Khitomer Peace Award Winner

Reason for the award

Shane made some changes to the USS Valiant that has reinvigorated the sim and brought on new players. It went from a traditional Star Trek sim to one that occasionally works for Starfleet Intelligence. To facilitate this, the crew “stole” a decrepit ship that had previously been used by smugglers.

In a series of posts, the crew posed as smugglers to join the gang that currently owned the ship, made necessary repairs, knocked out the smugglers and left them for their bosses to find, stole the ship, changed the transponder codes, renamed it the Adelaide, and took it back to Federation space. While doing so, some of the crew found several smuggler holds that held nothing of interest (if you don’t count 100-year-old Twinkies).

In addition, the Valiant crew has done several joint posts with other sims. They met on Empok Nor to experience a new club called “Neverwinter Nights.” This post led to a group called the Ashen Hand to cause some havoc in Neverwinter Nights that bled over to escalate a mission on Deep Space 5. Half of the players on the Valiant were active participants on both these other sims. The Ashen Hand and their exploits will lead to other missions and other potential joint posts. There is currently a cross-sim mission with the USS Pioneer where the Valiant will help the Pioneer capture a wanted felon on Breyet Nor in the Badlands.

Shane has been the driving force behind all of this. He discusses missions with his crew and will always listen to suggestions. Often the discussions will lead to twists or events in the current or future mission. He makes his crew feel like they’re appreciated and their ideas are welcome. And he makes writing on the sim a lot of fun.

This quarter, the Adelaide, their repurposed intel ship, answered a distress call that led them to a former Cardassian mining planet where they found most of the colonists sick and a team of stranded miners. This will lead to future problems and future joint projects.