USS Vigilance Character Sheet

Character Name:  Dhuro Lanis
Note--The surname is Dhuro; the given name is Lanis.
Rank:  Lieutenant, Doctor of Medicine 
       (Chief Medical Officer)
Department:  Medical
Race:  Bajoran
Age:  55 standard years (in 2380)
Sex:  Male
Birthplace:  Bajor, Rakhuta Province

Physical Description:

Lanis is 6'2" with a lean, wiry build.  His hair is 
silvery-gray and cut to collar-length.  He has brown eyes and a 
fair complexion.  Various scars appear all over his body, 
mostly from shrapnel lacerations and the occasional knife 
wound.  The scars are usually concealed by clothing, but he is 
not self-conscious about them.

His overall appearance is neat and somewhat scholarly.  He 
prefers traditional Bajoran clothing in earth tones and subdued 
colors.  The only items of jewelery he wears are his family 
earring and his com badge.

Lanis' voice is low and measured.  In movement, he is very 
quiet and tends not to gesture much when he speaks.  Caution is 
a way of life for him; he checks all corners before entering a 
room, sits where he can see all entrances to a room, even six 
years after the Cardassian occupation of his planet has ended.

Personal History:

Lanis' parents were both healers and fairly well-to-do, 
despite the depradations that the Cardassian occupation made on 
their planet--well enough off that Lanis an remember his mother 
owning and playing a Bajoran keyboard instrument called a 
kithara.

When he was five, however, this precariously genteel existence 
was swept away by Cardassian forces.  He and his parents fled 
to a refugee camp, where they lived for the next five years.  
When Lanis turned eight, he began assisting his parents in 
their work as the camp's healers.

When Lanis turned ten, the camp where he and his family lived 
was raided by Cardassians.  His parents were killed, and Lanis 
was taken prisoner, to be indoctrinated into the Cardassian 
slave labor teams.  Before this could happen, however, he 
attracted the notice of Amon Vorak, the camp doctor, who took 
an interest in him.  When he noticed that Lanis knew how to do 
minor first-aid, his interest grew, and he took Lanis out of 
the general camp population to be his assistant.

Lanis didn't like this at all, and Vorak recognized that his 
Cardassian patients wouldn't take a little Bajoran boy 
seriously.  So he instead trained Lanis in book-learning first.  
This had the added advantage of keeping him away from the boys 
among the Bajoran prisoners, who Vorak knew would treat Lanis 
as a collaborator if he were allowed to stay among them.

By the time Lanis was 12, he had learned to read, write, and 
speak Cardassian fluently enough to understand Vorak's medical 
texts and to communicate effectively with the Cardassian 
patients.  He also treated Bajoran patients when the Cardassian 
doctors were either too busy or unwilling to treat them.  Some 
of the children still considered him a collaborator, though, 
and this began to gnaw at Lanis' nerves.  

Making matters worse was the fact that he did feel some 
sympathy for his Cardassian patients, when they came to him 
badly injured.  It was hard to connect the screaming, badly 
burned patient with the strike squad that had just attacked a 
nearby town.

By the time he was 16, though, the inner conflict became too 
much.  Some of the prisoners had planned a way to break out of 
the camp, and they offered Lanis the chance to come with them.  
Lanis knew that if he didn't accept, he'd be branded a 
collaborator and would be as good as dead, should the camp be 
attacked.  And the Cardassians were becoming more irritating to 
work with, as the fighting dragged on and on.  He went, holding 
Vorak at knife-point and warning him that, if they should ever 
meet again, it would be war between them.

For the next 28 years, Lanis worked his way up through the 
ranks of the Bajoran Resistance, sometimes as a healer, but 
more and more often as a squad and then cell leader.  At age 
18, he married a fellow Resistance fighter named Irlen.  
They had two children together before Irlen was killed during a 
raid eight years later.  

Being the father of two motherless children curtailed Lanis' 
combat activities somewhat.  However, by 2363, Lanis was once 
again a full-time Resistance fighter, and he did participate in 
the last major action before the Cardassian withdrawal.  

During this battle, Lanis found himself separated from his 
troops and confronted with a blinded and badly wounded 
Cardassian lieutenant--and he couldn't ignore her pain.  He 
stayed with her through that night, then sneaked up on a member 
of a Cardassian search party the next morning and told him 
where to find her.  Then he disappeared and returned to his 
home base.

From that point on, he found it increasingly difficult to 
continue fighting.  After a few months, the Cardassians 
withdrew, and Lanis tried to decide what he would do with his 
life.

He found a Bajoran temple and went inside.  There, he spoke for 
a long time with the priest and was then led into the basement 
of the temple, where its greatest treasure lay, an Orb of the 
Prophets.  Lanis gazed into it and had an Orb experience.

When it ended, Lanis found himself far calmer than he had felt 
in years and knew that, for the present, at least, he could not 
be truly at peace on Bajor.  To find true peace, he would have 
to go to a place where the memories of war were not so keen or 
so fiercely remembered by everyone around him.  He did not know 
how to do this, but he trusted that the Prophets would make it 
clear to him in time.

When the people from Starfleet came to Bajor, Lanis suddenly 
understood what the Prophets had meant.  Reluctantly, he left 
his now grown children on Bajor and applied to join Starfleet 
Medical Branch.

Starfleet was only too glad to accept Bajoran candidates and 
granted Lanis' application readily, despite his age.  His worst 
hurdle was learning Federation Standard in its spoken and 
written forms, and then learning the necessary medical 
terminology for not only it but several other languages, as 
well.  Even now, Lanis sometimes has difficulty with Standard 
and occasionally resorts to a universal translator.

Nor was the adjustment to peacetime an easy one.  Lanis moved 
like an assassin and never went anywhere without a weapon, 
unless forced to.  He minored in Security, simply to have an 
outlet for restless tension, and did quite well in those 
studies, well enough to be tapped as a student instructor in 
hand-to-hand and edged weapons combat.

He graduated four years later as an ensign and was assigned to 
the USS Harlowe.

Psychological Profile:

Lanis' philosopy:  'Every thing is a weapon; every place is a 
battlefield.'  The meaning is not that he seeks combat 
everywhere, but that combat can happen anywhere.

Many Starfleet Medical brass find Lanis disturbing, even though 
the Bajoran officials have assured them that he does behave as 
they would expect for a Bajoran with his history.  It is not, 
however, the way Starfleet Medical usually expects its doctors 
to act.

Lanis does not believe in getting the crew to safety and 
abandoning the ship to the enemy, if need be; he believes in 
fighting to the last man, to the last drop of blood.  He 
wreaked a great deal of destruction in the holodeck during his 
Kobayashi Maru test, far more than is typically seen from a 
medical cadet's test.

He can be both sharp-tempered and exceedingly gentle, can be 
inhumanly calm and boiling mad, decisive, but also fraught with 
conflict.

He is devoutly, but quietly, religious, a normal state of mind 
for any Bajoran who has had an Orb experience.

Academy Major:  Medicine

Academy Minor:  Security

Family:

Lanis is a widower with two adult children.  His wife Irlen 
died in 2351 on Bajor during a raid on a Cardassian base.  He 
has a son named Irlan, born in 2345, and a daughter named 
Siarra, born in 2348.  Relations with his family have been 
shaky in the past, due in no small part to the uncertain nature 
of being a father leading a Resistance cell.  Since his 
departure for Starfleet, Lanis has tried to mend his 
relationship with his children, but it is a slow process.

TIMELINE:

2325:  Dhuro Lanis born.
2328:  Cardassian occupation of Bajor begins.
2330:  Taken by parents to live in refugee camp.  
2333:  His parents, who act as healers in the camp, allow Lanis 
       to assist them.  He learns quickly.       
2335:  Parents are killed in raid; Lanis is taken prisoner by 
       the Cardassian attackers for indoctrination and slave 
       labor.  However, he is taken in by Cardassian doctor 
       Amon Vorak and taught to treat both Cardassians and 
       Bajorans.
2341:  During the intervening six years, Lanis studies 
       Cardassian and Bajoran medicine, but he also studies 
       fighting in secret with the other prisoners near his 
       age.  When they attempt an escape, Lanis joins them.
2343:  Lanis marries Maluka Irlen.
2345:  Lanis' and Irlen's son Irlan is born.
2348:  Lanis' and Irlen's daughter Siarra is born.
2351:  Irlen dies.  Construction begins on the mining station 
       Terok Nor.  After Irlen's death, Lanis devotes himself 
       entirely to the Resistance cause and becomes a prominent 
       and vicious cell leader.
2369:  The Cardassians abandon Terok Nor and Bajor.  The 
       Federation takes over the mining station and renames it 
       Deep Space Nine.  Sickened with killing, Lanis visits a 
       temple and gazes into an Orb of the Prophets.  After his 
       Orb experience, he decides that he is called to join 
       Starfleet and serve as a healer.  His children want him 
       to stay at home and help to restore Bajor.  This 
       disagreement with them causes a further rift in an 
       already rocky relationship.  At this time, Starfleet is 
       readily accepting recruits from Bajor, and Lanis becomes 
       a cadet with Starfleet Medical.  He is 44 years old.
2373:  Lanis graduates from the Academy and is assigned to 
       serve as an ensign on the USS Harlowe.  
2375:  Transferred to the USS Vigilance.
2378:  Transferred to the USS Nightraven.
2380:  Lanis is transferred to the USS Charleston.

Other Education:  

The languages in which Lanis is fluent are Bajoran and 
Cardassian.  He is reasonably fluent in Federation Standard but 
sometimes needs the aid of a translator.

Over the course of six years, he received a thorough basic 
grounding in Bajoran and Cardassian medicine and had a great 
deal of clinical experience.  However, aside from his doctorate 
at Starfleet Medical, which he received by virtue of competency 
exams and his course of study there, Lanis holds no formal 
degrees from any institution of higher learning.