So this is nice and Spoiler-ific, If you haven't read Warpath yet, just go read it already! I know I'm coming in late to the game...
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Okay so I've finally read Warpath and read through the original 9 page thread regarding Warpath and, for the most part, I think I've got everything we're supposed to know so far, regarding Kira, the Intendent, RU Illiana Ghemor, and MU Illiana Ghemor. But I really hope there's going to be a lot more elucidation about what's really going on when Fearful Symmetry comes out. Because as things stand they still seem (although cool) a bit crazy and convoluted. (kinda like the last 2 matrix movies, only better.)
...and don't even get me started on trying to suss out what all of Kira's orb-y coma visions mean, that a a-whole-nother can of gagh.
Let me see if I've got this straight:
RU Illiana Ghemor
Gifted and privileged Cardassian girl decides to join the Obsidian Order against her parent's wishes. She does join the Obsidian Order, becomes an agent around 2361 during the Bajoran Occupation. She's trained, altered to look Bajoran, stripped of her identity even, and is inserted on Bajor in order to infltrate the Bajoran Resistance movement. Now apparently she just happens to look exactly like Kira Nerys, OR Kira was specifically chosen by the Order to be replaced by Illiana (ala Raymond Boone) because of their coincidentally identical appearance. Or something else entirely. The switch either did or didn't happen.
One of the original intentions of the writers was to suppose that apparently it did happen, and that the Kira we know and love was born Illiana Ghemor. So if the current authors go that route then they are positing that the now crazy RU Illiana was in actuality born the real Kira Nerys (SEE: "The Case of Seymour Skinner & Armin Tamzarian" or "Xander Crews/Nearl Crews) I really hope they don't decide to go that route as it would make things even more convoluted, just too Shyamalan-eque wacky, and might cause the ol' brain to melt...
ANYway, assuming RU Illiana didn't replace Kira, she somehow became involved in the machinations of Skrain Dukat perhaps because she looked a bit like his beloved old comfort woman Kira Meru or because she looked EXACTLY like the mysterious comfort woman Luma Rahl who disappeared 15 years earlier in 2346. Or maybe because Dukat had a long time enmity against the Obsidian Order found out somehow about their connection to this familiar looking woman and wanted to exact revenge. Maybe all of the above! Maybe he saw her somewhere, incorrectly recognized her as Luma Rahl, and assumed correctly that she was an O.O. agent by connecting the wrong dots to make the right picture!
The mind spins and boggles! Maybe this is why Dukat's so obsessed with messing with Kira's head!
ANYway, RU Illiana's got crazy good training, she's undercover, maybe doesn't even know herself, apparently she somehow gets betrayed by Dukat and then she goes all Jason Bourne, but not for like 15 more years...
So RU rogue O.O. agent Illiana Ghemor is in hiding, plotting and scheming, (or hell, maybe on ice in some stasis chamber in Dukat's basement since he "knows where she is",) has an idea to subvert the will of the obedience-trained Jem Hadar to fulfill her ominous bidding, then decides to make a secret lab and dissect a couple JH's to see how they work.
Somehow she figures out how to turn Taranatar into an RC car, and through him gets access to info about the Mirror Universe and the Intendant and *ding* has a light bulb.
Instead of replacing the "Darling-of-DS9 Kira" she's going to replace the upwardly mobile Intendant of the MU Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. Not only THAT but she uses the RC Taranatar to kill "DS9Darling Kira" before rendezvousing to jaunt off to the the MU in order to kill the Intendent Kira, whom she was also manipulating from a whole different universe! Right? whew...
Why does she do all this? I don't know. Maybe her brain's all swiss-cheesed and despite her amazing training and Obsidian Order skills she thinks she really is Kira Nerys and There Can Be Only One. Why does she blow the hell out of Sidau in order to get Hovath and his pretty magic bracelet? ::shrugs:: Maybe she wants to take her new fleet dimension-hopping, via the bracelet & the MU wormhole, and get all Jet Li style on the multiverse. (SEE: "The One" and hey! Recurring villain for the Myriad Universes stories!) But how did she manipulate the Intendant into creating a new dimensional transporter to bring her and Taranatar over? And for that matter how did she even contact the intendant's Vulcan hand-maiden, L'haan, to conspire with her? Stories to tell! Oy vey! Now I see why she was scheming for 15 years in exiled darkness...
Which brings us to our lovely...
MU Illiana, a crazy badass Cardassian ronin, how does she become aware of any of these plans? How does she end up in the RU? Who has put a price on her head, the RU Illiana? Have they met, how do they know each other? How does she know so much about the schemes, nature, and past of her counterpart in the RU? Did crazy RU Illiana contact her in hope of some alliance, now turned sour? The mind reels, oh how it reels!
This is why I'm chomping at the bit for Fearful Symmetry! I really hope the true story of all of this stuff is revealed. Because not a lick of it was answered in "Saturn's Children". Needless to say I'm excited for the new book. Maybe Shards and Shadows will have some spiffy connections to the epic too, because lord knows there's a lot going on...
Did anyone else take any of this from what they read?