Ktarian
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Ktarians hail from Ktaris, also known as Ktaria VII, a large planet known throughout the Alpha Quadrant as a popular resort destination. The glaciers in the northern hemisphere offer some of the best year-round skiing conditions to be found anywhere in the known galaxy. The equatorial band boasts several artificial tourist attractions of great renown, including the Singing Waterfall of Dtoki and the Btenken Cloud Lights. Property development in parts of the southern hemisphere is restricted to protect some spectacular architectural ruins from ancient Ktarian civilizations, but enough is permitted to exploit their value as interstellar vacation destinations.
Physiology
Ktarians are a humanoid species that have pronounced raised hemispheres in their forehead. These are bony protrusions from their skull. They also have distinctive yellow eyes with horizontal slit pupils and usually have pale skin. Their eight-chambered heart is a rarity among similarly sized humanoid races.
The growth rates for Ktarians are faster than humans and similar species. Females have scales that protect their breasts since infants grow their first set of incisors within four weeks of birth.
Personality
Sometimes opportunistic and competitive, Ktarians are typically a friendly species. They have a love of games and sports, as well as music. Some of the best food in the galaxy is of Ktarian origin. They have elaborate rules regarding the death of their kind. Those that have died are revered, with each grave covered with over a thousand stones each representing a prayer.
Ktarians have a knack for ingratiating themselves with other races. In males this takes the form of hokey chumminess, while females show a distinct talent for seducing the males of almost any humanoid species (it is rumored that the Ktarian agent Etana Jol infiltrated the Enterprise-D by attaching herself to executive officer Commander William Riker). At the same time, Ktarians can be capricious, easily distracted and quick to change their minds.
Ktarians have restless minds and rather short attention spans, as a result of which academic pursuits don't interest them much. On the other hand, they process information about their immediate environment very efficiently.
History
The Federation made first contact with the Ktarians in 2350. At first, the Ktarian world government resisted the idea of joining the UFP, preferring to retain its neutrality even as it welcomed economic ties with the Federation. The UFP provided the Ktarians with a vast new market for their native luxury goods and tourist destinations, and over the next 15 years they experienced an economic boom like no other in their history. The dream of endless prosperity excited Ktarians and encouraged them to dream of the future greatness of their race.
When growth slowed in the mid-2360s and their economy slipped into recession, many Ktarians became restless, and social unrest began to worry the Ktarian government. The executive branch, headed by Chancellor Serus Getarra, decided to use expansionism as an outlet for that restlessness.
In 2368 the Ktarians launched an audacious bid to conquer the Federation by gaining control of Starfleet. An intelligence operative named Etana Jol spearheaded the effort using an electronic game that tapped directly into the humanoid brain, making it addictive and creating psychotropic effects that rendered the user extremely vulnerable to suggestion. She befriended the crew of the Enterprise-D and used the game to gain psychological control over most of them, but then-Lieutenant Data, with the aid of Wesley Crusher, foiled her plot.
Immediately, the UFP lodged a formal protest over the incident, threatening to sever all economic ties with Ktaris and declare hostilities against it. Threatened with the sudden loss of their most important trading partner, Ktarians rebelled against their government, and in 2369 a faction more friendly to the UFP came to power. They immediately expressed regret over their predecessors' actions, and petitioned for Federation membership. After protracted debate, the Federation Council admitted Ktaria VII on a probationary basis.
Society
Ktarians are highly individualistic. They pay little attention to ties of blood outside of their immediate families. They tend to place the most stock in friendship ties, particularly those developed through professional activities. The fact that such relationships can prove unstable seems to bother them not a bit.
Ktarians recognize accumulation of wealth and material goods (particularly luxury goods) as the ultimate standard of a good life. They are naturally acquisitive and they relish the challenge and rewards of commercial activity. They raged trade as an evolutionary continuation of hunting - one finds, one does what one must to acquire the object of desire, and one enjoys the reward of that effort. Friends, neighbors and casual acquaintances alike see themselves as engaged in constant competition with each other to see who can acquire (and display) totems of material wealth. This constant pursuit of wealth has produced a society with enormous gaps between the rich and the poor, with consequent social turmoil never far from the surface.
But however one judges them for their flighty temperaments and love of material goods, one should also point out that Ktarians treat their dead with somber piety. A Ktarian who has passed away is buried in an underground tomb large enough to contain thousands of small stones, placed there by those who knew the deceased. Each stone represents a specific traditional prayer for the dead, and they consider removing even one stone from the tomb to be an act of terrible desecration.
Ktarians speak Ktara, a language known for its preponderance of rolling 'r' sounds. They favor short names which feature flowing vowel sounds.
Reference(s)
- Bridges, Bill, et al. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 5: Aliens, Decipher, 2003. ISBN: 1582369070.
- See also: Ktarian at Memory Alpha