The QUEEN OF THE GREAT LINK (Salome Jens) engineered the Founding of the Gamma Quadrant Dominion. And for five bitter years she prosecuted an all-out war against the United Federation of Planets and other superpowers in the Alpha Quadrant--the Solid Powers. But certain elements among the strongest and most persuasive of the Solid Powers, the Federation, infected her with a metamorphic virus that almost killed her and wiped out the Great Link. Only the action of Odo, one of The Hundred, saved her life and changed her perspective.The Queen never revealed to anyone the origins of her kind. Changelings exist in semi-liquid bodies that can assume any shape. Most of the time, Changelings like to blend together in the Great Link, looking for all the universe (at least to any Solid) like a vast, oily ocean.The Changelings always knew about the great Wormhole that connected the Gamma and Alpha Quadrants. (They did not know about the Entities, or Prophets, that controlled it and kept it stable.) Centuries before the events that figure in these chronicles, the Changelings sent out a hundred of their number to infiltrate various Solid societies and bring information about them back to the Great Link.But the Great Link also had some troubling memories. Many of their number died at Solid hands. The reigning Queen took these atrocities to heart, and was determined to establish dominion over all Solids, now and forever.To that end, she engineered the creation of two Solid races that would be beholden to the Changelings, who would call themselves the Founders. First came the Valar, whom she engineered to venerate all Changelings as if they were gods. Next came the Jem'Hadar, dedicated soldiers who would grow up fast and fight and kill whomever the Founders ordered to fight and kill. To keep the Jem'Hadar dependent, the Queen engineered in them a permanent dependency on a drug called Ketricel White, or The White. Valar would dispense this with much ceremony.Those design elements, intended to forestall any Jem'Hadar mutiny, would prove the Dominion's undoing. A sizeable Jem'Hadar contingent established residency in the Alpha Quadrant. Naturally they needed The White to maintain them. The Federation ultimately won in part by compromising, then destroying, the Dominion's supply of White and even any way of making it.Of all The Hundred, Odo Ital, the Changeling that dropped onto Bajor during its occupation by the Cardassian Union, proved the most troublesome. Odo joined the Federation with a whole heart. A Solid, especially a human, would say he went native. The Queen engineered a crippling illness to force Odo to return to the Link and face trial. For murder. No Changeling had ever harmed another Changeling--until Odo became the first, after the War started.Bringing Odo back would prove the undoing of the Dominion. For Odo carried a metamorphic virus that Starfleet Intelligence (Section Thirty-one) had engineered specifically for him. When Odo entered the Great Link to face judgment, he transmitted the virus to every Changeling in the Link.The Link sentenced Odo to transformation to permanent Solid form. That, of course, would be only temporary--something the Link could not know then. Worse yet, Odo's infection of the Link did its damage. From that day forward, the Great Link faced doom.The Queen, forced to command directly within the Alpha Quadrant, eventually came to the point where she could not change her shape. Still she told her forces to fight on. But even new alliances could not save the effort. The Breen turned out to be headstrong and unreliable allies--and not as powerful as they pretended. The Cardassians revolted, and even the systematic annihilation of Cardassian cities did not stop that. Finally a combined Starfleet-Klingon force conquered Cardassia Prime. The Queen became a prisoner of war.Then Odo--who by then had received an anti-viral treatment--offered her one last link. She took it. And at last understood why Odo had been such friends to the Solids. She then gave the final stand-down order, and signed an instrument of surrender. Under its terms, all remaining Dominion forces must withdraw to the Gamma Quadrant.There, Odo rejoined the Great Link at last, and shared with them the same cure that had saved the Queen's life. We may assume that the Queen abdicated her leadership in favor of Odo. Show less «