Entry 764: Klingon Augments
Home World: Quo'nos
Occupation: Alien plot devices of the story arc
First Appearance: "Affliction" (ENT, 2005)
Summary: The reason behind the strange appearance of most Klingons in the mid-23rd Century can be linked to an incident in the 22nd. In the 2100s, Dr. Arik Soong bred several new human augments, who then took over a Klingon Bird of Prey. While the augments were all killed, and Soong imprisoned, the Klingons were profoundly disturbed by how a handful of unarmed human augments had managed to secure a Klingon warship so easily. They used a handful of augment embryos found on the vessel to create Klingon augments of their own. Stronger, faster, tougher, and smarter than any ordinary Klingon, these augments held tremendous promise. Unfortunately, the human DNA still in the augmentation process dissolved their forehead ridges, and made them unusually aggressive, yet surprisingly fearful. Unfortunately, it eventually also degraded their neural pathways, and the augments died in agony. Worse, one of the augments was suffering from Levodian Flu at the time. The process "augmented" the flu, sending it airborne. The resulting epidemic threatened the Klingons with extinction, as the virus spread like wildfire, transforming the Klingons into "augments" for a brief time before invariably killing them. The legendary Denobulan physician Dr. Phlox managed to create a "cure" that halted the virus's spread throughout the Klingon body, halting it after their personalities changed and their forehead ridges dissolved, but before they developed augmented abilities or began to suffer serious health concerns. These smooth-headed Klingons actually outnumbered the ridge-headed ones for a time in the 23rd Century, but by the late 24th Century, the epidemic had been all but forgotten outside the empire. (The Klingons themselves don't like to talk about it with outsiders)
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