[OOC] The Starship 'Fritjof Nansen'

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Who was he originally supposed to be?

Lara Eichberger's grandson and Tomitomo's heir.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Either choice works for me.

I think the PCs being just the Social Sciences team with the Life Sciences Team as NPCs works the best, since it's logical for the teams to be separated and lets you use the Life Sciences team for info dumps.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Lara Eichberger's grandson and Tomitomo's heir.

So Tomiko's older brother. He would have been 17 when their parents died. No problem there, right?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I think the PCs being just the Social Sciences team with the Life Sciences Team as NPCs works the best, since it's logical for the teams to be separated and lets you use the Life Sciences team for info dumps.

Or suck them into ridiculous predicaments to be rescued by the marines, short-circuiting the need to baffle the players into blunders?

So Tomiko's older brother. He would have been 17 when their parents died. No problem there, right?

None at all. It just means that the scenario I spun with the future amateur historian won't fly, because Tomiko is not the sole heiress.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

• Name: Cpl Brent "Bucky" McAdams
  Origin: Hell (Tau Ceti)
  Thumbnail concept: Bucky's the kind of guy that never works harder than he needs to. He's a natural persuasive leader with a knack for finding the trick for every task. He's the kind of NCO that his Marines love because he looks out for them and smart officers love because he always gets the job done. Martinets and the overly motivated think he's lazy, which terminated his career in the Army of Hell. Soldiering was the only thing he was good at, so he volunteered for the Imperial Marines, where he fits like a glove.
  Backstory: Born in a nowhere town in the boonies on Hell in 475, he enlisted in Hell's Army as soon as he was old enough, and fought in the tail end of the Formation Wars. He was an infantryman, and later a supply chief. He retired and tried his hand at couple of jobs on Tau Ceti, realized he was a lot happier at soldiering so he volunteered for this new "Imperial Marines" outfit.

Dates: born in 475, Bucky would have been 18 in 493. The Wars didn't end formally until 495, so he served in wartime against the Foundation. But by that time the Foundation was no longer dropping troops on Tau Ceti, and the Tau Cetian Alliance had no longer any capacity to lift anything into space. An infantryman wouldn't he seen action (though he would have seen the aftermath of a plinker being used against a ground target).

The Imperial Marines were new in 507, when Bucky was 32, seven years after the Peace. Tau Ceti was rebuilding rapidly, unemployment low, wages high. Practical TL was increasing fast as orbital manufacturing was rebuilt, as wide export markets opened up for specialised products, and as wonderful imports from Simanta, Todos Santos, Seeonee etc. became available cheaply. By 507 Tau Ceti would be like the USA in the mid-Fifties, except without the Korean War: conscious of being in something of a golden age. The governments of Tau Ceti were still trying to destroy the Empire by fiscal strangulation, and Government spokesfolk were spinning things against the Empire. But the Empire was spinning itself as an sort of UN and not as an Eichberger hegemony, and it was actually pretty popular.

Bucky would have been in training in 507 and 508; sixteen weeks on Earth's Moon, sixteen weeks each on each of three foreign worlds with different gravities, sixteen weeks in free fall, at least five interstellar trips, three-day passes and two-week furloughs on alien worlds. Infantry school in 509 and assigned to the Regiment in reserve: whole thing together in one place at base, likely a couple of interventions. Riot school in 512. Five years in garrison on some planet with embassy-guarding, riot-control, hostage rescue, and anti-terrorist duties. Drop school in 517. Five years in MarDets on shipboard. Section Leader's Course in 522. Back into reserve. SOMETHING in 527. Back to garrison on another planet. Sergeant's course in 532, but no promotion: assigned to Survey as a MarDet leader.

Every meal a banquet, every formation a parade. Rugby every Sunday. And the boots polish themselves.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by martinl

Does my marine proposal fit here?[/list]

I think I'd prefer the proposals and discussion to take place in a series of fresh posts that will flag the thread with new content and not get overlooked, but that this post be edited to keep up to date when significant changes are settled upon.

Your other suggestions look good to me. Particularly casting Jewel Staite.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by jmurrell

Elevator pitch: Secret Squirrel disguised as bored gigolo.

Well put!

Backstory: Redacted.

I laughed.

They can be so thoroughly redacted.

Name: Dr Joshua Rabin
Origin: Eichberger Foundation Ships & Habitats
Thumbnail concept: Grandfatherly, "rabbinical". Good listener. Curious. Likes people. Passionate and enthusiastic. Unhurried, takes his time. Likes a good argument, sorry a ‘spirited discussion’.
Description: Jack Axelrod, specifically as Shmeil Pinkus on NCIS.

Nice casting!


My model for promotion and superannuation of Imperial Servants is designed for normal conditions of continual naval activity and fleet expansion, so it isn't really ideal for the period between 495 and about 531 in the Imperial Navy. But I've hacked it a bit to reconstruct Captain Lowell's career.

Lowell is 98 now, which means that he was born in 434 PDT. Things were entirely irregular in the Foundation then. There were hardly any safe habitats. He probably grew up in a re-fitted archaeological site in Mayflower's system, and joined a ship as an apprentice officer as soon as he could solve a problem that required ordinary differential equations. Say, about 15. He has no formal higher education, though he has had more than half a century in which to educate himself by reading and with an NAI pedagogue.

Supposing that he made captain at the age of 49 that would make him an 'A' officer (on a curve on which the Ds weren't fired and Cs were typical). But it would also make the date 483. He gets seven more years of normal progress, which I figure is not enough to start getting him postings as commodore ("battleship" command with escorts). At this stage I figure that Lowell was on track to make full admiral before he was 100.

Then the Wars grind to a halt: the Foundation can't get the parts for new ships and it can't raise technically-trained recruits to complete new crews. On the other hand, it stops losing commodores and rear admirals as battle casualties. The rate of advancement drops to half, so that by 495 Lowell is 61 and has just got his first senior-captain command.

Then the Treaty of Luna. The Navy has access to the markets on high-tech worlds again, it could build ships and recruit crews — if the Imperial Council gave it money. Instead it retrenches: mothballs and decommissions ships, builds only a bunch of, essentially, harbor monitor and patrol boats. The officer corps gets retrenched, too. Merely "above average" officers are transferred to merchant service. The best war-fighting leaders of crews get mothballed in patrol boats and behind admiralty desks, and promotions come about only through superannuation of super-numerous superiors. Lowell is senior enough to command squadrons, but he finds himself with three stripes, commanding a gunboat and inspecting orbital works for signs that pirate ships might be being built in secret, etc., with rotations to the Office of Naval Plans and the Office of Naval Procurement.

Even in these parlous circumstances, my model suggests that Lowell will make rear admiral about 429. He might either have been resisting promotion for the last five years or so in the hope of getting one last capital-ship command. Or he might have been recently promoted rear admiral and appointed Director of Compressor Procurement, and have accepted a demotion in order to get a survey ship command.

[Adina]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I think the PCs being just the Social Sciences team with the Life Sciences Team as NPCs works the best, since it's logical for the teams to be separated and lets you use the Life Sciences team for info dumps.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Or suck them into ridiculous predicaments to be rescued by the marines, short-circuiting the need to baffle the players into blunders?

Sounds like a plan to me. Luke, Martin, any thoughts?

And for Luke; is the Dean part of our fearless foursome or do you want to add another researcher for mucking around planetside?


For purposes of providing contrasts and mutual foils here's how I see Rabin so far.

• He's patient, normally slow paced physically, and not in a hurry to get anywhere. He is not quiet or slow of speech though.
• While too old to be an optimist, he tends to see the best in people and is enthusiastic about learning new things and new experiences.
• His background seems to indicate that he's a city mouse not a country one. Though I think he does have some physical outdoor hobby, climbing maybe.

We may be the Social Science team but I suspect most of us should have some practical physical/outdoor abilities. With just 288 survey billets available and thousands and thousands of scientists itching for the chance to do real fieldwork, just being good at one specialty isn't enough.

[Adina]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Headquarters has presumably assembled a staff with an eye to variety of outlook and range of focus, as a measure to prevent groupthink.

• The captain, who is described as an Imperial die-hard fanatic in professorial tweeds, is presumably chiefly concerned with war, weapons of mass destruction, and pirate Eichberger devices. There is a real danger that the presence of these things will tend to afflict him with tunnel vision.
• The Ambassador is big on social and political reform. She's going to focus on finding out what's wrong with these colonies' governments and economies and then reporting the findings to Headquarters so that a sensible long-term plan can be devised, prioritised, and resourced. She will be against rushing in to quick fixes, and oppose over-reach in general.
• The Dean of Survey is (rather surprisingly) here to look at the colonies as opportunities to make money (with which to fund the Ambassador's long-term schemes, naturally). He is looking for unique products, unusual price ratios, and data on potential market volumes. He emphasises the need to gather practical information on business customs, and to negotiate for treaty terms that will open markets, develop the colonial economy, etc.
• That leaves the MILINT bubba. What does he bring to the big table?

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Primarily professionally concerned with immediate risks to the mission and secondarily with long-term military/political consequences to contact. Personally she's an ethnographic explorer with a conservationist attitude towards preserving native cultures.

Sure, and in this case it's from the personal perspective of an enthographer with a tendency to "go native" as soon as her boots hit the ground.

Seems to dovetail nicely with what we are beginning to learn about Lt. Strickland, I think.

This gives us outlooks for the big table, but how about personalities?

To repeat my earlier question for the senior staff: how are you going to contrast with your reserved, professorial, fanatical Captain?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

SOMETHING in 527.

Embassy staff would give him grommets for the Diplomacy team.
Instructor at a School would give him grommets for the other Marines or for the ambassador's "aide".

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Embassy staff would give him grommets for the Diplomacy team.
Instructor at a School would give him grommets for the other Marines or for the ambassador's "aide".

The SOMETHING is in a six-month slot where you'd expect a 16-week training course (and eight weeks' furlough) before a new posting. It's probably an extension course of some sort preparatory for the duties he was expected to have in the following posting to a Residence for 54 months.

Aviation School, perhaps.


Ties to another PC are slightly different from grommets. I think that the big iron ring will do as grommets for the navy, marines, and diplomatic characters. The place where I want grommets for my plot hooks is on the explorers.