STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

[DragonCobolt]

Spoiler: Fleetwide Buff

The Dragon: Once per episode, at the beginning of combat place an Advantage on the field representing a cunning tactic or strategy devised by Danara Pel.

Spoiler: USS Voyager

NAME​	USS Voyager	PROF.​	MULTIROLE
CLASS​	Sovereign Class Heavy Exploration Vessel	CONST​	2371
SHIELDS​	13/13​	RESISTANCE​	6​	SCALE​	6​
POWER ​	13/13​	CREW SUPPORT​	6​	SMALL CRAFT​	5​

		COMMS​	ENGINES​	STRUCTURE​	COMPUTERS​	SENSORS​	WEAPONS​
BREACHES​		0/6​	0/6​	0/6​	0/6​	0/6​	0/6​
​	​	9​	11​	10​	11​	9​	10​
COMMAND​	3​	12​	14​	13​	14​	12​	13​
CONNING​	2​	12​	14​	13​	14​	12​	13​
ENGINEERING​	2​	11​	13​	12​	13​	11​	12​
SECURITY​	3​	13​	15​	14​	16​	13​	14​
SCIENCE​	2​	11​	13​	12​	13​	11​	12​
MEDICINE​	2​	11​	13​	12​	13​	11​	12​

TALENTS​	Command Ship: Can give advantages using Command within range to Away Missions or to supporting ships. EMH: Has an EMH! Improved Warp Drive: When going to warp, roll 1cd on an effect, regain the power point. Quantum Torpedoes: Can use Quantum Torpedoes! (60 total) Secondary Reactors: +5 to Power High Resolution Sensors: +1 momentum to out of combat sensor checks.
TRAITS​	Federation Starship – A highly sophisticated and advanced vessel, with holodecks, replicators, and similar comforts, primarily designed to handle multiple operations. Highly sensitive and requiring constant maintenance, the vehicle is less rugged than other interstellar craft Maquis Crew - a good chunk of the crew are former Maquis troublemakers. Expect discipline problems and unorthodox plans.
WEAPONS​	Phaser Arrays Power Cost: 1-3 | Range: Medium | Damage: 9cd [+1 per extra power spent] Can Use Spread: Hit +1 time at ½ damage per effect OR Area: hit +1 ship per effect within close range. Versatile 2: Gain 2 bonus momentum with a successful hit Photon Torpedoes Power Cost: 0 | Range: Long | Damage: 6cd High Yield: If it causes 1 breach, it causes +1 breach Quantum Torpedoes Power Cost: 0 | Range: Long | Damage: 7cd (Vicious 1 - +1 damage on effects) High Yield: If it causes 1 breach, it causes +1 breach Calibrations: Requires 1 minor action to calibrate Tractor Beam (Strength 5) Power Cost: 0 | Range: Close | Damage: None Effect: If successfully established, enemies face a diff 5 check to escape.

CREW COMPLIMENT (Base Stat: 9 | Base Skill: 2)
CO: Captain Katheryn Janeway (Skilled: Command, Science | Weakness: Combat)

SPECIAL ABILITY: "We Can Be Better" - if you succeed on any diplomatic check with Janeway, Get +1 momentum​

XO: Commander D-91 (Skilled: Command | Weakness: Socialization)
HELM: Lt. Tom Paris (Skilled: Conn | Weakness: Not Being A Fucking Up)
TACTICAL: Ensign Harry Kimm (Skilled: Gunnery | Weakness: Harry Kim)
SECURITY: Lt. JG Amy Strong (Skilled: Personal Combat | Weakness: Lying)

MAQUIS HEADBREAKER: C'nola (Skilled: Combat, Sneaking and Scheming | Weakness: Emotional Wreck)​

SCIENCE: Tuvok (Skilled: Science | Weakness: Emotionless)
COMMS: Lt. Bian T'are (Skilled: Communications | Weakness: Combat)
MEDICAL: The EMH (Skilled: Doctor | Weakness: Kind of a Dick)
ENGINEER: B'lanna Torres (Skilled: Engineering | Weakness: Also a dick)

SECONDARY CHARACTERS
Ensign Steve (Useless Security Goon)
Ensign Becky (plural fighter jock)
Petty Officer Third Class Jessie (Hard working engineer)
Crewman Billingsly (Dude, Billingsly!)
Crewman Chandra (Concerned Crewman)
Bifurcate (bidimensional robot girlfriend of Harry Kim)
Princess Lyan Positron (runaway daughter of magician most foul and girlfriend of Harry Kim)
Soria Flyte (Pegasus girl and girlfriend of Harry Kim)
Mirror Universe Trevor (he's fine!)

Spoiler: MRSS Val Jean

NAME​	MRSS Val Jean	PROF.​	TACOPS
CLASS​	Keldon Class Heavy Cruiser	CONST​	2370
SHIELDS​	12/12​	RESISTANCE​	5​	SCALE​	4​
POWER ​	7/7​	CREW SUPPORT​	4​	SMALL CRAFT​	3​

		COMMS​	ENGINES​	STRUCTURE​	COMPUTERS​	SENSORS​	WEAPONS​
BREACHES​		0/4​	0/4​	0/4​	0/4​	0/4​	0/4​
​	​	9​	9​	9​	8​	7​	10​
COMMAND​	3​	12​	12​	12​	11​	10​	13​
CONNING​	2​	11​	11​	11​	10​	9​	12​
ENGINEERING​	2​	11​	11​	11​	10​	9​	12​
SECURITY​	3​	12​	12​	12​	11​	10​	13​
SCIENCE​	1​	10​	10​	10​	9​	8​	11​
MEDICINE​	2​	11​	11​	11​	10​	9​	12​

TALENTS​	Electronic Warfare Suite: Whenever making a Jamming or Intercept communications check, can spend 2 momentum to select +1 target (repeatable.) Fast Targeting Systems: No +1 diff for called shots Improved Hull Integrity: +1 Resistance Cloaking Device: Spend 3 power, and make a Control+Engineering + Engines + Security check with a diff of 2. If successful, gain the Cloaked Trait (impossible to detect, cannot attack, shields are down.) It takes a minor action to decloak.
TRAITS​	Cardassian Ship – Durable, uncomfortable, close, cramped and cheap. Thinks creature comforts are for other people and technical sophistication is for people who haven't spent decades starving to death. The fact that the starving could have been avoided if the government were less...you know, monstrous doesn't seem to have occurred to that many of them. Okampan Crew – the crew are bright, perky, cheerful, and incredibly psychically powerful. Individually, they're all better than Vulcans, and as a gestalt? Who knows!
WEAPONS​	Phaser Arrays Power Cost: 1-3 | Range: Medium | Damage: 7-9cd (Spread: Hit +1 time at ½ damage per effect OR Area) Versatile 2: Gain X bonus momentum with a successful hit Disruptor Banks Range: Medium | Damage: 8-10cd (Vicious 1: Each effect adds +1 damage) Tractor Beam (Strength 3)

CREW COMPLIMENT (Base Stat: 8 | Base Skill: 1)
CO: Lt. Commander Brian Wacoche (Skilled: Commando Tactics | Weakness: Independent)
TACTICAL: Seska (Skilled: Being Seska | Weakness: Everything Else)
CONN: R'lash skilled: Piloting | Weakness: Romulan Fuckup)
ESPIONAGE: Kes (Skilled: Commando Tactics | Weakness: Naive)

Spoiler: Memorial Wall

Crewman Stadi - Age 23, Betazoid, born Beta Colony-5 to Zani and Talwyn of the House of Riis, survived by her sisters Tari and Batri.
R'mor - age 182, Vulcan, burn on Romulus to R'tan and Leslali, survived by his twelve nieces and nephews across the Empire

 

[samdamandias]

when freed, would be in any kind of state to lead an armed insurgency as suggested by this portion of the winning vote:

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Lead from the front, no.

But they don't have to.

We've send out the blueprints for the cure, but you can't exactly brew medicine in your bathtub.

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I mean, a biomed ziphead probably could come up with instructions for that.

See who among the crew plays a bard in D&D to try to seduce it?

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It's Tom Paris, isn't it.

 

[Skippy]

The problem is that the only secret worth trading, is industrialized mass murder.

I thought the poiint was to kill that, not spread it to their neighbours.

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Honestly I would be deeply unsurprised if there is a less ethically problematic methods of manufacturing their blue goo, and the Podmasters are uninterested in pursuing them because it would mean the rest of the population are not held in check by the thread of organ liquefication. Also, if the Vidiians already cured/can control the Phage for specific functions, they pretty clearly have some serious biotech chops even without the blue goo.

The problem is that the cure isn't being distributed.

We've send out the blueprints for the cure, but you can't exactly brew medicine in your bathtub.
What you need for that are advanced biomedical facilities and educated personal.

Only, among the Viidians, all the labs are controlled by Podmasters and producing Phage and Phage derivatives
And all the educated personel are likely to be either Podmasters or zipheads.

So, to the average Viidian, the cure is about as worthwhile as a spam email promising a miracle. They have zero ability to produce it, and don't have the knowledge to know it is real.
A few outside nations might produce and smuggle in the cure to help their trade balance, but domestic production is likely to be minimal to none.

Click to shrink...

Returning to this earlier post:

If the middle-class Vidiians are the lion's share of the population, then they're also the ones staffing those facilities. (This is most of the Vidiian economy, after all.) Podmasters are too few and too lazy to do all the work, and Zipheads seem not to be too focussed and probably unable to improvise or set goals themselves. To analogise, the Podmasters might be the CEO and upper management of Space Pfizer, and the Focussed/Zipheads might be like the supercomputers/machine learning models used for doing computational drug discovery, but the actual technicians and more generalist scientists are probably from the middle. So if you have some kind of revolution forming, then they probably can produce a cure by taking over facilities or hiding it in their usual work.

Of course, that's a big "if"...

...hey @DragonCobolt, after Nurel senior's little revelation back there, do we know whether the Podmasters saw fit to tell most of the population that they had already cured the Phage for themselves? Is that fact widely known in Vidiian society?

 

[DragonCobolt]

Returning to this earlier post:

If the middle-class Vidiians are the lion's share of the population, then they're also the ones staffing those facilities. (This is most of the Vidiian economy, after all.) Podmasters are too few and too lazy to do all the work, and Zipheads seem not to be too focussed and probably unable to improvise or set goals themselves. To analogise, the Podmasters might be the CEO and upper management of Space Pfizer, and the Focussed/Zipheads might be like the supercomputers/machine learning models used for doing computational drug discovery, but the actual technicians and more generalist scientists are probably from the middle. So if you have some kind of revolution forming, then they probably can produce a cure by taking over facilities or hiding it in their usual work.

Of course, that's a big "if"...

...hey @DragonCobolt, after Nurel's little revelation back there, do we know whether the Podmasters saw fit to tell most of the population that they had already cured the Phage for themselves? Is that fact widely known in Vidiian society?

Click to shrink...

This is accurate to how the society works. Like, if you just sit a Focused physicist down and told them to make a faster FTL engine, they would get caught in their own hyperfixations and start spinning off into weird jargon and feedback loops and assumptions that would produce nothing workable. You need multiple Focused, all of them coordinates by managers and with their output checked by technicians with more...for lack of a better word, common sense. All this stuff working together is faster and better than what other societies can output, but also, its brittle and...you know...slavery.

And Voy will be able to pretty quickly learn that, like...most Vidiians think that Podmasters, rather than being cured, just...like, have constant treatments cause they're rich.

 

[Skippy]

Yeah, problem solving is really important, but finding and posing the problems you want to solve can be equally challenging, and often requires a bit more general intuition.

And Voy will be able to pretty quickly learn that, like...most Vidiians think that Podmasters, rather than being cured, just...like, have constant treatments cause they're rich.

Click to shrink...

Okay, so I would really, really like it if we could have a recording of Amy's conversation with Toman Ser Nurel, and specifically this part-

He leaned back in his seat. "We can and do cure both. Did you think Podmasters have to buy Product to keep ourselves alive?" He snorted, then sighed.

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- I would this playing on loop to a dubstep mix in the best propaganda package we can output. Along with comprehensive data on biscans of Nurel and Dar, showing that that this real. (Cultured tissue samples, even.) Whatever it takes for us to be able to do that, even more Threat, I think it is worth it.

The Podmasters have premised the whole of their legitimacy on being the Hard Men who made Made Hard Decisions to stave off the Phage from eating their species. Their current government is literally called the Emergency. What happens when the majority learn that all of this is a lie? That the Podmasters could have cured them at any time if they chose to, and keep the Phage around because it enriches them?

If you want an explosive revelation to set off political unrest, you could do worse, I think.

 

[pheonix89]

Yeah, problem solving is really important, but finding and posing the problems you want to solve can be equally challenging, and often requires a bit more general intuition.

Okay, so I would really, really like it if we could have a recording of Amy's conversation with Toman Ser Nurel, and specifically this part-

- I would this playing on loop to a dubstep mix in the best propaganda package we can output. Along with comprehensive data on biscans of Nurel and Dar, showing that that this real. (Cultured tissue samples, even.) Whatever it takes for us to be able to do that, even more Threat, I think it is worth it.

The Podmasters have premised the whole of their legitimacy on being the Hard Men who made Made Hard Decisions to stave off the Phage from eating their species. Their current government is literally called the Emergency. What happens when the majority learn that all of this is a lie? That the Podmasters could have cured them at any time if they chose to, and keep the Phage around because it enriches them?

If you want an explosive revelation to set off political unrest, you could do worse, I think.

Click to shrink...

This is Broadcast from the Tyrants-verse level damage to the system I think.

Burn the entire civilization down.

 

[Spoit]

And Voy will be able to pretty quickly learn that, like...most Vidiians think that Podmasters, rather than being cured, just...like, have constant treatments cause they're rich.

Click to shrink...

Isn't that how capitalist health care works?

 

[Skippy]

This is Broadcast from the Tyrants-verse level damage to the system I think.

Burn the entire civilization down.

Click to shrink...

I mean, the Podmasters have a lot of power, and there will totally be bootlickers who are invested in the current system and afraid of change. It will not necessarily collapse the system overnight.

But what this does change, I think, is that before, everything we'd found out was kind of abstract, and a lot of it was stuff that most Vidiians knew? We can fly by and subtweet an entire culture with "Be Better", but that's probably less motivating to the average Vidiian, sitting inside their cultural context where this shit is normalized. The Podmasters might spin some BS about "economic necessity" for why they should not use the cure for the Phage.

Demonstrating the immense hypocrisy of the Podmasters though, cutting against a core tenet of their justification of power? That is pretty damning even when looking at it from within Vidiian norms, I think. And the Phage is something almost every Vidiian citizen has to struggle with, running in the disaster capitalist hamster wheel and terrified of the moment where they do not have the money to keep up with treatments. So it hits on quite an emotive level, I think.

And the fact that the Podmasters have been perpetrating a lie this massive might make people want to start thinking a bit harder about some other things.

 

[DragonCobolt]

Isn't that how capitalist health care works?

Click to shrink...

Yup! And the Phage is just oil, lol

 

[Rivenscryr]

So we broadcast the recording of the conversation with Toman Ser Nurel. Sounds like a possible plan to cause some unrest and upset, especially if we also share the information for how to make a cure. Even if the middle class Vidiians themselves can't do it, I'm sure all the surrounding powers would love to use this cure as a cudgel to destroy the power of the podmasters.

 

[Skippy]

So @DragonCobolt, should we make a write-in for Plan Watergate, including any Threat/Momentum needed so we have a recording, or will it be folded into/made an option in the start of Pt. II?

I'm super stoked about this idea and want to set the ball rolling because I can't imagine how deeply nettled Toman Ser Nurel will be when he sees, but I don't want to rain on your parade if you've got a plan for how you want to handle it.

 

[DragonCobolt]

Feel free - there's a bit of time between the two parts

 

[Skippy]

Alright! Bit tired, so this is probably slightly clunkily worded, but here goes:

[X] Plan Phage-gate
-[X] With some quick thinking and the buffer of the comms relay, Lt. Strong gets a recording of her last exchange with Toman Ser Nurel.
-[X] Prepare a propaganda broadcast dropping the incendiary news that the Podmasters have secretly had a cure for the Phage for decades, and were happy to cure themselves, whilst leaving the rest of the population to suffer. Ser Nurel's own words will be the punchline.
-[X] Use samples from Nurel and Dar to corroborate this. (Ideally timestamped to before we arrived, if possible.)
-[X] Study methods of cultivating the Phage without using people as hosts. If feasible, offer technological assistance with mass-producing organs and tissues for synthetic Phage production.

 

[KarmaA]

Are medical replicators like advanced organ 3D printer tech replicators but require bio feedstock and don't do everything with matter energy conversion? Anything matter energy or manipulating stuff with beams feels like they'd reverse engineer into weapons manufacturing tech or give them the ability to make micro stuff too easily.

 

[Skippy]

I have reworded to "technological assistance" to make it less specific, but as a hypothetical I don't think replicators are something we should get too hung up on right now.

 

[Eater]

Yup! And the Phage is just oil, lol

Click to shrink...

Haha, nice! I missed that until you mentioned 🤦

[X] Plan Phage-gate
I can get behind this. Probably only have time for the broadcast before the dragon shows? But it could potentially destabilize ship crews/reinforcements of a more conventional nature as well.

 

[Rivenscryr]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

Hey, maybe we could get the crews of those ships to mutiny against their podmasters witn this info.

 

[Spart117MC]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

See, this here is another reason why we should invest in armor for away teams. Amy wouldn't have to scramble to get a recording of Nurel senior mocking the poor if she had a helmet cam.

 

[DrTrenchcoat]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

 

[pheonix89]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

 

[KarmaA]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

 

[SweetJackal]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

You know, we can use their own Zips against them. As the original footage of the podmasters admitting to their schemes hits all airwaves, if we force feed it to Zips then they will verify it as authentic. The output of which will hit the technicians, managers, and others that depend on those outputs.

 

[KRISF]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

 

[Jack Stargazer]

[X] Plan Phage-gate

Very in for this.

 

[Bolo]

Would the synthetic Phage be helpful to us medically?

 

[Ramble]

[X] Plan Phage-gate