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[Playergamer]

Name: Goes by "John" No last name, real name unknown.
Class: Smuggler
Biography: John doesn't remember a single blip of his life before the age of 14, when he stole a hundred dollars from some old lady. He made friends with some other thieves and rogues his age, and, one day, they managed to scrape together the money to buy a cheap ship, figuring that smuggling would be much more profitable then petty crime. Their first run went off without a hitch, until they started dividing the money. One of the more intelligent among them realized his chance to get rich, and backstabbed the others, shooting them and taking the money. However, due to what can only be described as luck, John survived being shot, and, after getting emergency treatment (which he didn't pay for, obviously) realized that he now had a smuggling ship all to himself. He made a decent living as a smuggler, buying low, selling high, but with drugs and guns. That is, until he sorta-kinda crashed into the Space Brick and gave himself amnesia. Still, he's good with numbers and knows how to pilot a ship.

[monk12]

STAR BRICK

Space is big.

I mean, space is really, really big. The Deep Space Jump Drive provides the illusion that it is small enough to wrap your mind around, what with flinging metal cans full of air through the subspace aether across dozens of lightyears in an instant, but that illusion breaks down in the sectors of the Outer Rim. Here, away from the more civilized Cluster worlds, is where interstellar travel gets interesting, or to put it another way, gets really quite dull; the star systems of the Outer Rim are spread out so much that it requires multiple DSJs to get anywhere, which results in an awful lot of time inching your way through the interstellar medium waiting for your DSJ drive to recharge for another plummet through the aether. Few things highlight the breadth of the galaxy as much as being suspended in the inky void with little to do other than contemplate the inordinate distances between yourself and the nearest tavern which might sell a drink strong enough to drown the shakes that come from staring into an infinite amount of nothing.

The DSJ of the Star Brick is quite weak, which means the crew spends extra time in that black limbo. Fortunately, the Star Brick also lacks windows and the viewscreen is usually on the fritz, which makes navigation and salvaging operations tricky but certainly helps cuts down on the existential angst.

Name: Captain Someone

Class: Deafblind Spacebard

Bio: Captain Someone is, as you may surmise, the closest thing dear old Star Brick has for a captain, a person quite singular in shape and talent. A skinny, though tall middle-aged woman with rather long hair, she is clad in a thick, light gray military uniform of unknown origin. Captain Someone is the de facto owner of the vessel merely by having outlived the rest of its previous occupants, and possibly even the occupants before them. She dwells on her bridge, having mutilated several of the more user-driven ship systems so that they can be operated via what look like multilayered organ keyboards, some of the keys marked with distinct notches. She really hates it when people touch her keyboards, it should be noted, and she shows a strange finesse with the operation of some of the things on board in a manner you might not expect.

As for what she has experienced, she can hardly say, and is unwilling to write, but the gestures she makes with her hands on other people's bodies seem indicative of not the most pleasant set of adventures, no doubt made worse by her seemingly tenuous grasp on the world around her. The one thing she appears to do aside from checking and messing around with the ship's systems is playing some variant of a zither, holding it upright with her jaw placed firmly on the upper part while keeping the other on some metal surface - this being the Star Brick, there's plenty of those around, of course.

Captain Someone has even less trouble with the disorientation and loneliness associated with deep space travel than most spacefarers. Some might say that it's because she's a grizzled veteran of hundreds of DSJs, and the travails of such travels have inured her to the experience. Some might say that it's because she has military training of some kind, a stoicism and resolve that keeps her on course where others couldn't persevere. Some say that it's because she's deaf and blind and doesn't really understand, let alone appreciate the gravity of the business she's about.

However you like to slice it, there's no doubt that she's the most competent member of the ship's crew, which is no mean feat considering she couldn't tell you the color of the hull. Not only has she restocked the provisions of the Star Brick and hired on a new crew member, but she's also plotted the ship's course; the Cantaiian Debris Field, the site of an ancient battle between the Sol Imperium and the now-shattered Morgari Hegemony. Far from the beaten path and full of easy scrap, it's the perfect job for a ship like the Star Brick.

Someone's fingers dance across the navigation controls. The Star Brick groans, and rattles, and then abruptly pops off into the intestellar void. No warnings blare, no alarms sound; at least, the controls don't twitch beneath Someone's hands, and the ship doesn't shudder any more unpleasantly than usual. The Star Brick is cruising along at relativistic speeds far away from anyone and anything important, slowly gathering the energy to hurl itself even further into space. Someone smiles to herself, and pulls out her zither.

Name: Conan Jenkins

Class: Communications and systems trainee, former Librarian.

Bio: Conan is a large and imposing man with a full beard, moustache and long hair tied back into a neat ponytail. Though he is muscled and full of energy, his hair has long gone white as snow.

He has never told his real age to anyone. Hailing from a rather tribal world, he worked as a librarian on a tiny agricultural planet for years after being picked up by a salvage ship in his youth. After some failed harvests the economy on the planet crashed, leading to the farmers using the books for heating their homes. Conan had then took a job on the very forst ship he could find, which was probably the second worst mistake in his life. 

The ragtag bunch of misfits on this ship obviously had no need of a librarian, Conan wasn't even sure if most of these people could read. He thus managed to procure some textbooks, such as  "spaceship systems 101: an idiots guide to not accidentally shutting of the oxygen supply", and became proficient enough at using the consoles to use the basic systems without killing everyone on board. In his free time Conan enjoys working out and reading. He is currently reading "grammar for dummies" for about the hundreth time. Even though he was rescued from his tribal homeworld, the rules of grammar are still a bit of a problem up until this day.

Conan stands in front of a glowing green floor pad nestled in the corner of a cargo hold, regarding it suspiciously. After the orientation tour delivered by Skirri, he has half a mind to regard everything on the Star Brick suspiciously. Quite frankly, he'd go give Captain Someone a piece of his mind about how unprofessional hazing the new guy is, if he could be sure that it was hazing.

According to Skirri, this pad is a teleporter, and it is the only practical way to move around the ship. As she explained it, the Star Brick was originally constructed by the Tensarians. Since a Tensarian resembles nothing so much as a two foot tall bipedal snake, the halls and hatches they used to navigate the ship were made far too small for the larger races of the galaxy to use, a fact which suited the Tensarians just fine. It also suited the Xorithi engineers who subsequently acquired the Star Brick and stripped it down for the first of many retrofits; Xorithi teleporter technology is famed throughout the galaxy, and they value the control and security this gives them over the interior of their vessels. The Tensarian halls were patched over, and every room of the ship was linked with teleporter pads.

Of course, both the patches and the teleporter have since fallen into a state of disrepair, much like everything else on the Star Brick. The modifications to the teleport system that make it non-fatal to non-Xorithians also make it difficult to control. The pad functions using psionic resonance crystals; merely think of your destination, and the pad processes that request and sends you away. Given the inconsistent power levels on the ship, the disorienting layout of the rooms, and the fact that some pads on the ship no longer seem to function at all, and you find yourself wondering whether it's not worth crawling through the old Tensarian hallways anyway.

Telling himself that the story of the Tomb Room full of former crewmen who couldn't teleport back out if it was just a myth told to scare him, Conan takes a deep breath and steps onto the pad. Immediately, he finds himself standing in his cabin, or to be more precise, the abandoned comm node which now features a grav-hammock and Conan's worldly possessions. Relieved to still be in one piece, he sets about making himself at home.

Name: Skirri
Class: Meddling Scavenger
Bio: Standing all of 5'2", Skirri was never exactly the cream of the Cphetei IV Marine Corp's crop. Attempts to turn her into a medic and/or scout had mixed success, her boundless enthusiasm matched only by her tendency towards distraction and unorthodoxy. She insisted on studying everything, routinely had bouts of "inspiration" regarding thoroughly unsound medical and technical practices, and universally attempted to salvage anything not bolted down on the premise that it might at some point become useful or interesting. Her patent refusal to stop attempting to take C-3u2 larval specimens alive was the final straw in seeing her relegated to the role of noncombat mechanic, where her creative adjustment of a Cybat hoverbike with a busted echo coupling into a flamethrower turret on wheels was the final straw in seeing her placed on "special assignments"- first officially and then by way of shipping container.

A dejected Skirri immediately signed onto a visiting Xorithi merchant's vessel hoping to prove and hone her talent. The lampreylike merchant appreciated her reckless and unique integration of alien artifacts as a form of art, but sadly this did not prevent him from losing her in a card game. Her new captain, a sluglike Morgari, was evidently not quite so cultured, and after several failed attempts to get her to stop breaking his things simply handed her a junky old podship to be rid of her.

Purely by coincidence, it did not take this vessel very long to break down, leaving her stranded in a debris field. Fortunately the Star Brick was nearby and none too picky, thereby starting the next chapter in Skirri's illustrious career.

"Come on, Kit, Kit, Kit." Skirri wriggles one arm a bit further into the metal grating beneath the ancillary energy conduit. She'd had a great idea, the latest in a string of great ideas. Like most of her great ideas, this one called for some rather sophisticated raw materials as well as a nontrivial amount of energy.

Fortunately, the Star Brick houses a truly eclectic collection of alien technologies which have been repurposed in various ways to keep assorted vital functions running. It didn't take Skirri very long to take the magnetic field converter out of the stock Ca-Tech energy diffuser wedged in a comm subsystem (it's really only there to complete the circuit, after all.) The converter went into a graviton capacitor where it replaced a... well, Sirri isn't sure what it is, but seems to function like a standard laser signal repeater. She's pretty confident that's what it does, since it didn't blow up when she put it in the engine room's O₂ control panel in order to get the small black circuit regulator she needed for her project.

Unfortunately, she then promptly dropped the regulator down a service vent.

Cold, hard plastic brushes against her hand, then slips away. "Almost..." Skirri mutters, reaching a little further. A discontented mewling floats up from the floor, and suddenly she feels the regulator slip into her hand. Carefully extricating her hand from the vent, she holds the prized tech up high. "Got it! You're a lifesaver, Kit!"

A small, fuzzy, black and white kitten crawls up out of the vent. Its reproachful mew goes unnoticed as Skirri scrambles off to complete her project. All she needs now is a polysteel chassis, and she thinks she knows exactly where to get one...

Name: Kit
Class: Button presser and lever puller.
Bio: A litter of 8 kittens with a linked hivemind, Kit has near-human intelligence and the ability to be getting in trouble in eight places at once! Master of the fine art of pressing buttons, the main reason to keep Kit around is she's able to substitute for the entire rest of the crew in a pinch, being eight tiny sets of untrained paws. Just don't expect anything like optimal operations while she does it. Kit "talks" using collars that can display up to 13 characters at once.

to quote Kit:

Code: [Select]

so button do?

The kitten takes a moment to clean the grime from its paws before scampering into the Tensarian hallways. Kit has trouble with the teleporter, but fortunately they are the only crewmember which can easily use the old halls. Kit has explored those old hallways more thoroughly than anyone else, and has the best idea of the true expanse of the Star Brick. No one else suspects just how many rooms lie empty and powerless, some of them untouched since the days of the Tensarians.

Unfortunately, the vast bulk of the ship makes it difficult for the small kittens that make up Kit to quickly get from room to room. What is just a brief teleport for the larger crewmembers is hundreds of feet of running down twisty, dusty halls and crawlspaces for Kit. Lately, Kit has taken to spreading themself throughout the ship, trying to be everywhere at once. They've met mixed success with this tactic; true, now they're aware and present in every important room on the ship, but there isn't very much a lone kitten can do with controls designed and sized for humanoid users. Worse, being spread out like this keeps Kit from forming meaningful sentences; a few kittens together can combine their communication collars to get their point across, but individually they have trouble stringing even a couple of words together.

Kit has tried to communicate the need for more readily accessible controls to Captain Someone, but Captain Someone is both blind and deaf, and Kit's collars lack any sort of vibrate function. Skirri has been induced to help a few times, but she often cannibalizes the conveniences she builds as soon as she comes up with another pet project. Perhaps the new crewman will prove more helpful, Kit muses. Across the ship, in hidden halls and behind warm consoles, eight preternaturally intelligent kittens settle down for a catnap.


The Star Brick sails on.

Spoiler: Star Brick Status (click to show/hide)

Credits: 100
Fuel: Full
Provisions: Full
Shields: 48%

Rooms of Interest:

Life Support
Engine Room
DSJ Reactor
Weapon Control
Shield Control
Medbay
Bridge
Sensor Control
Cargo Bay
Conan's Quarters
Skirri's Quarters
Captain Someone's Quarters

For this first "turn 0," you are currently in transit to your destination and nothing interesting is happening yet. Go ahead and describe what your character would be doing on a typical day, and we'll go from there.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a sheet, you all made it REALLY HARD to pick only four. I think four's as much as I can do and still have reasonably frequent updates, though, so oh well. Most updates won't be quite so long as this one.

[Tiruin]

* Tiruin grabs popcorn and cheers the people in space Star Brick.

((This will be amazing to watch.))

[Parsely]

((;-;))

[IronyOwl]

Skirri pulled the trigger.

She couldn't tell exactly what happened next, but it was a lot like what she was hoping for only a lot pinker and with more confetti and at least one little scurrying thing that quickly vanished. That was probably nothing.

She turned the gun over in her hand, quite certain she had just fired a Cal'Ar Death Cannon, typically known more for their ruthless, fleshmelting green energy than their brilliant pink powder explosions. As she did so, she caught the equally bright pink thing integrated into the otherwise ominously black and silver weapon.

Oh. Right. She'd put... something, in there. She didn't really remember what, but she did remember what she'd taken out- the "Soul Hammer," they called it, which she promptly placed in one of the ship's reactors. The results had been fantastic for about the forty-two seconds it had taken for the new component to eat straight through the power core and drop into a pile of half-molten, half-rotten slag in the deep dark beneath the room's floor.

Kit had assured her the Soul Hammer had likewise been atomized entirely, but something made her wonder if the little kitten was being 100% truthful about that.

With a sigh, she placed the gun aside, and picked up The Box again. It was some weird complex geometric shape, like a dodecahedron with a cube inside of it. The surface was a silver matrix that might have looked somewhat like alien bones and skulls. It didn't seem to be able to do anything- she'd tested this rather extensively- other than block attempts to scan it and begin glowing and giving off mist with an ominous orange light when exposed to sufficiently powerful Sellecic power sources- which was also odd, because the skulls didn't look particularly Sellecic-like.

All of which meant that it was a box, and boxes were meant to be opened. Unfortunately, despite its reaction to Sellecic power sources, not even placing it in one of their reactors- indeed, not even that reactor overloading itself and melting down all on its own- seemed to do anything towards opening it.

Which meant she was gonna have to get creative.

Also unfortunately, that was probably going to have to wait for another day. She really wished she'd thought of shooting the thing with the other thing before she'd misplaced two power sources at once, because now the ship had even less box-cracking power than before. Quite a bit less.

The lights were flickering again, and that was nobody's fault.

Sighing, she placed the box back inside its secure container- that was, underneath some siding of some sort- and picked up one of her other latest projects. To most others, a pile of unstable-looking scrap and shiny baubles taped together. To her, the key to as many brownies as the crew wanted... well, as many as they had the power for, but that'd probably be a lot. Those lights were flickering again, and that was probably because of faulty wiring.

Now all she needed was another power core (yes yes, Someone had made hand-waving signals that might possibly be interpreted as "stay away from our other reactors we need them to live"), anything with Cesserium-382 in it (Dohrikhium-40 would probably do in a pinch, if she wasn't concerned about explosions), an appropriate sequencer (as might be found in most comms, but ideally rated for much more power), a gravity warper (the ship had artificial gravity, so there had to be something like that somewhere in here...), a gamma shield- no, a gamma converter- at least three gas capacitors, something for snapbacks to melt that wasn't vital, some bendy wires capable of molding vibrations and magnetism while letting electrons and heat pass uninhibited...

[Lenglon]

As Kit began to take his usual catnap in the engine room, where he could keep an ear or eye out in case the ship tried to fall apart again, she also went looking for the new crewmember's room. making sure that she could find her way to and from it easilly, and maybe doze off in his hammock. and if he was awake, she could also start talking him into making kitten-accessible controls for me! I also stood watch in the sensor control and bridge, serving as an improvised, and currently sleeping, backup coms system, and letting me look at the sensor screens anytime I wanted, helping me know more about what is happening throughout and around the ship than anyone else.

The rest of me were scattered throughout the old abandoned hallways, searching out various hidden rooms, parts, and trinkets. It was always nice to be able to find abandoned pieces of tech and hidden rooms, and it had been a lifesaver before too, finding that one obscure part we needed to keep the oxygen flowing. of course, by this time I've already searched out most of the place, so I'm being a bit lazy about the whole thing, dozing off as I want. It's not like anyone can get in here to bother me.

[Harry Baldman]

In the circle of parts, personal effects and miscellaneous debris that Captain Someone calls her home, all is in order. The systems, guided by her hand, seem to work adequately, and while it is unknown whether she herself has a full notion of where they're going, or what exactly the musical key presses she makes correspond to, or if she can indeed perceive anything through her usual method of pressing her head to the machine she is manipulating, the level of automation more than makes up for it, or at least that would be the more plausible explanation for why the ship has not met a grisly doom yet.

As she puts her chin on the zither, embracing it as she is about to start playing, she appears to remember something. A very vague rustling of motion as her hand wanders off to the side, fetching an ages-old MRE from the ground, eating a small part of its contents, a snack cracker or something of that sort, then putting it back down in the regular place. Someone certainly values her regular places.

After that, she begins to play, presumably oblivious to the world around her aside from some telltale vibrations of the floor that she by now has learned to assign to specific phenomena in the areas around the ship.

[Pancaek]

Conan looked around his room and frowned. It wasn't exactly luxurious, but then nothing on this ship was. That was not the problem. Someone had simply thown his books in a pile on the floor, an offense he would have answered with many smacks to the head in his old library. He sighs, reminding himself that he is no longer in his library, and begins picking up the books and piling them into neat stacks. His eyes wander around the room as he's stacking his books, something he has done thousands of times before.

"I never get why need grav hammocks. Just use regular ones. If gravity on ship fails, hammock is least of problems."

He shakes his head as he mumbles to himself and stands up, regarding his handiwork. Four neat stacks of 10 books each, sorted by size. He nods and grabs the grammar for dummies book, and goes toward the corner of the room where his weights are. He lays down on the floor, hooks his feet under a metal beam fixed to the wall and starts doing push-ups as he reads chapter 1 for the umpteenth time. A healthy body is just as important as a healthy mind, after all.

[monk12]

STAR BRICK

These are the voyages of the salvage scow Star Brick.

Her continuing 8 jump journey: To explore strange new debris fields. To seek out old wrecks and untouched piles of scrap. To boldly go where nobody else really wants to go!

Conan looked around his room and frowned. It wasn't exactly luxurious, but then nothing on this ship was. That was not the problem. Someone had simply thown his books in a pile on the floor, an offense he would have answered with many smacks to the head in his old library. He sighs, reminding himself that he is no longer in his library, and begins picking up the books and piling them into neat stacks. His eyes wander around the room as he's stacking his books, something he has done thousands of times before.

"I never get why need grav hammocks. Just use regular ones. If gravity on ship fails, hammock is least of problems."

He shakes his head as he mumbles to himself and stands up, regarding his handiwork. Four neat stacks of 10 books each, sorted by size. He nods and grabs the grammar for dummies book, and goes toward the corner of the room where his weights are. He lays down on the floor, hooks his feet under a metal beam fixed to the wall and starts doing push-ups as he reads chapter 1 for the umpteenth time. A healthy body is just as important as a healthy mind, after all.

[1]

Up.

Down.

State-of-being verbs are called linking verbs. They include all forms of the verb to be, plus such words as look, feel, appear, act, and go, followed by an adjective. (See the "Adjectives and Adverbs" section later in this chapter.)

Up.

Down.

Verbs often consist of more than one word. For instance, "had been breaking down" is a four-word verb. It has a two-word main verb, breaking down (also called a phrasal verb), and two helping verbs (had and been).

Up.

Down.

WHUMP-SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Conan falls roughly to the floor as the ship violently shudders, send his books to the floor and rattling the entire hull. For a long, terrifying moment, all of the power in his room cuts out before red emergency lighting flicks on, the teleporter in the corner glowing an ominous shade of mauve. His grav hammock remains unpowered (and therefore nonexistant,) as do most of the panels and screens on the wall. Angry klaxons spring to life, screeching in a truly alarming fashion.

Conan hasn't been on the Star Brick for long, but he's pretty sure that this is not how the ship usually executes a Deep Space Jump.

In the circle of parts, personal effects and miscellaneous debris that Captain Someone calls her home, all is in order. The systems, guided by her hand, seem to work adequately, and while it is unknown whether she herself has a full notion of where they're going, or what exactly the musical key presses she makes correspond to, or if she can indeed perceive anything through her usual method of pressing her head to the machine she is manipulating, the level of automation more than makes up for it, or at least that would be the more plausible explanation for why the ship has not met a grisly doom yet.

As she puts her chin on the zither, embracing it as she is about to start playing, she appears to remember something. A very vague rustling of motion as her hand wanders off to the side, fetching an ages-old MRE from the ground, eating a small part of its contents, a snack cracker or something of that sort, then putting it back down in the regular place. Someone certainly values her regular places.

After that, she begins to play, presumably oblivious to the world around her aside from some telltale vibrations of the floor that she by now has learned to assign to specific phenomena in the areas around the ship.

Captain Someone clumsily regains her feet, mashing at her customized shipboard controls. Something has gone drastically wrong with their latest DSJ, but on the bright side it seems that Someone and her immediate environs have not been converted into pure energy, or left scattered as a trail of free particles across the last four lightyears, or emerged in the heart of a black hole.

She will feel better about her situation once she can ascertain that none of those things happened to the rest of the Star Brick.

[5] Fortunately, the main computer is online and undamaged, allowing Someone to quickly assess the status of the Star Brick. Internal sensors do not report any hull breaches or fires, which is a plus. Double plus- the engines did not lose containment on the fuel stores! The backup reactors are ticking along as well as they ever do, and while the main engines are offline it shouldn't be too hard to spin them back up. The shields are still up; only at 48%, but that's as much as they draw in standby mode. Nothing to worry about unless the Star Brick is about to plunge into a plasma storm or the line of fire of a Aelyrai Interdiction Frigate.

Unfortunately, Captain Someone is unable to ascertain whether those unfortunate things are about to happen because the ship's sensors are offline, both active and passive. Without a look at the stars, the Star Brick's limited navigation computer can't tell where it has emerged from the DSJ, but Someone is willing to bet that they aren't where they should be.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Skirri pulled the trigger.

She couldn't tell exactly what happened next, but it was a lot like what she was hoping for only a lot pinker and with more confetti and at least one little scurrying thing that quickly vanished. That was probably nothing.

She turned the gun over in her hand, quite certain she had just fired a Cal'Ar Death Cannon, typically known more for their ruthless, fleshmelting green energy than their brilliant pink powder explosions. As she did so, she caught the equally bright pink thing integrated into the otherwise ominously black and silver weapon.

Oh. Right. She'd put... something, in there. She didn't really remember what, but she did remember what she'd taken out- the "Soul Hammer," they called it, which she promptly placed in one of the ship's reactors. The results had been fantastic for about the forty-two seconds it had taken for the new component to eat straight through the power core and drop into a pile of half-molten, half-rotten slag in the deep dark beneath the room's floor.

Kit had assured her the Soul Hammer had likewise been atomized entirely, but something made her wonder if the little kitten was being 100% truthful about that.

With a sigh, she placed the gun aside, and picked up The Box again. It was some weird complex geometric shape, like a dodecahedron with a cube inside of it. The surface was a silver matrix that might have looked somewhat like alien bones and skulls. It didn't seem to be able to do anything- she'd tested this rather extensively- other than block attempts to scan it and begin glowing and giving off mist with an ominous orange light when exposed to sufficiently powerful Sellecic power sources- which was also odd, because the skulls didn't look particularly Sellecic-like.

All of which meant that it was a box, and boxes were meant to be opened. Unfortunately, despite its reaction to Sellecic power sources, not even placing it in one of their reactors- indeed, not even that reactor overloading itself and melting down all on its own- seemed to do anything towards opening it.

Which meant she was gonna have to get creative.

Also unfortunately, that was probably going to have to wait for another day. She really wished she'd thought of shooting the thing with the other thing before she'd misplaced two power sources at once, because now the ship had even less box-cracking power than before. Quite a bit less.

The lights were flickering again, and that was nobody's fault.

Sighing, she placed the box back inside its secure container- that was, underneath some siding of some sort- and picked up one of her other latest projects. To most others, a pile of unstable-looking scrap and shiny baubles taped together. To her, the key to as many brownies as the crew wanted... well, as many as they had the power for, but that'd probably be a lot. Those lights were flickering again, and that was probably because of faulty wiring.

Now all she needed was another power core (yes yes, Someone had made hand-waving signals that might possibly be interpreted as "stay away from our other reactors we need them to live"), anything with Cesserium-382 in it (Dohrikhium-40 would probably do in a pinch, if she wasn't concerned about explosions), an appropriate sequencer (as might be found in most comms, but ideally rated for much more power), a gravity warper (the ship had artificial gravity, so there had to be something like that somewhere in here...), a gamma shield- no, a gamma converter- at least three gas capacitors, something for snapbacks to melt that wasn't vital, some bendy wires capable of molding vibrations and magnetism while letting electrons and heat pass uninhibited...

[2]

Skirri is growing a little concerned about the fact that her feet aren't touching the ground yet.

The backup reactor she had been fiddling with gives a reassuring blue pulse as it powers the rest of the room, but for some reason the artificial gravity hasn't kicked back in yet. No wonder; if the gravity warper she'd found wasn't compatible with the ambient particle relay in her brownie mixer, then it probably wouldn't work with the regular ship's systems either! Or maybe she had put it back in upside-down.

Monitors chirp and lights dance busily along one bank of control terminals. Something important is probably going on; after all, the Star Brick successfully Jumps a solid 19/20 times, so the catastrophic failures that necessitate the operation of the backup reactors are probably ongoing situations that need addressing.

Just as soon as Skrri gets herself down from here.

As Kit began to take his usual catnap in the engine room, where he could keep an ear or eye out in case the ship tried to fall apart again, she also went looking for the new crewmember's room. making sure that she could find her way to and from it easilly, and maybe doze off in his hammock. and if he was awake, she could also start talking him into making kitten-accessible controls for me! I also stood watch in the sensor control and bridge, serving as an improvised, and currently sleeping, backup coms system, and letting me look at the sensor screens anytime I wanted, helping me know more about what is happening throughout and around the ship than anyone else.

The rest of me were scattered throughout the old abandoned hallways, searching out various hidden rooms, parts, and trinkets. It was always nice to be able to find abandoned pieces of tech and hidden rooms, and it had been a lifesaver before too, finding that one obscure part we needed to keep the oxygen flowing. of course, by this time I've already searched out most of the place, so I'm being a bit lazy about the whole thing, dozing off as I want. It's not like anyone can get in here to bother me.

[3]

There's an awful lot going on across the Star Brick.

Captain Someone is uneasily murmuring to herself. Kit is not sure why she does this, considering she isn't actually saying anything and couldn't hear herself even if she was, but it usually indicates that things are not well aboard ship. Unfortunately, Kit isn't sure exactly what Someone is learning, since her special controls make it difficult to look over her shoulder, and the regular monitors are unpowered.

Kit can make a guess, though. The ship is running on backup power; if the state of the bridge wasn't enough of a clue, the fact that the gravity seems inconsistent across the ship would give it away. The old abandoned Tensarian halls are the first areas to lose artificial gravity, since by and large they are the points on the ship furthest from the backup reactors.

As for why the ship is running on backup power, Kit has no idea. The Sensor Control room is dark, except for where sparks of electricity periodically erupt from the walls. Kit doesn't know what kind of damage they've sustained, or how they've even taken damage in the first place, but until power is restored to that room the Star Brick will be flying blind.

Spoiler: Star Brick Status (click to show/hide)

Credits: 100
Fuel: Full
Provisions: Full
Shields: 48%

Rooms of Interest:

Life Support
Engine Room: ENGINES OFFLINE
DSJ Reactor: MAIN REACTOR OFFLINE BACKUPS ACTIVE
Weapon Control
Shield Control
Medbay
Bridge (Captain Someone's Quarters)
Sensor Control: PASSIVE AND ACTIVE SENSORS OFFLINE
Cargo Bay
Conan's Quarters: BOOKS DISORGANIZED
Skirri's Quarters

[Harry Baldman]

The feedback, while chaotic, is perceptible in detail. Someone has to help. And Someone will.

Press the side of my head to the sensor console. Hit the appropriate diagnostic keys and check the vibrations for indications about what the problem is.

[IronyOwl]

Skirri grumbled, thrashing around rather ineffectually in air. If getting power back on didn't work, maybe those consoles would suggest a more specific course of action.

Or provide the parts to make a more specific course of action!

Attempt to swim towards and examine those terminals!

[Lenglon]

Welp, first things first I suppose.

Me, Myself, and I all scatter, looking for Skirri, additionally, I continue trying to find my way to our new crewmember, and in the sensor and engine room I attempt to assess what damage may have occured and run diagnostics. I stay where Someone can find me in the bridge, or more accurately go back to there, because although it's annoying to be grabbed, in emergencies it's sometimes necessary. finally, the closest of me runs to the reactor room to check on it and run diagnostics if the problem isn't obvious.

[Pancaek]

"Argh, my books! What is this nonsense, why ship make screetching noises?"

Attempt to get to the transportar pad and go to the sensor control room. Look what seems to be the problem there and attempt to fix it.

[monk12]

STAR BRICK

The feedback, while chaotic, is perceptible in detail. Someone has to help. And Someone will.

Press the side of my head to the sensor console. Hit the appropriate diagnostic keys and check the vibrations for indications about what the problem is.

[4]

Captain Someone flattens herself against the console, trying to glean as much information as she can as quickly as she can. The sensor room itself is dead and still, unresponsive to query. However, data packets sent to nearby subsystems and room comm units return good vibrations, indicating that they all have power and report no structural damage. It seems unlikely that the sensor control room would be plucked out of the ship entirely; more likely, it experiencing a local power interruption.

Without more information from the room itself, however, there's no way Someone can fix it from the bridge. A small kitten sits patiently on the floor nearby.

Skirri grumbled, thrashing around rather ineffectually in air. If getting power back on didn't work, maybe those consoles would suggest a more specific course of action.

Or provide the parts to make a more specific course of action!

Attempt to swim towards and examine those terminals!

[4]

Skirri slowly tumbles away from the busier-looking terminals. She begins to flail wildly, half-remembering her mandatory Zero G combat training module back on Cphetei. With luck, her thrashing brings her within reach of an overhead light; snagging the edge of it, she is able to fling herself back to the important control console.

A few quick queries provides Skirri with the data dump that activated the backup reactor. [3] Sure enough, the main engines and DSJ reactor are both offline, throwing an ominous exception which basically boils down to "DSJ Unexpected Interruption." Whatever the problem is, it sent a significant power surge through the ship before the DSJ reactor could shut itself down, resulting in the main engines going offline (to prevent themselves from exploding) as well as the sensor controls going offline (possibly because they exploded.) Skirri isn't sure what causes this specific error message, but she knows that there is a DSJ Troubleshooting Manual in the main engine room.

A small kitten tumbles through the Zero G, tail whipping back and forth as it scrabbles for purchase on the wall.

"Argh, my books! What is this nonsense, why ship make screetching noises?"

Attempt to get to the transportar pad and go to the sensor control room. Look what seems to be the problem there and attempt to fix it.

[5]

Conan regards the transporter pad with some trepidation. It was intimidating enough when it was green; now it's downright scary. Still, there's not much Conan can do from his room, and if the ship is about to fall apart Conan would like to know about it. He steps onto the pad, and instantly finds himself plunged into blackness.

Fumbling at his belt, Conan unclips his emergency pen light and flicks it on. He finds himself in the sensor control room, which has certainly seen better days. His light casts strange shadows, and the intermittent sparking of electricity burns purple afterimages in his eyes.

It seems pretty clear to Conan that the electricity periodically arcing from the walls is probably the problem. It seems to be coming from a panel next to the main console in the room; maybe a circuit breaker, except that most circuit breakers don't turn into Tesla Coils when they pop. Conan's light shows that whatever metal bit formed the connection inside the panel has been melted into slag; to fix it, Conan needs something else to put in there, and ideally a way to keep from being electrocuted while he does so. He considers asking Captain Someone for advice, before remembering how difficult it is to ask Someone anything, on account of the deafness and the blindness. He then considers asking Skirri, and then immediately considers whether it would be safer for everyone just to do it himself.

He doesn't consider asking the kitten in the corner, but that's only because they're not well acquainted with one another and he suffers some prejudices regarding the engineering abilities of small cats.

Welp, first things first I suppose.

Me, Myself, and I all scatter, looking for Skirri, additionally, I continue trying to find my way to our new crewmember, and in the sensor and engine room I attempt to assess what damage may have occured and run diagnostics. I stay where Someone can find me in the bridge, or more accurately go back to there, because although it's annoying to be grabbed, in emergencies it's sometimes necessary. finally, the closest of me runs to the reactor room to check on it and run diagnostics if the problem isn't obvious.

With three kittens coordinating with the bipedal crew members (and one kitten scampering from Conan's quarters to Sensor Control) Kit is able to focus on two groups of two kittens, one in the Engine Room and one at the DSJ reactor.

[1]-1

Two kittens emerge in a pitch black Engine Room. Apparently something is wrong with the backup reactor responsible for keeping the rest of the room running; the oxygen vents are silent, the terminals and consoles are as quiet as the dead, and not even the teleporter pad is on.

This is a big problem, since the engines themselves are too large for Kit to clamber over even when united in the best of times, and these are far from the best of times. Nobody can get to the engine room until power is restored to the teleport pad.


[3]-1

The final pair of kittens emerges in the DSJ reactor. Happily, this room still has backup power, with emergency red lighting glowing on the enormous, cylindrical DSJ reactor itself. Even better, all the consoles and terminals are lit up, suggesting that there hasn't been any significant outages. All that needs to happen is for someone to throw the big "Spin On" lever, and the DSJ will come online and restore main power to the ship.

Unfortunately, that big helpful lever is on a big helpful console far out of reach of two kittens, even if they stand on top of each other.

Spoiler: Star Brick Status (click to show/hide)

Credits: 100
Fuel: Full
Provisions: Full
Shields: 48%

Rooms of Interest:

Life Support
Engine Room: ENGINES OFFLINE
DSJ Reactor: MAIN REACTOR OFFLINE BACKUPS ACTIVE
Weapon Control
Shield Control
Medbay
Bridge (Captain Someone's Quarters)
Sensor Control: PASSIVE AND ACTIVE SENSORS OFFLINE
Cargo Bay
Conan's Quarters: BOOKS DISORGANIZED
Skirri's Quarters

[IronyOwl]

"To the engine room!" Skirri shouted at nobody in particular, pointing her hand 'up.' Then came more pushing off objects and mid-air grabbing of kitties.

Grab kitten, abscond to engine room!