| “ | Save your friends as you would save your profits. | „ |
| ~ Orion advice |
| “ | There are three kinds of people I don't want to face while making a deal: Vulcan bankers, Tellarite lawyers, or anybody Orion. | „ |
| ~ Carter Winston |
| “ | Keep money, but do not keep it dear. | „ |
| ~ Old Orion advice |
The Orions are an alien race from Star Trek who tend towards the role of space-pirates, ambushing and attacking smaller vessels - they are not as big a threat to the Federation as Romulans, Klingons or the Borg but can still pose a danger to trading vessels that frequent certain areas of space. They are perhaps most infamous for being involved in slave traffic of their own species, as well as others.
The Orions appear in the original Star Trek television series, as well as the animated series, Enterprise, a number of licensed comics and novels and the MMORPG Star Trek Online. J. J. Abrams' Star Trek film features a friendly Orion student at Starfleet Academy, suggesting that in the movie's universe they are not hostile to the Federation and might even be members or allies.
(this is not surprising as Star Trek as a whole does not create "evil" species, rather evil individuals within societies that are different from the Federation but not necessarily truly malevolent (for example not all Klingons are evil and there are "good" Romulans, even Borg have some heroic "Liberated" variants such as Seven of Nine).
Opportunistic and with a talent for taking advantages and comparing risks whenever opportunity arises, Orions make formidable negotiators and diplomats, who enjoy matching wits with their opponents as if it were a game. Their politics were full of intrigues, bluffs, ulterior motives, outright trickery, postponing and being annoying for the hack of it. They play games of double crosses to increase their own profits, and see not a conflict of interest but an understandable compensation for their efforts. They are not above coercing foes to fight against each other instead, as they are content to risk others for their cause. They are equally willing to run from a fight that they believe they cannot win. They watch others instead, plotting and waiting for proper opportunities to backstab the victor. They are also shrewd and savvy, proficient at detecting lies, motives and subterfuge while cautiously masking their own devious intentions. Few outsiders can say confidently they understand Orions or know the truth about them. Orions enjoy puzzles, contradictions, and paradoxes, and like to sow confusion among outsiders and to tell lies, often misleading both each other and non-Orion sentients about their true motives. Orions feel no need to clear up misconceptions about them. To Orions, knowledge is power, and confusion and/or misconception are weapons.
Many Orion diplomats serve dual roles as spies, producing both real and imagined secrets, and Orion women in the bedchambers of important officials on frontier worlds, with their biological abilities, give Orions an extra edge in information and influence. Due to their neutrality, Orions can work as spies for the Klingons and other Federation rivals, for the Federation itself... or for both.
Orion women are infamously known for being irresistibly sexually attractive and with wanton appetites for sexuality to match. A Human male can rarely resist the alluring advances of Orion slave girls. They had a heat cycle that drives their mating instincts. Orion women are just as capable as their men, and they are just as talented at wielding power behind the scenes. Orion women have much greater physical dexterity than Orion males.
Social Status: A Twist[]
The system is at first seen by outsiders as patriarchal at every level: women only has a say in the home, and even in there it is minimal, depending on negotiation and compromise. Orion women are generally undereducated and semi-literate. However, there are exceptions; it is possible for a woman to inherit a family and skilled women could rise to positions of authority, and women are typically very good at what they do.
So it appeared that Orion females are slaves to the males, but the Orion privateer named Harrad-Sar claims to Captain Jonathan Archer in 2154 that the opposite is in fact true: it was the men who are subservient to the women, apparently due to the effect of their pheromones. As a means of deceiving other outsider sentient species, Orions maintained the facade that the females are the slaves. Once sold to a male, the Orion slave girls emit their highly potent pheromones that accelerate metabolisms of males of many species, raising adrenaline production to dangerous levels which cause aggression, delusion, mood alteration etc. Pheromones' most significant effect is to make males susceptible to suggestion. Not long after, the 'owner' males begin taking orders from their 'slave' females. The pheromones' effects are cumulative; the longer males are exposed, the more telling the result.