Admiral Denethor, Commodore Shazam, Ladies and Gentleman, as well as other assorted species and states of being,

As you may or not be aware, the initial iteration of the CSS was somewhat a bit of a failure. Despite initial enthusiasm, real life naturally interfered, and so not everyone could post. Because of that, those who did manage to post got kind of pissed off and so didn't want to post any more, and the whole thing kind of grounded to a halt. I myself recently went full time with my job, but now I'm back, and I'm ready to do this properly.

Shortly following Jaden's appointment to Wing Commander I implored Shazam (read,  bitch slapped) into transferring full control over the CSS and all associated matters to me. And I've spent the past couple of weeks brain-storming a proper way to usher in this new (but old, but also new) era for the Vast Empire Navy.

So, without further ado, I proudly present to you:

The Ghost Fleet

One concern brought forward by the Commodore before we left is that we may have been too rigid in our thinking, may have over-thought things or generally made it confusing and/or complicated. Considering the first story never got off the ground, it's hard to tell whether that comment would have turned out to be true or false, but never-the-less the pre-conception existed, and it may have been permeating the project. As such my first order of business was to offer up a much more casual state of being for the project.

Our new name symbolises that new way of thinking. In essence, we are the fleet that never was. There shall be no official unit, no 'squadron' fleet equivalent that we somehow have to explain and justify everyone's presence in. There is simply us, a random group of individuals brought together by circumstances, events and even fate (read, the force maybe?) time and again.

Imagine if you will, far into the VE's future, a clerk. This clerk is conducting the most mundane of tasks of sifting through old reports. Whilst doing this, he finds random reports that, inexplicably, seem to involve the same group of people time and again (us). Therefore, to make his life slightly more interesting, he starts trying to hunt down similar such stories/reports/accounts etc... involving this eclectic group individuals, and since he needs a header for this collection, he calls them The Ghost Fleet.

Our name shall never be used in story to refer to ourselves. As I said, we are not an official unit, this is simply an umbrella term in which all our work shall be placed under. If you still do not understand, I shall be writing a foreword for the group, written IC, which should highlight what I'm talking about. If you still don't get it, then tough - we do, and that's all that counts :P

So, enough about the back story, let's move onto the actual realities of the Ghost Fleet:

We will have a set roster of people who are authorised contributors to Ghost Fleet stories. Our stories however will be drop-in/drop-out in nature. Not everyone has to participate all the time, and members who have other duties, or are needed elsewhere in story terms, can easily sit out entire adventures if needed. We place no obligations on them other than if they do decided to participate in a story, they need to actually participate.

Due to this more flexible approach, the stories themselves will have to be more flexible. Now, this is the only really 'unknown' part of this whole project, as we have yet to see whether such a story can be possible and interesting under this way of thinking, but I live in hope. One suggestion, also put forward by Shazam, was to have more objective based stories, thus lessening the restrictions on individual posters, so we will most likely use that as a starting point, and evolve from there.

So, before I start explaining anything else, the roster as it stands right now:

Ibram Tyrol (Me) - like with TFX, Ibram's story will begin where he left off at the Battle of Lehon, broken, beaten, emotionally scarred, and ripped from everything he held dear. A personal story, Look to Windward, will relate the events that led Ibram to get in control of his own ship, and the first story will be his first official command.

Ash - Due to the impracticality of having Willt's character in the fleet, we've decided to use Ash as an NPC, and given him a slightly higher rank to fit it his background. Ash, is a 70 year old Falleen who's been in the fleet for a while now.

Jaden - will be playing has himself, in his capacity as Wing Commander. He will be moving Javelin's official home to a small but powerful ship to give the Wing HQ more mobility, and better justify his presence in the story.

Atrasin - Atrasin will be playing as himself, after having left the military and gone to take charge of his large financial empire or whatever. Naturally, he has his own private fleet, and he's been allowed to use one ship when writing with us. A personal story, An Opaque Mirror, will lay down some background for that.

Stormz - Will be playing himself, as his capacity as NTO still I guess. Still not sure how we're going to work him into stories, so he may not be able to participate all the time. We'll see.

So these are the major players for the moment. As time goes on, we may include more people, but our flexibility means that nearly anyone can be involved in a cameo or one of contribution, and we can still be included in Navy-wide stories.

Next is ships: we're diversifying the roster slightly to allow for different combinations:

One Strike-class Medium Cruiser - Ash
One Carrack-class Light Cruiser - Me
One Lancer-class Frigate - Stormz
One Nebulon-B Frigate - Atrasin

The last one will be Jaden's Victory-II Class Star Destroyer. It will be slightly modified so it can hold 3 squadrons instead of 2. Obviously, it's still 3 short of the full 6 needed to house the entire wing, but the reality of the VEN is that the played-squadrons at least usually operate in a state of detached service, always being res-assigned to one place, or next, aboard different ships... I myself rarely wrote being aboard the Atrus, and since the Atrus didn't move much, I even unofficially re-assigned the squadron to another ship, just for consistency.

As such, the entire wing is rarely at the same place at the same time, so this can explain away their HQ's diminished capacity.

(Note: HC permission was sought, and Shazam agreed. Hopefully he won't change his mind, otherwise we'll have to go back to the drawing board :P)

So there you have it. The brand new shiny CSS. Any questions, comments, leave them here.