History of the Dand Oligarchy

Early Years of Dands

Money, trading, raiding and power have always been very important aspects in the Dand culture. Even in the early years when Dands were only living in small villages they considered natural resources to be important. Ultimately everything came down to power. The one with the most amount of resources and money, usually was the most powerful one.

Each village was usually led by a powerful and wealthy house. Many of them rose and fell over the centuries, but many also endured. The villages raided other villages, traded with them and sometimes even cooperated, but there were never any large scale conflicts; Dands weren't interested in losing lives as they didn't want to lose potential customers.

Technological advancement was relatively slow due to, at first, lack of interest and lack of resources. But when some houses started to get upper hand due to more advanced technology, the interest in the other houses went up. Technology became an important aspect, some preferred to research it all by themselves, some chose to only steal it. Scientists were able to sell themselves to the highest bidder, they became some of the wealthiest people on the planet, at least if you had actually managed to invent something, as there were also several who simply took the money, but never did anything.

Later on, some scientists were getting interested in space. Some of the houses had interest in it too, but it would've taken far more resources than any one house could spare. Some houses started to work together more actively and started plotting house take-overs. While it had been practiced before, it had never been done with this much planning and coordination.

Several bigger groups emerged, large cities were built and resources increased significantly. The Dand space-race begun. All of the houses attempts were slowed down by sabotages and buying off the scientists. It was clear to the houses that this wasn't good progress for their species and while they fight against each other some other species might be taking over planets that would belong to Dands.

For the first time all the houses came together, to look for a way to unite the Dands. The first meeting didn't succeed well; there were numerous assassination attempts and abduction attempts. Some of the houses clearly had no interest in working together, but wanted to control it all. No one could blame them really, since all the houses thought similarly, but had chosen to wait before trying to make their move.

All the hostile houses were left out of the new government, the Dand Oligarchy. The leading houses became the leaders, they were the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. One of the houses that was left out tried to resist them, but was in the end annexed to the Oligarchy, with the leaders of the house dead. The other hostile houses in the end accepted the terms and willfully joined this new Oligarchy.

All the profits created by the joint efforts were to be split, equally, but everyone was free to do their own operations, as long as it wouldn't interfere with the space exploration or allow other race to interfere. The houses still raided other houses, but it wasn't as huge. There were still coup attempts, but they usually failed quite early and those that didn't just failed before they were fully executed.

Colonial Expansion

Finally with combined resources the Dands were able to get into space. Many had cursed their inability to work together earlier, as it may have cost them their place in the galaxy. Even now, the scientists were trying to get all, or at least most, of the glory to themselves, by sabotaging and stealing other scientists' works. Whoever made the most amount of progress, would get the most amount of money. It was a flaw that many saw, but no one wanted to change. As the alternatives didn't seem any better either.

While progress could've been faster, there was still progress. The Dand homeworld had no moons so the nearest planet was the first target. Once colonization begun there were problems among the houses as to who gets there. Many wanted to claim it to themselves. It was clear that, to avoid conflict, all houses needed to be allowed to move there and to be able to spread apart the space exploration needed to be increased. Each house were the first one to send their sleeper ships to colonize distant worlds, later on the civilian ones were launched. No official military had been founded before, but now the need arose for it and an official military was formed. Although it was mostly designed for raiding and pirating other potential species. If no species could be found, then the houses would use the military against each other.

The normal civilians lived under a tight rule and were quite heavily oppressed. Death sentence was commonplace and laws were very strict. Obedience was maintained by each house's "police", or a private army. Many lived in constant fear, but most had adapted to the way of life. It was still possible to raise high, as long as you had the money. Some oppressed the rule, but it was a minority and death penalty was usually enough to keep them suppressed, but over the years there was growing unrest.

New Contacts

While technological advancement was maybe slower than usually, Dands were able to better their ships, and especially their engines. The sleeper ships colonized nearby systems and soon the Dand Oligarchy had already expanded into several systems. The houses were able to live rather peacefully with each other, but there was another problem that came with the new colonies. As some were completely formed by citizens that weren't members of any of the houses, they wanted to be apart of the Oligarchy. The new military was ordered to keep all Dand colonies part of the Oligarchy and make sure all of them follow the leading houses. All of them followed, but the more distant colonies allowed people to be somewhat more free of the oppressing houses and voice their concerns.

The houses only cared about resources, as they wanted more resources to get more money and to get more power.

Later on, the Dands made their first contact. It was a relatively little developed species, although they had also obtained faster than light-drives. They raided them, traded with them and also secretly were buying their leaders. After years of manipulation and deception the Dands annexed them into their oligarchy. It all seemed so easy for them and most of them didn't believe they could run into any significant threat.

As they got connections to more smaller races, the Dands started to improve their fleets and they perfected them into pirating and raiding. Members of other species started to sign-up for them in search for money and power. As for them, Dands clearly seemed to be race of significant strength. Some considered them annoying low-lifes, but were technologically too weak to oppose them.

Turning Point

All seemed to go well with the Dands; they were able to prey on the weak and annex rather non-violently many of them, or at least keep them in check and molest them. The United Commonwealth of Planets changed all that. At first they thought it to be just a slightly more powerful opponent than they had faced before. They welcomed trade with the UCP and made several agreements, a similar tactic used before.

Many of the UCP citizens joined the Dands and provided useful information. Soon the Dands commenced their raids against the UCP and everything seemed to be going well. Although UCP was clearly much more powerful both in size and strength. They relied on their peaceful nature, believing that they wouldn't counter-attack and would resort to diplomacy rather. Also, several key UCP people were bought by the Dands. Everything was looking good for the Dands, although this time it would take longer to break their opponent.

However, UCP managed to strengthen their defenses, causing Dands to start loosing several ships in their raiding strikes, not long after most of their spies were caught. Still, the Dands remained positive, while there were set-backs things were still progressing well.

But Starfleet had been planning a big surgical strike against the Dands, and Starfleet Intelligence had fed the spies with disinformation. The Dands were taken completely by surprise and their key ship production facilities, as well as large number of their ships, were decimated. Leaving them crippled. This was known as the battle of Krog'le. It was clear that the Dands couldn't defeat the Commonwealth.

Later on the Dands attempted to raid the Gigerdians with the Vodoss pirate clan, a band of Dand pirates that had left their space to seek potential new targets elsewhere, but they were also later decimated by the Gigerdians, leaving the Dands with a crippled fleet.

After this the Dands signed non-aggression pact with both governments, ending the Dand hostilities, for now.

Peace Station Project

Main article: Peace Station Project

The Dands continued their existance after their failed raids against the UCP and the Gigerdi Federation. Many of their previous small enemies soon joined the UCP and things started to look rather bad. They still continued their previous lives by raiding smaller factions elsewhere and especially in the Beta Quadrant free zone. Many Dands, however, started thinking about joining the UCP, since it seemed far better choice than the current one. It was clearly a growing problem among Dands and many of them moved to the UCP worlds. It was something that many of the houses saw as possibly future for their kind since it was unlikely the houses could agree on anything else.

The Peace Station project was a potentially useful for them, as it allowed for easier raiding and smuggling operations as a central station for many of the species would obviously create a lot of traffic. So the Dands were supportive of the idea and offered to even fund it. Some believed that they had other agendas in mind, but without proof there wasn't much anyone could do.

Dands also welcomed trade with the Hemmoians and Bacterians.