- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"What do you mean 'have you tested it with a thousand threadmarks'? Which thread is going to have a thousand threadmarks?"
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
- Location
- The internet
Yeah... the GMs might want to consider putting most or all of the omakes in the sidestory folder. That'll buy us some time before the threadmarks completely collapse. Or outright make a second thread.
Created a thread about the topic:
Ongoing - Question - How many Thousands of Threadmarks can a Thread support?
Ongoing - Question - How many Thousands of Threadmarks can a Thread support?
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) it has over 1400 threadmarks FYI.
- Location
- United States
ASWAH has over 2100 threadmarks
The problem is that some -- indeed many -- of the omakes are important to fleshing out certain characters or story elements. Doesn't feel right to not include them.
Thebigpieman
I've got this, I think.
- Location
- United States
So it can be said TBG isn't going to break the forum yet. We can breath a sigh of relief... for now.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
tbh i'd have been fine with that too.
As long as it wasn't a loss meme.
2321.Q4.M3 Captain's Logs
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Captain's Log, Stardate 27740.2, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
We're picking up a large number of cosmozoa life signs from nearby system.
And I'm talking a lot, a lot of big life signs. A very exciting number of life forms!
There's also all kinds of structured subspace pulses and other FTL signals coming from that system.
Naturally we're going to investigate!
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27740.7, USS Frontier
We found it!
We found the origin point of that radio signal we picked up after leaving Becarra, it's an arid M-Class world just past Obar territory in the unclaimed space between us and the Harmony.
Our current scans show no intelligent life or active technology on the surface, but using the data we collected on that radio signal we're certain that someone, a lot of someones, were here at some point, it's simply a matter of going over this planet with a fine tooth comb to gather the details.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27741.1, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
They're beautiful.
Right now I wish that I was a poet.
These beings are graceful Leviathans made of ice and magic sailing through the void of space trailing shimmering magic behind them.
It's hard to describe them. Even a picture doesn't do them justice. Even a video only captures a fraction of the awe of seeing one of these stellar angels in person.
They're long creatures, with a teardrop shaped body ending in a wide tail, and they trail these vast particle collector fields made of energy and crystalline bone behind them that shimmer in space like an aurora. The collectors come off of a flattened ring, which we're pretty certain is their FTL propulsion system. Even more amazingly; the stars twinkle and flicker around them due to the properties of their navigational deflector analogue.
The smallest and youngest are about a hundred meters long and 300kt and the oldest and largest seem to be about the size of those giant Harmony fleet tenders, though most of what I assume are the adults are only Courageous's own size.
I've never been so entranced by something alive. And better yet, I think they're intelligent.
Actually, no, I'm certain of it. The way they're reacting to Courageous can't be mere instinct or programming.
And the subspace pulses and light signals that are being directed Courageous's way show signs of advanced mathematical principles, including what I think are something approaching Cochrane field calculations.
We have to figure out a new way to communicate now. We have new friends to talk to!
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27741.5, USS Frontier
This was once a massive colony world of millions, but that's not even the interesting part, there's some sort of material that this colony was mining and studying under the surface of the planet with a natural, if nearly undetectably weak, countre-gravity effect.
This is a juge discovery, a research colony here would allow us to investigate this long gone culture and this strange new material!
I'm already sending more people down to learn all we can about this place before the colony goes in. I'm especially interested in identifying the original colonists, these ruins are only a half millenium old at most, we might even be able to uncover a new, previously hidden, chapter in the history of a Federation member!
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27742.6, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I'm trying so hard to talk to them but I feel like we're not just talking without body language but without vowels and we can't agree what consonants actually do.
We can talk math with these leviathans perfectly fine, but trying to do anything else is really wearing at my good mood.
Our Betazoid crew can confirm that the cosmozoa are indeed intelligent and as curious about us as we are about them. It is hard going for them to try telepathy as humanoid minds are not easily compatible with those of such gargantuan and alien beings. It is helping though, really helping, though at times it feels that all we're doing right now is finding out exactly how difficult this whole process is.
I so really really want to talk to these graceful creatures and learn what they know and see how they see. They are so different, yet they share the same stars with us andIcan'tpossiblyevenbegintoimaginethethingswecouldteacheachother.
Thewholecrewisputtingtheirallintothisweall..
Mhhhh.
My First Officer looks about ready to call up Dr. L'Amour to relieve me of duty and Counselor Noir is telling me that I need to actually sleep now instead of just drinking more coffee.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27742.9, USS Frontier
Well, I guess our presence here didn't go unnoticed, one of the Harmony's scientist class ships, the HSDV Mattolok has entered orbit with us. Probably noticed us here and were curious to see what we're up to.
Her captain asked permission to visit the surface and I've allowed access because we've got nothing to hide and as Frontier was here first we've pretty much got the permanent colony rights locked down.
In other, less political news, our teams have set up in the central square of the main settlement site and are beginning archaeological work on the ruins.
There's a large body of computer data that we're still working on decrypting and translating that's our best bet at the moment. Hopefully we'll be able to identify the species before too long. Or at least figure out what they looked like.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27743.4, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I slept and dreamt of our majestic friends out there.
Some of the crew and I were with them, fellow travellers out as naked consciousnesses amongst the stars with these cosmozoa. Floating and gliding and playing with those amazing beings.
After I awoke, while I was talking about my dream I discovered that I was not alone. Everyone with an above average Esper rating who had slept while we were in communications range of the cosmozoa had had the same sort of dream, though most had attributed it to their own personal reaction to this First Contact.
But comparing our dreams and talking with Counselor Noir leads me to believe that the Leviathans are not simply communicating with subspace and electromagnetic signals, but also possess a degree of empathetic and psychic ability.
To test this I'm having Doctor L'Amour put me and a few other select members of the crew to sleep, while Counselor Noir and other crew, both Betazed and Vulcan, watch us from the waking world.
This is so neat!
Personal Log, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
It seems that I have more to thank my Aenar grandfathers for than an exotically pale complexion.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27744.4, USS Frontier
Well, the good news is that we and the Horizonians have figured out who the original settlers were.
They were Moy. One of the Harmony's member species. The picture on the dwelling wall is as clear as day and is the spitting image of the Moy crew off of Mattolok.
Suffice it to say but the Mattolok's captain made a very persuasive argument that the presence of Moy cultural artifacts that spread light on an ill understood part of their history in the pre-Harmony days should lead to the site falling into the legitimate government of the Moy people: The Harmony of Horizon.
It was very hard to form a counter argument that didn't sound like something from a ranting xenophobe in the vein of a Romulan or Cardassian diplomat explaining why more space should fall on their side of the treaty line just because they've got guns and were their first.
I couldn't argue that Frontier was at this site first. Obviously that didn't apply because the Moy were here long ago and should the Federation take control of this planet anyway that would be a pretty blatant violation of the Moy right to their cultural heritage.
I can't argue possession based on territory as this planet lays outside of both Federation and Harmony borders.
I can't argue based on moral grounds as, by all indications, the Moy are an active participant in a genuine democracy and Mattolok's captain has sworn up and down to me that this site will be respected and preserved. And I've no reason to doubt her word.
I did manage to get consideration for Federation scientists to gain permanent visitation rights to the site, but even then it's nothing of the scale of the joint research base on Athos V. The Harmony captain has simply restated her people's standing pledge to allow unarmed ships and personnel freedom of movement within their borders.
This amazing colony site will fall firmly into Horizonian hands and, well, I have no good arguments for why the site should not fall under their purview that doesn't sound like self justification for Federation expansion.
Frontier will be spending a bit more time at the site, but it's probably best to leave soon to avoid looking like Starfleet is prepared to pursue a territorial claim via… other means.
[Harmony of Horizon Gains Research Colony at: a7]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27745.5, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
It's hard to describe what being under with the Dreamers is like. They share a linked consciousness amongst their pods.
Which is not to say that they have a collective consciousness. I don't think. But they are even more tightly bound together than Betazoids are and they use a spectrum of psychic, subspace, and electromagnetic signals to communicate different things. Like how many species use pheromones, sound, and body language to communicate.
They recognize Courageous and her crew as something along the same lines; many individuals combined into a greater whole. Both the snowflakes and the bank. They really are as curious about us as we are about them and were trying hard to talk to us with all their available methods.
And it seems that while we are awake their attempts to contact us emphatically are suppressed by our waking minds; but while asleep the consciousnesses of most of the psychically sensitive aboard Courageous are capable of communicating with the Dreamers.
I-I've spent almost a week trying to understand them and I feel like I've changed a lot.
With that hurdle crossed we can really get down the business of making friends!
Personal Log, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I've never felt so connected to anything in my life. Speaking with these Leviathans in my dreams is indescribable.
When I wake up I forget the details, but I remember impressions, emotions, all sorts of things that I can't explain but can only feel as now part of me.
Another thing that I can't put into words: even awake I feel much more connected now that before. With myself and with my crew.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27745.3, USS Rru'uadorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
We have received word from the Federation Diplomatic Service that the Licori Emperor is heading for Betazed onboard his flagship, the Sandworm AIS Rebirth. They have asked us to escort them.
I reviewed Volume 1 of the Licori code for mannerly conduct for 20 minutes before throwing it and the next five tomes into a recycler. Simply too much to remember. I will instead use my powers of social observation and deduction to work my way through these interactions.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27748.4, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
It has been a very productive week for us and the Dreamers!
I'll mention here that Dreamer is the term that the Dreamers themselves seem to prefer. Things like "Leviathan", "Cosmozoan", and "Angel" get the subspace equivalent of a sensible chuckle from them. So Dreamer seems to fit best for now.
They have a multi system civilization in this area of space and we seem to be the first non-cosmozoan species that has actually tried to communicate with them!
They also have a form of technology that we didn't even notice until we got to talking with them! The crystalline "bone" structures that make up most of their energy collection array and their warp drive ring is actually "grown". It seems that they only developed their own FTL system after watching natural warp capable cosmozoa that travelled through their system over hundreds of millennia.
Have I also mentioned that they live thousands of years each?
Dreamers are so neat!
At the moment we are communicating with them using a team of a (humanoid) dreamer and a Vulcan in a mindmeld or a strong Betazoid telepath to run the technical end of the communications equipment. The pair have to really bond closely and almost lose all the boundaries between thoughts to communicate properly.
I...I am much closer to Counselor Lwema Noir than I was last week. I can certainly tell you that!
Hopefully, as we communicate more with the Dreamers we can develop less complicated methods of communication!
At the very least, the Dreamers are interested in us and we are interested in them. A real friendship is forming out here between the Federation and the Dreamer Collective. I just know it!
Personal Log, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I, um, have a lot to think about. And something neat to bring up next time I go home, I was never that close with my Aenar heritage, but I've begun really delving into their culture in ways that I never had before. It's a real eye-opening experience that is making me really happy.
I also need to dive into Starfleet regs for… other reasons.
[First Contact established with the Dreamer Collective: 75/100, 5G-tailward]
Tags:
[Cosmozoan Lifeform: 0/100]
[Alien modes of Communication and Thought: 0/300]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27750.8, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
The minor Apiata colony of Lapruzziz located just outside the rimward Badlands has broadcasted a very peculiar message addressed to Starfleet. The message assures as that everything is well, Cardassians are keeping to their side of the Badlands, and mining operations are proceeding as normal. If we were the Apiata government, receiving periodic updates to this effect would be expected, but Lapruzziz has nothing to do with Starfleet. I have decided to make a detour so that we may see the peaceful, productive status quo for ourselves.
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Message from the High Commissioner of the Federation External Trade Council
A research trawler belonging to Gumco, an private space firm based out of OSA space, has claimed a planet with significant deposits of cortenum monocrystal and other special ores. Apparently the system, SRB-2D, was due to be surveyed weeks ago, but Starfleet activity was diverted elsewhere.
Don't worry about it, Shey. You had people out there saving lives. It's just some rocks.
[Event response failed!]
[New SR colony for OSA Private, SRB-2D, coreward side of 2D]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
Lapruzziz is as the message claimed. Adjutant Queen Pulrizza expressed surprise at our approach, and hastily explained that the colony is thriving and not in need of any assistance. After consulting the nearest betazoid and being informed of the flood of grief, pain, and anxiety rising like a fountain of blood from the colony, I reopened the channel with Queen Pulrizza and asked her for permission to beam down for a brief courtesy call. She claimed to have no time, and had no answer when asked how a peaceful colony without problems could have so little time. However, she did repeat several times that her own drone-dignitaries were occupied with administrative tasks down in the mines, placing peculiar emphasis on the final four words with every repetition. I will be beaming down to the administration headquarters with a full security detail for company, while transporter activity masks the other full security detail beamed into the upper mining plaza.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757.2, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
We've rendezvoused with the Rebirth and oh boy -- the Emperor is mad! Rather unsurprisingly, they are very upset about the events involving the Antinoc. "Remember the Ant" has become a rallying cry among the Licori peasant and noble alike, adding fuel to the outrage.
Lugis is very sly, though, and made no obvious show of this when we met. But I could see how his brows furrowed when he saw I was Gaeni -- not surprising, given the bad blood our people share. I wonder if it would make it better or worse to mention I spent the entire war on a ship in the Apinae sector?
By certain parameters of the word, this is going to be fun!
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First Officer's Log, Stardate 27757.4, USS Pleezirra - Commander Jean Le Guin
The captain has just told us she had arranged a visit to the mines, as part of the routine checkup that "Federation policy" allegedly dictates that we perform when visiting any planetside mining facilities. Her tone of voice led me to not question it, but I'm not quite sure what to make of this.
The bigger problem is the plasma storm that's starting to brew in the planet's upper atmosphere just over the colony. With the exotic particles flying at this system out of the Badlands, phenomena like this aren't unprecedented, but it seems awfully focused. When I informed the captain, she instructed me very pointedly not to worry about it and to just perform the deflector maintenance cycle she's been wanting, and which she's never mentioned until now.
Lieutenant Commander bev Greg says there's a trick she learned from one of our Gaeni science officers about using directed deflector emissions to disperse high-energy atmospheric phenomena, and that she told the captain about just a month ago. I've given her and Lieutenant Commander Vu the order to begin preparations.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757.8, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
[Lugis] … And so there I am, my brother Marois looking up at me, a cut on his lip, and what does father say -- Beradd, my friend, the fork…
[Beradd-Kellar] Yes?
[Lugis] That… is… the desert fork.
[BK] You mean the dessert fork?
[Lugis] No, it is a fork you use in the desert. Were I more easily offended, I would be quite perturbed by you using it here instead of your… Beradd.
[BK] Yes?
[Lugis] You pass the port. From right. To left.
[BK] My apologies, honored Emperor! But this is much faster than learning by reading books, I can tell you that. Do you teach? I did my own stint as a professor of Sociology!
[Lugis] For all your inability to navigate a dinner plate, you have a keen read on people. I am, of course, an avid purveyor of the pedagogical arts. It was always been my belief that the Emperor should be the teacher of the people. Not like my brother, of course...
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757.9, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
Recording this log entry from a cave of black and white onyx recently broken into by the apiata miners. While the expansive high-energy containment field projectors lining the sides of the cave date back to the Iconian period and bear recognizable Iconian design hallmarks, the sacrificial altar inside of the containment field is many thousands of years older, and the blood and other biological residue of at least seven apiata workers lining the altar and its surrounding pedestal are many thousands of years younger.
We have stunned Queen Pulrizza and her bodyguards after they led us into this cave before turning on us with suspiciously telegraphed body motions and phasers set to minimum stun while loudly announcing that we will be giving out life energy to support the master of this world. Thanks to some rather ingenious wordplay of hers back at the colony's administrative office, we had been expecting something to this general effect, as well as being informed that a nonspecific antagonistic intelligence has learned to listen in on radio and subspace communications.
Word from the surface is that the plasma storm's intensity has been holding ever since we were led into the tunnels. I begin to suspect that further developments may be contingent on who emerges, and how.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27758, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
Enjoyment at dinner was on a downward trend for most of the evening -- until I rolled out the alcohol, real ethanol included. My body metabolises it with ultra-efficiency ever since I had a hyper-liver installed, due to a minor disagreement over polling methodology.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27759.9, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
The deflector pulse from the Pleezirra dissipated the storm just as it began to release the first harmful energy blasts toward the colony. Unfortunately, the mass of coherent energy that subsequently arose from the atmosphere and began firing much higher intensity meta-kinetic blasts at the vessel took Commander Le Guin by surprise, and we sustained minor damage to the warp engines before he was able to raise shields and return fire in sufficient quantities to force the plasma-conjuring alien blood god to retreat.
Queen Pulrizza has turned herself over to Starfleet custody, accepting responsibility for the workers she ordered sacrificed to appease the plasma-conjuring alien blood god until help could arrive. I have assured her that she will have our testimony supporting her defense; from the records I have since been shown, I believe she minimized the loss of life as much as possible given the difficult situation, as well as having saved the colony by slipping her covert distress call past the alien blood god's surveillance.
Unfortunately, we will have to complete field repairs here before we can pursue the fleeing plasma-conjuring alien blood god; in the meantime, the Allhive has dispatched a battlegroup to intercept it before it can reach another inhabited system.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27761.5, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
Lugis is an interesting guy, I'll give him that. And for a guy who talks about how he loved books as much as his brother loved athletics, he can pack away the liquor. I wasn't sure my hyper-liver could keep up! But it did, and I managed to get him to overlook my flagrant disregard for the rules of polite society and have an honest, albeit slurred, discussion about the Laio and the Antinoc. I told him that Starfleet has solved riddles more complex than this, and we are trustworthy as a third party. He expressed skepticism, so I proposed that the Licori prepare a team of investigators to coordinate with Starfleet Security and Task Force Beyond. That way he will have more oversight on their activities.
I made it seem like an off-the-cuff, drunken promise, so he could think he extracted it from me, but I had actually cleared it with Commodore Mrr'shan hours before. I don't leave everything up to chance! He took the offer and departed. I made sure to get it down in writing too, in case he forgets it. Which he might. How did he describe my dining room after we were done? Ah, "like one of the artillery strewn battlefields of old, except with wine bottles instead of shell casings!"
Lovely image.
[+15pp]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27762.9, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
Field repairs are completed. Good news is that the Apiata fleet successfully intercepted the entity in deep space just outside of the Badlands. Bad news is that plasma-shooting alien blood god refused to answer hails, and the Stinger Zinishi was destroyed in the following battle before the entity itself was terminated by concentrated fire.
While this has been a tragic sequence of events, I believe that our actions here have minimized what could have otherwise been a disaster. We will be holding position over Lapruzziz until a battalian of Comb-Staves and a specialist team from the Vulcan Science Academy can be brought here to safeguard against similar unpleasant surprises unearthed by the miners, and to hopefully determine the origins and nature of our late opponent.
[Gain +10 sr, Pleezirra gains +1 crew rating. Apiata lose Zinshi.]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27764.3, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
Sol. In our timeline it is the thriving heart of the Federation. The home of both the Humans and Starfleet Command.
In this timeline, Sol was the heart of the Vulcan Technocracy's high risk scientific programs. Or was until the Solarian revolt of 2269.
Yet it wasn't the Vulcans who destroyed Sol, who shattered her planets and moons, and broke the flow of time inside the system. It was the Humans themselves.
Faced with the defeat of their rebellion, their bid for freedom swamped under endless waves of Andorian and Amarki janissaries, and indiscriminate Technocratic bombardments, the Humans turned to the only option they had left: the Vulcan labs that they had overrun in the early days of their revolution.
It doesn't matter if they lost control of the weapon, or if the Humans were prepared to die rather than resubmit to Vulcan tyranny, because the result was the same: millions of Technocratic troops killed and Sol turned into an uninhabitable and twisted mass of spacetime.
And in that lies the salvation of my crew. We've travelled to Sol under the shield of Liberty's extended cloak. Slowly and carefully our Romulan friends have directed us through weak points in the Technocracy's sensor grid. Of course, we've already seen how little attention the Technocracy pays to the mass graveyards that they leave behind.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27765.4, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
Commander Tolar believes that we should be able to use the disrupted spacetime in this system to return to our own timeline.
While being near the graveyard of billions of souls is depressing, I can't deny some small level of wonder at the data that we are gathering here.
Our Romulan friends are just as curious as we are about this phenomenon, and they are eagerly soaking up everything that we share with them.
-
Bridge Transcript, Stardate 27765.9, USS Voshov
[Cpt. Rurliss]: Status?
[Cmdr. Llyhua]: Instruments not responding. I'm getting no readings. Looks like massive power failures. We've dropped out of warp, but ... I can't really tell you much else.
[Rurliss]: This is supposed to be empty space. What did we run into? Tactical, anything on your scopes?
[Lt. Cmdr. Valen]: Nothing, ma'am.
[Cmdr. Toor]: Ma'am, what the hell just happened? One moment, the warp core's purring like normal, the next she's scramming. I've got the ship running on backup fusion cores for now, but they won't last forever.
[Rurliss]: Not sure yet, Commander. We're working on an explanation right now. Just get me my warp power back.
[Toor]: Yes ma'am. Engineering out.
[Rurliss]: Viewscreen. Let's see what we're dealing with. ... okay, what am I seeing here?
[Lt. Cmdr. T'Kel]: A toroidal stellar object, ma'am.
[Rurliss]: Right, space donut. ... why am I seeing a space donut?
[Lt. Saadi]: I ... may have an explanation, ma'am.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27766.2, USS Concord
Concord is en route to a rendezvous with the Suffrage and the Starfleet auxiliary vessel Wayfarer's Joy.
With the Wayfarer's Joy passing through the SBZ, both I and Suffrage captain have decided to top up our synthesizer proteins and materials.
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Personal Log, Stardate 27766.4, Captain Iliae Rurliss - USS Voshov
We're in a decaying orbit around a boson star. What's a boson star, you ask? The short answer is that it's sort of a dark matter equivalent of a black hole. Not quite so dense, and not quite as intense gravity, but still intense enough to bend light itself. And it apparently has some tricky effects on subspace, which interacted badly with our warp drive.
The astrophysicists aboard are all excited ... but unless we can pull ourselves out of that decaying orbit, they won't get a chance to make any observations.
We've already ruled out pushing ourselves off-course with a photon torpedo detonation, like Emancipation pulled at CFBDS0059 - we're apparently on the wrong orbital trajectory for that to work. No, this is going to be all about whether we can get the impulse engines back up and running in time for a hard burn.
Which brings up another problem. Our inertial dampening systems are damaged. Not completely offline, thankfully, but everyone on board is still going to be experiencing something like 9-10Gs of felt acceleration. Dr. Linn is prescribing anti-G drugs that haven't been used since early spaceflight.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27766.6, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
We're not alone, there is a massive Technocratic base just inside the outer envelope of the phenomenon.
We would have been detected if not for the quick thinking of Commander Velim and her crew, who backed us off just in time.
Chiren tells us that the Republic had no idea that this facility existed, which is something that the Romulans find very worrying. I've agreed to help investigate the base, though at the moment we are limiting ourselves to eavesdropping on Technocratic communications to avoid risk to our ships.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27766.9, USS Voshov
Good news, bad news. Good news is, the burn worked, and we've pushed out of the decaying orbit. Bad news is, we're temporarily unable to go to warp - subspace effects still prevent us from forming a warp shell.
It's not too big a problem, though. We just need to get into interstellar space. And in the meantime, the science team will have time to get in some good analysis of this boson star. Hopefully, it'll help us keep from running into another unexpectedly.
Personal Log, Stardate 27766.9, Captain Iliae Rurliss
I don't know if it's the drugs talking, but even after all the trouble it caused, that space donut looks pretty tasty.
[Gain 10 rp]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27767.8, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
Lieutenant Chiren and Commander Tolar have finally returned from Cheron Temporal Observatory and the situation is worse than we feared.
The Technocracy is working on timeline editing technology. While Sol's current state makes it the perfect site to investigate temporal phenomenon, it seems that Sol was also where Vulcan research into timeline editing began. No wonder the Humans revolted.
With that technology the Technocracy could easily destroy our home timeline by accident, even if they bore us no ill will. Which is not to mention the damage they could do even if their destruction is limited only to this timeline.
Velim believes that we should return to the Republic and join them in an all ou-
COMPUTER!
END LOG.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768, USS Korolev
Korolev has completed a survey of SV-3131 and located a small deposit of verterium located on the system's only planet.
It's likely the remains of an extrasolar comet that hit the planet almost thirty four million years ago. We don't even have to really do any digging to get to it, it's mostly scattered along the surface. Fascinating.
[+10 SR from Comet Recovery]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.1, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
We've lost the last of the Technocracy's runabouts by hitting an atemporal wave with a tachyon pulse from our deflector dish, which is thankfully still operational.
We're still in danger however, the Technocracy will be on high alert and we are now trapped inside of Sol with the worst of the temporal distortions. It will be days before we've gathered enough data to attempt to return to our home timeline and we will have to spend that time dodging Technocratic patrols and temporal anomalies.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.4, USS Suffrage
Our rendezvous with Wayfarer's Joy has turned into a rescue mission. Wayfarer's Joy suffered an engineering casualty while entering orbit of a gas giant and is now in a deadly rapid deorbit.
Suffrage should be arriving first.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.5, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
We've finished decoding the data from the Cheron Temporal Observatory and we have details on the Technocratic temporal incursion technology.
This is no simple time traveling to the past to prevent events. On Cheron station they've been building a way to "push" or "pull" elements into or out of other timelines. Once they activate this weapon they'll rule this timeline like gods and damn every other nearby timeline to a hell of constant temporal anomalies and paradoxes. They could snuff the Federation out in an afternoon while quelling a rebellion on Andoria or preventing a Romulan invasion, or even change our own Vulcans while permanently locking in their own existence.
This Technocratic device is a threat to not only the people of this timeline but our own Federation as well.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.6, USS Concord
We've arrived in system to assist Suffrage in pulling Wayfarer's Joy into a proper orbit to conduct repairs.
While Suffrage has managed to halt the descent their own attempts to pull Wayfarer's Joy
up from the gas giant have been complicated by the unusually dense planetary rings filled with Hyperonic radiation which is preventing transport and interfering with tractor beams.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.8, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
I've discussed the situation with Commander Velim. We are going to launch an attack on the Cheron Temporal Observatory, if we can destroy their only prototype temporal core, there is an opportunity for the Romulans to rally their allies and prevent the Vulcans from rebuilding their doomsday device.
It's a bad plan. A brute force plan. But if we fail to act they can have the device online within months and I cannot accept the risk to our home timeline.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.9, USS Suffrage
Success!
Thanks to assistance from Concord we were able extend our own shields around Wayfarer, while Concord used phaser sweeps to keep our path out of the rings clear.
From here it's some minor assistance in repairing Wayfarer's Joy then we can collect our materials and return to our patrols.
[Wayfarer's Joy Saved and returned to service.]
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BRIDGE TRANSCRIPT, STARDATE 27769, USS TARRAK
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] Cheron Station shields down to 39%!
[Cpt Leaniss] How are we doing Commander?
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] Our own shields are at fifty-thre -no, make that forty six percent. It's a close race ma'am, too close to call.
[Lt Chiren (RRN)] That station has to fall Captain, our futu-
[CPO Attas-Vanad] I'm detecting a massive chronoton surge from the station!
[Cmdr Tolar] Cheron station is activating their temporal core.
[Cpt Leaniss] BRACE FOR IMPACT
-Unrecognizable-
[Cpt Leaniss] Can someone tell me what's going on?!
[Cmdr Tolar] Chronotron radiation increase from Cheron station. They are recharging their device.
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] STATUS CHANGE! New contacts.
[Cmdr Tolar] The local spacetime distortions have abated
[Lt Chiren (RRN)] Captain Leaniss. This is the battle of Sol. When the Terrans activated their weapon. The entire Technocratic second fleet was lost here, over sixty warships and three and a half million ground troops.
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] That would explain the warships inbound on our position.
[Cpt Leaniss] Of course! If they couldn't expect reinforcements to arrive in time to save them they moved Sol's last moments to our current time to protect themselves with an entire fleet. Like stitching together the edges of a ripped shirt. For those in Sol it's like the intervening time never happened.
[Cmdr Tolar] Captain, I am detecting a weak atemporal shockwave of the same type that delivered us to this timeline originally. Our current data is sufficient for me to generate a return vector.
[Lt. Sabine] I'm laying in a course now, ma'am.
[Lt. Chiren (RRN)] Please Captain. Leaniss. You can't abandon us.
[Cpt Leaniss] I'm not planning on it. Can someone give me the current Stardate?
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] Stardate 27769. Wait, that's almost the lau-
[Cpt Leaniss] Exactly Commander, prepare a data dump for Starfleet Command, we'll have no chance for an extended debriefing. Bring us into the wave Lieutenant.
[Lt. Chiren (RRN)] I don't understand.
[Cpt Leaniss] If the Technocracy wants to cheat and drop a fleet on us, I'm going to cheat right back and drop a legend on them.
We're picking up a large number of cosmozoa life signs from nearby system.
And I'm talking a lot, a lot of big life signs. A very exciting number of life forms!
There's also all kinds of structured subspace pulses and other FTL signals coming from that system.
Naturally we're going to investigate!
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27740.7, USS Frontier
We found it!
We found the origin point of that radio signal we picked up after leaving Becarra, it's an arid M-Class world just past Obar territory in the unclaimed space between us and the Harmony.
Our current scans show no intelligent life or active technology on the surface, but using the data we collected on that radio signal we're certain that someone, a lot of someones, were here at some point, it's simply a matter of going over this planet with a fine tooth comb to gather the details.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27741.1, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
They're beautiful.
Right now I wish that I was a poet.
These beings are graceful Leviathans made of ice and magic sailing through the void of space trailing shimmering magic behind them.
It's hard to describe them. Even a picture doesn't do them justice. Even a video only captures a fraction of the awe of seeing one of these stellar angels in person.
They're long creatures, with a teardrop shaped body ending in a wide tail, and they trail these vast particle collector fields made of energy and crystalline bone behind them that shimmer in space like an aurora. The collectors come off of a flattened ring, which we're pretty certain is their FTL propulsion system. Even more amazingly; the stars twinkle and flicker around them due to the properties of their navigational deflector analogue.
The smallest and youngest are about a hundred meters long and 300kt and the oldest and largest seem to be about the size of those giant Harmony fleet tenders, though most of what I assume are the adults are only Courageous's own size.
I've never been so entranced by something alive. And better yet, I think they're intelligent.
Actually, no, I'm certain of it. The way they're reacting to Courageous can't be mere instinct or programming.
And the subspace pulses and light signals that are being directed Courageous's way show signs of advanced mathematical principles, including what I think are something approaching Cochrane field calculations.
We have to figure out a new way to communicate now. We have new friends to talk to!
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27741.5, USS Frontier
This was once a massive colony world of millions, but that's not even the interesting part, there's some sort of material that this colony was mining and studying under the surface of the planet with a natural, if nearly undetectably weak, countre-gravity effect.
This is a juge discovery, a research colony here would allow us to investigate this long gone culture and this strange new material!
I'm already sending more people down to learn all we can about this place before the colony goes in. I'm especially interested in identifying the original colonists, these ruins are only a half millenium old at most, we might even be able to uncover a new, previously hidden, chapter in the history of a Federation member!
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27742.6, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I'm trying so hard to talk to them but I feel like we're not just talking without body language but without vowels and we can't agree what consonants actually do.
We can talk math with these leviathans perfectly fine, but trying to do anything else is really wearing at my good mood.
Our Betazoid crew can confirm that the cosmozoa are indeed intelligent and as curious about us as we are about them. It is hard going for them to try telepathy as humanoid minds are not easily compatible with those of such gargantuan and alien beings. It is helping though, really helping, though at times it feels that all we're doing right now is finding out exactly how difficult this whole process is.
I so really really want to talk to these graceful creatures and learn what they know and see how they see. They are so different, yet they share the same stars with us andIcan'tpossiblyevenbegintoimaginethethingswecouldteacheachother.
Thewholecrewisputtingtheirallintothisweall..
Mhhhh.
My First Officer looks about ready to call up Dr. L'Amour to relieve me of duty and Counselor Noir is telling me that I need to actually sleep now instead of just drinking more coffee.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27742.9, USS Frontier
Well, I guess our presence here didn't go unnoticed, one of the Harmony's scientist class ships, the HSDV Mattolok has entered orbit with us. Probably noticed us here and were curious to see what we're up to.
Her captain asked permission to visit the surface and I've allowed access because we've got nothing to hide and as Frontier was here first we've pretty much got the permanent colony rights locked down.
In other, less political news, our teams have set up in the central square of the main settlement site and are beginning archaeological work on the ruins.
There's a large body of computer data that we're still working on decrypting and translating that's our best bet at the moment. Hopefully we'll be able to identify the species before too long. Or at least figure out what they looked like.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27743.4, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I slept and dreamt of our majestic friends out there.
Some of the crew and I were with them, fellow travellers out as naked consciousnesses amongst the stars with these cosmozoa. Floating and gliding and playing with those amazing beings.
After I awoke, while I was talking about my dream I discovered that I was not alone. Everyone with an above average Esper rating who had slept while we were in communications range of the cosmozoa had had the same sort of dream, though most had attributed it to their own personal reaction to this First Contact.
But comparing our dreams and talking with Counselor Noir leads me to believe that the Leviathans are not simply communicating with subspace and electromagnetic signals, but also possess a degree of empathetic and psychic ability.
To test this I'm having Doctor L'Amour put me and a few other select members of the crew to sleep, while Counselor Noir and other crew, both Betazed and Vulcan, watch us from the waking world.
This is so neat!
Personal Log, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
It seems that I have more to thank my Aenar grandfathers for than an exotically pale complexion.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27744.4, USS Frontier
Well, the good news is that we and the Horizonians have figured out who the original settlers were.
They were Moy. One of the Harmony's member species. The picture on the dwelling wall is as clear as day and is the spitting image of the Moy crew off of Mattolok.
Suffice it to say but the Mattolok's captain made a very persuasive argument that the presence of Moy cultural artifacts that spread light on an ill understood part of their history in the pre-Harmony days should lead to the site falling into the legitimate government of the Moy people: The Harmony of Horizon.
It was very hard to form a counter argument that didn't sound like something from a ranting xenophobe in the vein of a Romulan or Cardassian diplomat explaining why more space should fall on their side of the treaty line just because they've got guns and were their first.
I couldn't argue that Frontier was at this site first. Obviously that didn't apply because the Moy were here long ago and should the Federation take control of this planet anyway that would be a pretty blatant violation of the Moy right to their cultural heritage.
I can't argue possession based on territory as this planet lays outside of both Federation and Harmony borders.
I can't argue based on moral grounds as, by all indications, the Moy are an active participant in a genuine democracy and Mattolok's captain has sworn up and down to me that this site will be respected and preserved. And I've no reason to doubt her word.
I did manage to get consideration for Federation scientists to gain permanent visitation rights to the site, but even then it's nothing of the scale of the joint research base on Athos V. The Harmony captain has simply restated her people's standing pledge to allow unarmed ships and personnel freedom of movement within their borders.
This amazing colony site will fall firmly into Horizonian hands and, well, I have no good arguments for why the site should not fall under their purview that doesn't sound like self justification for Federation expansion.
Frontier will be spending a bit more time at the site, but it's probably best to leave soon to avoid looking like Starfleet is prepared to pursue a territorial claim via… other means.
[Harmony of Horizon Gains Research Colony at: a7]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27745.5, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
It's hard to describe what being under with the Dreamers is like. They share a linked consciousness amongst their pods.
Which is not to say that they have a collective consciousness. I don't think. But they are even more tightly bound together than Betazoids are and they use a spectrum of psychic, subspace, and electromagnetic signals to communicate different things. Like how many species use pheromones, sound, and body language to communicate.
They recognize Courageous and her crew as something along the same lines; many individuals combined into a greater whole. Both the snowflakes and the bank. They really are as curious about us as we are about them and were trying hard to talk to us with all their available methods.
And it seems that while we are awake their attempts to contact us emphatically are suppressed by our waking minds; but while asleep the consciousnesses of most of the psychically sensitive aboard Courageous are capable of communicating with the Dreamers.
I-I've spent almost a week trying to understand them and I feel like I've changed a lot.
With that hurdle crossed we can really get down the business of making friends!
Personal Log, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I've never felt so connected to anything in my life. Speaking with these Leviathans in my dreams is indescribable.
When I wake up I forget the details, but I remember impressions, emotions, all sorts of things that I can't explain but can only feel as now part of me.
Another thing that I can't put into words: even awake I feel much more connected now that before. With myself and with my crew.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27745.3, USS Rru'uadorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
We have received word from the Federation Diplomatic Service that the Licori Emperor is heading for Betazed onboard his flagship, the Sandworm AIS Rebirth. They have asked us to escort them.
I reviewed Volume 1 of the Licori code for mannerly conduct for 20 minutes before throwing it and the next five tomes into a recycler. Simply too much to remember. I will instead use my powers of social observation and deduction to work my way through these interactions.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27748.4, USS Courageous, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
It has been a very productive week for us and the Dreamers!
I'll mention here that Dreamer is the term that the Dreamers themselves seem to prefer. Things like "Leviathan", "Cosmozoan", and "Angel" get the subspace equivalent of a sensible chuckle from them. So Dreamer seems to fit best for now.
They have a multi system civilization in this area of space and we seem to be the first non-cosmozoan species that has actually tried to communicate with them!
They also have a form of technology that we didn't even notice until we got to talking with them! The crystalline "bone" structures that make up most of their energy collection array and their warp drive ring is actually "grown". It seems that they only developed their own FTL system after watching natural warp capable cosmozoa that travelled through their system over hundreds of millennia.
Have I also mentioned that they live thousands of years each?
Dreamers are so neat!
At the moment we are communicating with them using a team of a (humanoid) dreamer and a Vulcan in a mindmeld or a strong Betazoid telepath to run the technical end of the communications equipment. The pair have to really bond closely and almost lose all the boundaries between thoughts to communicate properly.
I...I am much closer to Counselor Lwema Noir than I was last week. I can certainly tell you that!
Hopefully, as we communicate more with the Dreamers we can develop less complicated methods of communication!
At the very least, the Dreamers are interested in us and we are interested in them. A real friendship is forming out here between the Federation and the Dreamer Collective. I just know it!
Personal Log, Captain Zara Ka'Athnon
I, um, have a lot to think about. And something neat to bring up next time I go home, I was never that close with my Aenar heritage, but I've begun really delving into their culture in ways that I never had before. It's a real eye-opening experience that is making me really happy.
I also need to dive into Starfleet regs for… other reasons.
[First Contact established with the Dreamer Collective: 75/100, 5G-tailward]
Tags:
[Cosmozoan Lifeform: 0/100]
[Alien modes of Communication and Thought: 0/300]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27750.8, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
The minor Apiata colony of Lapruzziz located just outside the rimward Badlands has broadcasted a very peculiar message addressed to Starfleet. The message assures as that everything is well, Cardassians are keeping to their side of the Badlands, and mining operations are proceeding as normal. If we were the Apiata government, receiving periodic updates to this effect would be expected, but Lapruzziz has nothing to do with Starfleet. I have decided to make a detour so that we may see the peaceful, productive status quo for ourselves.
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Message from the High Commissioner of the Federation External Trade Council
A research trawler belonging to Gumco, an private space firm based out of OSA space, has claimed a planet with significant deposits of cortenum monocrystal and other special ores. Apparently the system, SRB-2D, was due to be surveyed weeks ago, but Starfleet activity was diverted elsewhere.
Don't worry about it, Shey. You had people out there saving lives. It's just some rocks.
[Event response failed!]
[New SR colony for OSA Private, SRB-2D, coreward side of 2D]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
Lapruzziz is as the message claimed. Adjutant Queen Pulrizza expressed surprise at our approach, and hastily explained that the colony is thriving and not in need of any assistance. After consulting the nearest betazoid and being informed of the flood of grief, pain, and anxiety rising like a fountain of blood from the colony, I reopened the channel with Queen Pulrizza and asked her for permission to beam down for a brief courtesy call. She claimed to have no time, and had no answer when asked how a peaceful colony without problems could have so little time. However, she did repeat several times that her own drone-dignitaries were occupied with administrative tasks down in the mines, placing peculiar emphasis on the final four words with every repetition. I will be beaming down to the administration headquarters with a full security detail for company, while transporter activity masks the other full security detail beamed into the upper mining plaza.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757.2, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
We've rendezvoused with the Rebirth and oh boy -- the Emperor is mad! Rather unsurprisingly, they are very upset about the events involving the Antinoc. "Remember the Ant" has become a rallying cry among the Licori peasant and noble alike, adding fuel to the outrage.
Lugis is very sly, though, and made no obvious show of this when we met. But I could see how his brows furrowed when he saw I was Gaeni -- not surprising, given the bad blood our people share. I wonder if it would make it better or worse to mention I spent the entire war on a ship in the Apinae sector?
By certain parameters of the word, this is going to be fun!
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First Officer's Log, Stardate 27757.4, USS Pleezirra - Commander Jean Le Guin
The captain has just told us she had arranged a visit to the mines, as part of the routine checkup that "Federation policy" allegedly dictates that we perform when visiting any planetside mining facilities. Her tone of voice led me to not question it, but I'm not quite sure what to make of this.
The bigger problem is the plasma storm that's starting to brew in the planet's upper atmosphere just over the colony. With the exotic particles flying at this system out of the Badlands, phenomena like this aren't unprecedented, but it seems awfully focused. When I informed the captain, she instructed me very pointedly not to worry about it and to just perform the deflector maintenance cycle she's been wanting, and which she's never mentioned until now.
Lieutenant Commander bev Greg says there's a trick she learned from one of our Gaeni science officers about using directed deflector emissions to disperse high-energy atmospheric phenomena, and that she told the captain about just a month ago. I've given her and Lieutenant Commander Vu the order to begin preparations.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757.8, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
[Lugis] … And so there I am, my brother Marois looking up at me, a cut on his lip, and what does father say -- Beradd, my friend, the fork…
[Beradd-Kellar] Yes?
[Lugis] That… is… the desert fork.
[BK] You mean the dessert fork?
[Lugis] No, it is a fork you use in the desert. Were I more easily offended, I would be quite perturbed by you using it here instead of your… Beradd.
[BK] Yes?
[Lugis] You pass the port. From right. To left.
[BK] My apologies, honored Emperor! But this is much faster than learning by reading books, I can tell you that. Do you teach? I did my own stint as a professor of Sociology!
[Lugis] For all your inability to navigate a dinner plate, you have a keen read on people. I am, of course, an avid purveyor of the pedagogical arts. It was always been my belief that the Emperor should be the teacher of the people. Not like my brother, of course...
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27757.9, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
Recording this log entry from a cave of black and white onyx recently broken into by the apiata miners. While the expansive high-energy containment field projectors lining the sides of the cave date back to the Iconian period and bear recognizable Iconian design hallmarks, the sacrificial altar inside of the containment field is many thousands of years older, and the blood and other biological residue of at least seven apiata workers lining the altar and its surrounding pedestal are many thousands of years younger.
We have stunned Queen Pulrizza and her bodyguards after they led us into this cave before turning on us with suspiciously telegraphed body motions and phasers set to minimum stun while loudly announcing that we will be giving out life energy to support the master of this world. Thanks to some rather ingenious wordplay of hers back at the colony's administrative office, we had been expecting something to this general effect, as well as being informed that a nonspecific antagonistic intelligence has learned to listen in on radio and subspace communications.
Word from the surface is that the plasma storm's intensity has been holding ever since we were led into the tunnels. I begin to suspect that further developments may be contingent on who emerges, and how.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27758, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
Enjoyment at dinner was on a downward trend for most of the evening -- until I rolled out the alcohol, real ethanol included. My body metabolises it with ultra-efficiency ever since I had a hyper-liver installed, due to a minor disagreement over polling methodology.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27759.9, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
The deflector pulse from the Pleezirra dissipated the storm just as it began to release the first harmful energy blasts toward the colony. Unfortunately, the mass of coherent energy that subsequently arose from the atmosphere and began firing much higher intensity meta-kinetic blasts at the vessel took Commander Le Guin by surprise, and we sustained minor damage to the warp engines before he was able to raise shields and return fire in sufficient quantities to force the plasma-conjuring alien blood god to retreat.
Queen Pulrizza has turned herself over to Starfleet custody, accepting responsibility for the workers she ordered sacrificed to appease the plasma-conjuring alien blood god until help could arrive. I have assured her that she will have our testimony supporting her defense; from the records I have since been shown, I believe she minimized the loss of life as much as possible given the difficult situation, as well as having saved the colony by slipping her covert distress call past the alien blood god's surveillance.
Unfortunately, we will have to complete field repairs here before we can pursue the fleeing plasma-conjuring alien blood god; in the meantime, the Allhive has dispatched a battlegroup to intercept it before it can reach another inhabited system.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27761.5, USS Rru'adorr - Captain Beradd-Kellar
Lugis is an interesting guy, I'll give him that. And for a guy who talks about how he loved books as much as his brother loved athletics, he can pack away the liquor. I wasn't sure my hyper-liver could keep up! But it did, and I managed to get him to overlook my flagrant disregard for the rules of polite society and have an honest, albeit slurred, discussion about the Laio and the Antinoc. I told him that Starfleet has solved riddles more complex than this, and we are trustworthy as a third party. He expressed skepticism, so I proposed that the Licori prepare a team of investigators to coordinate with Starfleet Security and Task Force Beyond. That way he will have more oversight on their activities.
I made it seem like an off-the-cuff, drunken promise, so he could think he extracted it from me, but I had actually cleared it with Commodore Mrr'shan hours before. I don't leave everything up to chance! He took the offer and departed. I made sure to get it down in writing too, in case he forgets it. Which he might. How did he describe my dining room after we were done? Ah, "like one of the artillery strewn battlefields of old, except with wine bottles instead of shell casings!"
Lovely image.
[+15pp]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27762.9, USS Pleezirra - Captain Maria Volkov
Field repairs are completed. Good news is that the Apiata fleet successfully intercepted the entity in deep space just outside of the Badlands. Bad news is that plasma-shooting alien blood god refused to answer hails, and the Stinger Zinishi was destroyed in the following battle before the entity itself was terminated by concentrated fire.
While this has been a tragic sequence of events, I believe that our actions here have minimized what could have otherwise been a disaster. We will be holding position over Lapruzziz until a battalian of Comb-Staves and a specialist team from the Vulcan Science Academy can be brought here to safeguard against similar unpleasant surprises unearthed by the miners, and to hopefully determine the origins and nature of our late opponent.
[Gain +10 sr, Pleezirra gains +1 crew rating. Apiata lose Zinshi.]
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27764.3, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
Sol. In our timeline it is the thriving heart of the Federation. The home of both the Humans and Starfleet Command.
In this timeline, Sol was the heart of the Vulcan Technocracy's high risk scientific programs. Or was until the Solarian revolt of 2269.
Yet it wasn't the Vulcans who destroyed Sol, who shattered her planets and moons, and broke the flow of time inside the system. It was the Humans themselves.
Faced with the defeat of their rebellion, their bid for freedom swamped under endless waves of Andorian and Amarki janissaries, and indiscriminate Technocratic bombardments, the Humans turned to the only option they had left: the Vulcan labs that they had overrun in the early days of their revolution.
It doesn't matter if they lost control of the weapon, or if the Humans were prepared to die rather than resubmit to Vulcan tyranny, because the result was the same: millions of Technocratic troops killed and Sol turned into an uninhabitable and twisted mass of spacetime.
And in that lies the salvation of my crew. We've travelled to Sol under the shield of Liberty's extended cloak. Slowly and carefully our Romulan friends have directed us through weak points in the Technocracy's sensor grid. Of course, we've already seen how little attention the Technocracy pays to the mass graveyards that they leave behind.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27765.4, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
Commander Tolar believes that we should be able to use the disrupted spacetime in this system to return to our own timeline.
While being near the graveyard of billions of souls is depressing, I can't deny some small level of wonder at the data that we are gathering here.
Our Romulan friends are just as curious as we are about this phenomenon, and they are eagerly soaking up everything that we share with them.
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Bridge Transcript, Stardate 27765.9, USS Voshov
[Cpt. Rurliss]: Status?
[Cmdr. Llyhua]: Instruments not responding. I'm getting no readings. Looks like massive power failures. We've dropped out of warp, but ... I can't really tell you much else.
[Rurliss]: This is supposed to be empty space. What did we run into? Tactical, anything on your scopes?
[Lt. Cmdr. Valen]: Nothing, ma'am.
[Cmdr. Toor]: Ma'am, what the hell just happened? One moment, the warp core's purring like normal, the next she's scramming. I've got the ship running on backup fusion cores for now, but they won't last forever.
[Rurliss]: Not sure yet, Commander. We're working on an explanation right now. Just get me my warp power back.
[Toor]: Yes ma'am. Engineering out.
[Rurliss]: Viewscreen. Let's see what we're dealing with. ... okay, what am I seeing here?
[Lt. Cmdr. T'Kel]: A toroidal stellar object, ma'am.
[Rurliss]: Right, space donut. ... why am I seeing a space donut?
[Lt. Saadi]: I ... may have an explanation, ma'am.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27766.2, USS Concord
Concord is en route to a rendezvous with the Suffrage and the Starfleet auxiliary vessel Wayfarer's Joy.
With the Wayfarer's Joy passing through the SBZ, both I and Suffrage captain have decided to top up our synthesizer proteins and materials.
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Personal Log, Stardate 27766.4, Captain Iliae Rurliss - USS Voshov
We're in a decaying orbit around a boson star. What's a boson star, you ask? The short answer is that it's sort of a dark matter equivalent of a black hole. Not quite so dense, and not quite as intense gravity, but still intense enough to bend light itself. And it apparently has some tricky effects on subspace, which interacted badly with our warp drive.
The astrophysicists aboard are all excited ... but unless we can pull ourselves out of that decaying orbit, they won't get a chance to make any observations.
We've already ruled out pushing ourselves off-course with a photon torpedo detonation, like Emancipation pulled at CFBDS0059 - we're apparently on the wrong orbital trajectory for that to work. No, this is going to be all about whether we can get the impulse engines back up and running in time for a hard burn.
Which brings up another problem. Our inertial dampening systems are damaged. Not completely offline, thankfully, but everyone on board is still going to be experiencing something like 9-10Gs of felt acceleration. Dr. Linn is prescribing anti-G drugs that haven't been used since early spaceflight.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27766.6, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
We're not alone, there is a massive Technocratic base just inside the outer envelope of the phenomenon.
We would have been detected if not for the quick thinking of Commander Velim and her crew, who backed us off just in time.
Chiren tells us that the Republic had no idea that this facility existed, which is something that the Romulans find very worrying. I've agreed to help investigate the base, though at the moment we are limiting ourselves to eavesdropping on Technocratic communications to avoid risk to our ships.
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Captain's Log, Stardate 27766.9, USS Voshov
Good news, bad news. Good news is, the burn worked, and we've pushed out of the decaying orbit. Bad news is, we're temporarily unable to go to warp - subspace effects still prevent us from forming a warp shell.
It's not too big a problem, though. We just need to get into interstellar space. And in the meantime, the science team will have time to get in some good analysis of this boson star. Hopefully, it'll help us keep from running into another unexpectedly.
Personal Log, Stardate 27766.9, Captain Iliae Rurliss
I don't know if it's the drugs talking, but even after all the trouble it caused, that space donut looks pretty tasty.
[Gain 10 rp]
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27767.8, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
Lieutenant Chiren and Commander Tolar have finally returned from Cheron Temporal Observatory and the situation is worse than we feared.
The Technocracy is working on timeline editing technology. While Sol's current state makes it the perfect site to investigate temporal phenomenon, it seems that Sol was also where Vulcan research into timeline editing began. No wonder the Humans revolted.
With that technology the Technocracy could easily destroy our home timeline by accident, even if they bore us no ill will. Which is not to mention the damage they could do even if their destruction is limited only to this timeline.
Velim believes that we should return to the Republic and join them in an all ou-
COMPUTER!
END LOG.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768, USS Korolev
Korolev has completed a survey of SV-3131 and located a small deposit of verterium located on the system's only planet.
It's likely the remains of an extrasolar comet that hit the planet almost thirty four million years ago. We don't even have to really do any digging to get to it, it's mostly scattered along the surface. Fascinating.
[+10 SR from Comet Recovery]
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.1, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
We've lost the last of the Technocracy's runabouts by hitting an atemporal wave with a tachyon pulse from our deflector dish, which is thankfully still operational.
We're still in danger however, the Technocracy will be on high alert and we are now trapped inside of Sol with the worst of the temporal distortions. It will be days before we've gathered enough data to attempt to return to our home timeline and we will have to spend that time dodging Technocratic patrols and temporal anomalies.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.4, USS Suffrage
Our rendezvous with Wayfarer's Joy has turned into a rescue mission. Wayfarer's Joy suffered an engineering casualty while entering orbit of a gas giant and is now in a deadly rapid deorbit.
Suffrage should be arriving first.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.5, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
We've finished decoding the data from the Cheron Temporal Observatory and we have details on the Technocratic temporal incursion technology.
This is no simple time traveling to the past to prevent events. On Cheron station they've been building a way to "push" or "pull" elements into or out of other timelines. Once they activate this weapon they'll rule this timeline like gods and damn every other nearby timeline to a hell of constant temporal anomalies and paradoxes. They could snuff the Federation out in an afternoon while quelling a rebellion on Andoria or preventing a Romulan invasion, or even change our own Vulcans while permanently locking in their own existence.
This Technocratic device is a threat to not only the people of this timeline but our own Federation as well.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.6, USS Concord
We've arrived in system to assist Suffrage in pulling Wayfarer's Joy into a proper orbit to conduct repairs.
While Suffrage has managed to halt the descent their own attempts to pull Wayfarer's Joy
up from the gas giant have been complicated by the unusually dense planetary rings filled with Hyperonic radiation which is preventing transport and interfering with tractor beams.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.8, USS Tarrak, Captain Leaniss Larai
I've discussed the situation with Commander Velim. We are going to launch an attack on the Cheron Temporal Observatory, if we can destroy their only prototype temporal core, there is an opportunity for the Romulans to rally their allies and prevent the Vulcans from rebuilding their doomsday device.
It's a bad plan. A brute force plan. But if we fail to act they can have the device online within months and I cannot accept the risk to our home timeline.
-
Captain's Log, Stardate 27768.9, USS Suffrage
Success!
Thanks to assistance from Concord we were able extend our own shields around Wayfarer, while Concord used phaser sweeps to keep our path out of the rings clear.
From here it's some minor assistance in repairing Wayfarer's Joy then we can collect our materials and return to our patrols.
[Wayfarer's Joy Saved and returned to service.]
-
BRIDGE TRANSCRIPT, STARDATE 27769, USS TARRAK
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] Cheron Station shields down to 39%!
[Cpt Leaniss] How are we doing Commander?
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] Our own shields are at fifty-thre -no, make that forty six percent. It's a close race ma'am, too close to call.
[Lt Chiren (RRN)] That station has to fall Captain, our futu-
[CPO Attas-Vanad] I'm detecting a massive chronoton surge from the station!
[Cmdr Tolar] Cheron station is activating their temporal core.
[Cpt Leaniss] BRACE FOR IMPACT
-Unrecognizable-
[Cpt Leaniss] Can someone tell me what's going on?!
[Cmdr Tolar] Chronotron radiation increase from Cheron station. They are recharging their device.
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] STATUS CHANGE! New contacts.
[Cmdr Tolar] The local spacetime distortions have abated
[Lt Chiren (RRN)] Captain Leaniss. This is the battle of Sol. When the Terrans activated their weapon. The entire Technocratic second fleet was lost here, over sixty warships and three and a half million ground troops.
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] That would explain the warships inbound on our position.
[Cpt Leaniss] Of course! If they couldn't expect reinforcements to arrive in time to save them they moved Sol's last moments to our current time to protect themselves with an entire fleet. Like stitching together the edges of a ripped shirt. For those in Sol it's like the intervening time never happened.
[Cmdr Tolar] Captain, I am detecting a weak atemporal shockwave of the same type that delivered us to this timeline originally. Our current data is sufficient for me to generate a return vector.
[Lt. Sabine] I'm laying in a course now, ma'am.
[Lt. Chiren (RRN)] Please Captain. Leaniss. You can't abandon us.
[Cpt Leaniss] I'm not planning on it. Can someone give me the current Stardate?
[Lt-Cmdr Kahurangi] Stardate 27769. Wait, that's almost the lau-
[Cpt Leaniss] Exactly Commander, prepare a data dump for Starfleet Command, we'll have no chance for an extended debriefing. Bring us into the wave Lieutenant.
[Lt. Chiren (RRN)] I don't understand.
[Cpt Leaniss] If the Technocracy wants to cheat and drop a fleet on us, I'm going to cheat right back and drop a legend on them.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Austria
WEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
I always wanted to affiliate cosmozoans in this quest!
Legacy of Vol Chad lives on!
I always wanted to affiliate cosmozoans in this quest!
Legacy of Vol Chad lives on!
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Zara continues to grow on me. Cosmozoan species is super neat as well 
Is it just me, or have we been losing out on mines lately?
Tarrak continues to thrill... Time for nuEnterprise to kick ass!
Is it just me, or have we been losing out on mines lately?
Tarrak continues to thrill... Time for nuEnterprise to kick ass!
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh, this is just beautiful. We've GOT to get them to join us.
Woo!
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Leaniss is going to hit them with NASH in the Enterprise-C?!?! Holy shit, that's brilliant! She's invoking plot shields!
And my prayers have been answered, we finally met nice sentient cosmozoans. Diplopush these guys stat. Sure we won't get anything but RP and PP from them ... but they're so goddamn cool. And they probably have really unique insights into warp and sensor tech just because their mark one eyeball is calibrated for space and they engineered integral warp drives for themselves.
Pulrizza is best queen. She played that plasma-spewing blood god hard.
And my prayers have been answered, we finally met nice sentient cosmozoans. Diplopush these guys stat. Sure we won't get anything but RP and PP from them ... but they're so goddamn cool. And they probably have really unique insights into warp and sensor tech just because their mark one eyeball is calibrated for space and they engineered integral warp drives for themselves.
Pulrizza is best queen. She played that plasma-spewing blood god hard.
I am willing to send half of starfleet in a diplomatic task force dedicated for this goal!
- Location
- Mists of Albion
...So the meme that every single female character in this quest is homosexual is true?
Huh. Cool to know.
- Location
- Austria
Kahurangi wasn't.
Savik, IIRC, wasn't.
T'Lorel....uhhh. I think she was heterosexual - her Pon'Farr partner was, IIRC, male engineer (who soundproofed ship enough for +1 Hull).
So...not really, no? I mean, that does not even get into aliens and how human homosexuality is not always applicable at all?
(human definition of "female" too)
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think getting told that someone else got the site instead of just a generic [event failed] is a new mechanic.Zara continues to grow on me. Cosmozoan species is super neat as well
Is it just me, or have we been losing out on mines lately?
Tarrak continues to thrill... Time for nuEnterprise to kick ass!
So sixty warships versus the Enterprise, Ambassador, Tarrak and that friendly Romulan Warbird.
That ain't a fair fight. Those technocrats better bring in their first and third fleets or this is gonna be boring.
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pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And the battlefield is one giant negative space wedgie, so Ambassador's S11 and Enterprise's S10 can be used for "make that squadron go away" S test attacks. Too bad Courageous isn't here for this. Zara's anomaly reroll + S11 would be really nice to have and I don't think Volanen's reroll on ruins, archaeology, or the past applies to timey wimey bullshit.
More seriously, a lot of those sixty ships are going to be small enough that an Amby can one-shot them with a S test attack, and they're all going to be obselete since the Solarian Revolt was 50 years ago and they were yanked forward from it.
They're 50 years out of date. Connie-As were bleeding edge when those ships were lost.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The Dreamers look very interesting, and they're only 125 points from affiliation...
We'll probably have to knife-fight the Harmony for them, because they're so cool, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.
Also, we are now definitely at war with the Vulcan Technocracy.
Y'know, what is it about the Federation that seems to make the godlike energy beings in every sector just act up like this? I bet the Cardassians never have to deal with giant green space hands manifesting behind their ships to give them morality tests.
We'll probably have to knife-fight the Harmony for them, because they're so cool, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.
Also, we are now definitely at war with the Vulcan Technocracy.
Y'know, what is it about the Federation that seems to make the godlike energy beings in every sector just act up like this? I bet the Cardassians never have to deal with giant green space hands manifesting behind their ships to give them morality tests.
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