Open Space and Hyperspace

Spontaneous RP Weekend -- Feb. 6-8, 2015 
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The ship had floated there, suspended in deep space, slowly spinning end-over-end surrounded by its own debris field, for what looked like a long time. What had happened out here to render the Venator-class Destroyer a lifeless hulk? Certainly, there had been a fight of some magnitude, as even a superficial scan of the 1100 meter vessel shows significant structural damage. Her back was broken, the result of severe close-range turbolaser damage and apparent explosion damage from within. The port main dorsal hangar door was mostly gone, and much of the debris field would seem to originate from the ship's hangar. The starfighter command and control bridge was a tattered mess of steel, as if a giant can opener had trimmed it from the superstructure. The port space station docking ring was a gaping maw, seemingly the result of a massive explosion that had removed much of the central ventral fuselage, leaving in its place buckled hull plates and blackened compartments. The ship was a mess.

But was it completely lifeless? At irregular intervals, power fluctuations cane be seen throughout the darkened ship, bringing temporary power back to several decks. At these moments, power spikes can be read from the main reactor, and fires rage from the ruined ventral structural damage, only to be quenched minutes later when the power fails again. How many decks are free from hull breaches? Could there be people alive inside?

The Starboard command bridge looks mostly free from damage, as does the Starboard forecastle crewed areas amidships. But the most pressing question: what ship is this? She wears the markings of the Imperial Navy, not the Republic, which should aid in dating the hulk. Enterprising individuals who venture close enough to discover exterior markings will eventually discover that this ship is the 'Nomad.' Holonet searches will reveal that the Nomad was a support carrier that was lost during the Thrawn campaign, but little else is mentioned, which is odd, as most Naval ships histories are public domain. It's like this particular ship's past has been erased...

OOC Notes: 

• This is a Thrawn-era Venator, meaning it was old, likely pulled out of mothballs long after it became an 'obsolete' design.
• The link above to Wookieepedia has a nice, exploded cutaway drawing which was the best 'deck-plan' I could find for the Venator. Use it as a reference where possible, but there will have to be some liberties taken with locations for in-game purposes. 
• This is a big vessel. Not an SSD by any means, but certainly large enough that there can be several stories playing out, and several entry / egress points (be creative!) 
• I would ask that, for the sake of the spontaneous RP, we refrain from outright destruction of the craft (at least till the end of the weekend!) 
• It will become apparent soon after getting aboard the 'Nomad' that the ship was some sort of black ops vessel. There's something here for everyone. For the Jedi / Sith crowd, how about a Holocron, or a cargo container of sought-after crystals (Krayt Dragon pearl, Blackwing crystal, Stygium crystal, Lava crystal, etc.) For the Politically-minded, how about a boatload of Imperial intel and secrets from recent memory, enough to prop up (or tarnish) entire governments. For the non-force set, the salvage of such a ship is worth high-six, low-seven figures, easily. And who knows what waits aboard. Riches? Adversaries? Something truly evil?

As the S.I.F. dropped from warp around the wreck that was the ‘Nomad’, i was on the observation deck learning all i could about the ship before i got close to the ship. as any situation would dictate, this was a derelict ship… barely running but somehow still making jumps every so often. using the Starnet sub band comms network i was able to find keywords that would lead me to locations of this and other mysterious ships… like the ‘Zamilla’ but that was a story for another day.

Turning to a console nearby I opened a com message on local frequencies potentially jamming out other communication attempts in the region, and began recording a live transmission.

::This is Jedi Master Diamonte Tuhlute. my coordinates are 099,087,064 I have come across a derelict Venator Star destroyer and am requesting help to search through it. my preliminary intelligence suggests that power levels would not be enough to sustain life support… but scans are attempting to tricking me. I would offer an olive branch and suggest an alliance of all that would help get this ship safely out of the stars. any bounty found will evenly be split amongst us according to one’s labor. If you accept i will be in the hangar bay accessible from the underbelly of the venator. pressurized suits are recommended.::

when the recording was complete, i accessed the same coms and narrowed the jamming transmission to all major channels, minor and subnets would not be blocked by my repetitive measure. heading to the helm, i attempted to devise a way to secure an area with a makeshift airlock shield at least for the area of the hangar i would comandeer.

touching down was another issue, as the port through which i would enter the hangar was still sealed, so i needed to use turrets firing phasers at a particular and constant speed to cut through. upon landing i dressed myself in alternate pieces of armor in Project: GO which exchanged my unique cowl for a suit that would be compatible with portions of an Imperial combat driver armor that i had found on Carida during my time there. Securing my suit with extra armor from Project: go, i realized that the helmet i was donning still had GE markings.

‘at least it is pressurized.’

making sure that the Magna locks on SIF’s landing gears were secured, i set about to find materials suitable to shield the hangar and potentially make it able to be pressurized and oxygen rich.

i had contended that I would not be the first person to reach the ‘Nomad’. so, before departing my shuttle, I requested my “team” consisting of Pixar, Gordon, and Riegel, to run continuous scans of the ship for any/all signs of life.

…i would attempt the impossible.

ok, it wasn’t “Impossible” a feat as I might have thought it in my head… most of the coupling actually were still “operable”, they just needed to be powered… and when I say they needed power, I meant that these emitters were hungry babies draining the bottle of formula their mama was holding at incredible speeds. crunching the numbers I figured I would need a power plant the size of … a small starfighter.

::Riegel, I need you in slot. pixar lower the garage… I have a plan::

there was the sound of metal unhinging and a container lowered itself from SIF… my prototype Delta-7c. I had been working on this line for over a year, and a previous prototype was still lost to the stars along with the man I once considered a Mentor figure. once the “garage” was lowered I ran in, grabbed cord and began connecting the pulse cannon output to the mag-shield intake. once that was completed I instructed my Astromech to turn up production to maximum, but shut off all systems and route the overflowing energy into the pulse cannons. I smiled is my range of sight was soon illuminated with a blue glow.

Repeating the process I used scrap parts from derelict ships in the hangar to construct a makeshift Mag shield over the underbelly port that marked how I got in. I smiled cautiously as that port glowed the same blue glow, knowing full well that the latter of the two shields was likely to fail first.

As I finished my task, I noted a Sentinel class shuttle ship landing. I did not pay mind as pixar and Gordon had the result of the primary life scan… 2 individuals besides myself and the new arrivals… one was making its way toward a computer core… the other headed toward the shuttle. not a good sign.

Deciding to be peaceful I stayed in the open as the troopers split into squads of four. finding the man that gave the orders, I raised my arms palm first and looked the man in the helmet.

::I mean no harm… I assume you are here responding to the message I have playing?::

Thunk. Hissssss.

"Right, looks like the seal is good, but I'm not taking any chances on this one. We're gonna vent the atmo from the boarding tube once we're inside and use it as an airlock while I cut us an entrance." The freighter from which the thunk hiss had emanated was latched onto the side of the starboard command tower, while its port docking tube was extended straight down on top of the dorsal span between the two command towers, right above the main reactor housing. Or one and a half towers, rather. "Put this on." He handed Lia, who stood behind and slightly to the side of him, a small mechanical object that vaguely resembled a shield generator belt. "It'll protect you from vacuum for up to twelve hours, give or take. You'll still need the breather mask though, so don't leave that behind." He sealed his own mask in place as the boarding tunnel doors slid open, then stepped inside and waited for Lia to join him before closing them and heading to the other end. For this particular excursion, he'd opted to don his heavy combat coat, which had duranium pauldrons and was reinforced with cortosis weave for durability. In the satchel slung over his left shoulder, he carried a multitude of various tools as well as several varieties of grenade, and a spare enviro-shield in case his or Lia's broke and the need arose for a new one. He also carried a custom lightning rifle over his other shoulder, his pistols holstered at his hips, and his usual assortment of rocket boots and shield generators, both of which had been tinkered with extensively on the trip here. "Cut the gravity. We're gonna be dropping in from above and I don't want to get pulled two different directions during transition." That's as sure a way to lose your lunch and wind up with a concussion as I've ever seen. Perhaps you should try it then. A good concussion may make you more amenable to my proposals. He muted his external comm. "Shut the kriff up and let me work."

Once the gravity was shut off, he activated the grav-plates in his boots, opened the door between him and the venator, and went to work with the lightning gun, burning out a door-sized chunk of the hull in a matter of minutes. When the chunk fell to the floor several meters below with a thud, he stepped forward and dropped in after it, pleased to note that the grav-plates in this portion of the ship were still active. He glanced around for a moment before looking back up at Lia. "Come on. Looks like this section still has gravity." They weren't actually within the ship yet, this corridor would be little more than a maintenance access tunnel this close to the dorsal hull, but there would probably be an access hatch into the ship itself not too far away.

As the rifles were trained on my person i noticed one of the barrels uncomfortably close to my person. thankful that someone had taken that time to give me a legitimate excuse to prolong death by firing squad… yet again (was this a yearly thing with me) I raised a finger

“I just need to take care of a thing… it will only take me one second, one second… “ i use said finger to move the barrel’s aim up so it would miss my head if fired “…one second”

the message played internally, and as quickly as i received the message i devised a witty response, however due to the threat of guns, i did not use my implant as a comm, using instead a voice everyone could hear.

::I read you Master Lemep, thank you for answering my call. if you could rendezvous with me in the central hangar… just look for the man with every imperial rifle trained on his forehead… thats me, see you soon::

turning my attention to the man with every rifle trained on my.

“First off, you could try saying please when making demands … secondly, yes I am Diamonte Tuhlute, Imperial database should list me as a loon. and finally, your premise for being here is faulty for two reasons. one, even if this ship is Imperial property, we are not in the imperial junkyard, but rather on an unstable vessel that has been rotting from the outside in become a warp missile in one of it’s next jumps. as such the Jedi Technological Enclave and Creative Hierarchy has authorized me to for a group with the task of destroying all engines before the ship takes its next jump, projected to launch it at an overpopulated city world.”

I wasn’t lying … too much in the previous statement. I was authorised primarily to do exactly what i claimed and the resources of J-TECH backed up my claims… however the down side was that i was the only member of note within J-tech. the rest were members that preferred to be footnotes to history and as such were not known by populas outside the Brotherhood of Techies.

little did i know, that as i mentioned J-tech, a message made its way to Mike Frantz’s comm.

“The other reason which is the most important…” and with the blessing of another writer I will all the troopers and their commander to for a single moment to consider me less of a threat than an imaginary one “…What in the world is that?!”

i use the moment that their attention is diverted from me to use speed and stealth, spiriting me out of the hangar before anyone realizes what trickery i had pulled off. i send another coded message to Lemep with a program that would track my movements. alerting him that i was no longer in the hangar.

Normally, when you’re a paranoid fugitive with a forty-eight million credit bounty on your head, poking around old Imperial Navy ruins is not something you’d readily volunteer for, especially when you know it’s attracted other attention.



Unfortunately for Lia Corusa, Rik had decided to save her the trouble of refusing and volunteer her anyway, and no amount of arguing, weapon-waving, or detailed death threats were getting her out of accompanying him on his salvage adventure. “This is by far the worst idea you've had so far,” she snapped as her boots hit the deck a few paces from Rik, her sharp gaze darting around. The blond was on high alert, E-11 at the ready, adrenaline bringing the dark, dead ship into crisp focus. “Let’s go take a stroll through a ruined Destroyer, because that can’t end badly.” Self-preservation fought hard to take over, trained instinct to run building in her legs, but she knew her chances of staying alive were better with Rik than hiding back in her stowaway closet.



Lia double-checked the gauntlet shield-generator on her right wrist, giving the cable launcher attached to it a look over. Her hair spilled over one shoulder, a mess of tousled waves and uneven braids. “You know there are others here, we heard them on the comms” she hissed at Rik, edging closer to him. “Not smart. This place has ambush written all over it. We’re gonna get in someone’s way, they’re gonna strip you of all your fancy gadgets, space us both, and take your ship apart.”

Kaarn continued aft, and after passing two sections devoid of O2, was growing weary of donning, and then removing his faceplate. Skirting this close to engineering was not initially part of his plan, but each time he had attempted to access a deck above, he had been met with either rising rad levels or a twisted mass of steel that physically prevented his motion. So he had continued along deck J, almost all the way to aft cooling units. Pausing to check the deck plan on his datapad, he placed his location at slightly aft of the main deflector shield generator. There should be both a stairwell, and a set of lifts nearby, and after a short recon of the area, avoiding caved in ceilings and buckled steel, he discovered both. The lifts were four gaping maws of bent, twisted steel and frayed cables, but the stairwell seemed mercifully intact, and so the Hunter started up. If his calculations were right, five or six decks up should be an access trunk for the secondary computer core, directly under the command tower structure. That was a likely starting point for his search.

The decks passed by with little enough trouble, though at one point the stairs themselves fell away, smashed to bits by some sort of falling bulkhead. This still posed little in the way of a real obstacle, as the Nagai simply used the twisted remains of the steel railing as a jungle-gym and climbed above the destruction. At the landing for deck F, he paused to check the deck plan again, the scene lit by an arcing electrical circuit dangling from a fixture in the wall. Satisfied that he was in the correct location, he wedged himself through the partially-open door which was twisted badly in its frame and no longer able to retract, even if there had been power to do so. He emerged into a large, mostly open room, perhaps 20'X30'. On the far wall there were several computer stations, some smashed, toppled or crushed by wreckage, and against the far wall, the tell-tale shape of the computer core, though access to the behemoth was on the other side of another door. At that door, working hard on running a sec bypass, stood a man. 

Looking for something?

Kahzak punched a few buttons in the cockpit of his ship and set it on a course towards the main hangar of the beastly vessel. As it flew towards the hangars he stood and walked back to inspect his gear. He had donned his armor some hours earlier and now he put his double bladed saber across his back and hung his single upon his hip. He adjusted his durasteel armor then got into position behind the door of his ship.

As his light starfighter landed in the main hangar Kahzak stepped calmly down the exit ramp then punched two buttons on his gauntlet closing the door behind him. As he walked thorugh the hangar Kahzak kept his eyes peeled. He wasn't here on vacation he had heard rumors of jedi being here, and what better way to increase his standing in the empire than to waste some of them. He stepped out of the hangar and into a corridor and began to walk down it hugging the wall as he came to a corner. He listened for a second before rolling around the corner and behind a crate his hand on the grip of his saber. As he peered over he realized there was no one there and he stood and continued to walk forward down the hall. The entire time he stalked the hallway he kept low and moved slowly and carefully. He listened closely for any signs of life aboard the derelict ship other than himself.