The MetaDrives Mystery - Out of Character Explanation
24 Dec 2016Jellicoe
The MetaDrives Mystery story was an attempt to write up my CMDR's actions during the recent MetaDrives/Raan Corsen storylines and the (very peripheral) part he played. The fun (and difficult part) was combining in game events with information learned out of game and finding a way to explain how Jellicoe in the game universe leaned things that I found out from places like here, Reddit of YouTube. I actually invented very little that happened in my telling of the story (a couple of minor encounters) and certainly nothing that affected the main thrust of the story.The facts of what happened are these: A story appeared on Galnet that MetaDrives Inc were in financial trouble and that Sirius Corp ere looking to bail them out, a few days later a local story was published in Chi Orionis (MetaDrives home system) that the Earth Defence Fleet (a player Corp and the ruling faction of Chi Orionis) were trying to broker a deal for Core Dynamics to take over MetaDrives to keep Federal control over any experimental technology in development. Several weeks later another Galnet story broke that the MetaDrives CEO had died, that Sirius had bought out the company and that a minor employee called Raan Corsen was on the run in a stolen company Eagle. As the story broke Earth Defence Fleet CMDR's pursued Raan offering sanctuary in return for information. Raan escaped, was then found in LHS 2088 by the EDF who pursued him to Alioth where his ship crashed and he was (is) presumed dead.
The facts behind Jellicoe's story as he played a frustrated part always one step behind the action are these - during a lull in the Kahina/Salomé storyline I decided to look into the MetaDrives story because it looked interesting and fitted in with the Children of Raxxla's ethos of uncovering mysteries explained in the story by Jellicoe's conversation with the other CoR consuls. Jellicoe's conversation with the Imperial intelligence agent, EDF officer and Lobanovsky the data broker were simply ways to explain the situation and how Jellicoe had learned the background details. Raan Corsen being tracked down to LHS 2088 came from a YouTube video posted by whoever was playing the character which included a small (less than one second) clip showing his view from the cockpit including his location, great for game play and advancing the plot but how to explain it in my story? I decided to go with Raan trying to contact someone in a way that was difficult to track down but not impossible for an expert (ever tried freeze framing a YouTube video) as a reasonable in game explanation. The incident with the wing of Sirius Security ships was based on an actual interdiction (though Power Play related) but the EDF ships at the landing site is a complete invention. Jellicoe's conversations with his crew are simply a tool to explain my internal thought process over a real in game mystery that I was (and still am) trying to solve. The conversation with 'November Uniform Sierra' was again a way to put into the story a discord conversation with a couple of other Children of Raxxla members in which we came to the conclusion (based on information from here, Reddit and elsewhere) that Raan Corsen was indeed working for Lady Kahina/Salomé.
The Kira character was (for me at least) an interesting one, I needed a way to explain where Jellicoe got the coordinates of Raan Corsen's crash site, obviously not from Raan, nor the EDF so who? Having gained an Alioth permit I was allied to its ruling faction (who would presumably have monitored it) so a senior executive who owed him a favour was possible but didn't seem particularly good so an old flame who still cares for him made more sense to me. Kira was originally intended to be an incidental character, wheeled on to play her part then exit stage left (I initially planned to have her murdered) but she grew as I was writing her and has already become a much more important part of Jellicoe's story than I had ever planned as anyone following it will have noticed.
I did indeed search Raan's crash site (though alas there was no challenge from a mysterious pair of Vipers) and found nothing. Jellicoe's holo-conversation with Sky Marshall Beskov of the Earth Defence Fleet was based on exchanges I had with him both on the official forum thread and via forum PM's, I hope I have done him and his group justice I did try to.