Breen

The name and location of the Breen homeworld remained a mystery for centuries, until it was discovered in Sector 97, where they also have several outposts. The planet Breen is said to be a frozen wasteland, so cold that humans could not survive there without special gear.

Those few explorers who have stumbled across this world left no record of its location (although it is believed that Starfleet Intelligence and the Romulans knew for a while). Seedy bars across the galaxy, however, abound with legends of the dangerous, furred reptiles that roam its surface, once forcing the ancient Breen to live in underground caves or on mountaintop peaks, though these are just stories.

Personality

Little is known of the Breen by other races, for they keep to themselves. They are secretive and aggressive, although they don't exalt violence for its own sake - their aggression serves a purpose. As the Romulans say, "Never turn your back on a Breen." They earned this reputation by opportunistically preying on the conflicts of other races, rarely involving themselves directly but profiting on the margins through such odious practices as slavery. They intentionally keep their motives and feelings hidden from members of other races - Betazoids cannot empathically detect them - enhancing their image as rigid inhabitants of a freezing homeworld. It is presumed that they are more open among their own kind, but this can only be speculated upon, for few non-Breen get close enough (outside of official business) to them for any significant period of time.

Breen do not appear to be excessively individualistic, for most encounters with them are associated with group endeavors. Indeed, their ability to maintain their secrecy hints at a highly cohesive clan or governmental structure, one that has yet to produce rebels or iconoclasts willing to break the seal of silence. When acting alone, Breen are quirky and unpredictable, seemingly displaying a neurosis due to working apart from a group. Some xenologists speculate, however, that they fake this behavior, wishing to foster the idea in other races that they cannot effectively work alone.

What can be safely predicted about a Breen is that he will act in his own self-interest - which is to say, in the Breen culture's best interest, regardless of the hardships endured by those who stand in the way. The Breen seem callous to the suffering of others, although they don't go out of their way to cause it - they simply don't heed calls for aid or relief unless there is something to be gained for themselves, whether it be money, technology or territory.

Physiology

Breen are humanoid, sharing the same average height and build as humanoids - presumably. Only a very few have ever been seen outside of their encounter suits: sealed, refrigerated suits of armor designed to keep them comfortable in adverse conditions - any temperature not below freezing. Their reputation as cold-blooded and heartless may be partially true - they have no blood at all (hot or cold) and thus no need for a central circulatory organ or heart. Xenologists have thus speculated that they might be silicon-based lifeforms, but there is no evidence to support this theory beyond the known lack of a circulatory system.

In fact, they are walking sacs of ammonia and gelatin. In what humans would consider freezing temperatures, Breen body gelatins are solid or semisolid; in more "normal" temperatures, Breen bodies literally boil and evaporate away. While they posses skeletal structures, they have no standard organs except for eyes, ears, tongues, brain, a pair of lungs, and a layer of purple, blue-veined "skin" capable of tactile sense. Their nostrils are used to filter oxygen but they have almost no sense of smell. Their external morphology is humanoid, with fingers and toes, but they have no body hair or finger- or toenails.

Their internal structure consists of layers of permeable chambers filled with a gelatin that maintains its semisolid consistency in extremely cold temperatures but which breaks down under high temperatures (70 degrees Fahrenheit and above). This gelatin oozes from chamber to chamber, transferring chemicals with it, with each chamber providing a slightly different function (digestive, reproductive, regenerative, etc.). The end result is an organism not too different in function from a human: the Breen eat, excrete, breathe, see, hear, talk, feel and think. They don't, however, bleed; any wound seals up with a hard layer of gelatin, leaving a calcified scar unless treated with Breen medical techniques.

History and Culture

The Breen are politically nonaligned. They do not take part in official treaties or alliances, although their representatives do occasionally attend certain diplomatic gatherings. Outsiders have yet to figure out what selection process they use to decide which such gatherings are important. They seem to attend such meetings only to gather information, not to participate. Since they have so far prove to be non-expansionistic and have initiated no wars, they are left alone by most other races.

Breen society is a cipher. They do have two genders, male and female, and it is common for them to bear children at young ages. Some xenologists conclude from this that they suffer a high mortality rate, and thus urge females to begin bearing at early ages, to increase the number of offspring each female can deliver throughout her lifetime. Others posit instead that they have shorter lifespans than humans, and hence come to sexual maturity earlier. Until the Breen themselves reveal the truth, the question will perhaps remain unanswered.

Breen government resembles primitive tribalism, except that all Breen are members of a single tribe. Whether this has always been so or is a historical development is unknown. They gather into groups where different members assume different roles, seemingly by voluntary consensus rather than autocratic dictate. Leaders rule only so long as the group allows them to. Their starship attack tactics seem to bear this out, for each ship seems to have a high degree of independent autonomy, only working with others in an engagement through mutual consensus or agreed-upon tactics.

Some Breen pilots have been known to speak Federation Standard, Cardassian and Ferengi. Breen naming conventions remain unknown. The Breen do not share their personal names - if they indeed have them - with non-Breen. Instead, they insist they be called by their roles: "diplomat," "pilot," etc. Some interstellar Breen smugglers and criminals adopt titles or monikers to interact with their clients.

A Breen known as "the Masked Breen" (because he never took off the helmet of his spacesuit) sold warp drive technology to the Ferengi, for the price of Ferenginar's North & South Poles and 6 comets & 7 frozen outer moons in Ferenginar's system. The Masked Breen's sales pitch of "Expand...or die" was so admired by the Ferengi that it became the 95th Rule of Acquisition, the only one coined by a non-Ferengi.

Technology

They have developed organic technology to the point where they routinely use biological spacecraft. Some of these are fitted with cloaking devices, a technology the Breen apparently invented independently of the Romulans and Klingons. They use disruptor type weaponry rather than the phaser technology used by the Federation. They are also the manufacturers of the CRM-114, an extremely powerful portable hand cannon designed to destroy moving targets and surface emplacements. The Breen use disruptors as their primary weapons. They are classified as type 3 (the same type as Klingon and Romulan disruptors), and discharge blue pulses.

The biggest advantage for the Breen frigate, the standard warship employed by the race, is the energy dampening weapon that disrupts all the power systems onboard a target vessel. This weapon is located on the ship's bow and can disable several ship systems with one or two shots while multiple shots on a target can cripple an entire starship. The Breen frigate would then use its disruptors and torpedoes to destroy the disabled ship. This weapon is invaluable as the Breen vessel is otherwise weak - though swift and maneuverable - when compared with similar sized modern starships.

In the Dominion War the Breen used the dampening weapon at the Chin'toka System with deadly effect. This allowed the Dominion to retake the system from the Federation Alliance. In less than a few weeks the Dominion War had swung in the Dominion's favor. Only the Klingons possessed vessels immune to the energy dampening weapon but could barely hold the line. However, Colonel Kira and Legate Damar were able to capture a Breen dampening weapon and the allies were able to counteract the energy dampening weapon. The tide of the war changed quickly however due to the vast number of Breen frigates they were still a threat in any major engagement although without the Breen dampening weapon they were a lot more vulnerable.

Reference(s)

• Bridges, Bill, et al. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 5: Aliens, Decipher, 2003. ISBN: 1582369070.
• Behr, Ira Steven and Wolfe, Robert Hewitt, Legends of The Ferengi, Pocket Books, 1997. ISBN: 0671007289.