Guide:Writing We Are the Borg
This article relates to the 2023 Fleet Action 'We Are the Borg' in how to appropriately depict the Borg Collective during this Campaign.
This is a ghost story.
Vague reports of Borg sightings. ‘Found footage’ of incomplete records of those who have gone missing. Mysterious technology that may behave in unexpected ways, that cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, and could well bring the danger to you. And the sheer terror of the idea - let alone the reality - of coming face to face with the Borg.
The intention of this mission is for the Borg to be elusive, mysterious, and dangerous. More signs of their presence will be found than actual encounters, ranging from a whisper on a sensor feed to a once-inhabited world now empty and desolated by their passing to their shattered technology abandoned and fought for across the galaxy.
Stories in this campaign should fall into one - or both - of two broad categories: investigating the Collective directly or answering the homing signals activating on defunct Borg technology to stop it from falling into the wrong hands or summoning Borg ships.
Investigating the Collective
The Borg are not coming to conquer. They are not mobilising in force. They have been desolated by the neurolytic pathogen and other defeats, and those investigating may realise that, with all of these setbacks, they are doing what they do best: adapting. Those investigating the Delta Quadrant may find the Borg have been withdrawing in many places, only to consolidate their resources elsewhere. A Borg ship venturing forth might focus on assimilation to replenish the ranks of drones, but it is more likely to seek out material resources and technology while ignoring people. It may even be merely scouting, updating Borg records either dated after their decades-long silence, or lost from the damage to their network.
You should write the Borg with the view that they are seeking to recover.
What will be notable is the following:
- The Borg will not be outright aggressive. They will, of course, eliminate a threat or remove an obstacle, but that might entail disabling a ship and continuing on their path.
- Their gathering of ‘resources’ may include assimilating fresh drones, but it may include material, equipment, technology, or knowledge.
- They are withdrawing from some places, dismantling equipment and abandoning sites. In others they are consolidating and rebuilding.
- They will recover lost Borg technology at all costs - but that means ignoring distractions. Stay out of their way, and they will take their equipment and leave.
- The effects of the neurolytic pathogen are not completely gone. This may result in inconsistencies in their behaviour, even within a single Cube.
- The densest Borg activity will be in the Delta Quadrant. Sightings near Federation space will be incredibly rare - limited only to what members write or necessary plot hooks like missing ships. The galaxy at large is not buzzing with fear, because they do not know. Locals, however, might know.
- Under no circumstances will any ship encounter a/the Borg Queen.
The Intelligence Office encourages members to tell stories rife with tension and apprehension, respecting the Borg as an unassailable foe in direct battle. They may be avoided, they may even be tricked, but they cannot be defeated. Stories about investigating the Borg should be reserved for missions of mystery and tension, rather than action and adventure. To that end, in depicting the Borg directly, less is more.
Borg Homing Signals
Borg technology has been scattered across the galaxy in a myriad of ways. Borg ships have been lost to all manner of challenges, and the neurolytic pathogen has made them only more vulnerable these last twenty-five years. A mere ion storm in the wrong place might have critically damaged a ship, or the pathogen may have disconnected a facility completely. Many people do not dare approach the Borg, even if they appear dormant. Stellar phenomena which destroyed a ship may mask its wreckage from sensors. Recovered technology may lie in Starfleet labs and illicit cybernetic research sites. And, more than ever before, there are the xBs, whose cybernetic implants cannot be removed from their bodies without killing them.
As Borg sightings have begun, so has much of this equipment - even that which was believed dormant or defunct - reactivated enough to begin emitting a signal. This signal is powerful enough to be detected from dozens of light-years away, and the Collective seems able to pick it up from even further. It will quickly become apparent that the Borg will respond to these homing signals and try to recover the equipment. This might entail sending a ship. It might entail sending a single drone (see the ‘Advance Party’ Priority Task for what this looks like; you can use the guidance here as part of your stories even if you don’t take this PT). But one thing is clear: where there is a signal, the Borg are likely coming.
They are not alone. For decades, especially since the discovery of the Artifact, a black market trade sprang up around illegal research into and usage of Borg technology. This has included the hunting and murder of xBs to harvest their implants. With these homing signals going off, that black market is going into overdrive. Anyone will pay a premium for Borg technology, so scavengers and smugglers are scooping it up and getting it to the criminal underworld.
Other governments may also wish to secure Borg technology for their own use - Starfleet has done it, learning lessons to build the new Sagan-class, so why shouldn’t they? The Federation is not only mindful of not wanting to be out-paced by its rivals, but some governments are more ethical than others. Can they be trusted to harness Borg technology?
In both cases, Starfleet would rather their ships answer these beacons first and deactivate them, destroying technology if necessary. Rival governments cannot be allowed to secure this technology. The criminal underworld cannot. And while the Borg recovering their own equipment is not necessarily a crisis, will it enable them to recover faster and become a threat again sooner? And what will they do if these signals draw them to the inhabited worlds of the Federation?
Dealing with this technology is a good choice for writers who want more of an action/adventure storyline, where they can clash with dangerous rivals over a prize. It can, of course, be used to tell all manner of tales - exploring the intrigue of the black market, wrestling over the ethics of dictating who should be allowed to use Borg technology, uncovering the horrors and mysteries of a dead Borg ship to kill a signal aboard. It should all, however, be underpinned with the fearful knowledge that if a homing signal goes on for long enough, a Borg ship will answer it.
Even killing the signal may not be enough - what if it was on a Federation research lab, and the Borg still proceed to its last known location? Taking a device far from inhabited space before destroying it may make a great story, especially if rivals are also answering the beacon, and maintains, as ever, the threat of a potential arrival of the Borg.
Location
This campaign is set across the galaxy, but realistically, it is set in places the Borg might be. If you want direct encounters with the Collective, the distant frontiers of the Beta Quadrant and especially the Delta Quadrant are a good choice. Lost Borg technology is most likely to be in those areas as well, but it will also be scattered across places where the criminal underworld is rife after decades of a black market. Regardless, anywhere logical is an appropriate setting for this story. If you want to deal with the Cardassians trying to secure Borg tech, go for it. If you want to write a Cube investigating near Gorn space, do it. Even the Gamma Quadrant may have seen Borg activity as they recover lost equipment and venture forth to scout and acquire resources.
Recent Events
The ‘Jurati Collective’ from season 2 of Picard have nothing to do with this story. They can be mentioned, as your characters may know about them, and some mission briefings mention them more directly. So far as anyone is concerned, they are still standing watch over the rift from the S2 finale.
Frontier Day looms large in everyone’s memory. Young people temporarily assimilated had no implants, and thus will not begin emitting homing signals. Whether or not they are susceptible to the Borg Collective in any way - if they hear the whispers of the Collective when close, as Picard did in First Contact, for example - is inconsistent. Young people will not fall to the direct control of the Collective without a deliberate engagement by the Borg in your story. Starfleet may be wary, but there are no fleet-wide protocols to isolate these young officers. Quite frankly, they don’t have the personnel to do that.
There will be many who ask themselves, though: was Frontier Day truly the end of the plan? The Queen made what was believed to be her last gambit, only now, months later, the Collective at large is stirring. Perhaps that was not the end. Perhaps this is only the beginning.