Think it's very likely that the thing with Vadic's hand was about a changeling drawing her blood to hide it's state in case of some blood tests...
I'm tired. I saw the title and my mind went.. "Legendary Item. Binds on pickup. +4 to dexterity. Grants the user quantum entangled communication with the person of their choice to be named at binding."
Someone on here the other day said they thought the voice of Vadic's handler sounded like Michael Dorn, and immediately my own tired brain supplied "The Hand of Dorn? Sounds like a Star Wars novel..."
Also, an infant Changeling once transformed Odo into a Changeling again by absorbing itself into his body, but it had also been dying at the time, so it is unknown how this would have normally affected the 'giver'. Could Vadic have been a solid who was willingly or unwillingly converted into a Changeling?
I've wondered whether Vadic and her crew are meant to be new "servant species" engineered by these renegade Changelings? That she's a variant of the Vorta, and her crew are a variation of the Jem'Hadar.
Terry Matalas just revealed what Vadic is: Vadic and all the crew of the Shrike are the renegade Changelings. The hand thing is differently odd. So Vadic is a changeling and cuts off part of herself to form a separate changeling that allows her to communicate with the boss of the renegade changelings?
That's, uh... a particularly bizarre choice to make, then. In all honesty the changeling hand thing would have made a helluva lot more sense, considering the way that entire scene was written and portrayed.
Yeah, that's how I viewed it too. It might be these rogue Changelings aren't connected to the Great Link and have suffered physical changes as a result, but that's not how the hand scene came across to me. I wondered if the "hand" is sort of like a watcher, as the Shadows had such parasitic spies in Babylon 5. They were normally invisible and could inflict severe pain on a host if the person refused instructions, but could be weakened temporarily by drinking lots of booze.
I don't have a problem with having them portray these renegade Changelings differently from what we're used to seeing. But yes, the context of the scenes with them make little sense in this regard. If nobody even knows who they are anyway, why do these Changelings even need to look like a cackling woman with veins on her face & smoking cigars, and chirping bird people? Who exactly do they need to fool, and why?
My assumption after watching the episode was that Vadic was a changeling, and that cutting off her hand allowed her changeling matter to interact with the machine it was deposited on for the communication. I guess they need humanoid bodies to operate the ship, and I can buy that the Vadic changeling is unhinged, but the rest does seem unnecessary.
Well honestly, if they wanted kewl they shoulda just given us the uber-powered Enterprise-D with THREE NACELLES!!1!1!