Posted by Gamemaster Wombat (Gamemaster) in Unroth III Surface- Main Sim
Snip

Dira looked around, the overwhelming sensations fro the crowd pressing against her mind. While she could block a great deal of it, she did not have the ability to block all of it, which meant she was drained faster. But her focus right now was on caring for those who might get pushed to the side, and to seek out those in distress that she could help. But as she moved through the settlement, Myqian exuded a calmness, knowing it could help even just a little.

Commander Myqian, XO

Mentally the masses were exhausted and scared, not that their faces would ever show it, any example of weakness would not be indicated by a Romulan after all. Generally though they were just tired. Tired of lines, tired of being hungry, physically exhausted, and in some cases longing for a home they would never see again. The natives of Unroth were only a little better, as they still had homes but even a few of them were mingled into the crowd. The increase in population lead to an increase in food demands which caused massive shortages. People were just tired.

Except for the children. Children always seemed to have an edge of curiosity to them, even if it was tempered with nervousness.

For his part, Oscar had been happy to be the mute curiosity of the group, although he couldn’t resist answering a few questions with snide comments. As the time progressed, he had discussions such as the following:

“Why are you wearing that?”
“See the green? Didn’t you know that Orion is contagious?”

And:

“Are you immunocompromised?”
“Well, I mean, if you consider not bathing regularly to be intrinsically compromising to the immune system, sure.”

And of course the old favorite for any away mission:

“Do we have some sort of disease that you haven’t told us about?”
“Nobody else is wearing isolation suits out here, so I’m pretty sure that I’m just paranoid.”

People behind those questioning individuals in line had chosen not to engage verbally with Oscar with anything more than an admission (or at least that was the word that Oscar found appropriate to describe it) of gratitude for his assistance.

Oscar Cascarrabias
Engineering

Most of these grouchy comments lead to raised eyebrows, side long looks, and huffs of indignation, but mostly people left him alone when they could.

After a moment though, the flamboyant producer, Golfink, appeared at Oscar’s side. “How much longer do we have to be here?” he whined at the engineer. “Aren’t the fed enough by now?” He looked around and frowned, “So sad what happened to them though. Really is tough luck.”

GM Wombat

Oscar sighed. The plan to leave the whole crew stranded in a shuttle craft at the Starbase had been so promising, especially with those enthusiastic crew members who saw Cascarrabias as some sort of savior ready and willing to help. But of course, Golfink had jumped in and told everybody that they already had warp-jump and warp-flight visuals from the actual USS Nightingale, so getting more of the Ogawa when they could just doctor existing footage was a waste of time. On the one hand, Oscar had to admire the laziness; on the other hand, Oscar hated that they were still stuck with people just trying to make good footage for the Federation at large, with no concern whether they were actually helping the Ogawa crew.

“We’re here to give out supplies, not count heads,” Oscar replied. “Or rather, everyone else is. I got wrangled into it because I walked out the wrong door. I’m guessing you were expecting something more exciting or motivational?”

Cascarrabias looked around at the people milling about.

“Either way, tough luck would be having a replicator system malfunction to only make hot bananas, no matter what you order,” Oscar remarked dryly, remembering a technical report a friend (one of the few he had) had sent him for a laugh. “What happened to these people is a catastrophe followed by total societal collapse due to a sudden power vacuum left by the annihilation of their central governing bodies and their central star system. That one Vulcan may have kept that supernova from doing any more damage, but it’s not a great outcome. I may not believe in any particular religion, but if not for the fact that stars go nova more frequently than we like to admit, I’d almost call it divine judgment - although whether by a benevolent or a malicious deity, I wouldn’t begin to say.”

Oscar realized what he had just said, and was glad that only Golfink was there at that moment, and that, as far as Oscar could tell, the producer didn’t have any recording devices at the ready.

Oscar Cascarrabias,
Engineering