Rank: Cadet, Fourth Class
Current residence: Starfleet Academy, Earth
Species/gender: Ferengi male
Year of birth: ca. 2353
Place of birth: Ferenginar
Parents: Son of Rom
Education: Entered Starfleet Academy, 2371
Marital status: Single
Starfleet Career Summary
2371 -- Accepted with sponsorship and advanced prep classes to Starfleet Academy
2372 -- As cadet, assisted in exposure of conspiracy to enact martial law on Earth
Psychological Profile: Report of Starfleet Academy Counselor's Office
Although a first-year Starfleet cadet, Nog occupies a special place in history as the first Ferengi ever to enter the Academy, and to date he has shouldered that potentially awkward stigma well. Reportedly, Nog credits his remarkably open multi-culturalism to his friendship with Jake Sisko, son of the commander of his longtime home at Deep Space Nine and Nog's own sponsor as a non-Federation applicant. However, Nog has also worked hard to mature beyond his former panicky reaction to a crisis, his occasional bout of Ferengi racism, his petty criminal record and his disdain for scholarship. His earlier school record was mediocre to poor, but that stemmed in part from his longtime illiteracy and his father's early reluctance to allow his attending the "hew-man" school taught by a woman, a threat repeated when the visiting Grand Nagus was aghast. In the end, he and Jake Sisko were Keiko O'Brien's last two pupils when she was forced to close the DS9 school.
Aside from a spat or two, especially involving dating when their cultures clashed as young teens, Nog prided himself on his and Jake's cross-cultural friendship and their survival of their fathers' initial opposition to the other. Sisko especially took a dim view of his influence on Jake with the traditional Ferengi view of women, and first met both Nog and his Uncle Quark after the boy was caught stealing with a Markalian thief from DS9's damaged assay office. The two boys met out of mutual loneliness and eventually did everything together, from joint science projects to girl-watching, playing cards and dom-jot, and avoiding Constable Odo's rounds. Baseball, though, was not a passion he shared with the human.
Like his father, Nog is good with his hands and worked for years for his Uncle Quark's bar and casino on DS9. Although he was saddened and angered by Quark's longtime humiliation of Rom, the teen was happy to see his father's rise to assertiveness by the time of his Academy admission. In fact, when pushed by his would-be sponsor Sisko, Nog admitted his application stemmed from his vow not to repeat his father's mistake of not pursuing his aptitudes, trying instead to be a "good Ferengi" in business without really having the lobes for it. It was he who kept his messy father's quarters cleaned up as well.
Nog marked his native rite of reaching adulthood in 2371, on the day before SD 48521.5, and selected Sisko as his role model and purchased apprenticeship mentor in order to be sponsored for Starfleet, offering him his life savings per Ferengi tradition and leaving it anyway when it's not required. He passed all four days of tests to make the Starfleet Academy Preparatory Program that year -- despite his uncle's sabotage of one test, uncovered and reported by his father.
Cadet Nog reported that he arrived for his first academy term in 2371 after an accidental time-travel trip back to Earth's 1947, thanks to a sabotaged ship repaid to Quark by his Cousin Gaila and a contraband kemacite cargo load. After Nog's traditional Ferengi sale of personal possessions on DS9 to finance his future, O'Brien and Bashir gave him a guidebook to Earth, from which he noticed that Gabriel Bell looks a lot like Sisko; his knowledge of Earth and its history helped win the trapped Ferengi their escape and a trip back to their correct time.
He enjoys Trixian bubble juice and fresh tube grubs, often beaming in to Sisko's restaurant in New Orleans to enjoy them.