The Remans

1. Overview

The Remans are the native people of Remus, the second of the twin worlds at the heart of the Romulan Star Empire. For as long as the Federation has known anything about them, they have lived as a subject people: mining the Empire’s dilithium, working its heaviest industry, and, in the Dominion War, fighting at the front of its battles. Romulans regard them as lesser, a people whose place is to serve. Few outsiders had ever met a Reman before 2379, and most Federation citizens still know them only through one name: Shinzon, the human raised in the Reman mines who led the Remans in the coup that killed the Romulan Senate.

This article sets out what is known of the Remans, their world and their place in the Empire, from the earliest Federation records to 2393. It draws on the events of 2379, which gave Starfleet its first close look at Reman life, on what the Restored Senate has published since, and on what the Remans of T’Met have told the Federation since they joined it. Much remains unknown. The Empire has never allowed outside observers on Remus, and where the record is thin this article says so. For the twin worlds themselves see Romulus, Remus and the Core Worlds, and for the Empire as a whole see The Romulan Star Empire.

2. Remus

Romulus and Remus have been known to the Federation as twin worlds since the earliest Starfleet charts of Romulan space. In 2266, during the first face-to-face contact between Starfleet and a Romulan crew, the two planets were already marked on Federation star charts as a pair, and they have been named together ever since. Until 2379, however, Remus was little more than a name on a chart. No Federation citizen is known to have set foot on it before that year, and none is known to have done so since.

What Starfleet learned in 2379 was that the Remans live in darkness. Their settlements lie on the side of Remus that the sun does not reach, and the Remans themselves are adapted to it: their eyes are made for low light, and bright light causes them pain. Reman ships and quarters are kept dim, which Starfleet officers who served alongside Reman crews in 2379 noted as one of the first and most striking differences between Reman and Romulan spaces.

Remus is rich in dilithium, and that fact has shaped the whole of Reman history as far as it is known. The mines are the reason the Empire values Remus, and the reason the Remans have been kept where they are. How deep the workings go, how much of the Empire’s dilithium comes from them, and how many Remans live and work on the planet have never been published. Federation estimates of the population differ so widely that this reference does not repeat them.

3. The People

Remans are humanoid, with pale grey skin, large pointed ears and prominent, sharp teeth. To Federation eyes they look nothing like their Romulan neighbours, and the Federation does not know how the two peoples came to share a star system. Romulan accounts treat the Remans as a people who were always on Remus. Reman accounts, as far as they have reached the Federation, say little about origins at all.

The Remans are telepathic, and at least some of them are strongly so. In 2379 a senior Reman who served as Shinzon’s closest companion, known to Starfleet only by his title, the Viceroy, was able to reach into the mind of a Starfleet officer aboard another ship, without her consent. Shinzon himself, though human, used the same kind of contact with the Viceroy’s help. Starfleet regards Reman telepathy as real and powerful, and it is the one trait of the Remans that Romulans speak about with open wariness.

Of Reman culture, very little is known outside the Empire. The Remans of T’Met speak of family lines kept by memory rather than by record, of a strong sense of debt between those who have worked the same shaft, and of a language of their own that the Empire has long discouraged in favour of the Romulan tongue. These accounts come from one community that has lived apart from Remus for decades, and Federation scholars are careful not to treat them as a description of Reman life on Remus itself.

4. Labour

The Remans are the Empire’s labour force for its hardest work. The best known part of that work is the dilithium mines of Remus, where Reman workers dig the crystal that powers Romulan ships. Starfleet’s fullest account of the mines comes from 2379 and from Shinzon, who was sent to them as a child and survived them. By his own account the mines were brutal: long shifts in the dark, harsh overseers, and death as an ordinary part of the work. Shinzon said that he survived his childhood there only because a Reman protected him.

The mines of Remus are not the only place Remans work. The Empire also keeps Reman workers in labour colonies on other worlds, where they mine, build and maintain Imperial facilities. The number and locations of these colonies are not public. Most of what the Federation knows of them comes from the Remans of T’Met, whose own world began as one of them (see section 9 and T'Met).

Romulans do not, in public, call the Remans slaves. Federation observers who have seen Reman labour at close quarters do not find the distinction meaningful. Remans cannot leave their assigned work, cannot move freely between worlds, and have no voice in the Senate or in any provincial government. They are, in the words most often used in Romulan writing, a people meant to serve.

4.1 How Romulans see the Remans

Romulan attitudes toward the Remans are old and deeply held. To most Romulans, Remans are coarse, dangerous and lesser by nature, fit for the mines and the front line and nothing else. Romulans who have served alongside Remans sometimes speak of them with respect as fighters, but rarely as equals. Marriage or partnership between the two peoples is, as far as the Federation knows, almost unheard of, and a Romulan who took a Reman’s side in public would expect to pay for it socially. For more on Romulan houses and social order see Society, Houses and Customs.

5. The Dominion War

When the Romulan Star Empire entered the Dominion War in 2374, the Remans went to war with it. The Empire used Reman units as shock troops: soldiers sent in first, against the hardest positions, where losses were expected to be heaviest. Shinzon himself commanded Reman forces in the war and, by every account, commanded them well. The Remans fought with a courage and ferocity that won them a reputation among the Romulan officers who saw them in action, and that reputation is the reason some of those officers later supported Shinzon.

The war did not change the Remans’ place in the Empire. When it ended in 2375, the Reman units that survived returned to Remus and to the mines. The number of Remans who died in the war has never been published. To the Remans, as their own later words made plain, the war was a debt the Empire took and never paid.

6. Shinzon and the Scimitar (2379)

The single event that brought the Remans to the Federation’s attention was the coup of 2379. Its leader was not a Reman at all.

6.1 Shinzon

Shinzon was a human clone of Jean-Luc Picard, created by the Romulans as part of a plan to place a copy of a senior Starfleet officer inside the Federation. The plan was abandoned when the Romulan government changed, and the child it had produced was sent to Remus to work in the dilithium mines. There he was protected by a Reman who later became his Viceroy, and he grew up among the Remans, with their language, their hardships and their grievances as his own. He rose to command Reman forces in the Dominion War and gathered support among Romulan military officers who had seen what his troops could do.

6.2 The coup

In 2379 Shinzon and his Reman forces, with the support of a faction of the Romulan military, seized power. The Senate was killed in its chamber by thalaron radiation, a weapon that destroys living tissue and that the Federation had banned from research. Praetor Hiren died with the Senate. Shinzon took the title of Praetor and, in his first act toward the Federation, invited a Starfleet ship to Romulus to talk of peace. He spoke of freedom for the Remans and of a new relationship between the Empire and the Federation.

Neither was his real purpose. Shinzon was dying. As a clone he was ageing far too fast, and he needed Picard’s blood to survive. His larger aim was an attack on Earth itself.

6.3 The Scimitar

The instrument of that aim was the Scimitar, a Reman warbird built in secret in the shipyards of Remus. It was larger than any warship Starfleet had met in Romulan service, heavily armed, and fitted with a cloak so complete that it could fire while cloaked. At its heart was a thalaron weapon powerful enough to kill every living thing on a planet. The ship was crewed by Remans, and the Federation’s assessment since is that it was the largest and most advanced work of Reman hands that anyone outside the Empire has ever seen.

6.4 The end of the coup

The Scimitar was stopped in the Bassen Rift, where it fought a Starfleet ship that it badly outgunned. Two Romulan warbirds under Commander Donatra, whose officers had turned against Shinzon once his intentions toward Earth became clear, came to the Starfleet ship’s aid. The Viceroy was killed aboard the Scimitar in the fighting, and the ship was destroyed before its weapon could fire. Shinzon died with it. A Starfleet officer, the android Data, gave his life in its destruction.

6.5 What it meant for the Remans

For the Remans the coup ended in nothing they could hold. Shinzon had spoken in their name, but his war was his own, and his death left the Reman forces he had led without a leader or a cause. For the Romulans the coup left a memory that has not faded. In Romulan eyes it was Reman hands that built the weapon and Reman troops that stood in the Senate’s chamber. Whatever else is said about 2379 in the Empire, it is remembered as the year the Remans killed the Senate. Every Romulan attitude toward the Remans since then has been shaped by it.

7. Romulan Law and the Remans Since 2379

The years after the coup are known to Romulans as the Silence: from 2379 to 2382 the Empire had no Senate, and rival houses and governors ran their own provinces (see History of the Romulan Star Empire). Reman forces were disarmed and returned to Remus during those years. The details of how that was done have never been made public. Some Federation analysts believe it was done harshly; others note that the Imperial Fleet, which held the Empire together through the Silence by refusing to take sides, had every reason to avoid a war on Remus while it was holding everything else together. No one outside the Empire knows which view is closer to the truth.

In 2381, before the Restored Senate first sat, the Empire changed the law that governs the Remans. Remans are now described in Romulan law as “subjects of the Empire under protection”. On paper the change gave the Remans a defined place in Imperial law for the first time that the Federation knows of. In practice it changed little on Remus. Remans still work where they are assigned, still need permission to leave their world or colony, and still have no seat in the Senate. The word “protection” is read by most Federation observers as protection of the Empire from the Remans, not the other way round.

The Restored Senate, which first sat in 2382, has not revisited the law. Under Praetor Sorrel t’Keleth, from 2382 to 2389, the Empire was turned inward and the Remans were rarely mentioned in public at all. Under Praetor Ardhal tr’Vesuin, since 2389, they have been mentioned more often, and almost always in connection with T’Met. For the government that makes these laws see Government of the Empire.

8. Remans and the Tal Shiar

The Tal Shiar does not acknowledge any of its operations, and its work among the Remans is no exception. It is widely believed in Starfleet that the service keeps a close watch on Remus, and that its rebuilding since the losses of 2371 has given Reman affairs a high priority after 2379. The Remans of T’Met say that they were watched long before they broke away, and that informants were placed among them. None of this has been confirmed. For the service itself see The Tal Shiar.

Reman telepathy is one reason for that watchfulness. A people who can read minds is a hard people to keep secrets from, and Romulan writers return to the point often. Whether the Tal Shiar has found ways to guard against Reman telepathy, or to use it, is not known.

9. T’Met

T’Met is the only Reman world outside the Romulan Star Empire. It lies just outside the Romulan border and was settled by Remans who had been sent there to work. Its people declared themselves the T’Met Republic, led by an office called the Caliph, and refused to return to Imperial rule. The Empire tried for years to talk the world back in. In 2391 the people of T’Met were struck by biogenic weapons that killed tens of thousands of them. The Federation believes the Empire was responsible; the Empire denies it. T’Met asked the Federation for help, and Starfleet sent relief, in which the USS Ragnarok took a leading part (see The USS Ragnarok and the Romulans). In 2392 T’Met was admitted to the Federation.

To the Remans of Remus, T’Met is proof that Remans can live outside the Empire. To the Romulans it is an affront: a people meant to serve who have walked away and found a protector. The full history is set out in T'Met.

10. Remans in the Federation

Since 2392 the people of T’Met have been Federation citizens, and for the first time there are Remans living and working under Federation law. Their numbers are small. Most remain on T’Met, where rebuilding after 2391 is still the work of every day. A small number have begun to travel within the Federation, to study, to trade, or to train, and a few are known to have applied to Starfleet Academy. No Reman is known to hold a Starfleet commission in 2393.

10.1 Practical notes

Starfleet guidance for crews working with Remans is short and practical. Lighting in shared spaces should be lowered where a Reman is present, or eye protection offered. Reman telepathy should be assumed to be real, and Remans from T’Met are said to be careful about it with outsiders; questions about it are best left to the Reman to raise. Remans from T’Met do not, as a rule, wish to be taken for Romulans or spoken to as if they were, and many of them will not discuss Remus at all.

10.2 Romulan reaction

The Empire does not recognise the Federation citizenship of any Reman. In Romulan law every Reman remains a subject of the Empire under protection, wherever he or she lives. Imperial officials do not address Remans from T’Met directly in diplomatic settings and have on several occasions declined to attend meetings where a Reman delegate was seated. Starfleet officers on the Neutral Zone should expect any mention of T’Met or of Remans in Federation service to be heard on the Romulan side as a provocation, whether or not it is meant as one. See Romulans and the Federation and The Romulan Side of the Zone.

11. Key Dates

For the full timeline of the Empire see Timeline.

12. See Also

The Romulan Star Empire · Romulus, Remus and the Core Worlds · T'Met · History of the Romulan Star Empire · The Tal Shiar · Society, Houses and Customs · Romulans and the Federation · The Romulan Side of the Zone