We had arrived at New Romulus 2 days prior. I was not allowed to go anywhere near the space dock as the ship was not quite complete. Koruk and I spent the time wandering around the wilderness taking samples of this and that. We came across a secluded pool of water and after completing several tests found that the water was fine. We shed our uniforms and dove into it and swam around for several hours. I enjoyed the water and thought it strange that I didn't choose an aquatic exploration path. We were just climbing out to dry off in the sun and have a little lunch (not really lunch but some sort of paste on dry crackers from our packs) when my comm badge buzzed. It was Commander Resoli, "Admiral Anderson, when you two are quite finished playing around would you kindly put some clothes on so I can beam you up to the Phantom. I have a problem and I need the two of you to help solve it."

"Give us 10 minutes then we will beam up, and stop spying on me or you will find yourself scrubbing the bulk heads in an EV suit! Parker Out!" I exclaimed and tapped the badge.

"You do not seem to be in too much of a hurry to see your new ship, Admiral." Koruk stated.

"The ship isn't going anywhere" I said, "I'd rather finish this last day on the planet enjoying your company and I intend to take as long as I want."

"Well, I think we should go now and make an appearance on your ship. It is likely they are not prepared for an inspection. I understand the crew is all on board now. The last batch from the academy took their stations yesterday." Koruk said with a typical Vulcan smile.

"Fine lets go" I said getting up and getting dressed.

We were surrounded by sparkling lights and within a few seconds materialized in what I assumed was the Captains Quarters. An announcement was made ship wide that I was on board. "Convenient." I stated and walked into the bedroom area stripping once again and stepping into the sonic shower. Koruk followed doing the same. After we had showered we replicated new uniforms; Mine was white with yellow gold shoulders and my rank across my right pectoral. "Ready?" I asked Koruk as I fit my com badge on the left pectoral.

"Yes, Admiral." He stated finishing up his own adornments.

We left my quarters and headed down a long corridor to the turbo lift that took us directly to engineering. The doors opened and I expected chaos, what I actually saw was perfection. The engineering room gleamed with newness and the crew stood at attention expecting my arrival.

"This looks like an inspection" I stated.

"It is, Sir." Resoli chimed. "If you will follow me I will give you the tour."

"No need. Send the specs and all modifications made to my ready room I will review them later. For now, introduce me to the team here and call my bridge officers." I stated and walked over to the warp core. "I have never seen this configuration before, and the crystals are out of alignment."

"Sir, that's the problem I can't quite get them, will you take a look?" Resoli asked.

I tapped on a console, sorted through the specs and called up the alignment program. Pulling a sonic alignment tool from my pocket I tapped a few interfaces walked over to the dilithium chamber and activated the tool. The crystal alignment took a few moments but was completed easily. "This is first year engineering." I stated. Just then the doors slid open and in walked several officers. I turned to greet them and they were standing at attention. "At ease! Good God is everyone going to be this stiff for the next 5 years?" I noticed a young officer with an optical device. I approached him. "You were assimilated?" I asked.

"Yes Sir, I was." he replied.

"What is your station, and how long have you been aboard ship" I asked

"Tactical, Sir. Three months. I have been fine tuning the ships weapon systems as well as organizing security" he replied.

"I want a complete report on your time here by 0500." I said. He produced a pad and handed it to me. "Thank you, I am sure you have duties requiring your attention, dismissed."

I went through the same process with each of my bridge officers and each of them had their reports ready. By the time I had finished I had 8 different pads. I handed these to Resoli. "Send these to my ready room along with yours commander."

Surprised by the blog, well yes. Surprised by the many responses (both good and bad), yes. Surprised by your Human Nature, well no. You are an amazing person, and no I will not call you master (yesterdays Nukura runs). :laugh:

I heard about it here on the Stonewall forums as I do not generally visit public forums because of all the trolls. It can be difficult to sift through crap for an answer to something. I did take the time to read through about half of the responses to your Guest Blog. There are still many many individuals that don't understand the message, both yours and that of the Star Trek premise. I look forward to next weekend to see how many people drop in to the events.

Well done Nick! :woohoo:

Now that the weekend's coming to a close, I wanted to post something here.

This weekend has been emotionally exhausting. When I was writing the Guest Blog, I never thought I'd get the reaction I did. I thought it'd be a great way to advertise the Pride Weekend and, personally, I was a bit honored to be worthy to be on Star Trek Online's blog, but I never expected this.

Don't let the thread replies fool you. The response to the blog has been unanimously positive. I've received mails, tells, emails, Facebook messages, and carrier pigeons thanking me for the blog post, for creating Stonewall Fleet and (This was probably the most emotional for me.) being such a good spokesperson for the glbt community.

People have told me stories about how Stonewall Fleet is the only place they feel comfortable because in real life they live in non-accepting areas. People have confessed stories about how Stonewall Fleet helped them come to terms with their orientation or helped them admit that they were differently gendered. One person told me I was a credit to humanity. The thanks have been in English, French, German and nerd. When PUGing one of the Nukura missions, I was recognized by a player as the blog writer and he was so happy just to run a mission with me. I've been brought to tears more times I can count this weekend.

While I really love Stonewall Fleet, I never imagined it could mean so much to other people. I usually think of Stonewall Fleet as just some guild in an MMO that I run. Let's face it, in the rest of the world, Guild Leaders and Trekkies aren't considered the coolest people in the world. But all of this has been a rather uplifting. That I could help so many people. (Don't worry though, I won't let it go to my head.)

I'm kinda speechless here. I'm not really sure where I'm going at this point, just that I've been so moved this weekend. I thank you all for the support and the praise.

I suppose the last thing I wanted to say was that I first contacted Brandon about the Guest Blog over a month ago. It killed me to keep it a secret the whole time, but I really wanted it to be a surprise for you all. So where you surprised? How did you first find out about it?

Quote by Jerran

" Didn't Paula Dean just use that one in another form?

I mean - right before she fried it in butter, y'all.

Yeah, I'm too old, too. >.

It is a lot of fun, though, to feed the trolls on that forum, watching them turn themselves into pretzels with their contortionist logic. I just can't wait to see the classic bigot line of, "But some of my best friends are gay!" Didn't Paula Dean just use that one in another form?

Congratulations NicholasJohn16! Very nice piece highlighting one of the more important messages of Star Trek. And, as has already been said, an article that is both good in content and good in that the developers featured it in such a prominent way. Some forum responses of less than pleasing quality, but a lot of support too.

Thanks for the support and feedback! I am implementing a few changes now.

Emergency Power to shields on pets? Really? They just need to give them subnuke, attack pattern alpha and reverse shield polarity. Yikes.

From the tooltip it looks like the different types will be Scimitar, Falchion, and Tulwar. And yeah, the ships in Azure Nebula are Republic ships so the Falchion is probably what they'll be releasing.

I have no idea how they're going to fit into the game from a story standpoint. Probably stole the plans from the Tal'Shiar or something like that. Maybe the Remans know how to build them since it was really a Reman ship in the movie, not Romulan.

So if we see the drones is that to play into this being a Tal'Shiar style ship?
Or liberated from the Tal'Shiar?

OH and possible play on the ship classes as we can now see the "Falchion" class in the Azure Nebula Rescue - Scimitar, Falchion, (Another single-edged sword possibly a Cutlass?)

Definitely enjoyed - two minor bits of adjustment if you're inclined:

* Beaming onto the Theodesius, one of my officers got stuck in a console; the beam-in needs to be shifted a bit;
* The engine room was a little..."busy" all at once.

I'd so play this!

Great news, thank you for sharing.

Namaste,

Drai

http://www.edgeboston.com/news/national/news//145726/boston_police_department_adopt_transgender_inclusive_policy

I have to say well done.. and congrats too...
having seen some of the forum posts, its made it even more concrete that I have chosen the right fleet to be a family member of, and to feel relaxed in, to have fun, be myself and not to hide.

All though I am a bit quiet on chat and vent. Its made me proud to have stonewall fleet, float above my ship

Just finished it! Excellent story! Loved the snarky guy at the first and loved the ending.... Oh Shi...! :)

It was a long read and that may turn a lot of people off. The ground and space battles were cool. Your settings were awesome!

A great piece and, I would say, pretty historic entry into the annals of MMORPGs across the board. They are many games out there that would never embrace the diversity of their members in the way of STO clearly has by publicising this blog post and thus demonstrating a commitment to equality in the universe.
It amazes me that anyone could call themselves a fan of Star Trek yet be a "phobe" of any variety - it would be in completely contradiction to everything Gene and Majel Roddenberry stood for and believed.
But I am pleased to see that the response of haters out there has been relatively weak and unscientific - clearly their minds could never conceive of warp capable flight - perhaps they should be allowed to join a new faction representing those violent prehistoric types that regularly appeared on the Original Series.

Title: Rose Tinted Mirror (ST-HUMXM260Z)
Author: isthisscience
Faction: Federation (Rom Friendly)
Level Requirement: Capt.
Author Notes: Last night there was a break in at UESPA's base on Titan. One Efrosian was captured. UESPA has been unable to determine what they were doing there and have requested assistance from Starfleet security. Given a connection between the Efrosian and your ship, you've been assigned to assist them. Beam down to Earth Space Dock and give any assistance you can.

This is my first mission to the foundry. Sorry for any minor textual errors, was a bit excited that the foundry was back up so was typing a bit to fast! Been wanting to do this for a while to get some ideas out, and also get a few other LGBT characters into a mainstream story. Let me know what you think :).

EDIT: See also my second release Your Mission Has Ended.