When 2073 came around, we were on the brink of destroying ourselves. Mother Earth could barely support the massive population of her human children and resources were stretched thin. Small wars broke out all over third world countries, as proxies for the major powers, whose leaders hovered over the various buttons that would assure M.A.D would take place. As we seem mere second away from destruction, hope sped over the globe. A joint effort by the United States, Japan, India and Great Britain has resulted in a spacecraft that could reach another star system in only a matter of years, using Deuterium as fuel. Better yet, the first test of the craft was complete.

Ten years ago, the team made a secret launch of their craft. It took the crew four years but they reached Alpha Centauri. Better yet, they found a terrestrial planet (which they named Dinker, after mission commander George Dinker) that could support human life. After two years surveying possible colony locations, the mission returned home. Over night, as the news was spread, the twenty man crew of the Orion became international heroes.

Over the next five hundred years, we spread across the galaxy, founding colonies and nations on new planets. Of course, there have been accidents, ships lost in space due to system failures or pirate attacks. There is a term from Earth, from the age of sail that describes such vessels; ghost ship. Some are floating crypts, filled with an unfortunate crew, others are found abandoned for some reason all their lifeboats launched. The strangest cases however, are those found floating in space, in perfect working order, with nothing in the logs, all lifeboats accounted for and nothing stolen, the crew simply gone. As disturbing as these cases are, such ships are worth a great deal in salvage rights.

So it comes late in the year 2575, that a medium sized freighter called Dancer, is destined to come across the path of a ghostship, which may not be worth the salvage but that but to the crew to decide……





Alright folks, Irish Wolf here and I feel like a good sci-fi game. As some of you know, I’ve just gotten back to the Gateway, due to technical difficulties with my laptop. While I was gone, I watched some good movies, like Virus, all of the Alien movies, Starship Troopers and played some good games, like Alien Swarm and Starcraft II. If these hints haven’t been enough, the basic plot is to find some face eating aliens aboard the ghostship and then find someway to deal with them. So now I’ll give some important details about the universe, the two ships in question, then character profiles.


Universe facts
1. Humanity as no central government. There are several large multi-planet nations, roughly in the center of human space (like the United Earth Federation or UEF) but the rest of human space is broken up into planetary nations, ranging from modern nations to backwater shitholes
2. Because there is no central government, one would think there is no common currency. This isn’t true. There is a so-called “space dollar”, which in truth is the Swiss Dollar. After the unification wars on Earth, a majority of the population of the former Swiss Confederation immigrated to a planet baring the uncreative name of New Switzerland, where they continued to provide excellent banking services. Over the years, they basically became a powerhouse for money transactions and it was easier to accept the Swiss Dollar (mostly referred to as the Dollar) as an international currency. Most nations have their own money, which can be converted into Dollars in almost any spaceport, where the Swiss Bank will have at least one branch.
3. Over the years, the refinement of Deuterium and engine design as improve enough to cut space voyages from star system to star system down from years to a matter of weeks or months.
4. Aliens. Yep, we found some, mostly in the form of flora and fauna but there have been a few Intelligences. For the most part, they are backward savages threats we study from orbital facilities.
4.5 The Trilotan were found on the on the planet of Kaukai in the 4336 Herculis star system and are the only ones we share the ability to travel the star’s with. A colony ship from the UEF landed on their homeworld and promptly got into a war with the natives, when a peace treaty was signed ten years later, the technology to travel the stars was one of the terms they demanded. It should be noted that they stick in groups and are never seen alone. They have four colony worlds and “outposts” in the capitals of most of the major human powers. Space ships will have either an all Trilotan crew or none at all.
5. With very few exceptions, maintaining freighters is too expensive for most corporations and other businesses to do, there for they are forced to contracted independent ships to move cargo from one planet to another. A few lucky captains manage to set up long-term trade routes and are set for life, however most are forced to live job to job.
6. Most independent freighters allow their crews to carry weapons or have a number of weapons stored on board in case they need to defend the ship. Some captains go so far, as to equip their vessels with armaments. This can cause trouble in more civilized space, as planetary governments always seem to get nervous about heavily armed civilians, for some reason.



The ships

The Dancer


Well alright, that is not the Dancer but rather the Penelope but she should give you a good idea of what the Dancer looks like.




This is the Explorer, our ghostship. She is basically a combination of a research lab and deep space exploration vessel. I won’t go too much into what she was doing out there but she was launched in 2450 and disappeared in 2463.

Characters

Alright, I am looking for crew members of the Dancer. These would include engineers, a communication officer, a navigator or two, cooks, medical officer and cargo handlers. I would also take a few passengers.