Behind the Scenes: How A Mission Is Run

[Constance Lafayette]

This is a mission we actually ran on the USS Athena called "The Constant of C". I'm posting up the actual mission planning document that was used from that mission.

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The Constant of C
By Constance Lafayette

Summary: The USS Athena, testing a Warp 12 engine, finds itself stuck moving at exactly Warp 11.9237. The ship begins to shake itself apart under the stress- the engines can't be disengaged. Navigation needs to do round-the-clock white-knuckle piloting to avoid objects and plan essentially continuous warp courses. Meanwhile, the crew starts to notice bizarre alien creatures on their ship. They are blurry and sleightly luminescent. I turns out that this is a species only "syncs up" while at exactly that speed. Eventually the crew figures out who they are and is able to communicate with them. The creatures bring the Athena to a "Warp Sanctuary" because it is in dire need- a stable bubble of warp space moving at exactly Warp 11.9237. The crew conducts repairs and try to get the species to join the Federation. The mission ends when a school of intelligent "warp fish" tries to attack. Can the Athena out-maneuver these creatures and save the day?

Story Beats
April 1st: The USS Athena, having been recently deployed to the Gamma Quadrant, is tasked with testing out the first "Warp 12" engines ("The Damocles Drive" in slang). The crew gets situated and begins their test.
April 5th:The test begins and goes rough- but is viable. The ship is out in an uninhabited part of space but is to make no attempts to disguise itself. We want the rest of the universe to know about it. The ship reaches Warp 11.9237 and can't get any higher. As it does so fuzzy apparitions of humanoids begin to appear on the bridge and all around the ship.
April 10th: Once the ship hits Warp 11.9237 for about 10 minutes we reach a "stable" point and the aliens become visible. They offer to take us to a "Warp Sanctuary"- a stable warp bubble that is constantly moving at Warp 11.9237. This is also their "ship" and a moving city. Players are invited to explore their city and ship repairs go underway.
April 15th:A school of "warp fish" (look like shuttle-sized flying fish) begin to attack the stable warp bubble the Voon don't have a lot of defense. The Athena has to battle them.
April 20th:When the warp fish are destroyed the resulting release of energy will push the Athena to Warp 12.1 and allow it to be maintained. After a wild ride we will end.
April 25th:The Voon, after understanding our reality, pop into our reality (by slowing down their stable warp bubble) next to the Athena and talk about membership in the Federation.

Alien Overview: The Voon

Two-headed aliens who exist at a different frequency than us that we can only interact with at Warp 11.9237. Their heads share a central brain located in their chest, though it is quite large and their hands can act independently (like our hands) but have issues doing too much alone. Mostly used as a way to consume or converse and still watch their surroundings in primitive days.
They are a peaceful, technologically advanced, race who will become allies to the Federation if we play our cards right.
They have no idea that the Federation, or anyone at a different frequency, exists. They indicate that they are a few other species on their plane of existence.

Department Overview
Science: We are doing a warp test. They are gathering results. Also, investigating alien warp bubble.
Medical: I'd like them to possibly help an injured Voon? This won't be medically heavy.
Flight: Warp 12 flight? Yes please.
Sec/Tac: Providing protection for the away teams. Fighting Warp Fish.
Engineering: Warp 12 flight. Shit exploding everywhere.
Ops: Communicating with Voon, data gathering, etc. Probably a little weak.

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Then we allow things to "drift", as they do. If we don't hit everything, on point, every time, to the day, we don't sweat it. We can adapt to things on the fly but let them kind of take their own course. In our chat we talk about "hitting our story beats" and how we can accelerate plots or slow them down to hit our marks a bit better.

This was a pretty successful mission so I thought it would be fun to share with you all kind of how we run our missions.