Happy New Year and welcome to another edition of Tuesdays at Quark’s! This month we’re starting things off with a look at the past: specifically the month of November last year when Jester David debuted a bunch of technological species including the Freed Borg. Today’s NPC is a member of that species with a backstory ready to be included in your campaign.
The classic example of the “freed Borg” is, of course, Seven of Nine. However, her liberation from the Collective isn’t until 2374, three years after the default year for Star Trek Adventures, and she doesn’t reach the Federation until the U.S.S. Voyager returns in 2378. As Jester said in his write-up of the Freed Borg species, however, you don’t have to jump into the future to get this character into the mix. Azala Kyl’s backstory actually has her assimilated during the Battle of Wolf 359 and recovered by the Federation during the events of The Next Generation episode “Descent Part I” and “Part II.” This makes her somewhat of a veteran by the time Seven reaches Federation space (and certainly by the later events of Star Trek Online when “liberated Borg” are a little more common) so even if you advance the timeline Lt. Kyl makes a great addition to the story.
There are plenty of plot hooks in the information below but here are a few to get you started.
- When the crew gets a new medical crew onboard, one of the people joining is Azala Kyl. Her situation is made known to the captain and executive officer but they have little time to prepare the crew and must move quickly to head off prejudices before the situation spirals out of control.
- The player characters respond to a distress signal from a Federation colony that fell victim to a vicious meteor storm. There are many casualties, one of them a joined Trill named Mazra Nala. To save the symbiont, doctors at the colony transplanted the Nala symbiont to the only Trill available: Azala Kyl. Have the former drones nanites corrupted the symbiont? What will the Symbiosis Commission think of this action? Normally removing a symbiont that has fully bonded is fatal but Kyl’s regeneration may save her… or it may make things much worse.
- In the events leading up to the Battle of Sector 001, when the first signs of Borg movement are reaching Starfleet, the crew is asked to bring Lt. Kyl back to Earth for further debriefing by Starfleet Intelligence. On the way, her implants reactivate and she begins to act strangely as she deals with flashes of signal from the approaching Collective.
Click on the image below for the PDF.
