Star Trek: 10 Alien Encounters Before First Contact
3. Onaya - The Muse
Onaya appears as a beautiful woman when she arrives on Deep Space Nine. She quickly closes in on Jake Sisko, sensing his creative promise, and offers to help inspire him while writing. This isn't the first, nor even the tenth time, that she's done this for a human.
Onaya boasts about helping such literary greats as John Keats and Catullus in their compositions. This makes her a lot older than she looks - Keats lived during the 18th Century, while Catullus wrote his poems during the 1st Century BC.
Onaya is something of an enigma. She certainly is deadly, draining the living energy from those artists she feeds from. Yet she also helps to unlock their potential, as shown when Jake finally produces the guts of his first novel, Anslem.
She helped Keats and Catullus, as well as many hundreds of others along the way, compose and release some of the greatest literary works in history. In a way, she is a compelling case for the ends justifying the means. Still, best not to mention that to Ben Sisko when he's stood in front of her, phaser in hand.