Onboarding Page

This page aims to aid new and old writers to situate themselves with their characters aboard the Theurgy, giving background and information about things that your character ought to be aware of. To begin with, however, you need to pick a way through which your character is introduced in Star Trek: Theurgy, so do that first, before browsing through the information that grants situational awareness. If you feel like you are missing something on this page, please don't hesitate to PM the GM on the forum with your request. Happy reading!

Story Entry-Points

Right now, as of Interregnum 01-02 in Season 2, your character could enter the story these different ways:

Option 01: Thawed from stasis on the USS Theurgy

If your created character is originally assigned to the titular USS Theurgy, it is recommended that your character has been in stasis since before Episode 01, and only now could be resuscitated after getting the medical attention he/she needed. Your character would then have been injured during the flight from Earth and Starfleet and put into a stasis pod to preserve his/her life. Whatever position your character held before their injury, that position might not be available any more, which would lead to them serving in an vacant position instead. Many possibilities with this option.

Option 02: From Qo'noS

Another method of joining the story, is that your character is somehow affiliated with the Director of Covert Operations in Starfleet Intelligence, namely Rear Admiral Joseph Nerva Anderson. Perhaps your character used to be a Starfleet Intelligence operative? Perhaps Anderson was a friend of you character's mother or father? In any case, Anderson has personally contacted and convinced your character to join the Theurgy crew, having great faith in you because of this previous affiliation that you conjure in your character background story. Your character was contacted by Anderson via a heavily encrypted subspace transmission from Earth on March 15th, 2381, after he'd verified that the crew of the Theurgy weren't the traitors the Infested in Starfleet Command claimed them to be.

Your character will board the Theurgy from Qo'noS, either having been there when the Theurgy arrived on the 18^th of April in 2381, or coming there on a shuttle from some other point of origin. Please also note that regardless the position applied for during character creation, your character would not be assigned to such a position prior to arrival. This needs to be handled In-Character.

Option 03: Transferring from the USS Oneida

Admiral Anderson has also been able to convince the Captain of the USS Oneida that the Theurgy crew is telling the truth about Starfleet Command, in them being overtaken by a parasitic infestation. Captain Jesse Jackson looked long and hard at the collected evidence, convened his Senior Staff on the Oneida, and they decided to side with the Theurgy in its mission. With that decision, they cut off communications and subspace links with Starfleet after sending a false distress call - thus simulating that the Oneida was destroyed somewhere in the Beta Quadrant. The crew aboard the Oneida generally trusts their Senior Staff's judgement with the mission undertaken, but some might not like the prospects of the mission. Either way, the Oneida undertakes its new mission as a renegade ship cut off from the rest of Starfleet, and the next day, they use the Intel Anderson gives them to find Captain Ives aboard the shuttle Sabine.

Given the needs of the Theurgy to replenish its ranks after all the battles she's been through, Captain Jackson would have asked his own crew if there were any volunteers who would consider transferring to the Theurgy once they made a rendezvous. Perhaps your character have an affiliation with someone already on the Theurgy, or they want to leave something behind on the Oneida? Perhaps they feel like they would have a greater chance to make a difference if serving on a larger ship? Whatever might motivate your character to leave the Oneida should be mentioned in the character's background story.

Again, please note that regardless the wanted position applied for during character creation, your character would not be assigned to such a position prior to transfer. This needs to be handled In-Character. Lastly, here is some recommended reading:

This is the first thread in which the Oneida appears in the story (no need to read the whole thing, just from this post and onwards): Chapter 06 Battle Log: Qo'noS Bound and Down.
For further context, here is also a speech Captain Jackson held on the Oneida after the encounter with the Sabine: CH06: S | Of Late I Think of Qo'noS.
Lastly, there are two battle threads, in successive order, here: CH07: S | New Renegade & CH07: S | Hidden Raptor.
If you want to get to know the Senior Staff of the Oneida and reference them in your character application, here is the NPC page where they are listed.

Your First Steps Aboard the Theurgy

So your character takes his or her first steps off the transporter pad on the story's titular ship, through the airlock, or woken up in post-surgery in sickbay. Here are some observations that could be made over the coming few hours or days serving aboard the USS Theurgy.

Current Mission Status

Unless the situation has been made clear by reading the Story Archive - which is recommended since the contents there is what your character would be able to read in reports about the mission so far - the situation is as follows. In late November of 2381, the Theurgy crew learned that the people in Starfleet Command and large parts of the admiralty has been compromised. Being under the influence of parasites that makes the hosts loyal to a cosmic entity known only as the Nameless Darkness, Starfleet Command caught on to how they were being investigated by the Theurgy crew.

Prior to the Theurgy being able to present any findings to the Federation, Starfleet Command gave the order to destroy the Theurgy - citing that the A.I. of the ship had gained sentience and that the crew was holographic replicas of the real officers. With the haste under which these orders were issued, however, the facts presented were disparate in the way that some iterations claimed that it was Captain Ives whom had defected to the Romulans during the peace talks at Romulus, and that s/he had used the A.I. kill the members of the crew that weren't loyal to hir. The confusion surrounding this was brief, the official statement being that it didn't matter either way. Task Force Archeron was formed to pursue the Theurgy and destroy it at all cost, since the cutting edge technology of the Theurgy couldn't be handed over to the Romulans. Moreover, all subspace communication with the Theurgy was prohibited at the penalty of treason since the A.I. of the ship could spread to more starships through a subspace comms link, and the reach of the artificial entity had to be contained so that it wouldn't spread through the Federation Network. Starfleet raised filters for incoming and outgoing network traffic based on new security policies regarding the threat of the Theurgy, and the ship was effectively cut off from all databases.

Since November of 2380, the Theurgy has been on the run from Starfleet, and as of Interregnum 01-02 of Season 2, six months have passed since that fateful day. All the while, the Federation News Network has peddled Starfleet Command's doctored facts about the actions of the Theurgy crew, shifting the public opinion entirely to their advantage. The thorough smear-campaign has been a constant presence in media channels, and whatever the crew has done in order to protect and spread the truth about Starfleet Command has been suppressed or twisted into a narrative fitting the Infested - which is the name given to parasitically infested. The motives of the Infested are somewhat shrouded, but whenever contact is made with them, they claim that intelligent life is a mistake. A spreading wound that needs to be treated. At the same time, they speak of how the current existence is to be 'consumed by the dark'. For more information about the Infested, click this link.

The Theurgy is currently orbiting Qo'noS, after having aided High Chancellor Martok to subdue House Mo'Kai - the leader of which failing to usurp the position as Chancellor. Thus, the Theurgy crew has found an ally in the Klingon Empire, but it might be too late to prevent an intergalactic war. Praetor Tal'Aura of the Romulan Star Empire has detonated a thalaron bomb in Paris, Earth, almost killing the Federation President and the entirety of the Federation Council, not to mention millions of innocent citizens. In doing so, she has declared war against the Federation, citing that Starfleet has armed her political opponent in the Romulan Civil War. Starfleet Command, in turn, had laid that blame at the feet of the Theurgy, saying they are responsible for colluding with Romulans. With the Praetor being one of the Infested, just like Starfleet Command, the two are working together to fan the flames of war. The Praetor has ignored the ban on thalaron weaponry and ordered her fleets to destroy Empress Donatra, her opponent in the civil war, who is currently fleeing with her fleet towards the Klingon border. Hopefully, Chancellor Martok and the Theurgy can find an ally in her.

Once the repairs of the Theurgy are finished, the mission to stop a new intergalactic war and expose the Infested will begin anew.

As opposed to what the Federation News Network has been saying...

At every turn of the story, the Infested have twisted the narrative around the unfolding events - painting the Theurgy as the villain. Here are just a few examples of the lies your character might have been told in Starfleet briefings or on the news, and what really happened.

"The Theurgy´s murder rampage through the Alpha Quadrant!"

Lie: When caught spying for the Romulans at Starfleet Headquarters, the Theurgy showed no mercy towards the noble crews that sought to stop them. With no compunction, the cold and calculating A.I. decimated all ships, killing thousands of loyal Starfleet officers, be it at the orders of Captain Ives or on its own accord. Either way, he Theurgy showed no quarter, and here are bodies to prove that the Theurgy must be destroyed at all costs. Whatever real crewmembers that still serve aboard the renegade ship are traitors, and all friends or kin of the original crew can rest assured that whomever they knew aboard the Theurgy has either been replaced by a hologram or been brainwashed by Jien Ives.
Truth: At every turn, the Theurgy tried in vain to prevent the loss of lives aboard the starships that attacked it, be it through hails or merely disabling the pursuing vessels. Your character can review the tactical logs amassed over the past six months and make their own judgement of this. The Theurgy crew has been forced to defend themselves in order to not let the truth about Starfleet Command get lost, leaving the Infested unopposed. Something which, by accident or since the threat posed by the Infested must be the mission priority, has led to loss of innocent lives, yet not even remotely at the numbers which Starfleet Command and the FNN has presented.

"The Theurgy attacked Starbase 84!"

Lie: Unprovoked, the Theurgy fired upon Starbase 84 and sent murderous boarding parties inside it, with the sole ambition to use the starbase's Romulan defence signalling system, sending a simulcast to the whole Federation in which Captain Ives challenged the doctrine of the Prime Directive, calling it an unjust discrimination towards civilisations that had yet to reach warp capability. While the Prime Directive is a necessity, it might seem unfair to some, but no such concerns should warrant treason! Even worse, once the simulcast was sent, the Theurgy deployed a shuttle to blast its way inside the recreational dome of the starbase, for the sole purpose of igniting its warp core and killing as many as possible. After that, faced with Starfleets finest in the form of Task Force Archeron - led by the heroic Admiral Sankolov - the Theurgy was forced to flee into the Azure Nebula. We shall always remember the brave officers aboard the Orcus and the Chester, who paid with their lives to defend the innocent.

Truth: The approach towards the starbase was meant to be undetected, entering transporter range in grey mode in order to deploy boarding parties armed with TR-120 rifles, which contained tranquiliser darts just to avoid phaser fire being detected on internal sensors. The starbase went to Red Alert, however, and the Theurgy had been detected. Starbase 84 fired first, after which the Theurgy fired to disable the starbase's tactical sensor suite and its phaser emitters. The boarding parties were compromised, so they resorted to defending themselves with their back-up phasers set to stun. The simulcast that was sent was supposed to contain a different recording entirely, presenting the evidence about Starfleet Command. Instead, the message had been switched out before the mission, containing a falsified recording where Ives challenged the Federation instead, cementing the image that the Theurgy had defected to the Romulans. The message has been altered by a former Trill host of the Rez symbiont - Jona Rez - in the interest to keep the truth from provoking public unrest and the Federation turning on itself. The shuttle that breached Starbase 84's recreational dome belonged to the USS Resolve, and it was piloted by its Captain, whom in anger over the fate of his ship sought to kill Captain Ian Hawthorne - one of the Infested. When his shuttle was fired upon, it was loosing altitude, and in order to conserve the blast from the failing warp core, he crashed it inside the command tower inside the dome - sparing innocent lives from the detonation as best as he might. Both the Orcus and the Chester were subject to defensive efforts to protect the truth. It is also worth mentioning that the Theurgy fled into the Azure Nebula instead of crossing the Romulan Neutral Zone, which had been a far better alternative if they were Romulan defectors.

"Just to escape anew, the Theurgy destroyed the Azure Nebula!"

Lie: When cornered inside the Azure Nebula, fleeing from Task Force Archeron, the Theurgy must have developed a new kind of weapon with the aid of it's A.I. It was a weapon of such yield that it not only ignited the sirillium clouds dispersed through the nebula, but the weapon tore all of subspace asunder in the blast. The Azure Nebula ignited in an explosion even brighter than a supernova, with the light due to be visible across the entire galaxy for decades to come. Since subspace was ruptured, warp travel has become impossible in the vicinity of the Azure Nebula, stranding millions of people and five inhabited planets. The farthest the shockwave reached was the Nimbus System. With subspace communication non-viable, it prevents any distress calls from reaching anyone outside the blast radius. It may take decades, centuries, for some affected colonies to leave their ruins behind, if they even survived. There is no way to know. Fortunately enough, what remained of Task Force Archeron managed to outrun the shockwave, and Admiral Sankolov managed to apprehend Captain Ives's former First Officer - Anya Ziegler - who was shipped off to a penal colony awaiting trial together with her closest companions. Claiming anything in order to lessen the sentence, the criminals claim to have been fighting Borg cubes - of all things - but Task Force Archeron detected no Borg activity inside the nebula.

Truth: Prior to the Theurgy's arrival, three Borg cubes had discovered a subspace aperture within Borg space that led to the Azure Nebula. The USS Endeavour was destroyed, its distress call reaching Captain Ian Hawthorne personally before the Battle of Starbase 84. The Infested suppressed the fate of the Endeavour, not telling anyone about the distress call. The USS Cayuga, under Anya Zeigler's command, sustained heavy damage from one Cube and fled deeper into the Azure Nebula - the radiation preventing any further communication. Only the Theurgy managed to heed the Cayuga’s distress call. Faced with the prospect of an all-out Borg invasion, the Theurgy set the course towards the heart of the Azure Nebula and the aperture that led to Borg space. To seal the aperture, the Theurgy was forced to use what the Borg termed “Particle 010”, but what the Federation knew as the “Omega Molecule”. The Omega detonation instantly destroyed the cluster of subspace tunnels, including the one which the Theurgy used to escape the nebula. Hundreds of Borg cubes that were already flying through were destroyed as the aperture leading to Borg space collapsed. All remaining Klingon ships could escape in time and the Cayuga made it as well, successfully outrunning the blast and warning the remains of Task Force Archeron in time. Despite the cost, the victory saved hundreds of billions of lives throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants and permanently closed off the Borg from entering Federation space through such means again. Anya Ziegler and her loyal crew were apprehended nonetheless, but has since managed to escape from the prison transport. For more info, see Battle of the Apertures.

"It is the Theurgy´s fault that the Romulans bombed Paris!"

Lie: For months, the Theurgy has been supplying classified information about coordinates to Empress Donatra, the Praetor's rival in the Romulan Civil War. Specifically, coordinates to Starfleet depots spread along the RNZ, which has armed Donatra's fleets with the Federation's most high-end weaponry. By doing so, regardless of reassurances from Starfleet Command that the Theurgy is a rogue ship acting on its own, it aggravated the Praetor to the point where she bombed Paris, declaring war against the Federation in the belief that Starfleet had picked Donatra's side in the conflict.

Truth: It was Captain Ian Hawthorne, the Commanding Officer of Starbase 84 and one of the Infested, who sold the coordinates to one of Donatra's rogue Captains, in the interest of framing the Theurgy and creating the excuse for the Infested Praetor to attack the Federation. The Infested followed through with this plot after the Borg Invasion was halted, and they had to resort to other plans. Captain Hawthorne's dealings with the Romulans were exposed by the crew of the USS Resolve just prior to the Battle of Starbase 84, and one of the depots that were victim to this development was the Black Opal.

Where are my quarters?

The Quartermaster's office is on Deck 10, Vector 01. Chief Petty Officer Abraham Savali is the Chief Quartermaster who served aboard the Theurgy in 2381. He was the quartermaster in charge of Vector 01, the "Helmet" and there were presumably two other quartermasters serving aboard the Theurgy, one for each stardrive vector, in the event of extended MVAM missions. Otherwise, these officers would be handling the shifts where Savali wasn't on duty. Among other things, the duty of the Quartermaster is to assign quarters to new officers, or issue new accommodations to officers that are promoted or demoted. You can either write a scene in which your character is assigned quarters - be it at your character's prompt or someone contacting the Quartermaster on your character's behalf - or you let all of this tedious work happen "off screen". Optionally, you can add a note where your character's quarters are at in a Special Notes section on your character page, unless you can keep track of it yourself.

When picking a deck for your character's quarters, take a look at the Deck layout of the Theurgy and what makes most sense for their duties. As for what kind of quarters your character is entitled to, it is determined by rank. Please see the below images (and don't mind the Easter Eggs hidden in them!).

Captain's Quarters & VIP Quarters
Departmental Head Quarters
Senior Officers' Quarters
Junior Officers' Quarters
Shared NCO Quarters
Shared Enlisted Quarters

If you write a civilian, your character is normally allotted the Junior Officer Quarters.

Departmental Situation

The links below will take you to your character's departmental wiki page, which is subject to updates on a running basis. There, you can find info directly relating to your character's department. As for which characters are running each Department, you can find them listed on the Crew Manifest. In order to see which writer the Department Head belongs to, click the [Show] button next to the character entry.

It is encouraged that you reach out to that writer and set up character introductions into the Department if so needed, but it is not mandatory if you have other plans for how you plan on introducing your character into the story. It is recommended that you PM the Department Head writer on the forum since not all writers are active on our Discord server. Don't be concerned about doing so either, since they just happen to write a superior officer In-Character. Out-of-Character, they are the same as you, without any elevated status. This is a writing site, and not a shoe-horned excuse of a rank system that extends into RL, so just relax and write them a line to see if they are available for a thread.

Department Pages:

Disparate Crew Origins

Quantum Slipstream Drive & the Savi

FAQ Section

Here are some common questions that you have yet to ask, but may have been on your mind. If not, they might come up at some point, so here are the answers:

"What are the Infested, really?"

"Does the parasites have anything to do with the bluegills in the novel-verse, seen in TNG: Conspiracy?"

"What is the deal with Doctor Nicander in the brig? Are there two of them now?"

"What happens if you call Thea a 'warship'?"

"Before Doctor Nicander, there was another Infested in the Brig named Sonja Acreth. What happened to her?"

"Wait, the Niga planet was destroyed, so how come strains of the Niga virus are still out there?"

"Okay, the Savi abducted some of the crew and played doctor on them in a bad way, so why are we allies with them now? And what the hell do they get out of helping the Theurgy when they can give us a bloody Quantum Slipstream Drive?"

"So, Savi. Tall aliens. Kay, but Antecedents and Scions? The Scion High Council? The Scion Directive? The Savi Rebels? WTF?"

"What? Was Thea turned into a human woman by something called the Ishtar entity? Is that why her A.I. is unique? But what is the Synthesis Code then?"