Difference between revisions of "Elraim Dalsur"


m
m
Line 18: Line 18:
 
|Rank={{Lieutenant|yellow}}
 
|Rank={{Lieutenant|yellow}}
 
|Played By=[[User:Sanchez|Matt]]
 
|Played By=[[User:Sanchez|Matt]]
}}{{workinprogress}}
+
}}
 
'''Lieutenant Dalsur''' is a serving [[Starfleet]] officer and former officer of the [[Cardassian Union#Military|Cardassian military]], currently serving as chief operations officer of the {{USS|Olympus}}. He holds a dual citizenship of both the [[Cardassian Union]] and the [[United Federation of Planets]], but has not returned to his homeworld since his decision to leave the Seventh Order and enlist in Starfleet.
 
'''Lieutenant Dalsur''' is a serving [[Starfleet]] officer and former officer of the [[Cardassian Union#Military|Cardassian military]], currently serving as chief operations officer of the {{USS|Olympus}}. He holds a dual citizenship of both the [[Cardassian Union]] and the [[United Federation of Planets]], but has not returned to his homeworld since his decision to leave the Seventh Order and enlist in Starfleet.
  
Line 52: Line 52:
 
Eventually, Dalsur was able to gain enough trust from Starfleet to be offered a senior position aboard a starship - though again one whose specifications were already known to the Cardassian military - as he was offered the post of chief operations officer aboard the {{Class|Nebula}} {{USS|Olympus}}. Along with his recently-gained rank of full lieutenant, Dalsur was amazed at the progression he had been able to make in just seven short years after his graduation, and gratefully accepted the position.
 
Eventually, Dalsur was able to gain enough trust from Starfleet to be offered a senior position aboard a starship - though again one whose specifications were already known to the Cardassian military - as he was offered the post of chief operations officer aboard the {{Class|Nebula}} {{USS|Olympus}}. Along with his recently-gained rank of full lieutenant, Dalsur was amazed at the progression he had been able to make in just seven short years after his graduation, and gratefully accepted the position.
  
== Personal Life ==
+
== Personal Life & Traits ==
Information and history of their personal life
+
Whilst serving with the Cardassian military, Dalsur did as all his fellow Cardassians who sought a more lofty position did; he accumulated 'contacts'. The vast majority of them could hardly be called friends, but Cardassian culture had made an art form out of creating a multitude of hidden acquaintances who owed favours, and it was always through the accumulation of these favours that one progressed up the ranks and out of the junior officers cadre. However, since his decision to leave the Cardassian Union for Starfleet, Dalsur has not been in touch with many, and has found it far more difficult to make new acquaintances - friends or otherwise. Intellectually, he knows that this can be put down to a simple matter of cultural differences, however at times he has been moderately distressed at his inability to make new friendships, regardless of his best attempts.
 +
 
 +
Whilst on duty, Dalsur's attitude to work is just as would be expected of any Cardassian officer; he follows his orders and he works diligently to ensure that all of his tasks are completed as efficiently and conclusively as they can be, often working to improve the way that he works or that the system stores or processes data whilst he is at it.
 +
 
 +
Before he left Cardassia, Dalsur's goal in life was to rise in ranks to attain the much-coveted title of Gul; able to command his own vessel or station, and serve his Cardassia as he saw best with the minimal of oversight from above - the first such position in the hierarchy of the Union where such a thing was true. However, since experiencing what he saw as the decline in Cardassian society even after the end of the War, his focus shifted elsewhere. Today, his sole true ambition is to be able to return to a stable Cardassia; one which didn't want to bully and elbow out of the way any who did not agree with the authoritarian concepts of the Central Command of old.
 +
 
 +
In his spare time, Dalsur enjoys reading up about starship specifications, though has been careful to keep his perusal through the specs of Federation starships since joining Starfleet to those which are rather widely known, or which his position granted him a direct need-to-know. Whether the concept is true or not - and Dalsur suspects that both cases are true amongst Starfleet Command when it came down to him - Dalsur believes that Starfleet is still highly suspicious of a Cardassian serving amongst their officers, especially one who served against them during the war. He also enjoys good literature, though he hasn't been a frequent user of holographic novels.
  
 
== Personal Relationships ==
 
== Personal Relationships ==

Revision as of 20:28, 8 December 2012

{{{name}}}
Basic information
Assignment


Lieutenant Dalsur is a serving Starfleet officer and former officer of the Cardassian military, currently serving as chief operations officer of the USS Olympus. He holds a dual citizenship of both the Cardassian Union and the United Federation of Planets, but has not returned to his homeworld since his decision to leave the Seventh Order and enlist in Starfleet.

History

Childhood & Cardassian Service

Born in the waning period of what has been described as Cardassia's golden era, Dalsur entered into the same educational program as every other Cardassian child at the age of three, being tutored in a variety of subjects, and trained to maintain a photographic memory, as well as the ability to shield his thoughts from invasive telepathic intrusion. The young boy barely understood the reasons for all of this, but nevertheless entered into the training and his studies willingly, believing as most Cardassians did that the state could do no wrong. Later, this belief was reinforced by what he later mockingly described as a "healthy fear of the all-seeing eyes in the Obsidian Order".

As Dalsur grew older, he was able to witness a change in the Union; first, peace with the Federation and the creation of the Demilitarised Zone, along with all of the mixed feelings of resentment that such a treaty caused amongst the people back home on Cardassia. Then, he witnessed the Cardassian dissident movement rise up in the wake of the destruction of the Obsidian Order, and lived through his teenage years under almost constant threat from the Klingon Empire, who were under the belief that the Detapa Council was under the control of Changelings from the Gamma Quadrant. As Dalsur watched the pride and the infrastructure of the Cardassian Union be gradually destroyed by the Klingons, his thoughts focussed around the time when he would become old enough to join the Cardassian military and help defend the state which he had been brought up to love from birth.

Dalsur finally got his wish to serve when he turned 18, though by that time, the Cardassian Union had entered into the Dominion, and was turning the tide of the new war. Entering into service at the lowest officer rank of Dalin, Dalsur served as an operations officer aboard ships within the Seventh Order, responsible for all ship power allocations, record keeping and a multitude of other administrative tasks between himself and the others within his department. After the standard year, he was promoted in rank to Dal.

Throughout his military service - and particularly the final year of the war - Dalsur became less and less enamoured with their new leaders, as he saw how time and again the Vorta pushed the Cardassians aside, or ordered them to needless deaths where lives could be saved. He also saw the needless brutality of the Jem'Hadar towards not only prisoners of war, but also towards his fellow Cardassians, and his blood boiled at the thought of his species becoming second-class citizens on their own homeworld, and by the time the Federation Alliance was closing in on Cardassia Prime, he had begun to strongly consider defecting.

Having not decided whether to follow through with his radical action, or even how he could have done if he did decide to defect, Dalsur was still serving aboard a Cardassian starship when the Federation engaged the Dominion forces in the Battle of Cardassia. After word of the bombing in Lakarian City reached the battle group, Dalsur willingly followed his Gul's orders to begin firing on the Dominion ships and change sides.

Following the signing of the Treaty of Bajor, Cardassian society entered an unprecedented phase of anarchy, with no centralising governing body - civilian or military - to unify the people and give orders. Individual Guls began to make use of their own ship personnel in order to maintain order on the capital and to begin recovery efforts, and Dalsur was one of the officers sent to the former Dominion headquarters to try and assist the divergent teams in re-attaining control over the key facility, which several Guls had realised would be required to help restore order to the Cardassian military. Unfortunately, much of the efforts of Dalsur and his fellow Cardassians were conflicting, and ultimately only proved to be a small help, as Starfleet was ultimately responsible for restoring power to Cardassia and enabling the running of the remaining infrastructure.

The Federation's occupation of Cardassia began almost immediately, but Dalsur couldn't help but notice just how different the experience was to the reports that he had heard of the occupation of Bajor, which ended whilst he was still young. The Federation limited itself to reconstruction efforts and caring for the injured and homeless. Their occupation government was minimal; mostly consisting of Starfleet officers and a few civilians whose only purpose seemed to Dalsur to be administrators, trying to find individuals within the Cardassian populace who could form a Cardassian government independent of the Federation, since the death of Legate Damar had left a rift of power, and the Federation was loath to simply hand control of the Cardassian economy over to the surviving Legates of the power that had only recently been their enemy.

Eventually, a democratic vote took place, and in 2376 the Reunionist party was elected to power under former Gul Gerim Ertal. Dalsur didn't know Ertal personally - not by any stretch - but he knew that the new Castellan of the Cardassian Union had been on Cardassia when Damar had begun his civilian revolution, and was directly part of the effort which disrupted power on the homeworld, causing the Dominion to lose contact with their ships. Ertal reformed the Detapa Council, and established it as the over-ruling civilian authority of the Union, and began work on reforming the various ministries and orders necessary to run the Cardassian government. The Federation's running of the election and their immediate willingness to step back from any area of governance that Ertal's government requested taught Dalsur more about them than he could have ever learnt in Cardassian schools or working on Cardassian vessels, and his respect of them was greatly increased.

Throughout the following two years, Dalsur continued to do whatever was requested of him in the rebuilding of Cardassia, but had to put up with the almost continuous discontent of some of his fellow officers, who had evidently supported the Directorate party in the election, and despised the fact that the civilian authority was overriding that of the new Central Command. Dalsur seemed to hear no end of opinions on how poorly the Detapa Council was running the reconstruction efforts, and how much better an authoritarian military command could do the job. When three of his crew mates were involved in the first assassination attempt on Castellan Ertal's life in 2378, Dalsur decided he had had enough. Knowing that doing so would likely take him away from the Cardassia that he still loved, Dalsur resigned his commission and applied for Federation citizenship and acceptance into Starfleet Academy.

He didn't tell any of his colleagues or friends of his decision until he was boarding the transport - a relief freighter making a return run for more materials from the Federation. He knew that they wouldn't understand his decision, and in truth he didn't fully understand it himself. All he knew was that he could no longer serve with men who would return Cardassia to the same state that had caused its decline, and he knew that he would never be able to rise to a position where he would be powerful enough to do anything about it. Becoming a Gul took years of dedication, and by then Dalsur didn't know if there would be much of Cardassia left to help. Not if the lawful government was opposed simply for being.

Starfleet Career

Starfleet took a long time to decide upon his acceptance to Starfleet Academy, and by the time his acceptance - as well as that of becoming a provisional Federation citizen - came through to him after he was already in Federation space, though he had encountered a few issues with security checkpoints along the way. He knew that the Federation had been severely damaged during the war as well - some of that damage being dealt by ships that he had served upon - and he accepted their general mistrust of him as a given from the start. Enrolling as a first year Cadet, Dalsur found the lessons that would challenge most cadets to be fairly simple affairs - afterall, he had served in the Cardassian military for four years as an operations officer. It was the cultural aspects that Dalsur found it difficult to adapt to. Life on Earth was very different from life on Cardassia; every political decision was not only debated during the discussion process, but even after it was announced. The Federation's legal system failed to issue a sentence or even a verdict until the end of a trial, which were all considerably more lengthy than Cardassian trials, and they weren't even broadcasted live to the population. It took a long time for him to learn that concept of "innocent until proven guilty", but even with understanding he maintained the belief that the Cardassian system was far more effective, though it required an undeniable belief in the actions of the state - something which most Federation citizens did not possess.

After his graduation from the Academy, Dalsur was assigned as an ensign aboard the USS Courageous, an Excelsior-Refit-class vessel, whose specifications Dalsur was aware of for the most part from his days with the Cardassian military. The newly minted Ensign believed that it was most likely due to ongoing distrust of him, as he knew that there were several more advanced starships seeking operations officers at the time of his posting. At least, he would still be suspicious, was he the officer in control of his assignments.

Dalsur's struggle to adapt to Federation life continued, but did not come in the way of his duties very often as he performed them, and mostly culminated in disagreements over cultural differences amongst himself and his colleagues. A large number of the officers he served with resented him for having served with the Cardassian military during the war; though Dalsur found it both curious and interesting that there were no readily identifiable pattern to those who did display this resentment and those who didn't. Both the young and the experienced displayed it, regardless of service during the war, and yet individuals from both groups also held the view that he was simply a small cog in the larger war machine. Dalsur knew he would have to accept some amount of resentment from his former enemies, but had not been prepared for shows of compassion from individuals whom his own countrymen had likely caused a great deal of hurt and suffering. The Federation, he decided, were a perplexing people, if an interesting one.

Eventually, Dalsur was able to gain enough trust from Starfleet to be offered a senior position aboard a starship - though again one whose specifications were already known to the Cardassian military - as he was offered the post of chief operations officer aboard the Nebula-class USS Olympus. Along with his recently-gained rank of full lieutenant, Dalsur was amazed at the progression he had been able to make in just seven short years after his graduation, and gratefully accepted the position.

Personal Life & Traits

Whilst serving with the Cardassian military, Dalsur did as all his fellow Cardassians who sought a more lofty position did; he accumulated 'contacts'. The vast majority of them could hardly be called friends, but Cardassian culture had made an art form out of creating a multitude of hidden acquaintances who owed favours, and it was always through the accumulation of these favours that one progressed up the ranks and out of the junior officers cadre. However, since his decision to leave the Cardassian Union for Starfleet, Dalsur has not been in touch with many, and has found it far more difficult to make new acquaintances - friends or otherwise. Intellectually, he knows that this can be put down to a simple matter of cultural differences, however at times he has been moderately distressed at his inability to make new friendships, regardless of his best attempts.

Whilst on duty, Dalsur's attitude to work is just as would be expected of any Cardassian officer; he follows his orders and he works diligently to ensure that all of his tasks are completed as efficiently and conclusively as they can be, often working to improve the way that he works or that the system stores or processes data whilst he is at it.

Before he left Cardassia, Dalsur's goal in life was to rise in ranks to attain the much-coveted title of Gul; able to command his own vessel or station, and serve his Cardassia as he saw best with the minimal of oversight from above - the first such position in the hierarchy of the Union where such a thing was true. However, since experiencing what he saw as the decline in Cardassian society even after the end of the War, his focus shifted elsewhere. Today, his sole true ambition is to be able to return to a stable Cardassia; one which didn't want to bully and elbow out of the way any who did not agree with the authoritarian concepts of the Central Command of old.

In his spare time, Dalsur enjoys reading up about starship specifications, though has been careful to keep his perusal through the specs of Federation starships since joining Starfleet to those which are rather widely known, or which his position granted him a direct need-to-know. Whether the concept is true or not - and Dalsur suspects that both cases are true amongst Starfleet Command when it came down to him - Dalsur believes that Starfleet is still highly suspicious of a Cardassian serving amongst their officers, especially one who served against them during the war. He also enjoys good literature, though he hasn't been a frequent user of holographic novels.

Personal Relationships

Whilst serving with the Cardassian military, Dalsur did as all his fellow Cardassians who sought a more lofty position did; he accumulated 'contacts'. The vast majority of them could hardly be called friends, but Cardassian culture had made an art form out of creating a multitude of hidden acquaintances who owed favours, and it was always through the accumulation of these favours that one progressed up the ranks and out of the junior officers cadre. However, since his decision to leave the Cardassian Union for Starfleet, Dalsur has not been in touch with many, and has found it far more difficult to make new acquaintances - friends or otherwise. Intellectually, he knows that this can be put down to a simple matter of cultural differences, however at times he has been moderately distressed at his inability to make new friendships, regardless of his best attempts.

Family

Like all Cardassians, Dalsur holds his family very close to his heart, and is distressed at not having seen them for much of the time he has been serving Starfleet. His only surviving family members now are his father, Nemon, and his mother, Tekala Dalsur. Both used to life in the family's ancestral home in Lakarian City until it was bombed by the Jem'Hadar - Dalsur's grandfather still inside. Tekala reglarly pleads in her messages to him to return to Cardassia and rejoin his people, with the hopes of finding him a wife in order to continue the family line, as their only remaining son.

Dalsur's only brother, Skrain, was killed by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey during the brief Klingon-Cardassian War that preceded the conflict with the Dominion.

Chronology

Year Placement Rank Assignment
2374-2375 Cardassian Seventh Order
CARD-o1.png
Dalin
Operations Officer
2375-2378 Cardassian Seventh Order
CARD-o2.png
Dal
Operations Officer
2378 Starfleet Academy
Y-c1.png
Cadet
Cadet
2379 Starfleet Academy
Y-c2.png
Cadet
Cadet
2380 Starfleet Academy
Y-c3.png
Cadet
Cadet
2381 Starfleet Academy
Y-c4.png
Cadet
Cadet
2382-2384 USS Courageous
Y-o1.png
Ensign
Operations Officer
2384-2388 USS Orinoco
Y-o2.png
Lieutenant JG
Assistant Chief Operations Officer
2388-2389 USS Orinoco
Y-o3.png
Lieutenant
Assistant Chief Operations Officer
2389-Present USS Olympus
Y-o3.png
Lieutenant
Chief Operations Officer


Preceded by:
Unspecified
Chief Operations Officer of USS Olympus
2389 – Present
Succeeded by:
Incumbent