The Black Nagus

The Black Nagus can refer to both the criminal kingpin Lurk or the vast organization under his iron fist.

Long before the Federation was born, the Ferengi Alliance connived and thrived its way into stellar trade. For 10,000 years, the Alliance wielded power and influence over the Ferengi people, executing crony justice through grift and bribery in the name of the Divine Treasury. The Grand Nagus, a position derived from the Ferengi Bill of Opportunities and far more notorious Rules of Acquisition, governed the Alliance from Ferenginar's Tower of Commerce with a latinum fist for millennia.

Sometime during the 21st century, while Earth was undergoing yet another war, there was a class struggle brewing on Ferenginar. An upstart Ferengi who had recently purchased the title of DaiMon challenged the Rules of Acquisition in a public forum. DaiMon Lurk, as he was recorded in the court proceedings of the Board of Liquidators, challenged Rule 18: "A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all."

Lurk argued that profit was only a placeholder for power, and so if a Ferengi surrendered his personal agency for the sake of profit, then he would have no influence with which to bribe the Registrar of the Divine Treasury. Vengeance, therefore, was often preferable to latinum, for with it one could dare to rob the Divine Treasury rather than bribe one's way into it.

Summarily branded a traitor and a heretic, Lurk was stripped of his title and status, and awaited state execution in a gulag with no name. An unexpected groundswell of support led to a revolt and subsequent escape for Lurk, resulting in the birth of his criminal organization. His heretical status struck his name from the registry in the Tower of Commerce, along with everyone else blackballed by the Ferengi Commerce Authority.

The Black Nagus, as he quickly styled himself, began to operate well outside of Ferengi territory. Rather than perform trade for profit, Lurk took to everything from piracy to terrorism in the acquisition of power, which his zealot associates came to value as true wealth above all currencies.

As a result of the Ferengi Alliance's shunning, there was little the Board of Liquidators could do to stave the unchecked growth of the Black Nagus organization. Whenever one illegal operation was shut down, two more sprung up elsewhere, all the while drawing off of resources spanning both Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

The Black Nagus trades in the standard goods and services, including armaments, rare and exotic materials, and other assorted merchandise, but its true commodity is information. Brokering intelligence and information is the Black Nagus' bread and butter, as most of its holdings trade hands through proxy agents which are easily liquidated and divested. To put a fine point to it: the Black Nagus is everywhere and nowhere.

In point of fact, when the Bajoran wormhole was discovered, the Black Nagus wasted little time in advancing its interests. Since the close of the Dominion War, the Black Nagus has aggressively and relentlessly pursued hostile takeovers wherever possible. It is presumed that the Black Nagus has performed similar activities within the Delta Quadrant, but Starfleet's Intelligence apparatus is insufficient to determine anything for certain.

Most recently, collated network data throughout the Federation and Starfleet Intelligence's infiltrator reports indicate that the Black Nagus may have set its sights beyond the known galaxy. How and with whom the Black Nagus may now be consorting from beyond the galactic barrier is a mystery which remains to be seen.