Star Trek: The Quadratic War

[Lys]

I guess I'll take the job of writing me saving your ass, rhoenix.

...

Okay, done. I was hoping to come up with something more impressive, but short and sweet is going to have to do it. Your ass is saved! Sorry about the shield, but the frigate was right on top of you. Plus, you know, by the skin of your teeth is always more dramatic.

[Josh]

To get us back into the spirit of things.

[youtube][/youtube]

[Josh]

God damn it, now I'm in an '80s mood.

Here's to Cyncat for not destroying the universe.

[youtube][/youtube]

[Lys]

Coincidentally, Rock You Like a Hurricane is the theme song of Stormbreaker, my character in the Earthdawn game.

[Josh]

Coincidentally, Rock You Like a Hurricane is the theme song of Stormbreaker, my character in the Earthdawn game.

It's a very flexible song like that.

[rhoenix]

I guess I'll take the job of writing me saving your ass, rhoenix.

...

Okay, done. I was hoping to come up with something more impressive, but short and sweet is going to have to do it. Your ass is saved! Sorry about the shield, but the frigate was right on top of you. Plus, you know, by the skin of your teeth is always more dramatic.

Indeed so!

[Josh]

So is Havoc still honcho on this, or are we making it up as we go along now?

[Cynical Cat]

So is Havoc still honcho on this, or are we making it up as we go along now?

Still his show.

[General Havoc]

Though it comes as much of a surprise to me as it does anyone else, yes. It appears we are.

I guess I'd better get started...

[Agent Fisher]

Holy shit, it lives. Yay!

[White Haven]

...Oh! Well then. Just goes to show I need to pay more attention to shit that may or may not be going down. Now, where was I...

[Lys]

How old is Kadon anyway? I decided against firmly establishing Ishtar's birthdate, but I did settle on a range of no later than 2345 (the year after her father became Praetor) and no earlier than 2335. The present year is 2398, so her age would be 58 +/- 5. In human terms she should look to be in her late 20s.

[Cynical Cat]

Young. Klingons physically mature faster than humans so he enters the Imperial Academy at age 12, graduates around 16, and is 18 when the Dominion War starts. He goes in a capable junior officer and ends it the captain of a Bird of Prey. So mid to late 20s. Less in Klingon years.

[Lys]

I briefly quite shocked by those figures, then I remembered that 12 year old Midshipmen and 16 year old Junior Lieutenants was par the course in the Age of Sail. You did say that they mature faster though, so I imagine a 12 year old Klingon looks like an 18 year old human or something. I get the impression that Klingons might not live as long as Romulans, but they make up for it by their prime taking up a far larger proportion of their lifespan.

Anyway, if Kadon was 18 during the start of the Dominion War he'd be 43 now, putting the age difference between him and Ishtar at 15-20 years. That's just barely enough to truthfully say that she has been engaged in Romulan politics longer than he's been alive. Excellent, I like that line and I wanted it to be true, and it is!

Actually I like your post a lot in general. My favourite line is, "II has files on her and standing orders are not to contact her with an agent that isn't considered expendable." It is exactly what I imagined the Klingon and Federation intelligence services to say about Ishtar, and it's just awesome to see my own thoughts reflected like that. ^_^

[Cynical Cat]

Glad you liked it. Yes Klingons mature faster than humans (DS9, The Final Reflection) although for some reason my brain was under the impression less time had passed since the end of the Dominion War. C'est la vie. I wanted to convey that your character was studied but not known because really how could they know her? Matters of public record, well known associates, those things are known but what makes her tick would be guess work. Interpreting the facts correctly, and they won't have all the facts, without projecting onto the result is more than difficult. Morizan is good enough to recognize the limits of his ability to profile her, but that means he has to admit to having a limited understanding of her actions and motivations.

[Lys]

Yeah I've been trying to convey more or less the same things. We're trying to write fairly intelligent and insightful people, but they only have first impressions, three lines of dialogue, conduct during a single skirmish, and available records to go on. Fortunately Star Trek's data storage capabilities mean that you can go a long way between the public record and military intelligence, but at the same time those only go so far. It's a fine line to walk between a character being well informed and them being prescient. I think we're doing a pretty good job thus far, and no doubt our characters will learn a lot more about each other as things develop.

[frigidmagi]

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 84:
84

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 89:
89

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 19:
19

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 21:
21

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 38:
38

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 16:
16

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 95:
95

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 68:
68

frigidmagi rolled 1d100 and got a total of 64:
64

[Josh]

Hunh, secondary effects. Cool.

[White Haven]

...On one hand, KaDONNNNN!

On the other hand, if it's going to happy to any ship in the fleet, the one stuffed with engineers and spare parts is probably the best...

[Josh]

I see only upside from this- Frank's case for his court martial will now have a lot more support since the senior officer blew up an even bigger chunk of the universe than he did.

Assuming, y'know, that enough senior officers survive to panel a court.

Win-win, really.

[rhoenix]

For my part, I'm going to be having a bit of fun with the "ghost ship" concept, mainly due to what happened on the Gilgamesh.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Comrade Tortoise rolled 1d100 and got a total of 85:
85

[White Haven]

Just to be clear, that whole internal inertial dampener thing is NOT trying to be a get-out-of-jail free card, it's just flavour description from what I imagine Scylla's engineers would probably put together. It'll only last a very short time, it's entirely possible it'll kill some of the crew itself, and basically all it does is eat a few seconds of people getting banged into bulkheads and such. It's something that, fine-tuned and with a decade or two of research, could be refined into a really useful system that would have saved hundreds of redshirts over the course of the various shows, but it's nowhere near that in Scylla's case.

[Lys]

See if it was me writing that passage, it wouldn't have even occurred to me that the ship's normal inertial dampeners were insufficient for keeping the crew from being tossed to death.

[Josh]

"Inertial dampers to protect the crew in the event of catastrophic shifts of position due to weapons fire or subspace events?"

"That's way too damned expensive. Next you'll go on about the surge protectors in the bridge consoles. We're on a fucking budget here!"

-Starfleet ship design conference