Romulan Biology and Mind

1. Overview

Romulans and Vulcans are one people, divided by history. About two thousand years ago, in the time of Surak, a large group of Vulcans who rejected his teachings of logic left Vulcan and, after a long journey, settled the worlds that became Romulus and Remus. The two peoples have lived apart ever since. They share a body. They do not share a way of living in it.

This article covers what a Starfleet officer, and above all a Starfleet medic, needs to know about Romulan bodies and Romulan minds: the shared descent and the differences, the physiology that matters in a sickbay, how Romulan patients and prisoners are treated, and the habits of mind that make Romulans what they are. The Remans, whose biology differs in important ways, are mentioned only in passing; see The Remans.

The record has limits. Starfleet Medical has treated relatively few Romulans, most of them in crisis: wounded prisoners, crash survivors and casualties of the Dominion War. Romulan medical literature is not available to the Federation. Where this article gives practice rather than established fact, it says so.

2. Shared Descent

The Federation learned that Romulans and Vulcans were related in 2266, when a Starfleet crew saw Romulans face to face for the first time and found that they looked exactly like Vulcans. Vulcans themselves had known far longer. Since then, the shared descent has been confirmed in every way that can be tested: anatomy, blood chemistry and the deep structure of both peoples’ genetic code.

The likeness is close enough to be used. Romulan agents have lived inside the Federation as Vulcans. In 2367 a Vulcan ambassador who had served for years was found to be a Romulan intelligence officer, and the deception had held for years. The reverse is also possible: Vulcans have passed as Romulans, and in 2368 Starfleet officers of other species were surgically altered to pass on Romulus itself. For a medic the lesson is simple. A patient’s appearance is not proof of their people, and a scan that is not looking for the difference may not find it.

Romulan ancestry can also run quietly through Federation families. In 2367 a Starfleet crewman was found to have hidden that one of his grandparents was Romulan, not Vulcan as his records said. The case is remembered mostly for the hearing that followed it and for the warning it left about suspicion, but it also shows that Romulan descent turns up in Federation medical records, often unrecorded.

3. Appearance

Romulans have the Vulcan build, the pointed ears, the upswept brows and the slightly green cast to the skin that copper-based blood gives. The main visible difference lies in the forehead. Many Romulans of the twenty-fourth century have a ridged brow, a raised V-shaped ridge above the eyes that no Vulcan has. Others have a smooth brow just like a Vulcan’s. Every Romulan seen by Earth and Federation crews in the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries was smooth-browed. Most Romulans met since 2364 have been ridged, but smooth-browed Romulans are still seen.

The reason for the difference is not known in the Federation. It may be a trait that spread among the settlers of Romulus, a difference between regions or families, or something else. Romulans do not discuss it with outsiders. Starfleet medics should not read anything into it: a ridged brow tells you a person is very likely Romulan, but a smooth brow does not tell you they are not.

4. Physiology for the Medic

4.1 Blood and tissue

Romulan blood is green and copper-based, like Vulcan blood. In practice, Starfleet medics begin from Vulcan reference values when treating a Romulan and adjust as they learn. The two are close but not identical, and a medic should check compatibility before any transfusion or tissue graft. Replicated Vulcan-type blood products have been used successfully on Romulan patients, but there is no substitute for testing.

One case from 2366 is still taught. A wounded Romulan officer brought aboard a Starfleet ship needed a transfusion of ribosomes, and the only compatible donor aboard was a Klingon officer. The Klingon refused. The Romulan himself had made clear that he would rather die than accept Klingon tissue. He died. The case is remembered for two lessons: that compatibility can come from unexpected places, and that a Romulan patient’s refusal can be just as final as the injury.

4.2 Strength and endurance

Starfleet guidance treats Romulan strength, stamina and resistance to pain as broadly equal to a Vulcan’s, and so well above a human’s. Security staff are trained to take that seriously. A Romulan prisoner who seems weak or injured may not be either, and Romulan soldiers are trained to hide pain. Medics should assume a Romulan patient is in more distress than they show.

4.3 Lifespan and age

Romulans are long-lived. Romulan officers serve for many decades, and Romulan politicians are often older than they look to human eyes. Starfleet has no reliable figure for the Romulan lifespan. It is generally assumed to be comparable to the Vulcan one, but the Empire publishes no such data, and the Federation has not studied enough elderly Romulans to say. Medics should not guess a Romulan’s age from appearance.

4.4 Children of two peoples

Romulans can have children with humans and with other peoples close to them. The best known case is Sela, the Romulan commander whose father was Romulan and whose mother was human. Starfleet Medical records hold other cases, most of them people of mixed descent living quietly inside the Federation. Medics should not assume a patient of mixed descent responds to treatment like either parent.

5. Telepathy and the Mind-Meld

Vulcans are touch telepaths. They train the ability from childhood and use it through the mind-meld, a discipline taught alongside logic. Romulans are not known to practise any of this. No Starfleet record shows a Romulan performing a mind-meld, and Romulans are not known to train telepathic skills of any kind.

What is not settled is why. The two peoples share the same descent, and the brain structures that support Vulcan telepathy are believed to be present in Romulans. Many Federation scientists suspect that the ability is there but untrained, lost over two thousand years in a culture that never developed the discipline to use it, and perhaps one that came to fear it. Others believe it has faded in the Romulan line. There is a historical hint: in the twenty-second century, records from Earth and Andoria show that the Romulans of that time relied on a captured Aenar telepath to control remote vessels, which suggests they had no such telepaths of their own. That proves little about the present.

Whether a Vulcan can meld with a Romulan is a practical question for medics and counsellors. Given the shared descent, it is widely believed to be possible. No case is recorded in the open Starfleet medical record, and no Vulcan healer is known to have described one publicly. Any such attempt on a Romulan patient, or on a prisoner, raises serious questions of consent, and Starfleet officers should treat it as they would any intrusion into a patient’s mind.

The Remans are a different case. They are telepathic, in some cases powerfully so, and their abilities have been used in ways that are deliberately invasive. That is covered in The Remans and should not be confused with anything a Romulan is known to do.

6. Medicine and the Romulan Patient

6.1 What Romulans expect

Romulan medicine is believed to be advanced, and Romulan officers are used to good care from their own physicians. What they are not used to is being treated by an enemy. A conscious Romulan in a Starfleet sickbay will often refuse to give a medical history, refuse examination, or refuse treatment entirely, especially in front of other Romulans. Some fear what their own side will think. Some fear what the Federation will learn from their bodies. Some simply do not believe the care is offered in good faith.

Starfleet practice is to treat a Romulan patient the way any patient is treated: with consent where it can be given, with care where it cannot, and with no attempt to gain intelligence through medicine. Medical scans of a Romulan prisoner are medical records, not intelligence material. That rule has been tested and argued over, but it stands, and medics are expected to defend it.

6.2 Prisoners

Romulans taken prisoner bring their own particular risks. There is a long Romulan tradition, seen as far back as the first Federation encounter in 2266, of preferring death to capture. Romulan commanders have destroyed their own ships rather than surrender them, and Romulans in Federation custody have taken their own lives.

A medic attending a Romulan prisoner should therefore treat the risk of self-harm as real from the first moment, check for hidden poisons or devices, and watch closely in the first days. They should also not assume that a calm prisoner is a safe one. Romulans are taught to keep a still face under pressure, and the stillness is not a sign of acceptance.

6.3 Recovery from interrogation

Starfleet medics have treated people of several species who have been through Romulan interrogation. The Empire’s methods are feared for good reason. They are effective, and they can leave the person who survives them a shadow of who they were. Romulan intelligence has also shown, in at least one case in 2367, that it could alter a Starfleet officer’s mind and send him back to his ship carrying orders he did not know he had. Anyone returned from Romulan custody should be examined for that possibility as a matter of course, with care for what they have already been through. See The Tal Shiar.

7. The Romulan Mind

7.1 Emotion without logic

Vulcans did not lose their emotions when they took up logic. They mastered them. The ancestors of the Romulans refused that path, and their descendants feel as strongly as any Vulcan once did: anger, pride, love, grief and ambition are all part of Romulan life, and Romulans are not ashamed of them.

What Romulans did not do, in leaving logic behind, was give up control. They built a different discipline, one of guarding and hiding emotion rather than mastering it. A Romulan is expected to feel fully and show little, and to choose carefully when and to whom to show more. A Federation officer who mistakes Romulan reserve for Vulcan calm will misread almost every conversation. The Vulcan is not feeling much of what you see. The Romulan is feeling far more than you see.

7.2 Secrecy

Secrecy is not something Romulans do. It is part of who they are. From childhood, a Romulan learns to keep their thoughts behind their face, to say less than they know, and to assume that what they say may be repeated. The habit runs through family life, through the noble houses, through politics and through the Fleet. It is reinforced by a state that watches its own people, and by a long history in which the careless did not prosper. See Society, Houses and Customs and The Tal Shiar.

For a Federation officer, the practical result is that a Romulan will rarely say exactly what they mean, and will expect the same from you. A Romulan who tells you something plainly has usually chosen to, and has a reason. A Romulan who tells you nothing may simply be behaving normally.

7.3 Patience

Romulans are patient in a way that few other peoples are. They are long-lived, they think in terms of generations, and their culture values waiting for the right moment over acting quickly. The Empire kept to itself behind its border for decades before it chose to show itself again in 2364, and its strategy on the Neutral Zone today rests on the same instinct: watch, test, learn and wait. Patience is not passivity. A Romulan who has waited years for something will act very fast when the moment comes.

7.4 Pride and honour

Romulans are proud: of their people, their Empire, their houses and themselves. Losing face before others is felt as a real injury. This pride is often what draws a Romulan into an argument they would otherwise avoid, and it is also what keeps them silent when silence costs them. Officers dealing with Romulans should give them a way to agree without appearing to give in, which is often the only way they will agree at all. The customs of honour and face are covered in Society, Houses and Customs, and the forms of address that go with them in Language, Names and Address.

8. See Also

The Romulan Star Empire · Society, Houses and Customs · Language, Names and Address · The Remans · The Tal Shiar · Dissidents, Splinters and Unification · Romulus, Remus and the Core Worlds · Romulans and the Federation