Hello all! Ric here with the next part of the early federation series, exploring the
Romulan War. This video covers what the Andorians, Tellarites and Vulcans got up to for the most
part, and while not overly focused on in the books of that era, they nevertheless made
significant… impacts on the war. The Earth Romulan war was so named by the
Federation in later years because, although the entire coalition of planets was engaged
against the Star Empire, the focused target had been Earth. Nonetheless, both Tellar and
Andoria made significant strides and sacrifices to defend its coalition neighbour as defined
in their mutual defence pact. Especially after Vulcan pulled out of active
aggression. Earth’s first encountered alien friends, the Vulcans had learned of the Romulan’s
heritage and wished to avoid walking the same path that those who marched beneath the raptors
wings. This came over the objections of Ambassador Soval who argued that the Romulan origin gave
Vulcan even greater culpability in the war. As mentioned in a prior video of this series,
the Vulcans did continue to lend support in the form of intelligence, but they also began
a rather sneaky action. Explaining which requires a bit of setup first.
Romulan space boarders the Haakona system, in the Psi Velorum sector block. As with all
of the Star Empire’s neighbours, the Romulans mistrusted them and frequently spied deep
into their space. The praetor of the Empire at the start war was D’Deridex, the dude
the warbird was named after and until his later years, he had been a respected leader
of the senate. It was under his administration that V’Las’ Vulcan regime came to power
and steered the Vulcan’s away from Surak’s teachings as well as the creation of the drone
ship and most of the other problems fixed by the Enterprise crew.
However, in is age, D’Deridex developed an illness that many suspect led to the more
obsessive orders he issued, driven by realisation of his mortality. He became concerned with
leaving some iconic achievement as a legacy, realising that he may die before the conclusion
of the Earth-Romulan War and therefore his successor would receive all the credit. So
instead, he began pressuring his generals to attack the Haakona, a smaller, easier target
but naturally, many of his underlings did not want to split military forces on a two
pronged war, engaged as they were with the Coalition. Nonetheless, it was a command from
the Emperor, so eventually a task force was sent into Haakonan space, where it was promptly
destroyed. This was because Vulcan, had been sending
supplies in secret to Haakona so that they could both defend themselves and maybe alleviate
some of the pressure on the coalition. Underhanded, but clever. As mentioned, these activities
were carried out in secret, from even parts of Vulcan’s own government so as far as
the Coalition was concerned, Vulcan was simply not fulfilling its end of the pact, which
it kind of wasn’t. Fortunately, the Andorians and Tellarites
made the decision to stick by Starfleet and present a united front, although one sorely
missing the Vulcan’s faster vessels. Part of this was due to the fact that the Star
Empire attacked the Andorian colony world of Threllvia IV where the Romulan’s telecapture
weapon managed to usurp then destroy the Imperial Guard ship, Ka’Thelan Krotus. The NX-01
Enterprise managed to recover 14 survivors. A month earlier, the Tellarite ship, the Miracht,
a mighty vessel, had been destroyed by the same system, opting for self-destruct over
capture. Following this, the human colony of Deneva that the Miracht had been guarding,
was lost to the Star Empire, the first planet to fall to earth’s enigmatic enemy along
with several more Daedalus class ships and Tellarite vessels.
This led to General Shran of the Andorian Imperial Guard to return to active duty to
help lead future battles. It was in no small part due to his emphatic and appraising opinion
of humanity that the Andorians stuck by Starfleet for as long as they did. There was also a
meeting between Ambassador Gral of Tellar and Minister Thoris of Andor where they discussed
findings concerning the telecapture weapon, findings that made it clear that their vessels
were very susceptible to it. However, each species was keeping those findings highly
classified and working on their own defences. That is until Gral leaked the Tellarite research
to Thoris who underhandedly passed it on to Starfleet researchers at Alpha Centauri. Yay,
surreptitious sharing! I’ve already alluded to the battle of Andoria
that took place in early 2156 and I’d love to elaborate, but there’s not much else
to add to it. Sufficed to say it made Andoria even more wary of defending its own space.
Events continued in the Romulan’s favour until June 2156 which led to a substantial
shift in the war, and not one wholly for the better. By this time, Starfleet had upgraded
the Daedalus class with NX style warp cores and managed to complete construction of the
NX-05 Atlantis and 06, Endeavour. Unfortunately, the NX-02 Columbia was now missing in action
with all hands. This is because it jumped over to a different series of books in the
Star Trek Destiny timeline, but that’s a whole ‘nother beta canon tale.
Within the Star Empire, D’Deridex had finally passed away, peacefully in a fiery accidental
shuttle crash in no way orchestrated by General Valdore to dispose of the gradually-maddening
Emperor. Although, without the Emperor, Valdore was actually able to do his job without interference.
Having recently lost Berengaria to Starfleet, he set into motion a long-feint attack that
ultimately earned Romulus its most major victory. The Star Empire are xenophobic space elves
with Game of Thrones as required reading it seems.
Anyway. Valdore launched a series of simultaneous strikes, beginning with the joint Andorian-Tellarite
fleet stationed at Altair VI, a human colony world. The battle only lasted 10 minutes and
the Romulan ships were repelled, although there were heavy casualties on the Andorian
and Tellarite ships while the humans lost only 2 vessels. At the same time, in the Kappa
Fornacis system, the Coalition amassed its largest joint fleet yet with both ‘Commodore’
Archer and General Shran in the chairs of Enterprise and the IGS Weytahn respectively.
This fleet pushed into Deneva and successfully took it back from the Romulans with space
battles and ground combat. Just a side note, it is mentioned that the
Romulans somehow did not leave behind even a single body for anyone to pour over, so
as unlikely as it sounds, their appearance was still a mystery to the Coalition. Okay
then, not one soldier unmasked a Romulan in the firefight, but okay.
The battle however cost the humans three Daedalus ships, the Adirondack, Kearsarge and the Shepard.
While their alien allies lost almost half their fleet. Of the 33 that entered the fray,
11 had been Starfleet, and 22 Andorian or Tellarite. This was another great loss that
Andor and Tellar had sustained on behalf of defending a human colony world.
But this was not the end of the bad news, as while the Coalition of Planets had been
taking back Deneva and repelling an attack at Altair, the main Romulan fleet had snuck
its way to Tau Ceti IV, busted its way through the defensive Coalition fleet and overwhelmed
the planet. They bombarded it from orbit and made a permanent base on its surface leading
to a Romulan foothold deep in Coalition space, only 11 lightyears from Earth. It would not
surprise me to learn that Valdore gave orders to deliberately target that Andorian and Tellarite
ships, to drive up their casualties while defending human worlds.
Either way, this all led to both Andoria and Tellar Prime revaluating their staunch defence
of Earth and her colonies, despite the efforts of voices like Shran, the two worlds decided
to withdraw from the defence pact in favour of securing their own worlds. This led to
the loss of their presence at both Sol and Alpha Centauri. This, in turn left Starfleet
with no option but to pull all ships back to Sol to protect Earth.
And as Valdore’s Piece de resistance, the very next day, just as Vulcan was beginning
to consider entering the war to help at last, after no small pressuring from Ambassador
Soval, a Romulan assassin detonated a bomb at Mount Selaya. This destroyed the Katric
arc of Surak, removing his living katra from the Vulcans seemingly forever. Such a blow
placed Vulcan into its own lockdown and prevented them from joining the battles, effectively
isolating Earth altogether. So in two days, Valdore orchestrated a plan
that isolated Earth from all its allies. Such a stroke had been built on the gradual whittling
of goodwill from Andoria and Tellar towards Earth followed by the incitement of paranoia
in the Vulcan people. This covers the war’s progress in the novel “Beneath the Raptor’s
Wing” and leaves Starfleet in a very precarious state. I’m going to continue reading this
series to bring you the apocryphal lore of Star Trek, even though we all know how it
ends. I do wish we got a bit more focus on the rest
of the coalition outside of Starfleet and Vulcan, so I think I’ll just have to make
a video concerning those species early contributions to the formation of the Federation, I just
don’t want to miss anything first. Thanks for watching this video and I’ll
see you next time for a lore, gameplay or review one. Until then, I’ve been Ric and
I’ll see you next time. Goodbye!