Assallya

Star Wars - Galaxies at War[MULTIVERSE SPACESHIP RP]

"-and there it is," M'Rella stated as they listened to the hail from the massive vessel that seemed to be center-most in what appeared to be a rag-tag fleet.
Shaavi nodded and made sure that she was broadcasting towards the Faith of the Heart in a tight beam transmission. There was no need to alert these ships to the exact position of their vessel.
"Captain," she stated for the transmission, "Sensors indicate a collection of vessels, seemingly with no relation in silhouette or design. Technological levels seem to differ as well. For one, we are recieving lots of radio. All telemetry and sensor readings are being forwarded."
"I see them," the radio replied, "No deep scans. We don't want to alarm anyone."
"There doesn't appear to be any hostilities. Heat signatures appear cold. No signs of shields or charged weapons as we would know them. I'm going to initiate contact."
"Confirmed. Stay Friendly you two"
Shaavi manipulated the LCARS, opening a new channel, modulating the frequency to match the radio frequencies being transmitted. Given the distances and the slow speed of radio it would take a minute to arrive, then a minute to receive any sort of reply. She then ensured both channels were linked in a manner where if their Captain chose to speak it wouldn't be heard by the vessels in the fleet. She then took a long deep breath and ran her fingers through her shoulder length green hair. She really didn't like the idea of speaking on behalf of her ship. She was the security chief, the tactical officer. She felt more comfortable pummeling people than winning them over. Remember your training. Keep things simple in case they were using a translator.
"This is the U.S.S. Yangtze. Lieutenant Shaavi in command. We are a peaceful exploration vessel. We have become lost and are in need of navigational assistance."
M'Rella smirked or at least Shaavi suspected that was what she was doing. It was hard to tell on a cat sometimes.
"What is it the humans say you are doing? Pulling over and asking for directions?"
"Better than flying without any idea where we're going."
"Loosen up. It's going to be a slow conversation at this rate. You should relax."
"I'd rather be holding a phaser than waiting for someone to reply."
"You'll be fine. I'll slow down the approach a bit more. We're practically running down the radio signal to the target."
"Oh great. Slow down and make the exchange take longer."
"I'm just trying to look non-threatening. It could look like we're stating 'We come in Peace' while moving in for the kill."
"Good Point. Nothing to do but wait then."
M'Rella and Shaavi stared at the canopy window. To the naked eye the ships in the distance weren't even pinpricks against the vastness of open black.

Deston's March | A Newbie Adventuring Group RP

Raziel gazed only briefly at the duplicated missive. Without reading any details beyond a desire for adventures she quickly stuffed the paper in her skirt and pranced along behind the corpulent dragon-born. She slapped the door open before it was fully closed and immediately caught sight of the object of Narrakas' attention.

"-and now that I'm here," Raze proclaimed, firmly entrenching her position with the team, "The adventure can begin!"

Deston's March | A Newbie Adventuring Group RP

I was told by Kuro that one of my more complex character concepts could possibly be accomplished via multiple styles of magic. So I would tentatively say, "yes".

The magic is taken from World of Warcraft so I would further posit that anything you see In that game should be okay.

The key, of course, is to try not to overshadow other players. For example: Siv and Raze are both ranged fighters. Raze can deal more damage but can't hope to match Siv's range or her accuracy.

Deston's March | A Newbie Adventuring Group RP

The main throughfare of Bruvell was rather bustling this day. Most days it was not. Rural towns were mostly farmers and farmers tended their fields most days. Today was market day. Stalls had been erected to sell seeds. Caravans had opened their wagons to sell pots, pans, axe heads, scythes and all manner of tools necessary for farming. (This last was to the stern indignation of the local smith who vocally berated the quality of these imports.) A wainwright was speaking with a customer about purchasing a wagon, discussing details of delivery and a dozen, dozens more were at work haggling and undermining one another.

Raziel danced in the midst of this chaos, bare feet slipping across the packed earth. Her hips swayed to a music only she could hear. Scarlet hair flung about her head, concealing her elven ears. She whirled about and about, the occasional gust of flame surprising those that trod by. At her feet was a simple plank of wood, propped up against a rock. The letters, scorched into the wood by flame simply read, "Mercenary for Hire, seeking adventure".

Deston's March | A Newbie Adventuring Group RP

Raziel "Raze" Entarian

Raziel is an elf from the forest kingdom. At puberty it became apparent she had a very close relationship with flame. Some say her mother most have slept with a demon, others say an efreet, still others claim it was a dragon in human form. Nobody knows. The only thing they can be certain is is that she lives to see things burn.

This, of course, is problematic within the sacred wood. The spirits themselves seemed unnerved by her penchant for flame. As a result the elders suggested she try her hand as a mercenary so she could embrace her talents without risk of burning down everything in sight- except, of course, the goal was to burn down everything in sight.

Star Wars - Galaxies at War[MULTIVERSE SPACESHIP RP]

[OOC: Imminent Arrival, tag anyone and everyone]

The U.S.S. Yangtze hovered outside her beleaguered and damaged mothership. She was a Danube class runabout. A long range shuttle and transport that was, in every respect, a veritable starship in its own right. Through it's main canopy the Faith of the Heart could be seen.
All the interior lights of the saucer section flickered as the Yangtze's sensors swept back and forth across the Nebula Class explorer. Life support was good but main power was still intermittent. The power stack was cross wired like a Christmas tree and one of the key plasma conduits leading to the main deflector dish was blocked or severed. Without the main dish they couldn't maintain relativistic velocities without pocking the entire hull.

"Faith of the Heart," the green skinned woman at the co-pilot's console transmitted, "This is the Yangtze. You are receiving data now."

Inside the Faith, Chandani looked over the data. She wasn't alone. Several science officers were beside her, running computational models on the rear battle bridge panels. After several long minutes they had their answer.

"Yangtze. This is Faith of the Heart. Analysis of local stars yields no results. No pulsar signatures or other astral phenomena within range of the Yangtze's sensors match any of them in our database. Galactic core is of a different mass with distinctly different gravitic signature than the Milky Way galaxy."

Shaavi sighed and leaned back. That pretty much meant no help was coming.

"So I take it we've officially surpassed Voyager's record?" Shaavi asked.

"There's no way to know. It won't be official until we can map our position relative to the Milky Way and how we're going to cross the great galactic barrier even if we did find a way back... I have no idea."

"Well Captain," Shaavi added, "I've discovered several signals. Most are simple- radio. If we try and respond to their signals they won't receive an answer for several hours. They sound disoriented and confused with conflicting accounts. Most of them seem to be experiencing similar difficulties to our own. Do I have permission to make contact?"

"What does your gut tell you?"

"My gut?"

"I could go over the transmissions but if, in your judgement, they do not present an immediate threat we should make contact."

"You do realize I'm the Security Chief and not an ambassador?"

The cat woman beside Shaavi chuckled.

"I'm also not a captain and I don't have a first officer as of yet. What would you suggest?"

"Good Point."

"Keep a subspace channel open. I'll be monitoring. Faith of the Heart out."

"Yangtze Out." Shaavi finished and then turned to her pilot, "So. What do you think?"

"I think you're screwed," M'Rella responded and tapped the side of her flat triangular nose.

M'Rella's fingers danced across the console as she entered an intercept course. It was a short hop by any standard but she adjusted the entry slightly so that they would come out of warp and approach using impulse engines. It wouldn't do to drop out of warp immediately out of nowhere without any sort of warning.

* * *

The Yangtze burst out of warp after only a mere moment. It then approached the collection of vessels at an impressive half of the speed of light, seemingly ignoring all relativistic effects of moving at such a ludicrous speed. It did so from several minutes out. Just to be on the safe side, giving the vessels a chance to read her on sensors before arriving. After all, if the Yangtze had chosen to move faster they would be chasing their own sensor image. Those vessels without supraluminal sensors would only have moments to respond. They wanted to be seen, to be addressed, and hopefully not get a face full of weapons fire.

Star Wars - Galaxies at War[MULTIVERSE SPACESHIP RP]

The Faith of the Heart tumbled aimlessly through space. Small arcs of energy danced across her hull from exposed plasma conduits.

Inside the Faith, nearly every hand was hard at work performing repair and damage control operations. Engineering Chief Rex Miller grasped both temples between thumb and middle finger, palm across his eyes, for a long moment. He was tired. Their ship had taken quite the beating. Normally, with the repair transporters up and running his engineers could simple cut away debris and remove slagged components and the ship itself would transport replacement components directly into position from storage. That simply wasn't possible at the moment.

"Good News," Rex reported, his Texan accent quite apparent, "The antimatter containment has been stabilized. We replaced the nonfunctional gravitic and magnetic coils. Main sensors are still offline. I think we blew some isolinear chips during the slingshot but I just finished making sure we didn't erupt into a bleeding supernova."

Chandani was also exhausted but she couldn't let weakness show.

"Good work chief. We're alive. That's what's important. Now that we've got the containment back under control and life support up and running we can begin looking at the other basics, the impulse engines, warp core and sensors. In the meantime. I don't like being blind. Secondary sensors are much more limited. That stream of plasma we haven't fully locked down is like a flare across the stars. We're very visible. The Dominion could be on us at any time.

"We could launch a runabout," Rex replied, "We may not have power to most of the primary hull and the main shuttle bay we can use the one meant to replace the one Deep Space Nine lost."

"That's a great idea." Chandani agreed, "It's got the range It's warp capable and can survive if we get separated."

Give Me Your Customer Service/Retail/Etc. Stories.

I have a hundred of these blasted things.

At one point we had a customer run around our dairy department holding a dozen eggs screaming while a colleague looked on with distress. Being used to dealing with such situations I headed over to help resolve things. I went over and visited him. His issue was that everything in the ENTIRE department was expired, or beyond the "best before" date. Needless to say I was incredulous. One or two items- Sure. A single group of items- Sure. The entire bloody department? No way in Hades.

I venture a look. Sure enough, the best before date is in June. Here in Canada the format is "BB/MA 06-22" or something along those lines. Each company do their codes slightly differently.

"These all expired in May!" the man declared.

This of course confused me. It's not entirely impossible. If the product isn't properly rotated an old piece might stay at the back for a long time and then get moved to the front or maybe it was stuck in the backroom for a month before someone put it out without looking at the dates. It's unfortunate but it happens.

"Sir. I'm afraid this package clearly reads June 22nd."

"No. I know how to read these. This clearly shows MA. That's May. This is five weeks past due."

"Excuse me sir?"

"Right here!" he states, pointing out the "BB/MA".

"Sir. That stands for 'Best Before' and 'Meillieur Avant'. The MA is 'Best Before' in French."

"I know what I'm talking about."

In short order, three staff and two managers later we simply had to ask him to leave. When he did not we reminded him he was on private property, had been asked to leave, and that if he did not we would summon the police.

At long last he departed, screaming about how it wasn't over and that he was calling the local newspapers and that we were going to be very sorry when the store was shutdown for violating health statues.

At that point, there was no point in explaining that Best Before dates are not regulated by the government in any fashion. Some people are just idiots.

(In fact, most eggs are good for WEEKS past their Best Before dates. It turns out that most people don't have a clue and throw out millions of eggs each year and the companies chuckle gleefully and accept your money for replacements.)

Star Wars - Galaxies at War[MULTIVERSE SPACESHIP RP]

The Battle Bridge door opened with a soft pneumatic hiss. Unlike the main bridge, this control center wasn't carpeted nor decorated. It was half the size and a spartan facility with no distractions. Hustling, the ship's first officer, Chandani Madan, passed the tactical console and swept approached the conn. The two stations at the front of the bridge, also known as the Ops stations regulated navigation, power distribution, inertial dampening and warp field geometry. In front of her, on the main view screen, was a wash of blackness and subtle red and orange hues. Beyond the wash of colour was the eye of god, a stark cold darkness staring at her- unblinking -unyielding. Black Holes did not discriminate. They were an equal opportunity destroyer of all things. They would swallow up her ship and the Dominion ships alike.

Behind her the turbolift hissed again but she had no time to turn and investigate. If it was a Gem'Hadar then she was dead. However, she was damn sure that they had handled the last of them.

"By the Goddess," a female voice behind her uttered, tinged with incredulity, "How close are we?"

Long fingers fluttering across the LCARS console, Chandani first adjusted the inertial dampeners to compensate for the relativistic effects of being so close to a black hole and breathed a quick sigh of relief for the settling of her stomach. A black hole, like any massive object, bent the very space around it in towards itself. This was very similar to and often interfered with the very means a starship used to surpass the speed of light. As a result she adjusted the warp field structure to compensate for the shearing effect it was experiencing using the Enbridge theorum of quantum gravitic lensing to avoid the field's total collapse.

"Too Close," Chandani responded to voice behind her, "Get on Helm. We need to adjust course to compensate. Our vector is too steep and we don't correct the spin of the singularity isn't going to compensate for escape velocity. Main sensors are down. Passive sensors only."

Long supple fingers, covered in a short soft fur worked her own console as a woman with a long mane of hair. Unlike Chandani she rolled her hips and slipped into the chair even as she was working the seamless flat surface of the console. She cursed softly at the lack of complete sensor data but saw little choice in the matter. The console beeped softly with every frenetic touch as the pair struggled to survive.

The turbolift hissed again and again a crew member gaped in wonder at the screen. He began to speak, then thought better of it. The orange skinned alien stood with two arms crossed while his third arm, thrusting forth from the center of his chest over the other two stroked the long flap of skin hanging from beneath his chin. Calmly he descended to the pair of women at their consoles and silently observed. The Ops position was his station. He was backup to Lieutenant Cheng who manned the ops position on the main bridge and regularly did duty on the dog watch. He, like many of the junior officers, were engaged in damage control efforts until he was ordered here.

"Course plotted," M'Rella, the cat-woman stated.

"Adjusting Warp Field and Inertial Dampeners for your course," Chandani replied as she worked and then stood away from the console, "Mister Aurex. Operations is yours."

The Edosian took his seat, maneuvering his three legs around and pressed several buttons, bringing up a customized operations console that best suited his three hands.

"All right you two" the first officer stated, "we've done almost all we can. Monitor your stations and if you have gods, pray to them."

Outside the Dominion vessels watched helplessly as their prey began to distance themselves. Their prey, the "Faith of the Heart", spilling plasma in a long trail behind it began to speed away. Their adapted warp field and trajectory using the spin of the black hole to accelerate themselves, sling-shotting themselves in a wide arc and leaving the Dominion vessels to flounder.

Inside, on the viewer, the singularity on the right side of screen began to slip away. The stars, which had been sliding by as strips of light growing longer and longer as they approached the left side of the screen began to be joined by additional stars on the right and suddenly, with the singularity behind them became a traditional, familiar, screen of streaming elongated pins of light.

"Something is wrong," M'Rella called out, "We're accelerating, accelerating out of control!"

Before them the stars grew longer and longer, burning brighter, and becoming more numerous until the entire screen filled with white. The crew struggled to maintain consciousness. Aurex struggled to collapse the warp field but nothing would work. Inertial dampeners strained and alarms rang, lights flashed on consoles but nobody was conscious to hear them.

Across untold distance and over immeasurable time the Faith of the Heart burst into normal space. She was bleeding and broken, a long black scrape along the top of her saucer section and a gaping, sparking hole at the end of that scrape where the bridge used to be. It leaked plasma, a long glimmering line showing its course as it drifted quietly through the empty, lonely darkness.

The Red Dragon Inn RP

Once again the request came for the blonde elven dancing girl to dance upon the table. She wasn't in the mood. Sloughing through dungeons was not her favourite endeavour but her group demanded her presence. She vastly preferred her adventures within city walls but had to admit dungeons definitely were better than traipsing about in forests and fields. While she was an elf she simply abhorred all things of nature.

Sipping at her honeyed mead she sighed softly and viewed the patrons. She, herself, was a luminous beauty. Her pointed chin and sculpted cheekbones drew the eye as did the radiance of her tresses. The golden hair glimmered in the firelight of the hearth.

"Wench!" Assallya called out, revelling in the demeaning rudeness, "Where are my potatoes! How long does it take to chop up some tubers and slather them in cheese?"