USS Caster Episode 15 - Ioan - After Action Report

[subplotkudzu]

I thought I posted this yesterday, but apparently not....

USS Carter After-Action Report: Ioan

Act I: Starfleet sends The Carter. Linneas and Adlai Stevenson to meet the Betazeds, looking for assistance in the battle against the Klingons. Negotiations start poorly when Commodore Stadi states that a Federation ship destroyed a Betazed colony world. The Carter only has 24 hours to explain things and forge a treaty before the Betazeds reclaim their ambassador and contemplate war! Meanwhile, Intelligence Officer Sulan is monitoring engineering (and Lt. T’Prin) during the upgrades required for the Carter to serve as the flagship in the upcoming battle.

This bit went very well, with Jason absorbing his sheet of Betazed politics and explaining things to the rest of the crew. Everyone was sure that things would be hard, but they all looked stunned when Rossad’s ex wife demanded that he return to her ship before a declaration of war. Clever sensor & telepathy work made it clear that Stadi had outraced her companions – including the one holding Chryses, head of the negotiations – and their best path was delaying things a bit. This they did, as diplomatically as possible, while Darius got a packet of data from Chryses that the Carter could tackle.

Some good player rolls threw me off stride in the order of clue recognition, with them identifying the Han and its back story early on. With an Admiral's advice that Sakhet take advantage of Sulan’s presence she dragged him into this immediately. This prevented them building on bad assumptions (Stephen’s thought was that the Han’s file had been altered by Bardek the Orion, not that Star Fleet had covered up something minor; I needed to stop that paranoia early), but bad in that I didn’t get to do much with T’Prin and Fujita in engineering.

The players rattled my plan even more by Asha’s decision of who to have the negotiations – given the matriarchal nature of the Betazed she went with all women: Sakhet, Dr. Knox, Lt. T’prin (to show off the non-human and psychic members of the Federation) and Chief Coy Mahn. She then sent Pelski, Raven, Fujita and Sulan on the Linneas to find out what happened to the Betazed colony, eliminating the whole engineering subplot. I could hardly argue the crew choices. Having most of the female crew turn up Betazed Formal was both great fan service, but it wasn’t what I had planned!

Act II: The negotiations begin, with Rossad on the Betazed side of the table and the Betazeds all advancing different factions, either stalling or pushing and leaving the Federation not sure who’s on their side. Lt. Cmdr Pelski, Lt. Raven and T’Prin take the Linneas to the colony world, discovering that this was done by a Federation ship (thought lost to Orion pirates) and that the weapon was crystalline empire technology. Armed with that Sakhet salvages the talks, but then someone tries to kill Rossad. The culprit is someone with motive. Vulcan Intelligence Officer Sulan accuses the crew’s Betazed ally of being a spy.

The negotiations went flawlessly, at least from the GM’s perspective: the players had moments of confusion of who was on who's side, but followed Darius’ lead on Azuma’s delaying tactics. Every player had a PC present so I didn’t have bored players, and there were nice character bits: Dr. Knox's willingness to prattle about differences in Terran & Betazed colonial law and Lt. T’Prin’s total fumble when trying to engage in the negotiations; while her faith in herself has improved she’s still far from being a conversationalist!

The delaying tactics gave the Linneas time to investigate the destroyed colony. Pelski & Raven did what I expected and rightly identified the weapon as a terraforming tool built by a silicon life form. Meanwhile, Fujita – with his Space Sickness disad – had to perform a task I designed for T’Prin with her Zero G & Space Suit Training: getting memory cards from a Betazed satellite. Fujita was as much out of his element as he could get, with Sulan coldly observing! However, fate loves our engineer as Karen exploded the dice three times, turning her huge starting penalty to a critical success, getting the job done in ¼ the time! Sulan even told him that his actions were “acceptable”. Star Fleet training comes through again.

Lacking Sulan’s presence I gave broad hints to Chief Coy Mahn to implicate Azuma in intelligence work, in keeping with her high observational skills. It was more leading than I like, but Karen accepted it with good grace, knowing that the character would think of things that the player would not. There was a break between negotiations for the players to put things together, letting them dominate the next round of talks: now that things had moved on to the destruction of the colony the Carter had all the answers. The sudden assassination attempt caught them by surprise again, but did give more nice character moments: Coy Mahn & Stadi moving to eliminate the threat simultaneously, showing Darius’ ex-wife as a Kirkly commander; and Sakhet moving to protect Chryses, reinforcing the Federation’s image.

When the lights came up the players knew that the captured gunman, crewman M’Batu from the Stevenson, was the least likely suspect. When asked about Betazed mind control Darius adamantly denied it, despite Jason holding the sheet of paper that indicated that it could exist in people with advanced religious training of the sort that he knew Hagan had undergone. I could clearly say I was playing fair.

On the Linneas return trip Raven approached Pelski again, and was gently but finally told that he would not consider any sort of relationship while she was reporting to him. That’s just the sort of officer he is, and he’s very sorry about it. Raven took it well and left, pondering. Everyone was very happy with the scene.

Act III: The assassin hunt is pre-empted by the Interphase appearance of the Han, armed with the alien weapon and piloted by a madman, Rossad’s old adversary Xenocrates. The Federation ships are able to prevent the any significant damage to the Betazed vessels and the Han is destroyed, imploding into other-dimensional space. The threat eliminated and Federation intentions made plain the talks conclude favorably, forcing the assassin, the Betazed captain Hagan, to arrange his own death by Commander Funk via mind control.

The Linneas returned to the scene and the Han appeared right behind it. I’d love to say that this was another surprise, but they knew he was coming. Everyone connected his appearance to Bardek’s teleportation device. The timing was bad: Sakhet was still on the Stevenson and the Betazed delegation shuttling to their ships (Betazed ships rely heavily on shields, and therefore aren’t conducive to beaming). The lieutenant commanding the Stevenson immediately handed the bridge to Sakhet, who kept Xenocrates raving until all ships were in position to attack him or defend the shuttle.

Part of that rant was his mentioning how he got the Han from the Pirate Dathio, who wanted so see Captain Liefson destroyed. Jason yelled, “that’s right, this is all my fault!”

I was jazzed when Sakhet & Funk had a brief discussion about using the Han’s prefix codes (from Wrath of Kahn) to shut her down but decided there wasn’t time. Meanwhile, Ambassador Rossad remembered that silicon technology was telepathically sensitive, and directed the negotiations team in a concentrated effort against the terraforming device: give a player an inch two years ago and they’ll make a mile out of it eventually. The fight went as planned, with the Linneas taking the hit from the one successful attack. The combination of the Carter taking out the Han’s power plant with the Betazeds overloading the terraforming device gave me the perfect framework for the Han’s implosion into interphase.

Everyone was happy to wind down, but there was still that assassination attempt. There was a great example of parallel play with Jason & Asha on one end of the table discussing Betazed telepathy as Sakhet & Rossad while I was having Hagan mind control Funk with a perfectly reasonable request to visit (while carrying his sidearm) Hagan on the Betazed ship, which had lowered its primary shielding. Jason & Asha fell silent when they caught what was happening and Jason began re-scanning his information sheet with a head slapping “Doh!” Funk received an order to pull out his sidearm and kill Hagan with it; after an internal struggle Funk complied by pistol whipping his controller – down to the letter, not really in the spirit. Funk recovered long enough to field strip his phaser and call Coy Mahn for help. The chief beamed over only to be Hagan’s next victim, leading to a brief scuffle as Funk delayed his security chief from killing the Betazed captain – and getting knocked on his ass as a result. You don’t mess with Coy Mahn. Funk still successfully delayed until Darius arrived on the scene and cold cocked Hagan.

The final scene of the session was Lt. Raven approaching Sakhet and asking for a transfer to the Linneas – they had lost some people to the terraforming weapon and the Linneas’ role as a biological survey ship was a perfect move for her specialty. Sakhet nodded, agreed & understood when Raven said that she wanted to have the captain's agreement before she raised it with her commanding officer. That in place Raven visited Pelski in his quarters and presented him her request for transfer. The commander was a little stunned and sad but signed off on it. Once it was official Raven said “There, now I don’t report to you. Now what?” Pelski walked past her and locked the door to give them some long awaited time alone. Fade to starfield black as another long distance relationship begins.

I was very happy with this session. Almost everything went as I had envisioned, with the players throwing me enough curves to keep it interesting. It wasn’t the best session of the game – the rails were too visible at points – but was far from the worst. If the Engineering subplots never went anywhere the conclusion of the Pelski/Raven romance made up for it.

Next month, the long awaited Battle for the Burning Nebula!