Biography: Aleczhander Lorhrok, Chief Engineer

Played By: Sam Gillis (formerly Ben Randall)
Voice Sample: Raw Dialogue, Second Take - Scene 10302

Assignment: U.S.S. Excelsior
Position: Chief Engineer
Rank: Lieutenant, Junior Grade

Name: Aleczhander "Alecz" Lorhrok
Sex: Male
Race: Trill (Unjoined)
Date of Birth: 11 December 2356 (SD 33945.0) (age 26)
Origin: Trill
Height: 1.8 m
Weight: 66 kg
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Dark brown, combed back from face

Starfleet Profile
Physical
Lorhrok is far from the poster boy for Federation officers. He has pale skin--no doubt a relic of all the time he spent indoors reading the latest technical journals rather than going outside. He is slim, and his hair is cut just barely within regulation. His features are best described as "young," and people unfamiliar with Starfleet rank insignia frequently make an assumption and address him as "Ensign," or even "Cadet." Aside from this, Lorhrok is frankly rather plain. Being taller than the average Trill in addition to lighter gives him a lanky, stretched look. His spots are somewhat darker and more vivid than normal, a family trait.

Personality
Aleczahnder Lorhrok is the textbook example of a young man trying desperately to prove to his shipmates--and to himself--that he is more than another inexperienced kid promoted to fill the shoes of better officers lost or promoted during the Dominion War seven years ago. He struggles against this soft bigotry on a daily basis, especially since his assignment as Chief Engineer of one of the finest Sovereigns in the fleet at the low rank of Lieutenant J.G. He brings to the table a mild-mannered but absolute resolve to get the job done--whatever it is--and wouldn't have gotten his current assignment without a reputation for thoroughness and results.

Family
Father: Artuzo Lorhrok, unjoined Trill living on Trill. Age: 75. Profession: Professor of Cosmology and Ontology at Vezini University
Mother: Jamia Lorhrok, unjoined Trill living on Trill. Age: 70. Profession: Potter
Sister: Kiitali de Liége, unjoined Trill living on New France. Age: 31. Profession: Photographer
Brother-in-Law: François de Liége, Terran living on New France. Age: 34. Profession: Pharmaceutical Distribution

Interests, Skills, and Languages
• Amateur holography
• Trill history (particularly the 13th-19th centuries)
• Engineering principles
• Starship design
• Contemporary literature
• Theoretical computing
• Theoretical warp propulsion alternatives
• Finding new things to break up the daily routine
• “What If” scenarios
• Astronomy

Languages:
• Trill (first language)
• English (UFP Standard) (second language)

Biography
Alecz Lorhrok was born on stardate 33945 (11 December 2356, Terran calendar) to Artuzo and Jamia Lorhrok on the planet Trill in the Kalandra Sector. The Lorhrok family, including his sister Kiitali, lived in a moderately sized city called Vezini in the Poznian Hills region. His father worked as a professor at the city’s university, in the Astronomy department. The Lorhrok family is descended from nobility from the Vexan Period, and as such they lived in one of the largest estates in the city. Artuzo was an extremely traditional man, while Alecz was interested in the future; as such, the two were often at odds, especially regarding the way the Lorhrok Estate was run. Jamia tended to side with Artuzo, and the young Alecz often retreated to his room, the one place in the house where an outside observer could see that it was indeed the 24th century.

His childhood in Vezini was relatively quiet. Even though Alecz attended a decently sized school—3,000 enrolled—he had trouble fitting in as he got older, especially around other boys his age. He found many of them to be uncultured or crude. As a result, the majority of his friends were females, even though his romantic track record left much to be desired. One of the attendants of the Lorhrok Estate, Jeminev, a girl born a few months before him, was his closest friend throughout his time on Trill. Alecz rarely had any issue with following the rules, and as a result found that he usually had more in common with his teachers than he did with his peers.

Dark times came to Trill when the Dominion managed to take over the Kalandra Sector in late 2374, including the Kalandra and Betazed systems. Starfleet analysts had believed the sector too far from Dominion space for there to be a viable offensive, but the fierce battles waged over the surface of Trill seemed to indicate otherwise. Numerous times, the Jem’Hadar and Cardassian warships engaged the Starfleet defenders orbiting the world. Fortunately for the citizens of Trill, the planet never fell to the Dominion, but the Federation fleet orbiting the planet suffered heavy casualties. Indeed, at least two Federation ships crashed onto Trill, the second, an old Ambassador-class cruiser, taking out a quarter of the capital city with it. Once, the Jem’Hadar managed to beam down over five hundred shock troops into the most densely populated section of the capital, but the Trill citizens managed to hold the area long enough for Starfleet marines from orbit to beam down. The Lorhrok family was far enough away that none of this directly affected them, but living under the possibility that a stray torpedo could rain down and destroy them all in an instant didn’t do much for their disposition. In early 2375, the Federation Alliance managed to retake the sector, and Lorhrok, at the age of eighteen Terran years, was finally able to head to Earth to enlist in Starfleet.

For better or for worse, the Dominion War ended in late 2375, and Cadet Lorhrok was never sent off to the front lines. With the manpower shortage continuing even after the war, Starfleet never cancelled its Accelerated Wartime Course initiative, and Lorhrok graduated in early 2377, if somewhat exhausted. The instructors had been required to teach four years worth of lessons in two years, and it had taken its toll on every cadet.

Ensign Lorhrok was posted to the U.S.S. Steadfast, NCC-1966, an archaic Miranda-class, one of the few to survive the Dominion War. It was a truly ancient ship, and the years of refits could only do so much for it. With a maximum speed of warp seven point three, it had trouble keeping up with its post-War assignments. As an engineer specializing in starship design and engineering, Lorhrok became intimate friends with the ship’s warp engines faster than he did her crew. The captain, a Vulcan named V’Klan, pushed the ship’s undermanned Engineering department hard, because many of the pirates, smugglers, and other assorted malcontents they encountered in the cleanup of the War had ships that could embarrassingly outstrip the Steadfast. Lorhrok and the rest of the department managed to get the long-obsolete starship up to warp eight point six using more dumb luck and unorthodox methodology than the sparse components they could requisition.

The Steadfast came under fire twenty-three times in the five years that Lorhrok served on her. With most of Starfleet’s shipyards devoted to cranking out new, top-of-the-line starships, and none of them assigned to repairing old ships that should have been retired decades ago, the Steadfast was more or less left to its own devices when it came to repairs. Ensign Lorhrok’s degree in Starship Design earned him a promotion to Lieutenant, J.G., when he devised a plan to use existing, less important bulkheads supplemented with forcefields to repair the patchwork hull. Finally, on stardate 59396, after exactly a hundred years in the service, the U.S.S. Steadfast was officially decommissioned.

Lieutenant J.G. Alecz Lorhrok took a brief leave from Starfleet in mid 2382 to visit his family on Trill. His sister, Kiitali, had moved to New France to be with her new husband, François de Liége, but his parents were much the same as they had always been. His time on the Steadfast had kept him very busy--and he wouldn't have been particularly inclined to keep in touch anyway--but he was unsurprised to find that his father had advanced to Professor of Cosmology and Ontology. Trill as a planet had more or less recovered from the wounds it sustained during the war, and life had returned to normal.

It was during this time that Lorhrok seriously considered requesting a transfer to Utopia Planitia. His time on the Steadfast had been very tiring and hazardous, while designing and building starships sounded much less stressful. With Starfleet in the process of rebuilding its fleet, there was no shortage of demand for the job. However, when the assignment of Chief Engineer on a Sovereign-class, the U.S.S. Excelsior, NCC-2000-C, was offered to him, he quickly took the job. Lorhrok had always wanted the chance to serve on one of Starfleet’s new behemoths, and the departmental head position was very appealing. He was one of the first of the senior staff to arrive on the ship at Starbase 911 in late 2382.

The Excelsior’s first mission was to the planet Valandria, in the Delta Quadrant, under the commander of Captain Rachel Cortez. Before they launched, he became acquainted with one of the crewwomen on a refit subcrew, Kinash Adow. Adow was disillusioned with a mere Lieutenant J.G. being the chief engineer of a Sovereign, and did not hesitate to tell Lorhrok so. Alecz had her assigned to waste reclamation, and she retaliated by both interfering with his replicator system (and, inadvertently, the entire deck’s) and taking a permanent posting aboard the Excelsior. After they were en route to the system, he was introduced to Simon Westlake, and gave the some non-consequential work in engineering.

Character Developed and Originated By: Alex Keyes