[STA] USS Excalibur

Interestingly, the way Modiphius explained Extended Tasks, they are more like starship combat than research, with Magnitude maybe enemy ship size, Resistance the armour toughness, and Work Track all the targets to hit (or shields to deplete) in your attack run. Breakthroughs are breaches, obviously.
 
negromaestro said:
Interestingly, the way Modiphius explained Extended Tasks, they are more like starship combat than research, with Magnitude maybe enemy ship size, Resistance the armour toughness, and Work Track all the targets to hit (or shields to deplete) in your attack run. Breakthroughs are breaches, obviously.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's very much how I see it.
 
Well, I think my character went straight down when we accidentally found the saboteur. Bloody Orion crime syndicate types..
 
Oh, I forgot! I'll get on it.
 
Picking up from the last session, where the Excalibur had dealt with some pirates and now faced the threat of their Klingon ally's warp core breaching!
  • Captain Julien came around and discovered he had been poisoned in the officers mess on Narendra
  • Shran and T'Kol dealt masterfully with the warp core issue
  • The escape pod began transmitting - there were no life signs on it :p - and a Romulan Warbird appeared from nowhere!
  • Commander Maeven made herself known and asked where the stricken Romulan ship was (the transmission) and what had happened!?
  • There was a tense stand off between the ships, until Julien convinced Maeven that they had both been tricked! She departed.
  • The convoy was caught up with, Klingons were evacuated, the USS Thunderchild arrived to escort the Mupwl back to Narendra, and everyone got to Array 3-5 safely
We then entered CSI Starfleet mode as the crew patched together the clues - they concluded (correctly) that to poison one Captain and bomb another's ship had to be an inside job on Narendra. They also scanned the wreckage of the raiders and discovered evidence of Orion involvement (leaning into the leads Smirnova had discovered last time)
  • Cut back to Narendra and Smirnova is scrutinising station logs and identifies an Orion dockworker who was on both sites, looking dodgy.
  • The same worker is now 'helping' Shran and his engineers fix the Mupwl, when he realises he's been made and blasts Shran twice with a phaser, critically injuring him!
  • Shran is saved by Captain Akul of the Mupwl - "You've saved my ship - twice - today is NOT a day for you to die!" as he delivers CPR!!
  • The Orion is dealt with by Smirnova et al and is in custody.
The hanging question is why the Romulan was there? No-one knows, but they couldn't have warped in and cloaked and not been seen in the time between the battle and the encounter. They had to be there - which would suggest the attack was pre-determined, maybe to allow the Orion Syndicate to impress the Star Empire at the cost of a couple of old ships? Who knows...
  • Julien is informed that the scientific conference that was postponed by the crisis on Alpha Toryui III is going to be reconvened, especially in light of the artefact captured in that mission.
That's the set-up missions done for the campaign. Next time we delve into the first of the main plot adventures!! At last....
 
Hooray
 
Well, we didn't immediately dive into the main plot, because of illness and work commitments, so instead I took three of the gang on a trip into ... the Lower Decks! In reality, I threw together a handful of Supporting Characters on the bus into work, printed them off and sent them on their merry way to cause havoc. We had...

Crewman Leslie - a lazy Welsh shuttle engineer, furious that the damned Helmsman's problems with transporters meant the shuttles had to actually be serviced for once...
Crewman Giner - a Catian holodeck engineer, sick of synthetic Betazoid meat and increasing horny as the annual mating season approached.
Yeoman Arden - an Efrosian 'Species Solutions' (Read: HR) consultant who seemed to believe everything could be handled with a little workshopping.

They were tasked by their section leader, Petty Officer Tark, an obviously surly Tellurite. to get about their daily tasks and under no circumstances to cause any trouble for the XO as the Captain and the rest of the senior officers were off ship following the return from Array 3-5. They, in turn, made every possible accidental reason to make the XO look like a butchering, brutal dictator who nearly got the ship destroyed and tried to cover her own back - leading to her arrest by Commander Graham of the JAG and getting themselves hauled off for questioning.

Upon their return they were again, balled out by PO Tark as he explained that the XO was the only person holding the ship together whilst the Captain and his chosen away team flounced off around the Expanse, and they were to sort the mess out! And in tried and tested fashion, they each solved each other's problems, cleaning up the situation and clearing the XO's name!

And Ginger got 'satisfaction' too, along the line.

Funny, light, quick game that felt quite like an episode of Red Dwarf, to be honest. Good stuff.
 
And then back to the main plot line for the next session.

The postponed scientific conference on Narendra convenes, and the evidence of alien artifacts and strange electro magnetic pulses around the Expanse are discussed. There's not a huge appetite to do anything about it, until some Romulans turn up and blow up the deep space probes sending data back from the Candidate Three system. Well, that'll be it then! Get the USS Excalibur and the IKS Mupwl out there ASAP!

The ships arrive and the Excalibur takes some damage after a communications mess up about Shields, leading to a Breach and the loss of it's own Nurse Chapel (RIP). The Mupwl goes off hunting and the Excalibur beam down to the planet, eventually, but not before Velik has a proper freak out about the transporters, which he hates.

The crew stalk their way, tricorders in hand, through strange pulsing alien artifacts and power conduits, slowly leading them to a temple like structure, where they see Romulans speaking to a tall, strange alien. The alien communicates telepathically with Velik and off to the spoiler tags we go!

He is Assessor Tredik and he welcomes them, and says they are better than the other visitors. They sneak around the Romulans and make their way into the temple. There they see something trying to materialise. There is a firefight with the Romulans which they win handily, but a stray disruptor blast knocks things askew and the materialisation ends, but not before an alien from the other side identifies herself as one of the Tilikaal and they need help!

Assessor Tredik is not pleased and says this has all happened too early! He says it is time to go and then teleports them to their ship, and then their ship is teleported back to Narendra - as is the Mupwl!

Needless to say, more questions than answers from this Science Officer heavy session!
 
This session happened a while back, but as the above post notes, I forgot to do the minutes. So this might be a bit short and sharp. This session also anchors the campaign in the Trek timeline again, around the Changeling and Tzenkethi storylines, especially in DS9. There's a lot of spoilers here, so into the tag we go!

The Officers are summoned to a 'war council' by Admrial Herbet and General Kargan
Romulans are heading for the Candidate Three system, almost certainly to grasp the ancient technology there
Captain Julien in placed in charge of a flotilla of ships to head back and deter them.
Upon arrival the ships are battered by intense electromagnetic flux
They are contacted by Assessor Tredik begging for help
And then a new planet appears! It's Toryui II, and it is heading on a collision course with the Tilikaal planet!
The USS Thunderchild intercepts and (much to Captain Julien's shock) engages with the Romulans!
The USS Venture tries to stop Toryui II from colliding with the planet, but in so doing, the ship is destroyed.
The USS Excalibur lands a shuttle on the surface and aid Tredik to activate some Tilikall tech
This allows them to communicate, once again, with Ash'Tamalia, and then try to save thousands of slumbering Tilikaal bodies.
And then the Romulans arrive, but after the Excalibur crew has left.
The Thunderchild blows the Romulan ship out of the sky, again, causing great consternation for Julien

So far, so Star Trek, and then we get the rather exciting deus ex machina ending. Back into the tag!

Sparkly lights happen and swirling vortices of energy appear, big enough to take a ship through.
Ash'Tamalia appears and begs for their help - for her and her people.
She offers them her hand and .... they take it.
The USS Excalibur, already battered and injured, starts to pass through the vortex into the Unknown!

And that's where we left it. For too long, but illness and theatres don't stop for Trek. Back again tonight for, effectively, Season 2
 
I am so looking forward to this.
 
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