Sierra

Recruiting: Whispers of Hope- Fires in The Night

OOC thread: 30 days old, "full"
Interest check: 18 hours old, "actively recruiting"

I'm very confused. Definitely interested! but very confused.

Galactic Conquest

DESTINY ASCENDANT
BRIDGE

Muriel tasked additional officers to managing comms. SICI was working overtime with decryption and translation. The number of signals & signatures blasting around in space was growing. More ships appeared, multiple responses came in. The bridge was a flurry of activity as the CO obsessed over the holomap. Tactically the situation was very poor. If things went well with providing a negotiating place for whatever warring parties they’d stumbled upon then a tactical solution would not be required. “Commander we’ve got something for you!”
Comms must have cracked it finally. “I’ve got a near-perfect match to this transmission already in the translation matrix …. And in running through archives I found a partial match to the encryption protocol as well,” SICI seemed pleased at the discovery.
The commander was less enthusiastic. “Play it on speaker,” she answered, “and trawl the archives for whoever we’ve just rediscovered. Save it for me for later.”
“Already collating it. I’ll provide the data when convenient.”
SICI was underrated by most commanders. Her utility was indispensable. "Unknown spacecraft, this is captain Lyra Bowyer of the Cindorian vessel Shadow Star. We are preparing to send a two-party away team to rendezvous with your vessel with the intent of peaceful diplomacy. Requesting confirmation of broadcast."
Muriel gave the comms officers the go-ahead to respond with confirmation. “Vessel Shadow Star, this is Destiny Ascendant confirming intent to receive away team in main hangar, over.”

A myriad of new signals joined the fray all at once. Comms worked hastily to identify it. “We’ve got another communication incoming along with some subspace disturbances. Translation matrix is finishing up and we’re working to piece together the subspace data. What we have is still screwy but it looks like another acknowledgement of envoy dispatch. They’ve included a stipulation that we stand down entirely.”
The subspace data finished compiling and Tactical was able to make a report. They’d isolated both a suspected FTL signature and a subspace sensor burst, but the stellar gravity well was interfering too much to get solid readings on the vessel itself. What the two officers did determine was that it was massive. The commander had departed the bridge, leaving the rookie XO in charge while she prepped to receive the inbound away teams. A third communication came through, this one decoding quicker.
"This is Fleet-Master Rah Nar'Kolimee of the Covenant. I have decided to grant you the blessing of my attendance to the talks. Prepare for my arrival. If you decide to eliminate me during my stay, however. Know that your end will come swiftly like thunder."
The lieutenant sighed. Muriel would be very unhappy about this one. “Commander, we got another one,” he called grimly, “but this one will be more problematic than the rest I suspect.”
“Absolutely fantastic,” she scoffed over her headset relaying to the bridge.
She made her way towards the hangar bay. Both strike teams had already moved there to enforce a perimeter. She called to SICI to have a projection with her as a translator. The various translation matrices were still rough, but they’d have to do for initial contact. It was an occupational hazard they would hit a glitch and offend someone. In this case though Muriel had every intent of doing that herself, at least with the one who was bold enough to threaten them.

---

DESTINY ASCENDANT
MAIN HANGAR

“Commander, we have five large contacts breaking stealth rather close by. They appear to be of the entity identifying itself as ‘the covenant’,” the XO reported.
“What have they said exactly?” she requested, not knowing word for word yet.
Her grip impulsively tightened aggressively around the hilt of her sidearm. “Lock all starboard turrets on the nearest covenant vessel and charge capacitors to full,” she snarled angrily.
“Commander do we intend to aggress on an enemy that outnumbers us five to one with larger, presumably superior vessels?”
“Just be ready lieutenant,” she barked, “I big guns backing big words if that’s what this comes to.”
She made her way into the hangar bay to await anything and everything coming their way. “This is going to be a shitshow …” she muttered over the comms channel that SICI, the marine Sergeant, and the bridge could all hear.

Choice of Romance - Seasons of Youth

Do I need to reserve a baroness title if my character is a baron's daughter? Still deciding where from.

Choice of Romance - Seasons of Youth

I don't think I've ever played Sam before she steals a gun and runs away ... and that before period is exactly when she fits here. I'm excited and nervous.

Galactic Conquest

Seeing as Dragon plugged the discord channel again and I know for a fact we don't have everyone in there (nor are half the people there nearly active enough), I will go ahead and toss up another link for people since the last did expire. Join now! This is a subsection of my personal server so there's a variety of other stuff that takes place on it. Everyone here gets a role to access the private channel in addition to any of the regular channels (come for the roleplay, stay for Factorio and Planetside 2?).

Galactic Conquest

@6slyboy6 I should clarify that the semi-rant post there is not explicitly about you. Bringing your 11km megaship in did prompt it (because as I said, we're up to 3 now I think) but it isn't the only appearance of these and I don't want it to be perceived as personal. It's a gripe I've sort of had with the Covenant but Rak mentioned at one point he was aware of this and was even considering scaling back a bit.

You mention nation-sim and I appreciate that. I think management of power disparity goes double for non-NRP sessions because you want everyone to interact with each other for sake of plot. I refer back to my point about people with modest assets available not wanting to go anywhere near a superweapon. We're here for a grand space opera story around our own ideas of hero/anti-hero and the factions & fleets behind them are foremost a catalyst for that story.

But anyway, its not at all anything personal. I do love what you're bringing to the table even if I would consider it a bit much. Its simply something I finally decided to get around to sharing.

Galactic Conquest

I'll go ahead and voice my concerns about power creeping, because I think we're beginning to see it. I'm even guilty of a little bit of it in the OOC banter. THe number of these "super-dreadnought-titan-doomstar-whatever" vessels is currently 3 now? I won't say that it has to be zero because that's completely unfair of me. I would say though that would you really dispatch the biggest thing in your fleet into a completely unknown situation like this? Realism aside, because realism is honestly boring, it presents the other problem of threatening by implication. Simply having a superweapon in an area is implicitly threatening because of just how much force you could project.

Now I see there's two camps that have begun to form. There's the people who probably or definitely have superweapons, but are choosing to play in a more clandestine fashion with smaller singular crafts and being covert. Then we've got the people who come straight in with the biggest ship they have as a personal transport essentially. I am partial to the former approach but I won't assert one is better than the other. I will however assert that the two are at odds with each other and don't interact well. Those people with the clandestine stealth approach are never in their right minds going to expose themselves to something that could vaporize them by looking at them funny.

As I stated, I am partial to the small, lone ship running quietly approach. I think its more interesting. I also have a multitude of bad experiences with the power games that come from starting off with ultra-dreadnought level scaling. At the very least, I think we need to take a moment and collectively have a discussion about exactly what we want this to be about. Do we intend to focus a bit more on the faction side of things as they throw fleets at anomalies, make alliances, and butt heads around uncharted worlds? Or would we rather focus on the personal stories of extraordinary characters as they brave the unknown and forge allies and enemies alike with no backup fleet coming to help them?

I would strongly argue for the personal stories, however I defer to the opinions of @DragonofTheWest and the group at large.

Galactic Conquest

@BKburke If we're concerned about things getting too powerful, a couple of us are sitting on "I-win buttons" ... or rather I hope other people have them. I have one called AMS Stardust that exists in a strange place: its fully fleshed out in how it exists in my lore, but it's not currently recognized as canon within said lore. I had no intent of calling it (or any other Imperial Navy reinforcements for that matter) but as the number of ludicrous-power factions grows, I'm glad I have it in my back pocket.

I consider the Alduur as a faction on the whole rather strong, but numerically most of the opposing forces have massive advantages and could win the war of attrition long-term. IC this is somewhat mitigated by only having a single tac-ops cruiser at my disposal: versatile, but on the whole weak. Course, The Covenant as an example is definitely something that instantly undermines the raw power I thought I had on the table. If we get too many of those then I need to trade my tac cruiser for a light carrier group or something! Still deciding if I consider that desirable or not. 50/50 on it. :P

Galactic Conquest

Apparently a civility play failed to make anything helpful to me happen. Fine then, plan B! What all do I have in the hangar I can use to send in an air strike...

Galactic Conquest

UNCHARTED SPACE - UNKNOWN PLANET “AURORA”
DESTINY ASCENDANT BRIDGE

More signatures pinged onto the sector map Muriel had on the command table. She scowled as the ship’s prospects of success in a firefight dropped considerably. Winning was no longer an option. The only move they had left should the sector erupt in free-for-all warfare was to hit and run. “Tactical, load a full volley of sleeper torpedoes and stand by to eject.”
Sleeper torps included a secondary low-band comm system, secondary power systems, and cold gas maneuvering jets. They could be launched without igniting their engines and lurk for hours in space before being called upon by a friendly ship to strike a target. Sleeper torps were one of the greatest tools in the black ops arsenal for making a single ship feel like five. Clearly her new first officer was not up to snuff on black ops assets. “Sleeper torpedoes?”
She explained the basics of what they were to him quickly while the autoloader mechanisms seated the weapons into their tubes situated just behind the main hangar. “We set them up, reposition ourselves, and then use them to pinch an enemy between us and a thousand megatons worth of fusion warheads,” she remarked, “They have to guess which angle we’re at and to defend. If timed right, both choices are wrong.”

The communications systems picked up an increasing amount of frantic chatter coming from the planet below. SICI handily brute forced her way through decrypting it, but the actual content was of an unknown language, or languages. The comms officer engaged XenoScript 3.0 to start running analytics & decipher it. The commander was busily worrying about the multitude of small signatures descending onto the same point at ground.
The ship slowly cruised through space, its emissions running minimal to avoid detection. One by one, all six massive torpedoes were launched out of their dorsal-facing tubes, faceless reapers in the blackness waiting to receive a target. “Lieutenant you may like our fancy toys but I don’t think you’ll like what comes next.”
“Oh? And why is that Commander?”
“Because those are plan B. Plan A is much more stupidly dangerous.”
“Absolutely fantastic ...” he answered sarcastically.
“Comms, set up a wide frequency unencrypted broadcast, local radio bands. Tactical, go ahead and take us out of stealth,” she interrupted the tactical officers’ synchronous protests against transmitting outside of directed laser comms, “raise shields and make sure all our weapons systems are loaded.”

“What exactly are you doing, Commander?”
In fairness, she was going outside of the usual black ops playbook. Even if he was familiar with that, this move might still be alien to him. “We have no idea exactly what we’re dealing with here and the number of players at this table is growing. We’re not learning anything by sitting here doing nothing, so I’m making a gambit.”
She turned back to the holotable, linked her headset to the open channel, and unmuted the broadcast. “This is Commander Muriel Dar’Tuura of the cruiser Destiny Ascendant. I offer my hangar bay as diplomatic neutral ground. Those who wish may send an envoy post haste. Please limit security escort to four personnel.”

The lieutenant looked shocked. His experience being with a standard navy fleet, impromptu diplomacy was so far out of line that this decision would have earned a court martial. Here when the odds were beginning to stack against them, it was Muriel’s best move to learn just what in Aria’s name she was dealing with. She motioned to the comms station to kill the channel. It had served its purpose. Now she engaged ship intercom to contact her pilots & marines. “Both strike groups, gear for security and ship defense. We are preparing to receive envoy teams in the main hangar. Look sharp, stay alert, carry rifles,” she turned back to the command table, “SICI engage security status 3A. The briefing rooms on the fore side of the flight deck is as far as any visitors are allowed to get. Sound general quarters.”

The ship intercom blared to life everywhere with a quick burst of five high-pitched beeps. “All crew, general quarters! All crew, general quarters!” SICI’s artificial voice blared over the speakers. The second-shift crew who were mostly asleep on downtime, suddenly were summoned awake to double-staff the ship and prep CIC, the armored command bunker farther back within the ship. The commander stepped off the bridge - leaving her new officer in charge - so she could prep to meet whatever she’d just invited aboard. Meanwhile near 50 trained soldiers were prepping their gear to enforce security in the hangar lest their visitors try to kill them, each other, or whatever else. Gratuitous security for an unprecedented move was never a bad idea.