Star Trek RPG - Setup thread

[choie]

Bless you for posting, EH. I need distraction from mourning the American experiment.

Questions:

Sometime later, Graham, Kylah, the doctor and Rawlings come to, groggy and more than a little disoriented. Onn and Rangin, now in the same cabin with everyone else, remain passed out.

Emphasis mine.

1. Did you mean Rawlings and me? We were off in our own cabin; does this mean we've been moved to the other room with the other four?

2. Did those of us who actually fell--Velir being the only one horizontal at the time--wake up on the deck? And if Rawlings & I were moved by someone, did they at least have the courtesy to deposit us onto the bunks?

3. If we're still on the deck, does it still feel icy cold? Although I wouldn't be as vulnerable to it as my lizardy colleague.

[choie]

To keep things moving I'll try to post w/o knowing the answers above. It ain't like Sidonian Gal's gonna have much to say for herself.

[Elendil's Heir]

All six Yorktown crewmates are now together in the same cabin. I didn't decide who's in a bunk and who isn't - you may each do so as to your character, if you wish. Yes, the deck remains very cold.

[choie]

Thank you! Intriguing.

[SidonianGal]

What intrigues me is the mystery of whether any of my gallants is gonna grok that, given my reaction after lying on that freezing deck for like 10 minutes this morning, it's probably not super that I've been sprawled out like a lifeless carp for Sid'Os-only-knows how many hours.

[choie]

Feeling a bit like this, I shouldn't wonder.

[Elendil's Heir]

Nor should I!

[choie]

To which I say...

[SidonianGal]

hA! EH you must've enjoyed this remark to Graham here once we were alone in the cabin after boarding:

Biting her lip, she pauses from just blurting out her own issues. "Are you getting hinky vibes about this? Kylah's acting like this is secretly a Romulan ship or something, but grubbiness aside, it's not striking me as hostile territory...."

My instincts yet again on target. Lucky I didn't actually snark at Kylah about that directly. I'm also lucky to be unconscious because I'm not sure my brain could handle knowing that in addition to every other disaster I'm blaming myself for, depositing her crew into the hands of Romulans is probably at the top.

Anyway, two things:

1) just a reminder to the rest of the PCs, since I just went to double-check: Singh warned Nia that the trip to Cavinre would take us somewhat near Romulan space, but wasn't too concerned. Nia passed this info on to Booker, since as her Number One (and a security expert) he needed to be aware of this.

The only other person Nia & Booker told about this concern was Rangin, whom they asked for an assessment via his datapad to the nearest planets, the distance between their plotted journey and Romulan territory. The Tesla wasn't yet in any distress but both Nia & Graham wanted to know the lay of the land, so to speak.

Anyway, point is, with both me and Rangin down for the count, general urko, I thought you might wanna know that Graham's the only one who might recall the relative nearness to the edge of the Neutral Zone to the Tesla's original course.

2) Next, a question for EH: Okay so I did some digging through both memory alpha's link and memory beta, since I suspected there's been retconning to the original TOS timeline as far as what we know about the Romulan SS.

I had no idea this began with TNG. According to original canon (before ENT showed up to retcon everything), Starfleet didn't seem to know about them. I know ENT wasn't originally considered game canon, but we know you also have total discretion to pick the most interesting bits of "non-canon" stuff and run with it.

As I understand it, post-TNG era TOS novelizations brought up the Tal Shiyar as playing a role in the Khitomer massacre & the attempt on Spock's life via their time travel abilities (apparently), a plot that in this new canon was foiled by Kirk and Gary frickin' Seven because hey why not.

So via ENT and TOS-expanded-universe canon, we should know about them, unless all this was hushed up despite involving the Enterprise in both eras.

I guess my question is simply: What, if anything, do the Yorktown gang know about them, according to our canon?

[stolz]

Would random Cold-War Era naval officers know much about the inner workings of the various Chinese intelligence agencies? The Romulans were vaguely supposed to be based on Communist China, according to Wikipedia.

[choie]

Ha true! But that was before the novelization where Kirk went up against them. With the whole of Starfleet praising his every exploit, in this new canon the Tal Shiar might be household names, referenced in song and saga as having fallen to Kirk's heroism.

[Elendil's Heir]

By this time, not long after the conclusion of Capt. James T. Kirk's famous five-year mission, every Starfleet officer would recognize the name of the Tal Shiar and be aware of both its function and its (unpleasant) reputation. Probably not much more than that, though, just as a typical well-informed US Navy officer during the Cold War would know what the Soviet KGB - and maybe the Chinese MSS - were, but little about their inner workings.

You may have noticed, incidentally, that I didn't identify T'Ves and her party as Vulcans in posts 1590-1598 until you had already done so.

[choie]

I should've commented earlier, EH, but yes, your having played fair (mostly! ) by not introducing them as Vulcans until we misidentified them is very much appreciated! Suddenly turning into an unreliable narrator would be out of pocket for you. Mysteries that pull that purposeful misdirection always lose points for me.

In one whole season of my online serial, I convinced the readers that one character was having an affair with his business partner's wife, because that's how this mysterious woman had identified herself to him. For a solid year, I never used her name in the narrative. Any reference to her as [partner's wife's name] was by the duped man.

A big challenge was that the actual affair partner was a very well-known character on the canvas already, so I had to obfuscate both women's activities, coordinate their schedules, and make sure every line of dialogue could work for both the real woman and the partner's wife. I left clues in by describing them each accurately, which--while there were similarities--would've made sharp-eyed readers who knew what each gal was supposed to look like suspicious.

Anyway I'd played strictly fair with them, and the whole thing was tremendous fun. And it was a gimmick/twist that could only work in a written format, where readers couldn't see or hear the actual women. I suppose an audio drama might pull it off, but the voices would have to be similar enough to fool the listeners. I think some cheating would've been involved and that ain't how I write mysteries.

Whereas I think your surprise Vulcan/Romulan switch would've been a great twist in any format, due to the similarities in the races, and the costumes and cover story would've been a distraction, plus we're inclined to believe our protagonists/PCs. If the Tesla gang believed them Vulcans, no reason the audience wouldn't assume they were correct. Cruel but fair. Lucky for Aval that Nia chose Bizhi vs. T'Var for the mission! Not so much for Bizhi. Oh and speaking of...

Bizhi resolves to remember to address Kayla as... simply "Kayla", in the future. Would she prefer "Ensign"? To his ear that does not necessarily sound so impressive, even compared to "Mister" or "Master", but he has no sense for such things.

Even if he went with "Commander" she'd probably find it more distracting to be called "Kayla."

He tries to be diplomatic, and has been to enough worlds so that si fueris Romuli, Romulo vivito more, but formal titles and terms of address (often a grammatical or social necessity), moreover formality, he does not prize in and of themselves.

Ooh nice twist on the famous saying, heh! Well played. So Dr. M. has both Scots and Latin influences! I'm fascinated by his background and personality. If you told me he was secretly Section 31, I would absolutely not be surprised.

Really, though, why is she attempting to draw Aval's attention? Some incipient distraction?

Stubbornness and stupidity, with a dash of a need to take some tiny "win" over the woman who deceived them, however incredibly petty. As an aside, this is a known bit of background for her--that is, her irritation of "Mr." was established in one of the first missions, or maybe in a story ex-Rangin/AJay and I wrote in the "Apocrypha" where Kylah first comes aboard the Yorktown. Not that anyone remembers it but me, but hey if you can't pull out random pieces of your PC's trivia Easter Egg backstory after 13 years playing an RPG, what the heck are we even doing here?

[stolz]

So Dr. M. has both Scots and Latin influences! I'm fascinated by his background and personality.

The first thing to keep in mind, should he ever seem unusual, is that he is literally from Mars It is an important, yet behind-the-scenes, industrial centre that people, doubly so from outside the Solar system, may not know that much about.

About the Latin, I figured that even in the 23rd (?) century doctors and pharmacists would still be required to study it. Even if not, or if it be merely vestigial, it is the sort of thing Bizhi would encounter and pursue on his own initiative.

If you told me he was secretly Section 31, I would absolutely not be surprised.

You know, I can absolutely see him involved in something like that, if it were (or he was convinced it were) to save the world from some weird threat. He is a doctor/medical researcher, though, not an assassin or a spy.

[Elendil's Heir]

Just like the good Dr. Bashir, who was also drawn into unwelcome contact with (if not actual membership in) Section 31.

Good stuff, both of you - many thanks!

[SidonianGal]

I loved that Bashir, of all characters, somehow managed to be of interest to the two slipperiest spies on DS9.

The good doctor carefully looks through the Uwat medikit and, after a few minutes, believes he understands what about three-quarters of its drugs and gadgets do. He's not sure that any of it would actually help his patients - there is nothing, in particular, that would aid Onn in her illness - but he believes he could probably restore either to consciousness.

In the name of the holiest of Seht'Dar's twin balls, please wake me up, Doc! I've been outta commission for a month!

[general_urko]

Thanks for the reminder about Romulan space, SidonianGal!

[SidonianGal]

Pleasure to be of service, general!

[general_urko]

#2049 was a quality post, stolz!

[stolz]

She doesn't even bother mentioning the incompetence of the Tal Shiar's having someone going undercover as a Vulcan who can't understand a word of Fed Standard.

She did say they were under a vow of silence :-) Got to give them a little credit.

[SidonianGal]

Fair enough. Let's say Nia's memory's not quick enough to remember that part. (I have no such excuse.)

Anyone have "Abolitionist Romulans end up saving the day" on your mission bingo card? Not me, that's for sure. Quite a turn-up and no mistake!

[stolz]

Fair enough. Let's say Nia's memory's not quick enough to remember that part. (I have no such excuse.)

Merely pretending to be mute would only solve half the problem, but people seem less likely to mess with a bunch of monastic nuns.

Anyone have "Abolitionist Romulans end up saving the day" on your mission bingo card? Not me, that's for sure. Quite a turn-up and no mistake!

Cives Romani sunt.

[SidonianGal]

LOL, oh sure, trot out the Cicero. Well, if they wanted to preserve the notion that Romulans are not to be molested by any other races, they probably should've sent bigger guns and made a real spectacle about it. Then again, I'm almost wondering if this was their first undercover assignment. (The "acolytes," anyway--I'm assuming if Aval's really a Major, she didn't just get tossed into a slave-recovery mission to inaugurate her Tal Shiar status.)

As an aside, what are the odds that 75% of us (at least--I don't know about general_urko) are Latin-conversant? What a bunch of geeks. (As if a 14-year ongoing Trek RPG didn't give us enough geek cred.)

[Elendil's Heir]

As if, indeed!

My favorite Latin was and is, especially now, "E Pluribus Unum."

[stolz]

So for a millennium it was a classical language, an academic lingua franca, and a cornerstone of Western liberal arts, but now Latin is consigned to the realm of geeks? O tempora! O mores!

For more extreme language geekiness, there was someone I anecdotally heard about who taught himself Ugaritic, because why not? Maybe it was an even more obscure language. In the story I was told it was rarely enough studied that he got to the point where he was actually able to make some contributions. No idea about the veracity of that story, but it is absolutely true that it took such "geeks" to decipher Linear B...

[Elendil's Heir]

I have no talent whatsoever for foreign tongues myself, but enjoy reading about those who do, and learning about linguistic/archeological sleuthing of that sort.

[SidonianGal]

Woohoo, it only took me four years in real time but I finally got Nia on a first-name basis with Bizhi. No more having to scroll up to find a "Mäkeläinen" to copy/paste!

[Elendil's Heir]

Well, you know, of course you can't rush that kind of intimacy....

[stolz]

My take is, he is not ignorant of social customs--- quite the opposite--- but, like the physicist in The Dispossessed who was bemused at being called "Doctor" (but without his naivite), titles are not something he needs to feel respected.

[SidonianGal]

Oh I didn't mean anything against Bizhi--I've just been waiting all this time to find a moment where Nia would be least in "command mode" or even "business mode." Using a first name is more of a friend thing, and while they're not strictly friends, she's been vulnerable enough with him to think of him as a more than a colleague. She's casual by nature, lord knows, but even though she's stepped down as C.O. since this morning, it didn't feel "right" for her to break down the last facade of formality until now. Especially she's getting more and more resigned to things not turning out well.

Just felt like this was the right moment to get to this point. At last!

(Of course Kylah's S.O.L., since she doesn't use first names for anyone except Velir. And T'Var, but that doesn't count. She only called her roommate "Jeremi" once or twice toward the end. Just not that sorta gal.)

[choie]

Sorry, general_urko, I waited as long as I could before having Kylah yammer on, but I was afraid we'd get time-jumped to the cabin soon without having the chance to talk to the frickin' Romulans by our side. Too ripe a setup to miss! But I tried to stick to things Kylah would be likely to ask, vs. encroaching on any sort of negotiating tactic that Graham would be more likely to initiate. (Maybe contacting the ship... but she's a comms officer, of course she'd think of that.)

[choie]

[Elendil's Heir]

I don't get the reference.

[choie]

Oops sorry, it's from "Mad Men." The character is Pete Campbell, a 24-year-old account executive in 1960 from an old-monied NYC high society family whose education, background and desire to be perceived as a controlled, gentlemanly young man give him a formal, sometimes outdated style of speech that would've been more common at least 10 years earlier.

"A thing like that!" is usually said when he learns of something surprising or disconcerting. I guess it's short for "Dang, who expected a thing like that to happen?!" Hypothetical trigger examples:

- Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon
- Your secretly loathed work rival just got his career and foot cut off after a lawnmower accident
- After years of trying, you learn you're a father
- Medgar Evers is killed (assuming that despite your misogyny, homophobia, bitterness and snobbery, you're impressively egalitarian & forward-looking when it comes to civil rights)



It's the "aloha" of reactions to unexpected stuff. The equivalent for a 1940s Jewish deli owner might be, "Oy, such a thing." An MCU character: "Well, that happened." A Sidonian woman: "Seht'dar's holy balls."

Of course, the most important takeaway from all this is... dude, omg... WATCH MAD MEN!!! That's like my not watching Breaking Bad till 2021! Make it happen, Cap'n.

[Elendil's Heir]

Yeah, yeah, thanks, I know - it's been on my list for quite awhile. Right now I have, I kid you not, almost two freakin' dozen series on my gotta-watch-someday list!

[choie]

Hey Doc, I happen to know some VERY INTELLIGENT and RATIONAL squirrels!

[Elendil's Heir]

I have no doubt about it.

Check out the bottom row of these new Revolutionary War battlefield stamps (click for a closeup): https://store.usps.com/store/product...tamps-S_486304

[choie]

Ha, very cool, boss. Thanks for the link!

[Elendil's Heir]

The latest (August 2025) issue of Naval History magazine has an interesting article on recent robotic deep-sea exploration of the wreck of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5), lost to Japanese torpedoes in the 1942 Battle of Midway.

[choie]

If the Chalnoth barfing his guts out right now is the same one who practically bit Kylah's nose off for daring to inquire about his health when he was sick at the beginning of the journey... Good!

[Elendil's Heir]

You know, he does look oddly familiar to her....

[stolz]

"OK," he replies to Ens. Kylah. "So that control as far as we can tell was specifically for 'shields for 'navigation.' So anything similar might be for defensive shields, or for actually navigating the ship." he nods to Three Crows. "All hands on deck helping Kylah look for anything similar."

I am pretty sure Three Crows is nowhere near the bridge(...?) Vielar had her helping to break into Engineering, so it would take her a minute to run back. I also presume she cannot read Uwat, or I would have expected her to say something earlier.

[choie]

Hm, Graham might've meant St. Croix? I know I keep mixing 'em up! In any event Kylah wasn't so much hoping for the Starfleet folks to help with the Uwat translation as pure pattern recognition. Anyway either persistence paid off or some deity stepped in. Maybe Sid'Os finally answered Nia's pleas from the past few days. (Sidonian prayers must be slower than warp drives. They're still a backwater planet.)

[Elendil's Heir]

Ha! Definitely persistence, but the prayers certainly didn't hurt.

Three Crows is aft with Dr. M., Ens. Rawlings, Lt. Vielar et al., while St. Croix is forward, on the Bridge with Graham and Kylah (the Security officers are an Amerindian and a Frenchwoman, respectively).

[choie]

Okay, IIRC, the human dude's cabin was back across the Common area (at least that's where he was this morning when he got his breakfast served), right? So it's the Doc, Vielar and Three Crows who are able to see the stranger, yes? Since Graham, Kylah & St. Croix are all the way on the Bridge?

[Elendil's Heir]

Actually, when he emerged from his cabin, the man would have been visible to no one, since part of the Yorktown boarding party was back in Engineering, and the other, smaller part was on the Bridge, but we'll roll with what's now been written.

[stolz]

I understood not that anyone saw him emerge from his cabin, but that they would have run into him some unspecified time later (maybe still sitting down somewhere, as instructed, but not necessarily). I hope I did not presume anything I should not have.

[choie]

I could totally be wrong, but I think El Jefe was himself doing a "whoops, my bad" up there -- the exposition describing the guy leaving his cabin does say "You see that he is a dark-skinned man" (I'm paraphrasing), which does imply that at least one of us has set eyes on him. I think your describing Bizhi as coming across Quinn makes a good transition to explain that, though, and it's all pretty smoothly done.

Meanwhile I'm just delighting in that splendid name our new runaway billionaire has. That's positively melodious, EH!

[Elendil's Heir]

Thanks. There were several names bopping around in my head in recent days, and they all came together nicely, I think.

[stolz]

If Three Crows et al. decide that there is a security problem, the Doctor will not report on the comms that there is not, of course. However, they did not arrest the passenger on sight as a dangerous fugitive, and even made polite conversation, so I wrote it like he is who he claims to be.