DS9 STATION RESIDENCE DATABASE FILE: Quark

 **Includes updates, addenda through SD 50500 (2373)

 Occupation: Owner and bartender/host, Quark's Place DS9
 Full Name: Quark
 Year of birth: c. 2333, Terran equivalent
 Place of birth: Ferenginar
 Parents: Ishka and the late Keldar
 Marital status: Single

 Starfleet Career Summary

 Civilian Psychological Profile: Report of Starfleet Doctor Julian
 Bashir, M.D.:

 Quark, one of the most influential of modern Ferengi thanks to his
 location at DS9 when the Bajoran wormhole was discovered, owns
 Quark's Place on DS9's Promenade but hates being called a
 "barkeep," preferring "host" instead as he fancies himself an
 empathetic dispenser of advice as well as a goodwill ambassador
 and legitimate entrepreneur extrordinaire. He also caters formal
 affairs for the Starfleet crew and named a new souffle creation
 after Kai Winn when the Bajor-Cardassian peace treaty was
 signed. In reality he has the reputation of getting anything for a
 price - with the help of a network of sources who also help him
 keep a hand in most illegal or illicit trade and deals going on
 around the station. He has even tried to force sex by contract from
 the unwitting Dabo girls who work for him; an employee's error is
 made up from garnished pay. When Odo calls him "disgusting," he
 proudly boasts: "Til the day I die!" and says lying is a gift. But he
 does sometime show remorse out of guilt for even his own actions,
 and relishes the thrill of gambling, even in business; otherwise, he
 has said, the trade comes off as simple bartering.

 His only sibling is younger brother Rom, whom he often teased and
 tortured as "lobeless": Quark even stole Rom's naming day
 presents from Keldar, replacing the gifts resold at a profit with old
 vegetables. His father bought him his first copy of the Rules of
 Acquisition, but it was his mother who helped him learn them - a
 repeated pattern whose truth he ignored until much later in life,
 feeling his father had been hounded by his mother's rebellious
 independence.

 In 2351, upon celebrating his Age of Ascension rites, he left home
 as soon as possible despite his father's advice to stay close; doing
 so 10 years ahead of Rom, he missed out on Keldar's ongoing
 business failures prior to his death. In his 20s, Quark apprenticed
 with a District Sub-Nagus until he slept with the boss's sister and
 lost his fast-track standing. He later served on a Ferengi freighter
 for eight years, where he learned some engineering and
 transporter skills while serving as its cook.

 By the 2360s he was running a black market from then-Terok Nor
 for the occupied Bajorans and illegally sold food to them at cost,
 while earning his exclusive casino franchise by catering to Gul
 Dukat and the occupying Cardassians with freebies. One
 Cardassian contact in particular was Glinn Boheeka. By this time
 Rom and his young son Nog had moved to the station, and Quark
 has fondly recalled reading the tyke basic Ferengi stories

 Amid the shambles of Cardassian withdrawal from newly renamed
 DS9 in 2369, his plans to leave were changed when Starfleet
 commander Sisko threatened to jail his nephew Nog for a petty
 theft if he left - along with enticements such as free rent, power
 and maintenance. It was a fateful change, leading to contacts with
 Grand Nagus Zek and the Dominion. He even served a week as the
 Nagus and faced death threats when Zek faked his demise to trick
 his unfaithful son.

 The next year, after having led a trade mission to contact the
 Karemma of the Dominion, he became the first Ferengi to meet a
 Jem'Hadar and Vorta of the Dominion when captured with Sisko on
 their Gamma Quadrant vacation eight months later. That led to
 Zek's request in 2371 that be aboard the Defiant's first Dominion
 contact mission. Married temporarily to Klingon matriarch Grilka,
 he faces down her rival D'Ghor before the Klingon High Council on
 Qo'noS to save her house after murdering her husband Kozak in
 self-defense in the bar.

 Quark knows at least the worst of human history, and while he
 speaks out against superior Terran attitudes he can be as racist as
 anyone. Quark saved his much-cherished Ferengi culture from the
 Bajoran Prophets idealism later that year when he became only the
 third known non-Bajoran, after Sisko and Zek, to experience an orb
 vision and single-handedly restored the Nagus to his previous
 state. Future cultural decisions were not so clear-cut, though: he
 was secretly forced to allow his employees to unionize in 2372
 despite Ferengi Commerce Authority intervention. He finally made
 up with his mother the year after revisiting the homeworld for the
 first time in 20 years when Ishka refused to renounce her feminist
 ways, endangering Quark's livelihood of fines and support.

 Even Rom finally began to find some backbone as the 2370s
 dawned, standing up to Quark regarding their mother, his biased
 view of their parents, and finally Nog's application to Starfleet
 Academy - the latter a move Quark actually tried to sabotage. The
 next year, he nearly stranded all three in 1947 Earth as lab
 specimens.

 Aside from his crushes on Dax and Kira, Quark had a surprising
 one-month fling in 2363 with Cardassian journalist Natima Lang,
 the love of his life. She didn't turn him in for aiding Bajorans, but
 felt betrayed and broke off the affair when he used her secret
 access codes to be paid for bogus goods - a much-regretted act
 seven years later, when she turns up as a Cardassian dissident. Of
 odder course was his falling for Pel, a feminist like his mother
 whom he could not commit to after her revelation as a female cost
 Quark a cut of all the Grand Nagus' future Gamma Quadrant
 profits. Despite his tough stance, though, he has always been a
 sucker for a pretty face of any species. When ho once chided
 O'Brien over his marriage troubles for not following the
 submissive-female way of the Ferengis, he was evasive when
 asked why he's still single.

 He engages Odo in a running battle of wits, but while it gets vicious
 at times there is mutual respect and even affection present.
 Despite his pride at escaping detection, he has been caught
 red-handed in crime more than once but served only petty
 penalties. He still retains old Cardassian security clearances
 through Level 7 - one higher than Odo - and knows enough about
 engineering to install a small cloaking device in ships not normally
 made for them. Lock-picking of all kinds is another skill.

 In a battle of wits, a rival casino opened by Martus Mazur across
 the Promenade almost sunk his bar in 2370 until Quark planned a
 Bashir-O'Brien racquetball rematch to get his customers back. If he
 didn't know the sport by then, he learned it quickly enough to call
 the remote play-by-play. He also enjoys the Ferengi game of
 Tongo, of course; Dax says he scratches his left ear just before
 Acquiring, a dead giveaway.

 Security File: Report of Odo, Security Chief
 SD 49000

 Quark, the Ferengi barkeeper, is a self-important con artist who's
 nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. His bar is a center for
 scams and illegal dealings.

 Quark was a co-indicted in 2362 by the Romulans as the
 middleman with alien thief Fallit Kot for hijacking a Romulan ale
 shipment, but testified against Kot and got off - barely escaping
 with his life eight years later here at DS9 when Kot was released.

 He allowed thieves of the Dax symbiont aboard DS9 and became
 an inadvertent supplier of arms to the Maquis' first attack. Even my
 first encounter with Quark, in 2365 on then-Terok Nor, saw him
 backing up Kira's alibi in the Vaatrik murder for a price. That is all.

 Civilian commendation by Capt. B. Sisko, CO DS9
 SD 50100

 I have to hand it to Quark. The Federation's thanks go out to him
 once again for acting as a trade rep to the Dominion-fringe
 Karemma, and even more so -- if I am to believe these reports --
 for keeping my ship intact when he single-handedly diffused an
 unexploded Jem'Hadar torpedo.

 I just wish he would cut out that stunt with the station-wide
 advertisements in the comm systems and replicators.

 Security File: Report of Odo, Security Chief
 SD 50080

 This is to note the recent cooperation of the Ferengi barkeeper in a
 successful sting operation against the Markalian smuggling ring.
 That is all.

 Security File: Personal Note:
 SD ---

 Never again will I take someone into custody without announced
 charges. I have done so with Quark, of all people, and it nearly
 cost he and I both our lives. At least I have learned Quark is not
 well-connected and wealthy enough to join the Orion Syndicate.

 Psycho-Medical File, Dr. Julian Bashir
 SD 50500 Update

 Quark has seen the true heights and depths of life in the past few
 months. He has stared down the cherished precepts of his culture
 and come away less conservative after choosing between life and
 breaking a Ferengi contract with none other than his old adversary,
 FCA Liquidator Brunt. An overpaid Ferengi doctor's misdiagnosis of
 fatal Dorek syndrome was bad enough, but to have Brunt demand
 that Quark follow through on their signed contract to sell his own
 desiccated remains, per Ferengi custom, was even worse. Despite
 his onetime decision to hire Garak to kill him -- a fact I have
 received through confidential source -- and the subsequent loss of
 his Ferengi business license, Quark has survived -- a bit stunned at
 the support the station has given him in spite of the many stunts
 he's pulled. We must face it: Quark provides a valuable service and
 resource on the station -- even if he still takes 30% of his workers'
 tips and manages their vacation fund himself.

 One the other hand, it's a good thing our resident Ferengi barkeep
 is a tough little guy as well. Along with his varied injuries and
 near-fatal mishaps in just the past four years -- including, I
 suspect, his actions which saved he and Odo on a Class-L ice
 planet -- are the bruises he picked up upon Grilka's return to DS9
 this year. Actually she came back looking for some romance, and I
 still can't believe Worf tutored him to do it and survive, especially
 with some virtual reality combat device. I also can't believe his first
 trip to Risa came with our group earlier this year -- though I can
 believe he owns a first-edition copy of Vulcan Love Slave.