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Astro Force Quest - Be the Redshirt (New Frontiers)

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Hey shit its time to run another system test quest!

New Frontiers is an attempt to write a...
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    • open_sketch

    open_sketch

    #1 Transgender Pansexual Witch Bandit Wolf Girl
    BEST SELLING AUTHOR
    Commission Artist
    Location
    Ottawa
    Pronouns
    She/Her/Whatever
    Hey shit its time to run another system test quest!

    New Frontiers is an attempt to write a structured storygame a la Apocalypse World that makes classic Star Trek happen, written in direct response to how not-good the upcoming Star Trek Adventures is going to be. The system is hella raw, so issues popping up is very expected. I wanna use this quest to build advancement rules, flesh out detail rules, and get a sense for the kind of content I need to be focusing on.
    ​
    January 15th, 2179

    The gentle beep of your WristComm rouses you awake. You react sluggishly at first, but then the realization of today's date hits you and you jolt up like you'd been hit with an acer beam.

    Today, you were getting assigned to your first mission, officially beginning your career in the Union of Aligned Star's Astro Force.

    Your roommates were all still asleep; none of them were shipping out today. You quietly pulled on your cadet uniform (for the last time), packed away your personal belongings in two separate bags (one to send home, and one to bring aboard) and you set out of the dorm.

    You never quite got over the sight of Gagarin Station's interior, no matter how many times you saw it. The vast O'Neill Cylinder sprawling out before you, filling your view in all directions. Directly above your head was C Stripe, a vast space of green fields and brown buildings; if you squinted you could just make out the tram and groundcars snaking along the roads. Between the stripes were vast windows looking out into space. From your position you could see the curve of a double sunrise over Proxima Centauri b, light flooding over the surface and brilliant auroras of green and red playing across the poles. If never ceased to take your breath away, and every time it reminded you why you were here.

    The campus was stirring awake around you, other cadets moving to and fro on the pathways. Around you buzzed hundreds of languages, many from Earth, but some from elsewhere. Most were rushing to class, clutching their pads and datatapes with the telltale stress of a heavy courseload under their eyes, and you couldn't help but smile a bit at their predicament. Not long ago, you were the one pulling painful all-nighters, cramming your head with facts and figures until it felt like it was going to burst, but it had paid off.

    You had a little time to indulge, so you pulled open your bag to retrieve your final evaluation. You'd poured over it two dozen times in the past week, and you still couldn't quite believe it. You hadn't just done well, you were top of the class. You knew that meant jumping ahead right to Ensign for your first deployment, and that Command Division had their eyes on you. It was the stuff of dreams.

    You couldn't wait to shed your grey Cadet outfit and don your duty uniform, in the signature...

    - [ ] Blue, for Astrogation. You're a hot-shot pilot, from cruiser rockets to areoshuttles, with a cool head and twitch reflexes.
    - [ ] Teal, for Sciences. With your understanding of the workings of the universe, nothing will surprise any ship you serve on.
    - [ ] Orange, for Engineering. You know your way around every component of a rocket ship, from the M/AM reactor to the FTL ring.
    - [ ] Yellow, for Admin. You'd keep the mission going on a glass of water and a deflating balloon if you needed to.
    - [ ] White, for Medical. No alien disease or catastrophic injury was beyond your capabilities.
    - [ ] Red, for Security. Anything that was going to harm your crewmates would need to get through you first.
    - [ ] Purple, for Signals. There is no code you can't break, and no language you can't learn.
    - [ ] Green, for Tactical. You could control weapons that would outshoot the entire 20th Century. If you want peace, prepare for war.
    ​
    You jump the tram to the spaceport, watching the trees and buildings fly by as you moved towards the docking port at the front of the cylinder. There, you dismounted and took an elevator up to center of the ring. There was artificial gravity on the dock, of course, but as per tradition, the elevators were left in freefall, so as you moved towards the center of the spinning habitat you could feel the weight leaving your body, until finally you floated off the floor entirely. You used to get as spacesick as anyone, but after your ten weeks of zero G training, it was second nature. You pushed off the wall elegantly and floated gently down the gradient of grav-plating until your feet were once again on solid ground.

    Standing between you and the docks was a checkpoint of Security Marshals, checking documentation and moving people along to their destination. You pull out your ident tape and run it through the scanner, and your personal information flashes across the screen.

    - [ ] Name: Write In
    - Species: Human
    - [ ] Place of Origin: Write In
    - Age: 19
    ​
    --------
    ​
    New Frontiers takes place in a universe thematically based on Star Trek: The Original Series. An optimistic technological future of space exploration, the universe diverges from our own in the mid 1960s, with accelerated technological development and the neverending Space Race replacing the Information Age. There's still a Soviet Union, we did get to L5 by '95, and we had our first moon bases before the 70s were out, that kind of thing.

    In the current year, the Union of Aligned Stars, a multispecies alliance led by humans, has found itself administering a vast swath of space, much of it unexplored, due to the collapse of a vast stellar empire in a devastating war. Danger and mystery lurks behind every star, from alien empires to god-like beings to strange science run amuck.

    The goal of this quest is to take your young Ensign through some missions, survive, climb the ranks, explore new frontiers, make first contact, "make first contact", and boldly go where no one has gone before.

    You up to it?    ​
     
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    • Character Sheet
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    • Haori Akane
    Ensign, Security Division, Lancaster Program
    Posted on Lancaster II

    ​

    Skills
    Skills
    Experiment: *
    Mediate: **
    Stamina: ***
    ACER Marksmanship: ***
    Alien Weaponry: *
    Subdue: ***
    Deescalation: **
    Intimidate: *
    Small Unit Tactics: **

    Tricks
    Reckless
    Anthropomorphize
    Zero-G Training
    Conditioning
    ​
    ​
    Languages: English, Russian, Japanese​

    ACTIONS
    Look Out, Sir! (Jump in the way of incoming damage for comrades)

    Stored Equipment
    Plasma Shotgun

    Advantage Understanding Data
    - - -
     
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    • [X] Orange, for Engineering. You know your way around every component of a rocket ship, from the M/AM reactor to the FTL ring.

    [X] Name: Rex Chronos

    [X] Place of Origin: Earth
     
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    [X]White, for Medical. No alien disease or catastrophic injury was beyond your capabilities.
    [X] Name: Andurah Sek
    [X] place of origin: Mars
     
    [X]White, for Medical. No alien disease or catastrophic injury was beyond your capabilities.
    [X] Name: Andurah Sek
    [X] place of origin: Mars
     
    Our homeworld should be "born in sphess and migrated several times over our childhood" or "sexy plant babe homeworld" (I'm not even joking)

    Mars is a boring red ball of dust, why would you want to be born there
     
    - [x] Yellow, for Admin. You'd keep the mission going on a glass of water and a deflating balloon if you needed to.

    -Name: Ryond Vour

    -Place of Origin: Moon Base
     
    Signals seems like it would be a good choice given the emphasis on "Making first contact" having some skill in languages would be good.
     
    - [x] Yellow, for Admin. You'd keep the mission going on a glass of water and a deflating balloon if you needed to.

    -Name: Ryond Vour

    -Place of Origin: Moon Base
     
    Arcus2611 said:
    Oh right if you must choose Earth you should probably be a bit more specific, because separate nation states still exist to some extent if I'm not wrong.
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    Yep. Feel free to invent some future history; things are supposed to be flexible that way.

    Most of humanity lives in space habitats or alien worlds, but these colonies usually have some kind of national connection to earth. Nation-states aren't terribly important politically but still very relevant culturally; everyone wears their national flag on their uniform, and as far as Americans and Soviets are concerned, the Space Race is still on. Even though the UN is the official government of Earth, rockets are lined with the flags of the nations that helped build them.
     
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    [X] White, for Medical. No alien disease or catastrophic injury was beyond your capabilities.
    [X] Name: Andurah Sek
    [X] place of origin: Mars
     
    - [X] Red, for Security. Anything that was going to harm your crewmates would need to get through you first.
    - [X] Name: Haori Akane
    - Species: Human
    - [X] Place of Origin: Jupiter (StraTokyo 3, City of the Red Winds)
    - Age: 19

    Apparently*, according to Jisho.org; Haori (which means formal coat) is a valid surname and Akane or Sen (茜 which means dyed deep red with the madder plant) is a valid given name. I think this keeps the excellent idea of @sebsmith's but combines it with a name that has a better mouth-feel and sounds more like a real name. I also just really like the idea of STRATOKYO 3 as this giant aerostat mega-habitat in the clouds of Venus. floating over Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

    WE SHALL WEAR OUR RED TUNIC WITH HONOUR AND PRIDE

    *(All credit goes to @Gwen for this naming idea, it was entirely down to her research.)

    EDIT: Changed Place of Origin location.
     
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    - [X] Red, for Security. Anything that was going to harm your crewmates would need to get through you first.
     
    sebsmith said:
    While the name was totally changeable if anyone could find a better one (and thanks for doing so), I was rather attached to them being from the Red Planet. However, if you can work a red or shirt reference into their place of origin, I'll back it.
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    Okay, that's a good point, editing now.

    EDIT: I changed it to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. I hope that's red enough for you!
     
    Okay, a cloud city over Jupiter's Great Red Spot is so fucking baller that regardless of how voting goes, that's getting a nod in canon.
     
    Admiral Skippy said:
    Okay, that's a good point, editing now.

    EDIT: I changed it to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. I hope that's red enough for you!
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    It is, so:

    - [X] Red, for Security. Anything that was going to harm your crewmates would need to get through you first.
    - [X] Name: Haori Akane
    - Species: Human
    - [X] Place of Origin: Jupiter (StraTokyo 3, City of the Red Winds)
    - Age: 19
     
    I should also add that from an engineering and astrophysical perspective; nothing about how this city doesn't immediately plummet and disintegrate makes any sense.

    It shouldn't be able stay up at that height in the upper atmosphere, as Jupiter's hydrogen atmosphere has no psuedo "habitable" zone like Venus's does. Moreover, I don't know how the intense Jovian gravity doesn't crush the inhabitants bones whenever they try to stand up whilst the intense radiation fries their marrow. Jupiter is straight-up one of the most insane places to try to colonize in the entire solar system.

    This is almost certainly why the humans did it. :V
     
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