this line confuses me. The Romulans are the IRRATIONAL Vulcans as their hat.

The Federation signed it I imagine because they're obsessive about not being proactively aggressive.

 

What about the Husnock having been the Hurq?
Would also make some sense as there was no living being and no corpses inside their "museum" with the sword of Kahless

 

I'm too invested in the Star Trek Online story playthroughs I watch on Youtube to buy that.

 

I doubt it because it seems the Hur'q were from the Gamma Quadrant and retreated there after their defeat by the Klingons.

Mind you, unlike ST:O, I had the view that the Klingons only faced like a tiny single bunch of pirates and were overly self-congratulatory.

 

That the Hur'q would be "from" Gamma is not really established. They had a stash there, though - so either they knew of the Bajoran wormhole, or had the means to travel across great distances in relatively short time. But if the latter, why would their Klingon-loot stash be so close to the Gamma end of the Bajoran wormhole that a runabout could reach it? Sheer coincidence sounds implausible.

Kor loves to boast that their find (a Vulcan find, really) is the very nest of the Hur'q, but nothing seems to support his rantings. The Vulcans weren't in the shielded chamber, so Kor declaring it the Central Museum isn't particularly convincing. And how come the only piece of loot not re-looted is the Klingon artifact they are looking for? Heck, the story ends with the Klingons placing the sword in the chamber. Perhaps the same scene played out a couple of years earlier, with some of the first Klingons to go through the wormhole hiding the sword in the Gamma Quadrant so that other Klingons wouldn't get to it; all the Hur'q cues relate to the sword, after all, and not to the planet or its caves.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I like your version better, it reflects how real life events can become much more epic in scope once they enter mythical tradition.