[Coda] Movie-era Ship and Crew

[Valen]

Thanks, Sea Tyger! The crew of the Hornet seems like a lot of fun, and I will definitely have two or three of them pop up in my movie era game once it gets off the ground. They are just too much fun not to use.

[Sea Tyger]

You're welcome. Now all I have to do is dig up those old adventure modules and get a couple of mission stories out.

[Perrryyy]

When you do, can you post where you got your inspiration for those stories?

For those of us who are creative deficient of late?

Thx

[Sea Tyger]

Originally posted by Perrryyy
When you do, can you post where you got your inspiration for those stories?

I can't make any promises....that was 12 years ago, after all. But I'll see what I can do.

[Sea Tyger]

Okay, this was the second or thrid mission I had run for the Hornet. It wasn't one of my best works, IMO, because I had a tendency to make plots too complicated back then.

I had no real inspiration on this one, except that I wanted to do something different, and was playing a monk in an AD&D campaign at the time.

Captain Dougan was in command of the ship at the time.

It was 2267 or so, and the Hornet was exploring near Klingon space. They happen upon a harsh, rocky desert planet and discover Klingonoid life signs at the top of some mesa-like cliffs. They beam down and discover that the beings are monks (about 100 of them, and they're the only higher order life form on the planet).

The monks were nothing like the Klingons (these are the TOS-looking ones, btw), and led a simple contemplative lifestyle. They didn't explain where they came from or how they got there, which, of course, made the crew suspicious.

The science officer, taking tricorder readings as he walked around the monastery, discovered some kind of massive energy reading deep within the mesa, but couldn't get anything specific, even with the ship's sensors. So, while the crew was trying to discreetly investigate this without offending/tipping off the monks, the engineer (who had the conn at the time) caught what he thought was a glimpse of a Klingon D-7 on the planet's horizon. Captain Dougan begins to wonder if the monks are just Klingons in disguise...when a couple of monks turn up dead.

It was at this point the plot started to get convoluted. Basically, the monks were caretakers of an ancient entity (the "power source"). The being extended their lives (they're all over 1,000 years old) in return for their protection and secrecy.

The creature itself literally produced dilithium (hey, I needed a reason to have the Klingons show up ), which is the cause of the energy readings. The monks tap a small fraction of its power for their daily activities, but otherwise leave the creature undisturbed (the abbot and a couple of the senior monks do converse with it from time-to-time).

Now, an obscure Klingon legend refers to this planet and the entity, so an enterprising captain decided to investigate and see if there was anything to exploit.

Intruiged by the energy readings, a couple of the Klingons infiltrated the monastery (I didn't bother with the fact that the monks would probably recognize strangers, but I just rationalized that the intruders kept to the shadows and avoided contact with the monks).

Curacao, meanwhile, is trying to chase down the Klingon ship by sending a shuttle in the opposite direction to do some scouting. The shuttle is destroyed by the D-7, but at least the crew has proof the Klingons are around.

Dougan tells the monks, who agree to let the crew identify and apprehend the Klingon infiltrators. They chase them down, get into a fire fight with a Klingon landing party, and eventually drive the Klingons off.
As I said, it wasn't some of my best work.

[Sea Tyger]

The other mission I remembered from the Hornet was one I borrowed a little from "Amok Time" and heavily from the Pocketbooks novel The Vulcan Academy Murders.

This was during the first post-refit tour...shakedown cruise, actually. It was the second mission of what turned out to be a total of three for that 2275 crew. I think K'col was still the CO at the time.

Dr. T'Saya, the Vulcan CMO at the time, fell ill while on a landing party during another tangle with the Klingons. The assistant CMO diagnosed her with a virus that attacked the psionic centers of the brain. (That's how I explained no one else getting infected.)

Since no Starfleet vessel had the facilities to treat a psionic illness, K'col ordered the ship to Vulcan. The ship raced at the speed of plot and made it to Vulcan within a week, where T'Saya is taken in by Vulcan doctors. While the crew waits, another Vulcan crewmember turns up dead in his family home, cut up in a very violent way.

Since a Starfleet officer was murdered, Captain K'col was extremely interested in having a hand in the investigation. He convinced the Starfleet liaison to talk to the Vulcan authorities, and eventually weaseled his crew into the investigation.

The crewmember's murder turned out to be the fourth in a series of extremely violent killings. Each one was effectively gutted and nearly dismembered by a razor sharp weapon.

The crew began to investigate in earnest, discovering that there was absolutely no connection between the four victims. Only once the crew began to inventory everything in the victims' homes did they realize that each one owned a rare S'harien sword, made just before the time of Surak.

The key to the identity of the killer lies in the weapons themselves. These particular S'hariens were all created from the same stock of steel, as was the weaponsmith's preference. He forged larger blocks of steel, folding and tempering them, then breaking them into segments that would become the individual weapons. Seven swords were made from this particular piece of steel.

The Vulcan authorities trace the swords to their three owners. One is on Earth (with its owner), and the other two belong to prominent Vulcans in Shir Khar. Neither of the Vulcans could be immediately found, so the end of the mission involved tracking them down and trying to figure out which one was the killer and which one would be the victim.

The crew found both of them just before the killer struck and apprehended him. The Vulcan government, of course, was appreciative.

Motive? The killer was a militant believer that Vulcans had to leave the old ways behind. His logic was that any reminder of the time before peince the swords were corrupting, these Vulcans were potentially corrupted and could not be trusted. Thusly, they should be eliminated. The tie to that was that the killer broke his own sword, symbolizing his defying the corrupting influence of the weapon.

Of course, everyone is free to steal these ideas for their own campaign.