"Strength is irrelevant, resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours." -The Borg

Relentless, emotionless, cybernetic beings that roam the galaxy assimilating entire civilisations to satisfy their pursuit for perfection.

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Detailed information about the history of the Borg is somewhat lacking. Although originally organic it is generally understood that over a period of centuries they have modified and enhanced their biological makeup to incorporate synthetic technological enhancements in order to achieve and satisfy their goals of progression and expansion. When a biological individual is altered to encompass the Borg's various cybernetic implants and hardware, they lose all sense of individuality, and become a drone, and part of the Borg commune. By way of a network of advanced subspace communications channels the individual will be absorbed into the Borg 'Collective' -a hive mind, or singular consciousness which incorporates all drones everywhere. It is this control mechanism that drives the entire Borg unit with devastating efficiency.

After individuality has been stripped, and assimilation into the collective has taken place, a typical Borg drone will be programmed for certain ship tasks, like any vessel crew member. But drawing on the knowledge and experience of all Borg, and all archived encounters, technology, tactical information and scientific data, the Borg collective is closer to perfection than any organic crew operating under a Command structure hierarchy.

As with any group collective the Borg have a central nucleus with which to draw on, for order, decision making, and strategy for the implementation of long term goals. This comes in the fashion of a Queen, or 'central voice'. It was the Queen's decision to concentrate resources on conquering the Federation. A diverse, and advanced organisation with so many cultural and technological facets as the Federation's would be of extreme gain to the Collective if assimilated. Over the years following first contact with them, the Borg have tried on several occasions to conquer the Federation.

The first effects of a Borg presence in Federation space was observed in 2364, when numerous outposts along both sides of the Romulan Neutral Zone were obliterated. Nothing was known about the perpetrators at the time, but first physical contact between the Borg and the Federation occurred the following year, when a malevolent being of the extra-dimensional Q continuum placed a Federation vessel in the path of a Borg Cube, deep in the Beta Quadrant. The resulting engagement was fleeting, and the Starship was safely returned to Federation space. But having scanned and catalogued vast quantities of information from the ship's computer core, the Borg learned a great deal about the new species and their organisation. In a conquest of assimilation, a course was set for Federation space.

About eighteen months after this initial encounter the first devastating signs implicating the Borg emerged -they had arrived at their destination. In order to facilitate the assimilation process, Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard was abducted by the Borg and integrated into the hive mind as Locutus -an official spokes-unit of the Collective.

An Armada of 40 ships from the home fleet massed together at Wolf 359 in an attempt to prevent the Borg vessel reaching Earth. All but one were lost in the bloody battle, where 11,000 lives were lost. After Locutus was removed from the Borg Cube and returned to his starship, a crucial Achilles heel was discovered in the Borg command structure. When commands to regenerate were fed into the Collective it triggered a chain of events which destroyed the vessel, and the threat was over.

But the possibility of future Borg activity and potential mass incursions was always a threat to the security of the Federation's borders. But with the discovery of transwarp conduits used by the Borg to enter Federation space border watches and listening post reports were redundant, being little more than perfunctory tasks, as sneak raids could occur deep within the Federation at any time, and without warning. And in this fashion, a number of Starfleet vessels would fall victim to the Borg of the next few years.

TECHNOLOGY

Borg Technology is extremely advanced in all areas, this is because it is an amalgamation of all that has ever been assimilated. Such a wide diversity of technology, encompassing weaponry, propulsion, bio-technology and computer systems is being forever added to, progressed and embellished. In many respects the Borg fleet of principally Cube shaped vessels act as gigantic vacuum cleaners, scouring the galaxy for drone recruits, and to facilitate the absorption of materials and technological systems.

A dominating technological factor is the ability to adapt to their tactical environment. Unknown alien capabilities such as weaponry and defensive shield status is monitored and analysed, allowing the collective to initiate countermeasure protocols and tactics which can invariably render an opponent's offensive and defensive initiatives redundant and ineffective very quickly. In these situations the Borg would adapt their shields to weapons frequency modulations. After the heuristic examination of alien shield configurations, and even nutation harmonics, weapon emission frequencies such as those of disruptor banks and laser cutters can be modified to penetrate most shield systems. 

The Borg have installed a series of transwarp conduits which permeate the galaxy. From their native Delta Quadrant they are able to make rapid jumps covering great distances, and travel times can be hundreds of times faster than their maximum warp. The Federation would normally employ a network of subspace sensor arrays and listening posts along their borders to provide advance warnings of potential incursions, but the conduits provide undetectable shortcuts directly into their territory.

RECENT DIPLOMATIC AND MILITARY MATTERS

The Borg actually have no diplomatic department. All interactive communication and negotiation is carried out by the central voice. Such dialogue would be in the fashion of "prepare to be assimilated", and "resistance is futile". Diplomacy and cooperation is irrelevant and inefficient to the Borg, and such inane communication interferes with the natural progression of territorial advance and assimilation.

Shocking revelations that the Borg were present during the incident surrounding Human's first alien contact in the 21st century were recently made to the Federation by way of the Enterprise-E. This new incident surrounding a serious Borg incursion into Federation space occurred in 2373 when a single Borg vessel attempted to reach Earth to begin the mass assimilation process. The Cube was thwarted in the Sol system by several groups of vessels that were close enough at the time to intercept.

With the experience and knowledge of Borg ship systems, previous 'assimilatee' Jean-Luc Picard, Commander of the Fleet, directed attacking vessels to target weapons fire at a specific area of the Cube. A small spherical ancillary vessel escaped the resulting mothership's destruction, and headed toward Earth. The sphere then initiated a temporal vortex to enter Earth's past to assimilate the population at a less advanced state (some have theorised it was the Borg plan all along). Following them before the vortex could collapse was Picard's Enterprise-E, a newly commissioned Sovereign Class vessel.

Travelling back to the 21st century, it was soon discovered that the precise date was a day prior to the event that history records as first contact with an alien species -in April 2063. It was on this date that maverick scientist Zefram Cochrane test flew his converted Titan 5 missile -a rudimentary space faring prototype vessel which was warp one capable. During the flight he would inadvertently capture the attention of an alien survey ship passing the outer edge of the solar system.

In an attempt to corrupt and devastate Human history, and the history of Quadrant events for a period of three centuries, they aimed to destroy Cochrane's ship 'The Phoenix', and prevent the first contact scenario.

After destroying the sphere, it was soon discovered that a Borg contingent had covertly beamed aboard the Enterprise. And even though the Operations Manager employed a powerful fractal encryption sequence to protect the main computer, it could not prevent the Borg from taking over key areas of the ship, with the assimilation of several Enterprise Crewmen. The beginnings of the temporal invasion were in place.

Another mission objective was to contact the Delta Quadrant Borg collective native to this time. To achieve this, several drones tried to reconfigure the Enterprise deflector dish, but were destroyed by Enterprise crew before transmissions could be sent.

Masterminded by the Queen, the principal plan, after removing Cochrane and his ship from the equation, was to send down a drone invasion force which would take control of the planet's surface. People below, ignorant of impending doom were still in many ways recovering and rebuilding after a long and bloody third world war. The mass assimilation of the entire Human species would take several years, but Earth would eventually be under the collective's control, and with the absorption of all natural resources and equipment, it would serve as an excellent Alpha Quadrant base with which to operate, as the Borg exact their influence and go on to dominate the affairs of this portion of the galaxy, in preparation for the eventual conquering of the entire quadrant.

But in this incursion as in the last, the Borg were defeated short of their goal, by the intervention of Picard, as they regained control of the ship, and oversaw the Phoenix's maiden flight, and hence ensuring contact with the nearby Vulcan survey vessel. For now though, the future of the Federation that was to come was safe.

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