Lieutenant JG Bek

Bek is a fairly typical Ferengi in terms of stature- shorter than most species, and built in a scrappy but scrawny way. His skin is a pumpkin-like shade of orange-tan and has a hairless, thick texture. His ears seem about typical of a Ferengi male, his forehead the multi-lobed, almost grub-like shape as standard. His ridged nose is large, long and bulbous, similar to a head of garlic. Bek’s eyes are large and brown in color, lacking the sense of grasping intelligence that some Ferengi have, but seem shrewd and… mischievous? Bek’s smile is a frequent greeting to those who engage him, and his mouth is full of typically sharp and jagged teeth which he proudly keeps sharpened. Bek has an overbite and when he smiles closed-lips a few tips of his fangs still rest against his bottom lip. His nails are prismatic.

Normally Bek dresses in the Operations division of a Starfleet uniform, including a fringed black headwrap with gold trim above. Off-duty his attire is Ferengi styled- waistcoat, vest, collared shirt. He likes a well-tailored garment but to avoid offending his Federation allies, he leans away from gaudy jewels or displays of wealth. Bek can be a bit vain- he likes his teeth pointy and his ears soft and supple with Ipecac cream. He also likes to smell nice and likes Flaxian colognes.

Rabar. A Dai Mon aboard a Ferengi Alliance Marauder, the Kortag. Rabar is busy in the Balanchar and Proxcynian systems. They seek out new civilizations to forge trade deals, make profit and find new resources for the Alliance. Rabar and Bek do not speak. Rabar does not accept his son’s profitless decision to join Starfleet, no matter how much the Nagus tolerates it. Rabar and Dosha are no longer together and allowed their marriage contract to lapse four years ago.

Dosha. Dosha enjoys the new, more liberal tendencies of a reforming Ferengi Alliance. She is involved in a spa and rejuvenation suite for Ferengi females to go and maintain their aesthetics, fashion and to form contacts in the new female-centered economies in the Alliance. Dosha and Rabar are no longer together and allowed their marriage contract to lapse four years ago.

Older Brother: Frep. Nerp’s twin brother. Frep is a loan associate on a Ferengi gambling ship and is responsible for supplying gamblers with extending their lines of credit. The only one in regular contact with Bek.

Older Brother: Nerp. Frep’s twin brother. Nerp provides information security and investigation for Ferengi ledgers and portfolios, including investigating fraud against the FCA.

Bek has a good mind for his chosen vocation. Bek is intelligent, mathematically talented and he is gifted with a visual memory that excels in logistics. As Ferengi go, Bek leans into the introverted- not so much shy as introspective and self-thinking, not needing the energy of others to flourish, at least in the short term. Bek also trusts his own gut instinct- a very Ferengi trait- and his faith in the Great Material River. Science and senses get one perhaps halfway there, but the rest comes with a carefully honed intuition.

Bek is a thinker more than a feeler. He is innovative more than empathetic. He makes decisions on his instincts, but he backs that instinct up with thought more than impulse- and that is a little unusual for some Ferengi. Bek is shrewd, planning, even… capable of being conniving even as his training fights that instinct. Bek has the “ears for profit” in that he acquires data and makes sound decisions with his instincts. He applies those skills to assuring that the Ontario’s resources are well-distributed, and he uses his negotiation skills to make sure the ship can acquire more than just their usual supplies. One of Bek’s best features is his ability to prospect- to change and adapt as information changes. He is not rigid in his potential actions.

In general, Bek is friendly and open-minded when engaging others, but isn’t the dripping-with-charm (or smarm) of a typical merchant. He is unusually curious about the cultures and interests of others- though of course his first impulse is to seek out a potential deal.

STRENGTHS

Analytical: Bek is a thinker and he excels at noticing patterns and connections.

Imaginative: Bek is good at coming up with ideas that might be counterintuitive to traditional ideas. He thinks quickly.

Open-Minded: Bek likes to learn and is naturally curious. He is idea-flexible and holds little as sacred- not politics, or religion, or traditions. Whatever leads to new opportunities and, of course, new profits.

Curiosity: Bek shifts around and looks for new ideas for opportunities of personal growth and opportunity. He likes to research new possibilities for acquiring profit and supply for his ship.

Honest: Bek is unusually honest for a Ferengi. He isn’t bluntly so, but he prefers to omit or stay silent (or be crafty) rather than outright lie. But he sees bluffing as a useful tool and will exploit a rival’s ignorance for his (or his ship’s) gain. But as a negotiator and ambassador, Bek is unusually fair (if tough).

WEAKNESSES

Disconnected: Bek’s inner world is rich- he’s developed it as he plans and schemes within a family that he is very much the black sheep. He loses himself in scheming and planning, in beautiful ideas of opportunity. He sometimes struggles to get to know others on a level that is meaningful.

Insensitive: In his searching for new avenues and new ideas, Bek can sometimes offend people who cling to more solid foundations in traditions and their emotions. To Bek having to discount things like that isn’t personal- it's business. But he must come back and apologize and smooth over frayed feelings when he gets too deep into making a deal or pushing for an opportunity. Resources and personnel go to the people and department that will bring the most “profit”, in terms of knowledge or agenda.

Dissatisfied: Sailing the Great River, it's best to be… restless. Things can always be better, but one must search for it to navigate. Few things just wash up on one’s boat. This can be exhaustive and divisive to truly following through on one opportunity well. And Bek can risk burn out.

Overthinking: Sometimes this kind of deep overthinking can lead to analysis paralysis and being burdened by so much information that it can be crushing. It becomes very difficult to make decisions based on so much information.

Impatient: Bek sometimes gets impatient when people don’t follow his line of thinking, or with those who overly delay, deny or vacillate.

Acquire profit. Find opportunity. Make connections. Prove his father and brother wrong. Prove to the Federation what an asset the Ferengi are. Rise through the ranks to eventually be in a Chief position for the Operations of a starbase or sector. Acquire a (male) mate. Buy a personal cargo shuttle.

Stock Trading and Profit: Bek is very much a Ferengi. He trades futures and commodities on the Ferengi and Orion stock exchanges. He does measure his worth at least in part by his wealth.

Tongo, Card Games and Dom Jot: Bek enjoys games both for fun and for profit. He enjoys games of chance and gambling. His favorite pastime game is Dom Jot, a game somewhat similar to Billiards and Pinball.

Holodeck Time: Bek loves a luxurious holodeck adventure, usually one on pleasure worlds or interesting vistas. He sometimes enjoys novels but in general he likes “sandbox” style programs.

Acquiring Art: Bek likes to collect bits of art. Every successful deal means he allows himself to make an art purchase that symbolizes that deal.

The Rules of Acquisition and the Great Material River: Bek is not beholden to them but he sees both concepts as a foundation for finding and keeping opportunity, and when to walk (or run) away.

Holophotography: Like so many before him, Bek picked it up when he arrived at a new place and wanted to have a way to send back his experiences. He found he liked it beyond just being a tourist shutterbug and he’s been self-teaching himself.

Native to Ferenginar and born in late 2369, Bek has known a time of great change among the Ferengi- and it hasn’t been a smooth sort of change. He was still a child with his first set of ears when the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant changed the course of Ferengi commercial interests. Bek’s family was as defined by the times- much of it preferring the old guard, but also using the opportunities of a new and more liberal Ferengi future.

Bek’s father represents the old guard of Ferengi- a Dai Mon, a ruthless pragmatist in the acquisition of profit, and someone with the plasma whip and Marauder to loosen up trade negotiations. Bek hardly knew or knows his father; he was an absentee parent for most of his childhood, and disapprovingly angst over his child’s interests as Bek entered adolescence. Rabar is a typical Ferengi Dai Mon in almost all respects. He treated his wife, Dosha, in much the usual tradition of a Ferengi husband. It was Dosha’s role to teach the children the Rules of Acquisition and their skills to make them successful Ferengi.

Rabar saw little opportunity in the Gamma Quadrant, but he profited greatly from the end of the Dominion War. He made extensive contracts for the reconstruction of Cardassia and the Cardassian Union. The Breen were an ever-present threat to his ambitions postwar, but the new Nagus’ contacts with the Humans helped facilitate. And in time the new formal alliance with the Federation assured safety for profit. But their influences on Rom pushed Ferengi society into polarizing camps. Rabar spent less and less time on Ferenginar.

By the time Bek was ten, the Ferengi economy was in chaos. Integrating new female-driven business caused exponential growth and exponential instability. Factions argued and created more instability. The Ferengi participated in some of the quadrant’s greatest economic opportunities but social change is hard and dangerous. Bek’s mother, Dosha, grew with the changes as a convert rather than a founder. She became a more emancipated female and that estranged her relationship with her husband. But her profits and business ventures, as much as they tended toward the all-female market, were her own and she grew.

Bek grew up with these new ideas pulling at him with the old. He saw new Ferengi like Nog as examples. Not paragons exactly, but as templates of new opportunity. Bek grew up and displayed great skill in managing resources, logistics, navigating dearth and surplus. While his older twin brothers were canny gamblers and bankers, they all had the skills of being clever and perceptive.

Bek was a quick study, intelligent and a willing learner. He enjoyed acquiring as much as any other Ferengi. But while he was a canny negotiator, he was not strictly speaking a businessman. He preferred to facilitate between parties or on the behalf of a party, rather than make or sell a product. His interest in Starfleet came slowly and being a Ferengi without a member or officer to sponsor him at the Academy, his choices were limited.

So, when he turned sixteen- two years before his Age of Ascension- Bek stowed away on a Bolian freighter. He left Ferenginar, leaving notes explaining his need to pursue opportunity in the Federation away from the tumult in the Alliance. He didn’t want to be in the shadow of a Dai Mon father or brothers who firmly believed in the 110th Rule of Acquisition- exploitation begins at home.

Bek ended up working as a technician at a civilian transporter hub until he got noticed by a Starfleet lieutenant- Lieutenant Keltern Gar, a Ktarian. They struck up a friendship over the weekends that Gar would transport home from Paris to his family in Vancouver. Finally Bek was shown the proper channels to join Starfleet after he started to express interest. He excelled at the logistics tests and seemed eager to learn. He was accepted by age eighteen, though he had his detractors among the proctors.

Bek struggled with interacting with his fellow cadets beyond the scope of learning and working. It was a piece of culture shock to go from stories and studying Federation culture, to being immersed in and judged by it. Bek learned that the Federation has its prejudices, it has its pre-judgments, it has bias. Bek found getting his fellow cadets to trust him to be the hardest. They were vaguely curious about why someone would want to acquire and gain profit as opposed to the notion of, “living to one’s best potential.” Trust came slowly- in some cases if ever- because of the reputation of Ferengi being untrustworthy. And then there was the most-Mars attack mindset- the Federation was colder, more reactionary, more hawkish, more quick to judge based on its fear.

Bek ultimately found a small group of friends. Most were fellow non-Federation citizens, or those from worlds that hadn’t achieved that notion of utopia. And Bek excelled at his chosen field. He knew what he wanted to do going into the Academy and he never wavered. He wasn’t tempted to try medicine, try science, or try command. He wanted to manage resources and work the logistics side.

The role of an early Operations officer can be quirky upon graduation, and Bek’s experience followed that course. For the first few years, he didn’t set foot on a starship. He was assigned first to a supply depot for terraforming and colonizing efforts, both of which had been scaled back due to the Mars attack. The depot was shuttered in early 2393 and Bek was assigned to the Qualor II Surplus Depot. Despite the Zakdorn overlords and their tendencies for extreme bureaucratic overregulation, Bek enjoyed his work at the depot. He worked on several decommissioned vessel classes- including the increasing number of retired Ambassador class ships.

While ingratiate is the wrong word when dealing with Zakdorn, Bek quickly made himself useful and proved his resourcefulness.