Romulan Commander Varek tr’Lareth

Varek is disciplined, intelligent and reserved. He speaks carefully, rarely raises his voice and is accustomed to having his judgment respected. He values competence and decisiveness but has little patience for unnecessary ceremony.

Despite his cooperation with Starfleet, he remains guarded and instinctively compartmentalizes information. This can make him appear deceptive even when he is being truthful. He does not trust the Federation completely, nor does he expect the Federation to trust him.

Varek does not regard himself as a traitor. In his mind, he has betrayed a dangerous operation — not the Romulan Empire.

Commander Varek tr’Lareth is a career officer in the Romulan Imperial Fleet. As a senior fleet disposition officer, he helps maintain the Chaltok Sector’s order-of-battle, patrol assignments, readiness reports and logistical movements. His position gives him access to nearly every conventional Romulan vessel operating in the region, although Tal Shiar and other compartmentalized forces remain outside his clearance.

Varek contacts the USS Rubicon after discovering that ships and resources are being removed from the conventional order-of-battle and concealed behind restricted authorizations. When he is ordered to falsify readiness reports and hide the missing forces from other commanders, he becomes convinced that elements within the Empire are preparing an operation that could provoke a war with the Federation.

He copies the sector’s military records and arranges for the Rubicon to extract him from a small moon inside Romulan territory. Although he seeks Federation asylum, Varek still considers himself a Romulan patriot. He believes his defection is necessary to prevent unseen forces within the Empire from causing irreparable harm to the Romulan people.