Hiyas!

[Devika Sedush]

I'm not quite sure what I'm setting myself up for, but here's me jumping in.

My name is Loni, and I'm new to Star Trek Online. I just started a few days ago, and I've already made the possible mistake of starting a subscription. But it looks like a good deal of fun. I went looking into the forums for a possible group to join, and I was reading a post from a casual player looking for a fleet, and James Bailey's reply to him caught my eye. I'm looking for the same thing, but I have a couple of questions. I'm sure that the answer is in here somewhere, but this seemed like the most efficient way for me to get the answers I was seeking...

One) In a few places, I've seen it mentioned that the Fleet is comprised of 30-40 year olds. Does 29 count? I'll actually be 29 again in July (and every July after that, I'll celebrate another 29th birthday).

Two) I actually started watching Star Trek towards the end of the Voyager years, and Enterprise after that. In my more financially sound days of a few years back, I actually went and purchased every season of every series (which is a LOT of Trek) but Voyager is still probably my favorite, just because it was what started me into Star Trek. That and Kathryn Janeway. I'll admit a certain bias to a female captain. I guess my question here would be "Would there be any female captains in the Original Series?" Its probably just a sign of the times when the show was created/aired, but TOS seemed awfully sexist to me.

Three) I'm a bit of an RPist. Any suggestions on character bios?

I appreciate the time and responses. Thank you. It seems like you all have a first-class operation going here, and I'd like to possibly be a part of it. My play times can be a bit erratic, the nature of waiting tables at a restaurant, but if that's not an issue either, I'll consider putting in an application.

[Carmen les Toreadors]

Hi there

Good to see others interested in this unique outfit. I've actually been from big fleet to big fleet and none of them offer me the things I want, namely:

1. A friendly fleet manager who is willing to negotiate and compromise to create the best experience possible for a new member
2. An environment with potential for canon styled roleplaying.

Mark chatted me up for a few days in the STO forums and his appreciation for my technical and cultural discussions piqued my interest, and that's why I put in my application yesterday. I too am a bit 'underage' :P

For RP I'm afraid that there is no major activity on the entire STO community for certain reasons (which I will not disclose publicly). But that's the reason why I started playing STO again. The lack of RP means I can redefine the quality and standard of such, organizing my own events and creating my own story arcs at will.

What I do is skip the character backgrounds.

If people want to roleplay, they can do so on their ships - in game anywhere and anytime. If you have doubts about writing a character bio don't fret. If I can write a story using in-game ship and crew actions with other people... it tends to automatically create a character as the group moves along.

That's how I deal with the inherent slow nature of RP - take away the pen and paper and replace it with a starship and a Captain's responsibility.

No obligations, but if you hunt me down someday, I'll show you how a roleplaying activity in STO need not involve special talents or time commitments. Because as the game master, it's my job to make a story there and then for YOUR enjoyment and participation.

(( my in game handle is @carmenara - see you someday))

[mark (James Bailey)]

Thank you for the information and the introduction Carmen les Toreadors

Welcome to Star Trek Online Loni!! This is my first Online game and as much as there is lots of things to do in the game sometimes I find myself just walking around my ship trying to get one of my crew to talk with me.

One) The 30's 40's and beyond is our ONLY rule but we are flexible with this. We just don't want the 30ish people teasing us 40ish people about walkers and stuff like that.

Two) The reason we called it the TOS Veterans is because a lot of us grew up with TOS as kids. Some of the younger fleet members grew up with TNG, DS9 and VOY so that in a way, VOY is your TOS. (is that tooo confusing) Fleet uniforms are based on what you want to wear and what you do with your bio or backstory. There is an entire Fleet of TNG Veterans in here so don`t limit yourself. I would like to think with 23rd century TV series with their social messages would allow women to be Captains. They may have to wear short skirts but I bet they were still commanding ships.

Three) As far as bios and backstories this fleet is full of really creative and helpful people. We have a lot of bios on the main page to give you some ideas but what would do is look up a few Voyager episodes and see if I can find one where a few people disappeared or were missing in action and you could work it around our Fleet backstory of 25th Century Captains going back to the past to rescue doomed (Captain material) officers and rescuing them and bringing them back to fight in the 25th Century war. Just a thought but I get all excited about bios, I just can't write to save my life

One other thing about RP. Carmen les Toreadors is right we lost our Fleet RP Officer in a temporal anomaly a couple of months ago. We do have quite a few people interested in starting it back up and we have a whole heck of a resource built up. Including some enthusiastic people.

[Carmen les Toreadors]

What Mark said regarding bios is a nice tip - pick out one of your favourite canon officers from your favourite Star Trek series, modify, redeploy, reassign to the XXV Century and viola, your very own modern version of Picard, Kirk... or maybe for you, Deanna Troi :3

For me I like creating characters from scratch and fitting them into STO's unique storyline. One of my characters is an interstellar trader that smuggles contraband from the Klingon Empire to Starbase 39, using a 150 year old Bird of Prey which arouses so much suspicion she had to 'get creative' with passing Federation customs inspections and oh, also the mandatory safety and health inspections.

When I RPed that, my Federation counterpart was SO pissed with my ship and character they took 4 hours to inspect, interrogate and whatnot. Guess what kind of excuse I gave them when they observed most of my crew were Orion ladies and no, they don't take suppressants xD

It was comic relief but the rest of the play was highly realistic with proper Customs & Excise procedures. So in retaliation, that my character used a Ferengi trick to 'persuade' the patrol ship captain to pay her twenty five thousand bars of gold pressed latinum as 'attendance fees'!

Sadly I didn't develop my KDF character's story as a rogue trader because the RP crew left soon after due to various personal reasons (and the person playing the patrol ship captain got too distracted sending me unwanted texts so I said NO to further contact).


My current and active Federation character is more fun and easier to get to know - she is part of an elitist group that broke off from the Federation during the colonial expansions in the period - elitist, because they regard Earth's "Utopian" society as dangerous (in terms of retarding creativity and encouraging decadence) and unequitable (in terms of not respecting societal diversity and rewards for success).

Fast forward two centuries and entire flotillas of privately owned interstellar traders are trying to flee Klingon controlled space before the declaration of war. Mysteriously, many ships were lost to marauders and Orion pirates during transit; preoccupied with securing Starbase 24 from hostile attack, Starfleet could nary spare a deep space patrol vessel to safeguard our deep space merchants as they were left to their own means. The Klingons knew that - and actively marketed Letters of Marque for enterprising privateers to raid and plunder what they could from Federation trade ships and colonies.

Unknown and unappreciated, "turncoats" like Fredegonde Valmy have to fight for their very right of existence between Klingon aggression, Orion piracy and Ferengi corruption that seek to exploit what few assets of her family that survived the sudden and vicious marauders' onslaught.

She made a very difficult decision to apply for political asylum with the Federation, going directly against her family's mandate and vision for a society of free humans ruled by a "normal" socialist-republican government just like in Earth's rich corporate history in the XXI Century.

Never liked for her haughty and aloof "noble" attitude (her family acted more like feudal warlords going toe to toe with Orion factions and Klingon aggressors since 2250), Freda never became a Starfleet Commissioned Officer but rather was, by her own 'social engineering', assigned to support the Federation Diplomatic Corps in extra-terrestrial negotiations that demanded both intimate knowledge of Alpha and Beta Quadrant inter-species dealings, but also a firm, ruthless hand in securing the Federations present and future interests.

Most notably, Ms Valmy was responsible for her bold acquisition of genetically engineered aeroponics crops and transferring a significant quantity of which to Cardassia Prime, giving a healthy and much needed boost to the failing reconstruction efforts that Starfleet had inadverdently neglected thanks to the threat of total war on multiple fronts.

While the 2nd Fleet continues to clash with the Klingon Empire over the ruins of Starbase 24, and Special Task Forces continue to launch incursions into Gamma Orionis in yet another Sacrifice of Angels, frontline diplomats like Ms Valmy play a crucial role in keeping things together in the Home Front.

It is with this relationship of mutual need that Starfleet can afford to keep an "enemy of the state" in their ranks, no doubt on a very tight leash, in exchange for Freda's survival. She had made many enemies during her dealings with pirates and brigands, and while she may never enjoy the company of her fellow Federation colleagues, she fears most of all her eventual fate if she had not secured employment in the FDC... namely, that of a female slave under her Orion mistresses, to be bartered, used, and never to see the stars again.

A fate no human would ever choose to endure, even under pain of death.


-----

I specially wrote the above story from scratch right here - call it exclusive, because none of my other RPers ever got this far.

In game, Ms Valmy's bio is much more innocent but also rather curious, have a look:

[Saedor7]

Greetings to SilkyDancer and Carmen. I too am new here, and am glad to see you both.

Carmen, I had seen your posts on the STO boards while looking for a fleet to join, and I have to say I'm glad to see you here. I liked the ideas you had on the main forums, and I was very close to contacting you. But now that we're both here, that has been simplified.

Once again, good to see you both.

Joseph "G.I. Joe" Hasbrough

@Saedor

[Devika Sedush]

I tried looking at the Recruiting and Personnel section, to look at some of the applications and maybe make one of my own, but I guess I need more than guest approval to see that area of the forums. Could I get that access, please?

[Carmen les Toreadors]

Fleet application or RP application ma'am?

For the former, don't worry about it, there ain't anything to write.

For the latter, don't worry about it too. I find the background creates itself automatically during the progress of RP anyway.

[Elric71]

Welcome to the fleet Silkydancer. Hope to see you in game

I am the chief archivist and historian of the fleet. If you want a hand with a bio, I'd be happy to help. I've written the fleet backstory (with help from a few other councillors) and another players bio. So if you need a hand, pm me

Q'aplaH!

[Devika Sedush]

Elric71 wrote:

Welcome to the fleet Silkydancer. Hope to see you in game I am the chief archivist and historian of the fleet. If you want a hand with a bio, I'd be happy to help. I've written the fleet backstory (with help from a few other councillors) and another players bio. So if you need a hand, pm me Q'aplaH!

I may take you up on that, Elric. Would it be outside the box (so to speak) of the Fleet to do a character from earlier than TOS? I'm speaking of the Enterprise era, circa 2160. I noticed that the NX-class ships are named for the space shuttles, ((Columbia, Challenger, Discovery)) but Endeavour and Atlantis are missing. Would it be possible to make a pre-TOS character for this Fleet?

[mark (James Bailey)]

SilkyDancer wrote:

I may take you up on that, Elric. Would it be outside the box (so to speak) of the Fleet to do a character from earlier than TOS? I'm speaking of the Enterprise era, circa 2160. I noticed that the NX-class ships are named for the space shuttles, ((Columbia, Challenger, Discovery)) but Endeavour and Atlantis are missing. Would it be possible to make a pre-TOS character for this Fleet?

For sure! The idea of Project Christopher is that in the 25th Century they have all of the information, test scores and psychological evaluations on most everyone since first contact. We can (accurately) go back to the early 22nd Century and know people would have made great Captains and the precise second they were lost. There are also lots of other situation where we can grab a Captain candidate for our cause. Just the fact that they are about to die, it allows us to snatch someone without affecting the time continuum.

Please feel free to be creative and I bet you will do just amazing!!

[Devika Sedush]

Then as soon as I make her up, I'll post a recruitment application for Sedush Devika, highest ranking (surviving) member of the crew of the NX-05 Atlantis, presumed destroyed towards the end of the Earth-Romulan War (2158). Devika is a Tamil, from southern India.

[Richard Silk]

Welcome

[Elric71]

SilkyDancer wrote:

Then as soon as I make her up, I'll post a recruitment application for Sedush Devika, highest ranking (surviving) member of the crew of the NX-05 Atlantis, presumed destroyed towards the end of the Earth-Romulan War (2158). Devika is a Tamil, from southern India.

That sounds great
I can't wait to read the whole bio! Looks like I'll have to bone up on my early Starfleet history! Like I said earlier in the thread, pm me if you need a hand

Q'aplaH!