Writing Prompt – Resurrection City from 1968

So this photo is a bit different, it is historical rather than abstract or fictitious. I would like to encourage people to consider taking this photo both in and out of context. The original article from the New York Times is from February 18th, 2017 and is about an attempt by Martin Luther King Jr. to confront the power structure with the poverty of the country.

Now, there is a lot of context that goes with the image, beyond that there is a lot of power in the image itself. The painted words juxtaposed with the nature of what else is in the photo and plywood walls set up by tents. There is also context of the general time in history this comes from, the late 60’s while King was still alive. There are a lot of places to go here, I encourage people to think a moment and pick a direction and just write about it, see where it takes you.

Update on Operation Succubus

The INV Serpent arrived at our facility Assyria Base on schedule and refit began immediately. Unfamiliar with the hyperdrive technology or hypermatter reactors, the refits are slower going than one would like. After some amount of argument with Admiral Vallan, he begrudgingly agreed to allow them to refit the reactors with matter-antimatter reactors which engineering crews are far more familiar with. The turbolaser designs appeared to require only minor adjustments to bring them up to speed to be comparable with phaser and disruptor designs. Transporters and expanded shields were also added tot he vessels. The full refit has taken longer than expected but is now complete.

The Duchess Malumnus has temporarily joined the Admiral’s Imperial fleet to assist in operations, part of the larger Operation Succubus to apply political pressure and undermine Solas Tempus. The fleet’s current task is already underway, they have successfully intercepted and captured the commanding officer of the Federation vessel dispatched to the Schatten Star System to assist and monitor Solas Tempus. The Commander has been detained aboard the Serpent who has already fended of one attempt to rescue her using their overwhelmingly superior numbers and firepower.

For this KS and Bucket would really like some people to play interrogators. KS plays Megan Shepard and while I play Angelique, I’d like to keep her more supervisory. Bucket, of course, plays Admiral Vallan. It would be very useful for someone to play an interrogator or similar part in the process, see both KS and Bucket for details on that.

Task Force for Operation Gray Angel

A new task force has been assembled to search for and rescue the missing Commander Megan Shepard of the USS Pegasus. Her XO from the Pegasus, Denver Tierny has been given a field commission of full Commander and placed in command of the small task force composed of the New Hope, Epoch, and Pegasus. All vessels are being retrofit with the Phasing Cloak to further assist in the operation code-named Gray Angel.

Background Information

Commander Shepard was abducted from the Aerowing belonging to the Pegasus at some point in time when returning to the Schatten Star System after a personal trip to Earth. The Pegasus along with the Epoch were dispatched at once to investigate, they later detected Shepard’s combadge on an Imperial vessel. The two vessels were attacked in an ambush and managed to return to the Schatten System after the Epoch suffered significant damage. The fabber, Vulcan, is quickly assisting with the vessels refit.

In accordance with existing treaties, Starfleet Command has expressed the desire to take over the operation, which Solas Tempus has politely declined to allow. Federation vessels, however, are also available to assist.

Speak to Buck and KS about entering this plot, I’m not sure what they need, but pilots for fighters perhaps or people to play Imperials.

Duranaia Establishes Foothold on Soteria

The colony site for the Serenity Concord on Soteria named Duranaia, which broke ground several months ago, has approved new residences who were not part of the initial start up team to being moving to the site. There is limited housing still, however, the colony site has successfully set up its own series of power sources and defenses in addition to commercial and industrial facilities there. The colony site opens up at the same time that food and textile productions from the Temperance and Sustenance communities of New Morning Fields and Moonshadow Gardens have begun ramping up production, mostly of food supplies with some textile production.

The Temperance and Sustenance communities are supplying food throughout the system, though still in limited quantities. The system will likely remain dependent on outside resources of raw materials for some time to come. However, having the farming communities focused on sustainable production of food and other resources which the colony site can then produce into other goods and services bodes well for the entire system.

Character Development Prompt

So rather than the usual image to do whatever with, I’d like to provide this image here and suggest that people write a short paragraph or two about who this person is from what they see. There is no setting or other parameters just, this face, and what do you think the person that has that face is like, who are they, what are they doing, what kind of personality do they have?

The Ball is in Motion

This information is broadcast via a Deep Echo Array one of a number of secret facilities. It is received using a subspace receiver tuned to the correct frequency at the correct time. The signal instructs an asset on how to retrieve this information using various codes in a code-book of some kind. An Onyx XIA would also have the ability to receive and decode such a message to look up the information in real time.

Duchess Malumnus has made contact with spliced in forces of the Galactic Empire within the Milky Way, specifically the INV Serpent and its leader, Admiral Enus Vallan, who appears to be in command of the Imperial forces in the area. The Admiral has agreed to a partner ship and is in route to our facility at Assyria Base for refit to fight Solas Tempus forces. Admiral Vallan has also dispatched a number of probe droids to contact his forces within the Schatten Star System, one of which has been discovered but self-destructed. Given the destruction of one of the probes, clandestine forces should be aware of the need for increased secrecy. It is known that contact was made with Milana Tarkiel outside of Nimbus Station and at this time there is no evidence that droids are being specifically tracked.

Onyx has provided Admiral Vallen with a coded subspace channel for secure communications.

This arc is going to need spies and people to help increase the unrest. As with a previous post there are racial tensions already present. Since the Empire is very much pro-human and anti-alien, this should go well. From a plot-standpoint, the is also the general direction, and anyone wishing to expand on that should feel free to do so. The way this is plotted to shake out is that the humans start to respond in-kind to alien anti-human sentiment.

Hints About Stories and Participation

The subject of participation has been troubling me for a while. Specifically how to increase participation within the site. It was clear from the survey that a lot of people don’t participate not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know what to do or don’t feel they have anything to contribute. That is why I’m going to attempt to put, at the end of every news post going forward, a little blurb about what the storyline needs or suggestions about how to participate. My hope is that people can read that and get a feeling for what they might be able to contribute.

Further, another comment on the survey was regarding people not knowing where to go with a storyline and thus people having to wait for me. Since my time is very limited this gets into a bad situation where storylines die when I cannot be on. I end up owing a lot of role plays and I, likewise, end up without time or energy to do them all.

I feel that we have a lot of very creative minds here and people with an extremely varied set of perceptions. No one on the server should feel they cannot or should not contribute to a story that is ongoing. I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to why people feel the way they do and I think a lot of it is because people have made a lot of seriously combat-based characters who are pigeon-holed into those roles and this gives us the current situation where you really can’t throw a rock without hitting someone who is a skilled fighter. I will be addressing this in a further posting and possibly with the staff about how to fix this problem.

In the meantime, these measures of putting information at the end of a post as to direction of a plot arc and the potential for participation in that arc should help with the indecision. No one should feel that their indecision about how to play a character or where to fit that character in is abnormal. On the contrary, it is extremely normal. I’ve talked about this before — the fact that a person is here doing role play means that there’s probably some social anxiety going on or some other kinds of anxiety and other issues connecting with people. That’s pretty normal too! Some of that boils down to not being able to figure out where we, as people, fit into the grander scheme. It is only natural to presume that this kind of feeling is going to cause issues deciding where our characters fit in.

I will being doing further posts on the Burning Sweetly section of the forum on this very issue in hopes of helping people overcome problems associated with how to develop a character. I’m by no means an expert so, commentary will be welcome.

Fresh News Area for Antagonists

Since we are finally going to start getting into a place where we’re having active play as antagonists for the story within Blazing Umbra, we need an area to keep those players informed. After our recent survey of players, it is clear that many players aren’t sure what’s going on or how they can contribute. This is going to be the first phase of an ongoing effort to keep players of both sites informed about the changes to the setting. Since these news posts are designed to be in-character and the characters not engaging in activity with the antagonist organizations such as Onyx and the Galactic Empire forces within the setting will not have access to information about what those sides are up to until things are already in motion; I have decided that there needs to be a separate place to post such information. This is analagous to the Solas Tempus COMs category only for the opposite sides.

In practice this area is going to take a while to solidify as to what is actually in it and will take some effort to get used to. As the story goes, things posted here and intended two fold, as previously stated we want to keep players informed when they can’t be on more than once or twice a month (or even longer). In addition to that, we’d like to foster creativity between players, posts here should also be seen as invites to consider how things can go and how people might contribute. Suggestions can often be replied to in one of these posts via the forum (a link to the appropriate forum topic is at the end of every post). In addition, a new topic can be started in the Phoenix Nebula section of the forum.

Destruction of a Probe of Unknown Origin

Viper Probe Droid An unknown droid was found entering the Schatten Star System and was brought into the main shuttle bay of the USS Pegasus before it reached it’s destination. The droid refused to communicate its intentions waiting for a verbal identification code. Mr. Damien Smith and Ms. Heather Quinn were brought in to assist with the situation. The pair attempted to seize the droid and force a physical connection. At that point, the droid self-desturcted injuring both parties. Mr. Smith is currently in the ICU Burn Unit on Nimbus Station while Heather is in the workshops being repaired by the engineering staff. Heather is expected to be repaired without issue, however Damien’s status is still critical from plasma extensive plasma burns.

The purpose and origin of the probe remain entirely unknown, the New Hope and the Cabur have been asked to consult while the Captain of the Pegasus retains the probes debris, the sensor logs have been transmitted to both ships for further analysis since those two ships have more experience with such technology.