STA: Damocles – Mission Report – S0E1 – Signals

The first taster session of Star Trek Adventures, despite a few technical issues, was imo a great success. Roll20 had issues with voice and vid, but when we switched to Skype for the chatting and kept roll20 open for the character sheets it went, for the most part ok. The only other issue was a fault of mine not setting up one of the sheets right, but later investigation revealed the problem and it was sorted. Most faults from here on in will be from me, not 100% knowing what I am doing. But that is something that can easily be fixed with experience and messing around with setting and so-on. So now, I present the brief overview of the first mission.

WARNING – Spoilers for the Quickstart Adventure ahead…..

S0E1 – Signals

The away team ship USS Generic (Yes, yes I know… heheh), which consisted off one Joined Trill, a Vulcan, both scientists and  Bajoran engineer, along with security from Ensign Ricky the “red shirt” had to investigate some signals and discover the fate of a couple of missing Starfleet personnel. There were some interesting readings on the scanners, so the away team went to investigate.  It wasn’t long before they were faced with a choice – Follow the combadge signal, the smoke plume or the other signal. The combadge was closest. What they found was rather unpleasant. Two Starfleet officers were fused half into the rocks, not far from their beam down point It was not a pleasant sight, and an investigation revealed they had lived for a short while afterward, in agony.

Releasing that the weird EM pulse and radiation they had detected earlier was the probable cause of this, Davrin (the trill) configured their tricorders to alert them to any possible return of the radiation. This simple task done, they then headed to the smoke signal.  There they discovered a crashed Romulan shuttle, with most of the crew dead, the shuttle a wreck and to Toral Wun (the Bajoran Engineer) dismay, a flask of expensive Romulan ale had been broke spilling its contents all over the floor.

Not long after this discovery they were attacked by two of the survivors of the shuttle crash, one of which was disabled and stunned and the second fled the area, heading east.  Releasing they had lost the chance to capture and question the fleeing Romulan, they team headed towards their last option – The signal and possible source of disturbances in this location. There they encountered the sniper-guard Douglas, a rough, frontier type who helped look after the small mining settlement they had stumbled on.

After some diplomacy by Davrin, they were escorted to the camp leader where they were greeted and their help was requested. It turned out that the miners had accidentally stumbled across something very old whilst mining. They had found a sheet of metal, a wall of some kind blocking their way. Beaching this wall was easy, but in doing so, they seemed to set off some kind of auto-defense system, a large EMP pulse that took out most of the electronics nearby, including a medical pacemaker used to keep one of the local geologists alive. Luckily she had been recorded what she had found and it was an easy task for Tolek (Vulcan) to extract the data and see what the miners had found.

Offering to help the outpost, Douglas went along with the team to the mine. He and Ensign Ricky waited outside whilst the team explored and checked out the pentagonal chamber. The room was lined with a metal their tricorders could not scan.  But it was obvious to all it was some kind con control chamber, with a large human-sized obelisk covered in blue glowing glyphs in the middle. It wasn’t long before they figured out that the source of the EMP pulse and the radiation was this obelisk. Whilst they were safe for now, there was nothing to indicate this device would fire off once more. A quick investigation revealed that this could easily be shut off by pulling out what could best be described as a plug. After a quick debate on if they should do that, it was done. The obelisk faded and the subtle hum turned off.

Not long after this, the distant sound of disruptor fire was heard. Douglas had been knocked out and Ensign Ricky had been mostly reduced to dust, only a few scraps of clothing and his type 2 phaser on the floor.

Grabbing this phaser Toral and the other took cover, firing on the last two survivors, a Romulan Centurion and the one that got away earlier. Davrin got hit but was lucky it was a glancing blow. The Centurion fell surprisingly quickly after a good shot from Tolek. The remaining Romulan, a youngish female, surrendered, knowing that Starfleet would not allow their officers to kill her, after all she could escape later and might gain some valuable intel along the way.  A quick interrogation revealed that the Romulans believed this was an “arcological” find they wanted for themselves and as it was a frontier Federation planet, that they could sneak in and capture it before anyone knew what was going on. Sadly this pland didnt work and now Starfleet had three Romulan prisoners and a crashed shuttle to deal with, along with knowing the fate of the two who had beed used with rocks.

The USS Generic, wh had picked up their orbiting shuttle, cotacted them. Using the reading and tricorder setting from erlier, they scanned the entire planet quickly and discovered here were more f these chambers all over the place. If all had turned on at once, the entire planet would have been covered with this EM field.

Taking one last opertuity, Toral decided to frisk the Centurion, finding a flask of much desired Romulan Ale. Sadly this moment was ruined as it was the precise moment that the USS Generic decided to beam them up, catching him mid riffling through the Romulans pockets and they materialized on the transporter pad.

Concluding Thoughts

• For the most part, I used what was presented in the quick start, with my own embellishments. The characters were a bit different but this caused little problems. One thing I enjoy about ST is the way characters are made, a “balanced” party is not really needed. But of course, certain builds will find some parts esier than others.
• The game is a lot easeier to run than I first thought it would be. The hardest part for me was, coming from a D&D background, remembering that a 20 in this game was “bad” and a natural 1 was the better result.
• Combat – The combat flowed better than I thought. I still need to brush up on the rules for it – But it’s easy to deal with.
• The most important, despite the humor, the game felt like Star Trek. It didn’t feel like some Sci-Fi game with minor Star Trek elements tacked on.
• I REALLY need to work on my poker face 😀
• Roll20 makes running the game easier for sure, but don’t rely 100% on it. Use it as a secondary tool to keep track of things like dice rolls or threat etc

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