[Story Comments] – Into the Mouth of Madness

[Sovereign47]

Anyone interested in posting new stories anytime soon? It would be a shame if this RP would die so soon, and I would prefer that we continue writing. Besides, we just started the real fun part

Oh, maybe I should have given more info on alien ships first. So here it goes now.

Fighters (Swarmers): About 50 meters in lenght, coming with at least two tentacles, but if necessary can spawn more of them. They share a standard design configuration as their larger counterparts. They also come with two spikes, one sensor appendage and a number of their bio-projectile launchers. While being rather small, they have a firepower capable of destroying Intrepid class sized vessel. Unlike their larger counterparts, fighters do not have visible power-sources.

Destroyers (Interceptors): Essentially larger than swarmers (about 400 meters long) these are truly dangerous vessels. Armed with up to ten tentacles, four spikes and twice the number of projectile launchers these ships are capable of destroying capital vessels without much trouble (like Nebula or Galaxy classes for example). Their power-sources are at the back of the vessels in form of glowing balls of light.

Battlecruisers (Hunter-killers): With more than 1 km long, these large vessels are consisting from more than two dozen tentacles, 8 spikes, numerous launchers and two power-sources in the middle, and the back of the ship. Being rather powerful these ships are capable of taking down the more powerful capital ships (like Sovereign and Prometheus classes) and even some smaller fixed installations like outposts.

Battleships (Behemoths): The third most powerful vessel in species 10647’s armada. Armed with up to 4 dozen tentacles, 16 spikes and high number of bio-projectile launchers, these ships are capable of destroying even the mightiest vessels of Milky Way galaxy (like Scimitar, Borg cube, Dominion Dreadnought and such). They can also take on medium sized installations due to their impressive firepower and ability to launch swarmers as well. Even their size of more than 3500 meters in length is terrifying.

Dreadnoughts (Leviathans): More than 9 kilometers in length, these ships are capable of fighting with dozens of capital enemy vessels with relative ease. Having more than twice the number of tentacles, spikes and projectile launchers compared to battleships, and a large number of swarmers and interceptors that they carry, these monstrosities have enough firepower to destroy entire planet. They come with six lighting ball like power-sources and eight of sensor appendages.

Dreadnought Carriers (Nemesis’): Approximately twice the size of dreadnoughts, these are the most powerful vessels which species 10647 have in their fleet. They have ten power-sources, over hundred of tentacles, over 50 spikes, numerous bio-projectile launchers and a dozen of sensor appendages. Aside from that, they can also carry a large number of swarmers, interceptors, hunter-killers and sometimes even behemoths. With that kind of firepower and a large number of support craft, these vessels can fight with hostile fleets consisting of hundreds of vessels.

NOTE: All of these vessels have high ability of regeneration abilities and their shields are able to absorb large amounts of energy. Such abilities are increased proportionally to a size of species’ 10647 vessels.

Now that I explained somewhat, their vessels, I could as well give you some better insight in their weapons, defensive and propulsion systems.

Offensive systems:

Beam spikes – used for firing powerful bright red colored beams which are able to quickly drain opponent’s shield and also severely damage both it’s armor and hull. They usually require several seconds of cool-down before they could fire again and they can’t fire simultaneously.

Bio-projectile launchers – capable of launching highly corrosive bio-mechanical warheads which are able to literally melt down both opponent’s armor and hull. However, they have no effects on energy shielding. Mentioned launchers cannot fire more than two torpedoes per one minute, but unlike beam spikes, they are able to fire simultaneously.

Tentacles – As there are several different types of them, I will cover them one by one. So here we go:

Ripper tentacles – these tentacles are covered with many sharp spikes and are used as sheer force to tear apart the target’s armor and hull apart. As such they are not able to inflict damage to energy shields and therefor are not used until the target’s shields had been collapsed.

Devastator tentacles – type of tentacles containing same corrosive liquid which the creatures and bio-projectile warheads have. They are used to spray their target with acidic liquid in order to melt down it’s armor/hull and thus allow boarding actions. These type of tentacles have limited use, as the liquid in them can be expended and it takes a lot of time for the beings to recreate it. Just like the ripper tentacles, these are also useless against opponents with energy shielding.

Energy draining tentacles – capable for quick shield draining as well as for draining of remaining power from target when it’s shields have been collapsed.

Devourer tentacles – tentacles with extremely sharp-teethed mouths on their ends able to literally devour and consume anything in their range (even the non-organic materials). They have a purpose of processing material which is later used in ship breeding.

NOTE: All of the tentacles can be regenerated and elongated if necessary. The bigger the ship, the more tentacles it has and additional ones can be generated as required.

Sensor appendages or so called detectors – special appendages created specifically for scanning surrounding area. Their effective detection range is increased by the number of them.
Therefor:
1 appendage (Swarmer) – effective senor range of up to 100 light years and effective scanning range of up to 100 000 km
2 appendages (Interceptor) – effective sensor range of up to 200 light years and effective scanning range of up to 500 000 km
4 appendages (Hunter-killer) – effective sensor range of up to 400 light years and effective scanning range of up to 2 000 000 km
6 appendages (Behemoth) – effective sensor range of up to 600 light years and effective scanning range of up to 5 000 000 km
8 appendages (Leviathan) – effective sensor range of up to 800 light years and effective scanning range of up to 10 000 000 km
10 appendages (Nemesis) – effective sensor range of up to 1000 light years and effective scanning range of up to 20 000 000 km

Propulsion: Transdimensional hyperdrive and sublight engines.

Shields:

Light absorbing shields – Swarmer
Medium absorbing shields – Interceptor
Heavy absorbing shields – Hunter-killer
Ultra-heavy absorbing shields – Behemoth
Primary and secondary absorbing shields – Leviathan
Primary, secondary and tertiary absorbing shields – Nemesis

And that would be pretty much all for now when these comes to these horrendous extra-dimensional aliens. If anything is missing or if something doesn’t seem right, please feel free to let me know. I’m also open to suggestions on improving details and ships in general so feel free to give your advises on how to do it.

[Sovereign47]

Nice post Damix! So it looks like your characters ended on my ship. Well, at least they are safe now (or maybe not? ).

Anywayz, I’m curious about the mentioned explosion? Is it the one caused by M’Toui’s photon grenades which he threw at the creature in turbolift shaft, or is it the one of that spatial charge planted on debris in front of armory to unblock the door by Daniel?

Also, I don’t remember Lieutenant Riley from my ship. Did you come up with him, or I forgot about him?

Now I’ll wait a little (week max) for Kylar or horrid to write something, or if anyone else joins in the meantime, and then I’ll go on with story and the things are going to get really really nasty 😈 Like Sisko said in ”Pale Moonlight” episode, we are going to get ourselves in a very bloody, very messy business (HINTS: alien ships and one huge alien in the station 😈 )

[Damix]

To tell the truth, I forgotten about second explosion but you described that first one shook several decks of the station so I guess that one.

Also, I’m still deciding if Haznir stayed on station or if he transported to Dragonstar. Tentacle was holding him so maybe they weren’t able to get his signal clearly. It would add to the drama 😛

You forgotten about your transporter chief? : ) Quoting you here: “Dragonstar’s transporter chief, lieutenant Riley quickly responded: Aye sir! Moment later Dr. Tahna dematerialized from the floor of armory and rematerialized in Dragonstar’s sickbay.”

In next few days I’ll write what was happening on the Bajoran ship in the meantime.

Ship descriptions are very detailed, kudos for your effort.

[Sovereign47]

True, that spatial charge explosion haven’t been as strong as the one from photon grenades

Well, if Haznir haven’t managed to be transported to Dragonstar, then he is going to be in a world of hurt, unless he somehow managed to kill off the creature which isn’t particularly easy. But if the creature was already injured before then it could be killed easily.

Huh…yeah, it appears I have forgotten about him. However, that is not surprising at all, since besides this RP I’m writing 2 more ST based books and sometimes it happens that I mix up characters or forgot them, like I did with Riley in this case.

Good, I’ll hope you’ll post soon and I hope someone else will too. As I said, I’ll wait for a week or so until I post my next part of story.

And thanks 🙂 It took me quite a while to get up with all that stuff, but I did the best I could. And in case I forgotten about something I will mention it in the story.

[Damix]

Ok, Haznir beamed to the Dragonstar. Not sure how to save him otherwise, hehe.

Two more ST books? Wow! Really nice to hear you are into it.

I wanted to write the story that happened during Yumi’s time on DS3 but I went too much in the past. Again, I hope to write the second part soon.

[Sovereign47]

@Damix wrote:

Ok, Haznir beamed to the Dragonstar. Not sure how to save him otherwise, hehe.

Two more ST books? Wow! Really nice to hear you are into it.

I wanted to write the story that happened during Yumi’s time on DS3 but I went too much in the past. Again, I hope to write the second part soon.

Yeah, two more. I am at the beginning of them. Well, I wrote the first one since my high school, but I didn’t liked how it turned out, so I’m ”rebooting” it now

Oh, and don’t worry, I’ll take care of your crew members in my next story. Btw I don’t mind you going a little into past as long as it has something to do with our current storyline, and judging by your post it has. So it is a good post. I’m looking forward to the second part too 😉

Btw, I have read your PM, but unfortunately I was unable to reply to it due to some kind of server error.

[Damix]

Nice post, it motivated me to continue my story right away. I’m at 15% at the moment, will continue tomorrow. I’m still missing something BIG that will make the whole return to the past thing well connected so hope I’ll be illuminated in the coming days (or tomorrow in best case scenario). If I wait, pace of the story goes down and I’d like to see it go forward.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Yeah, two more. I am at the beginning of them. Well, I wrote the first one since my high school, but I didn’t liked how it turned out, so I’m ”rebooting” it now

I’m sure you are more experienced now and life has shaped you in a way no redshirt has seen before! Good luck with the reboot, hope lense flares won’t be only thing you add.^^

[Sovereign47]

@Damix wrote:

Nice post, it motivated me to continue my story right away. I’m at 15% at the moment, will continue tomorrow. I’m still missing something BIG that will make the whole return to the past thing well connected so hope I’ll be illuminated in the coming days (or tomorrow in best case scenario). If I wait, pace of the story goes down and I’d like to see it go forward.

Cool, I’m looking forward to your next story. In my next post I will deal with Dr. Tahna and your characters on my ship. And if it’s ok that we consider Tahna an NPC I will reveal something else about these aliens which is even more frightening than anything else we encountered so far 😈 Sure, I can always sacrifice some other character if you want Dr. Tahna to be well…intact would be the best choice of words if we are to consider that other option of what might happen to him

Oh and btw, my friend that I was talking about before has already registered on forums, so he should contact you soon about participation in RP as I told him already. Anyway, he’ll be a very good addition since his writing skills are on our level.
Besides that, I’ve tried to contact Kylar, but there was no response, and I’ll also try to contact horrid, since as you could read at the end of my last post, I could use help from his away team.

@Damix wrote:

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Yeah, two more. I am at the beginning of them. Well, I wrote the first one since my high school, but I didn’t liked how it turned out, so I’m ”rebooting” it now

I’m sure you are more experienced now and life has shaped you in a way no redshirt has seen before! Good luck with the reboot, hope lense flares won’t be only thing you add.^^

That about experience and everything you said sounds about right. And no, lense flares definitely won’t be the only thing, however action still stays a large part of my books But besides that, there are some significant, but promising changes in storyline, better characters, and far more dangerous villains with interesting backgrounds as well. To put it simple, this rebooted book is going to be about the war of galactic proportions (yes, the aliens from another galaxy will come, but they are not Iconians). A one that will be far more devastating and longer than Dominion war. But due to that, there will be also a creation of grand alliance between some of the major powers in alpha and beta quadrants. And majority of that will be written from the perspective of Sirius Verax and his crew. Besides all that, it is important to mention that all of that will be happening several years after the Nemesis (10+ years after the end of Dominion war) in original universe 😎

[Damix]

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Sure, I can always sacrifice some other character if you want Dr. Tahna to be well…intact would be the best choice of words if we are to consider that other option of what might happen to him

I have my own plans for Tahna so I’d rather have him live so better find someone else for your twisted plans,hehe. Since he has some background, I’d rather have him developed even more as character. I know it would be convenient for the story since he was on DS3 but maybe some other NPC that was rescued from the station could be used. Or maybe Tahna could be healed in the end after *insert evil idea* was used for the plot.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Oh and btw, my friend that I was talking about before has already registered on forums, so he should contact you soon about participation in RP as I told him already.

I’m really happy to hear we will get new writer for the story! I will wait for his message. Going to send a message to Marcase to see if he could get Diplomat purple color since he won’t be member of the fleet in-game.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Besides that, I’ve tried to contact Kylar, but there was no response, and I’ll also try to contact horrid

I know Horrid is taking a little break from the game so he is probably still not ready to return to the fleet activities. It is also summer so people are usually less active during this time. Ildin, who also created his character hasn’t been online in game for some time so it is not likely he will join the story at this time.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

But besides that, there are some significant, but promising changes in storyline, better characters, and far more dangerous villains with interesting backgrounds as well. And majority of that will be written from the perspective of Sirius Verax and his crew.

Than this story is good training for that book you are writing, maybe even good background for your main character or some of the crew members. Although it would maybe be too much if Sirius encountered two badass super strong aliens that pose threat to do galaxy in such a short amount of time.

[Sovereign47]

@Damix wrote:

I have my own plans for Tahna so I’d rather have him live so better find someone else for your twisted plans,hehe. Since he has some background, I’d rather have him developed even more as character. I know it would be convenient for the story since he was on DS3 but maybe some other NPC that was rescued from the station could be used. Or maybe Tahna could be healed in the end after *insert evil idea* was used for the plot.

Alright, I won’t use Tahna then for the plan, since such event will be irreversible. Probably one of my ”redshirts” will fall victim to that ”little scheme” 😈

@Damix wrote:

I’m really happy to hear we will get new writer for the story! I will wait for his message. Going to send a message to Marcase to see if he could get Diplomat purple color since he won’t be member of the fleet in-game.

Nice. He should contact you soon.

@Damix wrote:

I know Horrid is taking a little break from the game so he is probably still not ready to return to the fleet activities. It is also summer so people are usually less active during this time. Ildin, who also created his character hasn’t been online in game for some time so it is not likely he will join the story at this time.

I get that, however, there’s no reason why they couldn’t write a story with us as it doesn’t really have to much connection with game and it isn’t that demanding either. Now I can live with Ildin not joining us for a while since he didn’t introduced his character(s)/ship into story yet, but Horrid did so his absence makes things a bit complicated. Same goes for Kylar. I wouldn’t like to have to turn their characters and ships into NPC’s, but I might be forced to do so if they don’t intend to continue with writing at all.

@Damix wrote:

Than this story is good training for that book you are writing, maybe even good background for your main character or some of the crew members. Although it would maybe be too much if Sirius encountered two badass super strong aliens that pose threat to do galaxy in such a short amount of time.

Actually this story is some kind of a test for another book which would be a sequel to the one I’m working on currently. And yes, there will be some downtime period between the books. Btw the aliens we are dealing with in this story are more powerful from once in the mentioned book. And unlike them, they are ultimate evil beings

[Sovereign47]

That’s a very good background story Damix. Hope you’ll write another part soon. And after I read your stoy, one interesting idea came to my mind that you could implement in that other part. It’s quite simple yet it could be a lot of trouble for your ship I was thinking that one of those aliens swarmers (fighters) might come after your ship, so that your crew might see a little action in space too. What do you think about it?

Besides that, in my next post I’m going to dedicate a part to your characters that are currently at Dragonstar. My captain won’t be happy at all with the stunt they pulled, but he’ll make sure that they arrive at SB 514 safely and alive of course. Well, at least physically, as they might have some serious nightmares from events they witnessed on DS3

Also, I came up with not so much as a name, but as a good description of the aliens or how we might call them until I come up with a real name. We will call them Devourers, since that is exactly what they do 😎

[Sovereign47]

Huh…, that latest post of our story I wrote was really exhausting, but I must say fun as well. All in all I hope you’ll like how I continued the story and pretty much solved the plot at Deep Space 3. However, the complete story is still far from over. This is just a beginning of the nightmare which has fallen upon our characters.
Also, I must admit that I wasn’t really sure how to deal with the characters and his ship of currently inactivate participants, so tried to left as much room as possible open for their interpretation of the final events on station and in space around it. Let’s just say that USS Curtana and her crew are still in one piece and on the way to SB 514 along with USS Dragonstar and Damix’s characters aboard her.

@Damix: I hope you’ll like how I handled your character and I believe that in the next post we will have to cooperate (I mean write it together) in order to successfully showcase discussion between our characters and shed some light on what they actually feel about events already depicted in the story.

And btw, I must repeat that anyone who wants to join us in writing may feel free to do so at any time. Just make a bio of your characters, give us some specs on your vessels and you may join us in this great Star Trek horror story

[Damix]

Sorry for not commenting sooner. Recent activity in this section of forum was a sign to make a post. : )

Part where they are talking who will shoot the power junction was nicely placed, I laughed a little as it was unexpected. I imagined it as a short funny line to cheer things up and show more of crews personality and the way they interact between each other. And something like this was needed because of the dark theme that spreads through the story.

When I saw there is Bajoran medical officer Irja in your crew, I started thinking in what way to connect her with Yumi and her team. There must be something to it that would be revealed at some later point. Was it coincidence or you were thinking in front and making possible future connections? Either way, nice detail that can be used.

Little bit of STO logic: You clearly don’t use Reciprocity as one of your ship traits or Aux2Bat, since your Quantum slipstream drive takes so long to be ready for use.

Oh, and it is nice to see that Sirius is not untouchable without any flaws. Concerning that part when he forgotten that detail about QS. At first, when I saw his special traits in the introduction post I thought differently, but it is nice to see the way characters take shape.

As I already said, I like what you write. I can really see it all happening as I read text. It must have been exhausting since it takes time for you to put emotion and picture behind every word. And to blend it all together so it makes sense in larger scheme since there are other writers.

I struggle with finishing my part more than I imagined I will. Partly because story was being written in long chunks of texts so there is certain expectation from me. All in all, I enjoyed writing and testing my own limits of imagination and the way I handle things on language that’s not native to me.

This could be like a prologue to a ST: Starbase 514 stories which would be perfect time for new role-players to join us.

[Sovereign47]

@Damix wrote:

Sorry for not commenting sooner. Recent activity in this section of forum was a sign to make a post. : )

No problem, I was also preoccupied with other stuff (playing STO among those ), but yeah it is time for awakening and continuation of the story.

@Damix wrote:

Part where they are talking who will shoot the power junction was nicely placed, I laughed a little as it was unexpected. I imagined it as a short funny line to cheer things up and show more of crews personality and the way they interact between each other. And something like this was needed because of the dark theme that spreads through the story.

Yeah, that was my intention so I thought it would be good idea to pull it off, and as I can see now, I was right. But aside from that, it is technically sound too as Lissan had the best weapon for the task at hand.
And I was also hoping you would like the way I choose to deal with such powerful monstrosity I introduced. It was the best one that I could come up with at the time.

@Damix wrote:

When I saw there is Bajoran medical officer Irja in your crew, I started thinking in what way to connect her with Yumi and her team. There must be something to it that would be revealed at some later point. Was it coincidence or you were thinking in front and making possible future connections? Either way, nice detail that can be used.

Introducing Bajoran medical officer was actually coincidental and I wasn’t thinking about her having some connection with your characters, but now that you mentioning it does seem like an interesting idea. So yeah, we might pull off something like that in the future story/ies.
Also, my crew as you may have noticed is pretty diverse and there are lots of different alien races on her so it is not strange Bajorans are included too.

@Damix wrote:

Little bit of STO logic: You clearly don’t use Reciprocity as one of your ship traits or Aux2Bat, since your Quantum slipstream drive takes so long to be ready for use.

Well, I must admit I haven’t been thinking about it that much, and besides since our story is set way before STO (less then a decade after Nemesis), it is logical that QSD drives are in their early phase of use and thus still have some shortcomings like longer cooldown periods. Besides it comes handy in various situation for the plot development.

@Damix wrote:

Oh, and it is nice to see that Sirius is not untouchable without any flaws. Concerning that part when he forgotten that detail about QS. At first, when I saw his special traits in the introduction post I thought differently, but it is nice to see the way characters take shape.

Well, while he still might be sort of ”jack of all trades” character, he is still not all knowing and untouchable being like Q for example. That’s exactly why I decided for him to get wounded by the creature in the OPS and to forget part about QSD cooldown. And it fitted nicely in the overall story too.

@Damix wrote:

As I already said, I like what you write. I can really see it all happening as I read text. It must have been exhausting since it takes time for you to put emotion and picture behind every word. And to blend it all together so it makes sense in larger scheme since there are other writers.

Thank you, I like that you appreciate my work. It was my intention in the first place to make the stories as convincing and interesting as possible, just like the ones from ST shows and movies are (and even more at some times). And yeah, as I already said it wasn’t easy, but it was fun as well. Especially complicated part was that larger scheme that includes other players as I had to do it in a way that I can keep their characters and ships still alive and thus enable other writers to use or reintroduce them whenever they want it to. It would have been much easier to just kill off characters/ships of inactive writers, but that is not my style and I rather leave them out of a harms way available for future use if their writers desire to do so.
Besides that, another difficult thing to achieve is consistency which I’m trying to stick with as much as I can and I hope I’m doing a good job with it so far.

@Damix wrote:

I struggle with finishing my part more than I imagined I will. Partly because story was being written in long chunks of texts so there is certain expectation from me. All in all, I enjoyed writing and testing my own limits of imagination and the way I handle things on language that’s not native to me.

I perfectly understand you because I’ve been there and done that many times by now. However, I’m certain you will come up with something new when you will have enough inspiration for it. Just take your time, as we have plenty of it.

@Damix wrote:

This could be like a prologue to a ST: Starbase 514 stories which would be perfect time for new role-players to join us.

I agree with this. I kind of intended for it to be a prologue, because arrival at SB 514 is a place where the things really start going into the motion and SB 514 is headquarters like DS9 was for Dominion war. So overall story name would still be ”Into the mouth of madness”, and then the prologue would be called ”Horror of the unknown”. I haven’t come up with a name for the first chapter, but I agree that we might at least temporary call it Starbase 514 stories.
And in order to get new role-players to join us, we should post prologue part on official STO forum. I can do that if you agree with it. Just let me know first 🙂

[Damix]

@Sovereign47 wrote:

And I was also hoping you would like the way I choose to deal with such powerful monstrosity I introduced.

I like how they dealt with it, since they don’t know its weaknesses they had to improvise and using their surrounding for their benefit was good way doing it.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Introducing Bajoran medical officer was actually coincidental and I wasn’t thinking about her having some connection with your characters, but now that you mentioning it does seem like an interesting idea.

She is medical officer like Yumi and Tahna so they could have some kind of connection.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

Well, I must admit I haven’t been thinking about it that much, and besides since our story is set way before STO.

Yeah, I was joking, trying to show how in-game captains would have strange way of dealing with things – installing some consoles for special combo. It would go against the story if used outside the game.

@Sovereign47 wrote:

And in order to get new role-players to join us, we should post prologue part on official STO forum. I can do that if you agree with it. Just let me know first 🙂

I agree, make it so. 🙂

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