Mirror-Universe Episodes. . .

[Cdre Bob Wesley]

Owen E Oulton mentioned that he just finished up a storyline in the Mirror setting. I have one coming up myself. I'd like to hear about your experiences with it.

1. How did you conduct the cross-over?

2. Did players swap-out with their counterpart, keep their regular character, or a mix of the two?

3. What other elements did you add?

[Owen E Oulton]

They went well. The first time, they did a swap per Mirror Mirror and were stuck in the Imperial universe in their counterparts' bodies. When they got back, they had to deal with the fallout of their doubles' misbehaviour. Later sessions were more like the DS9 episodes with both players and counterparts crossing over. Funny how Security thinks it's all a concocted story... As for long-term effects, there's alway the possibility that the doubles will escape the prison planetoid. Also, the players' current ship is a captured Mirror-Defiant class refitted by Starfleet.

[Pericles]

The only Mirror Universe encounter I've ever used was a scout ship rigged up for a special experiment with subspace with an Excelsior class along to provide the best possible sensor scans that discovered a similar experiment on the Mirror side using a scout and a couple of B'rel class birds of prey. The combined experiments created a large breach between the Universes and the warships started fighting. When the veil breached, it tossed counterparts from one scout to another and two groups fought each other on the scouts, each to prevent the other from closing the breach.

Eventually, the Excelsior crippled the sensors of the two B'rels leaving them largely undamaged, but no longer able to fight. All the Federation standard crew returned, but two of their counterparts were also trapped on this side when the experiment was finally shut down. The two were given asylum, but a leopard can not change it's spots and the last anyone saw of them were they had stolen a warp shuttle and had fled to the Triangle. Exactly how much trouble they will cause is subject to a further adventure in the future.

[Nuclear Fridge]

I've never touched the Mirror Universe, because I've never really come up with (or seen) a plot that really 'grabbed' me. The later DS9 Mirror episodes spoiled the whole 'Terrans enslaved' premise for me.

Still... DS9 itself, with the wormhole... The Bajor system is enslaved by the Terran Empire; they use the captured Terok Nor station to oversee mining operations in the Empire's newly-subjugated Cardassian provinces. And then the wormhole is discovered...

I could see a small group of Starfleet PCs stumbling from one reality to the other just as Kira and Bashir did... bluffing their way aboard Terok Nor... and then having to run for it when their Mirror replicas return from the Gamma Quadrant.

[Tricky]

That reality sounds a lot like the one from Dark Mirror, where in the Terran Empire is alive and kicking in their equivalent to TNG era. Picard is the cruel captain of the Enterprise, Worf is his cabinboy, and Troy is a bit of a dominatrix (go figure).

[Nuclear Fridge]

And the I.S.S. Enterprise-D is outfitted for orbital saturation bombardment with a dozen flavours of atomic, antimatter, and biological weaponry...

I guess a 'keep it small' approach would work. Look at Yesterday's Enterprise- a handful of Klingon ships show up, but the 'big differences' in the timeline all take place on the familiar territory of 1701-D. Something to ponder.

Another point to consider: even the 'sympathetic' characters in a Mirror universe are scum. Cheating, lying, double-crossing, blackmailing... they don't see anything wrong with any of that. Jennifer Sisko didn't hesitate to coerce Ben Sisko, let's not forget!

[Tricky]

I know I've mentioned it elsewhere on the boards, but one idea that I had was that the 24th century from 'Dark Mirror' some how becomes aware of the 24th century from 'Crossover'. Being both arrogant and evil, they started attacking this alternate universe, causing the Alliance to counter attack. As things start to get out of control, the conflict spills over into the more positve Trek-verses (probably the one your player characters are in ).

[Owen E Oulton]

When Glinn Seth broke M'Rel 2 and Tal 2 out of prison, he didn't hesitate to kill Seth 2, and later murdered Leiliri 2 and tried to frame Seth for it. M'Rel 2 and Tal 2 just put up with it, since if he COULD, he deserved to be the survivor. Why? They're EEE-vil, of course!!!

[Nuclear Fridge]

I know I've mentioned it elsewhere on the boards, but one idea that I had was that the 24th century from 'Dark Mirror' some how becomes aware of the 24th century from 'Crossover'. Being both arrogant and evil, they started attacking this alternate universe, causing the Alliance to counter attack. As things start to get out of control, the conflict spills over into the more positve Trek-verses (probably the one your player characters are in ).

Ouch! That would be messy!

[BouncyCaitian]

I played the invasion aspect a bit more underhandedly as Mirror infitrators got into secondary positions of power and quietly diverted resources to construct a "gate generator" to weaken the fabric of space to allow the Imperials to invade with a fleet and begin coneqest of the alpha quadrant

As this was during the Dominion war, Starfleet and the Dominion had thought the otherside had diverted resources for thier benefit. While starfleet sent the players to investigate, the dominion sent a warfleet

And got pranged hard by the imperials coming through, as with anything, they had concetrated on building cutting edge warships and worshipped Power.

The end restul being a lot fo scrap for the Federation to pick over and reverse enginner

[Nuclear Fridge]

Maybe that's where the Chain Reaction Pulsar tech comes from...