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We get to go home (yay) and then fight like hell for the survival of Terra and of Starfleet.against Terra and Starfleet!
Please note, that the idea of this next adventure is that the main action takes place over a 12 hour period, with trailing action taking no more than another day. Any new NPCs intro'd should not have a lot to do, other than follow orders and/or die. This is action!!!, both overt and covert. But fast paced.
There will be orders about legal actions to be permitted, later. For now, remember, since we cometimes will not be able to tell allies from conspirators, lets be careful of the mayhem level. It expect us to blow up a lot of stuff, and take a lot of damage. But the idea here is to strike with as much precision as possible, enable Starfleet to complete the anti-conspiracy hunt itself, and somehow come out alive, and exonerated of treason.
I am giving a lot of detail, here. Please note, this is for guidance. Nothing is locked in. If you feel you need to diverge from the plot as suggested here, then either contact me or your team leader (both preferred) to make sure any big changes are okay, and go with it.
THIS GUIDE IS TO HELP SET THE TONE and THE STARTING POINTS. I don't want members of the crew to feel that they cannot change things - that is half the fun of simming!
We assigned team leaders and some initial PC members. If you do not like your assignment, then tell Russ and Jami. If you were not assigned, then we are asking you to SELF-ASSIGN to a team, preferably one with fewer PCs in it.
Please note, that the command team has already started plotting the NEXT adventure, so far called "The Rubaiyat", which involves a mirror universe (probably not the one seen previously in ST), the Andromen (formerly Ttrailoids), a Command School, a lengthy and dangerous vacation, and some quirky bureaucrats. After this, we are finally going to go to the hugely important industrial UFP-member (Eminiar VII and Vendikar) Venn Starsystem, where the Conspirators hold an entire UFP Starsystem in secret thralldom (of sorts), and try to sort out the mess there. I am tentatively calling that one, "Where Knights and Angels Fear to Tread". After that, we are going to become outlaws, pirates, scofflaws, and generally of low repute...
Event Line
1. Leaving Aebrynnis
(Some of this is superceded by some recent changes during our 'escape from Aebrynnis').
The Lunar team will return with a tightly timed schedule during which Captain Firenzi will be able to activate a Manhattan Time Transfer Torpedo to create a form of artificial wormhole that will direct us into a dimensional interphase. Captain Bridger will use his Eyes and his own ability to seemingly direct or at least attact chronometric fields to provide a form of rudimentary guidance through the wormhole.
Lightoller and Commander M'Benga, of the Dirac, will keep all 35 refugee ships under tight control by the Knight in order to navigate all of the ships together. During the journey, we may lose one or two of these ship, due to field disruptions of some sort within the wormhole. One ship will desert at some point - one of the ones from a weird universe, that we cannot communicate with.
The journey will take us two months, during which time we will finish preparing the Knight and the crew, and the Marines, AND our refugee ships, for what Captain Bridger is calling 'an invasion of Terra', or Operation: Invader.
2. The Wormhole Transit
We MAY meet a group of explorers from Starbase Olympus, very briefly. I am working on this.
3. The Wormhole Exit
We will arrive just inside the orbit of Mars, about 50 million kilometers from Terra. At this point, all ships will broadcast a distress signal, and all ship COs will start a lot of sensor and comm chatter that should actually confuse Starfleet Sector 001 Tactical Command.
The Knight, Dirac, and three other ships will make way for Terran orbit at speed, while all the other ships scatter to various Starfleet facilities all over space.
The five ships bound for Terra orbit, fast, will be loaded with Marines and Knights, ready for the actual mission, which is a strike force to free Starfleet from the enemy agents high in Command, who are part of the Secret enemies, the Psions and Combine.
4. Situation on Terra
Only several months ago, the Federation President was killed in San Francisco. Initially, the CO of the USS Galaxy was suspected of the murder. He was replaced by his VP, who was nearly assassinated a few months later, during a trip to Starbase Olympus. And the CinC, Starfleet Security, Vice Admiral Mariska Hargittay, was found to be complicit in the crime. She was killed, and this created a space for the Psions to place yet another operative into Starfleet Command's highest ranks.
Now, with Psy Ops no longer countering the Psion menace, and in fact mostly dismantled, save for an illegal action that has almost wrecked the JAG Delta Gray investigation, the Enemy Council is planning for the quiet death and replacement of Starfleet CinC with a Psion replica. This is to be done within a few days after the Knight arrives, but will be pressed forward after the Knight begins to attack the hidden Psions and Combine members on Terra.
The situation on Terra is a bit tense. There are new fears of the Romulans, pressed by both the Combine and by another hidden agency of espionage that nobody has yet identified. The 'last, best hope for peace',. Starbase Olympus, was recently nearly destroyed by an so-called ally of the UFP, and by a race far out toward Olympus Sector, the Sebacean Regime. People are not so certain of Starfleet, and they do not feel secure in the new post-Dominion War peace.
5. Maguffins
A maguffin is a kind of 'straw man', a false lead or action taken to drawn attention toward others, and away from a real and important action. Most of the Operation: Invader action will be off-camera, so to speak, and will be directed at taking the heat off the real striker missions.
All 2000 surviving Diamond Knight Marines are being beamed to various targets at Terra and Terran orbit, in order to draw attention and harass Starfleet and local forces, while teams from the Knight pursue the 'real' mission.
6.0. JAG
The survivors of the terror-purge of the loyal Psy War staff are now working hand in hand with the JAG Delta Gray team, now coded named Sable. Sable is headquartered on Terra in an old Ford Motors automotive plant and museum near Detroit, Michigan. They also have two Danube class sensor-scanning platforms, and a Defiant class ship, all in near Terra orbit, and commanded by Captain Nyssa Jorges, Sable Team Leader.
A secret, coded signal will be sent from the Knight, for JAG and covert arms of Psy War only, telling them that 1) M'Benga has been subverted or replaced (they know this already), 2) the probable identities of the leading Psion and Combine spies in Starfleet Command and in UFP Council directorates related to Starfleet, and 3) apprising them that the JAG-channel-only Operation: Invader has just been launched.
How JAG decides to handle this, whether they help foil Starfleet, and somehow not break every law in the books, or decide to turn us in, is up to Cpt. Jorges. Several new players may be joining us, from this action.
6.0. The Striker Missions.
6.1. Starfleet Intelligence HQ
Team Lead: LCdr. Jack Lawson, Lt. David Poirot, Knight One Marine Company, WO3 Amanda Foucault, other NPCs.
Only one company of Marines will be kept with the main striker groups, and the goal of this team will be to capture the main Starfleet Intelligence HQ building, near the edge of Starfleet Academy, and hold it while a special team finds the evidence needed to justify the mission, and route out remaining Combine and Psion agents all over Starfleet. Note: Without this information, all of us will be arrested, and many of us (key enlisted and Lt. and above Knights) will be executed for treason, eventually.
Intelligence HQ is guarded by Starfleet Security, externally, and internally by an elite Security team formed from SICO staff and selected Marines. External guards number 30, internal guards number 50. Communication to this building will be cut by the only authorized space fire of the 'war', a single precision phaser shot from the USS Dirac, that cuts the building off from all support services, save internal power.
Inside the SI HQ will be Vice Admiral Jaylene Thierra, SI Directorate of R&D, a very powerful Psion and a spy for her entire Starfleet career. Thierra will be able to summon additional help for her own purposes, a Combine-infiltrated Marine Company, trained at the big Marine Base of Starbase 57 (which is wholly controlled by the Combine and Psions).
Critical to this mission will be the survival of WO3 Amanda Marie Foucault, whose cyberpsi ability is needed to extract the data we need.
6.2. The M'Benga Initiative
Team Lead: Captain Howell Bridger
Team Members: Lt(jg) Koroth, Protective Services team from USS Knight, a
number of NPCs
Psy War Division of Starfleet Intelligence is located in one of the three towers that make up the Starfleet Command HQ in San Francisco. It takes up three stories, of the Christopher Pike Tower, the 40th-42nd. But with the loss of 2/3 of the staff, the whole unit is quite likely to be closed down. The false M'Benga will be here when the Knight attacks, and his principal mission will be to try to convince orbital units of Starfleet to destroy the Knight and the other four ships in orbit with her.
The team coming here will be charged with the capture or death of the false M'Benga, gathering evidence of what he has been up to, for six months, and the absolute assurance that the Psy War division can no longer be used as a Psion tool. After this, Bridger wants to locate the real M'Benga and rescue him.
We will find that he, and several other ranking Starfleet officers, replaced in the last year, are being held at the Pavillion Spas, in the Monterrey Peninsula, not far from San Francisco. About 2.5 years ago, this site was liberated from a Combine team that used it for illegal kironide processing and genetic engineering research. It was thought to have been destroyed but was apparently reclaimed by the Combine. It is both a secret communication post for the conspirators, a genetics research base, and a POW camp - but no prisoner has ever left it, alive.
Prisoners are kept in deep underground layers, with transporter and phaser shields in place, and access only through a gamut of cybernetic 'troops' and an underwater tunnel that leads to the Pacific Ocean.
6.3. The Harcourt Arrest
JAG Team: LCdr. Barahal Arriens and his Special Directives Team
Knight Team: Cdr. B'Elin James, civilian Al Khutspe, and others on the
USS Mischievous
JAG will attempt to arrest Fleet Admiral Harcourt, for 12 years the Director, BuPers, and perhaps the single person with the greatest negative influence on Starfleet in its history. Harcourt, another lifelong conspirator, is an able officer and a master of deception. He has managed to build the personnel and resource base for the conspirators, largely by theft and reallocation and illegal records tampering, right out of Starfleet Command HQ, for nearly 30 years.
Dusty James will take the Lady in, with a team to keep the local Starfleet HQ defenses busy chasing 'ghosts'. When Arriens discovers the plot against CinC, Starfleet, she will have to abandon the second part of her mission, an attack on Vice Admiral Julii's local Starfleet Courier Service base, in order to rush to save the head of Starfleet.
6.4. The General Alarmist
Team(s):
USS Knight, under command of LCdr. Grant Lightoller, Lt(jg) Tobit
Calsanni, Lt. Entor Calsanni
Ground team: Captain Nyssa Jorges, JAG, others
Marine General Julii, Bolian goodfellow and secret kironide addict, has recently been made Commander, Starfleet Marine Corps, Sector 001. He is the only man who cannot be subverted or manipulated or misdirected by the USS Knight. He will try to destroy the Knight and her four allied ships in orbit, while a ground team attempts to locate and arrest or kill him, at the old NASA Ames Research Center, home to the 60th SF Marine Division.
The space situation will get quite hectic, and dire, for all. The ground situation, with perhaps a team of 10 against an entire Marine Division, should be.interesting.
7. Late in Campaign
The Starfleet Intelligence HQ should be surrounded by SF Marine and Security forces, and these should be utterly confused about what their orders are. Until somebody can stop the conflicting orders.
The Starfleet CinC should be saved. And evidence should be enough for him to direct a ceasefire and require the quiet surrender of the Knight forces.
M'Benga and others should be freed, and the team that does that should be subject to Marine Corps bombardment for a while.
The Ames Marine Base should be quietly traversed, and the Marine General brought to bay.
A group of couriers will escape, to warn the conspirators about what has happened on Terra.
8. Repercussions
All Knights and Diamond Knight Marines will be detained in top lockdowns, for a while. All of us, except for a skeleton staff on the Knight herself, who will be carefully monitored by JAG and elite security forces.
The rep of the Knight will reach an all-time low, until the newly elected UFP President will tell the planet that we saved Starfleet and the Federation Council. Then, our rep will be very high. But rather confusing.
After a month, we will be allowed to leave Terra, to go on well deserved vacations. But the ship will be reassigned to JAG, and Captain Jorges will become our 'boss'. Bridger will remain in command. Then we go to Park, The Pleasure, Planet, and begin an adventure I call "The Rubiyat".
Mirror Knights, the return of the Andromen, mysterious kidnappings, angry words with our JAG 'masters', the longest chase scene on records, fights with our selves, and Command School with people who hate or despise us.hmmm.
Notes -
1. See "Other Characters" on website for descriptions of some key JAG characters.
2. Keep collateral damage to a minimum. Also, do nothing to escalate Starfleets initial confused response to our attack. Starfleet Sector 001 can and will completely destroy us, if we manage to really get them angry with us!
3. Go ahead and start sending your thoughts to your command teams. Now, I did not assign all PCs to teams. Some of you will be needing to assign yourselves. Pick teams with lower PC representation though.