Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Captain's Log USS Guadalcanal Through Durandal Wormhole Stardate 0708.16

(Moderator's note: This marks the Guadalcanal's entry into the Delta Quadrant. It adds a bit of open-ended surprise, and the first random planetary adventure. The idea here is to  explore the straight story-telling aspect of the game. Not to say that the Guadalcanal won't see combat in the Delta Quadrant. It will. But this will show the possibilities of straight story-telling and exploration. In this case, the adventure is based on two random factors. One is a 4d6 roll for the type of planet. The other is a 3d6 for the type of mission. In this case, I ended up with a Class C planet, much like Pluto, or Psi 2000 from TOS "The Naked Time". The mission was simply this: "upon beaming down to the planet's surface, your landing party vanishes". The way I addressed it was, I thought, unique)

Stardate 0708.16
USS Guadalcanal
Captain Murphy

We found ourselves deposited in an unexpected location in the Delta Quadrant. Rather than the Nasari system, where we were due to rendezvous with the USS Voyager, we find ourselves close the Ocampa homeworld in the Jibalia sector. That actually puts us more than 2,000 lightyears distant from Voyager, and essentially out of range. We will remain in the neighborhood, taking care to avoid contact with the Kazon Ogla sect and awaiting the arrival of a construction team from the Alpha Quadrant that will construct Starbase Lighthouse Delta. While Starfleet is determined to establish a presence in the Delta Quadrant, there was no intention of establishing that presence in the heart of unfriendly territory. But we are here, and for the moment, the door is still one-way. Besides, we don't run just when it gets interesting.

Our first day of exploration began with an investigation of the third planet in the Jibalia system. It is a Class C planet. Geoinactive, with a frozen atmosphere and a surface temperature far below humanoid tolerance. Geological scans show it is approximately two billion years old, which is relatively young for this class of planet.

That was to be the end of our survey of Jibalia III until we detected what seemed to be an artificial signal emanating from the planet. It didn't match any known frequencies, and resisted our every attempt to decipher it. I led an away team that also included the science officer, senior geologist, and two security officers. After a full twenty minutes spent suiting up for duty on a Class C planet, we transported... and seconds later appeared on the bridge. A few choice words later, we moved back to the transporter room, and tried again. After the third attempt we took off our suits. Tonight the science lab is running a detailed scan of the planet, and tomorrow we'll take a shuttle down to have a closer look at things.

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