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SaddlePatch In reply to Flying-Phan [2013-06-07 07:31:54 +0000 UTC]

I drew it XD

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Makosharkman In reply to SaddlePatch [2017-04-09 06:20:20 +0000 UTC]

she looks just like a tomboy from this book I am writing. 

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Flying-Phan In reply to Flying-Phan [2013-06-07 01:03:24 +0000 UTC]

NVM

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SaddlePatch In reply to galaxy1701d [2013-05-22 07:51:39 +0000 UTC]

You know I never thought about that before, thats a great question...

I guess Calius would sit much like her father with a mix of Picard? Forward, in charge but relaxed at the same time. More serious once in the chair than when shes just walking about? I don't have anything amazing behind how she would sit XD Although I love your idea and really tells a lot about Captain Sun. I guess because Calius is quite a laid back Captain sometimes she doesn't appear threatening or in charge, but when anything or anyone threatens her ship or crew, her how aurora about her changes.

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galaxy1701d In reply to SaddlePatch [2013-05-22 15:43:36 +0000 UTC]

That would make sense. Kirk does tend to lounge a bit in the chair. He won't tense up unless something bad happens, like when he found out Reliant had been hijacked by Khan. Even Picard doesn't always grip his chair too tightly and has lounged sometimes, but he generally prefers to keep at least one arm on the armrest. Both Kirk (Prime and Alternate) and Picard have also been shown to cross their legs, which is usually a "relaxed" pose.

Since we've started talking about our characters' "leadership personas," Captain Sun's personality as a commander is somewhat similar to Calius' but to a bit more of an extreme. His approach to leadership was partly inherited from his mentor, Admiral Gavazza, but it is also eerily similar to the way his royal ancestor, Emperor Sonken Chuubou (Sun Quan), ran the Kingdom of Eastern Wu during China's Three Kingdoms era - he's a delegator of authority.

He's good at finding department heads and subordinate officers that are experts at what they do and are strong-willed about doing things the way *they* feel is right, and then letting them do what they do best with minimum interference from him while he shepherds everybody's efforts toward one overall direction or goal. Operations, with him, really are a "team" effort. However it's also the exact opposite of what Kirk tended to do, based on an essay I read that analyzed the leadership mentalities of the main "Star Trek" captains.

The upside is of this "decentralized" approach is that this causes his crew to become an independent and extremely competent bunch of individuals who can lead well in their own right and who know what he wants. It worked well with the Farrington's crew as many of them were the scientists and engineers who designed and built the ship, so they tend to be smart and extremely quirky anyway and wouldn't respond well to just being flat-out told what to do in a domineering way.

But the downside is that this "loose" leadership style can interfere with Captain Sun's ability to make snap decisions in a pinch or force his plans on others if the time comes when he has to do things his way even though they might not agree with it. Fortunately, his first officer is much more assertive than he tends to be and can help him out in times of crisis.

He also has some weird ideas every so often. For example, he decided to address a lack of discipline and morale within his crew by creating a British Navy sailing ship in the Holodeck, splitting his subordinates into "gun crews" and running gunnery drills (you had to work as a tightly coordinated team to fire the guns on a sailing ship). Even his first officer was shocked when the crew eventually started to actually get enthusiastic about it, and the sailing ship simulation became a time-honored tradition aboard the Farrington.

I guess what I'm saying is that with his situation, you basically have a quirky captain on a quirky ship with a crew full of strong-willed oddballs, many of whom have some serious flaws that they need to work around. I'm not sure how Calius would take being on the Farrington if their positions were switched.

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SaddlePatch In reply to galaxy1701d [2013-05-22 22:26:55 +0000 UTC]

I think they might be fine, cause when Calius gets command of the USS Alliant, Starfleet doesn't think she will last a year because 1) Shes so young and 2) her crew is so mix and match.

Donny is a complete video gamer, surfer type, who is the Tactical officer. No one really knows how and why he passed his training but he is very handy with the controls and has perfect aim. Just no one takes him serious except Calius.

Calvin is fairly level headed but spooks easily, hes the communications officer. He went to academy with Calius but is 5 years older than her (I think might be 3...Its been awhile since I Role Played with all these characters. Keep in mind most of Calius Senior staff is older than her, kinda like most of Kirks staff in the JJ verse is older as well)

Gabe Kilroy is probably the most mature out of the senior bridge officers. He was Navigation, but he was promoted to First Officer after Buea Uhura went ape wall after Calius dumped him for Q.

Then there is Rinsin, the made up alien Hannah and I made who is engineering..hes a total punk but his VERY good at his job.

Anjali is the senior Medical Officer, shes pretty level headed.

Shamrya is the ships therapist. Shes quirky and spunky but know when to take her job Seriously.

Then there is Q of course. He doesn't really need much explaining, however he has matured a bit and being half mortal (For most of Defiance|Alliance and half of Continuum. He eventually gives up his immortality to save Calius' life) he has a more human approach, hes not as cocky and full of himself but he does take pride in being the first Senior Bridge officer in Starfleet which was a position Calius made up for him (Starfleet doesn't really have him 'employed' but being what he is they can't really fight him on it).

Calius finally walks very much the path expected of her, but is a lot like JJ's Jim Kirk in that she doesn't follow the rules all the time. Heck the first time the Alliant goes into space from the Ship yard, they want her to go back cause the warp core isn't warmed up enough for orbital departure but she pushes the ship and shows her likeness to her father by succeeding in getting it out of orbit and into space. She had no intention on waiting any longer to get out into space XD Even Gabe was a little put off by her decision especially when she faked she couldn't hear ground control communicating with her XD

The pilot really is a shared position with Donny and in training pilots that Calius takes on. Calvin sometimes takes the controls, and even Calius does at times too. Q has but isn't suppose too.

Even though they're an odd ball crew, very mix and matched, they work well together. The Alliant is very much an exploration ship and is very Family oriented. I really hope Hannah wants to RP more now with the new movie out because we're rebooting Defiance|Alliance and making young Calius less weak, but mainly to have it actually saved.

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galaxy1701d In reply to SaddlePatch [2013-05-23 00:52:08 +0000 UTC]

It would be nice if Hannah does manage to join you. I see you and I both took on the idea of an oddball crew that wasn't supposed to last, but didn't do it in the same way - and don't worry, I also did some things with crew placement on my ship that need explaining. Heck, 4 of the senior staff are the Captain, his old roommate, his robotic little sister and his childhood friend (later girlfriend). I had to work very hard to make it clear why they were there.

U.S.S. Farrington was actually based on a kitbashed model created by model builder April Welles, who gave me permission to use her ship when she saw that I always credited her as the creator of the ship and her backstory, and because I used the ship in a totally different way than she did. She is a J.J.-verse Excelsior with a very specific mission: she was built as a testbed for a Federation attempt to make a wormhole drive known as Project: Gateway. The starship may look like an Excelsior on the outside, but she is made up of over 80% custom components on the inside and her internal layout looks almost nothing like a standard Excelsior. She was the 2nd of four prototypes that were ostensibly built to field-test radical new technology for use in the next generation of starships.

But what Starfleet (or rather Section 31) isn't telling the public is where the technology came from and how it relates to national security: Section 31 had gotten ahold of a wrecked Mirror Universe starship that punched through the dimensional barriers and entered this universe. Starfleet was terrified at how powerful and advanced that Mirror ship was and knowing from its records that the Mirror Universe was already planning an invasion, decided to try to reverse-engineer the advanced technology on the Mirror ship to understand it better. Four Excelsior-class prototypes were chosen and each one tested a different area of reverse engineered technology and other new modifications: power/drive systems, propulsion, weapons, command/control & sensors. The Farrington's wormhole drive is really Starfleet's attempt to reverse-engineer the rift drives used by the Terran ships to travel between universes - Starfleet didn't completely understand what the thing was and thought it was a device used to make wormholes instead.

The Farrington was never truly meant to go out on "real" missions, and because she was built entirely around her wormhole drive, her design suffers from several serious flaws. The ring module on top of her nacelles interferes with her nacelles' warp tunnel, causing her to sometimes spontaneously drop out of warp. The wormhole drive can't be used around large naturally-occurring gravity wells. Her custom parts make her a pain to fix, the increased mass hampers her maneuverability and makes her difficult to pilot, her weapons are not as powerful as a typical Excelsior's should be (this was by choice as she wasn't expected to go into a combat scenario), the wormhole drive requires so much power that she needs two warp cores of an unusual new tritium-fueled design, her tritium fuel is naturally radioactive (unlike regular deuterium) and makes fuel collection/storage more difficult, and her EPS feeds and electro-plasma distribution systems are based on an unproven, untested concept that her chief engineer drew up as a "pet project" when she was at the Academy. Even the crew just doesn't think she'll work - and they built her.

As a testbed, this ship was just there to look pretty for the public as the "face of progress" and to run tests. This is why Starfleet felt all right giving her a bare-bones skeleton crew made up of the lab techs that designed the ship. But when she went out for her first trial run, the wormhole she generated intersected with an unstable naturally occurring wormhole, shooting the ship into the M31 Andromeda galaxy (that last part is what I kept from April's original backstory). She's lost, she's badly damaged, her crew don't even trust each other - let alone their technology or their captain - and she's right in the middle of unexplored space that the Federation barely knows anything about. It's going to be a long way to getting the wormhole drive working again and allowing her to come home - and when she comes back, the Terran invasion has already begun and she must join her three sisters on the front lines of the Mirror War.

***

You already know about Captain "Toby" Sun himself. But there was actually a degree of controversy when he got the Farrington. The "Four Sisters" development program was being supervised by Sun's mentor, Admiral Gavazza, and Gavazza, being convinced that his protege had potential as a commander, wanted to give him a command that wouldn't test him too much - essentially to put him on training wheels - while keeping him under supervision.

So Toby was given a Brevet - a sort of temporary premature promotion where you're given the higher rank and its duties but not its increased benefits or "pay" (in Federation terms, how many credits the Federation government gives you to spend each month) - and granted the ship without going through the usual selection panels. He starts his mission as Brevet Captain Sun, and was told that whether or not his promotion would become "permanent" would depend on his own actions. This kind of promiton wasn't illegal, but it was rarely ever done, and the whole thing just reeked of nepotism. While Sun had previous command experience as first officer of the Highwind, having taken the ship out for several runs when then-Commodore Gavazza was away, it wasn't as much as Commanders typically had before promotion to Captain. He's a complete greenhorn, and his crew suspects that he got the job simply because he knew the right people, so when the ship is initially lost, it is very difficult for him to command any kind of authority with them. He's going to have to push himself to the limit to prove he's the kind of man who deserves their respect. As for his crew...

***

First Officer/Tactical Officer: Commander Madeline Jeanne Carpentier. Nationality: mixed French/German. Hometown: Metz, in the Alsace-Lorraine region along the French/German border. Captain Sun's fiery, strong-willed, childhood friend, the two look like complete opposites when they stand beside each other as she's a tall, athletic, blue-eyed redhead. Something of a "tsundere," she's known Toby since they were four and is probably the only person on the crew who's willing to get in his face and shout him down (or slap him with a Regulation 619) if she thinks he's wrong about something. As First Officer, Maddie is charged with actually running the ship's day-to-day operations and also acts as a leadership advisor and confidante, passing the crew's concerns to the captain. In private, she loves Toby dearly, something he doesn't completely appreciate at first, and although they are constantly teasing each other and occasionally bicker, she is fiercely loyal to him and would defend him with her life, although his self-sacrificing idealism and tendency to get himself in trouble trying to save others drive her up the wall as she constantly finds herself having to rescue him from bad situations. She is a master strategist, detective and martial artist and her accuracy with a Phaser is unmatched; much of the Farrington's later success in battle actually comes about because Toby trusted her judgment and took her advice. She eventually becomes his love interest, and they know each other so intimately that they can seem to act like two halves of a single personality. (The two of them are heavily inspired by the "Episode 26" versions of Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion.)

Second Officer/Science Officer: Lt. Cmdr. Sakura Sun. An amazingly advanced gynoid (female robot) built from the design specs of the Andromedan androids Kirk encountered in "I, Mudd (TOS)" by a Daystrom Institute team including Captain Sun's uncle Renton, Sakura was an incredibly ambitious experiment: an attempt to create a "living" machine, a robot that could meet the traditional scientific requirements of a life form (she sort of takes the place of Data as the first robot citizen of the Federation in my timeline). She can do almost everything a human can in her own mechanical way, even eat and grow - her "stomach" is a miniature replicator that can break down what she ingests into energy or raw matter that she can use to repair her systems. After the Federation government is convinced to grant her civil rights as a special case, she is adopted into the Sun family as Toby's younger sister when he was 15 years old, because it was argued that if she was to be a "life form," then she needed to be treated like one. Possessing enough strength to bench-press a semi truck and fully capable of emotions, she appears to be a kind, demure, prim-and-proper "Yamato Nadeshiko" type at first glance but is actually brilliant, calculating, quite observant and maybe something of a snoop and a schemer, although her intentions are always for the best. She adores her big brother and he dotes on her in return, and she also treats Maddie/Commander Carpentier as a big sister and will sometimes refer to her as "onee-san." One of the Federation's leading experts on wormholes and other strange astrophysical anomalies, she was recruited to lead Project Gateway and commanded the team that built Farrington's Wormhole Drive, making it a no-brainer that she was selected to be the ship's science officer. She is intensely curious, but this can put her and the crew in danger because she tends to care more about whether something is possible than whether it's safe, and unlike Maddie, she is less willing to get in her brother's face and prefers to follow his orders as long as they're reasonable. As much of her components were built in Japan, she considers herself "half-Chinese, half-Japanese" and practices traditional Japanese arts including Kyudo and flower arrangement. She is also a genius chef, considering cooking to be the one place where creativity and science can come together in harmony, and takes shifts in the galley after Farrington's loss in Andromeda, where she quickly develops a reputation for creating ambitious pastries. Inspired by JSM-02T Cherry from the "Saber Marionette J" anime series and Yumemi Hoshino/Reverie Planetarian from the visual novel "Planterian: Reverie of a Little Planet."

Chief Engineer: Lt. Cmdr. Niva, a fan character created by . She is a Halanan, a race seen in "Deep Space Nine." Halanans are capable of creating psycho-projections of themselves that exist alongside their "real" selves in real-time, but Niva sadly can't fully control hers. Worse, while Niva herself is generally polite and easy to get along with, her psycho-projection, being a creation of her subconscious, (which Sakura sarcastically calls the "id monster" ) is more blunt and simply says whatever is really on her mind, getting her into awkward situations. A child prodigy, her mother was a professor whose unconventional theories on transwarp propulsion were finding great difficulty being accepted, convincing Niva early on that brilliance wasn't always appreciated. Obsessed with finding alternative ways to solve problems, she crafted an unusual new reactor/EPS junction system as an Academy student that was passed over for years until it was selected for installation in the U.S.S. Farrington, landing her the coveted job of building the ship. She worked closely with Sakura Sun, who was designing the wormhole drive, and the two "mad scientists" became fast friends. Niva knew that the Farrington was not intended to go into real deep space missions, a fact that drove her crazy as she believed that the design she poured her heart and soul into would never have the chance to prove itself. So when the ship was lost, she was one of the few officers on board who was in no hurry to go home. Believing strongly that an engineer should live to push the envelope, Niva is frequently frustrated by her crew's fear of the untested prototype design and is constantly trying to get them to be as optimistic about the ship as she is, a situation that mirrors what Captain Sun faces from the crew as a whole.

Helsman: Lt. Charles "Chazz" Haines. Nationality: Welsh, from the area around Harlech Castle. Something of an oddball, you could say he's a calm, imperturbable number-crunching math nerd (his hobbies include trying to find mathematical puzzles he can't solve) "trapped" in the body of a bishounen pretty-boy (he's kind of like a grumpier, older version of ST:09 Chekov); he is one of those rare geeks who knows exactly what he is, is completely at peace with himself and has never wanted to be anything else. Unfortunately, this puts the poor guy in a weird situation - girls like him for his looks, but he considers almost all of them to be "shallow" and wants none of the attention he gets. He's an extremely skilled flier but particularly gifted at handling ships that are being problematic and keeping them flying steadily, and it was this quality that got him the post on the Farrington, which needs to remain stable in wormholes. "Chazz" has a sort of friendly love-hate rivalry with Thalera, the ship's Andorian navigator. They eventually become a couple, and often compare their relationship to that of the captain and his first officer, who they come to see as role models.

Navigator: Lt. Thalera. Nationality: Andorian. Part of the same flight team as Charlie "Chazz" Haines at the academy, like most Andorians, she has a bristly, type-A personality and loves to tease the more reserved, geeky helmsman; the two frequently refer to each other as "pink-skin" and "Smurfette." "Thy's" refusal to leave Chazz alone would have irritated him to no end if it hadn't been for the fact that she is nearly his equal when it comes to math and physics, which got her his grudging respect; she herself is quietly impressed with him for being one of the only boys who isn't interested in her just because of her looks. Outspoken, assertive and something of a "tsundere" not unlike Maddie, Thy looks up to her X/O as an ideal officer but doesn't trust Captain Sun at first, thinking him a weak leader who only got the job through nepotism and practically handing him a "vote of no confidence" when they first meet. It takes years for him to earn her respect, but after he does, she too becomes fiercely loyal to him, seeing him as something of a big brother. In private, Thy feels distanced from her fellow Andorians because she actually dislikes warfare and violence, an "undesirable" trait for a member of a "warrior race," and this is why she chose navigation over weapons or security when picking her major.

Communications: Lt. Cmdr. Estelle Gavazza. Nationality: Italian. The younger sister of Admiral Gavazza, who is over 15 years her senior, Estelle often felt like she grew up in the shadow of her powerful big brother. Proud, sardonic and independent, Her greatest desire is to establish her own reputation outside of her brother's achievements, and she seriously dislikes being compared to the admiral. She was less than impressed when she discovered that she was being transferred to a prototype ship that wasn't really going to go anywhere, then even more dismayed to realize that her brother had put his own protege in command. Like Niva and Sakura, she has no issue with being lost in Andromeda and doesn't feel in a rush to get home because here, finally, she has the chance to forge her own path away from her brother's shadow. The ship's resident deadpan snarker, she tends to keep to herself at first and is uneasy around Toby, Maddie, and Sakura as they were her brother's students. She sometimes likes to switch languages mid-sentence just to grate on her shipmates' nerves. In private, Estelle is actually affiliated with Starfleet Intelligence and has some prior ties with Section 31, as does her brother. She was put on the Farrington because the ship's critical role in the Federation's plans to resist the Terran Empire make it important that an eye be kept on internal communications among the crew - making her something of a mole. This part of her role has no meaning when the ship is in Andromeda, but it won't stay under the table forever and will have consequences later.

Chief Medical Officer: Damien Tudor, M.D. Nationality: American. Captain Sun's old academy roommate, the two men have not seen each other in many years. He used to be best friends with Sakura Sun, Maddie Carpentier and his roomie, M. Tobias Sun; Toby actually managed to convince Damien to be the attending physician for the Starfleet Academy fencing team for two years when he planned to take the team to the All-Federation Championships. But the two cadets were assigned to separate ships after academy graduation, as Tudor was driven by curiosity to go to the very edges of known space and transferred to the Department of Colonial Operations; while on a mission, he was involved in a humanitarian disaster that caused him great emotional trauma, something he still doesn't like to talk about (in reality I haven't figured out what happened to him ). Still suffering from a significant amount of PTSD, Dr. Tudor wanted an assignment that seemed like it would put his new shipmates in a minimal amount of danger and it was with this in mind that he agreed to become CMO on the Farrington. Unfortunately, the ship ended up lost in uncharted space - the last thing he wanted from the job - causing him a tremendous amount of despair and leaving him in a pessimistic, cranky mood (he seems to act like McCoy at first, but for different and more tragic reasons whereas Bones is just naturally cranky). It's up to his old friends to restore the curious, optimistic, adventurous young man he once was. Dr. Tudor and Sakura Sun frequently tease each other, something that began in their academy years when he unintentionally made a remark about her nature as a machine that rubbed her the wrong way (don't ever call Sakura a "machine" ) and she wouldn't let him off the hook about it. She actually has a crush on him, and they will eventually become the 3rd main couple among the crew.

***

It would be very interesting to see what would happen if the two crews met each other, but it would also depend on when it would happen. (Considering her first flight, Calius would probably get along quite well with the more "progressive" members of Farrington's crew such as Sakura and Niva who like pushing things to the limits.)

Much of the drama between the Farrington's crew gets ironed out the hard way during the ship's 5 long years spent out of the Milky Way Galaxy. By the time they come home, they've been forged into a "band of brothers" - they trust each other, they know what their ship can do, they're relaxed and still kooky but completely professional and they'd die for their captain in a heartbeat as they know he'd do the same for them.

Admiral Gavazza and Starfleet Command almost can't believe it's true, but it took 5 years for these guys to get to that level. And this is precisely where they need to be for the war with the Mirror Universe, because if the Farrington crew went out to fight a war in the state they were in when they got lost in Andromeda, they'd probably end up killing each other before the Terran Empire assault fleet even fired a shot.

I guess that's sort of what I was trying to get at when I took the crew characters and revamped them. I originally hadn't developed them very well, but when I refined my concepts in 2007-2008, I realized that I needed to find a way to have everybody stand out as an ensemble so that they were all needed, they all had a place, they could all interact with each other in unique ways and - more importantly - everybody got a well-defined, visible, concrete plot arc. You basically want your people to end up in a different psychological "place" than they were when they started and all of my crew characters definitely do - and, more importantly, it all feels natural.

I was really concerned about that because the last thing you want to do is make your characters do something that doesn't feel like what they would naturally want to do. It's good that you decided to reboot your continuity to make young Calius less weak, but I think it should always be on your mind that what she does or doesn't do should always emerge naturally from the kind of person she is.

Oh, and about having Calius fake not being able to hear Starfleet HQ telling her to stop? Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the greatest hero of the British Navy, did something similar during one of his early fleet battles in the Napoleonic Wars; I think it was the Battle of the Nile (I'm pretty sure it was at the Nile but it may have been at Copenhagen) when he disregarded an unwise order from his senior admiral to cease fire by deliberately putting his telescope to his bad eye and claiming that he couldn't see the signal flags. He subsequently went on to win the battle and rout the enemy fleet. So there's definitely precedent for this.

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SaddlePatch In reply to Kinola14 [2012-01-18 22:56:17 +0000 UTC]

^w^ Thanks!

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SaddlePatch In reply to MoodyBeatleGirl [2012-01-18 22:55:49 +0000 UTC]

Dawwwwwww, Im glad meh arts makes you happy :3

And yes....FFF DAMN HOMEWORK!!

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SaddlePatch In reply to Ordaka [2012-01-18 22:55:24 +0000 UTC]

Thank you!

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SaddlePatch In reply to Jarvisrama99 [2012-01-18 01:11:18 +0000 UTC]

Uh??

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Jarvisrama99 In reply to SaddlePatch [2012-01-18 01:31:04 +0000 UTC]

No she seemed like a nice character. Then she dies. Dark.

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SaddlePatch In reply to Jarvisrama99 [2012-01-18 15:11:01 +0000 UTC]

Oh lol shes not really dead XD

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Jarvisrama99 In reply to SaddlePatch [2012-01-19 00:21:38 +0000 UTC]

Thank god. I like her.

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SaddlePatch In reply to Trekkiegirl15 [2012-01-18 22:55:11 +0000 UTC]

XD Thanks!!! Im just rusty on drawing my Trek OCs XD

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SaddlePatch In reply to Cainstiels [2012-01-18 22:54:51 +0000 UTC]

I APPROVE OF THIS!

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Cainstiels In reply to SaddlePatch [2012-01-18 23:07:34 +0000 UTC]

:'D

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