History of the Klingon Empire

1. Overview

The Klingon Empire is the Federation’s oldest rival and, for a hundred years, its closest ally. Its people trace their state to a single warrior who united them some fifteen centuries ago, and his name still sits at the centre of their laws, their faith and their politics. For most of the time the Federation has known them, the Klingons have been feared. For most of the last century they have fought on the Federation’s side. Both facts are true at once.

This article tells the Empire’s history in outline, from Kahless to the present day, as the Federation knows it. Klingon history is told aloud as much as it is written, and much of it reaches outsiders as story rather than record. Where the record is thin, this article says so. For exact dates see Klingon Timeline. For how the Empire is ruled see The High Council and the Chancellor, and for the alliance in detail see The Alliance with the Federation.

2. Kahless and the Founding

Every Klingon history begins with Kahless the Unforgettable. Before him, by Klingon tradition, the Klingon people were divided and ruled by a tyrant named Molor. Kahless rose against him. The story says that he cut a lock of his own hair, thrust it into the lava of the volcano at Kri’stak, and twisted it into a blade, then plunged the blade into the Lake of Lursor to cool it. So he made the first bat’leth, the Sword of Kahless. With it he killed Molor and united the Klingon people under one rule.

Kahless gave his people a code as well as a state: the teachings on honour, duty and courage that Klingons still quote in every argument in the Great Hall. The stories told of him are lessons as much as history. One tells how he fought his own brother Morath for twelve days and twelve nights, because Morath had lied and shamed the family. Before he left his people, Kahless promised to return. He pointed to a star and told them to look for him there, and the clerics of Boreth, a world that circles that star, kept watch for him for centuries.

How much of this is history, outsiders cannot say, and most Klingons see no need to ask. What is certain is that the Empire dates itself from Kahless, and that every Klingon ruler since has had to show that he governs in his spirit. See Honour, Faith and Custom.

3. The Long Ages and the Hur’q

Little of the Empire’s long middle ages has reached the Federation as dated history. Klingon tradition speaks of Emperors, of the great houses that served and fought them, and of the Empire’s slow growth beyond Qo’noS. The houses are older than any record the Federation holds. See The Great Houses.

The one disaster of those ages every Klingon knows is the coming of the Hur’q, whose name in Klingon means “outsiders”. They invaded Qo’noS and plundered the Great Hall, and among the treasures they carried away was the Sword of Kahless. Klingon sources give outsiders no fixed date for the invasion. The Sword was found again in 2372, in the Gamma Quadrant, by warriors who had searched for it. They came to believe it would divide the Empire rather than unite it, and they let it go into space. Its whereabouts are not known.

At some point the line of Emperors ended, and the Empire came to be ruled by its High Council and the Chancellor who leads it. By 2369 the throne had been empty for some three hundred years. See The High Council and the Chancellor.

4. First Contact with Humanity (2151 to 2154)

The Empire’s first contact with Earth was an accident. In 2151 a Klingon courier named Klaang crash-landed on Earth while hunted by Suliban agents. Against Vulcan advice, Earth sent its new starship Enterprise, the NX-01, to take him home to Qo’noS. The evidence he carried helped the High Council expose a plot against the Empire, but the Klingons found the humans meddlesome, and relations soured within a few years. In 2152 the same ship’s captain was tried before a Klingon tribunal on Narendra III and sentenced to the prison asteroid of Rura Penthe, from which he was recovered.

In 2154 the Empire suffered a plague of its own making. Klingon scientists, trying to breed stronger warriors from the genetic material of human Augments, set loose a virus that threatened the whole Empire. The cure saved its victims but left many without their cranial ridges, and they passed the change on to their children for generations. Klingons do not discuss it with outsiders. See Klingon Biology.

5. The Long Rivalry (2154 to 2293)

For more than a century after first contact the Federation and the Klingon Empire were rivals, and often open enemies. A Klingon Neutral Zone lay between them, and like the Romulan one it was tested often. In 2245 the two powers fought a battle near Donatu V, close to Sherman’s Planet, a world both claimed.

In 2267 full war came close. Klingon forces occupied the planet Organia, and the two fleets moved toward each other. The war was stopped by the Organians themselves, a people far more advanced than either power, who simply prevented the fleets from fighting. The Organian Peace Treaty that followed bound both sides. Under it a disputed world would go to whichever side could develop it most efficiently, and in 2268 Sherman’s Planet became the test of that rule. In the same years the Klingons and the Romulans traded: by 2268 the Romulans were flying ships of Klingon design. How long the arrangement lasted and how it ended is not recorded. See Klingons and Romulans.

The rivalry ran on into the 2280s. In 2285 a Klingon commander was killed in fighting over the secrets of the Genesis Device, and in 2286 the Klingon ambassador demanded before the Federation Council that the Starfleet officer responsible be handed over. The Federation refused.

6. Praxis and Khitomer (2293)

It was disaster that changed the relationship. In 2293 Praxis, the Klingon moon that held the Empire’s key energy production facility, exploded. The explosion poisoned the atmosphere of Qo’noS, and Federation scientists estimated that the homeworld would be unable to support life within about fifty years. The Empire could not pay for both its military and the saving of its world.

The Chancellor of the High Council, Gorkon, reached out to the Federation for peace, and was murdered aboard his own ship, Kronos One, by conspirators who wanted the old enmity to go on. Two Starfleet officers were wrongly convicted of the murder in a Klingon court and sent to Rura Penthe. Gorkon’s daughter Azetbur succeeded him and kept to his course. At the peace conference at Camp Khitomer the conspiracy was exposed. It reached into both powers and beyond: Klingon officers, Starfleet officers and a Romulan ambassador, Nanclus, were among the conspirators.

The Khitomer Accords ended the long rivalry, began the formal alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and redrew the border between them. A Federation-Klingon Neutral Zone still lies between the two allies along the line set in 2293. See The Alliance with the Federation.

7. The Alliance Years (2293 to 2344)

The first half century of the alliance is thinly recorded on the Federation side. The Empire survived the loss of Praxis and the long work of saving its homeworld, and it did so at peace with the Federation. The Romulans were another matter. After the Tomed Incident of 2311 the Romulan Star Empire broke off contact with the Federation for more than fifty years, but it did not withdraw from the Klingons, who felt the weight of Romulan attention in these years far more than the Federation did. See Klingons and Romulans.

8. Narendra III and Khitomer (2344 and 2346)

In 2344 Romulan warbirds attacked the Klingon outpost on Narendra III. The Federation starship Enterprise-C answered the outpost’s call and was destroyed defending it. To the Klingons, a Federation crew dying for a Klingon outpost was an act of great honour, and it did more to bind the two powers than any treaty. Klingons still say the alliance was sealed in blood at Narendra III. They have neither forgotten what the Romulans did there nor forgiven it.

Two years later, in 2346, a Romulan attack on the Klingon colony at Khitomer killed thousands. A Klingon traitor had given the Romulans the colony’s defence codes. He was Ja’rod, of the House of Duras, though that would not be known in public for more than twenty years. Among the few survivors was a boy of the House of Mogh, Worf, who was raised by a Starfleet family and became the first Klingon officer in Starfleet. Together, Narendra III and Khitomer are the heart of the Klingon grievance against the Romulans. See The Klingon Frontier in 2393.

9. Duras and the Civil War (2366 to 2369)

In 2366 the House of Duras accused Worf’s father, Mogh, of having betrayed Khitomer. The High Council knew the traitor had been of Duras’s own house, but the House of Duras was too powerful to expose without risk of civil war. Worf accepted discommendation, the Council’s formal shunning, to protect the Empire. See The High Council and the Chancellor.

In 2367 the Chancellor, K’mpec, died of poison. Before he died he named an outsider, the Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard, as Arbiter of Succession, because he could trust no Klingon with it. Duras and Gowron both claimed the chancellorship. Before the rite was complete Duras killed the envoy K’Ehleyr, and Worf killed Duras under the Klingon right of vengeance. Gowron became Chancellor. The same year Romulan agents programmed a Starfleet officer to kill Vagh, the Klingon governor of Krios, to break the alliance. The attempt failed.

Duras’s sisters, Lursa and B’Etor, put forward his young son Toral as heir. When the Arbiter rejected his claim, the House of Duras and its allies rose against Gowron, and the civil war ran from late 2367 into 2368. The Romulans secretly supplied the House of Duras. Gowron restored the honour of the House of Mogh in return for its support. The Federation would not fight in a Klingon civil war, but Starfleet ships formed a tachyon network along the Klingon and Romulan border that exposed the Romulan supply convoys. The Romulans pulled back, the Duras forces collapsed, and Gowron held the Great Hall.

In 2369 the clerics of Boreth presented a man they said was Kahless returned. He was a clone, grown from blood the clerics had kept as a relic. Rather than divide the Empire over him, he was made Emperor: a spiritual leader with no power over the High Council. The Federation has no record of a later change.

10. The Break of 2372

In 2372 the Cardassian military government fell to a civilian council, and the Klingons claimed the change had been arranged by the Changelings of the Dominion. Gowron invaded the Cardassian Union. The Federation condemned the invasion, and Gowron withdrew the Empire from the Khitomer Accords. The Federation-Klingon war of 2372 to 2373 followed. Klingon ships attacked Federation positions and pressed old claims against Federation space. The House of Mogh, which would not follow Gowron, lost its lands and its seat on the High Council.

Gowron’s fear of the Changelings was not baseless. One had taken the place of a senior general, Martok, and was helping to steer the Empire toward war. The real Martok was a prisoner of the Dominion until he escaped in 2373. That year the Dominion took Cardassia into itself, Gowron restored the Khitomer Accords, and the Dominion gave both powers the same enemy. See The Alliance with the Federation.

11. The Dominion War and Martok’s Chancellorship (2373 to 2375)

From late 2373 to 2375 the Empire fought the Dominion beside the Federation, and from 2374 beside the Romulans as well. Klingon and Starfleet ships fought together throughout, some of them in joint fleets under one command; one was known as the Fourteenth Joint Fleet. Klingon forces took part in the first allied offensive into Cardassian space, at Chin’toka, in 2374. When the Breen joined the Dominion in 2375 and their energy weapon crippled allied ships, Klingon ships, which the weapon did not affect, held the line for a time almost alone.

Martok, freed from the Dominion, had become the Empire’s most respected field commander. In 2375 Gowron took personal command of the war and spent Klingon ships in attacks meant to keep Martok from overshadowing him. Worf, by then of the House of Martok, challenged Gowron and killed him in the Great Hall. By Klingon custom the right to lead passed to the victor. Worf gave it to Martok, and Martok became Chancellor. The Dominion surrendered after the battle of Cardassia later that year. The Empire’s losses had been heavy, and the full figures were never published.

12. The Recovery Years (2375 to the 2380s)

The Empire had to rebuild its fleets, care for the families of the dead, and settle the houses whose fortunes the war had changed. It did this as the Federation’s ally, closer in the late 2370s than at any time before. In 2377 the Federation, the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire set up a joint recovery initiative of twelve ships each, led by the USS Viola. For most of a decade its crews cleared the battle zones along the Cardassian border and returned the dead to their homeworlds, Klingon crews serving alongside Romulan ones. It stood down in 2386.

The officer exchange between Starfleet and the Klingon Defense Force went on, and Starfleet doctors have served aboard Klingon ships under it. After 2383 a Defense Force contingent trained with Starfleet on Mars in fighter tactics. Nausicaan raiders worked near the Klingon border in the early 2380s. See The Klingon Defense Force.

13. The Raids into Romulan Space (about 2382 to 2390)

In 2379 the Romulan Senate was killed in its own chamber and the Romulan Star Empire turned inward. Romulans call the years from 2379 to 2382 the Silence. Romulan patrols fell away and stayed thin for most of the decade.

From about 2382, Klingons crossed into Romulan space on raids of their own. They were not the Empire’s fleets. They were young warriors of lesser houses and some ship captains, many of them sons of the House of Gharvel, striking at Romulan border holdings for old grievances, glory and plunder. The grievances were real: Narendra III, Khitomer and the Romulan support for the House of Duras were all within living memory. The High Council neither sanctioned the raids nor stopped them. See Klingons and Romulans.

The Romulans came back to the line from 2387, and in strength from 2389 under Praetor Ardhal tr’Vesuin. The raids grew costly and tapered off after 2390. In 2390, at the tri-border near Starbase 24, where the Federation, Klingon and Romulan borders meet, raiders from a freighter outpost called the Hub struck Romulan and Klingon shipping, and each empire blamed the other. At talks with the Romulan ambassador V’rel, the Klingon general T’Sok accused the Federation of violating Klingon borders with its sensor sweeps, declared that the Klingon Empire can protect its own borders, and left saying that the Federation has no honour. The Romulans have never forgotten the raids.

14. The Empire in 2393

In 2393 Martok is still Chancellor, as he has been since 2375. It is a long chancellorship by any measure, and the great houses have begun to think about who comes after an old warrior. Two houses on the High Council stand for the two paths most argued in the Great Hall: the House of Vreth, old and border-minded, which wants a harder line with the Romulans, and the House of Tarkesh, rich in shipbuilding and mining in the outer colonies, which wants the alliance kept steady. See The Great Houses.

The Defense Force holds the stretch where the Romulan Zone runs nearest to Klingon space, in the Nevrha Sector, through the Narendra Command at Narendra III, where the outpost the Enterprise-C defended has been rebuilt as a fortress and a memorial. Its commander is General Kortaq, of the House of Vreth. Starbase 24, at the tri-border, was being rebuilt in 2390 and has since been completed. See The Klingon Frontier in 2393.

The alliance holds. Klingons in 2393 are allies who are genuinely on the Federation’s side and genuinely difficult to work with. A Klingon captain near the Zone shares the Federation’s adversary but not its methods. See The Klingon Empire.

15. The Eras at a Glance

16. See Also

The Klingon Empire · Klingon Timeline · The High Council and the Chancellor · The Great Houses · The Alliance with the Federation · Klingons and Romulans · The Klingon Defense Force · The Klingon Frontier in 2393 · History of the Romulan Star Empire