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Physiology Society OBSIDIAN ORDER An extragovernmental unit, established over 500 years ago, to enforce absolute loyalty in the civilians. They had complete autonomy, but were equal in power to Central Command, who fucntioned as a separate entity in the government. DETAPA COUNCIL The Detapa Council is the civilian government that overthrew Central Command. They are made up of civilians, with some military leaders/officers holding seats on the council. Gul Marratt is a junior member of the council. Gul Dukat was formerly Chief Military Advisor to the council before his affair with a Bajoran female was made public. Later he led the Cardassians to merge with the Dominion and became leader of Cardassia. TRADITIONS Guests always dine with the Captain of the ship. First drink on the house. Generations of Cardassians eat at the same table in the same household.
They have two classes of warships: Galor-class and
Keldon-class. The Galor-class battle/war cruisers are the most
powerful in the Cardassian military, with the type 3's being
their ultimate warship. It has a crew complement of 600. For
weaponry, they use a compressor beam, phasers, and photon
torpedoes. Their weapons range is 300,000 kilometers. The ships
defensive capabilities are shields and an anti-proton beam. Their
transporters uses an active-feed pattern buffer, this is to
shield their weapons. History In the course of continuing military conquests, Cardassian military forces descended upon Bajor. Promising help and support to the peaceful Bajorans, the Cardassians instead annexed Bajor in 2328 that began the 50 years of Cardassian Occupation. To strip mine the wealth of Iridium nearby, Cardassia built a mining station, Terok Nor, in Bajor's orbit for the purpose of ore mining and processing. They established a presence upon the planet and instigated an authoritarian government through the ruling Guls. Many Bajorans were forced to resettle on other worlds and their religion was later banned. Those among the Bajorans who were not content to rely on the assistance of the Prophets to end the Occupation gathered to form resistance cells in the mountains of Bajor. They utilized guerrilla tactics, running through rough terrain, then shooting as the Cardassian soldiers caught up. The relentless violence against the invading rulers would slowly change the stance of the Central Command back on Cardassia Prime. Cardassian relations with the Federation had been hostile ever since 2350. The Military firmly believed Cardassia needed to expand in order to thrive, and they tried to extend their reach into Federation territory. War broke out when the Federation would not yield, lasting for 20 years. An uneasy truce was reached when a peace treaty was signed in 2366. Many Federation officers had grave misgivings about this treaty, suspicious of the true intents of the Cardassians. Were they simply buying time to regroup then attack the Federation? One year later, on Stardate 44429.6, Captains Jean-Luc Picard and Benjamin Maxwell discovered that the Cardassians were preparing to launch a major offensive against the Federation. Captain Maxwell violated the treaty when he entered Cardassian space with his vessel, the starship Phoenix. Though his action was illegal, it confirmed his suspicions: heavy Cardassian military activity portentous of ill intentions. A new treaty was signed in 2367 between the Federation and the Cardassian Union, which agreed upon a neutral party overseeing incarcerations of either country's captives. Cardassian presence on Bajor was driven out in 2369, after years of unceasing terrorist activity from the freedom fighters of Bajor finally came to a head. The Occupation ended with a hasty withdrawal, and along with all the equipment left on Bajor itself, Terok Nor was abandoned as well. Defenseless and left with a shattered world, the Bajoran Provisional Government requested the assistance of Starfleet to administer to the orbiting station. The Cardassians would rue their mistake, when a stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant was soon discovered nearby. Terok Nor, renamed Deep Space Nine, became a strategic location for commercial and scientific expeditions to the Gamma Quadrant, and later became a key defensive front against the Dominion. The Cardassians didn't let the Federation claim the wormhole entry without contest. A year later, they were successful in driving out Starfleet presence on the station by helping a Bajoran extremist group stage a coup to overthrow the Bajoran Provisional Government. This plan would have left the Cardassians with Bajor and the wormhole ripe for the picking. A few months later, the Cardassia Union and the Federation agreed to redraw their borders, relocating citizens who were on the wrong side of the line. The agreement also included a buffer zone between the two powers, called the Demilitarized Zone. Dissent among the Union's hardliners ran rampant when the agreement was signed. Soon, they started unprovoked attacks and sabatoge operations on the colonies closest to the Cardassian side of the Demilitarized Zone, hoping to reclaim land lost in the deal. For the Federation colonists, already furious over what they saw as the betrayal of the government, it was the last straw. They retaliated by forming the Maquis, and began hard-hitting terrorist attacks on Cardassia itself. With the rise of the military to power, Cardassia's secret intelligence agency, the Obsidian Order, also came to prominence. Though required by law to report to the Central Command, they soon gained enough power to operate independently. A Maquis renegade seized control of the Defiant on Stardate 48467.3 and alerted both the Federation and the Cardassia Central Command of the covert shipyard in the Orias System. The purpose of the secret fleet was revealed when the Obsidian Order joined forces with its Romulan Counterparts, the Tal Shiar, to launch a preemptive strike on the Founder homeworld. After the disastrous first encounter with the Jem'Hadar ships, the Alpha Quadrant was extremely worried by the rumors of a Founder infiltration. Fear of a Dominion invasion prompted the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar to action. The two partners gathered a fleet of 40 Romulan warbirds and Cardassian vessels and sailed through the wormhole confident of total victory. The fleet went right into an ambush of 140 Jem'Hadar ships, and total erradication of both agencies was the result. The elimination of the terrifying secret service agency buoyed the hopes of the Cardassian Underground Movement. In 2372, the Cardassian Central Command was overthrown by the movement, placing the Detapa Council in control. Paranoia ran high in the Alpha Quadrant following the exposure of Changeling imposters and fear of the Founders gripped the Klingon Empire, who believed the coup to be a ploy by the Dominion to replace the Council with Founders. In response, Klingon warships led by General Martok attacked Cardassia Prime, nearly eliminating the Detapa Council. Gul Dukat, with assistance from Starfleet, rescued the Council members and proved they were not shape-shifters, forcing the Klingon attack to cease. Though unsuccessful in its mission, the Klingon invasion nearly fell Cardassia's industrial production base. For the first time in decades, Cardassia was weak and unable to provide for itself. Several of the outer colonies had been captured by the Klingons, and nearly every ship destroyed while defending the homeworld. With assistance from the Federation Council, who provided among other things twelve industrial replicators, (though some replicators were stolen in transit by the Maquis) Cardassia started rebuilding. The Klingons soon turned to declare war on the Federation, beginning with attacks on Deep Space Nine. When it was revealed that General Martok was a Changeling, and that he was the one behind the paranoid violence exhibited by the Klingon Empire, the war ceased, but Klingons still occupied some of Cardassian space. Ashamed of the weak state Cardassia had fallen to, and resenting the Klingons for not handing over the remaining Cardassian space, Gul Dukat began secret negoitations to form an alliance with the Dominion. Shortly after Stardate 50560.1, Gul Dukat announced Cardassia's alliance with the Dominion, and his new position as head of state. In his speech to the shocked population of Cardassia, now subjects of the Dominion, his words were, 5 days after the speech, the Maquis were summarily slaughterd and the Klingons removed by the Jem'Hadar fleets that came throught the wormhole. Dominion forces were continually building up in Cardassian space, and the whole Quadrant could sense an impending invasion. On Stardate 50975.2, Starfleet gave orders to Deep Space Nine to begin mining the wormhole entrance with self-replicating cloaked mines. Vorta Weyoun was sent to dissuade Captain Sisko, but to no avail. Full out war had begun. Weyoun returned to Cardassia, where he along with Dukat and a large fleet of Dominion/Cardassian vessels, began an attack on Deep Space Nine, hoping to stop the activtion of the minefield. The attempt was only successful in driving out the Federation personnel, but not in halting the minefield's activation. The Dominion won victory
after victory for the next three months, and the subjugation of
the entire Alpha Quadrant was within sight. The slow progress on
deactivating the minefield however displeased both Founder and
Vorta. It was Dukat's aide, Gul Damar, who finally figured out a
way to disarm the mines. The minefield eventually
was rendered useless and the Jem'Hadar armada began entry into
the wormhole. The Defiant, with Captain Sisko on-board, managed
to break through enemy lines, but was no match for the
overwhelming numbers of Jem'Hadar ships. On the verge of
destruction, the Emissary sought the help of the Prophets by
making them see the result if all the Jem'Hadar passed through
and arrived into the Alpha Quadrant. The Prophets moved to help
their Emissary, and all 2,800 ships vanished without a trace.
Dukat could not believe what had happened. With total victory
almost within reach, he would suddenly lose everything he had
gained. Damar, Weyoun, and the rest of the Dominion presence retreated from Deep Space Nine, leaving the station for the Federation to reclaim. Dalmar was proclaimed the new leader of Cardassia, but he merely served the will of Weyoun and the Dominion. The Romulans, who had distanced themselves from the war by signing a non-agression pact with the Dominion, would again be drawn into the brawl when they suspected the Cardassians of the assassination of Senator Vreenak. Vreenak had signed the pact, and his death could not be ignored by the Romulan Empire. They immediately retaliated by destroying 15 Cardassian outposts along the border, and looks ready to join the Klingon/Federation forces battling the Dominion. Cardassia now remains in ruins. Since the civilion population rebeled against the Dominion and the Breen, The Doninion punished them buy wiping out ever major city and under order from the changling leader, the jem'hadar were sent to wipe out the population. Bye the time the Federation and it's allies arived, there where over 800 million dead. All their history and works of art were oblitherated. They are currently rebuilding a "New Caradassia". |
The Galor-class Warship is standard and
half the size of a Federation Galaxy-class Starship. The
Keldon-class are slower, possibly smaller. The Obsidian Order
poss- essed several updated Keldon-class ships, outfitted with
cloaking devices, as part of a new fleet. The joined with the
Romulan Tal Shiar to stage an attack against the Dominion in
hopes of destroying the Founders. The Order's mission failed,
when it was dicovered that the Founder's were aware of the
Order's plans and had infiltrated the Tal Shiar. They use system
five disruptors for thier planatary defense system, photon
torpedoes, phasers, and a compressor beam, for their warship's
weapons' system, and disruptors and phaser rifles for
hand-to-hand combat. 
Their ruins continue to be considered some of the
most remarkable in the galaxy. When famine struck, most of their
treasures were plundered by starving Cardassians, including the
military, who sold artifacts to finance their war with the
Federation. The military
state conquered worlds and replenished their resources by this
new approach towards interstellar politics. 
Starfleet assembled three fleets in a
last-ditch effort to stop the Dominion from penetrating the
minefield. 2,800 Jem'Hadar ships were waiting on the other side
of the wormhole, and when the minefield is successfully
deactivated, the Alpha Quadrant would be lost. 
Worse still was the murder of his daughter Ziyal by Damar.
The impact of all these events resulted in the mental breakdown
of Dukat, a condition he, as of the moment, has not yet recovered
from.