Star Trek: Tirpitz

We were recently contacted by Lieutenant Anek with a potentially dangerous assignment.  The Afehirr Nebula is a sector of space with natural properties that prevent us from performing long-range scans of the space it occupies.  It is also deep within Romulan territory.  In the past, its location prevented us from sending ships to explore and document the region.  In light of recent events, Starfleet Command believes that sending a few vessels to explore the region would be in the Federation’s best interest.  I believe our orders came from equal parts of a desire to expand our scientific knowledge of the nebula and wanting to make sure the Romulans weren’t massing a fleet for another assault into Federation space.   

Searching for Tkon artifacts

We managed to avoid any run ins with the Romulan Empire or its allies on our way to the nebula.  Once we reached the nebula, our first destination was system Delta 542-J.  Scientists working on the Tkon artifacts we discovered in the Tepheri system had found a partial map of the ancient empire.  They believe that Delta 542-J was once home to a Tkon outpost.  We performed an extensive scan of the system, and detected several unusual energy sources, but we didn’t find any identifiable pieces of Tkon technology.  We compiled our findings to send to Starfleet at the next opportunity.  Hopefully our information will point Federation Scientists in the right direction to find the missing outpost.   

A non-corporal life form

As we were traveling to the next system we had been assigned to explore, we picked up a distress call from a nearby planet.  Knowing full well that it could be a trap, I gave orders to set a course for the planet.  Once we established orbit over the planet, we were able to contact a colony on the surface that belonged to a people known as the Mokia.  They had settled on the planet not more than two months prior to our arrival, and during that time there had been a series of murders.  Among those killed was the colony’s chief of security, so they had found themselves without anyone capable of carrying out an investigation into the deaths.  I had Mr. Scharf lead an away team to the surface to see if we could help solve the murders.  He soon reported that the investigation may be more difficult than we had originally expected.  There was very little in the way of physical evidence and no real witnesses.  The only thing the victims seemed to have in common was the fact that they had all had children, who had somehow survived the murders that killed the rest of their families.  T’Lol tried her best to interview the children, but none of them had actually been witnesses to their parent’s deaths.  As much as I was glad to hear that, it left our investigation at square one.  T’Lol did note that the children all mentioned encounters with some sort of ghost.  The colonists had originally written off the ghost stories as part of a the stress of losing their families.  Playing a hunch, I had Dr. Franklin and Mr. Toran join the away team, with orders to perform a highly detailed scan of the colony.  It wasn’t long before they were able to identify the children’s ghosts as a non-corporal life form.  Upon further investigation, they were able to identify the life forms as Gorgans.  Starfleet records showed only one previous encounter with the Gorgan life form.  A Gorgan had been responsible for the deaths of all adult personnel of the Federation outpost on Triacus in 2268.  It had only been the actions of Captain Kirk and his crew that prevented the Gorgan from escaping the planet.  We delivered our findings to the colony’s leaders along with information on how to combat the children’s ghost.  The away team remained on the surface until scans determined that the Gorgan threat had been dealt with.   

Scanning the system

After we retrieved our away team, we continued on to our next assigned system.  Our initial scans of system Arae HC only detected a vast asteroid field.  Further scans of the system revealed a number of spatial anomalies.  We needed to carefully maneuver through the asteroid field to reach the anomalies for our highest intensity scans.  Our investigation didn’t turn up any apparent cause for the anomalies.  While near one of the anomalies, we picked detected an unexpected object with turned out to be a genetic sequencer.  I had the nagging suspicion that we had arrived too late to find out who or what had caused the phenomena we were studying.    

With our assignment completed, we exited the nebula and sent our findings back to Starfleet Command.   

Out of Character

In my vain attempts to complete a planetary aid mission over this past weekend, a random through had crossed my mind.  Maybe I was having so much trouble finding an aid mission in the Delta Volanis Cluster because my captain was a much higher rank than the exploration system needed.  Maybe I’d have better luck in a commander level exploration zone.  Unfortunately for me, that hasn’t been the case yet.  The Gorgan mission got my hopes up.  It starts off as a planet requesting general assistance.  They don’t tell you that they don’t need any supplies and just want you to investigate some dead people until you reach orbit.   

The mission to explore the Afehirr Nebula is a little weird to me.  Basically the player is told that because the Romulan Empire is falling apart at the seams, the Federation can get away crossing into enemy space for a scientific mission.  It didn’t feel like something the Federation would approve.  I know at this point the only reason the Federation and the Romulans aren’t at war is because neither side has actually declared war yet.  In my opinion, sending any number of ships across the border is just begging for trouble.   

While I enjoyed the planet visit, I was a little disappointed by it.  It started with a nice story element, and it tied itself in with an episode of the original series.  And it gave me an opprotunity to write an away mission for my non-ground combat bridge officers.  A small part of me wonders how well T’Lol would manage to deal with situation of interviewing emotionally scarred children.  But in the end it fell flat.  The episode it’s based on established that the Gorgan drew energy from children in order to survive.  Deny a Gorgan that energy and they dissolve into nothing.  However in the 140 plus years since their one and only encounter with the Gorgan, Starfleet seems to have found a simple and easy way to kill them just by waving a tricorder at them.  It also didn’t help that the Gorgan appeared as giant glowing walls of light.  Since they’re called ghosts by the children, I was expecting something at least vaguely humanoid.