OK, so this will be the topic where we can chat about our first mission. First of all, I'll give you a bit of background.

We'll be starting off in May 2155, which is four months after the events of "Terra Nova", and the subsequent launch of Challenger. Discovery's planned launch date will be two weeks after we actually launch - at some point later in May, but the events at the start of the mission will fast-track that - not by a great amount (no flying without weapons), but enough for a few minor systems to be left untouched.

The concept behind the mission is essentially that whilst Paxton and the main group of Terra Prime leaders was dealt with, there will be plenty of others who were previously lower on the pecking order who are still at large. Obviously, despite the fact that the Coalition talks started four months ago, they still don't want them to go ahead, and this is a more desperate measure to try and stop them. Their theory is that if they can make it seem as it if is too troublesome and dangerous to do business with Earth, then the talks will break down.

So, feel free to use this thread to post ideas, questions, or work on concepts as the mission goes along.

OK everyone; I know that things have been a bit slow the past week or two; entirely my fault; I had meant to spend more time on my sims, but every time I turned to my computer, something else pulled me away or distracted me.

Nevertheless, I'm looking to getting us moving again, especially now that we have a fifth crew member and I've put up an ad on the fleet forums to try and obtain our missing three (I'd ideally like to have medical and helm filled before we leave spacedock; MACO is less critical)

I'd like to make sure that I get at least one intro post with each of you done as soon as possible; if you have any ideas for how you want that to go down, please get in touch; otherwise over the coming days I'll try and think of a suitable scenario and start one with you myself.

I'm hoping then we'll be able to spend a couple of days (IC) getting into our roles and doing a bit of character finding. On May 12th in game I will be starting off our main mission plot, with a meeting with Admiral Gardner to get our orders. They will mean that we leave spacedock with a lot of minor systems unfinished, and our departure date will be either May 13th or May 14th - not sure yet, and that will probably be determined by how quickly helm and medical get filled

OK everyone, I thought I would give you a bit of a lead on where we're going to be going post-wise.

I'll be putting up the post where Cayne gets killed in an explosion after the JP between Curtis, Cayne and Maya in the Captain's Mess goes out (which will happen after the briefing post, which is near completion). The explosion post will happen on May 15th, so the day after we launched from drydock. The ship will drop out of warp as a result (not through any damage; just as a genuine precaution while they find out what caused the explosion), but we'll find out that the bomb wasn't build properly, and so the explosion was relatively minor - just the armoury control console was damaged, and obviously Cayne was killed in the explosion as well. No ordnance or power systems were affected though.

The Andorian ship bringing out MACOs will detect our sudden stop and probably even the slight reading spike of the explosion, and increase speed to rendezvous with us that same day, bringing Wakefield aboard as soon as possible. As soon as we have determined that the device caused no damage, and checked all other systems for ones similar to it, we'll set off again at warp for Deneva.

At this point I'm open to ideas as to how to deal with the placing of the explosive. Obviously the easiest to go with plot wise is that one of the yards crew planted it in the mass of activity before launch, but another option is to have the saboteur be onboard the ship as a member of the crew. Could cause some interesting tension in that setting, but I'm not sure if it would distract us too much from our main plot. Either way, the MACOs and armoury officers would be given orders to guard sensitive areas of the ship just in case.

Following on from that, we'll deal with our arrival on Deneva. I'm not sure what date that would happen on yet - need to re-research (or re-estimate) the distance between Deneva and Earth and see if I can come up with a warp calculation that won't take too long, but that still makes sense with the speeds we're doing and the distances involved.


Obviously there is plenty of room in there for your own posts and JPs, and I encourage you all to work on those as well. This is just a basic outline so that you know the main points that we're going to be weaving around. I'll also be starting up a JP or two set after the explosion (most likely tomorrow) - so this gives a bit of background into the content of that post, despite the fact it's not actually up on the site yet (so we're not all writing blind )

I kind of like the idea of who planted the bomb being a bit of a mystery for us to solve. Maybe it isn't clear if it was planted before or after launch. I can see it getting distracting, but possibly not too distracting depending on how long we let that subplot play out. Maybe that person is on the ship, but they find a way to make themselves known a short ways into the mission. Either they are caught and used for leverage, or they escape the ship and join the other Terra Prime members on Deneva and segues into the plot there. Either way, it would no longer be a distraction since the responsible person is taken care of. Maya could possibly do a mind meld to "prove" that there are no other Terra Prime members on the Discovery, or something to that effect.

I just wanted to mention that I am around, but beyond a random Chloe runs into and talks to a member of the crew, I don't know if there is anything that I can be involve in. I think at the moment we're investigating the bombing. Are we going to get underway, or are we going to sit tight until we can find out who was responsible? I can have Chloe sit in on any interviews if you'd like. She probably wouldn't be great at determining if someone is lying, but her communication and linguistic background might help a little. For the sake of the story, I'd be willing to hand wave it a bit to make it work.

Sorry, kind of got caught up in a couple of other things myself lately.

My plan as far as where we go from here is that we'll get Dalton set up with his men guarding the sensitive areas of the ship. I'm thinking that by then Leo will have a short list of crew members who could potentially have sympathies with Terra Prime - we'll confine them to quarters, and then we'll resume warp while we start the interviews.

I figure Chloe might be called upon to look into the suspected personnel's communication logs, to see if there is anything that might help us there. We'll start the interviews, possibly with Chloe sitting in to ask questions about particular communications that may be questionable. I figure we'll come across the saboteur during our interviews, and they'll go into the brig - I don't think there's too much of a need to drag out that particular plot element too long, since so few of us are directly involved in it.

We'll be arriving in Deneva orbit shortly after that, where the manhunt will begin for Mosstaff.

That sounds like a good plan to me. I just wanted to double check what was going on.

Perhaps Maya might enlist Chloe's help in an unofficial investigation. Barring that, they could at least discuss the matter in the mess hall.

Good point. That's always a possibility too.

Yeah, I expect that there would be a lot of talking going on outside of any official investigation - we are a very small ship afterall, and a ship predominantly of explorers. Gossip is going to spread fast, and the whole ship will soon be talking about what happened. So even if people aren't involved in the nitty gritty of working on finding out who did it, there's always the chance of extra JPs springing up around the issue.