Iotian

			Intelligent Lifeform Index

Iotian
Four Letter Code	IOTN
Federation Status	Member
Planet of Origin	Sigma Iotia II
Encountered	TOS: A Piece of the Action
T/E Rating	T0/E0
Current Tech Level	N
List of Named Iotians
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"Hey Boss, what's in it for me?"

a Iotians proverb.

The Iotians are a species who suffered from the meddling of outsiders, humans who contaminated their culture and society. They remain as one of the major examples of why the Prime Directive is such a vital and important part of the Federations policies. Since then they have managed to adjust, to recover and develop, eventually gaining membership into the Federation.

Home System

• Quadrant: Beta
• Location: Triv'ota Sector (coordinates B23-0001-1302)
• Proper Name: Sigma Iotia
• Star: It orbits a class G (Yellow) star
• Distance from Star: its orbit is approximately 325 million km
• Companions: There are 9 planets in this system. Theirs is the 2nd.
• Moons: It has 1 massive one, 1 medium and 2 tiny moons

Home World

• Proper Name: Sigma Iotia II
• Diameter: 13,890 km (8,631 miles)
• Gravity: 1.09 standard gravity with a density of 5.5
• Axial Tilt: 18.6%, with normal terran seasonal changes
• Orbital Period: 393 days
• Rotational Period: 24 hours although they actually have just over 25 hours a day. Their clocks have been adjusted to incorporate an extra hour and 17 minutes
• Classification: M
  • Surface Water: 53%
  • Atmosphere: 0.98% is a standard pressure with 72% nitrogen, 24% oxygen, 4% trace chemicals
  • Climate: Fairly diverse climates with few extremes
  • Terrain: A wide range of types, very earth like
  • Population: Just over 17 billion

History

USS Horizon

Prior to 2155, the people of the continent of Ekal had achieved their industrial revolution and commenced a conquest of the continents of Egaph and Uil, while only Landek made a successful resistance. However, the clans of Ekal then began warring amongst themselves over what they'd seized from Egaph and Uil. Eventually, the nations of all three continents fractured into a number of small, feuding states. Then the natives of Landek began readying for their own conquest of their divided neighbours.

Then in July 2155, the Horizon-class, USS Horizon visited Sigma Iotia II to make emergency repairs. As this was prior to the development of the Prime Directive, the Starfleet officers made contact hoping to arrange for some assistance. However they had arrived during a period of unrest and escalating hostilities between the various factions. The only way they could arrange for supplies and assistance so they could effect the repairs was to be come involved. Captain Kinzie of the Horizon made a demonstration of superior firepower and forced the rival Iotian factions into a temporary truce.

Once this had been achieved they were able to trade with the people of Iotia who had just begun their industrial age. They were able to provide the Horizon crew with the metals and organic polymers they required, as well as provide some help. In exchange, Horizon crewmembers traded them vintage cultural items (which the Iotians were more interested in than technology): vinyl music records and a hand-cranked gramophone, movies recorded on celluloid tape and a projector, and a number of books, including Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, which a certain village elder was fascinated with.

Once they had effected their repairs the USS Horizon left and the Iotia remained isolated from alien contact for a century.

The Book

Iotians, who felt that their society and culture was growing stagnant, quickly adopted "the Book" as something of a cultural bible, and reshaped their society to reflect the crime gang culture it portrayed. Its political system changed to one of gangs and crime-bosses. Meanwhile, the clans competed to reconstruct the tools and weapons they found in the book, and a burst of technological growth saw the development of automobiles, radio and projectile weapons. The planet even adopted English as its official language, including 1920s slang.

Ironically, the adoption of organized crime accelerated planetary unification. However, it also resulted in a great deal of unnecessary suffering and bloodshed. With the advanced technology, Iotia was on the brink of a world war. Fortunately, their imitation of the Book provided a solution. On a major clan border in southern Ekal, they chose to build a common capital city: Chicago. Beginning in the early 22nd century, instead of a destructive major war, they fought their disputes here in ritualized combat fashioned after the conflicts of the original Chicago mobsters. With every major clan represented in Chicago, this had the surprising by-product of unifying the clans and continents, in one way or another.

The arrangement lasted for around fifty years until the 2260s when Bela Okmyx, who controlled resources of northern Ekal, now called the Northside Territory and Egaph, made a play for world domination. Jojo Krako of Landek and his allies in southern Ekal, the Southside Territory, fought Okmyx off. They were preparing for another confrontation in 2268 when the USS Enterprise visited Sigma Iotia II and discovered the contamination caused by the Horizon. Okmyx and Krako fought each other over the Enterprise away team and each pressured them to supply them with phasers in exchange for a cut.

Captain James Kirk determined to correct the damage by making a demonstration of Federation strength to force a truce, in much the same way as Kinzie had a century previously. He convinced the planet's leaders that the Federation had claimed the world as their "turf". In this way, the planet was united under a single government, with Okmyx as boss and Krako as his second-in-command, and centered on Kirk and the Federation, or "the Feds". The Federation was to take a 40% cut of production

The Transtator Revolution

Unfortunately, this time around, a Starfleet communicator was left behind by Doctor Leonard McCoy and caused fresh cultural and technological contamination. Iotian scientists pulled the communicator apart and discovered the transtator, a key component of Federation technology.

This began the Transtator Revolution, when the Iotians made enormous developments in computers, encryption and global communications, though their materials science not yet able to fully exploit the technology. By the time the next starship visited Iotia, the Iotians had re-invented themselves once again. Many Iotians had abandoned the mobster theme and instead built a mock Federation starbase and donned Starfleet uniforms and even used Starfleet communications frequencies.

While records of this time period are confusing they do seem to indicate that not all of the Iotians had switched to the Starfleet imitation. Many still clung to their 1920’s mobster theme. It is possible that both adopted cultures ran concurrently among different Iotians, or more likely that the Federation sociologists quickly put a stop to it.

Following Kirk's visit, the Federation Council resolved to devote significant resources to guiding Iotian society, including large teams of cultural experts. The Federation sent teams of sociologists to Iotia to undo the damage and help them develop a more ethical form of government. Sometime after Kirk's visit, Lieutenant Michael Theivamanoharan studied the Iotians, while the Federation used their cut of Sigma Iotia's resources to encourage a more open and democratic society. One of these efforts involved a man named Kall Porakan, and used the example of Eliot Ness to create an honest law-enforcement agency.

The Feds

In 2269, Sigma Iotia II was a candidate for Federation membership, and entered in the Great Starship Race. In 2271 the Iotians sent delegates to the Federation Council. By reference stardate 2/2306.1 (circa 2287), the planet was an associate member of the Federation and was conducting trade with other worlds. Despite these gains, later Federation diplomats were unable to repeat Kirk's dominance in negotiations. They didn't collect the Federation's cut either, which had by now been reduced to 33%.

Instead, the Iotians had been saving Kirk's cut over twenty years. In 2287, Okmyx was one of the witnesses called by the prosecution during Kirk's trial of Prime Directive violations. During his testimony, Okmyx had Kirk's cut of the money brought into the court room in multiple brief cases.

In the late 2280s and early 2290s, Starfleet vessels stopped making their annual visits to Iotia while the Federation was distracted by threats from the Klingon Empire.

Okmyx was succeeded as planetary boss by Ivor Nyris. Nyris kept the Northside Territory technologically advanced, and used the former "Fed cut" to fund space research. The Iotians possessed a primitive ion drive by 2311. As Romulans retreated in their area of space, the Iotians followed and scavenged Romulan wrecks, thus discovering the warp drive. Venturing into interstellar space, Iotians began exploring and exploiting other less-developed worlds.

The Iotian Outfit became a small but ambitious new player in the interstellar underworld. Iotia once hosted an interstellar gang conference.

By the mid-2360s, Iotia had become a Federation Protectorate, though it remained an independent or neutral world, with a cultural rating of E plus. It was not quarantined, but all visitors were first cleared to enter in a recently constructed orbital customs facility. It later became a Federation member world in 2366.

In the mid-to-late 24th century, modern-minded Iotians such as Jodd Pako and Makk Vinx were serving in Starfleet.

The Living Museums

Starting in the 2250s, isolated from the Federation, certain zealous followers of the "teachings" of the Book began to live in anachronistic communities that shunned the newer ways. They became increasingly isolated as the Iotians took their first steps into space and began to meet and steal from other cultures. As the Iotians entered into negotiations with the Federation to become a Protectorate and then a full member, the communities drew the attention of sociologists, xenolinguists, and cultural archaeologists. Over time, the communities were gathered and provided with cities of their own where they were free to follow the old ways. Followers of the Book lived in Okmyx Chicago, a remastered version of the magnificent recreation of the Terran city of Chicago that Boss Bela Okmyx had led back when Captain James T. Kirk encountered him. Followers of the Communicator lived in the opulent style of the 22nd century Starfleet, with velour uniforms and yeomen in short skirts, at Port McCoy, which also serves as one of Sigma Iotia's largest spaceports. Okmyx Chicago is carefully regulated by guards who work to keep the environment safe for the tens of thousands of tourists who come through it each year, and who also insure that the "culture" of the Living Museum stays up to standards, keeping out alien influences and preventing the pinstriped gangster citizens from leaving.

2400

In 2400 the crew of the USS Constitution picked up a distress signal from an Iotian ship built to look like the USS Enterprise of the 2260's with the crew of that ship mimicking the real Enterprise crew.

Government

Even now after all the changes they have gone through, such as becoming members of the Federation their government system still resembles that of a twisted 1920 gangster controlled Chicago. The head of the government is called the planetary boss and his second in command is his biggest rival.

Description

The Iotians are a humanoid species, very similar to humans.

Physiology

The Iotians are a humanoid species, very similar to humans though with internal differences. For example, their blood is based on molybdenum instead of iron.

Psychology

They are highly intelligent and notable for their impressive ability to quickly learn and imitate, including languages. However, they were also aggressive and had a pack mentality. The reasons for this imitative talent were disputed by Starfleet anthropologists. Some thought that it was the evolutionary result of Iotia's frequent disasters, while others looked at the quick spread of trends and theorized that the Iotian brain-eye systems processed "pack" information differently from a human. Still more called the whole concept a myth, and nothing more than a result of severe culture shock after the clumsy first contact.

Religion

If they had any prior to their first contact with an alien species it has since been lost. No records, data or evidence has been found to confirm that they may have had one. However since their first alien contact the Book has become the closest thing to a true religion although it was more of a cultural transformation than a religious one. In that regard their cultural transformation was undertaken with all the drive and single minded devotion of a true zealot.

Mythology

Various characters from the Book and their own history since the cultural transformation have taken on mythical aspects and almost every citizen can repeat these stories from memory.

Society

Iotian society was loosely unified under a number of oligarchies. Prior to the Horizon contamination, the Iotians of Ekal were divided into a number of rival clans, albeit in a complex and ever-changing system. Researchers from the USS Horizon found the closest parallel to Ekal's politics at the time in Earth's gang warfare. Afterwards, the clans became crime gangs.

The Federation sent sociologists and cultural experts to undo the damage and helped the Iotians develop more ethical and democratic forms of government. The leader of an Iotian gang was called a "Boss". Ordinary Iotians paid their "percentages" to their local Boss, who was supposed to provide services and protection in exchange. Prior to the contamination, a Chief Administrator was an important government position among the Iotians.

Culture

The Iotians based almost all of their culture on the gangsters of Earth's Chicago in the 1920s, all based on "the Book", Chicago Mobs of the Twenties left behind by Horizon in the mid-22nd century. They adopted the clothes, weapons, architecture, and gangster activities and lifestyle They also took English as their official language, heavily flavored with 1920s slang. The Iotians even divided their day into 24 hours, based on the Earth pattern, despite the length of Iotia's day.

For a time following the visit by the USS Enterprise, many Iotians abandoned the mobster theme and instead donned Starfleet uniforms and built a mock Federation starbase. The Jailbreakers were a very popular Iotian music group.

Customs

These have taken a huge beating to the point where there does not seem to be any left from before their initial contact with aliens. Since then they have adopted and transformed themselves twice. Numerous new customs were developed and used, based on their exposure to the 1920 gangster philosophy and the early Starfleet officers.

Technology

Now they are roughly the equivalent of the less advanced members of the Federation.

Economy

They have a fairly well developed internal economy as well as external trade partners. The only draw back is the large element of lawless criminals who still adhere to the 1920 gangster philosophy. This affects not only their own people but their relations with other species as well.

Military

They had developed a large well armed military in order to protect themselves from both the Romulans and the Klingons whose borders were not that far away from them. However since joining the Federation they have sold just over half of these vessels keeping only the most modern and technologically advanced ships for their own use.

Federation Intelligence Files

See Federation Intelligence file # ENT-2155-9536 and TOS-2268-2793.

In the mid-to-late 24th century, Iotians such as Jodd Pako and Makk Vinx were serving in Starfleet.

Sources

Memory Alpha references used ENT episode: "Horizon" and TOS: "A Piece of the Action".

Memory Beta references used were ENTnovel: Kobayashi Maru, TOSnovel: The Great Starship Race, TOSnovel: The Lost Years, TOScomic: "... Let's Kill All the Lawyers! and the NFshort story: "All That Glisters....

Other references used were Decipher RPGmodule: Worlds, FASA RPGmodule: The Federation, SCEeBook: Fables of the Prime Directive, ST reference: Spaceflight Chronology, ST reference: The Worlds of the Federation and SCEeBook: The Demon, Book 1.

SDC

This file was updated and approved by the SDC on 16 May, 2012

Content from this article may have
come partially, or entirely from
 Memory Alpha

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