Dax awakens Kor the next morning, with both assuming he simply passed out. Dax reveals the results of her tests on the shroud, verifying its authenticity. Kor explains that he got the shroud from Vulcan scientists who discovered it in some ancient ruins in the Gamma Quadrant. The planet must have been inhabited by the Hur'q, ancient foes of the Klingons who stole many of their precious relics. The trio borrow a runabout with Sisko's blessing and set out filled with optimism. They reach the planet and beam down but discover that Kor never bothered to tell them about the force field protecting the ruins. The Starfleet officers quickly bypass it and enter the ruins.
Inside is what appears to be an ancient Hur'q museum, but it's been completely ransacked. Dejected, Kor is ready to give up, but Worf locates a suspicious wall that turns out to be a hologram. Dax uses her tricorder to mimic Hur'q lifesigns, bypassing the security scanner and allowing them all to walk through. Inside, lo and behold, is the Sword of Kahless, an extremely ornate and ancient bat'leth. Worf gives Kor the honor of holding it first. But before they can return to their runabout, they're ambushed!
It's Toral of house Duras, flanked by some goons and the Lethean, who tracked them there. Toral mocks Worf for sparing his life and prepares to take the sword, but the trio fight back and escape. Toral has jammed their transport signal, so the trio will have to navigate out of the catacombs. As they trek, Kor asks Worf what Toral was talking about, and Worf admits that he passed up his right of revenge against Toral. Kor is aghast, deciding that Worf is no true Klingon after all.
At camp, Kor begins grating on Worf with his embellished tales. When they discuss what they will do with the sword, Kor scoffs at the idea of giving it over to the Emperor, a clone of the original Kahless, believing the man to be a fraud. Wor realizes that Kor means to use the sword to unite the Empire under himself. Worf soon dives into the messiah business and decides that it's actually him who is destined to rule the Empire. Through it all, Dax struggles to maintain the peace. When Kor nearly falls into a chasm, Worf tries in vain to convince him to release the sword and fall onto a precarious ledge below. After helping to pull Kor up, Dax privately accuses Worf of trying to get Kor killed, and Worf doesn't trouble to deny it.
Worf and Kor finally break down and start to fight, but they're interrupted by another ambush from Toral's group. Kor attacks, and Worf is inspired to fight beside him. All three manage to defeat the bandits, and they force Toral to cancel his jamming frequency. Back aboard the runabout, Worf and Kor have decided that the sword will split the Empire rather than unite it, just like it did Worf and Kor. They beam it into space, trusting that destiny will reveal it again when the time is right.
This episode provides examples of
- Action Girl: Dax mixes it up with the guys, though she's clearly the third most skilled of the three.
- Artifact of Attraction: The sword doesn't have any actual powers, but its allure of power drives Kor and Worf to damn near kill each other.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Like his father and aunts before him, Toral dreams of ruling the Klingon Empire and sees the Sword of Kahless as the way to do it. While he's certainly more of a threat than he was on TNG, he's no closer to his goal than Lursa and B'Etor were.
- Broken Pedestal: Worf starts seeing Kor as less of a hero and more of a drunken old man.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Kor returns for the first time since "Blood Oath", making this his second of three appearances on DS9.
- Toral also returns for the first time since TNG's "Redemption".
- Call-Back:
- Worf tells Jadzia about his vision of Kahless. Kor references the same episode by deriding Clone Kahless as a figurehead without any real fighting ability or power.
- Worf comes face-to-face with Toral, and it's mentioned how he previously spared him.
- Toral's lackeys include a Lethean, whom he sends to steal the knowledge of the sword's location from Kor's mind.
- Chew-Out Fake-Out: Kor when he first meets Worf:Kor: Ah, Worf—the traitor, the pariah, the lowest of the low...it's a pleasure to meet you. Any enemy of Gowron and the high council is a friend of mine.
- Continuity Nod:
- Worf mentions Kor's fight with Captain Kirk.
- Sisko shaves with the same little blue cuboid that Geordi used in Code of Honor. Fittingly, LeVar Burton directed this episode.
- Cool Sword: The Sword of Kahless is flashier
◊ looking than a traditional bat'leth, with a design reminiscent of Damascus steel, the symbol of the Klingon Empire embossed in the center of the blade, and a triangular midpoint. It is the first bat'leth, the blade of Kahless the Unforgettable, Famed In-Story and so revered that Worf believes it could unite the Empire. And Kor uses it to cook a meal. - Deliberate Values Dissonance: Kor can't fathom why Worf would show an enemy mercy and declares that he's not a true Klingon after all. Even Dax can't reason with him.
- Ham-to-Ham Combat: With Klingons, this is pretty much inevitable.
- Hypocrite: Toral mocks Worf for his lost standing in the Klingon Empire when he, as a member of a house that repeatedly collaborated with Romulans to take over the Empire and been banished, has even worse standing.
- Klingon Promotion: Both Worf and Kor start making plans for this upon bringing the sword to Qo'noS.
- Mandatory Line: Sisko only appears long enough to authorize the sword-hunting mission. The other cast members only stick around for Kor's story.
- Mundane Utility: Kor uses the Sword of Kahless as a meat skewer. When Worf gets indignant over this, Kor points out that Kahless used it as a sword, not a holy artifact.Kor: Why, Kahless himself used it to skin the Serpent of Xol, to harvest his father's field, to carve a statue of his own beloved! It's a sword!
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Toral only found out about all this because Kor was boasting in a bar on Toma IV about finding the Shroud of the Sword. When Kor blames Toral pursuing them on Worf sparing the boy all those years ago, Worf hits him with this.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Toral's ambush allows Worf and Kor to mend their feud and helps avert a Klingon civil war.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Worf sparing Toral's life at the end of the Klingon Civil War back on TNG finally comes back to bite him in the ass.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
- Worf mentions that Kor led an assault on Romulus itself.
- Kor got the clue that led them there while he was ambassador to Vulcan. Kor, the drunken boastful Boisterous Bruiser ruled by his emotions, was stationed... on Vulcan. Where he apparently made friends.
- Only Sane Man: Poor Dax is stuck trying to keep Worf and Kor from offing each other over the sword.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Worf starts thinking in terms of being a Visionary Villain and conquering the Klingon Empire with the Sword of Kahless as a rallying point.
- The Precarious Ledge: Kor nearly falls off of one, but gets saved by Dax and a very reluctant Worf.
- Reverse Polarity: How Worf and Jadzia get past one force field.
- Rule of Cool: In-Universe— Kira and Odo point out how unlikely Kor's story about going three against an army amid rivers of lava is, but O'Brien doesn't care because it's entertaining.
- Sequel Episode: To DS9's "Blood Oath" (picking up Kor's storyline) and to TNG's "Redemption" (picking up Toral's fate in the interim since the Klingon Civil War). In the case of the latter, this is also a loose sequel of sorts to Star Trek: Generations (showing what's become of the remnants of the House of Duras following Lursa and B'Etor's deaths at Veridian III).
- Ungrateful Bastard: Worf spared Toral's life several years ago. Toral repays Worf by trying to kill him. He even taunts Worf about this to his face. Honorless petaQ'.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Dax chews Worf out for almost letting Kor fall to his death from The Precarious Ledge.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is a stripped-down version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with three men setting out to get a treasure, finding it without much difficulty, and then gradually succumbing to greed and infighting as they struggle to bring the treasure back to civilization while being pursued by bandits.
- The World Is Not Ready: Realizing how divisive the Sword of Kahless made them, Worf and Kor decide the Klingon Empire isn't ready to embrace the sword themselves, and they transport it into space.
