Lieutenant JG Ramat'iklan
Name Ramat'iklan
Position Medical Officer
Rank Lieutenant JG
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Jem'hadar | |
| Birthplace | Dominion Hatchery 4A | |
| Birthdate | 25 April 2412 | |
| Age | 19, going 20 | |
| Quotes | "You have your own strange preferences, and I have mine. Do you see me passing judgment on you for it? No? Then apply that same logic to me." |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 6'3" | |
| Weight | 177 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Black | |
| Eye Color | Light blue | |
| Physical Description | Ramat'iklan has been through a lot. You can immediately tell by the numerous scars that polka dot his body and face. Bulkily built, muscular and with a kind of resting grumpy face you'd never guess that he works in sickbay until you see him don a doctor's coat. Of particular note are his eyes, ice blue and quite nice to look at, a surprising feature for a species that's supposed to be a cold-blooded killer. Elsewise he stands tall and proud as a Jem'hadar who has lived as long as he has; he has earned his place through sheer hard work and is unafraid to walk among his colleagues as an equal. |
Family
| Spouse | None. He's not terribly enthusiastic about his chances anyway. | |
| Children | None | |
| Father | None | |
| Mother | None | |
| Brother(s) | All the Jem'hadar in the Gamma Quadrant... if you really, really want to get into the nitty gritty. | |
| Sister(s) | None | |
| Other Family | None by blood. He would call a handful of residents of Deep Space Nine who helped him study for Starfleet Academy found family, but he'll never admit that out loud. |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Blunt, direct and with not too much tact (though somehow he manages to display acceptable bedside manner, albeit under protest), Ramat'iklan goes about his day and work with Jem'hadar candor - which is not saying much in the way of politeness. He doesn't understand the need to sugarcoat or obfuscate words when all that often does is deliver the opposite of what you mean to say, but since his entrance into Starfleet he's been forced to bite the bullet and learn how. Curse people and their sensitivities! The concepts of birthdays, marriage, holidays, festivals, funerals and so on and so forth are baffling to him; make no mistake, he will attend celebrations for all if asked to if only out of attempts at politeness, however, though he will quietly question his colleagues' inexplicable need to celebrate or have a ceremony for seemingly anything and everything while doing so. Why, oh why are humans and their allies this way. Beneath all the bluntness and bluster, one finds the desire to prove one's own worth to the world - and to his 'brothers' and 'gods' one quadrant away. He is firmly determined to earn back his honor and place - albeit on a different kind of battlefield. |
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| Psychological Profile | Ramat'iklan is what can only be described as... unapologetic. He genuinely does not care what others think of him - especially the ones who lambast him for reasons he knows not to be true - and it shows. Baseless negative opinions usually slide off him like water off a duck's back. As long as he does his job well and leads an honest career, that's all he needs to feel satisfied, regardless of whether he receives validation he doesn't need from those he doesn't need in his life or not. Does that mean he just does whatever the hell he wants, however the hell he wants? No. Certain things must be done a certain way for certain reasons and he's keenly aware of this. As much as he might disagree with some of these things, he chooses to follow them anyway - because if he doesn't, that's when people die. And that's not ideal. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | + Utterly unafraid of danger. + Utterly afraid of having to do extremely difficult or tedious things. + Will willingly sacrifice his own personal time to get something done to his satisfaction. - Will willingly sacrifice his own personal time to get something done to his own satisfaction. On two occasions this caused him to faint on shift. - Utterly unafraid of danger or the threat of impending death, and will throw himself into the thick of combat to carry out his duty with zero regard for his own safety. Great, until you think about it and realise that maybe that isn't the best trait for a combat medic. - Not very good with empathy or other traits most normal people tend to be more adept with. But he's trying. |
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| Ambitions | * Punch the Changeling who exiled him in the face. Screw her and her slimy face. * Command his own field medicine training institute. * Learn how to cook. His last attempt resulted in a steak burnt to a crisp. |
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| Hobbies & Interests | * Working out in the gym. * Combat scenarios, to keep his wits sharp. * Strawberries. He can't get enough of them and treats made with them. |
| Personal History | Ramat'iklan did not have a good start in life - well, subject to individual opinion of course. ‘Born’ into Jem’hadar company Tau-9 - a company most known for being sent on suicide missions (read: cannon fodder of cannon fodder), suffice to say that he, along with his ‘brothers’ were already slated to not live for very long. Even as he walked the ship, he could hear his brothers whisper among themselves over their fate. So much put into fighting for the Founders, so many soldiers lost unnecessarily, nothing returned to them. Why were they fighting for gods that may or may not exist? At seven years old, Ramat found himself right in the middle of one such incident. Having freshly stamped out a rebellion in the Psi Orionis Cluster, the company’s attack craft was limping back to friendly territory, shields heavily damaged and hull nearly breaching from the strain of making it back alone. By then the craft was crewed by only twenty Jem’hadar - their Vorta supervisor had been killed in the attack, leaving their First to bring them home. They did not expect to be ambushed along the way by even more rebels, hoping to at least make a statement to their Changeling oppressors. In usual Jem’hadar fashion their First engaged the enemy vessels in combat - normally, the attack craft would have been enough to dispatch them all, but in its heavily damaged state, its weapons and engines were offlined in combat, sending it spiraling down towards a planet just shy of the Bajoran wormhole. With no means of righting itself, the vessel had just enough time to eject its warp core before crashing into a mountainside with the loss of all hands… ...except one. Clambering out of the wreckage, bloodied, heavily injured and with several broken bones, Ramat surveyed his surroundings. It was just as well that he’d been in the attack craft’s storage bay at the time, and gotten trapped between supply crates. Yes, supply crates. Jem’hadar ships had been forced to carry those ever since their soldiers had acquired the need to eat and sleep in lieu of ketracel. By some miracle they’d protected him from any extraneous harm. Now was not the time to worry, though - he needed to stay alive until help came. Somehow. Using what few medical supplies that hadn't been destroyed in the crash to patch himself up and whatever food that had survived the impact, he used the mangled wreck of the attack craft as a camp of sorts, awaiting rescue. A day turned into two. Two became five. Five became a week. No help came. And the waiting itself? Ramat came to describe it as simple hell in his later years. He drifted in and out of consciousness often as he waited, slumped against a wall. Though he was able to deal with his surface wounds, his internal wounds continued to afflict him. A Jem'hadar does not fear pain or injury - except this pain was all-consuming, almost. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe and it hurt to think. He sometimes found it difficult to ascertain whether he still had his faculties or not. This was pain that robbed him of his purpose, his sense of self as a soldier - and he hated it. Intensely. At the end of the week, he found himself in a forest clearing, staring up at the stars while curled up in foetal position. By now his supplies had run out, and he was hungry, thirsty and, strangely enough, he felt ready to die. Alone, away from the eyes of his people and his gods. Oh well, at least they wouldn't get to see him die in such dishonor. As his eyes fluttered closed for what he thought might be the last time, his last vision was of a distant star that seemed to streak across the sky and stop above him, and his last sensation the feeling of weightlessness. So this was death. ...except it wasn't. The next thing he remembered was the blinding white of a ceiling lamp shining right in his face, a hard surface that was definitely not soft grass and soil against his back, beings clad in white shuffling around and… voices, muffled by his disoriented state. The pain had vanished. Was this Heaven? Surely not. He hadn't departed the world honorably, had he? As it turned out, he'd been rescued by the crew of the Jupiter-class USS Hyperborea, which had been fortunate enough to have been in the area on the final day of the week following a diplomatic mission, and was currently resting in sickbay - any longer and he would have actually died and gone to Heaven, he was told. In fact he was lucky to not have departed for the afterlife during the crash. The days that followed for him to recover were like a blur to him. Sleep, wake up, eat what was given, sleep, sleep some more… which he once again hated. He wanted to get back into the field - to fight. After a week and a half he was up and about, albeit still largely closed off and distrustful. Nonetheless, the Hyperborea could not keep him aboard forever, and eventually the time came to send him home. He was brought to the bridge, safe and sound - and seeing the Founder waiting to talk to him on the viewscreen was like having a holy revelation. He couldn't wait to return home and tell his brothers that he'd seen a Founder with his own two eyes. What would you do, seeing the face of God for yourself? He naïvely expected the Founder to be glad to see him, to be glad that her servant was safe and that he would be collected in the next few days and taken home. That's not quite what happened. The Changeling on screen took one look at him, scoffed and deemed him insignificant. Ramat'iklan snapped, calling her a few nasty things - so she exiled him from Dominion space as a punishment, seeing as she could not order his execution on the spot anyway. Ramat'iklan spent three whole days moping and depressed in guest quarters before hitting upon the (honestly pretty Captain Obvious) realisation that would change the course of his life forever: he hated feeling as helpless and week as he had been on that planet. He hated feeling diminished and unable to do that which he had been created for. He'd seen what the people who returned him his life could do. He knew then what he wanted to do. In no uncertain terms, he had nothing to lose in breaking the mold. Everyone he voiced his radical next step to thought he was nuts. Captain Azalea Hopps, the Hyperborea's commander herself felt that he was in over his head. For what it was worth, she wasn't sure if he had the patience or skill to make it at all, never mind the uphill battle he’d need to fight to gain people’s trust. "Give me a chance," he argued, "Let me prove you wrong." Prove her wrong he did. Ramat’iklan spent his hours of lucidity over the next few days burying his head in reading of various kinds and, upon being tested, demonstrated the ability to retain and apply information which no one had ever thought was possible coming from someone of his species (but no, it wasn’t as if he had any special powers; all he’d done was slog through the content, memorizing it bit by painstaking bit). Now suitably impressed, give him a chance Hopps decided to do, and wrote him his recommendation letter for entrance into Starfleet Academy. Upon reaching the Alpha Quadrant at last, he moved onto Deep Space Nine, where he spent the next six months studying for the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. He quite frankly viewed the process as unnecessarily laborious, but his grievances were kept internalized. This was a necessary step to the goal he had in his sights; he hadn't let rabid Hur'q swarms or phaser-wielding rebels stop him before and he'd be damned if a few hours of poring over harmless books did. It was at this time that he got his first taste of Federation hospitality and willingness to look past species and prior reputation and embrace what was possible. The handful of civilians who lived around him in the habitat ring in face banded together to help him study and adapt, in fact. Some of them helped to bring his conversational skills up to speed. Others made him food to tide him over the long, lonely nights of studying. A sparing few, knowing that being a shut-in was not a desirable trait for a medical officer, took it upon themselves to get him out of his quarters and socialise him properly. It was during these times that he picked up a handful of spoken languages, at the insistence of this small group - languages they felt would be beneficial for him to know going into this new world. At the end of those six months, Ramat’iklan travelled alone to Earth to sit for the entrance exam and passed - one of the first of his kind to do so, and in so doing subverting all expectations held of his people up till that point. |
Starfleet Record
| Branch | Navy | |
| Commission | Officer | |
| Service Record | 2412-2418: Starfleet Academy; Cadet 2418-2421: USS Bethehem, Medical officer, Lieutenant JG 2419: Completes the Starfleet Combat Medic Course (Advanced Level) 2421-2424: Starbase 79, combat medic course training cadre & medical officer; Lieutenant JG |
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| Professional History | His Academy tenure starting in 2412 went by reasonably well, all things considered. He acquired a reputation for being blunt and abrasive and favoring directness - typical Jem’hadar candor, of course. Possessing little tact or anything else in the way of bedside manner (the need for the latter in the first place baffles him), when not studying in his quarters, he would spend time using combat programs on the Academy’s recreational holodeck on the hardest setting - and then complaining that they were too easy for him. It was definitely better than paying for the Ferengi-owned holosuites on Deep Space Nine, though. The other aspects of being a full-fledged person took him months more to figure out - and even then he was only with a limited understanding of each aspect. With the help of some of his classmates he found out that he favored dark-colored clothing that kept him warm, at least, which colors exactly he did not seem to care about. Also among his discoveries was a dislike for cherries and dragonfruit as well as a taste for curries and the like. Why exactly any of these were his preferences, he did not know. They just… seemed right, for lack of any better explanation. At the encouraging of some of his instructors and lecturers he also delved into some of the clubs and activity groups on campus, theater (which he failed miserably at - it turned out that he had the acting chops of a cement brick, and even those act better by sitting still and doing absolutely nothing), martial arts (which he was thrown out of for being a little too enthusiastic) and boxing (which he was again thrown out of for being too enthusiastic) among them. His relations with his classmates remained largely stiff, though he made attempts to try and socialize. He thought of them as his fellow soldiers in training and as such tried to learn as much as he could about them (if only for the purpose of being able to function more effectively as a ‘unit’ with them) - which didn’t exactly earn him what he sought after. If anything his habit of silently observing them like a hawk or being absolutely blunt with his questions put them off even more, and sadly his conversational skills weren't quite up to snatch either - at least, not yet. This being said they did eventually get along, albeit not without much work on his psrt. He was not satisfied with staying in a sickbay, though, he wanted to stay close to where he thrived - and that was the field of battle. In addition to his studies, he also took up the notoriously difficult combat medic’s course, where he could do what he did best… while doing what he was supposed to do best. Initial test scenarios were somewhat difficult for him to adjust to (it had to be explained to him that one did not first bludgeon their enemies with their medical kit before commencing treatment, even though the carry case was made of hard material and would certainly cause serious injuries if swung hard enough at someone's head), but he gradually rose to the top of the class in training scenarios for having no fear of charging straight into danger and yanking the injured to safety, where his classmates would sometimes panic. Having no fear of horrible death certainly seemed to help. He graduated training at the top of his class - although some of his instructors commented on an overzealous streak that might need to be reined in with age and experience. Against all odds and expectations Ramat'iklan graduated handsomely. No loved ones attended his commissioning ceremony, seeing as he had none outside of Starfleet Academy, but that was fine by him. Freshly commissioned, Ramat'iklan was assigned to the USS Bethlehem for his first assignment. Life wasn't all that exciting, really - the Bethlehem's mission was study of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere, which meant a whole lot of sitting around and doing... not a lot, unless away teams returned with injuries, or being sent down to study the Sphere with them. Otherwise, however, it would be his collagues who helped him further along on his journey of self-disccovery and refine his social skills. It was here that he made his first attempt at dating - only to find out that the young engineering ensign whom he made the attempt with only wanted to show him off to her friends like a prize boyfriend. No thank you. He was subsequently given the opportunity to attend the Starfleet Combat Medic Course (Advanced Level) on Starbase 79 in 2418. Ramat'iklan relished the opportunity to finally put his 'skills', if it were, to use. The course was brutal. From late-night or early-morning turnouts to training conducted with real phaser fire and ordnance use and real patients bleeding for real with real consequences for lapses in focus, Ramat'iklan forced himself to push through till the very end. Their summary exercise, held on Androlphus IV, saw him savaged by a wild animal and almost killed, if not for the actions of his fellow trainee from the Klingon Defense Force. He repaid the favor to her two days later, which started a bond of mutual respect and friendship that lasts to this day. Coincidentally, Starbase 79 was where Ramat'iklan found himself assigned in 2421, as a medical officer in the base's sickbay who also double-hatted as a training cadre for the very same course he'd graduated from. Several syndicates' worth of trainees passed through Ramat'iklan's hands throughout his three years. During that time he became known as one of the scariest cadres in the course - trainees sometimes cried from the brutally honest and often unfiltered feedback he would give, and the punishments he would dole out for sloppiness, complacency and occasionally simple whininess. Nonetheless, the message always shone through: when you have someone's life depending on your absolute focus under fire, you cannot afford to switch on only when you want to, and his trainees all learned that lesson eventually. Eventually, though, he requested reassignment, hoping to put his skills to use elsewhere, and the USS Vanguard was the posting he was given. |
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| Notable Awards | 2417: Course Best Trainee, Starfleet Combat Medic Course (Basic Level) 2418: Academy Commandant's Coin, earned for being the most academically improved cadet in his Wing 2419: Course Best Trainee, Starfleet Combat Medic Course (Advanced Level), tied with a Klingon Defense Force exchange officer. |