A series around a Rogue planet

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Maybe the idea of a large planet is too far fetched for what I have in mind. I'll tone it down to a small moon, either artificial like Publius suggested or one which was ripped out of its orbit as C5 mentioned.

I like the idea of an artificial planet, one which could resemble the death star. I've toyed with the idea of making maybe a world which is artificial but with a holographic surface.

Now I've got lots of good competing ideas; a world ripped out of its orbit and dying slowly in space, one artificial planet which "flies" through space, and one which is a ocean based which was purposefully torn out of its orbit. All great ideas, I'm trying to figure a way to merge them all together.

Some help would be appreciated in trying to put them together.

[Moriarti]

Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos
Maybe the idea of a large planet is too far fetched for what I have in mind.

Well, it's not. If you'd like, you can have Jupiter made out of Cream Cheese and populated by Oompa-Loompas, as long as you and your players are entertained, Science be damned.

Now I've got lots of good competing ideas;
a world ripped out of its orbit and dying slowly in space,

one artificial planet which "flies" through space,

and one which is a ocean based which was purposefully torn out of its orbit.

All great ideas, I'm trying to figure a way to merge them all together. Some help would be appreciated in trying to put them together.

I've got it! Two Words:





"Rogue System"

[Chaos]

I'm not sure how important it is, but it sounds to me like it would be helpful if you could come up with some semi-plausible way for a planet or moon to travel at speeds faster than light. Otherwise, as far as story goes, the FIS is either intruding on hostile territory to set up the base (which would mean crossing a border) or setting out on a project which will take years, even decades at best, to prove fruitful.

How about if the "rogue" planet was actually in orbit around a singularity that's moving at faster than light? After all, a black hole is all about warping space, so it's not too far to stretch and say that this is a singularity which generates a "natural" warp distortion. (I put that in quotes because it's also as much a possibility that your dormant alien race manufactured the singularity for this purpose, somehow).

Or, how about a planet which shifts in and out of transwarp corridors? This would seem to be a really good solution since the it never physically crosses the border, it just sort of *pops* up on the other side. Could also give you some other interesting plot lines... The players may have a time limit by which to complete their mission, otherwise the planet will jump too far into enemy territory for them to escape. Or maybe the Borg take notice of it. I can just imagine the look on Player's faces when their planet runs down a hapless Borg cube that was travelling in the opposite direction.

[C5]

Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos
Now I've got lots of good competing ideas; a world ripped out of its orbit and dying slowly in space, one artificial planet which "flies" through space, and one which is a ocean based which was purposefully torn out of its orbit. All great ideas, I'm trying to figure a way to merge them all together.

Some help would be appreciated in trying to put them together.

Well... here's one attempt.

On an ocean based planet, sentient beings (hey, could they be related to the senders of the whale probe in STIV ?) have created a way to move planets faster than light by destroying their sun in such a way that a subspace ripple is created, sending the planet surfing on a warp wave (hey, the sun needn't even be destroyed - maybe it contracts and expand rapidly, or something like that). When the wave subsides, the inhabitants find another star to push them onwards.

Usually, they try to avoid inhabited star systems, but sometimes they can't know it before it's too late (if they're related to the whale probe, they may not even bother with terrestrial life forms). And so, an inhabited planet was ripped out of its orbit and sent sprawling on a warp wave on its own (or maybe this could be one of their first experiments ?). Of course, being unprepared, this world is now slowly dying (and maybe on a collision course with something important).

I must admit I have difficulties to put the artificial planet here.

Some possibilities :
- A completely different race created it (man it's getting crowded with moving planets around here...), maybe as a weapon against the oceanic beings who destroyed one of their colonies.

- It's another project, launched by the oceanics when they left their system, that has now reached its conclusion, and its inhabitants are looking for their pioneers. Alternatively, it could be allies to the oceanics, only terrestriel, and, unable to send their own planet the same way they did (due to some technobabble configuration) decided to create a moving replica of their own.

- The Oceanics may have built it in order to save a civilisation they had doomed after destroying their sun (by hollowing an existing planet and putting the energizing core inside) and these guys are now travelling on their own - maybe even unaware of their real location (apart from a small caste of "Helms").

Hope some ideas here are interesting.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Actually C5 that sounds really good.

I'll just built and elaborate on what you wrote previously.

So the oceanites knew that their system was doomed and decided to do something about it. Lets say they are related to the space probe in St:IV, and in reality many were sent out to scan for potential systems to escape to. Terrestrial life is meaningless to them.

Now instead of ripping their homeworld out of its orbit, they built a smaller moon (SW has the deathstar so this could work) as their Noah's Ark. They reproduced as much as possible from the original world unto this "fake" world. So the surface is oceanic with some islands with holographic stuff on top (their sticklers for detail).

They used their dying sun's supernova to somehow throw their planet into a transwarp gate in order to travel faster than the speed of light and somehow save thei civilization, as per Chaos' idea.

Now they didn't take into account everything and this world is still slowly dying without them being able to find a new home. The colonists on the Ark decide to go into cryo and wait for when the planet finds a suitable location, through deep space probes.

That's when the crew finds this planet during one of its outside transwarp "pops". FIS decides to investigate and has a whole slew of information on the planet's past locations that they've been suppressing. This is in 2343, so no Borg yet. But I could see how the Borg would get interested, just in time for Wolf 359.

And my long term plan is to have the PC's on a long-term mission, when the FIS directors change and the Klingons become friendly.
The crew's mission suddenly becomes unsavory since their deep within Klingon space, and no FIS director would want to admit that they've spied on the fuzzy-wuzzy Klingons to a Fed council committee (especially for a potential political career). So the PC's will be forgotten about.

Now I'm going to have to create the oceanite people, maybe somewhat Antedean in nature. I like C5's Helm idea of a caste which is still active that overlooks its people. Definitely feeling superior to terrestrials, and sticklers to protocol and detail.

Its coming together nicely.

[Capt.Hunter]

FTL rogue planet? No problem. The Feds (or someone else) were testing soliton wave propulsion (as in TNG "New Ground") again. Once again, the wave fails to dissipate and hits the planet where the reception station is located. Instead of shattering the planet as expected in "New Ground", it actually accelerates the entire planet to warp...

[Owen E Oulton]

How 'bout this?

A large moon orbiting a pre-warp planet is used to store nuclear waste. The waste goes critical and blows the moon out of planetary orbit. Much of the waste is an exotic radioactive heavy metal which builds up a subspace field which pulls the moon into warp. After a period of time in warp, the field decays and drops the moon into normal space orbiting the nearest star at the same gravitational gradient as its original orbit. 24-72 hours later, the subspace field reaches critical levels again and the moon whips back into warp...

Of course, any base established on this moon will have to crash at least one shuttlecraft per adventure.

[C5]

I can't help having this feeling of déjà vu, Owen... although this is the best technobabble explanation I've seen so far

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Posted by Owen E Oulton:

A large moon orbiting a pre-warp planet is used to store nuclear waste. The waste goes critical and blows the moon out of planetary orbit. Much of the waste is an exotic radioactive heavy metal which builds up a subspace field which pulls the moon into warp. After a period of time in warp, the field decays and drops the moon into normal space orbiting the nearest star at the same gravitational gradient as its original orbit. 24-72 hours later, the subspace field reaches critical levels again and the moon whips back into warp...

I absolutely love this idea.

A great technobabble idea which will calm by science endowed players.

So now I'm thinking that the Oceanite World government knew that their world was doomed but couldn't do anything about it because they were prewarp. So they decided to use their moon as a means to save their civilization from death and they "caused" an accident. So C5's idea of a Helm caste in charge of the Ark (the moon's name) is great; that makes them government agents keeping the people in cryo safe while they send out probes ala ST:IV.

So the Oceanites engineered the movement of their moon, and the government had previously prepared the moon for this purpose. It didn't go perfectly according to plan so now they travel the stars on this moon.

The surface of the moon is toxic, with a large water deposits beneath the surface, and holographic vegetation at the top on small islands. The radiation does not affect the people instantly but prolonged exposure can kill. And obviously it makes using shuttlecraft or runabout dangerous.

Posted by Capt.Hunter:

FTL rogue planet? No problem. The Feds (or someone else) were testing soliton wave propulsion (as in TNG "New Ground") again. Once again, the wave fails to dissipate and hits the planet where the reception station is located. Instead of shattering the planet as expected in "New Ground", it actually accelerates the entire planet to warp...

I'm thinking maybe the oceanites used rudimentary solanite technology do force the accident on the planet. I'll have to go back and watch that episode. Anyone know on what TNG DVD disc its on?

[Capt.Hunter]

Whichever series Alexander became a regular recurring cast member, that's the best I can do...