How about this: a graviton ellipse emerges from subspace, swallowing the characters' vessel. Unable to escape, the ellipse reenters subspace, travels across the galaxy, and expels them at the far end of the Gamma Quadrant (beyond Dominion-held space).
Their vessel, unable to remain in space, makes an emergency landing on a tropical, class-M planet. Their communications technologies were mostly fried by the time inside the ellipse, but at least they have some weapons, rations, and so forth. Futhermore, the hulk of their crashed ship - once disassembled and reallocated - should provide excellent housing and defensive capabilities. The saucer section would provide living space, laboratories, replicators (if you're nice), and so forth while the remnants of the engineering section (should they prove salvageable) could be moved and reactivated to provide power.
The goal could easily be to build a small colony, acquire the necessary materials, refit their shuttles/build a new [smaller] ship, and escape their tropical gulag, flying through Dominion space to get to the Bajoran wormhole and return home (yet another source of adventures).
This provides a <i>Voyager</i>-esque setting without having to deal with the Borg (or any other <i>Voyager</i> elements you'd choose to avoid) while providing lots of interesting background material. Hey, maybe its your PCs that are really responsible for the Dominion War!
Just some random thoughts.
mactavish out.
Last edited by mactavish; 04-23-2003 at 07:24 AM.
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