Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×13

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 10^th August 2024

Guest Stars:

• Doc­tor Rose Eloun­dou: Star­fleet first con­tact specialist.
• Lilong of the Green Isle: Com­mand­er of the Qofuari trad­ing ves­sel Song of the Green Isle.
• Grith­al of the Rolafus: Tra­di­tion­al­ist eld­er at the Qofuari All-Ashore Meeting.
• Fal­loo “Broken Ear”: First mate on the Song of the Green Isle.

After 4 weeks of intens­ive debrief­ing by the Depart­ment of Tem­por­al Invest­ig­a­tions, my seni­or officers and I have finally been cleared to return to duty. While Zohir has kept my seat warm while I was away, it’s nice to get it back.

Lex­ing­ton’s first mis­sion is a return vis­it to Lila­fas, the home of the mys­ter­i­ous Qofuari first encountered by Azon­an, Quinn and Zepht last year. While undoubtedly pro­tec­ted by the Prime Dir­ect­ive, the Qofuari have demon­strated a dis­turb­ing under­stand­ing of con­cepts like astro­phys­ics and warp dynamics.

Our vis­it now is at their own request, as they have uncovered a ruined ali­en struc­ture they believe will be of interest to us. In view of the cul­tur­al issues, we have been assigned a chap­er­one, Doc­tor Rose Eloundou.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 50692.9

Plot: A return to the home­world of the Qofuari brings a new dis­cov­ery and unleashes a poten­tial dis­aster for the Lex­ing­ton.

The ‘A’ Plot: The newly-returned crew’s first mis­sion is to Lila­fas, the home of the Qofuari, first encountered by Zepht, Azon­an and Quinn 19 months ago. A probe mon­it­or­ing the plan­et has received an audio-only sub­space sig­nal, which appears to be from the Qofuari them­selves, des­pite their lack of advanced tech­no­logy. It says they have found some­thing that Star­fleet might be inter­ested in.

Approach­ing the sys­tem, scans show no sign of advanced tech­no­logy oth­er than the probe itself, its logs show­ing that the sig­nal came dir­ectly from the sur­face on an open hail­ing fre­quency. While they are scan­ning for a poten­tial source for the sig­nal, they detect a new mes­sage, addressed to “Zepht Bumpy­face”. This trans­mis­sion appears to be com­ing from a large fleet of Qofuari trad­ing ves­sels clustered in the middle of an ocean, but there is no sign of a power source.

With the cap­tain’s per­mis­sion, Zepht responds, con­firm­ing he has arrived, and the speak­er squeaks with excite­ment. Once he has recovered, he iden­ti­fies him­self as Lilong of the Green Isle, the cap­tain the stran­ded shuttle crew encountered on their earli­er visit.

He goes on to explain that a recent vol­can­ic erup­tion has uncovered a long-bur­ied city, which is obvi­ously not Qofuari, and he remembered that Zepht and his com­pan­ions had an interest in such things. Zepht replies that they are indeed inter­ested, and would like to vis­it the ruins. Lilong admits that he will need to get per­mis­sion from the “All-Ashore Meet­ing”, a kind of ad-hoc coun­cil of eld­ers, and that they may have some dif­fi­culty because the site is in a ter­rit­ory con­sidered holy by some Qofuari.

Zepht defers to Kon­in on this, who decides it would be help­ful to meet with the eld­ers and estab­lish an under­stand­ing. He asks for a good place to beam down, and Lilong tells them to look for a large cir­cu­lar struc­ture at the edge of the fleet, this being centered on his own ves­sel the Song of the Green Isle.

Kon­in and his seni­or officers arrive on the quar­ter­deck of the ship shortly after­wards, and are greeted by a mot­ley assort­ment of curi­ous Qofuari from its crew. On the deck before them, more sail­ors are fold­ing up a large cir­cu­lar net, stretched across the decks of ships to either side. Azon­an spots a com­plex-look­ing mech­an­ic­al device beneath it, appar­ently built around a steam engine.

Lilong soon appears and invites them into his cab­in, where he explains that the city lies in a moun­tain range on the largely-unin­hab­ited island of Fasun­oli. A large fac­tion of Tra­di­tion­al­ists, folllow­ing the old reli­gious tra­di­tions of the Qofuari, con­sider the large act­ive vol­cano at the centre of this range to be the home of the most power­ful spir­it on the plan­et, which is why they will need to get per­mis­sion from the All-Ashore Meeting.

The only oth­er prob­lem is that he has­n’t told the eld­ers the Lex­ing­ton con­tin­gent were com­ing, and fur­ther­more, he had been for­bid­den from con­tact­ing them in the first place!

While Kon­in works out how to handle this, Azon­an asks about the trans­mit­ter. Lilong explains that Star­fleet’s sub­space com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tem was trivi­al to decipher, based on what they’d seen in the shuttle. Build­ing some­thing to inter­act with it was simply a mat­ter of work­ing out a way to con­vert sound to energy and pro­ject­ing that energy as a sub­space sig­nal, along with con­struct­ing a device to sup­ply enough power. The engin­eer is impressed.

Kon­in is less impressed with Lilong’s “bet­ter to ask for­give­ness than get per­mis­sion” approach, but asks for more inform­a­tion so he can plan how to approach the neo­giations. Lilong del­eg­ates this task to his first mate, Fal­loo, as he rushes off to arrange the meeting.

The next day, Kon­in and Zepht are taken to the centre of the fleet to meet with the All-Ashore Meet­ing. The coun­cil is seated on a wide deck slung between mutiple ships, and is mostly made up of older Qofuari in a vari­ety of elab­or­ate fash­ions. Lilong intro­duces the cap­tain, and after an ini­tial round of mut­ter­ing and com­plaints from the eld­ers, Kon­in begins explain­ing about Star­fleet’s desire and reas­ons to explore the ruins. His main oppos­i­tion turns out to be an eld­erly indi­vidu­al wear­ing robes with com­plex embroid­ery, intro­duced as Grith­al of the Rolafus, one of the most con­ser­vat­ive fac­tions among the Qofuari, and the group who con­trol Fasunoli.

Kon­in uses every tool in his dip­lo­mat­ic arsen­al, and even­tu­ally con­vinces them, but he is forced to agree to a num­ber of terms to sat­is­fy Grith­al and his allies. Chief among these are that the Star­fleet vis­it­ors will leave all advanced tech­no­logy behind, includ­ing weapons, tools and man­u­fac­tured cloth­ing. At Zeph­t’s request, Kon­in pushes back on this point, in an attempt to retain a tri­cord­er, but is forced to agree that the Den­ob­u­lan will per­form a com­plex ritu­al to appease the spir­it of the vol­cano. Grith­al also announces that Lilong will also have to per­form the ritu­al, in order to apo­lo­gise for break­ing his prom­ise not to con­tact Starfleet.

With everything agreed, final arrange­ments are made, and the Song of the Green Isle heads for Fasun­oli, accom­pan­ied by sev­er­al oth­er Rolafus ships. The voy­age takes sev­er­al days, but the time is put to good use, as suit­able cloth­ing is arranged for the humanoids, and Zepht mem­or­ises the ritu­al, includ­ing the com­plic­ated Qofuari phrases, as he will not have access to his communicator.

They even­tu­ally arrive at the island of Fasun­oli, where a high moun­tain range, dom­in­ated by an act­ive fire-topped vol­cano, over­looks expans­ive beaches of white sand, backed by an extens­ive trop­ic­al jungle. Zepht is a little shocked when Lilong emerges on deck com­pletely devoid of fur, and even more so when Grith­al explains that the ritu­al is car­ried out “naked before the spir­its”: Zepht will also have to shave all his hair off and per­form it without clothing.

Dis­em­bark­ing the next day, they begin the trek into the moun­tains. The first stop is a shrine at the very mouth of the vol­cano, where Zepht per­forms his ritu­al. It seems to go well, but he does stumble a little over some of the pro­nun­ci­ation. Grithong, how­ever, seems sat­is­fied and announces that the fire spir­it has been appeased.

Finally, they begin the des­cent to the ancient city, loc­ated in a val­ley bur­ied under a black river of dried lava from an ancient erup­tion. A large cave-in has exposed a dome-shaped volume around 500 m across, con­tain­ing a spread of arti­fi­cial struc­tures, although Zepht notes that they do not look like Tilikaal architecture.

They clam­ber down into the cav­ity, not­ing its smooth and reg­u­lar shape, and the­or­ise that it may have been cre­ated by a pro­tect­ive force field hold­ing back the lava flow dur­ing the erup­tion. The cent­ral struc­ture is a shal­low marble dome cov­er­ing a ring of pil­lars of a very famil­i­ar style. They real­ise these ruins are Iconian.

The ring does not appear to con­tain a work­ing gate­way, and Azon­an sug­gests this may be due to a lack of power. While the oth­ers study the inscrip­tions on the walls, Zepht approaches a free-stand­ing con­sole, which promptly activ­ates, appar­ently draw­ing power from the tri­cord­er. He scans the device, look­ing for a way to inter­act with it, but has to work around a series of minor faults that have sud­denly developed. The faults get worse, then sud­denly the tri­cord­er begins to emit a reg­u­lar beep of rising fre­quency and volume. Recog­nising the warn­ing sound of a power pack over­load, Raynor rushes over, grabs the device and pulls the pack out, throw­ing it into the open air where it explodes.

Azon­an remem­bers that an Iconi­an com­puter probe was con­sidered to be the cause of the explo­sion that des­troyed the U.S.S. Yam­ato eight years ago, and nearly did the same to the U.S.S. Enter­prise. It was determ­ined dur­ing invest­ig­a­tions that the probe can spread via any data-link.

The tri­cord­er is rigged to relay all data read­ings dir­ect to the Lex­ing­ton if the ship is in range…

The ‘B’ Plot: By the time the time-dis­placed officers return to Fed­er­a­tion space, Vice Admir­al Hebert has trans­ferred her flag back to Star­base 234, fol­low­ing the rap­proche­ment with the Klin­gon Empire.

After a brief meet­ing with Hebert, the seni­or officers find them­selves isol­ated while they are repeatedly debriefed by agents from the civil­ian Depart­ment of Tem­por­al Invest­ig­a­tions. The inter­views last for sev­er­al weeks, as the agents, who want to know everything about their trip to the past, try to determ­ine if there have been any consequences.

When Quinn off­han­dedly men­tions the Trave’s trip to an altern­ate quantum real­ity, a new invest­ig­a­tion is triggered, extend­ing their isol­a­tion for anoth­er two weeks.

The Arc: It appears the Iconi­ans had a facil­ity on Lila­fas, although it is unclear if this has any con­nec­tion to the Tilikaal.

Obser­va­tions: After six months of Klin­gon occu­pa­tion, Nar­en­dra Sta­tion is a mess. Extens­ive use of the Gal­ler­ia as an urb­an com­bat train­ing range has left it devoid of shops, and there has been a marked lack of main­ten­ance for many non-com­bat sys­tems. Even the essen­tial areas are run-down and dis­or­gan­ised. Both Kon­in and Azon­an are seen to wince when they see the state of some decks.

Qofuari names are usu­ally single words, but often have an iden­ti­fi­er based on their home or occu­pa­tion, and occa­sion­ally a descript­ive nick­name. Lilong appar­ently latched onto Zeph­t’s Den­ob­u­lan fea­tures when nam­ing him “Bumpy­face”.

The Qofuari are divided into two broad fac­tions. The con­ser­vat­ive Tra­di­tion­al­ists are con­tent with life as it is, and are opposed to any kind of tech­no­lo­gic­al advance­ment. The Future Build­ers want to use their abil­it­ies to devel­op their cul­ture and explore the stars. Con­tact with the Fed­er­a­tion has boos­ted their influ­ence, as more young­er Qofuari join them.

The Qofuari do not have a reli­gion as such, and many are agnost­ic, but many Tra­di­tion­al­ists con­tin­ue to fol­low an anim­ist belief sys­tem from their past. This ascribes spir­its of vary­ing power to anim­als, trees, and sig­ni­fic­ant land­marks, such as forests, islands and moun­tains. The most power­ful of all is the spir­it of the vol­cano dom­in­at­ing the west­ern coast of the island of Fasun­oli. This is the strong­hold of the Rolafus, a group of these anim­ists who, as Tra­di­tion­al­ists, dis­ap­prove of Star­fleet technology.

Dia­logue: Zepht when he finds out that he will be con­duct­ing the ritu­al without cloth­ing: “I will not be naked: I will have my tricorder!”

Ref­er­ences: The U.S.S. Yam­ato was des­troyed as a res­ult of con­ta­gion by Iconi­an soft­ware in 2365. Cap­tain Picard’s U.S.S. Enter­prise was also infec­ted, but the crew was able to resolve the issue.

Ques­tions: It is unclear wheth­er the Lex­ing­ton has actu­ally been infec­ted by an Iconi­an probe, as the team are cur­rently sep­ar­ated from their com­mu­nic­at­ors. This also means they can­not warn them about the problem.