So those three Borellian Nomen...

[Specter]

So we last see Maga, Bora, and Taba leaving the shuttle in "Baltar's Escape," after which it's understood that they board the Eastern Alliance destroyer and travel to Lunar Seven with Commandant Leiter and the enforcers.

Bet that journey is a barrel of laughs. Probably Leiter and Maga spend their time arguing who's stronger, the Nomen or the Alliance.

And then presumably they land on Lunar Seven only to find that the Eastern Alliance has just had all its missiles vaporized and surrendered to the Nationalists. That's gotta be even more fun. Wonder what life is like for the Nomen after that.

[Cylon-Knight]

Nomen: A Battlestar Galactica Story

You're onto something!

[johnnybear]

They were a great set of characters but one thing I always wanted to know was the planet Borallas as mentioned by sire yuri in the Saga of A Star World their home planet or was it Borella as said by Baltar when serving them Desert Layers in the Prison Barge in Baltar's Escape?
JB

[Cylon-Knight]

So they were not Colonials. Interesting. I wonder if their planet was also swatted by the Cylons then? Or they were just on a Colony when the onslaught occurred and, oops, stuck on a wagon train to the stars. #sorries lol

[johnnybear]

Yes, I get the drift that the Cylons hit their planet as well and that there were more Borellians in the fleet! Whether that planet was Borallas or Borella!
JB

[Specter]

They were from Borella. I don’t think Borallus had anything to do with them.

[johnnybear]

No probably not but considering how close the names were...
JB

[Specter]

I just had a sudden thought. What if Borella isn't a planet at all, but a continent on one of the Colonies?

We know there's a Borellian ship in the fleet, the freighter Borella. It seems unlikely that enough Borellians to fill a whole ship would have been "just visiting" on one of the Colonies at the time of the attack. Nor is there any mention of the fleet's stopping outside the Colonies to pick up any survivors of a contemporaneous Cylon attack.

It seems entirely possible that Borella could be a large but somewhat isolated continent within a Colony, where "the land of the mega-sun and the endless sands" could be found and the natives could have evolved those large foreheads over millennia. This would explain why the warriors had a pre-existing familiarity with the customs of the Nomen. It also fits with Boomer's line: "I never heard of them mixing with the other colonists." (Other colonists, as in "the Borellians themselves are colonists.")

Just a passing idea.

[johnnybear]

Good thinking, Batman! I somehow still think of Borallas as being something to do with them as Sire Yuri wanted the Galactica to head for there rather than head out into unknown space! But Adama knew there would be a Cylon attack force there which implies that Borallas was a safe haven to the colonies before the 'peace conference' and that the Cylons may have attacked it to draw the survivors into a bloodbath!
JB

[Specter]

Good thinking, Batman! I somehow still think of Borallas as being something to do with them as Sire Yuri wanted the Galactica to head for there rather than head out into unknown space! But Adama knew there would be a Cylon attack force there which implies that Borallas was a safe haven to the colonies before the 'peace conference' and that the Cylons may have attacked it to draw the survivors into a bloodbath!
JB

That could be.

To be exact, he says "a Cylon task force," which might mean the Cylons had infiltrated Borallus (as opposed to attacking it).

[137th Gebirg]

I always got the impression that the Nomen might have been a distant evolutionary offshoot of Colonial humans. There was a time not long ago in our own history where Neatherthals and Cro Magnons overlapped and interbred, parallel humanoids sharing the same genome but with distinct physiological differences. The Nomen may simply have been better at surviving and avoiding contact with the more advanced humans, allowing them to continue on into modern Colonial times.

Another theory is that they may even have been there before Kobol colonized Cyrannus, following the principles of parallel development that was always a favorite Star Trek trope. They were rounded up in reservation-like communities as the Colonies spread, which could explain why they hate humans so much. "Borellia" may have been the name of the planet they are from before it was renamed to one of the 12 worlds we knew.

In my own personal theories, I always wondered if they were somehow the inspiration for the post-TOS era of Klingons, complete with a larger physical size and strength, bumpy heads and an ancient warrior code. Sound familiar?

Either way, I really wish they were explored a lot more than were seen in the limited run.

[Specter]

Good theories. And I think the inspiration for the later Klingons is quite likely.

[johnnybear]

And John Colicos appeared with both of them too!
JB

[Cylon-Knight]

Excellent theories Specter and 137th Gebirg!!

So many cool stories could be done with your ideas. Love them.
Nomen: A Battlestar Galactica Story ... Make it so. lol three franchises all mixed up right there.

[bishopdonmiguel]

Followed by the widely successful educational tome, “Nomen’s Guide To Programming: The Code (84th Edition)”