Nexus - Eleventh Season

The Eleventh season brought Nexus to what I would call the brink of perfection. The players I�ve had for the game never meshed better than in this season. The music which became such an integral part of the gaming experience in the tenth season became even more an integral part of the series. Three of the best episodes I believe that have been done in this series came in this season, and all had strong musical scores provided for them.

Technically, we started putting the musical scores down on CD, the final move away from the taped recordings we�d used before.

It was during this season that I considered ending Nexus. It was not that I did not like the series...far from it. However, I became concerned about the quality of future episodes, and there was a general feeling that I had gone as far as I could with the series.

The eleventh season of Nexus was rated at:

Eleventh Season Episodes

220. The Fury (DD, BP, JW, ET)

After the Battle of the Kia Approaches, the Victory is assigned to the area near Tarnath, and gets involved with the defense of Tarnath from Markann invaders. In this battle, Capt. Jason Cain fights his way across the battlefield and rams his fighter into a Markann capital ship, destroying it. Soon after that battle, the group is recalled to Nexus and told about plans for a Nexus offensive. In order for the offensive to be effective, the Markann�s shipyard at Schiavett needs to be destroyed in order to create chaos in the flow of reinforcements to the front. The team is selected for the mission, and they are given command of the CS 10, which has been temporarily recommissioned for use in this assignment.

Slipping in under the cover of T/D distortion, the group sneaks aboard the main module of the Shiavett Yards. They manage to slip into the Engineering section and plant most of the charges before they are spotted. From there, it�s a running fight to plant the charges and escape, but with the help of T�Garr�s mental illusions, they barely manage to escape. The CS 10 is then forced to fight a fierce running battle as it tries to get clear of the impending explosion. When the Nexus ship is clear, the charges are detonated, and the Shiavett Yards are vaporized.

The team is reassigned to the Victory in time for the final battle of the war. The battle goes well, except for some damage sustained by the Victory in an earlier battle makes it impossible to the carrier to move at sublight speeds. This is no problem until a planet razer shows up on the battlefield with the Victory right in its sights.

All appears to be lost, but an unidentified pilot appears on the scene and makes an arcing pass low over the top of the planet razer, strafing it as she does so. She then arcs away just before the planet razer fires. The beam hits the Victory, the lights go out on the bridge, the ship shudders.... and the planet razer explodes. Later examination of the pilot�s flight tapes showed that some of the alien ship�s power grid had been hit by the strafing fire. When the ship fired, it short-circuited. The unidentified pilot turned out to be Arliss Cain, the 14 year old daughter of Jason and Stephanie Cain. Capt. Dirk DeVerst is promoted to Commodore and reassigned after this episode.

(SOUNDTRACK: Music from the movies: "Independence Day", Star Trek: Generations", and "Star Trek: First Contact", as well as the STNG episode: "Best of Both Worlds")

221. The Joke's on You (JB, BP, ET) (Guest GM: DD)

The Victory is en route to Nexus to drop Dirk DeVerst off at his new job when they receive a distress call from the Praxiteles system. Once there, they discover evidence of a wormhole in the vicinity. Not far from the wormhole, they also discover a derelict ship. Investigation of the ship reveals it to be the RHS Rhalest, of Rhagast. It�s captain is Admiral Thomas Kellens, formerly Plasma.

Kellens� explanation of the ship�s final battle against the �Xarians� is about all that the team can get from Kellens. When the Nexus search teams bring back the captain�s log and download it, they discover that the ship has contracted a computer virus from the Rhalest�s log records. Soon, access to most of the Victory�s systems is cut off, and Zandra is helpless to do anything about it. At the same time as the group is dealing with the virus, they are also attempting to solve the mystery of explosive devices left in engineering toolkits.

Arliss Cain manages to solve the computer virus problem when she and Dirk destroy the computer�s central processing node, which basically renders the computer useless. The group then turns its attention to the explosive devices. The perpetrator is eventually cornered in the shuttle bay, where he makes his escape after a short firefight. After further investigation, it was found that the man had been a prisoner aboard the Rhalest, but when the ship got engaged in battle, the criminal escaped in the confusion. The Victory delivers Dirk DeVerst to Nexus with no further troubles.

222. The Molding (DD, BP, ET)

In order for Arliss to permanently take possession of the Staff of Estirun, the staff has to bond with her. While the bonding process is taking place, the barriers between the staff and the rest of the world are weakened, and one of the two extra-dimensional beings may escape. In this case, the demonic being escapes from its imprisonment in the staff and appears to Arliss and quite a few of the rest of the crew of the Victory as Jason Cain.

Various attempts to get to the demon fail, and eventually, T�Garr, Black Widow, and some security guards end up fighting the demon. Unfortunately, the demon is able to mentally convince Arliss that the Nexus officers are trying to kill her father, and she attacks with the staff (which completes the bonding process). Unfortunately, Arliss is knocked out, and the battle continues. At some point, the angelic being in the staff attacks the demon and forces it back into the confines of the staff.

223. Viva Le France (DD, BP, ET)

The group is ordered to board a liner headed for various planets in the SE Sector to �show the flag� to the various Nexus delegates heading home after the latest parlimentary sessions. En route to Minar from Xenendar, the ship is commandeered by a criminal who fashions himself as �The Napolean of Crime�. Despite a couple of attempts to apprehend Napolean, one of which ends with T�Garr being imprisoned in the ship�s airlock, the trick that worked in this case was Black Widow, who appeared on the Bridge dressed in her evening gown, and with a little mental illusion thrown in from T�Garr, Napolean thought that the Lady Josephine had stepped onto the Bridge. As Napolean wooed Black Widow, T�Garr slipped out of the airlock. When Napolean found out that T�Garr had escaped from the airlock, he orders the guards to kill the Nexus officer, but T�Garr plants the illusion in one of the guards� mind that Napolean had just ordered the other guard to fire on HIM. The enraged guard promptly activates an anti-personell gernade and throws it at Napolean, killing him.

A trio of guards manage to escape from the liner and report to a mysterious figure, who orders their execution for failure.

224. A Frame of Time (DD, BP, JW)

While on vacation at Terra, Chrono is accosted at a speech he is giving by a man who claims that he is a fraud, that he doesn�t really know how time works, and that he will soon find out EXACTLY how time works. That night, once everyone is asleep, they begin to have dreams about things that have happened in the past. The first dream takes the group back to events in �The Admiral�s Son� where they again have to subdue Kyle Fictner.

The next dream takes them to the attack on the Schiavett Station detailed in �The Fury� The infiltration again goes off without too much trouble, but the CS 10 makes a T/D jump away from the station before the commanding officer throws the detonation switch, and therefore, the ship has to go back and make sure the detonation of the station occurs. During the escape from the engineering section of the station, Dirk opened a portal to the elemental plane of fire, then got trapped there when he attempted to open yet another door instead of escaping back through the first.

The third dream was of events surrounding the last battle of the war at Oberkampf. Events happen almost as they did originally, except TWO planet razers show up. Arliss Cain again makes her fly-over of the planet razer, as does Phoenix. When both ships fire on the carrier, only Phoenix does not disbelieve the explosion that destroys all three ships, and is killed. The Clockmaker makes his escape.

225. Secession (DD, BP, ET)

The Victory is sent to the Oana system to attempt to prevent that system from seceeding from Nexus and joining the Markann Technocracy. When talks with the governor fail, and a confrontation with the Markann Emissary M�Garren produce only frustration, the team seeks out the opposition voice that drew Nexus to Oana. The find a television station owner who shows them footage from a supposed battle in which due to the destruction of a planet razer, a nearby planet�s atmosphere is stripped away. The officers from the Victory recognize this footage as being from the 4th Battle of Oberkampf. However, the footage of the planet�s destruction is fake because the battle actually took place in the outer reaches of the Oberkampf system.

The group is able to present this evidence to the planet�s legislature during the debate on the subject, and the vote is an overwhelming rejection of the move for secession. M�Garren then calmly returns to his ship and heads back across the border.

226. A Glimpse of the Past
(JB, DD, BP) (Guest GM: ET)

The group discovers a Markann dreadnought that was built a couple thousand years ago while investigating the theft of ships from the Terra Shipyards. The dreadnought is lost when it makes a warp jump through a partially built subspace field.

227. The Struggle Begins (BP, ET)

As the adventure opens, Dirk DeVerst is rescued from the elemental plane of fire by Lucien. In return, Dirk agrees to become an avatar of Lucien and to serve him. Dirk's motivation for this outside of the idea that he is no longer in the elemental plane of fire is the hope that he can somehow reform Lucien. The group is contacted by Lucien and told of a renegade time traveller's plot to alter the history of the High Nexus by tampering with the events surrounding Beth March's first battle with Morden Zaraster, the twisted man who would later become the villainous Count Mephistopheles. After a brief argument from Captain T'Garr over the authorization for the use of NSF personell in this mission, a team is selected, and they board Lucien's ship and head back to the Nexus of the year NY 47. (Current date as of this episode was NY 361.)

While on approach to the planet Nexus, the ship is caught in a tractor beam from the surface. Lucien has everyone bail from the shuttle via transporters and they arrive safely on the surface near a small city.

The first thing the group runs into once they arrive in the city is an armored vehicle that is moving down the street toward them mowing down people as it goes. A voice blares from the vehicle: "This is the consequences of not paying the taxes and duties owed to the master of these domains!" After a brief argument from T'Garr, who doesn't want to get involved for fear of altering the timeline, the group destroys the vehicle.

The search for Lucien's ship takes them to the outskirts of the city, where they discover a tunnel leading to a series of underground caverns. While exploring these caves, the group comes across a casino room. Unfortunately, they are being watched from the next room by the local crime boss, who is the owner of these particular caves. The crime boss orders his guards to kill the intruders, as well as the rest of the guests in the room. The guards burst into the room from its various doors and start slaughtering the people there. Knockout gas starts pouring from the air vents. The group manages to dodge and fight their way to a door, except for Arliss who succombs to the gas. Unfortunately, the door the group exits the room from connects into the throne room of the crime boss.

The group confronts the crime boss, demanding the return of their ship. The crime boss refuses, and opens a pit trap beneath the group. The group falls into a pit filling with the corpses of the people killed in the casino. While searching for a way out, Chrono discovers the body of Arliss, and upon checking, discovers that she isn't quite dead, despite having taken a blow to the head. When he attempts to use her staff to heal her however, the staff, still thinking its in a combat situation, attacks him with a lightning bolt which kills him instantly. The group decides to climb out of the pit using the chute the corpses are coming down from. They finally manage to reach the now empty casino room.

The group makes their way to the hangar bay. En route they are met by Dirk DeVerst, who was sent by Lucien to help out the group. They enter the hangar bay and get into a firefight with the guards there. During the battle, in which the crime boss is killed, the NSF officers manage to get Lucien's ship and make their getaway.

The group heads to an automated steel mill that Morden Zaraster used as his hideout. They manage to find a control room overlooking the giant vat of molten steel which dominates the center of the mill, and the catwalk that crosses some distance above the vat. They then wait for the renegade to show himself.

The renegades appear in the form of two Knights of Justice, one of whom sizes up the situation in regard to Zaraster, who has made his appearance on the catwalk. The other knight sees the characters and moves to defend his comrade from them. The group, seeing that the Knights are the ones responsible for the alteration of the timeline, attack. In a brutal battle, the group manages to defeat the Knights with virtually no help from Lucien. Events then unfold as they were meant to...Beth arrives on the scene and after attempting to convince Zaraster to stop his acts of vengeance against Kaebek the Wanderer, decides to fight in order to prevent Zaraster from carrying out his plans. The two fight to exhaustion. Beth again attempts to sway Zaraster, but to no avail. Zaraster responds by saying, "You and your associates have stolen the glory, fame, and credit that should have been mine. You have stolen from me for the last time! I swear to you upon the graves of everyone buried on this planet that if I am allowed to live, I will be the end of everything in your world. I will destroy your friends, your loved ones, everything you defend or stand for, and in the end, at the instant you die, you will look into my face and know that I have killed you!" At first, this doesn't register with Beth, but then he repeats it when he sees her face.

When Zaraster repeats his threat, Beth snaps and attacks him in a fit of righteous rage, using her force sword to hack Zaraster to the edge of the catwalk. Zaraster slips off the edge of the catwalk and falls between the railings, managing to grab onto one of them in the last instant. Beth deactivates her force sword and attempts to rescue Zaraster but Zaraster once again shouts that he will kill her if he is allowed to live. With that, Beth lets him fall into the molten steel boiling in the vat below. Physically exhausted, mentally shattered, Beth manages to stagger from the steel mill.

After Beth leaves, a grapping hook descends from the far corner of the ceilng toward the vat. It reaches down and pulls a molten blob out of the vat, placing it on the catwalk...thus Mephistopheles is born.

This episode is generally seen as one of the best episodes in the Nexus series.

(SOUNDTRACK: Music from all three of the original Star Wars movies)

228. Hail to the Emperor (DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant is ordered to the area near Riverland to make observations of the Aann Rift, an area of spatial and temporal instability that forms a huge barrier in the NE Sector and makes travel from one side of the sector to the other rather impossible. Once on the scene the crew finds a ship inside the rift. Despite their best efforts, the crew fails to rescue the stranded ship, in fact, they themselves become trapped in the rift. After being bombarded by the swirling currents within the rift, the Valiant passes through a temporal/dimensional doorway. While attempting to get through the rift, Captain T'Garr is injured when a jolt knocks him off of his feet. He hits his head on a nearby railing and is knocked unconscious.

Unfortunately by this time, the ship has sustained major damage to its warp drive systems, and efforts to repair the damage fail. Once the Valiant is through the rift, the first officer orders the ship evacuated. The Valiant shoots out of the rift trailing free particles and escape pods until the warp core goes critical and explodes, destroying the ship.

By the time T'Garr awakens, the group is being confronted by a ship. The commander of the alien ship recognizes T'Garr as "Emporer T'Garr", and escorts the group to the flagship of a nearby fleet. Once there, T'Garr becomes convinced that he is in fact "Emporer T'Garr" when the computer recognizes his voice and retina scans. He decides that the people who were with him earlier are actually subversives who are plotting against him, and he has them jailed. The Nexus group, however, escapes from the brig and manages to capture T'Garr and escape in a ship.

Not long after the characters leave, the Pirate Queen, Elisa Darwin arrives on the flagship and finding that T'Garr has been kidnapped, vows to find him and the people that took him.

229. Flight of the Emperor
(DD, BP, ET)

The Nexus group carrying the kidnapped Colossus T'Garr (who is kept in a drugged state) flees across the border from the Empire of T'Garr into the Conglomeration of Free Worlds, a state subservient to the will of the Terran Hegemony, the arch-nemesis of T'Garr's empire. Before crossing the border, the group has to outfly a patrol from the Empire at Pevensey, which they barely manage to do, however damage sustained in the battle force them to land at Samstead, in the CFW.

T'Garr in the meantime, awakens and makes as much trouble as he can for the group. The group's doctor runs out of sedatives and the group ends up using force on their captain after the replicator is unable to produce the correct serum for a sedative. Arliss nearly kills T'Garr with one of her lightning bolts. The group manages to make it to Samstead, where they pick up needed supplies. T'Garr however, uses this opportunity to take over the shuttle. The group gets back and manages to fight T'Garr into submission again when the Pirate Queen shows up and after a brief firefight, takes the entire group aboard her ship. Once there, she informs them that they are heading to Terra, over the objections of T'Garr, who wants them to be returned to the empire to stand trial for their crimes.

230. Death of the Emperor
(DD, BP, ET)

Upon arriving at Terra, the group finds that they have been "bought" by Alexander Lucien, who explains to them that they are in an alternate dimension, in the year NY 462, where the High Nexus decided to withdraw from the affairs of Nexus and let things go as they will. The persons responsible for this change were Colossus T'Garr and Beth. Apparently T'Garr managed to convince Beth soon after the events of Episode 227 that the High Nexus should stop "interfering" with Nexus. Beth then brought the matter to the High Nexus Council and it passed. Those who wanted to continue interfering had to go live in Nexus. The rest remained secluded on the High Nexus plane...and without the subtle aid of the High Nexus in various matters, Nexus dissolved into a collection of feuding states.

Upon discovering the group, Lucien brings them to Terra with the purpose of sending them home, along with Colossus T'garr, but he wants T'Garr to pay a heavy price for a return to his old life.

While Lucien is dealing with T'Garr, a fleet from the Empire of T'Garr arrives and engages the forces of the Terran Hegemony.

Even while under threat of death, even while being forced to witness a surreal setting on Carmague in which he sees his wife and daughter laying dead in the remains of a building burned out by one of the initial battles of the now-endless wars, Colossus refuses to compromise his ideological independence, and in the end, he impresses Lucien enough that he realizes that it simply would do no good to kill his nemesis.

The group is escorted by Lucien to Titan after T'Garr manages to convince the Terran commander, (who is none other than Beth March) to agree to a temporary cease-fire. In a hollowed-out asteroid near Titan, Lucien reveals that once the Valiant was destroyed, he took it upon himself to build an exact replica. The group then heads home, but when they attempt to cross the dimensional barrier, the T/D Drive malfunctions and they end up somewhere else...

GM's Notes:

The Emporer Trilogy used three different versions of NIN's "Head Like a Hole" in the opening sequences, as well as Queensryche's "Damaged", "Get a Life", and "Hero".

231. Markann Prime (DD, BP, ET)

After the T/D misjump at the end of the last adventure, the crew of the Valiant finds themselves in possibly the last place they'd want to be...right outside the Markann homeworld, Markann Prime. They manage to hide long enough to start repair work on the ship's systems, which have sustained damage. They are thus quite astonished to learn that someone from the surface of Markann Prime is hailing them using the old Nexus DST frequencies. When the captain answers the hail, he finds a message telling him to select a team and meet a person only identifying himself as "K" at coordinates included in the hail.

After a dangerous manuver to get the Valiant into position, the group uses a shuttle as a platform and they make an unassisted drop onto the planet's surface. They have a brief run-in with a guard before getting to their destination...a restaurant in the capital city's human quarter.

While Black Widow almost blows the group's cover by telling the bartender that she is an Emissary, T'Garr manages to convince a local gambler to help him at the roulette wheel. Between all of the group's efforts, they manage to find their contact, a member of the Purist movement who is out to stop Emissary M'Rell's plans. To do so, he gives the Nexus crew information on troop movements and anticipated deployments. He also gives T'Garr a layout of the building that houses M'Rell's residence.

After sending Arliss and Lucky to a designated meeting point, T'Garr and Black Widow infiltrate M'Rell's residence and actually make it past the security systems...or so they think. When they discover M'Rell, she appears to be asleep, but when T'Garr attempts to wake her, another M'Rell steps out of the next room. She informs the Nexus duo that the sleeping form is a clone, and after a battle of wits ensues between M'Rell and T'Garr, M'Rell allows them to leave, assuming that either her security forces or the ships in the vicintiy will deal with the intruders. Black Widow doesn't leave however without inserting a computer virus into the main computer.

The group fights a running battle from the meeting point to a point where the ship can safely transport them aboard. Once aboard, the Valiant moves away, but is pursued by various defenders, including three planet razers. The Valiant barely manages to escape before the planet razers can power up and fire again.

The information gained in this adventure proves invaluable in the planning of the Jhelai Offensive, which is successful in pushing the Markann out of the Khitai holdings. Unfortunately, Black Widow submitted part of the information through NIS channels, and T'Garr discovered this when he went to reference the information in his report to the NSF and found it missing.

232. The Inquisition Convenes
(DD, BP, ET)

Due to events in Episode 231, Colossus T'Garr is brought up on charges of negligence. These charges are supported by a faked NIS report submitted by Black Widow. The report was altered by a low-level NIS agent to make T'Garr look a lot worse than the original report did. However, while on the stand, the prosecution got Black Widow to agree with the faked report. Only after the news of the fake was uncovered by the crew of the Valiant and disclosed to the court were procedings adjourned pending the capture of the culprit, who escaped from the NOC with Black Widow hot on his tail.

The command staff of the Valiant were ordered to take a couple weeks of rest leave at this point.

233. The Invisible World (DD, ET)

Lt. Sandreyla (Black Widow) and a tykay mercenary are trailing Sgt. Chau when suddenly they are flying wildly through a planet's atmosphere and they are forced by the strong gravitic pull to make a crash landing.

Capt. T'garr, Arliss, and Lt. Kit are en route to a shuttle rondezvous when an unidentified planet appears on their scanners. When they attempt to investigate this planet, which appeared in the middle of the most heavily travelled area in Nexus, they too are pulled down by the planet's high gravity field and make a crash landing.

Sandreyla manages to find the other NSF officers and together, they discover a derelict Nexus shuttle, which apparently has been on this planet for over 2500 years. While the officers are investigating the ship, the group is surrounded by some of the natives who are hiding in the forest surrounding the clearing where the derelict is located. T'Garr's attempts to communicate with the natives almost end in bloodshed when the leader of the elven natives attacks one of his illusions with a fireball. After that, the leader contacts Sandreyla and tells her that she is interested in meeting these new people.

The group is invited to the elves' village for rest and food. While there, the elven maiden tells them of a person simply called the "Black One" who lives in a fortress in the mountains to the north. She tells the group that he has lived there for about 2000 years, and that he is continuously attempting to exapnd the lands he controls. The group decides that the "Black One" is actually Sgt. Chau.

234. The Black One (DD, BP, ET)

The group is awakened in the elven village by the sound of an alarm being raised. The Black One has allied with foul creatures from the mountains and is attempting to take over a port town on the coast to the southeast. The Nexus officers and an elven scout party head out to recon the invading force. It turns out that the invading force of orcs and goblins is huge...more than enough to take out the city. The scout force attacks, but is easily driven off by the orcs. The group decides that the only way to ensure the safety of the city is to travel to the Black One's fortress and defeat the evil mage.

The group travels into the mountains toward the fortress. Once they get within sight of the fortress, they see that it is situated on top of a flat area of a mountain in between two peaks. Approach to the fortress looks impossible. They also see a HUGE face carved into the stone surface of the mountain, directly to the left of the fortress. (The face is about as large as two of the heads on Mt. Rushmore) As they approach the fortress, the area is wracked by earthquakes, and the group is attacked by a family or rocs which live nearby. The group finally manages to make it to the entrance to the fortress, which was hidden on the other side of the mountain. Once inside, the officers begin exploring and they find a Nexus shuttlecraft which had been reported missing. It is in perfect condition. The group also finds that the shuttle bay's surrounding walls and floor have been modified to support the shuttle. This seemingly medieval fortress is powered by electricity. It also has all of the comforts of a Nexus starbase.

Once the group finds the Black One, aka Sgt. Chau, he traps the majority of the group and dares Black Widow to betray T'Garr once more, saying "You can't hide how you really feel about him. If you go back, he'll always resent you for calling him a traitor." Chau however did not count on the resourcefulness of Lucky, who manages to slip out of his manacles and attacks Chau. A firefight then ensues, and Chau is killed.

After the battle, the group finds a tunnel leading from the basement to a underground lake. A pathway leads out into the lake, and when T'Garr follows the path, a spirit appears in front of him. It explains that the fortress is a magical area which wields great power over the planet, and that the power can be used either for good or evil, it depends on the wishes of the "master of the castle" T'Garr is declared to be the master of the castle, and he uses the fortress' navigational artifact to move the planet to an area on the fontier of Nexus. he and the group then use the shuttle Chau captured to get home.