Last post by Griff -
I suppose this is the place to share it: as some of you know, I've been having health problems for the past few years, but especially since last year. The physical issues aside, the illness has also affected my cognitive function. It's not dementia, but my creativity has definitely been affected. My writing both here and elsewhere has taken a nose dive in quality. I am sorry for not communicating this better, as I know that I bear a fair bit of the responsibility for not posting. I keep trying to force it, but that simply does not work. It is clear that something needs to change. I am due to get surgery in September. I am hoping that this (plus other things I am now doing) will get me back on track, but if not, I will bow out. I very much hope to stay, but only if I can still write.
Last post by Dumedion - Posted here because ill probably miss the pow-wow due to work/adulting. These are my thoughts on the matter (so far). Will add/edit as more come.
NOTE:If you agree/disagree, that’s fine, but please don’t clog the thread with replies to this – I'd prefer to use Discord for that; this is simply a list of thoughts and points id like brought up at the meeting if I am absent.
Alternatives to letting the sim die:
• Eliminate posting requirements altogether (nobody is following the rules anyway). Alternative: If you havent contributed shit in three months, and we havent heard any reason why, you’re out.
• No more art. (Hot take, I know). I think folks focus too much on art – don’t get me wrong, I like it too – but reading doesn’t require it, writing shouldn’t either. You can still make it if you want, share it in Discord, etc, but it shouldn’t be mandatory and shouldn’t stop folks from writing.
• Eliminate character inheritance. If someone leaves, their characters go with them. Their story ends unfinished, and that’s it. Writer’s can handle their characters involvement/relationships with that IC (or not) if they choose to.
• Eliminate requirements on current writers adding new characters. If inspiration strikes, they write; the bullshit process in place takes too long and acts more like a gatekeeping mechanism than anything else.
• New writers get approval from one (1) person. It shouldn’t take months to onboard newbloods. Everyone needs to do better about making themselves available to write with new people. If we cant attract new writers and grow, we face stagnation – and people that do engage with new writers all the time will get burnt out doing it.
• Wrap the current narrative. Shelve it. We did our best to complete AL’s story – but its clearly floundering and dying on the vine. We can keep the history, but it’s a lot for new people to absorb; we need to dumb it down and pick a new direction. There are so many options available to use for this; I hope you all have some ideas – I am thinking on it.
There comes a point in every long-running story where the crew has to stop staring at the viewscreen and ask a harder question:
“Where are we actually going from here?”
The USS Theurgy has a long and meaningful history behind it. If you take even a brief look through the forum statistics — including post counts, member activity, and the sheer number of stories and characters that have passed through these halls — this board has mattered to a successful many people over the years. Some of those writers are sadly no longer with us. Others drifted away because life changed course. But the history is there, written into every thread and archive, and it deserves acknowledgment and respect.
The statistics also tell another story: a steady and undeniable drop in activity and participation that we can no longer ignore or quietly work around. This is not meant to be a doom post. It is meant to be an honest one. It is also not a matter of hoisting the blame upon any one person or one variable post, as the GMs acknowledge their place in the sliding as well.
Many of you were here during the difficult period surrounding AL’s departure in 2023 and the scramble that followed to keep the board running and preserve what had been built together. For anyone wanting to revisit that discussion, the original thread can be found here:
Our current setup is not generating enough sustained activity to keep things healthy long-term. That means we need to be willing to discuss everything from the ground up, including:
* Posting expectations and rules * Character creation and acquisition * Storyline structure and long-term trajectory * Accessibility for new writers * Retention of existing writers * Forum/Discord engagement and socialization * Leadership structure * Onboarding new writers * Plot pacing and collaboration * Community culture overall
Nothing should be considered too sacred to discuss.
This also means we need people coming into the conversation prepared to contribute constructively. Bring ideas. Bring solutions. Bring experiments worth trying. Think about what would make you more eager to write, more invested in the stories, and more connected to the community.
Understand that not every idea will be accepted, implemented, or agreed upon. That is part of collaborative storytelling and community-building. Please do not come into the discussion solely to vent frustrations or catalog failures. Everyone here is already aware that things have been struggling — even when not every concern has been openly stated. That awareness is precisely why this conversation is happening.
There is not a firm date for the live chat yet because schedules are currently flexible and chaotic for many people (summer has a way of doing that), but please take some time over the coming weeks to reflect and prepare your thoughts. When the discussion date is finalized, we hope as many of you as possible will participate live.
If you cannot attend because of time constraints or scheduling conflicts, please still contribute either through the Discord or in response to this thread. Your voice matters whether spoken live or written afterward.
And finally: thank you.
Thank you for your time, your creativity, your patience, and your passion over the years. The USS Theurgy has always been more than a collection of forum posts. It has been a collaborative world where people came to imagine together, tell stories together, and escape the grind of everyday life for a little while.
Its longevity is worth fighting for.
Its quality is worth fighting for.
And the friendships built here — both the ones we already have and the ones still waiting somewhere in the future — are worth fighting for too.
It had been an uneventful flight at least after the bureaucratic ego pit behind. There hadn't been much to do on the flight, except pour over what little intel they had on the situation. It didn't make pretty reading; mostly because of how thin all the relevant sections were. He could also tell that the crew had put the assessment together because it was admirably short with very little in the way of guesstimates, conjecture, and general fluff that indicated someone was trying to cover their ass. The only really solid pieces of information they had were the technical specs, schematics, and the general command codes for the ship. The command codes wouldn't let someone get too far into the critical deeper functions on the ship, but they would at least let the group move about.
The Chief's eyes looked down at the schematic and he reviewed the plan again for the umpteenth time. It was a solid and fairly conservative plan. A good thing when safety was being considered paramount and there wasn't an incredibly pressing need to do things expeditiously. He stared at the plan brief and wondered if he should inject something a little more daring, anything with a little more pizzazz. He shook the feeling away. They'd lost enough already. There wasn't any good reason to spend lives.
"We're coming up on the coordinates Chief" The pilot hold him. Frank simply nodded. No biological could match the precision a computer would bring to travel over interstellar distances, and all the necessary calculations had been already inputed. Instead Frank watched the count down timer go down to zero and the barely audible thrum of the engines gained volume as the ships reversed and adjusted the subspace field to bring them back in line with real space. The starfield shorted rapidly and then stopped to light pricks in space on a black background. And a whole lot of nothing else. Space was vast and his looked around anyway to see if they would by fortunate enough to see their lost ship appear right in front of them. Nope. No such luck.
Moving his eyes away from the void, the Chief Engineer hit a few buttons on the console in front of him. "All ships, check in." then turned his head around to one of the science crew sitting behind him. "Any sign of the Cayuga or threats?" The woman checked the sensors one more time. "No sir." The Chief turned back to the front. Not unexpected, but still it added complexity to the situation. Dark blue eyes looked around into space at his options.
He tapped another set of buttons on the console to access communications. "Tesla, launch to probes. Wolves, tie the probes in to your systems and begin your search. We're going to remain in position for the moment. Let us know if you find anything."
Out in space behind the Maslow, the imposing bulk of the larger Tesla stood motionless with the rest of Theurgy's small craft. Beneath the shuttle, a pair of class 1 probes gently detached and fell away from their carrier hull. When the pre-pgrammed safe distance had been reached, jets flared from rear of the exploratory sensor packed robots and they rapidly flew away from the larger shuttle at divergent courses and pulled ahead of Wolf-04 and Wolf-10 to accept their link up commands as their sensors began questing space for any clue as to what happened to the lost ship.
Her eyes tried to open, but it was hard. The incident flashed thorugh the mind's eye. The jungle passing beneath them at high speed. A sensor readout on the screen. The stink of fear and sweat despite the best efforts of the shuttle's high efficiency air recyclers. Lieutenant Eris saying they were almost at the pickup zone. The shuttle bucked as a hail of purple energy slammed into the small craft. A beam lanced against the shuttle's shield's. Eris screaming they were going down, his call to brace cut off in a loud sickening crunch of alloy, shattering glass, bodies being crushed, and a scream that sounded very much like her own.
She awoke and immediately groaned in pain that caused her to collapse back on the upended wreckage of the shuttle floor. The blue eye lids closed and squeezed for a moment as the body dealt with the pain. Painkiller! Her mind yelled, and the eyes opened once more as she breathed hard and looked around. There! A medical bag. The Andorian groaned as she leaned over and reached for the bag. She fell back once more with a groan as she took in a steadying breath. Her eyes opened again as she focused on the medical bag. She'd have to bite the proverbial bullet, and she yelped as she lunged for the bag and her hand managed to get a hold of it. It was a small measure of triumph as she dragged the bag towards her while suppressing a groan of protest.
She lay back once more and closed her eyes once more as a reward for not passing out from the pain. The pain wasn't blinding, but it still somewhat debilitating and her body throbbed. She had to wait for what seemed like far longer than what she wanted. The throbbing finally reached a manageable level and she set about opening the medical bag. It didn't take long to find the right vials and a hypospray. The familiar suction noise followed by a soft click confirmed a good seal. Her fingers moved to the head of the hypospray, but they seemed a little syrupy. Zark shook her head to clear it, or at least get the blood flowing properly before focusing again. Maybe the fingers were still slow, but they seemed to move with the right amount of accuracy as she adjusted the dosage. The cold alloy touch against her skin was welcome as she pressed the hypospray to her neck and depressed the trigger. A familiar hiss flooded her blood stream with the necessary chemical mixture and she sighed in relief as the pain lessened.
The medic took a brief second to revel in the distinct lack of pain before she began checking her own body. Ah! Fractured ribs at the least! She thought to herself as she winced and felt, more than heard the click inside her body. I can still move though. and she did as she gingerly lifted herself up and moved towards the first body she saw. Lieutenant Eris was definitely dead. Having a chunk of circuitry shoved through one's forehead would do that. Zark turned away from body in disgust. Zark went around checking the rest and it was grim findings, most of the medical team was dead, except for one, but he was unconscious. It didn't matter, there was a chance at life and she began unpacking the bag, starting with the medical tricorder. The lights of the device obediently came on, but before the medic had a chance to read the information, she snapped the tricorder shut and looked behind her. Her antennae quickly pointed in the same direction as her head, then began to wave back and forth as if a search radar had been activated and her eyes narrowed. Then she heard it, footfalls. Heavy ones and many of them. It was hard to say.
The Andorian looked around for a weapons, but they were getting to close, and soft sound of metal being pulled from a scabbard felt almost deafening as she padded to the breach in the shuttle's hull. At least they were on an angle, so the searchers would have to come in to see anything. Zark pressed her body against the hull and brought the standard issue combat knife up. She'd go for the jugular right away. The boot steps were getting louder, closer! Her heart began to race and she forced herself to breathe more quietly. Closer. Closer....Closer! They were almost on top of her.
[In the real world]
Ensign Jurek Xevin was helping to make the rounds in the ICU. She was tired, and so was everyone else. At least they'd been able to send a half dozen more patients back to standard recovery. The Cardassian sighed though at the Andorian in the bed with the human male and female standing next to her bed. She could hear them speaking, but didn't really bother to register any of what they were saying. It wasn't her business after all. The nurse looked at her PADD and compared the current medical monitors against the previous data, then sighed. She really hoped Zark would be fine and from a purely selfish standpoint, able to get up and help again soon.
There was some discussion on how Zark had ended up in the bed and how everyone was holding up which was very healthy when dealing with such a chaotic situation. The nurse frowned as she checked the monitor. Her brain and respiratory activity were showing odd readings. Not really strange, but definitely not normal for someone in Zark's state. She pressed her combadge "Doctor Leux to the ICU, Lieutenant zh’Ptrell is showing hyper activity in her frontal lobe and her cardiac...Urghhkk!!" the nurse finished as a blue banshee exploded on the bed in a wild war cry and the sickening crunching thump of fist smashing flesh and bone as the strike battered into her chest just below a fatal point, but high enough to disable just about anyone. The nurse had no time to register this as a knee appeared out of nowhere and crashed into her head and sent her careening onto the floor, just missing the bulkhead.
Medical alarms blared and several people cried out in fear as the blue woman moved with speed that shouldn't have been possible as she swung over and sent a kick flying at the male voice she heard nearby no idea whether she scored any hit and didn't care. There long stringy things attached to her. Perfect! With a feral yell, she clocked the other woman across the head, then proceeded to wrap the chords around her neck as she brutally pulled the brunette in closer and tighter while grunting like cornered wild animal.
She’d been re-tasked almost immediately upon returning from the Cayaga mission, given enough time to eat and sleep, refit and rearm, then launched again; it wasn’t unusual, given the Wolves limited numbers of pilots and ships, but Talia couldn’t help but wonder about the logic of pairing her and DixieBee together. There was nothing personal about it; Via had proven herself a perfectly capable pilot – Talia studied her fellow Wolf’s helm footage from both the Hobus scrap and the Triangle battle. Capability wasn’t the issue. Experience, however? Perhaps that was the point, she reckoned; this’ll certainly be a prime opportunity to learn a few things.
Not like it was a big deal, or anything. It’s just a day trip to Romulus. What could possibly go wrong, Shadow snorted.“Come on DB, what the hell’s taking so long,” she sighed to herself, head craning to port and behind, looking for Via’s ship. The Valravyn was right behind her on the flight-line when Shadow launched; they should have rendezvoused five minutes ago to hold station for the shuttle. Instead, Talia had been forced into a slow, lazy orbital circuit (because TC refused to let her sit still and had already shifted her assigned lane three times for no reason other than his own amusement).
“Wolf 4, Traffic Control,” a masculine voice grated inside her helm.
Speak of the devil, Talia sighed. “Wolf 4, send it Control.”
“Wolf 4, alter lane z + twenty kilometers, heading 035.8. Station keeping at outbound lane epsilon.”
“Zeta plus twenty, 035.8, holding at epsilon,” Talia repeated rapidly, managing to keep the irritation out of her tone, if only just; the adjustments were inputted manually, but she let Anahi execute the minor course change.
As the Valkyrie creeped ever so slowly off to port, Shadow’s helm exploded with noise in a wash of what might have been called music – to Via. The bass was a heavy, droning rhythm, punctuated by high percussive snares; throughout it all, someone – or something – was mumbling words so fast it sounded like gibberish. Talia screwed her eyes shut against the acoustic onslaught with a groaned string of Arabic curses usually reserved to describe something worthy of utter and complete damnation from the beginning of creation itself, then searched for the source.
Sure enough, Via’s bird soared into the void, spiraling out at nearly full impulse.
Talia heard Traffic Control screaming over the music, barely audible. Shadow joined her voice to the cacophany, trying to get Via to turn her music off – because she obviously didn’t realize she was broadcasting wide open – to no effect.
“Fuck sakes, Via,” Shadow laughed, powering up her thrusters with a shake of her head. Via was coming in hot, deaf and oblivious. It was only a matter of time until TC locked her ass down with a tractor, at best. Control was having a conniption now that both fighters were breaking maximum thrust regulations, but was easily ignored over the pounding music. Talia felt herself nodding along to the beat, even though the words were almost impossible to decipher; she banked hard, climbing up to roll over Via’s ship close enough to get her attention. Another few seconds and they were inverted, canopy to canopy; she looked up, watching Via’s hands and arms jerking about – while Beachhead waved up enthusiastically behind her.
Talia motioned to her ear then drew a hand across her throat after typing out a coded message: MUSIC OVER OPEN NET - TURN OFF, NOW!
[Meanwhile… LT Vanya | Shuttle Bay 2 | Deck 15 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] [Show/Hide]
Vanya padded across the deck barefoot, a pair of polished black heels in one hand, PADD in the other; she had no need for any other personal belongings – nothing that couldn’t be replicated en route or upon arrival later, at any rate. The assignment itself – a diplomatic mission to Romulus – had taken her by surprise; being who and what she was, there was a high probability that her presence would pose unquantifiable degrees of complications, but there were too many variables at play to cause Vanya to feel overly concerned. After all, for all intents and purposes, it was highly likely that the Tal Shiar considered her a neutralized threat; that afforded an opportunity for Vanya, should they choose to act rashly.
Those calculations continued to run in the background of her positronic network, however; there were more immediate tasks at hand.
Dr. Frost had personally briefed the android concerning her specific role for the mission; insofar as it concerned Vanya, she was to represent the scientific department with utmost curtesy, providing technical assistance to the newly minted Romulan-Reman coalition as well as aiding LT Nysarisiza zh’Eziarath in any capacity deemed appropriate. While that settled easily enough, Vanya couldn’t help but smile inwardly at the amount of ‘wiggle-room’ inherent in such vagueness; there were a great many options available in such a tasking.
A solitary figure stood before the shuttle assigned to them; Vanya’s optical and olfactory senses studied as she approached: male, Romulan, relaxed but alert posture – lightly scented with unique oils and scents of medical ointments and the barest hint of blood - handsomely lean, healthy middle-age. Whoever he was, he had recently spent a great deal of time either wounded, or tending to the same. Curious, Vanya’s lips twitched down in a frown, unable to recall interacting with him before.
Another anomalous memory gap in her short-term databanks, thanks to the virus no doubt.
She passed him without breaking stride, clad in a skirted uniform with the addition of a white lab coat that billowed slightly in her wake. The PADD shifted to under the arm holding her footwear before she keyed in the access code to open the shuttle’s ramp, then spun to face the older Romulan with a pleasant smile, the drape of her dark hair loose about her shoulders. Her body language was relaxed and open, a hand twirling in the air in his direction like a curb-side magician’s slight-of-hand tell. Vanya deliberately chose to engage him in Rihan versus Federation standard, out of respect and neutrality – introducing herself first as only Vanya, then asking what name he wished to be called in turn; Romulans were quite fond of multiple names, after all.
Except Vanya herself, of course; he’d soon discover she was quite un-Romulan, for better or worse.
“Aren't you dashing. Forgive my curiosity dear,” Vanya continued with a friendly smile in Rihan, utilizing the standard northern dialect, “I simply must know; what to do you?”
Last post by Nesota Kynnovan -
Frost is going on the salvage mission, albeit against his will. Jaya is staying aboard; I hear @Ellen Fitz's Enyd is going to cause some chaos and mayhem and Jaya wants to be there.
The bone was replicated. The knife found no grain, no direction, nothing that pushed back. She carved into it anyway.
The mourning spiral was Okashii Atama work — the kind she had learned before she'd learned to write, her grandmother's claw guiding the tool through the first curve of it while the fire outside the tent made the shadows move. Real bone remembered which way it had grown. The scrimshaw followed that memory, and the elders had called that the art's honesty: you listened for where the bone was willing to go. This bone was willing to go anywhere. It would hold whatever she cut into it without complaint, and that was the problem, and she was making marks regardless.
Her male Vulcine form sat wide across the shuttle seat clothed in the medical department uniform, her ear-length hair combed back from her face as she worked at the bone. Wrong. Not wrong in the way an injury was wrong — wrong the way borrowed clothes were wrong, technically functional, all the edges slightly off. Her third shift in Arven's lab had gone into this form, and it had landed cleaner than the feral, but the proprioception was still arguing with her. She kept reaching for things a half-centimeter from where her hand actually was.
And the other forms pressed.
Not loudly. Not urgently in any way she had language for. More like standing in a doorway while a room full of people waited behind you — each one patient, each one present, each one hers. The feral form worst of all: it had a kind of blunt insistence, pure body knowing what it was, and it had pushed at the edges of the Vulcine shift the entire time until she'd come back out the other side of it, and Arven's equipment had recorded seventeen deviations she couldn't feel from the inside.
The knife followed the outer ring of the spiral without her watching it. She knew this design by repetition; over forty years of scrimshaw had put it below the level of thought, which was the point. Her grandmother had taught her that the hands could hold grief the way the mind couldn't — steadier, quieter, without the mind's habit of turning the thing over and over looking for the angle that hurt less.
There was no angle that hurt less. The Cayuga was out there. She had not looked at the viewport as they cast off from Theurgy and she would not look outside again until they arrived.
The spiral reached its center. She ran her thumb across the cuts — clean, consistent depth throughout — and the bone said nothing back, and she started a second design in the space beside it: the Okashii Atama mark for witness. She hadn't planned it. Her hands had already begun.
Voices at the front of the shuttle. Someone's equipment cycling. The mechanical breath of life support.
She kept the knife moving and did not look at the viewport and did not think about what it would look like when the Cayuga came on screen, what was left of it, what the Savi and the Romulans and the indifferent physics of a drifting ship had made of the place where she had once known where everything was.
Ensign Barnes had decided she was a problem before she finished introducing herself. She'd clocked it in the first thirty seconds — the chin, the look at her pip, the expression that settled into something technically neutral.
She'd been patient. She'd spent three years on Cardassia being patient with people who had active ideological reasons to want her gone, which was a considerably higher bar than one ensign with a database and an attitude he hadn't earned.
She explained the access request. He asked for her clearance codes. She provided them. He looked at them, nodded, and began constructing his objection.
"I'm afraid without authorization from a senior diplomatic officer currently posted to this starbase—"
"I am a senior diplomatic officer."
"—currently posted to this starbase," Barnes said, finding his footing and planting on it, "I'm not able to grant access to classified Federation diplomatic archives to crew from a vessel that until very recently was operating under a treason designation."
Enyd looked at him. Her hands were flat on the edge of his desk. She kept them there, still, because if she let them move, she was going to grab his uniform and explain at close range what the Theurgy''s crew had been doing while the Federation called them traitors. She was going to describe Zark's biobed. She was going to describe what a thalaron trigger looked like from ten meters with no cover and one Andorian standing between her and it, and ask Barnes which part of that he'd like to reclassify.
She didn't. She picked up her PADD. Straightened her uniform.
"When is the senior diplomatic attaché back?"
"Thursday, Lieutenant."
Three days.
"Thank you, Ensign." Warm. Level. Emptied of everything she was actually thinking. "I'll be in touch."
She walked out. She made it twelve steps before she thought, with real specificity, about going back in and upending his desk. She let herself have that for a few seconds, then kept walking.
He hadn't invented the propaganda. He'd absorbed it. She understood that. It didn't make her hands unclench.
Turbolift. She stared at the wall and made the list her grandmother had taught her to make when the thing she actually wanted wasn't available: what can you do right now, with what you have. The attaché's office. A comm to Cross. Cross up the chain to whoever sat above Barnes. She'd work it.
But not yet. Not before ten minutes of something that didn't smell like recycled air and institutional carpet. The arboretum was two decks down.
Last post by Ellen Fitz -
[ Specialist Hirek tr'Aimne | Shuttlebay 2 | Deck 15 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @rae@RyeTanker@Pierce
He had arrived first. His bag sat against the shuttle's landing strut. There was so much of the ship under repair, or soon to be under repair, that it frankly amazed him that there was even a bay stable enough for them to launch from.
Nysari had been direct with him. She had listed the reasons he should come. He had listened to each one, sorted them into accurate and not-quite-accurate, and agreed because the accurate ones were enough without the others. The Senator's response was owed in person. His family's last message had been too careful — his cousin Uhria using the old Uuluma construction that their grandmother had preferred, the house is well, which in her dialect meant we are watched, ask nothing directly. He had read it four times. Then he had stopped reading it and started packing.
What he had not told Nysari: he was not certain he was coming back.
Tal'aura was dead. Donatra was dead. The D'ravsai Coalition was hours old and already requiring two peoples who had spent centuries in structured antagonism to govern each other. He could not decide if that was optimism or carelessness, and the fact that he could not decide bothered him less than the fact that he was on a Federation ship while it was happening.
The islands would not stay the islands. Mainland politics moved the way tides moved. Not suddenly. Just eventually, and then there was no going back to what the shallows had been. Not that his islands had ever experienced true peace from mainland politics and the civil war, but at least he'd known what to expect from the previous government. This one had more unknown.
Then there was the Infested.
He had not meant to find them interesting. The mechanism was the thing — the integration, the use of an existing neurological architecture as a substrate for something that was not its original occupant. Biologically, it was among the more elegant forms of horror he had encountered, and he had a longer list than most. Whether the host's own systems could be turned against the parasite. Whether there were signatures that preceded the observable behavioral changes. Whether the detection problem was tractable at all, or whether the only reliable method remained autopsy.
His mind had kept returning to it the way it returned to problems that had no current solution. It was a twisted kind of pleasure that he took in these types of problems, challenges to occupy the whole of his being.
If he stayed on Romulus, he was present for the thing he had worked toward his entire adult life, in the specific place where it would be decided.
If he stayed on the Theurgy, he was at the only active investigation into a category of threat that operated identically to the Tal'Shiar and could make the D'ravsai Coalition irrelevant before it finished its first session.
He had not resolved this, which he wanted to pursue. He was going to Romulus to help in that decision.
The shuttlebay held its quiet. Recycled air, the faint charge-smell of systems idling, deck plates that would have been cold through different shoes. Footsteps at the far end of the bay. He did not turn. He straightened slightly, which was the only acknowledgment the situation required.
