"Welcome back." Let's lay the groundwork. The Lorath will be arriving in Wandering Star later, but I shall get this train rolling while I've got time. I'm getting a plot article up as I type. So Cooee! Anybody itching for the next season of the Lorath Exploration Ship? Post your interest here. And don't worry. There's no rush at the moment. This could take a while, so let's bat some ideas around perhaps in the meantime. The focus of the plot on exploration is going to cross into colonisation. Oh, and the captain's itching to go for a long walk after that ride... Proposed Prologue and Plot Progression Val'ta arrives. Ship has had some trouble on the way through. Get ship's haywire systems under control, and confirm crew and universe status. Consolidate assets, take inventory, have small party, learn to fly in new universe. Find a new home, scan it, scout it out, and strike the earth. Await reinforcements...
Yes. Also J'ann will be shipboard personnel, but I'll make a second as an away team member. (But that doesn't mean he won't come down from time to time for. . . mind ready reasons.)
With the Lorath now here, and a better idea of what's going on after talking to @DocTomoe and bouncing ideas around with others, I've figured out our first mission. Shortly after arriving, the Val'ta was dry-docked and put into repair, since components and materials had a critical existence failure or otherwise. During this period, I will let a thread stay open as a single-post meet-and-greet session taking place on the same platform as the Val'ta is being repaired. (AKA: I will be transposing the ship's article to a spot under the article, since it's a strange little bird! I have it backed up, and a list of things that can be nixed, thanks to @Eistheid - and it will need a hell of a fix! The ship turned into jelly almost since all of its freaking bones went missing!) Once the ship's article is acceptably ship-shaped, the Val'ta's first mission will take place on a system the Lorath brought a with them. It contains a pair of Terrestrial Planets ripe for exploration, and possible colonisation. (E-11) This gives the LSDF Val'ta an opportunity to stretch its legs in a system which the rest of the galaxy doesn't know about, and thus cannot be subject to external interference, or possible unwanted capture or external interaction. The worst case scenario is the LSDF arrive to bail out the predicament the ship finds itself in some time down the track. The Val'ta drops beacons, gets a ground team out collecting research and investigating landmarks; while the ship crew helps starports set up, and directs/defends colony ships towards ideal locations scouted by drones and/or ground teams. After that, the plan is to explore the systems immediately around Lor, to form a ring of outposts and colonies around the core systems, then spiral outwards, twirling, twirling, twiiiiiirling into a mission of exploration of the weird and wonderful world. I think this will be a sufficient trajectory for the plot, and will offer a lot of opportunities to mix things up. This plot is also going to kick off the creation of a larger system map for Wandering Star's universe, which will include the positions of territories and societies like the Aleph Cluster, Balance, the Raiconian Alliance, and the Greater Cluster as well as other locales and oddities as they appear. For all interested players, you can find a character sheet template here.
