The Borg (ST-OM)

Group Name: The Borg (ST-OM )
Created by:  Gene Roddenberry, developed by Jay P Hailey and Dennis Washburn
Appearance:  Star Trek: The Next Generation , Season 1. 
Number of Members: Unknown, possible trillions.
Nature of Members: Humanoids and others who have been assimilated into the collective.  
The Borg use Cybernetics and nanotechnology to “assimilate” people into the collective.  This process is extremely violent and destructive.  People who have been assimilated are never quite the same again.
The Borg collective over writes the individual identity of any assimilated being, turning them into seemingly mindless drones.  The Borg collective is housed in the minds of all of its drones,  via distributed computing.  
The Borg is a single entity, which sees its drones the same way we see our cells. 
The Borg are the death of individual identity for an assimilated being. The Borg considers individualism to be chaotic, inefficient and wasteful, something to be discarded. 
Organization:
The Borg are all nodes in one insanely large network. Input is considered by the collective, a decision is rendered and the parts carry the decision out.  
The Borg adapt quickly and constantly adjust to meet new challenges.  They aren't so good at innovation - this is one reason they like to assimilate entire cultures - this provides fresh material in terms of ideas and approaches to problems in the environment. 
Game Role:
A Gray wall of death.  They aren't much fun that way.  Any given trick will work three times on the Borg, and then they adapt.
Former Borg are more fun in game terms See below. 
World Role:
A gray wall of death.  The Borg are implacable.  If you fend off one assimilation attempt, they'll eventually come back, with an ugly surprise or two and a lot more ships.
Relative Influence:
Huge,  the Borg dominate a large portion of the delta quadrant, and terrorize the entire Galaxy
Public or Secret?:
Public - stealth and subterfuge are irrelevant. 
Publicly Stated Goal:
"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
Relative Wealth:
Insane, they have assimilated entire worlds and turned them into hives of cybernetic "perfection".  They can afford fleets of cubes, spheres and probes to dwarf anyone else's, except perhaps the Dominion or the Voth.
Group advantages:
Numbers, adaptation
Special Abilities:
Adaptation.  The Borg can adapt to almost anything.  Once they adapt to a given form of attack, it's almost useless.
Assimilation: The Borg take over people and turn them into cyber zombies.  Worse, the Borg steal all the knowledge of their assimilated subjects, becoming experts in the people they are fighting.
Group disadvantages:
Nobody likes the Borg.  No one. 
Special disadvantages:
Everyone who has encountered them is looking for effective weapons against them - often they find something that works, for a while. 
Those who favor them:
No one sane.
Those opposed to them:
Everyone who values not being a Borg.
Area of Operation:
Mostly the Delta Quadrant, but they have appeared all over the galaxy thanks to their transwarp conduit network. 
Headquarters Location:
Irrelevant.  The idea of a headquarters assumes that they'd need one to perform administrative and coordination tasks.  They don't.  All Borg are the center of the Borg and the Borg center is in all Borg.
Public Face:
"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
Notable Members:
Irrelevant: No one Borg is any different from any other Borg.  That's the whole POINT.
History of the Organization:
The Borg started on an unknown world. Somewhere, some insane cyberneticist decided that individualism was a bad idea and she erased it.
Early Borg were primitive creatures, compared to the later models, but they always adapted and refined themselves.
Eventually the Borg collective went out to the stars and started assimilating.
There were many long wars and desperate campaigns. The Borg history may be much longer than anyone suspects. 
In 2292 , the Borg attacked and assimilated El-Au the El-Aurian Home world. They assimilated most of the  El-aurian Population and then destroyed the Planet and left. 
In 2356 , Xenologists Erin and Magnus Hanson and their daughter Annika were assimilated while on a quest to discover the truth of the rumors of the Borg.
In 2364 ,  a Borg Cube passed along the Romulan/Federation neutral zone, assimilating colonies as it went.  The Borg learned of the Federation and the Romulan Empire and they went on the "To be Assimilated" list.
In 2365, Q took the Enterprise-D to a distant solar system and introduced them to a Borg cube there. The Enterprise-D fought the cube and only avoided assimilation when Q rescued them and returned them to the Federation to carry the warning.
At the end of 2366, a Borg Cube came into the Federation and made a beeline for Earth, wiping out the Federation fleet at Wolf 359. They were only stopped at the last second by inventive tactics of the Enterprise-D crew.
Here, the time line for ST-OM forks off from the cannon
In 2368, something destroys the Borg Network.  All Borg Drones are dumped out of the collective and resume independent identity.
The carnage is unbelievable - most drones were *conscious* of being assimilated, they just couldn't do anything about it. This resulted in a population of trillions of violently insane people.
Most of the partially functioning drones immediately counter attacked and killed untold numbers of dysfunctional borg. Most cubes and smaller units exploded or were rammed into something. 
Borg planets became charnel houses.
The Enterprise-D encounters Hugh a Borg who didn't realize that he was free of the collective until the Enterprise-D crew pointed that out. 
In 2369,  The Harrier Encounters a Borg Cube adrift near in between Rishan space and the Klingon Frontier.  The Harrier brings back sample of the Borg Cube and a handful of survivors. 
In 2369, the Enterprise-D battled a crew of Free Borg, including Hugh, lead by Lore, Data's predecessor. 
In 2373, the Enterprise-E fought a crew of Free Borg following a "Borg Queen".
In 2373, the Voyager, Lost in the Delta Quadrant, became involved in a war between a Faction of Free Borg and Species 8472, the Undine.
The Voyager Picks up Seven of Nine, formerly Annika Hansen, who elects to go with them to escape her Borg Queen.
2378: The Voyager returns to Earth, via the Borg transwarp conduit network, bringing Seven of Nine, a wealth of Borg technology and knowledge of the Transwarp Conduits, technology the Federation quickly adapts for its own use. 
Fate of the Organization:
Once the Collective is destroyed in 2368, the Borg are finished as a Galactic level threat.  
But individual free Borg, crews of free Borg and entire nations of free Borg will be seen for quite some time into the future. 
Everyone is afraid of the re-occurrence of the Collective, the Free Borg most of all.  Some groups or crazy individuals try to reestablish the collective, but their attempts are usually feeble and broken compared to the original.  
For some reason, the Borg are fond of Queens.  Several Borg Queens occur.  They are dangerous.  Their technology is quite high and they can be extremely ruthless.  But their "Collectives" are pale shadows of the original, dangerous on a local level, but not on the scale of the original.
 
Category:ST-OM
Category:Races