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Victor Heinrich
Krieghoff |
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Terran - Stationborn |
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25 August
2348 |
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Starbase
74 |
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6' 1/16” |
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191 lbs |
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Native English, German, and an archaic Vulcan/Romulan dialect. Fluent Cardassian and Andorian. Intermediate Ktarian. Limited Jem'Hadar, and Bajoran, and very limited Klingon. |
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Precision, artistic gunsmithing; hunting, specifically 'stalk hunting'; dancing, particularly formal dances like waltzes, tangos and such; and holographic training programs. |
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Robert H. |
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2370: Academy Graduate |
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2372: Letter of Commendation; Promotion
to Lieutenant (JG) |
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2374: Letter of Commendation |
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2377: Letter of Commendation |
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2380: Bronze Star |
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2380: Dedicated Service Ribbon, 10 Years |
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2381: Battle of Havras |
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2383: Battle of Romulus |
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2383: Presidential Unit Citation - Battle of Romulus |
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2383: Combat Action |
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2383: Combat Readiness |
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2383: Valor Cross |
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2383: Purple Heart, Romulus |
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2384: Combat Action |
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2384: Battle for Deep Space Five |
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2385: Starfleet Games Participant |
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2371: |
Charged with use of
excessive force in apprehension of homicide suspect after Ensign Krieghoff
broke the suspect’s right arm against an emplaced stone planter
on the main Promenade. Ensign Krieghoff cleared when witnesses and security
scanner reports backed his story that the suspect had drawn an illegally
obtained Mark 1 phaser upon sighting Ensign Krieghoff. Ensign Krieghoff
was subsequently transferred to the USS Delaware. |
2372: |
Charged with disobeying orders during boarding
of suspected Orion smuggler when Ensign Krieghoff drew and fired his weapon,
rendering two Orion crewmen unconscious. Investigation could not prove
his assertion that the men had been in the act of drawing their own weapons
to fire on the boarding party, and a reprimand was entered in his record.
Ensign Krieghoff was transferred to the USS Durendal. |
2372: |
Placed on AWOL status when Ensign Krieghoff
failed to report back to the USS Durendal on schedule. Status returned
to normal after Ensign Krieghoff returned with two Maquis prisoners wanted
for Theft of Starfleet Property and Assault on Starfleet Personnel he had
recognized on the street and followed to try and recover the runabout they
had stolen. The runabout was subsequently recovered after interrogation
of the prisoners. Lieutenant Krieghoff was transferred to Starbase 155
following his promotion. |
2373: |
Suspended from duty after accusations of
improper conduct were levied against him by a resident aboard Starbase
155. Restored to duty after Lieutenant Krieghoff proved his own innocence
by demonstrating that the accusations were a ploy to allow a shipment of
illegal narcotics that the Lieutenant had discovered to be brought onstation
and sold. Station Command transferred Lieutenant Krieghoff to the USS Chakar. |
2374: |
Charged with disobeying orders regarding
the rules of engagement ordered by the Shantipole’s Executive Officer
in a confrontation with Jem’Hadar troopers in defense of a Federation
communications relay array. Charges dropped when it was determined that
Lieutenant Krieghoff’s actions prevented the loss of the array and
subsequent loss of communications with fleet elements during a Dominion
offensive in the sector. Lieutenant Krieghoff was transferred to the USS
Hesperas. |
2377: |
Charged with assault on the Leonidas’ Assistant
Communications Officer during an apparent argument during which Lieutenant
Krieghoff broke the ACO’s jaw by slamming his face into an LCARS
panel. The subsequent investigation cleared him when it determined that
when Lieutenant Krieghoff had confronted the ACO about a series of suspicious
communications packets traced to him that routine checks had found attached
to other messages in the Leonidas’ com traffic, the ACO had made
an attempt to swallow a suicide capsule, and that Lieutenant Krieghoff’s
actions had prevented the ASO from swallowing it. Subsequent investigations
proved the officer to be in the pay of Orion Syndicate elements. Lieutenant
Krieghoff was subsequently transferred to Deep Space 9. |
2378: |
Charged with false arrest and excessive
use of force in restraining a Bajoran aboard DS9. Lieutenant Krieghoff
maintained that the Bajoran had possessed a sleeve disruptor and was in
the act of aiming it at a Cardassian national on the Promenade when he
apprehended him, but that the disruptor had been dropped in the altercation.
The Bajoran claimed to have never possessed such a weapon, and it could
not be located at the scene. The charges were dropped when Station Commander
Kira Nerys agreed to transfer Lieutenant Krieghoff |
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2353 – 2366: Standard
pre-Academy Educational Program, Starbase 74
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2366: Starfleet Academy, San Francisco,
Earth, First Year Cadet |
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2367: Starfleet Academy, San Francisco,
Earth, Second Year Cadet |
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2368: Starfleet Academy, San Francisco,
Earth, Third Year Cadet |
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2369: Starfleet Academy, San Francisco,
Earth, Fourth Year Cadet |
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2370: Wide variety of self-paced
learning programs and holographic simulator classes |
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2370: Ensign,
Security Officer, Starbase 215 |
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2371: Transferred, Ensign,
Security Officer, USS Delaware |
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2372: Transferred, Ensign,
Security Officer, USS Durendal |
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2372: Promoted and Transferred,
Lieutenant (JG), Security Officer, Starbase 155 |
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2373: Transferred, Lieutenant
(JG), Security Officer, USS Chakar |
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2374: Re-assigned due to loss
of ship, Lieutenant (JG), Security Officer, USS Shantipole |
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2374: Transferred, Lieutenant
(JG), Security Officer, USS Hesperas |
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2375: Re-assigned due to loss
of ship, Lieutenant (JG), Security Officer, Federation Occupation
Forces, Cardassia Prime |
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2376: Transferred, Lieutenant
(JG), Security Team Leader, USS Leonidas |
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2377: Transferred, Lieutenant
(JG), Security Officer, Deep Space 9 |
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2378: Transferred, Lieutenant
(JG), Security Officer, Idran System Fleet Base |
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2379: Transferred, Lieutenant
(JG), Security Patrol, USS Galaxy |
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2385, January: Promoted, Lieutenant, Assistant Chief of Security, USS Galaxy |
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2385, May: Promoted, Lieutenant, Chief of Security, USS Galaxy |
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Victor comes from a small, traditionalist German family with a strong tradition of military service that goes back to Germany’s origins as a nation. His family has served their nation, and later their planet, and still later the Federation, in every generation since it was founded. Along with that external tradition of service, the Krieghoff's have also practiced an internal tradition of craftsmanship, having been weaponsmiths to the wealthy elite of first Europe, then the world.
At first swordsmiths, when firearms were introduced to Europe, the Krieghoff family slowly shifted their operations and became gunsmiths. The small family shop produced one-of-a-kind custom firearms for the wealthy as early as 1685, and the family has kept the tradition alive to the current day. The Krieghoff's handmake each weapon and utilize painstakingly researched methods to ensure that each piece is not only unique, but non-replicatable as well. Demand has slacked off since the introduction of energy weapons to society, since the family refuses to make them, considering chemically propelled slugthrowers - specifically rifles and shotguns - to be the pinnacle of their art, but there are always enough collectors willing to make a deal for a unique weapon to keep the family tradition alive. The family does, however, manufacture precision parts for a variety of energy weapons such as triggers and internal parts used in customization on a larger scale, deriving most of the business' income from the sale of such parts.
Victor's parents both served in Starfleet - his father as a Tactical Officer, and his mother as a Doctor - and continued to serve as members of the Federation Diplomatic Corps after their marriage. Victor was born during their tour of duty aboard Starbase 74, and they requested permanent assignment there to ensure that he had a stable environment growing up. Although he seemed to be constantly in trouble as a boy, and had few, if any, friends, Victor studied hard and achieved good, if not spectacular grades. It was a forgone conclusion within the family that he would join Starfleet when he was old enough, and he lived up to their expectations when he turned 18.
His time at the Academy was characterized as a solo struggle to maintain his grades. He participated in the minimum required extracurricular activities and formed no friendships to build up a support network. He received counseling on several occasions for his standoffishness, and after one disastrous attempt to integrate him into a group of socially awkward cadets by a Counseling Officer, he was allowed to continue without further pressure to socialize more. His worst subjects proved to be tactically-related; specifically ship-to-ship and ground tactics where he was expected to follow an existing plan or work as part of a much larger whole. He escaped the classes with minimally qualifying scores, a suggestion that he consider Security for his branch specialization as opposed to Tactical, and a notation in his record that he be counseled against transferring to the Command track following his unorthodox solution to the Kobyashi Maru simulation. Aside from that deficiency, his grades were solid, and he graduated in the middle of his class.
Upon graduating from the Academy, Victor was assigned to Starbase 215 as part of the security detachment there based on his experience with station life. He experienced the same problems fitting in there that he had in the Academy, making no real friends. In his off-hours, he began to take self-paced training courses in the station holosuites to fill his off-duty time. A year into his tour there, he was assigned to investigate a homicide, and apprehended the prime suspect without calling for backup when he encountered him by chance exiting a turbolift on the Promenade. Victor was brought up on charges when he inflicted a compound fracture on the man's arm during the apprehension, but was subsequently cleared. In the first instance of a cycle that would come to characterize his career, he was transferred to the USS Delaware by a nervous station security chief and administration, fearing a worse incident would occur if he were lowed to remain.
He served aboard the Delaware for seven months, until early 2372, before the ship ran a suspected Orion smuggler to ground and beamed a boarding party aboard. In defiance of orders to keep his phaser holstered and not to open fire unless ordered to by the officer in charge, he drew and opened fire on two Orion crewmen that were in the act of drawing disruptors, stunning them. As there were no other witnesses except the Orion crewmen, who supported their two companion's story that Victor had fired for no reason, he was reprimanded and transferred at the request of the Security Chief, finding a new home aboard the USS Durendal.
Serving aboard the Durendal for eight months, he repeated his pattern of making no friends and simulator training, before spying two wanted Maquis members while on shore leave. Recognizing that one of them was using a scanner to check for Starfleet locator signals, and realizing that there was no time to summon backup, he dropped his combadge so that they would not be alerted by its signal, and followed the two men, hoping to have them lead him to the runabout they had stolen. When it became apparent that they were not going to return to the stolen ship, and were not meeting any other members of the Maquis, he apprehended the pair and brought them in. He received a letter of commendation for his efforts in bringing in the two men and was promoted to Lieutenant JG - and, at the request of his Security Chief, given a promotional transfer to Starbase 155.
Victor served there for a year, his now-established pattern continuing, before learning of an incoming shipment of illegal narcotics destined to be sold aboard the station from an informant just before the outbreak of the Dominion War. Unfortunately, the Ferengi the shipment was destined for also learned that Victor knew, and took steps to neutralize the threat to his profits. A woman employed in one of the Ferengi's businesses came forth and accused Victor of forcing a relationship - and himself - on her by threat of manufactured evidence that would have her deported off-station. Victor was suspended pending the investigation, and broke house arrest to gather the evidence needed to clear himself and ensure that the narcotics were seized. He managed to exonerate himself, but could not gather the evidence needed to prove the Ferengi was behind either the narcotics or the accusations against him. Again following established pattern, Station Command took advantage of the need for officers in the mobile fleet and transferred him to the USS Chakar at the onset of the War.
He happily served aboard the Chakar for a year, finding for the first time in his career a commander who understood him in Captain Bryce McClain. He also broke his normal pattern of behavior and began to try and interact with the crew socially, and succeeded in making several friends, something that had eluded him before then. His time on the Chakar was eventful as the ship served - and fought - in the Dominion War, but the support of his shipmates and Capt. McClain's understanding of how to manage Victor meant that his talents were utilized properly for the first time. The Chakar was all but destroyed in combat during one of the attempts to retake Betazed during the War, and the decision was made to spread her personnel across an increasingly short-handed fleet rather than rebuild her and have her crew lie idle. Victor found himself the lone member of the crew transferred to the USS Shantipole, a Saber Class vessel.
The demands of the War had brought a different set of missions to the Shantipole than her hastily-assembled cadre of officers were used to, and her Command Staff struggled to change their way of thinking and adapt to the needs of the moment. Again forming no friendships and relying on training programs to fill his spare time, Victor didn't notice this until the ship was assigned the task of protecting a subspace communications relay array from a small Jem'Hadar attack force. The Shantipole's XO laid down a complex and unwieldy set of rules of engagement for the forces stationed on the array, rules that Victor promptly discarded when a Jem'Hadar force beamed aboard the array while the Shantipole was battling their fighter escort. Victor violated his ROE and opened fire before they had finished transporting onto the station, prompting the rest of his team to do the same. All but two of the Jem'Hadar were killed in the initial crossfire, and those two promptly shrouded and forced Victor and his men to engage in a deadly game of hide-and-seek to stop them from damaging or destroying the array. Victor stopped them at the cost of two of his team's lives, killing the last Jem'Hadar personally with an improvised bludgeon. The XO brought charges against Victor for violating the ROE, but Starfleet threw them out in light of the successful defense of the array, awarding Victor a letter of commendation instead. The XO, unwilling to work with Victor following the dismissal of his charges, then arranged a trade of Victor for another Security Officer from the USS Hesperas, an Akira-Class vessel.
On the Hesperas, Victor found another CO who understood him, Captain Delora Farragon. As he had on the Chakar, he broke his pattern of off-duty training programs and tried to socialize, although with more mixed results than he'd had on the Chakar. He served aboard the Hesperas until the end of the war, when she was lost with almost her entire compliment during the final battle to retake Cardassia Prime. Captain Farragon assigned him to one of the runabout-based assault teams going after the defense stations to take advantage of his strengths, so Victor was not aboard when a volley of polaron beams and the pinwheeling tail of a exploding Galor-Class ship took the Hesperas out of the fight and caused a catastrophic environmental systems failure that killed her Captain and most of her crew.
Following the battle, Victor was assigned to the Federation Occupation Forces on Cardassia Prime, a position he served in without incident for eighteen months. Of all his assignments, this would prove to be the hardest on him, as there was simply nothing for him to do. There were no recreational facilities where he could continue his classes and no friends to socialize with. While his CO did not really understand him, the nature of the Occupation meant that he was forced to give considerable freedom to the men under his command in order to get anything at all done, which prevented most of the problems Victor was used to having from occurring. With nothing to do, Victor simply volunteered for double shifts for the duration of his time there, feeling that the extra work at least allowed him to do something useful with his time. Finally, perhaps inevitably, one of those extra shifts led to a problem. While on a routine patrol, he walked up on a small group of drunken off-duty Starfleet personnel assaulting a Cardassian woman. Victor intervened, sending several of the men to the infirmary with minor injuries and stunning the remaining two when they tried to draw their own weapons. Rather than blow the incident into a problem that would reflect negatively on Starfleet, Victor's CO took the step of transferring everyone involved off-planet and back into the fleet to hush the problem up.
This time, Victor found himself aboard the USS Leonidas, an aging Excelsior-Class vessel patrolling the edges of the Badlands . Once again, he also found himself aboard a ship whose CO did not understand him, and whose crew, save for a lone Andorian engineer, was uncomfortable around him. Aside from the occasions he socialized with the Andorian crewman, he simply reverted back to his old habit of taking training class after training class to pass the time and give him something to do. Five months into his tour aboard the Leonidas, Security stumbled across a series of encrypted data packets being attached to routine outgoing mail, and Victor was assigned to investigate. The trail led to the ship's Assistant Communications Officer. When confronted about the packets, the ACO attempted to swallow a suicide pill to prevent being questioned. Victor managed to prevent the pill from being swallowed, and got a grip on the ACO's jaw that prevented him from biting it, but could not force the prisoner to spit it out. Finally, afraid that the pill would dissolve and take effect that way, Victor simply broke the prisoner's jaw by slamming it into an LCARS panel and extracted the pill manually. Although he was cleared of the charges brought against him, and received a letter of commendation for exposing the Orion Syndicate operative who had been feeding ship movements to his master, the Leonidas' crew and CO were unwilling to have him remain aboard and a transfer was arranged to the security detachment aboard DS9 when the Leonidas passed by it next.
The rougher, post-war environment aboard Deep Space 9 suited Victor and his talents well, and he served there for a year as part of the Federation security team assisting Station Commander Kira Nerys' security forces. He made several friends, and even managed to sustain a relationship with one of the Bajoran's working aboard DS9. All that came to an end when he stopped the attempted murder of a Cardassian national by a Bajoran national on the Promenade. The Bajoran's weapon, a holdout disruptor, was not located after the initial arrest was made, and the situation devolved into one of Victor's word versus the Bajoran's. The resulting protests and threatened legal action cost Victor both personally, when his relationship collapsed in arguments over the need to protect Cardassians aboard the station, and professionally, when Commander Kira was forced to transfer him off the station to quell the protests.
Because of the station's proximity to the wormhole, Victor was assigned to a post as far away from Starfleet as he could imagine possible: the Idran System Monitoring Station and Starbase in the Delta Quadrant. While not understanding Victor the way that some of his previous commanders had, the CO at the Idran Starbase simply had so many things on his plate that he didn't have time to care about anything but results - as long as Victor produced those, the CO was happy. Victor managed to make one or two friends on the staff, but after being placed in charge of the security detachment at one of the small mobile shipyards brought through the wormhole and set up at the Idran Station, he found he had little time for socialization. He spent the better part of a year there, receiving little attention, until the end of the year when something finally happened to make the Station commander notice him again.
While responding to an intruder alarm aboard the USS Gyrfalcon, a Defiant-Class vessel just completed at the yard, Victor discovered something unexpected - not only was the alarm not another in a long series of false alarms, but the intruders attempting to steal the vessel were Borg. No other forces being available, he led a team of yard personnel to try and stop the theft of the vessel, while the two other security personnel on site contacted the main station for assistance and organized a search party to check for any other Borg. Despite having only two engineers and a welder's mate to work with, he managed to stop all three of the Borg aboard the Gyrfalcon, losing the two engineers in the effort and being critically wounded himself in the process.
He received a transfer notice while recuperating in the station infirmary, in and of itself no surprise to him by now even if the notice did come with a promotion to full Lieutenant. What was surprising, however, was that not only was the transfer to the USS Galaxy - the new flagship that he'd only had whispers about - but that instead of being pushed away from his post as he was used to, he was being pulled to another one... the Galaxy's captain had requested him specifically. |
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Victor is a dedicated, determined officer, willing do whatever it takes to ensure the safety of the people and property he's responsible for. Under normal circumstances, that would be an asset any commander would want - but circumstances aren't 'normal' in Victor's case. For the majority of the Federation's citizens, whatever it is that marks you as a predator, both inside and out, is an alien concept, something best forgotten as a thing of the past or regarded as a monster. Victor on the other hand, can't see it that way - because he is a predator.
Whatever it is that marks you as a predator so the sheep around you will know, whatever genetic factor makes that distinction, Victor has it. His walk, his appearance, the way he smells, the emotional or telepathic resonance he emits, the way he thinks - something about him marks him, making those he encounters uncomfortable in his presence by triggering their 'fight or flight' reflex. Additionally complicating matters is the fact that Victor has a predator's attitude towards violence as well: you use it, and then you let it go and move on. If it's necessary - and his definition of necessary is based almost solely on instinct, not planning or rules of engagement - then he uses it. He doesn't dwell on it, he doesn't enjoy it - he just does what he has to do and moves on. Most Federation citizens and Starfleet officers are appalled at the seemingly casual way he will shift from inaction to violence and back again.
The situation was made worse in October of 2379, when the Galaxy encountered the original USS Defiant, thought lost in an interspatial rift in Tholian space over a century before. Wherever the Defiant had been, it did not return alone - it brought with it a malignant, evil entity that possessed every atom of the ship, making it alive and malleable to the entity's desires. The entity was utterly destroyed at the cost of many lives - or so it was understood. In actuality, a single part of the Defiant, a Type 1 Phaser, survived in Victor's possession, picked up and forgotten during the mission. Since it was, as all parts of the Defiant had been, alive and a portion of the entity, it suppressed Victor's impulse to turn it in for destruction just long enough for the fractional portion of the entity, sensing Victor's nature, to leave the phaser and attempt to possess him. The attempt failed, and the entity found itself trapped within Victor, literally welded to him on a spiritual level, as Victor's subconscious, unknown to his waking self, turned his mind and soul into a prison to keep the Galaxy and his universe safe.
Prior to arriving on the Galaxy, the instinctive, atavistic response that his mere physical presence normally provokes in people, and the lack of socialization that his condition has forced on him, ensured that Victor made few friends during his time in Starfleet, and kept him on the move, bouncing from assignment to assignment with regularity until arriving at the Galaxy. With a lack of willpower on his part, less of a sense of duty, or a lack of a strong moral upbringing, he might well have been the monster that many past crewmates have thought him - but he possessed all three, and isn't. Since sealing the Defiant Entity away within himself, however, that distinction is less clear in the moments when the entity is more in control.
Initially, the possession rendered Victor, if anything, even more socially dysfunctional than he’d been before, making him colder, more remote, and less human, but, in the years since assimilating the Defiant Entity, Victor has matured and learned to deal with his inner nature, although still without his, or anyone else, realizing that he has the Defiant Entity trapped within him. In part, that has been due to his relationships with fellow crewmen, both romantic and otherwise. For the first time in his life he’s made friends, met people that didn’t loathe him on sight – and that’s helped center and ground him. Despite having only one dysfunctional relationship in his past, Victor has managed to sustain not one, but two relationships since being assigned to Galaxy. The first, with fellow officer Ella Grey, lasted for several years, but, despite rumors to the contrary, was never fully consummated owing to Victor’s inability to shake the Defiant Entity’s influence. The second, with Ktarian fighter pilot Angelienia, hasn’t reached the point of consummation either, but has reached a level of physical intimacy only just short of that.
The final part of Victor’s newfound ability to control the entity and its influence over him is life experience – although not technically Victor’s life. In 2384, Galaxy encountered a crashed colony ship from the Vulcan Diaspora era, and was collectively possessed by the communal katra off all the proto-Romulans that had been aboard her, forcing the crew to relive the lives of the crew and passengers that had travelled aboard it. Victor was possessed by the katra of Chulak Vardek, the son of the ship’s Prime Engineer, for a time until the Defiant Entity within him overwhelmed the katra, absorbing it and making the katra’s memories a part of Victor as well. Victor awoke within the communal katra, trapped in Chulak’s body, afraid to force his way out of the communal katra experience for fear that he would disrupt the matrix and was forced to live out the remaining century and a quarter of Chulak’s life, as Chulak. The only benefit to the situation was that the communal katra was strong enough to keep the Defiant Entity suppressed, and as such, Victor was allowed to live a life free from other people’s instinctive reactions to him. He worked as an engineer, managed a department, fell in love with Chulak’s wife, Sakonna, had four children together with her, and grew centered and strong enough that even when the communal katra faded, he continued to act with the maturity, experience, and wisdom he’d accumulated in it.
Under most circumstances Victor is an intelligent, but not brilliant, man, with a good grasp of social customs and niceties, a somewhat dry sense of humor, and a wide, but not necessarily deep, base of knowledge on a surprisingly varied set of subjects. In threat situations, or situations that he perceives as threat situations, he, in the past, reverted to an instinctual level for decision making. Complex tactical maneuvering and organized actions as part of a larger whole were beyond him at those times, with small-unit actions the limit of his practical ability to work with. Since living Chulak’s life, this issue appears to have been resolved, although it is not currently known if he may revert under stress or not. He still, however, works best when given an objective and left to his own devices as to how to accomplish it. His tactics tend to be unorthodox, and often involve direct application of violence in places that others would attempt negotiation, but never unnecessarily so within his view.
Over the years, he's become well adjusted to who and what he is, especially after his second life, and doesn't see himself as handicapped or 'broken' in any sense. He’s remarkably self-aware, and matter-of-fact about how people react to him. If pressed, he will compare himself to a tiger that's adopted a herd of sheep. He scares his charges, and he knows that - but it's his job to see that no other predators bother the sheep, and whether the sheep like him or not doesn't really have much to do with the program. |
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Victor dances daily when possible, formal dances like the waltz and the tango and their analogues from non-Terran cultures, but for him the dancing is more of a need, not a hobby. He requires it much the way he requires oxygen to breathe, as it helps him contain and control the entity within him. This compulsive behavior stems from his subconscious identification of his post-merger self as Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction and rebirth as a way to conceptualize what he has become. Since Shiva danced the dance of destruction and rebirth, Victor dances.
He also hunts as a way of containing his inner nature - a practice that most Federation societies find barbaric. He doesn't hunt herbivores, but rather chooses to specifically hunt land-based predators like Terran lions and tigers, Andorian ice bears, and others. He always hunts afoot, stalking and pursuing his prey in its natural habitat without tricorders or other sensors, relying only on his own senses. He never uses an energy weapon, relying on the handmade double rifle that he built himself as his first complete work in the family tradition. Since most of the predators that he hunts are scarce in the real world, he hunts them in holodeck programs he's filed as combat training/survival programs to take advantage of the looser safety protocols in that area and make the hunt as close to the real thing as possible. When taking shore leave on worlds where it is permitted, he will, when feasible, practice his skills against the real animals under real conditions.
He plans on continuing the family tradition of gunsmithing, but hasn't made a weapon since the one that he made for himself after graduating the Academy. The family has a body of tradition relating to how firearms are made, whom they may be made for, what may be traded for them, and how they're registered in the family archives that he follows - or will follow - when he begins to craft weapons. He's an excellent gunsmith - within the confines of the family style, almost a master - and possesses knowledge of ballistics appropriate to that level of skill.
Victor doesn't drink, at least not in public. The few times in his life he's felt compelled to get drunk, he's done it in his quarters, behind locked doors with the computer set to only open them if he passes a sobriety scan. He doesn't get invited out much, if any, so that isn't a real issue, and he understands that the last thing the people that he unnerves just by walking them in the hall want to see is a tiger drinking in Ten Forward. (He also has no desire to see what happens if he has enough to drink to let the reactions people have to him bother him.)
Both of Victor's parents - Klaus and Dominica - are living, having retired to a rustic colony world after the chaos of the Dominion War. He has a scattering of other relatives around the federation and the family remains very close-knit. He and one female cousin - Greta - are the only survivors of the current generation thanks to the losses sustained during the War. He has two Andorian Aunts, Rexa and Ar'resh, thanks to his Uncle Bernhard's marriage into an Andorian quad some years back, although his Uncle and the other male of the group also died in the War. In October of 2381, he discovered that Rexa, Ar'resh, and Greta had, for tax and business reasons, formed a Klingon House - 'House Krieghoff' - with themselves as members and had voted him the head of it, making him the essential owner of all properties assigned to the House. He further discovered that the House had been assigned ownership of all assets of the Idrani Clan, Rexa and Ar'resh's family (all other members of which were killed in the Dominion War), including the planetary system on the Cardassian border that the Clan had purchased for colonization purposes, and handful of small merchant and passenger starships formerly belonging to Clan members.
Victor's habit of taking self-paced courses to fill his time has left him with a wide array of skills and knowledge. He can operate a phaser drill; has over 100 hours of simulator time in several different types of Starfleet small-craft from fighters to captain's yachts to workbees; knows which fork to use first on fifteen different planets; understands the mechanics of a great many Starfleet devices well enough to make basic repairs or modifications to them; can dance formally in many styles; and a good deal more - but he isn't an expert at any of those things. He has a very impressive backlog of educational credits that the classes have earned him, but he's never applied for a degree or requested they be applied to his promotion ranking.
He still retains all of the knowledge and skills that Chulak possessed, as well as those that he mastered in the decades after ‘waking up’ in Chulak’s body. Those skills include a detailed, first-hand knowledge of the language, history, and customs of the period; a wide-spread knowledge of the era’s technology and how to maintain and modify it; and an intimate knowledge of the structure, workings, and design of the colony ship Talvalen that he was Prime Engineer of for over a century.
That generalist attitude carries over into other areas as well, particularly combat. He's studied systems from different cultures through the intermediate levels, but hasn't mastered any of them. Instead, he just moves from art to art, using a kick here, or a disarming technique there, all instinctively and spur-of-the-moment, with no set pattern. This free-form style of mayhem makes fighting him a headache for more skilled opponents, but his lack of mastery at any of the arts he's studied tends to negate any advantage he might gain from that.
Since his merger with the Defiant Entity, he has demonstrated the ability to allow it to direct his movements while fighting, making him a more powerful and frightening combatant capable of literally dismembering opponents with proper leverage. In such a state, his personality undergoes a reorganization and he speaks and carries himself completely differently, as if he were not the same entity any more (which, in truth, he isn't); additionally, his eyes occasionally change color, becoming a brilliant green while in this state. Victor rarely does this consciously unless driven to it by extreme circumstances, but has reverted to this state on occasion when seriously injured as a defensive mechanism of sorts. When this happens, Victor tends to rely almost exclusively on hand-to-hand combat, eschewing ranged weapons except the archaic Type 1 Phaser that the entity within him came from.
One thing he hasn't spent time studying is armed hand-to-hand combat. In situations where he faces an opponent who's armed, he simply phasers them when possible, and makes use of improvised weapons from the scene to try and counteract the advantage a weapon gives his opponent otherwise. The single exception to this his legacy knowledge of the Vardek Family ahn-woon style, in which he is the sole remaining practitioner, as well as the sole master.
The atavistic response that he engenders in others is not under his control - he can't turn it on or off like a light switch - and it isn't deliberate. He doesn't act aggressively, bully people, or commonly engage in threatening behavior - he just sets off people's alarms by physical proximity. The effective range of the 'aura' (for lack of a better term) is approximately three meters, and doesn't depend entirely on sight - people facing away from him sometimes get a feeling that 'something dangerous is behind them' when he approaches, making sneaking up on them problematic. He occasionally 'removes his mask' and allows others to see his true, inner self, an event that, since his merger with the Defiant Entity, observers generally perceive as the manifest entity of Death entering the room and speaking through Victor as though he were a mask.
Races known to be affected by his presence include most humanoid stock Preserver-seeded races such as Humans, Centaurans, Klingons, Trills, and Bajorans; and species with a strong predatory background like Catians, Anticans, Ktarians and Kzinti. Vulcans seem to be immune to the effect, but other telepathic species, particularly empaths like Betazoids, are particularly strongly affected, and occasionally suffer adverse physical reactions if unable to move away. Accordingly, Victor has a notation in his Starfleet files that he should not be assigned to work in close quarters with Betazoids for any extended periods. Some few individuals in any affected species are apparently immune to the effect, and a still smaller percentage of those individuals find it to be attractive, rather than disturbing.
As a further consequence of his merger with the Defiant Entity, Victor believes that he has the ability to 'forbid' someone to die, literally preventing their death by the power of his will, and normally makes a point of informing members of mission teams or friends and loved ones that they ‘do not have permission to die’ when departing on an Away Team or entering combat. No hard evidence supports that belief, although some individuals during the Battle of Romulus in 2383 had hallucinations where they believed an image of Victor came to them and prevented them from dying, and in 2381, a fellow Security Officer held on to life despite horrific injuries long enough to allow her unborn child to be transferred to an artificial womb, only letting go of life after Victor gave her permission to do so. Also during the Battle of Romulus, while surrounded by death and destruction on a monumental scale, he believed himself capable of extending that forbiddance to individuals that were off-planet with the Fleet in another stellar system, far beyond what he considers the 'normal' limits of this ability. True or not, it is worth nothing that since being assigned to the Galaxy no one that he has refused permission to has, in fact, died while that refusal was in place.
Victor posses an illegally-modified lung (the left), implanted after his previous cloned lung (the original was lost in a vacuum-exposure incident during the Dominion War) was damaged beyond repair in a fight while operating undercover with a Klingon Intelligence agent in December of 2381. The exact parameters of the modifications are not known, but it has been observed to allow him to hold his breath for approximately fifteen minutes due to increased storage capacity, and to process oxygen well enough to alleviate any incident of shortness of breath due to exercise or exertion. A tentative decision to allow him to retain the lung was reached by Starfleet after confirmation from the Klingon Intelligence operative he had been assigned to work with that Victor had not requested the transplant, possessed no knowledge of the lung's capacities before implantation, and that the lung was intended as a reward for his performance during the mission. |
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