Mankind has reached the stars, but the galaxy is troubled.
You're presently sitting alone...
You're presently sitting alone...
Mare Incognitum - Space Voyage Quest
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Prologue - A Message from Uncle Omar
Guarantor G
Waiting
Mankind has reached the stars, but the galaxy is troubled.
You're presently sitting alone in a dimly lit bar, examining the parcel sitting on the counter in front of you. The licensed courier who delivered it is walking out through the door behind you out onto the streets of Champagne 7. It's still fairly early in the afternoon so the place is fairly quiet, most of the other regulars don't filter in until later in the day. The bartender loiters at the far end of the counter, watching a broadcast of some sporting event with keen interest.
You weren't expecting any sort of mail, especially by way of a courier service expensive enough to track you down and deliver it in person. You carefully unwrap it to reveal an older model data terminal that flickers to life at your touch. There's a letter waiting on its display screen, signed by your Uncle Omar. No one in the family has as far as you're aware heard from him in years, though these days you're nearly as bad.
It's all some vague nonsense about him wanting you to join him in some business venture out on the frontier. He wants you to travel to Thorpe. You've never even heard of Thorpe. But what do you have to lose? You're not going anywhere spending your afternoons drinking at some dive here on Champagne 7, one of the worst corners of the Earth Sphere.
You can still remember back before everything went wrong, when you were:
[ ] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
[ ] The captain of a transport ship for one of the freight lines making supply and passenger runs between the Earth Sphere and the helium mining operations out at Saturn. Hardly the most exciting route, but the pay was superb. You were unlucky though, and an HFLA cell infiltrated onto one of the Saturn Sphere Colonies as passengers aboard your ship and carried out a series of terrorist attacks. You were cleared of any involvement, but you lost your job, and your ship. You've had so little success at finding someone who will hire you that you've all but given up on ever shipping out again.
[ ] A regional politician back on the Earth itself, a rising star with ambitions to someday become one of the Five Hundred and the support of a powerful patron within the upper echelons of the UEMN government. Unfortunately for you, that patron was brought down by a corruption scandal that saw most of his supporters and clients driven out of the political landscape and you weren't any exception. You traveled to Champagne 7 to lay low, though by this point you know the media has moved on to the next big story.
You're presently sitting alone in a dimly lit bar, examining the parcel sitting on the counter in front of you. The licensed courier who delivered it is walking out through the door behind you out onto the streets of Champagne 7. It's still fairly early in the afternoon so the place is fairly quiet, most of the other regulars don't filter in until later in the day. The bartender loiters at the far end of the counter, watching a broadcast of some sporting event with keen interest.
You weren't expecting any sort of mail, especially by way of a courier service expensive enough to track you down and deliver it in person. You carefully unwrap it to reveal an older model data terminal that flickers to life at your touch. There's a letter waiting on its display screen, signed by your Uncle Omar. No one in the family has as far as you're aware heard from him in years, though these days you're nearly as bad.
It's all some vague nonsense about him wanting you to join him in some business venture out on the frontier. He wants you to travel to Thorpe. You've never even heard of Thorpe. But what do you have to lose? You're not going anywhere spending your afternoons drinking at some dive here on Champagne 7, one of the worst corners of the Earth Sphere.
You can still remember back before everything went wrong, when you were:
[ ] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
[ ] The captain of a transport ship for one of the freight lines making supply and passenger runs between the Earth Sphere and the helium mining operations out at Saturn. Hardly the most exciting route, but the pay was superb. You were unlucky though, and an HFLA cell infiltrated onto one of the Saturn Sphere Colonies as passengers aboard your ship and carried out a series of terrorist attacks. You were cleared of any involvement, but you lost your job, and your ship. You've had so little success at finding someone who will hire you that you've all but given up on ever shipping out again.
[ ] A regional politician back on the Earth itself, a rising star with ambitions to someday become one of the Five Hundred and the support of a powerful patron within the upper echelons of the UEMN government. Unfortunately for you, that patron was brought down by a corruption scandal that saw most of his supporters and clients driven out of the political landscape and you weren't any exception. You traveled to Champagne 7 to lay low, though by this point you know the media has moved on to the next big story.
[X] A regional politician back on the Earth itself, a rising star with ambitions to someday become one of the Five Hundred and the support of a powerful patron within the upper echelons of the UEMN government. Unfortunately for you, that patron was brought down by a corruption scandal that saw most of his supporters and clients driven out of the political landscape and you weren't any exception. You traveled to Champagne 7 to lay low, though by this point you know the media has moved on to the next big story.
[X] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
[X] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
[X] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
[X] An mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] A regional politician back on the Earth itself, a rising star with ambitions to someday become one of the Five Hundred and the support of a powerful patron within the upper echelons of the UEMN government. Unfortunately for you, that patron was brought down by a corruption scandal that saw most of his supporters and clients driven out of the political landscape and you weren't any exception. You traveled to Champagne 7 to lay low, though by this point you know the media has moved on to the next big story.
Prologue - Booking Passage
Guarantor G
Waiting
That's right, you are are Jaleh Dorothea Saldanha and you were:
[X] A mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
Your family all but disowned you when you remained in the military instead of following your parents into politics, and now you've mostly lost the career you'd planned out for yourself. Uncle Omar was just about the only one who supported you the whole way through, though it's been over a decade since you've seen him in person. He's been out on the frontiers for years, charting routes to new star systems and looking for the next big discovery. He's made and lost fortunes along the way.
The letter he left on the old hand terminal is maddeningly vague, just cryptic references about how there's a place for you with him on his latest expedition and some nonsense about how he's getting on in years and needs someone to inherit his operations. You don't think the last part has any truth to it, Omar won't retire as long as he's alive. When he left Sol behind you're pretty sure he did so for good. There must be some other reason, or maybe he just heard you'd fallen on hard times and wanted to give you a way out other than crawling back to the family estates back on Earth.
You decide you've got nothing to lose by giving his offer a shot and pull your own terminal out of your pocket and search the Encyclopedia for Thorpe. There's not much information there, it's some frontier outpost nearly seven months transit coreward from Sol. A large asteroid base serving as a jumping off point for survey and exploration missions and a UEMN garrison undoubtedly halfheartedly hunting for HFLA stragglers. Not exactly the most exciting place out there.
Nothing to do then but figure out how you're going to get there, as traffic that far out is almost always irregular and erratic. You check the public shipping itineraries and find two options:
[ ] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
[ ] The tramp freighter Monterey is listed as leaving a few days after the Raffaello, headed directly to Thorpe. Not too many details, but there's available passenger space and you'd be going directly to your destination. The downside though is that at best you'd spend most of the trip in stasis, or at worse be stuck awake aboard a likely crowded and uncomfortable cargo hauler for months. You did long cruises with the navy, but that's nothing you want to do for fun.
Digging a bit deeper into the available information, it appears that the Raffaello will according to the latest rumors be carrying some sort of VIP. Not really surprising given what you're reading about the ship, it lives up to the luxury claim if the pictures are anything to go by.
As for the Monterey, you don't find much information at all. It's an older ship registered out of Tranquility, but it doesn't seem to visit Sol very often. It does seem to be legit but you've this nagging suspicion that maybe you don't want to get aboard a ship for so long that you don't know much about.
[X] A mid-grade officer in the UEMN military, where you were looking forward to a long and successful career ahead before getting caught up in a political turf war that saw you unceremoniously cashiered out into the reserves. You've spent the last few months loitering around on this old industrial colony attempting to avoid having to think about what you're going to do next.
Your family all but disowned you when you remained in the military instead of following your parents into politics, and now you've mostly lost the career you'd planned out for yourself. Uncle Omar was just about the only one who supported you the whole way through, though it's been over a decade since you've seen him in person. He's been out on the frontiers for years, charting routes to new star systems and looking for the next big discovery. He's made and lost fortunes along the way.
The letter he left on the old hand terminal is maddeningly vague, just cryptic references about how there's a place for you with him on his latest expedition and some nonsense about how he's getting on in years and needs someone to inherit his operations. You don't think the last part has any truth to it, Omar won't retire as long as he's alive. When he left Sol behind you're pretty sure he did so for good. There must be some other reason, or maybe he just heard you'd fallen on hard times and wanted to give you a way out other than crawling back to the family estates back on Earth.
You decide you've got nothing to lose by giving his offer a shot and pull your own terminal out of your pocket and search the Encyclopedia for Thorpe. There's not much information there, it's some frontier outpost nearly seven months transit coreward from Sol. A large asteroid base serving as a jumping off point for survey and exploration missions and a UEMN garrison undoubtedly halfheartedly hunting for HFLA stragglers. Not exactly the most exciting place out there.
Nothing to do then but figure out how you're going to get there, as traffic that far out is almost always irregular and erratic. You check the public shipping itineraries and find two options:
[ ] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
[ ] The tramp freighter Monterey is listed as leaving a few days after the Raffaello, headed directly to Thorpe. Not too many details, but there's available passenger space and you'd be going directly to your destination. The downside though is that at best you'd spend most of the trip in stasis, or at worse be stuck awake aboard a likely crowded and uncomfortable cargo hauler for months. You did long cruises with the navy, but that's nothing you want to do for fun.
Digging a bit deeper into the available information, it appears that the Raffaello will according to the latest rumors be carrying some sort of VIP. Not really surprising given what you're reading about the ship, it lives up to the luxury claim if the pictures are anything to go by.
As for the Monterey, you don't find much information at all. It's an older ship registered out of Tranquility, but it doesn't seem to visit Sol very often. It does seem to be legit but you've this nagging suspicion that maybe you don't want to get aboard a ship for so long that you don't know much about.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
Wonder who the VIP is...
Wonder who the VIP is...
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[X] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
- Location
- Home
[X] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
[X] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
[X] The tramp freighter Monterey is listed as leaving a few days after the Raffaello, headed directly to Thorpe. Not too many details, but there's available passenger space and you'd be going directly to your destination. The downside though is that at best you'd spend most of the trip in stasis, or at worse be stuck awake aboard a likely crowded and uncomfortable cargo hauler for months. You did long cruises with the navy, but that's nothing you want to do for fun.
ILurk
Insert Demeaning Remark Here
[X] The tramp freighter Monterey is listed as leaving a few days after the Raffaello, headed directly to Thorpe. Not too many details, but there's available passenger space and you'd be going directly to your destination. The downside though is that at best you'd spend most of the trip in stasis, or at worse be stuck awake aboard a likely crowded and uncomfortable cargo hauler for months. You did long cruises with the navy, but that's nothing you want to do for fun.
Avoozl
The Dark One
- Location
- Beyond the depths of the far realm
[X] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
Prologue - Boarding the Raffaello
Guarantor G
Waiting
[X] The luxury passenger liner Raffaello is leaving in a few days for the Autonomous Republic of Oualie, one of the older coreward colonies about a third of the way out toward Thorpe. You've got more than enough money left to book passage there, and it'd be much easier to find a ship heading to your destination from one of the frontier's main transit hubs than it would be here in Sol.
There's still a few open spaces aboard the Raffaello when you check, and you book a second class cabin for yourself before you even leave the bar. It's expensive, but it's reliable and you've still got enough money left in your savings accounts to get by for a good while even without the continued half-pay you're getting as an officer still technically on the UEMN military's reserve list. With your transportation secured you leave the dive bar behind and head back to your cramped apartment to set your depressingly limited affairs in order.
With most of your possessions put away in long term storage, your and your luggage leave the industrial landscape of Champagne 7 behind, hopefully forever, and make the shuttle hop over to one of the orbital colonies of the Vermilion Archipelago where the Raffaello is being loaded and prepared for departure.
You spend two nights in a motel on Vermilion Island 3 waiting to board, there's little to do in the meantime but catch up on current events and learn more about your ship and your destination.
There's not much as far as the former's concerned, the media's caught up in some celebrity scandal for the most part and there's some muted talk about renewed HFLA activity. There's always talk about continued HFLA activity. The High Frontier Liberation Army's been beaten down three times in the past seventy years, but the military's never quite managed to get rid of them entirely. Stories of whole rebel colonies hidden out beyond Sol have abounded ever since the first hyperspace engines were completed.
As for your destination and your Uncle's activities out on the frontier, you find very little in the way of useful additional information. You spend a great deal of time attempting research in your hotel room, but Sol's public databases are virtually empty on the subject of distant Thorpe. It seems you'll have to get there to find out more.
At last the time comes to board the Raffaello, and past a few security and customs checkpoints you find yourself standing on the carpeted deck of the opulent liner, as other passengers and crew make their way across the grandiose lobby around you. In the next few minutes the ship will depart from port and you'll be on your way outbound.
What are you going to do now?
[ ] Make your way up to an observation deck and watch the ship pull away from Island 3. This will most likely be the last time you'll see the Earth Sphere for a long time.
[ ] Go find your cabin and make sure your luggage has gotten aboard. There's nothing in there you're particularly concerned about, everything important is on your person, but it's the principle of the thing.
[ ] Check out one of the Raffaello's bars, you know there's several scattered across the sprawling ship and you haven't had a proper drink since you left Champagne 7.
There's still a few open spaces aboard the Raffaello when you check, and you book a second class cabin for yourself before you even leave the bar. It's expensive, but it's reliable and you've still got enough money left in your savings accounts to get by for a good while even without the continued half-pay you're getting as an officer still technically on the UEMN military's reserve list. With your transportation secured you leave the dive bar behind and head back to your cramped apartment to set your depressingly limited affairs in order.
With most of your possessions put away in long term storage, your and your luggage leave the industrial landscape of Champagne 7 behind, hopefully forever, and make the shuttle hop over to one of the orbital colonies of the Vermilion Archipelago where the Raffaello is being loaded and prepared for departure.
You spend two nights in a motel on Vermilion Island 3 waiting to board, there's little to do in the meantime but catch up on current events and learn more about your ship and your destination.
There's not much as far as the former's concerned, the media's caught up in some celebrity scandal for the most part and there's some muted talk about renewed HFLA activity. There's always talk about continued HFLA activity. The High Frontier Liberation Army's been beaten down three times in the past seventy years, but the military's never quite managed to get rid of them entirely. Stories of whole rebel colonies hidden out beyond Sol have abounded ever since the first hyperspace engines were completed.
As for your destination and your Uncle's activities out on the frontier, you find very little in the way of useful additional information. You spend a great deal of time attempting research in your hotel room, but Sol's public databases are virtually empty on the subject of distant Thorpe. It seems you'll have to get there to find out more.
At last the time comes to board the Raffaello, and past a few security and customs checkpoints you find yourself standing on the carpeted deck of the opulent liner, as other passengers and crew make their way across the grandiose lobby around you. In the next few minutes the ship will depart from port and you'll be on your way outbound.
What are you going to do now?
[ ] Make your way up to an observation deck and watch the ship pull away from Island 3. This will most likely be the last time you'll see the Earth Sphere for a long time.
[ ] Go find your cabin and make sure your luggage has gotten aboard. There's nothing in there you're particularly concerned about, everything important is on your person, but it's the principle of the thing.
[ ] Check out one of the Raffaello's bars, you know there's several scattered across the sprawling ship and you haven't had a proper drink since you left Champagne 7.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] Make your way up to an observation deck and watch the ship pull away from Island 3. This will most likely be the last time you'll see the Earth Sphere for a long time.
- Location
- SMS Odette II
[X] Make your way up to an observation deck and watch the ship pull away from Island 3. This will most likely be the last time you'll see the Earth Sphere for a long time.
What's a man without a little romance in their soul?
What's a man without a little romance in their soul?
Chapter 1 - The Raffaello prepares to depart
Guarantor G
Waiting
That's the spirit!
[X] Make your way up to an observation deck and watch the ship pull away from Island 3. This will most likely be the last time you'll see the Earth Sphere for a long time.
There's a long voyage ahead, and ultimately you can't be certain that you'll ever see the Earth again. You sling you pack over your shoulder and make your way through the crowded lobby onward and upward toward one of the Raffaello. The wide and well-marked passageways aboard the liner are a world always from the typically cramped confines of the warships you've spent nearly all of your considerable amount of flight time aboard.
You've no difficulty at all finding your way up several decks to an observation lounge with towering windows that give an excellent view of the Vermilion Island 3 cylinder and the blue Earth behind it. This isn't the first time you've left the Earth behind, but on the patrols you set out on before there was always the knowledge that after a few weeks or months you'd eventually be back barring some unlikely defeat on a distant battlefield. Before the last few days you'd never really entertained the idea that you might join the wave of colonists and explorers seeking to carve out a place in the wider galaxy beyond Sol.
There's a lot of traffic moving out there, little dots of light traveling across the dark. With time to spare before departure, you dig into one of the pockets of your bag and take out a small monocular, one of the few pieces of gear from the service you were allowed to keep as a reservists. You turn it on and raise it to your eye, training it outward at the nearby shipping. The optic begins to tag and label nearby craft. One or two local freighters, a number of cargo shuttles and space worker pods, and waiting further out a Cairo-class battleship and several escort ships.
It's definitely unusual for a warship that big to be loitering here. Either someone's put them on notice that there's the potential for an attack or that rumored VIP up in First Class is someone with serious political clout. You're about to set about looking for more warships when you realize you're no longer alone at this particular window.
A young girl has walked up just beside you and paying you no heed at all is unsuccessfully attempting to adjust the settings on a monocular similar to yours. Similar but not identical, you recognize it as a newer and more expensive model than the one you were issued by the military. A pretty expensive toy for someone's teenager and not really something that's easily used without a bit of instruction.
You proceed to:
[ ] Offer her some advice on how to use her optic before the ship gets underway. It's only the friendly thing to do and you'll be stuck on this ship around the same faces for several months.
[ ] Head back for your cabin. No one's paying you to be some sort of instructor for junior space travelers.
[ ] Disregard the girl but remain at the window. You were here first and you're not going to miss watching the departure.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Offer her some advice on how to use her optic before the ship gets underway. It's only the friendly thing to do and you'll be stuck on this ship around the same faces for several months.