Idea stolen from the jacket of "Chronoliths."
D'oh! Did this thread die? Rats.
Title: This Flag Planted...
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
A large "monolith" style object appears in close orbit of a colonized world, and immediately enters the upper atmosphere. The players are members of the crew rushing to evac the planet, or get the colonists to somewhere safe before the big monolith slams into the planet and deals a heck of a lot of damage to the ecosystem. But it lands very much like a marker - and its covered in strange writings and odd languages.
The Universal Translator takes some time to figure out what the monolith says... and when it does, there's a surprise in store: it's a marker denoting the victory of the great XYZ empire against this planet... in a year that's nearly fifty years away.
Uhoh.
Another monolith appears in orbit of another nearby planet where a colony is planned to begin construction. It lands with the same effects. The marker shows a date a year earlier than the one before it.
Another shows up near a nebula.
Extrapolation shows that the monoliths are likely to show up in some seriously habited spots rather soon, and its up to the crew to figure out who the progenitors of this XYZ empire are, and track down the people starting to form it. Of course, does it violate the temporal prime directive to stop them now to erase those monoliths from happening? Uhoh.
Michael Barratt
(I'm baaaaaaack.)
Stolen from "The Golden Fleece," by Robert J. Sawyer
Title: Murder
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
The crew's ship was investigating a planet that recently blew itself up in a nuclear holocaust, when suddenly -
- BANG! -
- The crew's ship, damaged by the passing of a ship using a form of gravity drive (basically a ship that creates a focused point of high gravity ahead of itself, thus "Falling" forward through space), make first contact with the Argani.
The Argani are coming from a system far away, toward a world they are colonizing for the first time. The journey, via Gravity Drive, will take nearly fifteen years, and they have an enclosed system inside their ship, which is basically an entire city, complete with holographic "beaches," transplanted forests, and so forth, and a faboo artificial intelligence that runs most of the city functions. It's a wonderful environment, and since the crew will be co-ordinating repairs for at least a week or two, the Captain allows shoreleave.
Alas, crew start having "accidents" that seem somewhat fishy, even a few deaths. The pattern is astronomers and stellar cartographers, and then, an Argani who was working with the chief science officer also shows up dead... What's going on?
Well, anyone in the know of the local sector looking at the star logs of the Argani's long journey will realize they're faked. The ship has been circling it's own system for ages, under the guidance of the artificial intelligence, who, along with the other world artificial intelligences, realized that a nuclear confrontation was soon coming to pass. So the Argani mission was put forth, the crew boarded, and set out - and then the war broke out on the planet behind them. The AI is also behind the killings - people who figured out the truth had to be offed.
Why? Because the AIs survived the war, as they planned to, and are even now beginning their "other" mission - they're going to launch automated terraforming devices, some with AIs of their own, to colonize the fourth planet of the next closest system. Once they're done, the ship AI will let the crew arrive, thinking they've travelled vast distances to another class-M planet they'd found so very far away, and colonize.
The Federation ship can be half-way through the confusion of the beginning attacks and murders when they get sketchy sensor readings (due to the damage and interference of the gravity drive) of massive launchings coming from the ruined globally-destroyed planet... uh oh! Weapons? Just the terraforming gear... and if the crew figure out what's going on, those "terraforming" AIs are quite content to keep the secret by terraforming the Federation ship into dust...
Prime Directive would apply: these are not warp-capable people, and the crew should have to have a philosophical discussion about whether or not to tell the Argani that they've not gone anywhere really... And that their whole world is gone...
Michael Barratt
Stolen from "Purity in Death," by J.D. Robb
Title: Deadlock
Era: Any with replicator technology
Setting: Ship or base, as above, with replicator technology
One by one, people on a starship or base currently dealing with a series of very tough negotiations are dropping dead. The source seems to be a medical outbreak: they have picked up a virus that is causing massive brain swelling, which leads to bleeding from the nose, eyes, ears, and major migraine attacks, before finally the person seems to "nest" and die.
Most crawl into their quarters, lock the door, and drug themselves up until they die or go nuts from the pain and kill themselves. A few take someone with them, lose their temper from the pain, and end up in murder/suicide.
Terrorists opposed to the continued negotiations have blended replicator, transporter, and computer technology. This is a computer virus they can send to your terminal and when you use the terminal for enough hours, it replicates the virus and beams it into your head, all unnoticed, and unlogged. Between the computer techs and security, they'll have their heads shaking over how to undo this, and how to cleanse the system thereafter...
The Doc