Who will love my ironies?

Managed to at least put a dent in my inbox last night, will hopefully be clearing out the rest of it tonight. Working today, but then I get another brilliant two days off, so if I'm not on top of absolutely everything by Thursday, stab me in the goddamn face.

When last we left our valiant heroes, you were getting arrested by some jerkstore aliens.

You follow the Ganzigites for several hours until a small round object is picked up by your scanners. Ahead of you is a large, wheel-shaped structure, rotating slowly. The Ganzigites announce their arrival. Monitoring their conversation, you learn that this is the spaceport Laur-Jamil. M'K Mal once again contacts you and gives you docking instructions.

You dock the ship and wait while he checks your story. Some time later you see the Ganzigite ship leave dock. Presumably you have either been cleared, forgotten about or ignored. You decide to leave the ship and investigate the spaceport.

Inside the spaceport you follow the corridor until you are approached by a hovering device of some kind. It announces itself as a Service Robot and asks if it may be of assistance.

Oof, gotta get back in the habit of daily updates, this weekend was by turns exhausting and totally batshit insane. Somehow I have survived both the Christmas season and turning 24 now, though, so I'm really hoping things will finally settle down a bit.

RP-wise, I'm a couple of days behind on tags, forgot to tag Kate, have half an SotP written out somewhere that I should finish, but overall, I'm in a pretty good place to start the year off, I think. I finally get a freaking day off work tomorrow, so that'll be my chance to catch up.

For the record, I really fucking hate how impossible it is to get a non-wireless keyboard these days, at least here. I don't give a shit about a cord, why should I have to fight with signal strength and batteries if I don't fucking care?

Today, we have a skill roll for the MO!

Your Medical Officer comes up with a possible antidote and injects herself. She goes down to the docking bay without an EVA suit and waits. An hour later, she has still shown no signs of illness. The antidote has worked! All crew report to the Medical Section for treatment.

Back on the bridge, you set your course. Ahead of you are two planets.

Have been feeling perpetually two steps behind in everything ever since the new year started, but as this is actually a pretty big step up from the two miles behind in everything that I was feeling before, this is not actually a complaint. More a sigh of determination. Hang in there, baby~

Five hours of work, and then two days off. I can do this.

Gah, how did it take me so long to put up a new poll? Especially when this one's a fun day!

They can find no signs of the pilot. Perhaps he has died or was killed in the crash. An automatic signal, probably a type of Mayday call, is being transmitted by the ship's radio. There being nothing else to see on the planet, your crew return to the recon plane and fly back to the ship.

Landing the recon plane, the party make their way to the briefing room to report to you. As they relate their finding, you are interrupted suddenly with an urgent message: 'Captain! We have lost three of our engineering personnel who were involved with docking the recon plane. They are all dead!'

Haha, god, I had planned to cram so much in this morning, and then I managed to sleep through two alarms so now I guess that's not happening. Fuck everything, I am a mess. Off to work it is!

There's a lot to get through here today, so strap in.

The guard sees you and flurries into action. Raising its head in the air, it lets out a shrill whistle. Seconds later you look up to see that you are surrounded by alien guards, all with weapons pointed at you. You decide it best to surrender to them.

You are escorted into the castle towards a central keep, apparently the nerve centre of the castle. You explain that you wish to meet the Rain Lord. One of your guards goes off to the keep and comes back some moments later. Another group of guards comes over to take you inside the keep.

As you enter, your eyes widen. You are not in the great hall, or perhaps stateroom, you had been expecting, but in a large computer complex. The walls are lined with sophisticated control panels covered in gauges, dials and indicator lights. In the centre of the room, behind a large screen flanked with a number of keyboards, sits a human figure. As you approach, this figure turns round on his chair.

'Aha - our intruders!' chuckles the small man sitting at the controls. 'Perhaps they may be able to help with our little problem.'

The man calls himself Bran-Sel. You introduce yourselves and tell him your story. 'I may be able to help,' says Bran-Sel, 'if you are able to help me first.' He goes on to explain that, many years ago, he was an interstellar trader, carrying a cargo of sophisticated planet control computers to Gleena-3 in another sector of the galaxy. His warp drive failed and he was forced into orbit round this planet. He was able to contact Gleena-3 to explain the delay, but they would take no excuses and cancelled the order. Thus he was left with his cargo and no buyer. Facing financial ruin if he returned home, he decided to settle on the planet. Through his advanced knowledge, he was quickly hailed as a sort of god by the inhabitants, who built him a castle in which he could set up his planet control equipment. Since then he has indeed acted as a god and, by his own account, a benevolent one at that. However, some time ago he discovered a malfunction in the weather planning system which meant that he no longer had control over the weather. As the climate was normally very damp, the years of fine weather he had provided for the benefit of the inhabitants' crops had resulted in huge reserves of rain being stored in the planet's clouds. As soon as control was lost, a torrential downpour started.

'If you have a knowledge of planet control systems, and can help me get back control of the weather, I am sure the computer's knowledge of astronomy will be able to help you get back to your own universe,' promises the little man. You decide to call in your Science Officer.

Skill roll for Science Officer Spaceman!

Your Science Officer takes a clump of the weather control program back to the ship to try to analyse it on the ship's computer. It has been written in a strange language, but the computer is able to give some insight into its logic patterns. Your SO alters it slightly and runs the modified program. Within a few moments, the rain dies down. Bran-Sel is delighted and offers to use his computer to search for a suitable black hole to transport you back to your own universe. The computer locates several such black holes; unfortunately it cannot distinguish between them, but it is able to tell you that you will have to travel towards it at warp speed 3 to effect the transfer successfully.

You thank Bran-Sel for his help and beam back aboard the ship.

You leave orbit and probe with your scanners for likely destinations. Some 3.3 light years away is a large red planet which you can head towards.

You switch to warp drive and head towards the red planet. As you reduce from warp speed, you approach a small, great planet.

Feeling extremely jacked up today, all this lack of sleep and days full of zero downtime are finally catching up with me. Nevertheless, I NEED to find time to tag into things and write EPs today. Family is so exhausting.

Your Medical Officer is taken round some of the huts to see whether anything can be done.

Zoidberg gets a skill roll of his very own! Exciting!

Conditions are very primitive. Your MO notices that many of the aliens have a fever and tries a drug which appears to bring their fever down. The aliens are grateful for your help.

Your MO returns and complains of feeling unwell.

And now some weird reverse luck roll, go figure.

The feeling soon passes and your MO recovers after a brief rest. Your party then discusses what to do next.

Feel like shit today, but work. Hooray.

Through your translator, you talk to them, explaining your mission. They are suspicious and hold you at bay with their weapons, but agree to take you to the village Elder to talk.

As you enter the village area, other aliens shuffle towards you inquisitively. You are marched to a large hut in the centre of the clearing to meet the village Elder. You enter this hut and see a large, somewhat wrinkled alien squatting in a far corner. After you have exchanged introductions you begin to question him.

SO MUCH TO DO. SO FEW HOURS IN A DAY. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Back in the Transmatter Unit, the crew are taking your food off to the lab for analysis. You return to the bridge and prepare to leave orbit. The lab reports that your supplies are digestible and highly nutritious.

Scanners report the nearest planet some 3.7 light years from your present position. You set a course and enter warp speed.

You approach a medium-sized blue-green planet and take up orbit position. Scanning the planet surface reveals several clusters of intelligent life-forms. You try to contact them but nothing comes up on the radio.

Staffing note: with the untimely death of Security Officer Throm, the unnamed Redshirt 2 has received a promotion! What a lucky guy.

Ugh, I am so sorry for being so behind on tags (particularly on Felix's EP), I was such a frigging mess yesterday, it was pathetic. Getting back on track today, now that I'm all high on life and sleep and Diet Pepsi.

There's still so much to do, though.

You search for suitable plants, using a nutritional analyser to tell you which will be edible. Not far from where you landed, you find a small cluster of suitable plants with succulent leaves, large fruits and tuberous roots. You begin to cut down the plants and make them into a pile which may be beamed up to the ship.

Suddenly, you feel something restraining your leg and look down to see a vine wrapped round your calf. Its grip tightens. As you wrestle with the vine, the leaves of another plant bend over your head and clamp themselves on to your body. You struggle, but it seems that the plants are alive and are attempting to defend themselves against you!

Working late tonight, insert appropriate whining here. My grandfather's coming home so I need to shovel the walk to accommodate his crippled self before I leave. Have already accomplished the most difficult part of that, though (putting on pants).

Oh, they're officially rebooting Fantastic Four now? Weeeeeeee.

The creature appears to look at you (you are not sure whether it can actually see or not) and you fire. As the blast hits its body, it rears into the air, roaring loudly - and its huge feet come down on top of you! To your despair, a stun blast was enough only to cause it some pain and now its massive weight has crushed you beneath it. This is the end of your adventure...

Damn it, you guys! That's the second time in, like, four days! I can't just keep covering for you, can I?

Have started my day out right by dumping a bottle of Diet Pepsi all over myself. Huzzah!

I feel I must have liked Drive more than I remember liking it because I was listening to the soundtrack last night and it gave me all these feelings. Weird.

These have been your random observations of the morning as I head back to the salt mines.

When we last left you and your valiant crew, you were beaming down onto a planet with no land masses to exactly the result you might expect from such a thing. DO-OVER. Thanks to a freak dimensional shift or possibly Science Officer Spaceman's older self traveling through time and changing his past, you instead find yourself beaming down to the pretty green planet. Let's do it!

You take up orbit position round the green planet. Scanning the surface you find an abundance of vegetation and animal life, but there are no signs of intelligent inhabitants.

Once again, you are accompanied by your Science Officer and your Head Redshirt.

You enter the Transmatter Unit and minutes later you materialize in a dense jungle on the planet. As you get your bearings, you hear a sound. In the distance, coming closer, is something large crashing towards you through the undergrowth.