Star Trek Adventures: Adapting Dayton Ward's Available Light into an Original Scenario!

Often, when I read a Star Trek novel I think to myself, "This would make a good Star Trek Adventures scenario." Novels that have made me think this include John Vornholt's The Next Generation: Masks (1989), Jeffrey Lang's Deep Space Nine: Force and Motion (2016), John Jackson Miller's Prey: Hell's Heart (2016), and especially many of the Next Generation works of Dayton Ward: Armageddon's Arrow (2015), Hearts and Minds (2017), and Available Light (2019). (It's probably not a coincidence that Dayton himself has written a lot for STA.)

That last one I thought would not just make a good STA adventure in general, but would make a good fit for my campaign. The premise of the novel is that the Enterprise finds a derelict ship in deep space. It seems abandoned, but the crew eventually discovers that it's carrying 60,000 refugees from an alien planet, they're just suspended in the ship's transporter buffer—where they can actually live until the ship arrives at its destination. Things are complicated, though, when a group of scavengers turn up.

This would work well for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to make the scavengers into Ferengi instead of an original race. One of my player characters is a Ferengi woman, and she has a brother who works as a successful businessman. If her brother was among the scavengers, it could lead to some good character conflict for her. (Additionally, one of my players requested more familiar races from the show.) Second, way back in our fourth episode, the players acquired an alien superintelligence living in their computer system, the "Engineer" named "Mercury." Unlike most of their people, Mercury wanted to explore the universe; they had briefly done so in an android body (which the players found way back in episodes 1 and 2). However, Mercury had honestly not done a lot since coming aboard, aside when the players briefly consulted them in episode 6. I had the idea that Mercury might complicate things here by uploading themself into the derelict's transporter buffer, which would then let them materialize themself as a living being.

I also did a B-plot, as I've been doing more of this season. The players have been dealing a lot with the Haradin and the ways their nativist movement is disrupting the entire Ekumene sector. I wanted them to help shape Starfleet's response to this, so my subplot for this episode was a conference on the player ship's home base of Deep Space 10, where Rukot and Mooria would be summoned to participate.

Also, at the beginning of the summer, one of my players, Cari, had been torn whether to continue playing her regular character of Jor, the Diversitas's security officer, or a new one-off character she'd played in our ninth episode, Rina K'var, the blue Orion pickpocket, who'd ended up exiled by her aunt. I suggested she could play Rina once, an idea she went for, because I had a good idea how to fit the character into the B-plot of this episode.  

“Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 55020.9. Consul Vrossaan has invited Mooria and me to a conference on Deep Space 10 to discuss growing Haradin tensions in the Ekumene sector. Professor Orven Jadrel’s understanding of Haradin history, trade, and the meanings of Harad will be essential. The Haradin are not simply facing piracy. They are facing a crisis of identity....”

This is who I had per session:

• Ryan as Rukot, captain (sessions 1-3)
• Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer (1, 3)
• Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (2-3)
• Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot (1, 3)
• Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst (1-3)
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer (1-3)

...with special guest stars: 

• Cari as Rina K'var, freelance Orion (1, 3) 
• Hayley as Charley Lee, DS10 science officer (2)

I'll write this one up act by act. I did change the episode title to "No One in Here" to fit with my usual pretensions, but maintained Dayton's original title as the title of Act I. To keep with his usual theme of using Rush song titles, I used two other track titles from the same album as "Available Light" as the titles of Acts II and III. 

Act I: Available Light

Mercury appears to Gurg
(image generated by ChatGPT)

It's been an ongoing subplot in our campaign that Gurg, the Diversitas's chief medical officer, has been trying to make contact with Mercury; it was the whole reason he snuck aboard the Diversitas and finagled an assignment there. The episode began with Mercury presenting a genetic problem to Gurg; once Gurg solved it, Mercury appeared on his screen and asked what he wanted. Gurg's big technological goal is to connect people's brains to each other for the sharing of information (a collective, he is always quick to point out, not the Collective); when Gurg told Mercury this, Mercury gave Gurg a set of nearby coordinates.

It took a bit of persuasion for Gurg to convince T'Cant, who was acting captain with Rukot away at the conference, to go there, but he eventually did. There the players discovered the derelict. The three scenes were basically 1) examining the derelict from the outside, 2) beaming over and exploring it, and 3) discovering the Ferengi were aboard. (Kenyon, who plays Nevan the chief engineer, was away for this session, so we just said they left him in command when the players beamed over.) I had to come up with a bunch of Tasks for the players, of course, but I very much benefited from being able to take a bunch of description and such right out of Dayton's novel!

Nejamri derelict
(adapted from the Available Light cover by Doug Drexler)

My players were convinced this was an Alien-esque scenario, so they proceeded very cautiously. I had a bit where I played some Ferengi laughs they heard from the other side of a door, but they were convinced it was something creepy and malevolent! I had planned on having scene 3 be about them dealing with the Ferengi, but things went slightly longer than expected, so I just ended the act with the Ferengi turning up and one of them hugging Frector and exclaiming "sister!"

In Available Light, a fight breaks out between the scavengers and the Enterprise crew, and a mysterious emitter seemingly evaporates the character of T'Ryssa Chen; if there had been a fight, I would have done something like this, but this didn't happen, so I had an emitter evaporate T'Cant seemingly at random—because Debi would be out of town next week! 

In the B-plot, my goal for this act was mostly to establish the NPCs and the parameters. There were a lot, since I wanted a bunch of different possibilities represented for the conference, but most of them were returning. These were:

• Captain Akul, Klingon (episodes 3, 5, 8)
• Professor Orven Jadrel, Haradin academic (episodes 7, 8)
• Lt. Commander Mazio Sanna, Starfleet Intelligence (episodes 5, 8, 10)
• Subcommander Taleria, Romulan (episode 10) 
• Consul Vrossaan, Federation diplomat (episodes 5, 6, 8, 10) 

conference attendees

Plus there were three new NPCs: Della Robbia Roman, the admiral running the conference, (my players were delighted by my southern accent); Commander Derzir Ban, a Trill logistics expert (I wanted a joined Trill who could be snobby about Mooria's failed Initiate status); and Ashrevi, a Return to Harad agitator protesting the conference. And also Gregin Shrek, DS10's bartender, would put in an appearance (he previously appeared in episode 5). Each NPC would have a different take on what Admiral Roman should do about the Haradin: a military solution, a diplomatic solution, an Intelligence solution, and so on.

My other goal was to get Rina K'var involved. Since being kicked out of her aunt's pirate guild, she'd been playing Orion tambourine in Gregin's bar; he asked her to sneak into the conference and get him some information. With some judicious use of Threat, I got the players to intersect, and Rina even overheard some of Taleria's subordinates plotting. The act ended with Professor Jadrel giving a keynote at the conference... and then a bomb going off, injuring Jadrel, Mooria, and Rina. (Mooria's and Rina's players would be out of town the next week, so this worked well with my preexisting idea for a bombing subplot.)

Act II: Hand over Fist

Assistant DaiMon Tozal
(Tog from TNG: "Ménage à Troi")

In the A-plot, I had three basic scenes planned out. The first was the negotiating between the Starfleet crew and the Ferengi; Frector excels at this kind of thing, of course... but I put the whole Federation crew at a Disadvantage in Social Conflict with Ferengi because they were hanging out with a female. So it was difficulty 6... but she still did negotiate to allow continued access to the derelict. Her brother was Assistant DaiMon Tozal, working for DaiMon Plen of the FCA marauder Trickledown Economics.

In the second scene, the players investigated the derelict with some technical Tasks, alternating with social Tasks to deal with the Ferengi—they got up to shenanigans that the crew would have to deal with to proceed. The players were able to pretty quickly put together the clues to figure out that the Nejamri was carrying 60,000 people in transporter buffers, but they were suitably impressed at the concept.

In the third scene, I had an Extended Task planned. I didn't know exactly what it would be, just that it would be Magnitude 5, Work 30, Resistance 1, Intervals 12. I was going to play it by ear based on what was happening: they wanted to open up a communication channel to T'Cant, so I had this cause the derelict computer to recognize she didn't belong and attempt to purge her. Nevan and Gurg took care of this, while I occasionally spent Threat to have the Ferengi do stuff Frector would have to deal with.

At the end of the act, Mercury used their connection to upload themself into the derelict computer, which also shut off the power. Commercial break! 

Lt. Commander Charley Lee
(image by ChatGPT)

Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Admiral Roman tasked Captain Rukot with investigating the bombing. I had known we'd be down to just four players this week, and suggested to my wife that she could play: she was in my old campaign, but now cares for the kids while I play usually. This would mean bringing the kids and them having a late night, but we thought we could make it work... beside, Kid One was interested in playing! I suggested to my wife she make up a character who could be stationed on Deep Space 10 and help Rukot investigate.

She decided to build a science officer with a Focus in chemistry, a human with a cybernetic hand that gave them an enhanced sense of touch. Kid One designed the visual appearance using an online Star Trek token generator, and Kid Two came up with the name: Charley Lee. A family undertaking!

When it came time to plan the mystery, I thought the only two real possible culprits were either the Romulans or the Haradin agitators. But how to make this not obvious... yet not so complicated the players would struggle to solve it? The idea I came up with was that Ashrevi had planted the bomb, but she had been given it by Romulans posing as Haradin. So the players would find some clues incriminating the Haradin, and some incriminating the Romulans, and some absolving each group: footage of Ashrevi carrying in a package she didn't carry out... but strong evidence she couldn't have brought an explosive on the station. They did a good job making their way through the clues and figuring it out.

I made the third scene an Extended Task as well, a chase where Ashrevi ran away and they had to catch her. Something interesting I did was to play both scenes at the same time, going back and forth. As Kenyon pointed out, this mean the players had to be thoughtful about using Momentum, because they needed to save some for the other group! 

Act III: Presto

DaiMon Plen
(Lurin from TNG: "Rascals")

Debi was back, so we began our third session by showing what T'Cant was up to in the Nejamri "Heaven" (it's called "Haven" in the novel, but c'mon, let's go big). This let her get some key exposition. 

Scene two then set the stage for the finale: The DaiMon of the Ferengi ship ordered Frector's brother to disconnect the Starfleet connection to the computer core of the derelict, so Frector had to stand up for herself. Austin killed it, rolling something like 11 successes, some of which he spent to establish an Advantage countering the Disadvantage I'd set up. They also made contact with Mercury and communicated with T'Cant inside the derelict computer.

I wanted the final scene to be all about transferring power to the Nejamri derelict, but I didn't want to do yet another Extended Task. So I adapted the Extended Task mechanic:

• Every round, the players could attempt a Daring + Engineering Task to transfer power to the derelict.
• On a success, they could roll Challenge Dice like an Extended Task, and the power flow would increase by that amount, on a scale of 0 to 20.
• The difficulty would start at 5, but every time they succeeded it would go down by one.
• But also every round, I would roll Challenge Dice, and the power flow would go down this amount, representing the Ferengi doing things to interfere. 
• I could spend Threat to do things like increase the difficulty of the main Task or add to my Challenge Dice rolls. 
• But the players could also undertake Tasks to either create Resistance on my rolls or stop me from rolling altogether.

If the power flow went back down to 0, the materialization process would begin without enough power to sustain it. If it went up beyond 20, then there would be enough power to sustain the process.

the Trickledown Economics
(image from Star Trek Online)

This I think was pretty fun! There was some grumbling about the fact that since it wasn't an Extended Task, Nevan couldn't use his relevant talent, but I pointed out that if I let him use it, I would have just designed the whole thing to be harder to compensate. There was a nice tug-of-war, but they won in the end. Frector broadcast to the Trickledown crew, pointing out the downsides of their undetaking, causing a work slowdown; T'Cant bent the power transfer beam so the Ferengi couldn't block it. There was one very exciting round where between them all, the players rolled five 20s, giving me 10 Threat!

In the end, the players saved the Nejamri, had some exciting showdowns, and convinced the Ferengi to lay low. My adaptation got looser as it went, but I think overall it worked well.

I'd like to make the A-plot a publicly available mission, but my notes are mostly written for my own benefit and have a lot of stuff specific to my players and campaign, so I would need to do a lot of cleanup first. Maybe someday!

The first scene of the B-plot was mostly to wrap up dangling thread from the investigation: the players got to question Ashrevi, and hear Taleria's side of the story. (The latter told them she'd already sent her subordinates home to Romulus... on a shuttle she feared wouldn't make it!) Then in the second scene, I had them hear each NPC's take and then come up with their own plan. They very much wanted to amplify Professor Jadrel's anti-nativist message... but how?

This was sort of the crux of the episode for me. I could think of a lot of ways to do this, but didn't want Starfleet to just tell them—hence the conference idea. They came up with the plan of hacking into the Haradin transmitter network, and transmitting Jadrel's message through that.

Scene three, then, was convincing other people to go along with the plan. If they could convince four of the six NPCs, they then could convince the Admiral. They worked their way from easiest sell to hardest, making good use of Talents and information to lay out their argument... and then they convinced the admiral. So now I know what to base the season finale around! 

Star Trek: Ekumene:

1. "Patagon in Parallax"
2. "A Terrible Autonomy"
3. "Stinks of Slumber and Disaster"
4. "Angels in Your Angles"
5. "A Thousand Miles from Day or Night" 
6. "When I Get through This Part…"
7. "Only Trying to Do Right in This Wicked World" 
8. "No Place in the Processional"
9. "Legend Grew about Their Daring" 
10. "On the Edge of Nobody's Empire"
11. "No One in Here" 
12. "Your Enemies at Your Side" 

Specials:

1. "Hear All the Bombs Fade Away"
2. "The Word for Word Is Word"

Star Trek Adventures: Playing "Entropy's Demise" from These Are the Voyages

It's summer, which means it's time for me to get my Star Trek Adventures group back together! I reached out to everyone who participated last summer, and they were all willing to play again this summer. It's a really solid group of players at this point, so I was very happy to hear this.

I have seven players, which I know is a lot, but it's not very often that all seven are at the table, because we play weekly whether everyone can make it or not. Something I was keen to do this summer was push the role-playing element a bit more. My players aren't the kind for protracted in-character dialogue, but it did seem to me that I could be putting more pressure on Values in interesting ways. In the final episode of last summer's mini-campaign (see episode #8 in the list below), for example, the players were kind of pushed to perhaps do something undemocratic in the short term in order to help democracy in the long term... they did not, and everything worked out. What I am a bit curious about is putting the players in situations were sticking to their Values might either 1) cause inter-character conflict, or 2) cause conflict with Mission Directives.

To this end, one thing I wanted to do was split them up more. Last summer, I added a B-plot to the prewritten mission "The Gravity of the Crime" (see #7). I think this helped energize things a bit: two or three characters on the ship doing their own thing meant all the players got more to do. It also seemed to me that putting two characters off on their own could let them focus on their interactions a bit more as a duo, and let me find ways to put interesting pressures on them.

Outside of the character dynamics, I also wanted to continue our ongoing plotline about the Haradin and their growing nativist movement. I have an idea about where this might go by the end of the season, but we'll see. The players dealt a blow to that movement in the finale to last season, but the real world has shown us that this doesn't always mean something! So the idea I had was to explore some of the consequences the movement might have for the wider Haradin society. Specifically, inspired by some of the USAID stuff, I had the idea that the Haradin clan-ships might cut funding to planetborn Haradin, as this might have become politically unpopular. 

This dovetailed nicely with a prewritten mission I've long had on my list of potentials to run, "Entropy's Demise" by Anthony Jennings from the first STA mission compendium, These Are the Voyages. That's about a Federation wine colony that needs help, but what if it was a Haradin wine colony... whose requests for help from the ship-clan had gone ignored? It also has a role for the Romulans, and one of my players had requested more familiar Star Trek aliens in the campaign. (And I could see how I could build on this to have more Romulans going forward.)

So I decided to do that one, adding a B-plot. I'll go through the A-plot first here and then the B-plot. 

“Chief Engineer’s Log, Stardate 54910.9. Doctor Gurg and I are returning to the Diversitas via runabout after spending a week supervising the construction of a new hospital on Maxia Beta VIII. However, we have been asked to divert to Deep Space 10 by Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna of Starfleet Intelligence...”

Planning the Mission 

Morghanek's Hope (image generated by ChatGPT)

The basic premise of "Entropy's Demise" is that the player ship is sent to Morgan's Hope on Carina VII, a colony growing grapes and producing wine. The colony is beset by mysterious temporal anomalies: a kid who should be six months old looks six years, grapes are going through their entire life-cycles in days, buildings only built recently are collapsing overnight. This turns out to be due to a century-old Federation starship, the USS Hamilton, which was testing a temporal weapon using tachyons; the abandoned ship is orbiting Carina X. The three acts are 1) the players investigate the colony, 2) the players discover the Romulans are observing the colony in secret and clear out their base, and 3) the players go to the Hamilton and deactivate the weapon while competing with the Romulans who want it themselves.

My main changes were, first, making the colonists into Haradin, which mostly involved changing names.

• Morgan's Hope → Morghanek's Hope
• Syreeta Sebastian → Siretha Sebanil 
• Mackley family → Maklen family
• Wesley → Weslar
• Aurelia → Aureneh
• Efren → Efrevi
• Zane Knoll → Zanil K'nor

Se'irrah's estate (image generated by ChatGPT)

There was one existing colonist with an alien name, whose species I don't think is ever established, Se'irrah, so I kept that name as is.

The other main change I made was altering the backstory of the USS Hamilton a bit. In the mission as written, it's a Constitution-class starship testing a weapon; I made it a Crossfield-class starship testing an experimental drive system, a sister ship to the Discovery from the same program. I felt like 1) "Burnham's War" seemed like a plausible source of Starfleet desperation (this wasn't really accounted for the mission as written), and 2) a tachyon drive seemed a much more likely thing than Starfleet making a tachyon superweapon! Plus, I have a nice Eaglemoss model of the Discovery.

Thanks to this friendly redditor for making a map of the Romulan outpost I could print out. Very useful! (And, as always, I made the title more pretentious.)

Playing the Mission 

warehouse on Carina VII (image generated by ChatGPT)

These are the players I had:

• Ryan as Rukot, captain (sessions 1-3)
• Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer (1-3)
• Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (1-3)
• Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot (1-2)
• Cari as Jor Lena, security officer (1-3) 
• Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst (1-3)
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer (1-2)

Kenyon and Andy were who I siphoned off into the B-plot, so more about them later. I was able to keep things to one session per act. (Technically our sessions are three hours, but we usually socialize and eat for the first thirty minutes.)

Act I: Trouble on Carina VII 

secret Romulan outpost (image generated by ChatGPT)

At the first session of the summer, I asked the players to reflect on what their characters had been up to in the months of narrative time since we had last played. Cari had the idea that Jor had become disgruntled about how poorly most of the crew had done in some recent Fitness challenges, and thus was imposing a strict workout regimen on the crew; Andy built on this by Gurg being tired of treating workout-related injuries and thus being willing to write crewmembers frivolous medical excuses for getting out of workouts. This was leading to tension between the two once-tight friends. I had the players reflect on who would adhere to Jor's regimen and who would not; Ryan and Debi said their characters would, but Claire said Mooria would only participate in "fun" workouts, while Austin said Frector (who, as a Ferengi female, just can't keep up no matter how much she wants to) would have started engaged but gotten discouraged. We began the episode with a scene of Jor confronting Mooria about participating more, which was interrupted by the distress call from Carina VII.

The players surprised me by contacting Matriarch M'Syrolath of Clan Marvek while en route to Carina VII and informing her about what was going on, but this worked well, because it let me foreground the  ship-clan's abandonment of the colony. The players were very cautious on arriving at the planet, sending a probe at first rather than getting close. This meant they detected interference, so they used their ship's "Modular Laboratories" Talent to set up a sort of isolation laboratory that would screen out any environmental influences. Instead of beaming down to talk to the governor, they talked to her over comms; instead of going to the Maklen family home to see their prematurely aged child, they beamed the Maklens up into the modular laboratory!

I did eventually get them to understand they needed to go to the planet, so while T'Cant studied Efrevi Maklen and Rukot tried to isolate the interference, Jor took Mooris and Frector to the surface. This part of the mission as written turned out to be kind of redundant and repetitive. Your players talk to some characters and find out something weird is going on, repeat again and again. They don't get much new information out of each iteration of this, and I don't know that the colony needs all these NPCs who ultimately don't contribute much. I ended up skipping through some stuff in the interests of time and tedium. The characters don't get to do much detective work; basically, they scan a bunch of stuff, then someone shows up and says it's Romulans and it is Romulans. If I were to run it again, I think I'd add more clues throughout and let them piece together the Romulan observers themselves.

There was a bit of shenigans because investigating the planet is mostly Tasks in Medicine, Science, and Engineering... but T'Cant was on the ship, and Gurg and Nevan were somewhere else entirely! The remaining characters were not exactly well-suited to this. 

Act II: The Outpost 

USS Hamilton near Carina X
(image found on Facebook; I think it's from Star Trek Online?)

We had some fun roleplay stuff on the way to the Romulan outpost: I suggested to Cari that Jor might carry out an impromptu fitness challenge as they made their way down the path. This ended up being an Opposed Task: could Frector and Mooria match Jor's roll? Austin was like, "Well, there goes my Determination for the session already": he felt Frector's Value of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" would cause her to do this to try to keep up. Claire also spent Mooria's Determination. Mooria did keep up, but even with Determination, Frector failed the roll! But I rewarded Austin with another point of Determination for this in-character decision.

The mission as written shows, in my opinion, some signs of being ineffectively edited down from a longer version. Act I ends with a note saying the players can't find the outpost, but Act II begins with the players just going into it! But I easily fleshed this out by giving them some Tasks to find their way in. Similarly, the mission as written just begins a scene with, "If the Player Characters interrogate D’Tok, they learn that he and his team of scientists recently arrived at the Romulan Outpost after the discovery of the tachyon emissions," without explaining who D'Tok is or where the players might find him! Everything in the base was pretty straightforward, however. There's a Difficulty 2 Task to disarm a bomb the Romulans plant; I dumped some Threat to make it D5, but T'Cant succeeded anyway. Frector and Jor got the jump on the Romulans setting the bomb and knocked them out before they could even react.

I think that in the mission as written, the interference is supposed to come from the tachyons, but Ryan wanted Rukot to study it; I hadn't planned on this, but I decided the Advantage from Modular Laboratories could let him do this, and so let him isolate the interference as something generated by the Romulan outpost to make them harder to discover.

Act III: The Lost Starship 

Subcommander Taleria and her soldiers aboard the Hamilton
(art from These Are the Voyages mission compendium)

The mission as written suggests the players will research the USS Hamilton once they find it's the source of the tachyons... mine did not! However, once they got to it, they wanted to use its command codes (like with the Reliant in Star Trek II) to run it remotely; I had them find the ship was classified once they attempted to do this, and they acquired the Hamilton's logs. The mission as written has no explanation for how Starfleet could have final logs from the Hamilton. If Starfleet knew it was in the Carina system, why did they never recover it? I established that the logs were jettisoned in a recorder buoy Starfleet recovered a century after they were recorded, and the logs only indicated the Hamilton was lost in "an unknown solar system in the uncharted Ekumene sector," so Starfleet didn't know where to look for the ship. (Maybe the mission as written is thinking the crew evacuated, then the ship vanished to the Carina system? I don't know.)

My players dithered a bit in approaching the Hamilton (they had a long debate about sending a message to the Romulans), so they didn't have a ton of time in the final session, so I made things a bit simpler on the fly. Still, they did good. They convinced the Romulan subcommander, Taleria, to work with them, nicely setting her up for a return appearance. The final fight is supposed to be on the Hamilton's bridge, trying to knock out all the Romulans before their commander can download the plans for the tachyon device. Austin had the idea that instead of shooting the Romulans, they should just shoot the console they were using. The Romulans missed on their opening turn (I should have spent more Threat!), and then Frector and Jor each hit the console (I made it D1 instead of the usual D2 for a phaser shot, since it seems to me shooting a console can't be that hard), blowing it up and knocking out the Romulans. In the whole episode, the players only shot two Romulans and never were successfully hit by one!

"Entropy's Demise" is fine on the whole, but it feels like more of a D&D adventure than an STA one: go to a village, then go through two "dungeons" essentially. There's no Star Trek–style moral dilemmas or allegories, nor does most of the stuff in Act I really matter to Act III. But it worked nicely for my purposes: I ended with a hook into the ongoing Haradin plot, and Subcommander Taleria will come back in our very next episode! 

The B-Plot 

Esha Vortan (image generated by ChatGPT)

With the B-plot, I wanted to pick up on our Christmas episode. In several episodes, the players have bumped into a Haradin character named Esha Vortan. Esha was one of the Haradin pirates they captured and handed over to the Klingons in episode #3 (though he wasn't seen in that one, this was established later). He first appeared in episode #5, where they got the Haradin prisoners back from the Klingons; he was keen and young, and offered to mind-meld with T'Cant to try to help the crew to understand the Haradin. (T'Cant couldn't mind-meld with him because of his implant, but he didn't know this.) Esha let Gurg study his implant. When they Haradin pirates were released (mentioned in episode #7), he returned in episode #8, now part of General Zotabia's paramilitary forces trying to prevent "election interference." He was nice and genuinely thought the Diveristas crew would be impressed by this. He then popped up in episode #9, now a pirate again, and was part of the pirates the crew helped capture.

So what would happen to this guy? I wanted to explore some ideas of how someone becomes radicalized—and how they might be deradicalized. I also wanted, like I said, some potential character conflict, and to use our recurring setting of Deep Space 10 with its NPCs a bit. Nevan and Gurg seemed like an interesting pairing for such a subplot. Gurg likes to debate; Nevan likes to solve puzzles. But Gurg likes sharing information, while Starfleet Intelligence hoards it, which seemed to have good potential for conflict. Plus, Nevan's romantic interest, Chief Susu Webb, is stationed on DS10! 

(image generated by ChatGPT)

I had Nevan and Gurg diverted to DS10 after a mission and summoned to the office of Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna, the director of Starfleet Intelligence operations in the Ekumene sector. (He appeared in episodes #5 and 8 before, and as Frector's boss, has been mentioned in several others.) Mazio told them that SI was really happy with how Frector had acquired the coordinates to Zotabia's pirate base in episode #9, but they also wanted a PR coup: firm proof that General Zotabia had returned to piracy. However, none of the pirates were willing to name Zotabia... could Nevan and Gurg get Esha to spill the beans via Esha's bond with the Diversitas crew?

Nevan and Gurg secured a temporary release from the DS10 security stockade for Esha by talking to Captain Morox, DS10's JAG officer, and were able to talk to him in the station bar. They found out that Esha had initially received comfort from the Haradin transmitter network when Zotabia had reactivated it, but since he'd been locked up on DS10, it had gone dead. Esha had assumed Starfleet was blocking it, but they were able to prove to him that wasn't the case—having failed Zotabia's movement, the pirates had been abandoned by it. They were thus able to persuade Esha to give the testimony required.

But this was the twist: when they went back to Mazio, he told them this probably wasn't good enough to secure Esha's release. Anyone could say Zotabia was in charge of the pirates. Wouldn't it be better to release Esha, let him go back to Zotabia's base, and get a recording of him? Nevan and Gurg were pretty dubious that Esha would even survive this!

Consul Vrossaan
(image generated by ChatGPT,
based on a cosplay photo)

I think this played out nicely. Neither Gurg nor Nevan are characters built for social conflict, so they had to stretch themselves to work their way through this tangled web of mayhem and intrigue. Eventually, Nevan was able to get Consul Vrossaan, the Diplomatic Corps's envoy on DS10, to back him up and negotiate diplomatic immunity for Esha in exchange for Esha entrapping Zotabia on a comm channel, a deception Nevan had to help facilitate, thus turning a diplomatic problem into a technical one. And Nevan and Gurg were able to give Esha the sense of purpose he had lost: SI gave him an impounded pirate vessel so Esha could start a new life as an independent space merchant. Plus we got some incremental advance on the Nevan/Susu romance!

Star Trek: Ekumene:

1. "Patagon in Parallax"
2. "A Terrible Autonomy"
3. "Stinks of Slumber and Disaster"
4. "Angels in Your Angles"
5. "A Thousand Miles from Day or Night" 
6. "When I Get through This Part…"
7. "Only Trying to Do Right in This Wicked World" 
8. "No Place in the Processional"
9. "Legend Grew about Their Daring" 
10. "On the Edge of Nobody's Empire"
11. "No One in Here" 

Specials:

1. "Hear All the Bombs Fade Away"
2. "The Word for Word Is Word"

Star Trek Adventures: Battling Space Pirates after Christmas!

As I did last winter break, I decided to run a three-week Star Trek Adventures one-off. I wanted it to be a fun one-off (as opposed to the very grim war storyline we ran last winter!), and an idea bubbled up that I've long had for a story. Apparently (I'm sure I heard this on NPR over a decade ago), getting your cargo freighter hijacked by pirates isn't a big deal, in that cargo companies have insurance that cover their losses. So you don't battle the pirates these days, you just hand over the cargo so no one gets hurt. I've always thought there was the kernel of a good action-adventure story in here: what if some character was travelling via a cargo ship and thought they were helping when they put up resistance to the pirates when in fact the cargo ship's captain would have much rather they remained calm and cooperated!

So that was the basic idea. Where would the players be travelling, and why on a cargo ship? Well, my campaign has a recurring group of aliens, the Ithik, who are obsessed with games because they live forever and are bored; these alien appeared first in episode 2 (based on the published adventure "Abyss Station" by Jacob Ross) and then returned in episode 6 (based on the published adventure "Game Night" by Alison Cybe). At the end of episode 6, the players had helped the Ithik resettle on a new homeworld. When one of my players, Ryan, wrote his character's personal log about the events of episode 6, he'd suggested that the Ithik channel their enthusiasm for games into hosting a galaxy-wide competition, the Ithika. That seemed like a good hook: the players could be travelling to the new Ithik homeworld to play in and/or observe the Ithika, on a freighter carrying colony supplies.

The other upshot of that was that it would make it easy for players to play someone different if they wanted, apart from their regular characters; they would just need a reason to be participating in the Ithika as either player or observer.

“Acting Captain’s Log, Stardate 54463.6, Lieutenant Jor Lena reporting. The senior staff of the Diversitas has been invited to participate in a competition on the new Ithik homeworld, Psi Erandi X. The Ithika is a massive competition with participants from across the quadrant, attempting to leverage the Ithik obsession with games to good end. Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate as, with Captain Rucot visiting his parents on Cardassia Prime, I will be commanding the Diversitas on anti-piracy patrol. The Diversitas is scheduled to rendezvous with a freighter charted by the Ithik to bring the other senior staff members to the games.”

Planning the Mission 

Breen freighter Urney, Klingon surplus
(image generated by ChatGPT)

All seven members of my regular STA group took me up on my invitation to play. Five of them elected to play their regular characters. Cari, who normally plays security chief Jor Lena, suggested she might play a somewhat incompetent pickpocket from a Blue Orion pirate family, and this seemed to line up nicely with my plans, so I encouraged it. Austin, who plays Frector the Ferengi intelligence analyst, asked if I had any ideas, but I said I thought the episode I had in mind would be a good one for Frector, and so encouraged him to stick with her. I did, though, reach out to Ryan, who in our previous Christmas one-off had played the Diversitas's previous science officer, Phalnox Drin, a Benzite science officer obsessed with MMA. Thanks to some well-spent Momentum, Drin had actually succeeded in defeating a Jem'Hadar in single combat, and at the time, Ryan had joked Drin could quit Starfleet and pursue an MMA career. What if he had, and he encountered his old shipmates on while travelling to participate in the Ithika? Ryan was keen on the idea, and revised Drin's stats and Values to account for his postwar career. Thus I had a line-up of seven, all of whom made all three sessions except one:

• Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer
• Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (1-2)
• Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot
• Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer
• Ryan as Phalnox Drin, MMA coach
• Cari as Rina K'var, Orion pickpocket

Back when I started GMing STA (which was also my first time GMing anything at all), I would plan out episodes in exhaustive detail—which was easily done, since I was always working with published missions. I had fifteen pages of outline for our first episode, "Patagon in Parallax," for example, covering all three acts. But 1) having written my own episodes several times now, and 2) having a strong group of players who really grok the game, I find I no longer do this. I went into our first session with 3½ pages, just covering the first act.

I knew I wanted the pirates to be Haradin, our recurring alien species; following the events of episode 8, the pirates would be followers of General Zotabia, my players' recurring Haradin nemesis (see episodes 1, 3, 5, and 8). He had tried to go legit as a nationalist demagogue, but would now turn back to piracy following his defeat in episode 8's election. Zotabia himself wouldn't feature in this episode, but a couple other recurring Haradin characters were, especially Esha Vortan, an earnest true believer of Zotabia. For a moment I thought about making the freighter crew Haradin too, but decided this was probably too much Haradin lore! I used to use the Haradin as my generic filler species, but I've developed them so much I can't do that anymore. I made the actual freighter a surplus Klingon ship so I could use my Klingon ship tiles, but had it been purchased by the Breen, whose weird standoffishness seemed like it might add a nice complicating factor to the proceedings.

Thot Udd (screen capture from Deep Space Nine)

I found a YouTube video of Breen dialogue from Deep Space Nine and paired it with an image of a Breen that I put on my tablet, so whenever the  Breen thot talked, I could press the play button and generate some gibberish.  

Basically, all I planned out was the broad setting, a couple characters (the Ithik mayor, three pirates, the Breen thot, some other Ithika participants), and the beats of the first act:

• Teaser: Rendezvous with the freighter, meet the other participants, end with the freighter being attacked while the players sleep
• Scene 1: Haradin pirates enter the corridor the players are in and lock it down, taking two players as hostages to the bridge.
• Scene 2: The players on the bridge learn what the pirates are up to. (In order to keep costs down, the pirates wouldn't staff the freighter or hold its entire crew hostage or anything like that; instead, they'd physically link their ship to the freighter and establish control over its systems.) 
• Scene 3: The players in their quarters would do something—presumably attempt to escape.
• End of Act: Someone, probably the pirate captain, would recognize a member of the Diversitas crew and realize they had something even more valuable than colony supplies—the senior staff of the Diversitas, who had foiled their boss many times over.

Also, once the pirates turned up, I planned to give Austin a slip of paper indicating what Frector knew:

Thanks to your Intelligence briefings, you are aware that in the months following Zotabia’s defeat in the Ship-Clan Marvek referendum, there has been a resumption of Haradin pirate activity in the Ekumene sector. However, the Haradin pirates have thus far been careful to avoid preying on ships belonging to the Federations or its allies, and there is also no clear indication that these pirates are allied with Zotabia. 

Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna [Frector's superior] on Deep Space 10 would particularly like to find either 1) hard proof that these pirates are affiliated with Zotabia (which could help turn some of the undecided ship-clans against Zotabia), or 2) the location of the pirate base.

Playing the Mission 

Tazrevi Korash, first officer of the Haradin pirates
(image generated by ChatGPT)

Overall, it was a lot of fun and went very well, I think. In the teaser, the players built some Momentum and were (re)introduced to Phalnox Drin, the Ithik mayor, the Breen thot, and Rina. In Act I, scene 1, Ryan tried to have Phalnox Drin knock out a Haradin pirate and scoot past him to the turbolift; he succeeded, but I spent 2 Threat to have the turbolift doors refuse to open for him (having established that the freighter was in poor shape), letting the pirates stun him, making him one of the hostages. The pirates randomly picked T'Cant to be the other, but she slowed them down by pretending to take a while to get dressed; when Frector poked her head out, the pirates took her instead. The two of them left their comm badges on secretly, so that the other players could hear what was happening on the bridge.

Nevan tried to write up a booby trap using a console in his quarters, and succeeded in accessing it... but also rolled a Complication, so I had him shocked and knocked unconscious; Gurg succeeded at a Task to argue he should be able to help Nevan, so they ended up in the same room adjacent to Rina. But when Rina tried to talk to Gurg through the walls, he rebuffed her! She ended up using her Orion smarts to claim to the pirates that she wanted to join them, and they let her out. On the bridge, Phalnox and Frector were able to sneak a look at some consoles and realize that part of the pirate plan was to do two things:

• Align the pirate ship's subspace carrier to the freighter's internal clock cycle. If the two ships were out of sync by more than a microsecond, the freighter would reject remote inputs.
• Install a "deadman echo" in the freighter computer core; if the link between the two ships was severed, the freighter's power grid would automatically go into standby mode. 

The first act did indeed end with the pirate captain, Beshlor, coming onto the freighter bridge and recognizing Frector and thus putting out an order for the rest of the Diversitas crew to be brought in.

Between sessions, I wrote up about 1½ pages of ideas of what could happen in Act II. One idea I came up with was that, if we use quartz crystals for timekeeping in the real world, maybe in the Star Trek world, they use dilithium crystals; thus the players would need to make their way to the freighter's dilithium crystal chamber.

Haradin pirate ship (Orion surplus, I guess?)
(image generated by ChatGPT)

Act II thus opened with a Timed Challenge: the Diversitas crew would have 4 Intervals to get away, with actions taking 2 Intervals. Momentum could speed those up, Complications slow them down, and the players could also Create Advantages that would give them more time. Rina talked the Haradin into thinking the Diversitas crew was very dangerous and they should be cautious, so they ended up with 6; the players were able to sneak into Jefferies tubes and even set up some booby traps.

On the bridge, Frector and Phalnox came up with a plan for Phalnox to pretend there was something wrong with Frector's (made up) heart implant and thus utter some dialogue about adjusting the timing, so that the other players could hear this and know to sabotage the freighter's clock. I made it a D5 Task to send the message and D4 one to comprehend it. The players succeeded, but Frector rolled a Complication when assisting Drin; I made the Complication that the pirates bought it so much they had Frector taken to the sickbay on their ship! Meanwhile, Rina befriended Esha Vortan, who really does like the Diversitas crew, and thus persuaded him to let her send a message to her people so the Diversitas could come and help. I had thought he would interact directly with the Diversitas crew, but that never ended up happening.

Meanwhile meanwhile, the other characters did an Extended Task to sneak around the freighter. Frector stunned the pirate escorting her... but then asked Gurg to join her in sneaking on board the pirate ship after all! Frector likes to keep secrets, so they were kind of vague about why, but a grumbling Gurg came along. 

When the other players made it to the chamber, I gave them a Timed Extended Task to adjust the freighter's computer clock. I made it Initial Difficulty 5, Magnitude 4, Work 30, Resistance 1, Intervals 4. Difficult but doable... but the players didn't always roll great, and I used Threat to keep the Difficulty up and the Work low even as they got Breakthroughs. For the first time ever, my players failed at an Extended Task! It was a good bad ending to the session. I felt almost apologetic, telling them you need to have a failure in Act II to make the victory in Act III even sweeter.

(Them: "What if we fail in this episode?" Me: "Then I guess season three will be escaping from Haradin prison!")

Aunt Thevi
(image generated by ChatGPT)

I seized on that idea Cari had had, of Rina sending a message to her people, asking for them to 1) come help, and 2) call the Diversitas. So providing she succeeded, having her family—a whole second group of pirates!—seemed like a great Act III complication. So going into Act III, I worked up a character to be a Blue Orion pirate leader, Rina's Aunt Thevi.

The beginning of the act went a bit better for them: the players in the dilithium chamber were able to hide when the Haradin pirates came by, then knock out a guard and finish their sabotage; Drin used his MMA skills to fake falling onto a console and mess up the pirates' work; Frector and Gurg were able to download the pirates' comm data and send a distress signal to the Diversitas, though they ended up jumping into an escape pod to get away.

Then Aunt Thevi turned up. She had not passed on Rina's message to the Diveristas but wanted the freighter for herself. Things got a bit goofy as I played up the incompetence of the Blue Orions; she did beam Rina and Phalnox off the freighter. The players decided to let the pirates slug it out, but this seemed undramatic, so I spent 2 Threat to have the Haradin pirate captain offer Aunt Thevi the Ithik freighter if she would just give the Haradin the Diversitas crew. The players decided to convince Aunt Thevi they could help take both the Haradin pirate ship and the freighter; I made this take three D4 Tasks, and they did succeed... only Rina rolled a Complication. 

The Diversitas then turned up; Aunt Thevi decided to flee (technically she hadn't done anything wrong... yet), but when she beamed Drin to the Diversitas, she sent Rina too, the Complication being Rina was now in exile for causing her family to yet again fail at piracy. The Haradin tried to go despite their linkup not being totally in place, but the computer clock sabotage caused it to fail; at that point, the pirates disconnected and flew off... leaving some of their people behind on the freighter!

So overall, it was fun even if it got a bit goofy in the last act... but then goofy made a nice contrast to our previous winter adventure! And there are some good hooks for stuff to come. Poor Esha Vortan has been taking prisoner twice! Will Rina ever come back? And will Phalnox Drin ever stop talking about the one time he kayoed a Jem'Hadar?

Star Trek: Ekumene:

1. "Patagon in Parallax"
2. "A Terrible Autonomy"
3. "Stinks of Slumber and Disaster"
4. "Angels in Your Angles"
5. "A Thousand Miles from Day or Night" 
6. "When I Get through This Part…"
7. "Only Trying to Do Right in This Wicked World" 
8. "No Place in the Processional"
9. "Legend Grew about Their Daring" 
10. "On the Edge of Nobody's Empire" 

Specials:

1. "Hear All the Bombs Fade Away"
2. "The Word for Word Is Word"

Star Trek Adventures: Haradin Species Description

The Haradin are a species mentioned just once in Star Trek, in the episode "E²"; they don't appear, we're just told that Haradin traders gave the NX-01 some improved engine components in alternate future during its trip in the Delphic Expanse. Probably no one would ever remember them at all, it's just one of those random one-off asides that are peppered throughout Star Trek, but I did—because I was the one who wrote their Memory Alpha article! (That's their only canonical mention, but they are mentioned briefly in two books, in similar circumstances as off-screen trading partners.)

I like to have some level of consistency and worldbuilding when playing Star Trek Adventures (I suppose most GMs do), so in my original campaign, I used the Haradin as sort of the generic filler race in the region of space the players were exploring. When they found a couple traders imprisoned by the Romulans in "A Star Beyond the Stars," I made some of them Haradin; when they came across a refugee settlment in "Signals," I made it into a Haradin settlement. I tended to drop them into dialogue periodically in those typical Star Trek lines, the sort of things where people say, "We've had offers from all sorts: the Ferengi, the Orions, the Haradin."

Had I made it to running "Convoy SE-119," I would have made the pirates there into Haradin. I had tentative notes on other episodes I'd've liked to run, and in some of those, I mentioned I'd make the aliens-of-the-week into Haradin as well: "Trouble on Omned III," "Drawing Deeply from the Well," "Ends and Means," "A Cure Worse than the Disease."

Due to this, my ideas about who and what the Haradin were evolved piecemeal. I'd made the Haradin in "Signals" into refugees—so refugees from what? My idea was that the Haradin were the dominant species beyond the Rim of the Starlight, but their government had recently collapsed. Thus you had different groups of Haradin throughout the area, living on colonies now on their own, some no longer able to be sustained. The word "Harad" I intended to describe not a planet, but it was in fact their name for the whole region of space. Most of these ideas didn't come to fruition, of course, because my players only met them twice!

When I started a new campaign, it was in continuity with my old one, set six years later. So I built on what I had been doing; when I ran "Hard Rock Catastrophe," I changed its Saurian colony into a Haradin one. When I finally ran "Convoy SE-119," I kept the pirates as Haradin, and made their new leader General Zotabia, the villain of "Hard Rock Catastrophe." (This was a last-minute idea that ended up unlocking the whole story arc of my second season.) My ideas about what "Harad" was evolved to meet the new setting and some new themes I wanted to explore; obviously the Haradin couln't be from a single region now because this campaign's Ekumene sector was nowhere near the old one's Rim of the Starlight.

My players seemed decently intrigued by what was going on with the Haradin, particularly when they had a very frustrating conversation with some captured Haradin pirates in "Convoy SE-119"; the pirates said Harad had been invaded, and scoffed in disbelief when my players asked where Harad was or who had invaded it. I decided to give them a hint in the first season finale, when the digital consciousness Mercury, who had spent weeks observing the Haradin undercover, gave them the piece of information that in their language, the word Harad meant "universe."

I thus leaned into them more during season two; the players rescued the Haradin pirates from Klingon captivity in the season premiere, and got hints about them during the third episode, all of this leading up to a finale centered on the Haradin. I had to do a lot of thinking about the Haradin to make this happen, so here I've typed up some of my notes and other thoughts. 

---

Species Physiology

M'Syrolath, matriarch of Clan Marvek

The Haradin are a humanoid species; they have thick purple skin that can range from dark mauve to a light lilac, which is often ridged. Some have hair, though hairlessness is more common. On some, the ridges on their heads extend into dangling tentacles. Some features can vary wildly between different Haradin ethnicities; some have human-like ears, some pointed Vulcanian ears, some ears that are merged into the head, some no visible ears at all.

(I'm not the kind of GM who thinks about species abilities very much, to be honest; since almost all of my Haradin NPCs were originally NPCs of other species, I just maintained whatever was on the character sheet originally.)

Species Origin and Residence

The Haradin must have a home planet, in the sense that any humanoid alien species must have evolved somewhere, but if they ever knew their origin, it has been long forgotten, and on top of that, they consider it irrelevant. Among the multiple meanings of Harad in their language is "universe"; the Haradin consider themselves residents of the universe. Many Haradin go their whole lives without ever stepping foot on a planet. The majority of spaceborn Haradin reside on the great clan-ships (see below), at least hypothetically; some Haradin traders might go many years between return visits, or live on a space station elsewhere.

interior city on a clan-ship

Haradin can be found across the entirety of the Alpha Quadrant and probably even beyond; they are essential to the economies of many regions and civilizations. Unrest among the Haradin can severely disrupt the economies of many societies across local space. Particular concentrations of Haradin have been noted in the Ekumene sector, the Delphic Expanse, and beyond the Rim of the Starlight, probably due to presence of one or more clan-ships in each region. (For example, Clan Marvek, led by Matriarch M'Syrolath, is based in the Ekumene sector.)

Over the centuries, however, some Haradin have settled on planets. One particular Haradin colony, for example, is on Ryuku in the Ekumene sector. Some of these colonies are independent; others have affiliations with and are supported by particular ship-clans. There are some groups of Haradin who consider these planetbound Haradin to not be "true" Haradin; see more discussion of this below.

The Clan-Ships and the Ship-Clans

Haradin clan-ship

Most Haradin consider their homes the great clan-ships (traëlin-vurek in Haradin, literally "ships that belong to the clans"), which are typically ten miles in diameter and a hundred miles long. With 40% of the interior volume given over to dense city living, a typical clan-ship has a population of a half billion. They have warp drives, but are rarely used except in times of emergency; rather, they make their way slowly through the deepest recesses of interstellar space. Each ship-clan (vurekin-traël, "clans that belong to the ships") considers one of these its home, and Haradin traders return to them between their journeys. Each of the clan-ships is a hive of activity, with all the various comings and goings. Outsiders are very rarely allowed on board clan-ships. The Haradin do most of their trading with aliens in those aliens' space. 

The ship-clan leader is chosen from among the leading families; they are typically women. The matriarch is assisted by a group of ministers, also chosen from among the leading families. Each clan is organized differently, but Clan Marvek, for example, has a Representative Council made up of 794 members (so each representative covers a district of ~630,000 people). The only clan-wide votes that happen are referenda—these can be either called by the Matriarch in advance of a significant decision (for example, whether to relocate the clan-ship), or invoked by vote of a certain threshold of the Representative Council. Before the collapse of Harad, these votes were carried out by members of the ship-clan voting via their communications implants (see below). This also used to be how local district elections were carried out, but since the collapse of Harad, each district had evolved its own procedures for in-person elections.

In order to maintain careful monitoring of imports and exports for tax purposes, matter transportation is strictly forbidden to and within a clan-ship; all approaching ships must dock, and a monorail system is used for movement within the ship's interior. 

puddle-pig on an interior farm

Though the food supplies for the ships are partially sustained through imports, there are farms aboard the clan-ships. The main feed animal is the plorthik (affectionately called the "puddle-pig"), semi-gelatinous, quadrupedal herbivores about the size of a small dog. Their bodies resemble translucent, pastel-colored blobs with stubby legs and oversized, expressive eyes perched atop gentle stalks. Despite their wobbling, pudding-like appearance, they move with surprising agility and coordination, especially when herded. Their coloration ranges from soft peach to pale mint green, often changing hue slightly depending on mood or diet. They are primarily raised for their nutrient-rich mucus, which is harvested sustainably and used as a base for protein rations or medical salves. They are easily startled by loud noises, whereupon they "boing" into the air with a soft squelch, often landing upside-down until righted.

The Meaning of Harad and Haradin

Beshlor, pirate captain

As stated above, Harad is a word that means "universe" in the Haradin language; thus Harad is sometimes translated as "universe" or simply "space" (especially "deep space") into Federation Standard. A Haradin saying "I've lived in Harad my whole life" is just stating that they've never lived on a planet.

However, Harad is also the name the Haradin give to a massive communications network that stretches across the quadrant. Individual Haradin have receiver/transmitters implanted in their brains as adolescents that give them access to the network; it's not interactive like web sites or Twitter, more like receiving a podcast stream or radio feed in your brain. There was a large central transmitter that then broadcast to relay transmitters on clan-ships, which then routed the signals to individual Haradin. This allowed the Haradin to maintain a cultural identity despite their wide dispersal. Though funded by the Haradin government, the transmitter network was managed independently, and thus mostly avoided being caught up in politics (sort of a space BBC or NPR). The transmitter network uses a lower domain of subspace (almost a "subsubspace") that means its transmissions cannot be detected by a Federation starship not specifically configured to detect it.

Esha Vortan, Return to Harad recruit

Haradin born on planets typically did not get the receivers implanted in their brains. Note that after 2371, the transmitter ceased operation; more about this below.

If in conversation with a Haradin that doesn't know any foreign languages, this overlapping of concepts can lead to a lot of confusion; a Haradin might express surprise that someone else doesn't know what Harad is (because it means "universe" to them) or talk about the "invasion" of Harad (more on that below) or even its collapse in a way that indicates you ought to know about it (because how could you not know what happened to the universe).

The word Haradin is formed from Harad and the suffix -in, which literally means "from"—for example, their word for "human" is Earthin, or their word for "Vulcan" Vulcanin. But it also carries a connotation of rightful belonging, one is Haradin because you belong in Harad. So the Haradin are not just from the universe, but the rightful inhabitants of the universe. As stated above, some Haradin reside on planets, but for this reason there is often a faint sense of suspicion they are not true Haradin, for they no longer live in Harad.

clan-ship monorail system

In Haradin, the suffix -güi is the opposite of -in, indicating a lack of belonging. The word Haradgüi would literally translate into Standard as "alien" or simply "non-Haradin," but it carries the connotation of those who do not belong in Harad—that is to say, those who do not belong in space.

Conversely, sometimes one may become Haradin even if born of a different species, by assimilating to the Haradin way of life—all you must do is establish your own belonging to the universe. Thus there are pockets of immigrants aboard some of the clan-ships whom outsiders might refer to as non-Haradin, but the Haradin themselves would not make that distinction. For example, there are groups of Orions, Yridians, and Lissepians in Clan Marvek. They make up about 1.5% of the ship-clan population; the one district with a majority non-Haradin population is called Oriontown. There are some hard-line Haradin nativists, however, who would say that once Haradgüi, always Haradgüi.

The Haradin and the Federation

Orven Jadrel, history professor

The first significant contacts between the Haradin and the future members of the United Federation of Planets were recorded in the mid-22nd century in the (former) Delphic Expanse. As the Federation expanded, it encountered the Haradin more and more, but the Haradin always remained something of a mystery to the Federation. The universal translator did not work out, for example, that Harad meant universe, and thus as far as the Federation was concerned, the term referred to a planet. The Federation had heard of the great clan-ships, but no one had ever been aboard one.

In the 23rd century, there was some significant commerce between the Federation and individual Haradin traders, the Federation usually being particularly interested in new knowledge; for example, the Federation acquired a used Orion database from the Haradin that contained samples of many previously unknown languages. Especially on the frontier, Haradin traders were often essential to local economies, but then they would be displaced as the Federation built up its own infrastructure in a region of space.

University of Marvek

During the Dominion War, a Haradin trading vessel found a disabled Breen vessel in the Helaspont Nebula, which was sold to the planet Kropasar; they knew the inhabitants of this nonaligned world, renowned for their advanced biotechnology, would be interested in the Breen's own biotech. The existence of this vessel was leaked to the Federation and, unable to acquire it by legal means, it was stolen by a Starfleet Intelligence strike force (the Federation needing any advantage it could get with the Breen having entered the war on the side of the Dominion).

The Collapse and Invasion of Harad

Vekshari, puddle-pig farmer

By 2371, the Haradin government was struggling. Some historians identify three main causes. One was that the Haradin were simply spreading out over a wider and wider area of space, leading to increased feelings of disunity, and sentiments among some Haradin that they were so far-flung, the central Haradin government was not responsive to their needs.

Second was the increasing spread of the Federation; as the Federation fully embraced its post-monetary phase in the 24th century, there was little use for Haradin traders in areas they had previously been essential to.

Third was that the conflicts of the 2350s onward (e.g., the Cardassian Wars, the Galen Border Conflict, the Borg incursion of 2366, brewing tensions with the Dominion) dampened trade opportunities across the quadrant, causing a depression in the Haradin economy that the already struggling, overstretched Haradin government struggled to respond to.

Thalera Neshek, transmitter manager

Details about what happened exactly are vague, but in early 2371, the Haradin government collapsed. The Haradin had never had a strong central government, most governmental functions being carried out on the local level by the ship-clans.

The most visible negative consequence of this was that the central transmitter of Harad (its location still a mystery to outsiders) ceased functioning or was possibly even physically destroyed; outside historians do not really know for sure. Some planetary Haradin colonies began to struggle without the resources from the government that previously sustained them, leading to a refugee crisis beyond the Rim of the Starlight

This is the event that many Haradin refer to as the collapse of Harad. For those without the frame of reference for what Harad is, this is confusing terminology, and many in the Federation thus believed their planet may have been destroyed.

General Zotabia

The collapse of Harad has given rise to more nativist sentiments among the Haradin, a growing antagonism against the Federation and all other Haradgüi. Many of these use inflammatory rhetoric of "invasion" to refer to the events of the past decade or so, calling the encroachment of the Federation into areas of space previously dominated by Haradin trade routes the invasion of Harad. This is confusing terminology to non-Haradin (a Haradin who buys into this rhetoric would react with incredulity if a Starfleet officer asked who invaded Harad, for example, because how could one not know about the invasion of the universe!), but the "invasion" of Harad is basically the point—about a decade ago—where the Haradin began to realize that it was Federation ships that were dominating the spacelanes, not their own.

The Dominion War exacerbated this, and is considered part of the "invasion" as well. Partially this is because to some Haradin, all aliens are Haradgüi. But also the Dominion War really did eat into Haradin prosperity by restricting their trade routes; they lost access to half the quadrant. Many Haradin have fallen on hard times. Without a central government to manage it, the Haradin economy has continued to struggle.

The Rise of Zotabia and "Return to Harad"

"Return to Harad" campaign poster

In 2377, after the Dominion War, nativist groups began popping up with greater frequency throughout Haradin society, both among the ship-clans and on the planetary settlements. One such group arose on the colony Ryuku, "Return to Harad," advocating for an abandonment of planetary settlement. After a series of terrorist attacks, the ringleader of the organization was exposed as General Zotabia, commander of the Ryuku military. Zotabia was imprisoned, but loyalists liberated him, and he escaped the planet in a battleship.

Zotabia ended up joining forces with a group of Haradin pirates, winning them over with his rhetoric, and using them to form the core of a fledgling interstellar movement. Many outside of the movement refer to it as New Harad, but Zotabia rejects this appellation. It is not a New Harad, but the Harad of old, reclaimed. Zotabia's rhetoric, which demonizes the Federation and other Haradgüi, as well as what he calls the ineffective or even traitorous ship-clan administrations, for the difficulties faced by the Haradin, is increasingly popular among the many in the ship-clans. 

Unbeknownst to many, Return to Harad's philosophy is being spread through reactivated transmitter networks on individual clan-ships. No longer managed by the Haradin government, the ship-clan transmitters are now in the hands of Zotabia loyalists, who use them to broadcast nativist anti-Haradgüi propaganda directly into people's brains, slowly radicalizing them through their media diet.

Haradin lined up to vote

A public referendum is being held among Clan Marvek to determine if it will affiliate with Zotabia's movement. Pressure against the existing ship-clan leadership has been growing thanks to their inability to manage an outbreak of the anatid space flu among the plorthik; as the disease originated off-ship, it is only giving Zotabia a further excuse to demonize Haradgüi. Growing anti-Federation sentiment among the Haradin is also creating difficulties out on the Federation frontier in regions such as the Ekumene sector, which does still depend on Haradin trade.

Return to Harad Rhetoric

Norex Talven, Supervisor of Elections

Here's the way a member of Return to Harad might speak to someone from Starfleet: "We don’t have planets to go back to. Space isn’t a route to us—it’s home. And people like you, they don’t live here. You just visit long enough to change everything. We were born in the black between stars. Our blood runs cold with vacuum. No mud, no wind, no crawling roots beneath our feet. You want to take that from us."

This is a speech by General Zotabia, broadcast over the Haradin transmitter network from the Marvek clan-ship:

Brothers and sisters of the Void, true-born in vacuum, proud heirs of Harad—

I stand before you tonight not as some matriarch groveling at the feet of the Federation. Not as some weak-kneed trader begging for port access. No. I stand as your voice. And I am here to say what they are too afraid to admit.

Our space is under invasion.

They won’t call it that. They use words like cooperation, exchange, outreach. But we know better. You’ve seen it. Ships full of Earthin and Tellarin and Bajorin flooding our orbits. Barging into our ports. Speaking in soft voices while they push us out of our own hangars.

And they bring their rules, their culture, their gravity-choked values. Have you tried to dock at Motherlode recently? Since they joined the Federation, Haradin ships that have travelled that route for generations find themselves turned away for failing “safety inspections.” They are imposing their rules on our Harad. They even banned radiant spice on Kalet IX because it “offends” Andorians!

And they breed, oh do they breed. Families of Haradgüi, five to a berth, living off subsidies, draining our air, draining our power. And our children—our children—are being told in school that Harad doesn’t belong to us alone. That we should share it.

That’s a lie. That’s a crime against our ancestors.

We are Haradin because we belong in space. We were forged in vacuum. Our ship-clans crossed the stars when Earthin were still learning to boil water. And now those same primitives lecture us about “inclusivity”? No thank you.

Let me tell you something. When I’m in command of the high routes—when I seal the outer lanes—we will take back every dock, every relay, every forge from the stinking claws of the Federation, from the Klingons, from the Ferengi.

No more cultural dilution. No more language training for Haradgüi immigrants. No more free berth-rations for alien crews who don’t even know what a flux anchor is.

We will purify our sky.

We will build walls of radiation and steel around our ports. We will fly only Haradin flags from our antennae. And if they say we’re intolerant? Good. Let them say it from behind closed airlocks.

Because this is our space. And I promise you this: We are returning to Harad. 

Example Haradin Names

Many Haradin don't use surnames; for these Haradin, their family name is identical to their clan name, which is fairly useless in a population of half a billion that mostly has the same family name as you. (There's no reasons to go by "Beshlor Marvek" if everyone on your street and indeed half your district is also "[Something] Marvek.") But smaller families subsumed within a clan do use their family names as surnames. About half of Haradin my players have met use surnames; clan leadership never will, because their surname is guaranteed to match their clan name (e.g., M'Syrolath).

Isathei
University of Marvek provost

Female Forenames

• Ashrevi 
• Aureneh 
• Ero
• Isathei 
• K'manehai 
• M'Syrolath
• Siretha 
• Tazrevi 
• Thalera
• T'Rumiak
• T'Rushemei 
• Vekshari
• Zanil 

Se'irrah, vinter

Male Forenames

• Beshlor
• Esha
• Kelvarin
• Kilexian
• Norex
• Orven 
• Rhex 
• Se'irrah 
• Weslar 
• Zavreth 
• Zotabia

Maklen family: Weslar, Aureneh, and Efrevi

Nonbinary Forenames

• Drev
• Efrevi 

Surnames

• Drallen 
• Dreshek  
• Jadrel 
• Katel 
• K'nor 
• Korash 
• Korranel
• Maklen  
• Marnok  
• Morghanek 
• Neshek 
• Sebanil 
• Talven  
• Vortan 

Clan Names

• Marvek
• Tarnaval 

Added some more Haradin names on 30 May 2026. 

Sources and Inspirations

Star Trek Adventures Scenarios

• "Convoy SE-119" by Jim Johnson 
• "Ends and Means" by Troy Mepyans 
• "Hard Rock Catastrophe" by Christopher L. Bennett
• "Signals" by Ian Lemke

Other Inspirations

• Dark Mirror by Diane Duane (the Lalairu) 
• "On the Causes and Consequences of and Remedies for Interstate Malapportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives" by Jeffrey W. Ladewig and Mathew P. Jasinski
• On the Media: "The Divided Dial" 
• On the Media: "What the Removal of Navalny's Smart Voting App Means for Democracy Around the World"
• "Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" by Ursula K. Le Guin 

All images in this post generated by ChatGPT (except for the ones containing the Google Gemini watermark).