Charla was schooled in Kirill's household, and was trained as an accountant. A timid but efficient man, he was well treated by his master and never made waves. This made him unpopular with his fellows, as he had no support for the resistance. He simply could not bring himself to see the evil so many claimed the Cardassians were inflicting. Of course, he was unable to travel, and things in his own province were generally smooth. To him, the resistance brought trouble on itself. He was fed, clothed, educated, sheltered, and protected by his Cardassian master, and gave Kirill the respect he felt the master deserved. Indeed, he was proud of his service, and proud that under his guidance the household and its business interests flourished.

When the occupation ended, he considered following his master to Cardassia. Kirill forbade it sadly, telling Charla he would not be welcomed on Cardassia Prime. Charla bid his master farewell, and with several other previously loyal servants, opened a small banking business.

His business failed quickly, as word was spread that he and his partners were collaborators and should have been banished under the Ilvian Proclamation. His office was ransacked and the building burned down, all the partners arrested and imprisoned to await trial. His son was beaten to death in the prison. While he and his grief-stricken wife were acquitted of being sympathizers, she left him shortly after they were released. Unsure what to do, his life in a shambles, he began to wander.

He traveled widely for several years, managing his savings closely and working at odd jobs to supplement his accounts. In that time his eyes were opened to an entirely different Bajor to the one in which he was raised. He was appalled at the ravages the Cardassians had inflicted. The senseless violence. The outright plunder. The genocide.

After years of travel, it became too great to bear. Searching desperately for a way to maintain his focus, he found religion. The Bajoran religion was banned by the Cardassians, and he grew up with no knowledge of it whatsoever. Freed of such restriction, he attended the local rites as often as he could, and gladly embraced the reverence and the worship of the prophets. In fact, he became deeply interested in religion in general, and read widely on the subject.

As he read and thought, he was struck by the concept of atonement, and wondered how he could make up for his own unwitting support of such monsters as the Cardassians. He decided Starfleet would make a fine avenue for forgiveness, and signed up the next time he passed a recruiting office. He was 50 years old.

He was far too old by then to be allowed into the Officers' Program, but he secured a technical school billet on the strength of his written exams and mathematical acumen. He was an oddity on campus, to be sure; bald and wizened in a sea of youthful exuberance. While some muttered that he threw off the curve, he graduated at the top of the enlisted Operations strand, and secured the promotion that went with the top spot. As a new Crewman First Class, he was assigned to the USS Sulu, an exploration ship.

His old servant's habits sometimes creep back on him, and he occasionally has to stop himself from bowing to people in authority. He has a keen sense of people born of his decades of service. He is quite capable of anticipating the needs of those around him, often placing beverages next to people just as they think they want one.