You have my wings.

Alright, my latest is up. Hades feels as if there's something wrong. It may not be with the ship, but he is analysing most details. Perhaps he has one of those Han Solo-esque abilities to have 'bad feelings'

awesome, thanks sir.

Reminder noted Hades, but wiki work bah humbug. If I have time I'll go update it, thanks for the heads up though, I'm real good at forgetting pretty much everything lol.

I took for granted that my mom still had internet access at her house; it turns out she doesn't, and I'm visiting until Friday. With Serpent away on leave I'm going to make every effort to find a way to get online (other than through my phone, which is too clunky for real story posting) asap, but in the meantime: starfighter peeps, you're clear to keep posting, if you want to move the action forward to the boarding stage. The OOC plan: a single shuttle from Surprise boards the Salvation without initial incident, but there'll probably be resistance once our team's aboard. of special interest: navigation info for the local shipping, and something special that required a low-profile-but-willing-to-sacrifice-themselves escort. Great work so far, I'll be back posting as soon as I can, and keep having fun!

Post is up, and the kinks have been ironed out for us to be joined in the story by some volunteers from the Stormtrooper Corps!  Yay, interdivisional collaboration!  The story's scope is rather larger than it was to begin with, though, so let's move discussion here, so as not to clutter this thread. 

Welcome back, bossman.  Can't wait to see what the Warrior gets up to.

I'd like to take a moment to congratulate and thank all of you for the level of activity this past month. The holidays are typically an extremely hectic time, so most years we don't see a lot of activity. But not this year! By my count, there are 13 stories in the Naval Storyboard with posts in the last month. If you add in the Certs/Skills posts we come up to the even better number of 22 stories. Some of them are VENI activities, some are CD stories. Others are missions or Certs/Skills as noted- but all of it's activity and it's great. Looking good, guys. Let's keep this momentum rolling!

-Drac

*looks around* Anyone awake in here?

I should be on more often now- school started out the semester by swinging a big bat labeled "Instant Burnout" at my face and I've been ducking the attack for the last week or so.

I'll be in touch with DeepSix and the SCAPs shortly: we're going to take a week or two to organize another big story which should launch at the end of that period and last for a month and a half to two months (slightly shorter than the last two). In the meantime, I encourage everyone to accelerate what you're doing in the current stories so that they won't be abandoned or cut short when the next Fleet mission comes about.

-Drac

Hey, guys. I just wanted to encourage everyone to log on to IRC when you're online. Use the Java client from the VE Main Page if you like, or download the IRC client. If you need help, just ask.

A short list of good channels to join:

#Vast_Empire
#VEN
#VENA

-Drac

Understood Drac!  I'll try to get on more often!

A quick reminder, everyone: PM your reports to myself and to your unit commander. Reports are due starting earlier today and need to be in before Saturday at midnight.

-Drac

Most impressive, Serpent.  I myself never finished my backstory side project, so I know firsthand how difficult it can be to find the time.  Haven't finished reading yours yet, but when I do I'll shoot you some feedback. 

Are we posting here for new story ideas?  If so, I got one!

Okay, so here's the pitch.  A world on the edge of VE space is infected with a Hive Virus (which have long dormant incubation periods before becoming lethally active).  The planet is split into a rich northern continent and a poor southern one.  The south is infected, and the north may be, but no one is sure.  The wealthy northerners have their own ships and are planning to flee before the Hive Virus gets them.  To prevent them fleeing and perhaps taking the virus to other worlds, the VE Navy blockades the planet.  (That's our ships, obviously)

While the VE rushes to get medical relief to the world, the planet's governor reacts to the crisis in one of two ways, depending on how big a battle we want this to be.

1) With only a modest force in orbit, for a low-key battle, he contacts a strong mercenary group.  They won't land on an infected planet (no amount of money could persuade them to do that!) but the mercs are willing to engage and distract our forces while people flee the planet.

2) The governor decides that there are too many VEN forces in orbit, and needs extra firepower to distract them.  He contracts the New Republic.  He claims that his world was deliberately infected, as part of an evil Imperial plan of genocide.  The Republic dupes fall for the sad story (or simply play along with it for the good press of saving such a tragic world) and rush a force to engage ours.  While the Republic fleet distracts, the locals flee.

One battle is larger than the other, but both have the same theme.  In addition to defending ourselves, we have to maintain the blockade.  Basically, that means a lot of soul-searching and hard moral decisions as we shoot down defenceless civilian vessels on the chance (no matter how small) that they carry a plague.

What does everyone think?

I think it's brilliant.    Drac, if you greenlight this, Surprise wants in!