Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
A pencil sketch of my Star Trek character, Melek Valerian. Often mistaken as Vulcan, he is actually mixed race (Risan and Romulan*) He wears glass, which must be an affectation, honestly. I'm pretty sure glasses are a thing of the ancient past.

Mostly, I've talked about my other other Star Trek Adventures game here, but I really want to share a couple of things from Saturday night's game that I found deeply wonderful. First of all, bcholmes is a fantastic GM. We were in a bit of diplomatic pickle and had been challenged to a duel by a Talarian envoy. I was ready to go down swinging, but we ended up avoiding bloodshed as our hosts (a matriarchal set of Talarian political prisoners) suggested we have a Spelling Bee. My character is among other things a linguist, so he took up the challenge and, thankfully, won it handily.

However, the whole idea of a Spelling Bee sparked a fascinating discussion about the Universal Translator.

Like how would a Spelling Bee even work? For instance, it's generally assumed that the translator works auditorily. Like, each of us hears our native language. So, for instance, if the Original Trek crew had a spelling bee and crew members were asked to spell "dog," what would they answer? Presumably, Sulu would say, "I-N-U" as "inu" is Japanese for dog, and Uhura would spell "M-B-W-A" as "mbwa" is dog is Swahili... and both of these people would pass to the next round, right? But how would you know if they got it right? The translator would translate the letters as is, presuming there is a shared lettering system.  So, how do you do this when there's a native Risan-speaker defending against Talarians? We ending up using handwavium and letting the dice decide how it all went, but I was fully ready to roleplay it, as I'd pulled up Google translate and was going to pick a random language to respond in.  

The other fun thing is that we discovered that our entire diplomatic mission was a cover for an invasion force. So, we were stuck in a very complicated situation, as if I chose (despite being the Science Officer on a DS11, I was the ranking officer) to open fire in order to stop shuttle craft from landing on the planet, this would obviously be an interstellar incident that was... well, above my paygrade to say the least. Also, we are the Federation, despite feeling an intense desire to defend the defenseless, in this case, murder isn't really supposed to ever be the answer. Plus, we were on a research mission and so it's not like we had a full warship at our command at any rate. Anyway, we had some fun trying to figure out non-violent solutions to stopping an invasion force. I tend to like to misuse the transporter system, so my first suggestion was beaming out the entire shuttlecraft crew and depositing them directly in our brig. They were on to me by the second launch so we caught them in our tractor beam. But, then we quickly ran out of options, and had to do our best on the ground to keep the political prisoners safe.  

At one point I was able to point out to the Talarians that they might want to watch themselves as Science Officers are not require to take the Kobayashi Maru.. which means not only do I have no sense of the consequences of my actions, I also have no reason to believe I CAN'T win and unwinnable situation. And that, dear Talarians, is very dangerous to you.

:-)

Anyway, it was great fun. I can't believe that anyone anywhere is letting me be the ranking officer of any away team, but here we are!

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* So, I have this huge backstory, of course, of how this combination could even happen. 

I've become kind of fascinated by the fact that there is canon that not only does a "pleasure planet" exist in the Star Trek universe, but that its native population is apparently governed by a hedony--a hedonistic governing system of some sort. So, the science fiction writer in me went into overdrive and decided I needed to know how this could actually Work, and filled-in some canon gaps, including deciding that the sex workers of Risa were, in fact, part of the governing body. So, I invented what I call the Seven Flowers of Risa-- Rose, Bindweed, Camila, Lily, Lotus, Thistle and Valerian (<--the universal translator's best guess at native flower analogs, of course.) You'll see my character's last name there. His mother is what is known as the Flower of Valerian and (I won't get into it all here, but each house has its own rules for how it elects its leader, it's flower--some houses also have petals, which are like vice-presidents). But, the house of Valerian choses its flower by a planet-wide beauty contest--but then agrees to give this person that position for life. So, his mother is considered the most beautiful person on all of Risa. 

I wrote all this up into a document as though it was a report to Starfleet and here's what I have as a notation about Melek: "Due to the profound availably of advanced contraception, it is unlikely that Lt. Com Valerian’s birth was accidental. Speculation provided by Starfleet sources in the Lotus House [see below] is that it is a House of Valerian tradition to bear mixed-race children whose parentage implies the lengths to which people will travel to be serviced by the Valerian Flower. It has been confirmed by Lt. Com. Valerian himself, as well as through genetic testing, that his paternal heritage is Romulan. Though Starfleet Intelligence believes they have identified several potential candidates as his father among spies and commanders of the Star Empire, Lt Com Valerian is not considered a security risk as the majority of Risans, including those in the Valerian House, are matrilineal and place little to no value on fathers or fatherhood."

This is entirely why I needed to not play a lot of RPGs when I was starting writing. I will spend literal hours on backstories and worldbuilding that no one but me cares about. :-)