krow
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Post by krow on Feb 21, 2015 0:53:20 GMT
Wildfire Episode 1,
The USS Exodus received a distress call from a small planetary colony just outside of Federation space, in the middle of nowhere. It was a simple distress call, no message to it. Just a basic SOS. Upon arriving, they discovered a desert planet with only one city on the surface. The city was badly damaged and parts of it on fire. Three ships were in orbit over the city bombarding it with very basic plasma cannons and missles, trying in vain to level the city. Exodus charged weapons and hailed the ships, demanding they stand down. The ships immediately complied. The lead vessel returned the hail and a beaten to hell man appeared on screen. He revealed that the distress call had been active for over a week, and blamed the lack of Starfleet help on a weak transmitter. He explained that some kind of sickness had afflicted the city and they were trying to eradicate it. He said whatever it was changed people into violent monsters who killed thousands. Scans of the city revealed the population of nearly 50,000 had been reduced to maybe a quarter of that. The man explained that they had taken their survivors and injured, packed 5 transport ships with them, and sent them in the direction of the nearest colony since they had better medical facilities. Exodus sent word to Starfleet to intercept and quarantine the transports. However, it remains to be seen if any Starfleet ships were in range to get there in time... The man told them what his wife informed him. His wife was apparently a doctor. She said it was unlike anything they'd seen before, and hopped species effortlessly. The man told them that everyone down on the planet was already dead. The crew decided to send an away team to the planet to gather samples and search for survivors. The man overheard since the comm call was still open, and informed them in a panicked voice that they couldn't beam down. The disease escaped all their efforts at quarantine, including going through forcefields and eating its way into sealed environmental suits. They zoomed in on a portion of the city in time to see a woman creep along the street. She stepped on a piece of glass, saw something, and started running. Several hundred people came on screen chasing her, clawing over each other in an effort to get to her. Like a tidal wave of people. Still, they decided to send down and away team.
I should note that this is where the RP faltered. It was my fault, since I didn't have a ground map lined up for them to use. I honestly didn't think they'd beam down after hearing the disease would infect people through the EV suits. But I altered the plot, made the sickness FAR less deadly, and pulled a foundry map out of my ass. Because if I hadn't nerfed it, you would have found the man was telling the truth. Everyone on the away team would have died.
A mostly abandoned apartment building was found into which they Exodus AI beamed in first, in her Android body. She determined the air was mostly clean and there was nothing trying to kill her so the rest of the away team beamed down. They found a woman tied to a bed by her arms and legs, fully clothed. They did a scan that revealed two things. First, part of her frontal lobe had been dissolved or eaten away. It was the part that governed higher brain function. Without it, the person would be prone to violent unrelenting rage. The person's urges and hungers would go unchecked. If you need a cultural parallel, think Reavers from Firefly and Serenity. Also, every single tissue and fluid of her body was infected. Meaning spit, blood, urine, sweat, everything was highly infectious. They took samples and returned to the ship, now able to say for certain that once infected there was no saving a person. Exodus chose to ignore the man's pleading. He begged them to vaporize the city before it spread. They instead established planetary quarantine. While I'm not sure what this entails, I assume it means warning buoys.
Did the transport ships make it to the next colony or did backup stop them in time? Were the three ships in orbit infected? If so, what happened to them? Will the Doctor's quarantine hold on the samples, or will it infect the Exodus? Will the disease spread from the destroyed city? And most importantly, where did it come from? What are the details? Find out on Wildfire: Episode 2.
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krow
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Post by krow on Feb 25, 2015 22:02:33 GMT
Wildfire Episode 2,
The episode started with a news broadcast, summing up some of the events that happened since the first encounter with the pathogen. First, the Starfleet ships the Exodus called to intercept the transport ships were too far away to reach them in time. Considering the original distress call had been going on for a week and the planet was outside of Federation space. The Medical ship U.S.S. Port-au-Prince arrived at the second colony a day after the five transport ships did. By then it was too late to prevent infection, but possible to contain it. The survivors were transported to a medical facility in a small city away from the other major cities on the planet. So the death toll was in the thousands instead of the tens of thousands or millions. The Port-au-Prince was able to contain the infection in that small city using mainly holograms and volunteer Androids. But for how long they can contain is it a mystery. The captain of the Prince hailed the Exodus after the news broadcast requesting their assistance to, in his words, "help clean up the mess YOU made". He told them that the doctors have decided the pathogen was manufactured and delivered to the original colony. Eye witness reports from some of the survivors describe a large unknown ship in orbit over the planet hours before the first person came down with the sickness. He also transmitted their findings to the Exodus.
The disease appears to be an unknown kind of organism. Not a virus, parasite, etc. It doesn't match any known types of pathogens. The disease has two distinct strains. One infects in seconds through the skin, eyes, nose, mouth, anything it comes in contact with. Once in the bloodsteam, it goes to the brain and proceeds to eat a very neat and specific hole in the frontal lobe. The process is agonizing and quick. Full transformation in less than 15 seconds. Once the hole is made, the pathogen infests every tissue and fluid in the body, making the person a walking carrier. They're affected by uncontrollable rage, killing and maiming anyone. They also feel no pain, and are unnaturally strong due to large amounts of adrenaline. The second strain is identical, aside from one small detail. After infection, it pools in the brain stem for anywhere from 3 days to two weeks before triggering the change. Seemingly at random. They're not contagious during this time, but infected are nearly impossible to detect until they change. Once changed, there is no cure.
The pathogen mutates to fit any host species anatomy, including Bolian. If you manage to get it magnified under a microscope without it killing you, it looks like black tar. Very very tiny black tar. BUT it doesn't live long out of a live host. Once in a vial or container away from living tissue, it dies and breaks down into base elements. Essentially vanishing. But in the few hours it takes to degrade, it randomly mutates. It'll sometimes eat through metal or glass, sometimes releasing infectious spores of some kind into the air, almost as if frantically trying to infect anyone near it. Oh, and it's nearly invisible to sensors and transporter filters. So have fun with that.
The Exodus headed for the original colony to look for any evidence of a mystery ship. Upon arriving, they discovered two things. First, an unknown warp trail leading into and out of the system. It was an old trail, about a month degraded and very faint. Corresponding to the time of the initial infection. Second, several new warp signatures popped up since their last visit. They traced these to engine trails leading to a small space port on the city. It seems someone in the city took off with three small transport ships and went to warp, heading for a small mining colony on a nearby Asteroid. This posed a dilemma for the Exodus. Follow the mystery ship that may have been responsible for the infection, and try to stop it before it possibly infects another planet. Or follow the 3 transport ships and stop them before they possibly infect the mining colony. The Captain decided to tell Starfleet to chase down the transport ships and proceeded in the opposite direction, chasing the month old mystery ship trail. However, they quickly remembered that Starfleet is a long way away. The nearest ship would reach the ships eight hours after they reached the colony. So they hailed the colony to instruct them to attack and destroy the incoming ships. The space redneck that answered informed them that not only are they unarmed, but why would they attack their allies? He stated that they must be bringing their supply shipment early. And that they didn't trust Starfleet at all. Think the prospector from Blazing Saddles. The GM had way too much fun typing in space yokel. Luckily, the Exodus decided to turn around and intercept the transports this time. They managed to reach them less than an hour before they would reach the mining colony. When hailed, all that was heard on the other end was screaming, laughing, and wet ripping noises. All three ships dropped out of warp. Two turned and attempted to ram the Exodus. They each took a Quantum torpedo to the nose and were vaporized. The third continued to head for the colony. The Exodus grabbed it in a tractor beam and scanned it using special modified sensors, fine tuned to act as medical scanners. They got some very high detailed scans of some of the crew in various stages of infection before someone on the ship had too much fun in the engine room and the little transport's core went critical. It exploded, leaving no trace.
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krow
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Post by krow on Mar 2, 2015 23:51:35 GMT
Wildfire Episode 3: Calamity Rising
The episode started with the USS Exodus being hailed by a Starfleet admiral. He explained that for the last week, several Starfleet ships had been following the warp trail from the unknown ship. They hadn't found anything, and it was looking like they were on a wild goose chase. He informed them that a sensor buoy had detected the warp trail only a couple hours ago, heading into the Badlands. Their orders were to follow the trail, find the ship, learn as much as they can about it, and report back. They were ordered to NOT engage the unknown ship. The Exodus quickly complied and made best speed to the Badlands. The engine trail was fresh and led right into the plasma storms. But as the Exodus was about to enter the Badlands, a massive Bortasqu' class dreadnought decloaked and grabbed them in a tractor beam. Exodus raised shields, armed weapons, but luckily didn't fire. The Bortas hailed them and they were met with the smiling face of the sector's most loveable pirate, Calamity Jane. The Cardassian proceeded to inform them that they were chasing the same "beastie" and said she had an offer for the Exodus. After releasing them from the tractor beam, she explained.
The ghost ship that Calamity Jane had been hunting was one in the same as the plague ship the Exodus was chasing. She said that the invisible monster had been killing her men and destroying her ships lately. She explained that among other things, she was a weapons dealer. Her group had recently come into possession of some very illegal and deadly torpedoes. But before she could get rid of them, her fleet was hit and the torpedoes were stolen by the Ghost Ship. She said the torpedoes were curious custom made ones designed to be launched into a planet's atmosphere in order to spread a bio-weapon into the air.
But she said her Bortasqu' was a Warship and not designed with science in mind like Starfleet ships are. So her offer was simple. The Exodus tracks down the ship, and Calamity Jane kills it. The Exodus accepted, seeing that they would still be following orders if someone else did the shooting. They proceeded into the plasma storms, the Bortas following. As they threaded their way deeper, the trail led into a very thick section of storms. Pushing through the plasma torpedoes, they emerged into a large open space with no storms. The eye of the storm. The unknown engine trail led into the center, but there was no ship. The Exodus modified a torpedo to be used as a kind of depth charge, creating a shock wave in the hopes that it would silhouette the ghost ship. They fired it, and it worked. The huge ship appeared on sensors briefly. The Bortas opened fire, but the Cannon shots went right through. The ship had moved. Checking gravity eddies and currents, the Exodus quickly found that the ship was moving towards them. The Bortas started spraying canon fire in a wide arc. One shot at the edge made contact, and they narrowed the cone. Another shock wave torpedo illuminated the target again, and the Bortas fired her massive nose mounted disruptor auto Cannon. The shot blew off some debris that when scanned, was revealed to be Romulan. A moment later, something slammed into the Bortas. It buckled her hull along the neck and shoved her down. The Bortas' cannons continued to hammer the invisible target, which flickered, wavered, and slowly appeared. The mystery Ghost Ship, the Plague Ship, was unveiled as a very odd looking Scimitar class. It was heavily modified. Odd bits of armor were bolted to her hull here and there giving her a beaten up patchwork look. Armor was layered along the front of her wings, one of them still trying to cut its way through the Bortas. The so called "Phantom Blade" was a Scimitar, using a wing to cut through ships while cloaked. The Warbird had the word "Scar" on one wing, barely discernable through the damage and scratches to her hull. The Scimitar gunned her engines, still trying to shove its way through the Bortas as the Bortas continued firing, trying to pull away. Both ships spiraled down into the swirling plasma storms, locked in an epic struggle to the death. Ahab sinking into the ocean with her white whale. As they vanished, the Exodus fired a subspace tracking beacon which vanished after the ships. They got confirmation that the beacon attached to something, before the interference from the storms made the beacon and both ships vanish completely. If the ship with the beacon pops back up again, it'll have to clear the storms for it to be detected. Most likely in exactly a week.
The Exodus left the Badlands and reported their findings to the Admiral, ending the episode.
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krow
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Post by krow on Mar 24, 2015 23:31:38 GMT
Wildfire Episode 4: The Chase
Now fully repaired from their run in with the Pirate freighter, the Exodus set out again. The ship quickly detected the signal from their subspace tracker they launched into the swirling storms after the Scimitar. The signal showed the ship leaving the Badlands at low warp on a course that would take them close to Starbase 146. The Exodus plotted and intercept course and sent a priority call for assistance to any ships within range. Three ships answered the call. The Yorkdown, Protector, and Montgomery.
The four ships formed up with Exodus in the lead. They overtook the signal and discovered the unknown ship was cloaked, but only barely. The sensors showed them that there was in fact a ship there and that is was massive, easily dreadnought size. However, aside from residual plasma from the storms and some hints of weapons fire, that's all they could find out. The class of the ship and its condition remained a mystery. After repeated attempts to hail the ship, it dropped out of warp and continued at impulse. A warning shot halted the cloaked ship as the 4 Starfleet vessels surrounded it. Instead of opening fire, they talked about options. A garbled message came over comms, making the crews wonder if it was a distress call. But before a decision could be made, the unknown ship did a 180 and went to warp in the direction it came from. Barely. It was clearly having issues with its warp drive.
The 4 ships pursued. Only to meet a full spread of very primitive tractor beam mines. They evaded, but only barely. Finally catching up, the ships decided on a plan to stop the unknown ship. They activated their tractor beams together and grabbed the mystery ship. It dropped it out of warp and disabled the cloak, revealing the annoying fact that Exodus had missed with her probe, hitting the Bortasqu' instead. An easy mistake considering how close the two ships were.
The GM would like to note here that he was in fact trying to pull one over on the players. I was seeing if the players would shoot at the unknown ship, seeing as you assumed it was the Plagueship. If you had, you would have had a very pissed off Pirate on your hands with a damaged, but still dangerous Bortas who wouldn't accept a "whoops my bad" as an apology. It seems the players are quickly learning to not shoot first, second, or even third. At least when I'm GMing anyway. I'm tickled pink that they decided to act like Starfleet instead of Klingons, like many Starfleet RPers do. Moving on.
Calamity Jane was clearly not happy. She moved her ship into a defensive stance, full broadside to the Fed ships, and fired a warning barrage from her still functioning cannons. An explosion took out what was left of her engines, leaving her dead in the water. It was at this point that she finally got her comms system working again. In her usual way, she explained that over half her crew was dead and she was NOT pleased to have the Feds harassing her. After the Scimitar had rammed her, some of her crew near the impact site became infected and started killing people. At the first sign of infection, she had initiated a purge protocol on the forward half of her ship. Over half her crew were incinerated by the internal purge systems, stopping the infection dead in its tracks. She informed the Feds that she had killed over a thousand crew to make sure an infected fifty didn't spread.
But she had an offer. She claims that her crew had managed to hack part of the Scimitar's systems and gleaned some important information. In exchange for this information, she demanded Starfleet repair her ship fully. To full combat ready status. Then and only then would she give them the information she claimed they desperately needed to stop the Scimitar known only as "Scar".
Starfleet of course had no real choice in the matter, and accepted after making a show of arguing about it. And as much as the crew hates Jane, they towed her back to Starbase 146 under full quarantine protocol to repair her ship. Which will most likely take exactly one week.
Was Jane lying? If not, is the information she has enough to take down Scar once and for all? Or will Jane do as pirates do and turn her ship against the Feds in firery retribution? Will Exodus and her allies be able to stop Scar in time, or will the Plagueship infect another world? And even if they do find it, will they be able to fight the mystery spectre of a ship?
And this biggest question of all, perhaps the most important: Who's behind it?
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krow
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Post by krow on Apr 11, 2015 13:58:36 GMT
Wildfire Episode 5: Ghosts in the Steam
Calamity Jane's repairs finally completed. The Pirate demanded to be released from the drydock so she could take her Borasqu' out of range of the detection grid. She said the only way she'd tell Exodus what she learned, is if she was free and cloaked. After some bickering, threats, and posturing, Exodus finally agreed. Since they couldn't risk open combat with Jane, not with the information she had. She moved away and cloaked. Then gave them the information they needed, as she promised.
During the battle, Jane's ship had hacked a single set of coordinates from the Scimitar's nav computer. A planet. The planet is located at the edge of Federation space, not far from the planet where the pathogen first appeared. It's a pre-warp civilization with a massive population of seven billion. The planet is rather large, and the people on it are in an age of scientific discovery. Their culture is dominated by new and marvelous steam powered machines, telescopes, scholars, and mathematicians.
So Exodus set sail for the Steampunk planet. En-route, Limi tried to convince Tiana to set up a quarantine protocol similar to the one that Jane used on her ship to stop the infection in its tracks. Jane, if you remember, used internal systems to incinerate half her crew. She vaporized over a thousand people to stop an infected fifty people from spreading it further. Tiana refused, and the Exodus remained an incineration free zone.
Upon arriving, scans revealed a number of engine trails entering and exiting the system, all varying in age and all belonging to the mystery Scimitar, "Scar". There was no sign of the ship. But many of the engine trails intersected over a single large city. Scans of the planet revealed a distinct lack of any panicked mobs, burning cities, or wandering packs of monster people. All seemed peaceful. Visual scans revealed however, in the city in question, many of the shop fronts had paintings and statues of what was clearly a Scimitar class Warbird. Further scans revealed the native population to be remarkably similar to Humans, with slight differences in internal structure and body chemistry. The most distinctive difference was stripes around the eyes and mouth, radiating outward.
So the crew formed an away team, dressed the part, and beamed down into an abandoned alley. The players began to explore. Nothing seemed amiss at first. The people around the city were polite and calm with no signs of panic or fear anywhere. Limi had the right idea and entered a shop that had a Scimitar statue in the front window. Through some careful and subtle questioning, she not only got a deal on an original work of art, but learned who carved it. According to the jolly old shop owner, it was carved by a man named Threll. The shopkeeper said that Threll wasn't usually a carver, but he was using the "Great Bird" as proof of his theories and, in his opinion, was cashing in on the publicity. Limi managed to get directions to Threll's house in order to get his engraving on the statue.
Meanwhile, people attempted to find anything odd via tricorders or abilities that let them listen to every conversation in the area instead of asking around or talking to people. The GM did not give them any clues. Meanwhile, the crew still on the Exodus noted a figure in white darting from rooftop to rooftop. Scanners couldn't get a fix on the person, and systems like thermal were useless with the heat and steam machines all over the city. They relayed the location of the individual to the away team. The Pulsar android shell pursued the figure, and used her robo-legs to jump to the top of the buildings to come face to face with the entity. It said a single word. "Interloper". Pulsar replied with "Something tells me you don't exactly belong here either, sir. Though it is nice to know you have a voice.". The figure promptly turned and walked away, stepping off the edge of a building and vanishing.
Limi reached the house of Threll and found his door heavy, steel, and covered in locks. She managed to talk her way inside, using the autograph angle. During the conversation, here's what was revealed. His house was covered in sketches and equations. Papers everywhere showed blueprints, mathematical equations, what looked like protein chains, and countless other scientific mumbo jumbo. Bits of telescopes laid around the room, as well as other countless unidentifiable bits of machinery. The man was very paranoid, and when he figured out she wasn't there for his signature, pointed a gun at her. Limi insisted she was interested in what he had discovered, and claimed to be able to help him. The man through his paranoia and vagueness said, "Listen to me very carefully. The council had no choice. What's going on is for the best. It was either this, or we all die. We... we didn't have a choice." He said he'd reveal everything, but not then. He told her to come back in a week, claiming he'd be able to talk then.
She left and went outside in time to hear a loud noise. Everyone looked up, hearing metal clang against metal. A Zeppelin had collided with something invisible only a couple hundred feet in the air. Some bits of metal nose-plating rained down, and the Zeppelin backed away, turned, and resumed course in another direction while the air shimmered and rippled. It turns out, the Plague Ship had been closer than they thought all along. The wings of the Scimitar known as "Scar" cradling the city from above. The crew returned to Exodus, and it was decided to observe the planet till the meeting with Threll.
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krow
Member
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Post by krow on Apr 18, 2015 8:33:45 GMT
Wildfire Episode 6: The Price of Answers
I'm going to be lazy with this summary. I've been very busy and haven't had time to go over the log of the RP in detail. It was a 3 hour long session where a LOT of stuff happened. I also GMed it while at work during a very busy day, so I was distracted and scatter brained. A lot got jumbled and confused in my memory. If I get something wrong or missed an important detail, tell me and I'll edit this post to correct it.
The week passed and the crew went back to see the inventor, Threll. On their way to see him, many of the away team glimpsed a figure or figures in white on the rooftops or in the crowd. During the meeting with Threll, some plot dumping happened. He said he thinks the invisible machine over their city is responsible for the recent disappearances. He said the people missing were homeless, or less than refutable characters, so the council swept it under the rug. The away team stated the ship holds a terrible secret, and they believe it's connected. Threll is a veteran of something called the "Plague Wars" than decimated his planet. It was revealed that after the end of the war, all the nations involved banded together and banished sickness from their planet completely. No member of his (as yet unnamed) species has gotten so much as a sniffle in over 50 years. They're completely immune to all diseases, bacteria, pathogens, or even allergens on their planet. It was revealed to him that they were not from his planet. He also told them of the people in white.
The figures dressed in white, as Threll explained it, was something of a ghost story. During the war, there was a unit of soldiers who would travel through the trenches and grant a merciful death to soldiers who were too diseased or sickly to fight or be anything more than a burden. They were known as Steam Wraiths and became synonymous with death. As the war went on, their idea of what was "too sick to fight" became looser. They began to kill more and more healthy people until for some unknown reason, they started to kill seemingly at random. Finally, one nation decided to put a stop to them. An elite group of soldiers were sent to hunt them down. They found the Steam Wraiths and killed them all. But their legend continued, and it was said their spirits still haunt their world.
Meanwhile, an engineer went to fix the internal defense turrets the Exodus apparently has. During his maintenance, a figure in white stepped out of the wall and into the hall behind him before vanishing back into the bulkhead. Scans revealed a kind of phase shifting technology. The crew was able to track the signal like breadcrumbs to the science lab where the initial testing on the Hate Plague happened. They found one of the Steam Wraiths hunched over a console reading the information Exodus had gathered on the pathogen. Tiana ordered the Pulsar A.I. to cut power to the console after the Wraith completely ignored them. That got its attention. It seemed to address them with clinical disdain and requested they power back on the console so it could finish reading, stating it needed to find out what they'd learned. After refusing, it proceeded to offer an exchange. "I learn how much you know, and your co-workers on the planet live."
When they didn't answer yes or no, it assumed it was a no and went to leave. Then the Pulsar A.I. spoke up. I'll post the conversation here, since it was fairly important.
slinkiisu: I'm willing to exchange information. I for one am quite curious about what you do with the people from the planet below. Do you ship them off to somewhere to spread disease, or are they just being quarantined...?
khaoskrow: "Curious. You do know more than we thought. This may need to be rectified. We were unaware of how much the Inventor knew."
slinkiisu: I am a computer, it is my job to collect facts annd collate data.
khaoskrow: "This vessel has an artificial sentience?"
vitas33: Yes. You just spoke with her.
khaoskrow: "Fascinating... And you're aware of the Pathogen? What do you know of it?"
slinkiisu: We are aware of what it does to most sentients it comes into contact with. Turning them feral.
Or, more specifically, blocking off the higher functions of their brains and reducing them to an animalistic, violent state.
asd886: "...I don't think you're in a position to keep asking questions, whoever you are. You haven't identified yourself."
khaoskrow: "I see. And what do you know of the end phases of the disease? After a subject has been 'feral' as you described it for long periods of time."
vitas33: We haven't heard from the ships monitoring the affected planets.
khaoskrow: "Very good, thank you. I have no more questions. I'll be going now."
asd886: "Hey, wait!"
vitas33: *tries to gently grab the intruder's arm again*
johnathanzadoc: O'maly: Hold up now mate...
slinkiisu: Would you like to find out what happens when concentrated energy comes into contact with a phased being? I'm sure given a few seconds I could find a frequency that would be excruciating.
khaoskrow: "Are you threatening me with pain, computer?"
asd886: "Ex! What the hell?"
vitas33: Ex, it's ok. I'm sure our guest will cooperate with us willingly. won't you?
khaoskrow: "Let me think. Cooperate, or face 'excruciating' pain. I chose option number three. Teaching you what that word truly means."
After that, it phased through the wall and left. Back on the planet, the away team deemed it important to take Threll with them back up to Exodus. They beamed up, taking him with them. Also, it's of note that the airships passing back and forth through the sky passed through the area where the Scimitar had been with impunity.
It seems the Warbird "Scar" has moved.
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krow
Member
Posts: 177
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Post by krow on Apr 25, 2015 2:27:34 GMT
Wildfire Episode 7,
The inventor Threll had spent the last week on the ship seeing the sights and looking at all Starfleet's marvelous inventions. Some of the bridge crew went down to the lounge to talk to him. It started well as the old man was terribly excited about everything. They started asking him questions about the Scimitar, trying to figure out what he knew. The old man quickly became irritated by the repeated questions after stating he didn't know anything about it other than the brief sighting everyone in the city saw.
Through the various questioning, Threll revealed some important information. First, his race is absurdly long lived. During the plague wars, each side developed newer and more deadly diseases to unleash upon the other side. Before the war, he was a botanist. During the war, he manned an artillery piece near the front lines. After the war ended, he was conscripted into the team responsible for curing his race of diseases completely. The last two members of this team recently died or vanished, making Threll the last one alive with the secrets for how their race became immune to all diseases, pathogens, and allergens.
When told of the Plague Ship and the pathogen it carried, he told them yet again he didn't know anything about it. He wasn't part of the teams developing diseases, so the plage Scar carried isn't one he knows. He did however share a theory. He said he believes the Scimitar is a Plague runner. During the war, these were delivery methods where infected Airships were crash landed behind enemy lines. Both sides would also rush to develop cures to the diseases the other side created, in a kind of plague arms race. Assaults were regularly made on hospitals where cures were being developed in an attempt to stop them. He stated his belief that the Scimitar is doing something similar.
The Exodus crew began pushing the man to reveal what he knew of the cure. He became increasingly agitated, stating he couldn't just hand something that powerful over to people he didn't trust. He believed Starfleet could be lying about everything in an attempt to get the cure from him. He proposed a trade. His people were rebuilding from the Plague Wars, and Replicator technology could feed the starving millions. Tiana left to consider his offer. At this point, the security officer decided to show Threll his phaser. After learning what button was the "shoot" button, he turned the weapon on the security officer and demanded to be returned to his house.
To him, it all had become clear. The Scimitar, the Steam Wraiths, all of it was made up to get the cure from him. He said that the Exodus crew were the ones abducting people, and when they couldn't get the cure from that, they went to him with a story designed to make him think he was in danger and to trust them. He said they'd never give him the technology to help his planet, and refused to believe the ONE piece of evidence given to him as proof of their claim. The security footage from the Steam Wraith in the Science lab. Since future people can use photoshop and dress up in white too.
Eventually, he was disarmed once he realized the weapon didn't work due to a dampening field. Tiana tried the "little blue dot" speech that Picard used. However, Threll wasn't a wide eyed youngster and had been on the ship for a week. Plenty of time to look at his planet and lose the shock and awe that made Picard's speech so powerful. Finally, they agreed to send him back to his home. On the transporter pad, they mentioned bio-engineered crops. He seemed interested, but insisted he needed to go home to rest and think. The man was clearly overwhelmed and terrified. That, and the session had gone 3 hours and the GM had to leave.
He was returned to his home to rest and think alone. Or... Is he alone?
Sidenote: This was my first attempt with Exodus crew in a diplomacy situation. If you've ever met an old eccentric man, you know just how stubborn and set in their ways they are. The elderly are interesting. They're old, so they insist they know best. And it's hard to shake them of that. And being old is scary. Your body is weaker than it ever was, and your mind can have some major problems as well. This makes them often times easily rattled and frightened. This RP was my attempt to get Exodus crew to think on how to best motivate and talk to a unique and complicated individual. And a little spoiler? Wildfire is just part one. Part two is going to be mostly diplomacy RP like this. Where you have to convince someone of something when they REALLY don't want to be convinced. Because anyone can shoot an enemy. What makes Starfleet RP so special, is the ability to out-talk and out-think an enemy. So start thinking outside the box, guys.
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