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Kromn was born on Ferenginar on the day and year corresponding to January 19th, 2325. She was assigned male at birth, and was therefore given the rights and privileges males had in Ferengi society at the time. From a young age, she preferred femininity to masculinity, though she quickly learnt to suppress this in order to stay out of trouble. This suppression caused a great deal of stress during the early years of her life.
As a young adolescent, she was shy, awkward, and quiet. During her schooling years, she mostly kept to herself. Her peers regarded her as strange, and thus generally avoided speaking with her. Eventually she found refuge in a small friend group consisting of Ferengi that were similar to her.
She was also very ambitious, determined, and cunning, clearly having the makings of a talented and shrewd businessman. As she grew older, she began to desire a position within the Ferengi Commerce Authority itself. Knowing that her awkward and quiet nature would hinder her ability to make connections and acquire profit in the business world, she actively pushed herself to become more and more outgoing. Her efforts succeeded, and she became well known for her confident and commanding façade. Deep inside, however, she wasn’t truly confident, still struggling with extremely strong gender dysphoria.
Through various schemes and business ventures, she was able to acquire a good chunk of profit. Using her craftiness and funds, she managed to make connections within the Ferengi Commerce Authority. Eventually, through bribery and a good deal of networking, she managed to land a job as a secretary to a member of the Board of Liquidators. She had grander plans in the works, so she continued to inch her way to a more prestigious and powerful position.
She worked tirelessly on side ventures alongside her job, using the profits to make friends in high places through either bribery or general social networking. This, combined with her charisma and confidence, made her quite popular amongst her coworkers. In 2347, at the age of 22, her ambition and work was awarded when she was offered a position as a Liquidator. Thrilled at the opportunity, she took the job and underwent the rigorous training required of a Liquidator. She took this training very seriously, becoming very knowledgeable on the workings of economics and Ferengi commerce laws.
Ever ambitious, she quickly rose through the ranks. Before too long, she was no longer bribing her way into social circles; instead, others were offering bribes to her. She took said bribes happily, continuing the cycle she had once utilized to get to her own position. Her profits soared. Being quite religious, she was confident that she had secured her place within the Divine Treasury. She was practically the model of the perfect Ferengi, one that all others should aspire to be.
As time went on and she met more and more people, she began to find other Ferengi that were just like her. She found her way into a private club of transgender Ferengi after being invited by a very close friend and fellow Liquidator. She would attend meetings frequently. Said meetings involved recreational activities with all Ferengi presenting as their true gender. She formed close relationships with many of the members. Her position as a Liquidator gave her some leverage over other Ferengi, allowing her to silence anyone that dared snitch on the group or anyone poking around too close with a well timed threat of sending the FCA after the offender.
After serving the required 20 years of working as a Liquidator, at 42 years old (an age considered quite young for a Ferengi), she was promoted to Master Liquidator in 2367, officially achieving a position topped only by the Board of Liquidators themselves. She had been working towards this her entire life, thinking only of the goal, blocking out everything else. This conveniently helped her ignore her mounting distress she felt due to her being perceived as a male in Ferengi society.
Ironically, it was the achievement of one of her life goals that caused her to leave everything behind.
After returning home from being granted her Master Liquidator’s license at the promotion ceremony, she realized that she simply wasn’t happy. She felt no joy from her achievement. Instead, she felt sad and hollow inside. All the justifications she had made along the way fell apart as she suddenly understood that it had all been for naught. The goal hadn’t made her happy. This started a chain reaction that would eventually culminate in her leaving her home behind for greener pastures.
Though she was paid handsomely, had many business ventures, and knew a variety of friends in high places, none of those acquired things were able to overcome the misery she felt from her gender dysphoria. She had put all her stock in obtaining a job as a Master Liquidator, hoping it would make her feel better, but it was obvious that that wasn’t working. If she couldn’t be happy about acquiring profit, what could she possibly be happy about?
With some impressive cognitive dissonance, she tried to force herself to fit into her job and Ferengi society. The feelings of dysphoria fought with her determination to continue on as she always had. Eventually, after 6 years of forcing herself to live as the model male Ferengi, her dysphoria won out over her attempts at forcing herself into a mold that she simply wasn’t shaped for. Almost immediately after this realization, she decided she needed to leave Ferenginar. As long as she was there, she would be miserable.
She immediately began to plan her exit from Ferenginar. She needed to go to a place where a transgender Ferengi would not only be accepted, but viewed as just another living being. There were many options available to her. Many Federation species were very open-minded. Frustratingly, however, there were few places she could go that focused on both profit and advancement, unlike Ferenginar. She didn’t want to go to some planet and sit around doing the same thing for the rest of her life.
After a good deal of contemplation, she decided on a course of action. Starfleet. There would be plenty of opportunities for advancement while she maintained business ventures on the side, and Starfleet was full of people of all different kinds. She began to plot her exit strategy. Loathe to lose all of her business ventures, she installed a close friend from the club she attended as her business proxy, allowing someone other than her to help manage her affairs while she was off-world. As she began to muddle through the accompanying proxy paperwork, she got to studying everything about Starfleet and how to enter it. After discovering that she would be required to enter Starfleet Academy, she began to prepare to apply. A year later in 2374, after obtaining a definitely legitimate letter of recommendation from a Starfleet officer that definitely existed, she applied for entry into Starfleet Academy.
Through her off-world connections, some minor bribery, and calling in a variety of favors, Starfleet Academy granted her entrance into their pre-student training program, which would prepare her for the official entrance exam. With her proxy installed, she informed the FCA that she was taking an “extended business trip,” which they approved. After all, why wouldn’t they approve a model Ferengi’s business ventures? With a great deal of excitement and optimism, she left Ferenginar in 2374 and went to Earth in order to attend Starfleet Academy, becoming the second Ferengi to join Starfleet.
She began the transition process immediately upon living on Earth. She underwent both top surgery and ear reduction surgery, and began hormone replacement therapy. The hormone process took somewhat longer for her than usual, since there was little scientific and medical precedent established for transgender Ferengi. It hadn’t been done by Federation doctors before. However, after some time, she finally met the goals she had been dreaming of all of her life. Finally, she was happy with what she was. She no longer needed a façade. She felt truly outgoing and at ease.
She stumbled quite a bit at first from the sheer culture shock of entering a society that was nearly the complete opposite of her own. Her attempts to bribe others eventually landed her into trouble, nearly getting her expelled. It was only after insisting that she hadn’t known any better due to bribery being so ingrained into Ferengi society and then threatening to take legal action because of Starfleet’s prejudice that she was allowed to stay. Throwing aside bribery, she resorted to good old-fashioned schmoozing, becoming friendly with most of her professors and much of the staff. This, on top of being a hard worker, caused her to become a top student in the eyes of many of her professors, though some of them found her disingenuous and grating.
Her peers, however, found her rude, dishonest, and a bit cutthroat. She wasn’t particularly out to make friends, reserving her full charm for her professors and higher-ups, but was instead determined on getting accepted into the Academy proper. If that meant treading on a few toes, so be it. The act was quite natural for Ferengi in the business world, causing her to be unaware of the true impact of her behavior. After getting a taste of the world outside of Ferenginar, she was not going to return. This attitude unfortunately isolated her from those around her, leading her to become very lonely. To combat this, she did the same thing she had when she was staving off gender dysphoria: threw herself into her work.
It was after officially being accepted into the Academy as a command track student that she found her footing. Desperate to find connections with other living beings, she ended up attending a few on-campus clubs. In the end, she decided to stay in the debate club, finding the outspoken nature of the members there to work nicely with her own similar nature. She had a lot of interesting topics to bring to the table, coming from a planet that was so different from the homeworlds of those around her. She quickly found that most in the debate club had no tolerance for her cutthroat and rude behavior. Being directly challenged by others and being told how rude she truly was caused her to look inward and change. It was then that she finally found friends. She got along well with Tellarites and Andorians.
Her Academy years were uneventful. Her good speaking and debate skills allowed her to excel in the command track. She worked hard and made excellent grades in all of her classes. Her previous experience of being a Liquidator with the FCA made her a skilled negotiator with an eye for detail. She easily passed her final exams, allowing her to become an official officer in Starfleet. Her first assignment was also quite boring and uneventful, where she served as a helmsman.
Sweeping reforms happened on Ferenginar, changing the planet’s society drastically. Despite this, she remained behind a proxy, though eventually she officially quit her job as a Master Liquidator as her “extended business trip” became a bit too extended. Despite her very untraditional lifestyle, she maintained some level of traditionalism throughout the entirety of her life, remaining very religious and determined to acquire profit.
Once again, her ambition served her well, and she rose through the ranks. By her fourth assignment, she was a second officer. After this assignment ended, in 2410 at 85 years old (still considered on the younger side for a Ferengi), she was granted captaincy of her own vessel. She went on to assist in building the Romulan Republic, fight in both the Iconian and Hur’q wars, and fend off the Terran Empire’s incursions. She maintained her connections within the FCA and within her various business ventures, giving her footholds in situations another Starfleet captain wouldn’t have had access to.
She remained a very strong asset to Starfleet until the day she retired to Ferenginar, returning to a society that was more accepting than it had been when she left. She lived out the rest of her days there.