cyclops

Trouble on the Horizon?

For many people in the cities around Chicago gangs and gang violence are just part of everyday life. For those in Ford Heights and similar areas, the violence has been steadily escalating for days and no one quite knows why. The dominant gangs appears to be splitting along previously unknown fault lines. Loyal members vanish for a few days and then come back only to shoot up their former allies with no demands or talk involved.

The most recent shooting has even gang members shocked and willing to talk to each other. Previously, it hasn’t been easy to get the leaders of the different territories to get together, but something has changed.

Bobby just came at us. We hadn’t seen him in a few days and figured he’d just been layin’ low, pissed someone off. Saw him next and he got the drop on us, just started shooting. It was bloody, I don’t know what could make anyone do that, out of nowhere, we grew up together and he just shot me in the chest four times. I’ll never forget it though, I see him again he’ll be the one bloody.
Eye Witness to Shooting in Ford Heights

Even with the chronically low levels of educational success, the local community leaders have been able to broker meetings between gang leaders in the area. So far, no one is accepting responsibility, in fact local leaders have taken them at face value.

When one of them is fronting, you can tell. You can just tell, more often than not they’ll tell you themselves that they did it without saying it. A lot of these people lead out of fear, fear of reprisal. No one wants a war, but most of these boys agree that one is coming, the only problem is they don’t know from where.
Local Community Leader

So far the police have been silent, but that is nothing new for these neighborhoods. Word has it, that this isn’t isolated to the Heights either. Word has come in from other neighborhoods that similar things are starting to happen elsewhere. Investigations reveal numerous 911 calls from surrounding suburbs and even getting into the edges of Chicago proper. Calls are often answered late and when the police get there, there isn’t much to do other than call the coroner and file a report.

Kids are dying. Kids. I don’t care what they think, these aren’t perfect kids but who is? And what do the cops do? Nothing. They don’t care, to them it’ll be all the same if we all drop dead tomorrow. Maybe then someone will build a nice mall and golf course, then the cops would care. No, we’re on our own.
Local Pawn Shop Owner

Community outrage has yet to reach officials in Chicago, or if it has they have been entirely silent. Repeated calls to the mayor’s office or the police chief have been met with no comment. The silence is deafening. If this continues, they won’t be able to stay silent forever.

Orbital Deployment Exercise

What you’re about to see is really something special. Each trainee must complete some of the most extreme combat and insertion maneuvers we can put them through, so when they are out in the field they can go through whatever is needed and complete their objectives. I don’t personally know of any training programs which do this as a standard training program either.

Recently Vice Admiral Emily Artis allowed reporters from the Soteria News Service to tag along with the latest group of trainees which are nearing graduation from the Solas Tempus Academy and become members of the young but illustrious new group, the Solas Tempus Marine Corps. Our reporter met with their commanding officer to tell him about what this was all about.

What you’re about to see is really something special. Each trainee must complete some of the most extreme combat and insertion maneuvers we can put them through, so when they are out in the field they can go through whatever is needed and complete their objectives. I don’t personally know of any training programs which do this as a standard training program either. The trainees are taken up to around 250 km, with an orbital velocity of right around 180,000 kps. Our drop point is randomly chosen at liftoff to prevent anyone from knowing what they’re going to jump into. Once we’re in the window for the drop point, the trainees are deployed. They must safely deploy from the vehicle and arrive within the target landing zone within a set time from. So what you’re about to see is their final exam of sorts, these people have been training for a long time to do this, all building to execute this drop.
Captain Reginald Armando

Captain Armando is quite proud of his people, he talked further about how the trainees are trained in order to accomplish this. The Orbital Deployment Exercise is just one small part of the overall examination process.

The team loaded up at Serenity Station in a Type 6 Shuttle, giving each other a hard time about who might fail and making jokes about who might throw up in their armor. The armor is of particular interest, as Solas Tempus bagan developing advanced exoskeletons before the incorporation of the Serenity Concord, what the marines are wearing is termed as Class 1Z Advanced Cybernetic Exoskeleton, developed specifically for use by the marines. We spoke to one of the trainees about the armor and what it allowed them to do.

Oh, the 1Z? Yeah, it’s pretty amazing technology, it’s like it lets you do what your mind sets out to do. It’s some powerful stuff, we’re all pretty good soldiers, well trained, and there’s always limits. The body can only handle so much, with the 1Z though it’s like a perfect kind of partner. The 1Z helps you do what’s got to be done.
Trainee Brett Evans

Mr. Evans, soon to be Ensign Evans, went on to talk about how the armor was an extension of who he was, just a hunk of alloys and technology until someone like him straps in. Many of his fellow trainees felt the same way, like they were pretty good but the armor let their body do what needs to be done, beyond what others can do. Of course, the Captain had a slightly different take on things.

The 1Z? Yeah it’s impressive hardware, and these kids really like it. There’s a lot to like about it. They aren’t wrong when they talk about the fact that it becomes an extension of the wearer though, we picked these people for a reason though. Each one of them makes the 1Z look like a toaster in comparison to the possibilities. These kids have the best training without even touching that armor before they even qualify to look at it.
Captain Reginald Armando

Captain Armando went on to talk about the training that each person goes through, in fact one of the qualifying tests is about armorless-operations where for their finals the trainees will go head to head with seasoned veterans who know all the tricks and tools of the trade. The program is really impressive.

The Jump

Once the shuttle lifted off, the trainees were made aware of their drop coordinates and the joking stopped. That’s when the Captain issued orders for the trainees to prepare to drop and each one secured and checked the armor, plugging the drop coordinates into the armor’s on board computer and securing their helmets. The rear hatch opened and the trainees gave the thumbs up, when the shuttle was over the right orbital window, they got the green light and jumped out, two at a time, right out of the protective force field and over Soteria in hard vacuum.

The Captain as well as the Vice Admiral and myself watched from the shuttle cockpit as the trainees descended and hit the atmosphere, according to the Vice Admiral that was the moment where a lot of the pass and fail grades would be decided, being able to go from hard vacuum to atmospheric reentry in a suit of armor is not an easy thing. All the trainees made it to the ground in the end, though their grades are still being decided. On the ground, the group was in good spirits, some expressed wanting to hop back up to orbit and do it again. They would get their chance, this wasn’t the only orbital drop they’d have to do in order to become marines. All of them were eager to get onto the next phase of the process.

Writing of a Saga

I know that most of us have spent a long time crafting responses, stories, and characters over the last few years. What is on the Wiki remains persistent and can be easily exported in the event that I can no longer pay the bill. Still there is character biographical data, setting information, but not really stories of any kind, just background and source material. In that vein, I would really like to begin actual work on writing a kind of comprehensive main plot of the settings. There is just so much to write and I cannot possibly do it on my own.

As a site we’ve been going around for almost three years now, since 2016. We’ve got a lot of stories written and a lot of those stories have yet to be canonized, some of the information has even been lost when channels have been deleted on Discord and such things. I would like to really start to cobble together the saga that we’ve built, so that it doesn’t get lost forever someday. Back in the old days we had persistent chat logs on IRC that could be saved (I have a lot of them myself, still) and forum data could be easily backed up (as our forum is). In the age of Discord and many related servers (such as Slack, Zulip, or Mattermost) there is the problem of how to get the data out of Discord. The short answer is that, you can’t. I suppose one could code a bot to dump all of the Discord information to a text file, but as I can attest to with chat logs and like they are nearly impossible to parse.

I know that most of us have spent a long time crafting responses, stories, and characters over the last few years. What is on the Wiki remains persistent and can be easily exported in the event that I can no longer pay the bill. Still there is character biographical data, setting information, but not really stories of any kind, just background and source material. In that vein, I would really like to begin actual work on writing a kind of comprehensive main plot of the settings. There is just so much to write and I cannot possibly do it on my own.

In that vein, I’m asking for help in getting this ball rolling. I’m getting some of my creative mojo back after a long span of having no real creative fire left, so I don’t mind firing it up. I’m still up in the air for what would be easiest, given the prevalence of using Google Docs, I am inclined to believe that would be easiest for everyone and thus, I envision this as a folder on Google Drive that is shared and people can collaborate, write, and start things for their characters as they want to. I will have a main file for the Saga of Blazing Umbra which will contain the main story itself and other stories be satellites to that (that also stand alone). The idea is that we’ve got the actual stories of all of our characters and plots written in a narrative form, perhaps even cut-paste largely off of Discord itself.

To that end, I’ve made a shared folder on Google Drive. The link provides view-only access, since these are our stories I would like to actually add people’s editing access as needed, to protect the work from vandalism. I have also enabled version histories, so if there are changes that a person doesn’t like to their story, they can be viewed and the original is recoverable. Please comment or DM me for direct access.

Operation Stellar Horizon Update

Progress report was transmitted by the Stellar Horizon on schedule and was received at 0300Z via the transdimensional receiver array at Janus Station. Recon proceeding for uncharted star system, so far no hostilities have been found. The Stellar Horizon is holding position pending study of entertainment broadcasts received. At the time of the transmission the vessel had not encountered any resistance, hostile or otherwise. See file TDO-SOV-0010-1 for details.

OOC: Remember this feed is kept under wraps from the general public, internal Solas Tempus communications.

Stellar Horizon Reboot

So, it occurs to me that we’re going to need to do a reboot of the Stellar Horizon plot. We have a few spots for people to join, this is going to be formatted like your average episode of Star Trek. We’re going to have a bridge crew / senior officers and a few extras. Not everyone will be required at all times, and people can go in and out of scenes as needed.

We’ll be doing a storyline. We have two right now that we can do, that I am planning to run myself. So, right now, I know for sure that we have no active CMO (Chief Medical Officer) as that is played by @buckethead and I don’t know if Cake is interested in being involved still, also T0l hasn’t joined the server either to be involved. It has been a while, we’re going to start in-space after the ship goes through Janus Gate and is on its mission and go from there.

Looking to start this story by sometime around this upcoming week.

Pushing the Investigation

We are looking for 2-4 players to participate in a 2-3 hour long session that will be scheduled in about 2-3 weeks from now, to allow me time to finish with the semester. We will be playing off of non-combat areas of mental illness, classic horror concepts, and a much darker universe than we’ve been going with before.

So the introductory thread for the Angelic Sins setting was supposed to have been over and done with years ago. However, we have been having trouble getting players to consistently want to participate. We’ve tried to do it on the forum and such since times don’t like to add up so people can do things. However, this is a plot that I’d like to finish. At this time, I’ve put out a call for players to volunteer for an as-yet-unscheduled event in Angelic Sins.

If all participants are able, we can arrange for the session to last longer, but right now I’m looking at doing several short sessions that deal specifically with this in an episodic kind of way. Rather than trying pack an TV style episode of content into the game, these will focus on one or maybe two concepts important to the whole plot, closer to a small MMORPG Quest style of episode.

If anyone knows any players who may which to participate who may not be on the server, please invite them and see if we can build a following.

Attack on Mars Devastates Federation

Some are saying the last safe haven for synthetics could be the Serenity Concord. The Concord has issued a statement saying that they are not considering any legislation against synthetic lives at this time, certainly will not act without more information about the causes for and details of the attack on Mars. The ALFRE act of 2384 is now the only legislation in known space to protect the rights of artificial life forms.

Yesterday during celebrations of First Contact Day, an apparent terrorist attack against the Federation colony on Mars occurred. Few details are as yet known, but what is known is that synthetic workers played and instrumental part in the attack. Any reasons for why this might have occurred are unclear at this time. Synthetic workers deactivated the planetary deflector shields and turned the defensive satellites against the surface in orbital bombardment. Casualty reports are still coming in but early reports estimate over 90,000 dead in the attack.

A rescue armada being constructed by Starfleet to assist in the evacuation of Romulus before the Romulan sun is predicted to go super nova was also attacked and destroyed along with the entire shipyards. The surface of the planet has been devastated and early reports suggest it could take decades to properly rebuild. It is unclear if the Federation will choose to rebuild its rescue fleet, though Admiral Jean Luc Picard has stated the devastating attack has nothing to do with the mission to save the Romulan people from destruction.

The Federation Council held an emergency meeting this morning and have issued a preliminary ban on synthetic research and development. Admiral Picard could not be reached for comment. Such an act could have unimaginable consequences for any synthetic life forms currently living or working in Federation space. It is known that since the android known as Data was discovered on Omicron Theta that many have been fighting for synthetic rights. The events of the past 24 hours are sure to have a lasting impact on the lives of any artificial beings currently in Federation territory.

Changes Made

While there were some reservations about the changes to be made, I still believe we can increase our total player count and activity across the 3 settings by splitting them across different servers. Over the last week or so, that is what we’ve done. All 3 servers are now operational and set up. All content on the original Molten Aether server has been configured to be archived and read-only until such time as we feel comfortable deleting it.

The server Molten Aether will remain online and be a centralized hub for all the settings / servers. All the OOC channels are intact and while the roles have been heavily simplified, it maintains the same idea of who can get where. The “Founders” role will also now contain those who run additional servers as well as those who have contributed a lot to the setting, since those are also mostly the same thing.

Those who run other servers will be granted access to the #staff channel on Molten Aether. I have also simplified our bot experience, we have 3 core bots on most of the servers, and a few more on Molten Aether itself. The main addition is the bot called Alyssa, which is an instance of Nadeko Bot that I host myself. If anyone is interested, it is open source and pretty easy to configure. The primary reason for this bot is that it provides some “global” options for when running a self-hosted version on multiple servers, as such we have use of the following global commands:

.start
.end
.pause
.resume
.links
.servers

These commands replace the Dyno commands which were similar. In addition, on Blazing Umbra there is the command .welcomekit which gives links and a description of a welcome kit for new arrivals to the station. More commands will be forthcoming as they are needed.

The server invites can be displayed with the .servers command for all of the Molten Aether servers. Soon, I will begin posting advertisement links to the Portal and we’re already listed on Dynobot’s site for all the servers. The hope is that we will attract people for each setting who may or may not want to do other settings and each server gain increased membership that way.

Proposal for Server Changes

I have considered server changes for a while now. Everyone knows that the server has gone through many iterations. For a good while now I have seriously considered doing something we did previously… That is to go back to having a server for each setting. Not only that, I would like to allow those people who have starships to have their own servers for their ships and thus allowing people to play around more with time-fudge (as is kind of becoming a term in my brain) so that people could more easily break away from the constraints of being all on the same server at the same time.

At this time, the changes outlined here are a proposal awaiting commentary from the group. If no commentary is given, we will proceed with making the necessary changes, otherwise consider this post an engraved invitation to comment and / or complain about these ideas. I am especially interested in peoples concerns both with how we do things now (which feels excessively complicated at times to manage) and how I am proposing to do things in the future (which might also feel excessively complicated to manage to some). I would like any and all constructive commentary.

Setting Czars

I have decided that each setting is going to get its own “Czar” who will be in charge of said setting in its entirety, except for accepting some co-input from myself when and if it became necessary to do so. Though the intention is for whoever is in charge of that setting to have a server dedicated to that setting where they are in charge of character approvals, story line choices, and even setting / background choices.

Reality Czars

Along those same lines, since we have Janus Gate in operation, I would like to give people the opportunity to (again on different servers) run a linked-reality with even more control unto themselves. This is the framework I imagine for servers to partner with ours. A prime example is a pure Star Wars, Halo, or Troy Rising universe along with other customs (including Cyber Star’s custom setting if he wishes, or Winter’s setting if she wants). Within each of our 3 settings we have methods of traversing realities and such partnerships would come with a “full faith and credit” kind of clause. This would allow approved characters, ships, and technologies / concepts from one reality to traverse to another reality unchecked so long as it has been previously approved in one of our servers.

Reference Material / Game Mechanics

I have always found participation points to be an important part of any setup. Thus, servers joined together in this way would need a bot (similar to Tatsumaki in this feature) to accumulate points and displayer server-only points and network-wide (as I think we could reasonably call a set of servers a network) points. We would still all share the same Wiki (though reality-specific servers would get the choice to reference their own Wiki should one exist).

The in-game mechanic of the Janus gate or even a singular Stargate works for me for transit between realities within Blazing Umbra, and magical solutions in the other 3 settings, the Umbral Passages / Drochaid stones in Embers of Soteria along with generalized magical spells and such in a more advanced world such as is in Angelic Sins.

Since Discourse (our Forum solution) and WordPress (thus, duh) have an extensive capacity to be customized and provide a unified front for all things, those people who are running external servers could use the forum and/or word press to unify announcements and the like. Some adjustments would need to be made, in all likelihood, in dealing with cross-posting and such but that all can be dealt with on the technical side at a later date.

What and Why?

My life is quickly getting more complicated and my personal life is blooming out into something I am really enjoying. I don’t want to give up Molten Aether nor any of its sub-settings but I am becoming too busy to properly manage it (and I didn’t really have time before to do all 3). Also a lot of other people have a lot of other ideas that are far better than mine when dealing with things like Fantasy and Modern Horror and even SciFi that isn’t Star Trek and Stargate (which I know an obscene amount about). Doing it this way allows people to be creative and benefit from our combined creative talent which is, well I think it is an impressive amount of creativity we have here.

Taking Applications

So what is going to follow is going to be the draft application for doing a partner server to ours:

Server Name:
Link:
Admin:
Description:
This should be a paragraph or 2 at least.
Base Universe:
If the reality / universe is based on an existing one (such as Babylon 5, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Halo, Troy Rising) or anything that we can look up specifically as the base for the setting, it would go here include existing resources for if an original setting is being used here as well.
Special Information:
Anything we need to know about the in-universe game play and rules, be as detailed as possible if there is anything unusual outside the rules outlined on the Molten Aether Wiki that needs to be considered.
Additional Notes:
Anything else we need to know.

Application Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions apply to every partnered server, of any type, which is added to Molten Aether. All partner servers should aspire to the same overall feel, our goal is to create a network of servers to cater to the creative desires of everyone who may wish to join and support those people in becoming better role players, writers, and such.

Full Faith and Credit

Any and all characters approved on any individual server are valid for every server within Molten Aether and its subsidiary servers and our character creation guidelines must be met as outlined here. All servers must follow the rules of conduct as outlined here, at a bare minimum, this does not mean that individual servers cannot have more strict rules of play so long as they do not violate the rules specified. Interpretation of rules should be as uniform as possible, but server admins do retain the ability to interpret the rules as they see fit while minimizing conflicts with other servers.

Moderators vs. Administrators

Moderators are defined as those who work within a server to assist in role play, producing plots and stories, going over applications, and enforcing the rules of an individual server. Administrators are defined as those who administer the server’s framework, channels, bots, roles, and other such things. Administrators also, under this plan, will assist in unifying all the servers in the network should some kind of conflict arise.

Admin Sharing

While each server will have its own administrators moderation privileges will be extended to administrators from the other servers. This does not have to include moderators getting similar privileges on all servers. However, anyone who is an Admin on one of our core servers (currently defined as SysOp we currently have on Molten Aether) will be expected to be administrators on subsequent servers unless there is sufficient reason not to. Moderators can also be shared, but it is not required and individual server owners have the final say on if a moderator of a partnered server is allowed to be moderator on their server.

Comments

In addition to our normal comments being on the forum, there is a Google form for extended comments and voting for these changes.

Time and Time Again

I’ve always told everyone that real life comes first but I never had much of a real life to contend with before. I can’t say that I’m familiar with balancing my time the way I have had to recently. Along that vein I’m not able to keep up with my obligations as the head of the various story lines that we have going on. As such, I am officially handing the reigns for all ongoing / upcoming story lines to our SysOps, @jumpingscript and @ks0908 who will coordinate with our Moderators and Founders in order to get our role play back into swing. I will likely give advise and ideas, the primary approval and focus for RP will be our collective Staff.

First off I’d like to apologize to everyone for my limited time over the last few months. School this semester has been brutal and especially demanding on my time, I’m spending roughly 70 or so hours a week on classes, class requirements (in class room experience), homework, and actual work (paychecks are nice). Even before my personal life got more complicated, the demands on my time were significant. As most of you know I have also become involved with someone, this person has quickly become very special to me and thus most of my free time (what little we can line up together) goes to her.

What to do about unfinished stories…

We have many unfinished and ongoing story lines, what I have documented is all contained in the following OneNote Notebook, this link is a view-only link and shows everything I have gathered that has yet to be posted for the game. I know a lot of people don’t care for Microsoft products but OneNote is entirely free, has apps for Android, Windows Phone, iOS, Windows, Mac, and web. The server staff has been given an editable link to allow them to make changes to all notes and read all content.

For those players who are in RP-Lock with my characters and given storylines. Overall, we can put those RPs on hold and continue them later (likely after my semester ends) when I have more time. The time-frame on that is mid-May, since finals week is the end of April / start of May. For anyone with specific concerns on how to deal with ongoing storyline issues due to my absence, I encourage you to contact me directly and we can work out specifics of how to deal with it. A few people I am going to contact privately myself.

For those wondering some of the details for things; I have compiled a rough list of who is where of the important figures…

Blazing Umbra

Sal D’Amico has been recalled to Markab Prime to oversee Solas Tempus operations from HQ.
Asher / Rosary have been ordered to stay on ready-alert during the Zone exploration from the Continuum in orbit and monitoring the situations / providing intel.
Lance Thomas is still listed as deceased, overall the general population does not know anything different and his passing has been mourned slowly and operations have really gotten back to normal. There are rumors throughout the station and abroad that he is still alive, most of these focus on some urgent mission that is revealed would do some horrible thing, the horrible things varies of course. Of course the core of our playable characters within Blue Team of Solas Tempus know the truth, that he is alive and being searched for.
Drem Confuscho has been assigned to assist with the Solerian people at the bottom of the Soterian ocean to rebuild their society. The USS Drakon has been largely left to Emily Damion to command.
The STV Galatine is commanded commanded by Siv Quinn who has been promoted to Admiral and made the head of Blue Team / Temporal Operations. The Galatine has been placed on a classified mission and has not been seen in the Schatten System in some time, neither has Siv.
Amber Cross herself is still in the system and active, she can be played as an NPC if necessary by staff but please read up on her character before playing her.

Command Structure in Schatten System

Nimbus Station remains the command outpost for the system and oversees all operations within the system under its current command structure.
The Civilian Government still maintains its primary offices on Nimbus Station for the time being, Andrea Maddox is a Human (female) and is Governor of the system while a Romulan (female) is the Senator of the system. These are both NPC’s so they can be played by anyone.
Sal D’Amico is largely unable to be reached at any given time, but if his orders are needed they probably take a few days to a week (real time) to get as the players in question will have to drop me a line and I can write up orders or some such. He does have a secretary and aids who can be NPC’d if necessary — I’ll leave any names up to everyone playing.

Angelic Sins

This is much easier to untangle. Lance Thomas himself has been heavily reprimanded for his behavior and for the moment is mostly working out of the Ad Undas base near Los Angeles and is investigating the supernatural occurrences that happened recently, he is essentially unreachable. My other characters there are just not present right going on other jobs, in the case of Trevor Arnell he is most likely unavailable because of having just gotten married and now has to learn the history and culture of Erica Larsson who is not human and has a significant amount of stuff that Trevor has to learn.

I will leave it up to the staff and players about the murder mystery that has been going on for a really long time, notes on that should be in the notebook linked above.

Embers of Soteria

The main story here should hold but can be used. Notes on the story are in the above mentioned notebook. Lisa Thomson herself has been leading the Souls Templar across the countryside seeking to defend the kingdoms against the horrors that are starting to come through the veil as the Peace of Ages dissolves. This plot element will remain static for the time being and can also be used by players as needed to conflicts, storylines and anything else.

Good People, Good Writers

We have a lot of good people here and good writers. I hope that everyone can continue to role play and have fun even when I’m not around. Please, create new stories, have fun, alter things, nothing would please me more than having to learn new lore and new things that happened. Don’t be afraid to break things, don’t be afraid that I’m not going to approve, run it past the staff and so long as they give the OK, then you have my blessing.

I’ll be around to chat and such periodically and I might RP now and again.

Until then. Happy plotting.