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[Guide] - The Borg

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Kiflin, Thu 09 Jun, 2022 10:12 AM
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     –  Last edited by Nesta; Tue 12 Dec, 2023 5:22 PM.
    The Borg Collective
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    When the first starships of United Earth slipped the boundaries of the solar system into the infinite universe that lay beyond, they did so with a singular but far-reaching mission: to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no one had gone before. This mandate would continue, expand, and flourish under the United Federation of Planets. But the Final Frontier was not always a peaceful one.

    Conflicts with the Xindi, the Romulans, and the Klingons left millions dead on both sides and imparted a necessary lesson: the galaxy is not safe. It is wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it is not for the timid. Yet, in confronting each adversary and rival, there existed, even in the darkest moments, the potential for a greater understanding and lasting peace. It could never have been imagined that waiting in the darkest corners of the galaxy, was the ultimate user. A force against which the ideals of the Federation were rendered meaningless. Within its domain, there was no life, no civilisation, only the deafening silence of a thousand extinguished worlds, reformed, repurposed, into a single terrible voice. A vast consciousness that named itself the Borg and declared that Resistance is Futile.

    Overview
    The Borg are a vast consciousness, untold trillions of formerly sentient beings from a multitude of different species whose individuality has been forcibly subsumed and assimilated into a gestalt intelligence or “Hive Mind”. The Borg functions as a singular entity, with no discernable separation between the Collective and the myriad of lifeforms that constitute it. By every conventional understanding, it has no government, no culture, no religion, or ideology. Their overriding directive is often described by those who have studied them as the pursuit of “perfection”, but no explanation, no matter how thorough, can fully articulate the nature of the Collective’s motivations. An individual mind is incapable of comprehending or conveying the subtle essence of the Borg, for their implacable drive transcends the familiar motives and desires characteristic of natural life.

    At their height, the Borg Collective was likely the most powerful civilisation in its native galaxy, exceeded only by those few species whose capabilities transcended natural reality. It had assimilated tens of thousands of species, controlled a large swath of what Starfleet labelled the “Delta Quadrant” of the galaxy, and integrated enormously advanced technology into every level of its unique society. Conflicts with other civilisations, the United Federation of Planets in particular, are believed to have devastated the Borg, and their current status as of the early years of the 25th Century, remains largely unknown.

    Biology and Assimilation
    The Borg almost certainly evolved from a single progenitor species, but having assimilated so many others across their history, the Collective is no longer tied to any single biological or technological lineage. At least ten thousand species are believed to have been incorporated into the Borg. Humanoid life is often favoured by the Collective, but they have also shown no hesitation in assimilating a diverse array of life, including those exhibiting more extraordinary biological features.

    The process of assimilation typically begins with the injection of nanoprobes and stabilising metals into the host’s bloodstream. These quickly begin to override native cell functions and reconfigure neural pathways. The effects of the process first manifest as skin mottling as the flow of blood within the capillaries is disrupted. Eventually, though usually within a few hours, Borg nanoprobes construct rudimentary implants and other structures that penetrate through the outer layers of skin, flesh, and bone. Higher brain functionality is subordinated and the host becomes integrated into the greater Hive Mind. The individual consciousness of the host is suppressed, and its physical form is now a drone within the Borg Collective.

    Once the initial phases of assimilation have been completed, additional cybernetic implants are incorporated depending on the function the drone is expected to fulfil. The nature of these implants varies significantly, with more specialised drones sometimes having body parts amputated and replaced with additional implants as required.

    The role of a drone within the Collective is determined by a number of factors and can be altered over time, though certain assimilated species have been disproportionately utilised for specific duties. By this point in the assimilation process, the host’s natural life signs will be almost impossible to discern through most methods and even its native species might be difficult to identify depending on the extent of its modifications.

    The assimilation process is complete once the drone has been given a numerical designation in the form of a sequential identifier, for example, Three of Five or Seven of Nine. The first number of a drone’s designation indicates its position within an assigned subgroup, while the second represents the total number of drones within that particular unit. Fully assimilated drones gain enhanced capabilities from their cybernetic implants and genetic modifications, yet also operate under specific constraints.

    They can function for extended periods without shelter, food, water, or atmosphere, and require only a supply of energy to maintain their implants which in turn maintain biological functions. They can perceive the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum, individual molecules, and even the geometry of multi-dimensional space-time. Natural systems in the body have been reinforced and strengthened, while armoured plating makes them impervious to many different forms of blunt trauma. Compared to most species in the galaxy, Borg drones possess superior strength and resilience.

    The energy required to keep a drone functioning is typically provided by special “regeneration alcoves” though a variety of other methods might be utilised in special situations. Alcoves additionally can be used to repair even major damage to a drone’s body far more thoroughly than a drone’s own nanoprobe supply. Drones can function for 200 hours without regenerating but must shut down all their nonessential bodily systems while the process is taking place. A Borg drone undergoing regeneration might appear asleep or unconscious, its individual life signs indistinguishable from its alcove.

    Common functionalities of Borg drones also include neural transceivers that keep them linked to the hive mind, personal protective force fields, and cortical and neural processors. These latter devices are necessary to rapidly intake visual information and seamlessly process what would otherwise be overwhelming instruction and data from the hive mind. Assimilation tubules are also ubiquitous, with any Borg drone capable of assimilating biological lifeforms and local technology. A single drone, in the absence of external interference, is capable of assimilating entire starships or similarly complex systems.

    The Collective
    Without any concept of individuality, the Borg function within a single entity. This resulting Collective, the vast hive mind administering the Borg Civilisation, facilitates remarkable efficiency in both decision-making and execution. Every drone functions as both a vessel of labour and a component of the Collective’s enormous computational network, endlessly processing and disseminating information. Each Borg drone may concurrently engage in a diverse array of tasks spanning the entire hierarchy of the Collective’s needs—from local, immediate concerns relative only to that single drone, to complex, large-scale endeavours that address the strategic objectives of their entire civilisation.

    The enormous computational power derived from its drones, allows the Borg to execute a nearly limitless number of tasks or calculations simultaneously. When presented with a challenge, the Collective is able to consider and analyse every conceivable course of action, integrating not just factual data, but the vast repository of experiences accumulated from each individual and each civilisation that has been assimilated. The integration of diverse perspectives, without the weakness typically present in hierarchical organisations, ensures a level of accuracy and precision in the decision-making process without equal in the known galaxy. Even decisions that might be deemed unthinkable by other species, with profound and far-reaching consequences, can be made without emotion, ego, or bias.

    When interacting with other civilisations or external forces the Collective is capable of conducting warfare, territorial expansion, and even diplomacy at an extremely high level of proficiency. They can utilise psychological manipulation and strategic deception, and exhibit a foresight in both spatial and temporal dimensions, pursuing objectives that might be unrecognisable to species with a more limited perspective.

    The Borg Queen
    Existing almost paradoxically within the Collective is a single Queen. She embodies the Borg’s uniformity, yet represents a distinct anomaly in their otherwise indistinguishable mass. Though the Queen can take physical form, often in a drone equipped with superior augmentations, this entity is instead an expression of the Collective itself, neither an individual nor the hive mind and yet both. She commands the Borg as a distinct element, yet is also seamlessly intertwined into the Collective’s consciousness, a relationship impossible for those outside the Borg to fully grasp. Her role in practical terms is more akin to a central processor or nexus from which flows the commands necessary to the functioning of the Borg. The Queen even possessed a limited transdimensional awareness, bridging into adjacent realities and timelines.

    The remaining Borg are divided into a number of subdivisions designated a numbered “Unimatrix”. These are further separated into trimatrices and octants, acting as massive clusters of computational power, nodes in the larger collective, subnets, or even entities that might be considered roughly analogous with data centres or server farms.

    Minor Borg Collectives
    Drones can be separated from the Collective in a multitude of ways, but in each instance, will become confused, listless, or even violent. Borg assimilated at an early age, who only briefly existed outside the hive mind are particularly affected by isolation in this manner. Should a large enough number of Borg be severed from the hive mind, they may attempt to create an ad-hoc collective among themselves, mimicking the subsidiary unimatrixes or other units that exist within the Collective proper.

    While these minor, external collectives lack raw processing power they are a method of keeping even a sizable population of Borg drones cohesive and integrated until contact can be re-established. They are more susceptible to manipulation, however. Without the guidance of the Queen, there remains the possibility for others to assume its place.

    Borg Philosophy
    Borg philosophy, to the extent such a concept can be applied to the Collective, is based on achieving a state of “perfection”, both for themselves, and all life. This is advanced in practice mainly by assimilating individuals, ships, planets, or entire civilisations. The best qualities and traits of each entity, their biological and technological distinctiveness, can be adapted to serve the whole of the Collective. Any weaknesses are expunged.

    This is done without any moral consideration; the Borg do not inflict undue pain and suffering, but will not hesitate to do so when such actions are in their interest.The idea that other species may not wish to be assimilated, that they value their individuality over the concept of shared perfection, is a foreign concept to the Borg. Within the Collective, the benefits of assimilation and the advantages it presents over individuality, are as incontrovertible as a mathematical equation.

    While they might understand the nature of individuals, they have transcended the ability to comprehend why this might be favourable. In the pursuit of perfection through assimilation, the Borg view resistance as not only futile but a deviation from the optimal order of the universe.

    Borg Military and Conquests
    Borg campaigns to assimilate other species, particularly those with the capacity to mount effective resistance, are executed with an intricate blend of relentless determination and strategic precision. Yet no two species are assimilated using entirely identical methods. Even in conventional invasions, where the target species is besieged by Borg vessels and drones until their defences are overwhelmed, the approach is meticulously tailored to exploit the vulnerabilities unique to each species.

    Sometimes the process is completed in the span of weeks or days, while other species might be studied for centuries, the eventual invasion preceded by clandestine observation, abductions and probing attacks. This more comprehensive evaluation allows them to develop tailored assimilation protocols and strategies that, like their conventional assaults, are finely tuned to the distinctive traits and weaknesses of each species.

    No distinction exists between the civil and military elements of the Borg Collective. Their starships are all-encompassing vessels, able to act as nodes within the collective, assimilation hubs, mobile laboratories or formidable attack craft. The practical, utilitarian approach to starship design adopted by the Borg reflects their philosophy, utilizing basic geometric shapes for each class of vessel they operate. Borg Cubes, some of the largest, most powerful starships utilized by the Collective, embody this seamless integration of civil and military functions.

    Borg History
    The Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy, though neither their homeworld nor their original species is known outside of the Collective itself. It is also unclear whether the emergence of the hive mind was the result of a calculated evolution or a runaway process that overtook whatever form of life they once might have represented.

    Other hypotheses contend a multiple of other potential origins, including a possible connection to the V’Ger probe encountered by the United Federation of Planets during the 2270s. In lieu of any firm evidence, however, these theories remain speculative and are a subject of ongoing debate and research among scholars and scientists within the Federation and beyond.

    Unverified accounts from several ancient species in the Delta Quadrant assert that during Earth’s 15th century, the Borg had assimilated only a handful of star systems in the Delta Quadrant. Their emergence as an interstellar civilisation roughly coincided with the fall of the Vaadwaur, a major power in the region. The resulting power vacuum and political instability may have provided ideal conditions for the Borg’s early expansion, with any potential rivals fragmented or weakened in the wake of the Vaadwuar’s decline.

    Other sources contend that the Borg, or at least their constituent parts, have existed for thousands of centuries. Despite this apparent contradiction, it remains possible that both are true, and that the Collective through the use of time travel or other means, has expanded not only through physical reality but also through time. The very concept of a shared Borg history may represent a flawed, linear perspective of an entity that exists outside of these constraints. Their past, present and future may be interconnected in ways incomprehensible to other species.

    What is beyond speculation is that by the mid-24th century, the Collective had expanded to many thousands of star systems, and assimilated a comparable number of civilisations. Their expansion was facilitated by the use of transwarp technology, enabling the Borg to create a hyper-efficient transit network that eventually extended across the vast reaches of space. Though the Collective’s territory remained firmly rooted in the Delta Quadrant, these transwarp conduits accelerated the Borg’s assimilation process. Its vessels could appear almost anywhere in the galaxy with minimal warning to any local civilisations present.

    First contact with Starfleet was marked by the United Federation of Planets as having occurred in 2265 by the USS Enterprise-D under the command of Jean-Luc Picard. The encounter was provoked by the entity known as “Q”, which had temporarily transported the Enterprise thousands of light years beyond Federation space. The information obtained by Starfleet during this brief but violent meeting provided new context to a series of earlier incidents.

    It confirmed that the Borg had been the catalyst behind the influx of refugees into the Alpha Quadrant, most notably the few survivors of the El-Aurian species. The disappearance of multiple Federation starships and entire colonies on both sides of the Romulan neutral zone was likewise recognized to be the start of a systematic reconnaissance and probing campaign, signalling the Collective’s strategic preparation for a broader invasion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

    In 2366, the Borg conducted a more overt incursion, directing a single Borg Cube through Federation territory on a course for Earth. Among the thousands of Federation citizens assimilated by the Collective during the opening stages of the attack was Captain Picard.

    Locutus of the Borg, the designation given to Picard within the collective, was a unique intermediary in the makeup of the hive-mind, an individual whose role nearly replicated the function and influence of the Borg Queen. With Picard’s knowledge of Starfleet’s defences, Locutus decisively destroyed the main Starfleet defence effort during the Battle of Wolf 359.

    Though the Cube was destroyed and Picard rescued from the Collective, a rare instance in which the assimilation process was able to be reversed, Borg incursions into the Alpha and Beta Quadrants continued sporadically over the next few years. Another major attempt to assimilate the Earth was made in 2373, in this instance utilising time travel to erase the Federation from existence.

    This too was prevented, but resulted in Borg debris and drones being scattered across Earth’s polar ice cap in the year 2063. In a unique instance of a predestination paradox, several of these drones were later recovered in 2153. Upon their reactivation, they successfully transmitted the location of Earth to the Borg Collective in the Delta Quadrant, a message that would take roughly 200 years to arrive.

    United Earth, and later Starfleet Intelligence would suppress this incident, opting to conduct a covert investigation into what was, in their era, an entirely unknown adversary. With this added context, the intervention of Q, 112 years later, might have been an attempt to rectify an imbalance in the timeline, providing to humanity, and in particular Picard, a forewarning equivalent to the information the Collective had received.

    In 2173, just months after the Borg's failed attempt to alter Federation history the Collective successfully breached into fluidic space, an extra-dimensional realm composed of organic matter in the place of stars or celestial bodies. A civilisation located within, designated by the Borg as “Species 8472”, proved entirely immune to assimilation, and inflicted devastating losses after counter-attacking through the breach created by the collective. Hundreds of worlds, thousands of vessels and millions of drones were destroyed in the war before a counter-measure was developed, a victory made possible with the assistance of the USS Voyager, a Starfleet vessel that had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant and had closely observed the conflict’s progression.

    Voyager’s intervention concluded with the rescue of Annika Hansen, designated within the Collective “7 of 9”. Like Picard, her unique experience as a drone within the hive mind would be critical in furthering Starfleet’s understanding of the Borg. Its capabilities weakened, and the Collective suffered another major setback in 2377 when it was discovered that expressions of individuality had resurfaced within a small percentage of drones.

    Through a genetic mutation, these individuals were able to interact with one another when regenerating, creating a virtual reality concealed from the Collective known as Unimatrix 0. The Borg Queen personally managed the dismantling of this reality, but its mere existence revealed that the Collective’s hold over its drones was not absolute.

    Yet the greatest cataclysm to befall the Collective occurred in 2378. Armed with technology and knowledge provided by a future version of Captain Janeway, the USS Voyager was able to destroy a Borg Unicomplex, a pivotal centre of the Collective, and infect the hive-mind with a neurolytic pathogen. This resulted in a cascade effect that devastated the Borg across their transwarp networks and effectively removed them as a galactic power.

    The information below this line is not canon to the Ares Roleplay Storyline - yet

    By the 25th century, the Collective had essentially ceased to exist. Borg starships and other installations were left adrift, scavenged for parts, or meticulously studied and dissected by nations such as the Romulan Free State, committed to replicating Borg technological advancements. The Hive Mind itself had been deeply fragmented and further incursions into the natural flow of time created, in one instance, a rival queen that sought to build its own competing collective.

    In 2401, in a desperate effort to restore the greater Collective, the primary Borg Queen negotiated an alliance with a faction of changelings, similarly displaced following the conclusion of the Dominion War. Through a systemic infiltration effort, Borg nanoprobes were distributed within Starfleet’s transporter network, the prelude to a mass assimilation effort that could be triggered simultaneously across billions of Federation citizens. Vox, another Borg entity modeled on Locutus, and formed from the assimilated body and mind of Picard’s own son, was an instrumental asset as part of this greater effort.

    During 'Frontier Day,' a significant event marking the assembly of the entire Starfleet in orbit of Earth, the Borg initiated this mass assimilation event. Fleet Formation Mode, a radical new technology intended to further integrate Starfleet vessels, was exploited by the Borg to turn Starfleet against itself, with only a scattered few ships able to resist assimilation. One such vessel, the USS Enterprise D, undergoing recovery and restoration, was urgently reactivated and in a daring gamble, successfully severed the connection the Borg had established across Starfleet. The final Cube under the control of the Queen was destroyed, and the last remaining instance of the Primary Collective was extinguished.

    Conclusion
    The galaxy is not safe. It is not for the timid. The Federation will inevitably come into contact with new forces that threaten it, rivals and challengers against which its ideals will be tested. But perhaps the greatest victory it will ever achieve its most profound triumph is that the next generation will never again hear the voice of the Collective, never again hear the words that consigned a thousand civilisations to a fate worse than death;

    We Are The Borg. Resistance is Futile.
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