"Malcolm Xavier Ness" (Star Fleet Officer, Human); Police (Iotians, Federation); Sigma Iotia II, circa 2270.

What a life it has been, such fire, such verve, a dance to remember! You were last born in 1955, 5th of 7 children, you know how it was then, the post war baby boom, and you grew up in Americas golden age, business was booming, most anyone who wanted a job had one, and by the end of the day at that! You went to school, did your homework, and watched old fashioned black and white TV in the evenings. You watched them put a man on the moon, fell in love with your high school sweetheart, got married a month after graduation, and went to college together: smoked pot and did acid together for what was the first and last time: got a job working for the University of Vermont in the mathematics department, had 3 kids of your own, watched them grow up: go to college, get married, have your grandchildren: earned 'tenure', kept teaching the bright mathematical students matriculating through UV each year while living out your 'golden years' with your beloved wife Rachel, whom you have preceded in , as you were afraid you would: the doctors warned you both that this was a very real possibility with your arteries as bad as they were.

You wait for her for most of a decade, stubbornly refusing the computer's prompts to begin character creation: but she does not join you and eventually just over 7 years later the 'AI assistant' says: “She's just remarried you know...” and though you are not sure how, you sense that the AI is right. ~Ah well, time to get to this reincarnation thing I guess.~ You think and start working on your character at last.

You were never very much into RPGs or RTS, though you did play 'Civilization II Gold Edition' pretty enthusiastically for a few months when your grandson Mark gave it to you for Christmas. Thus you are out to sea on this when the AI starts giving you instructions on how to design your character, but you use the help files to figure things out relatively quickly, being a mathematician by profession and having dabbled a bit in computer programming so you are able to suss out the underlying precepts of the system this game uses, and though it is very complex after a few more months of reading and experimental playing around get the hang of it and really start working on your final character concept.

First thing you do is create your avatar, which basically is just a Caucasian man around 26 years of age wearing a navy blue suit and tie with a stetson hat, kind of like your father wore when you were young.

Having settled on what you will look like, you start working on selecting your world and then your army, which leads you to something you have thought about off and on since you were 13 and first saw the STAR TREK episode 'A Piece of the Action': now that the federation has taken control of Sigma Iotia II and are putting their money into the planetary treasury to guide the Iotians to a more civil and honest society HOW are they going to make that happen? The answer you came up with long ago was simple: They send in 'Eliot Ness' and other 'Untouchables' and bring down the bosses one by one just like Capone while building up the police forces to counter them, until at last it's time for “The Night Chicago Died” when the combined police of the planet go to war with the gangs. The majority of Iotians clearly have the personality profiles which make someone a good criminal: but those same profiles also are the ones that make a good COP, so it is just a matter of flipping the polarity on which their culture lionizes and which it holds in contempt.

Thus you pick for your world Sigma Iotia II, circa 2270, two years after Kirk's visit. A new ship has been dispatched, 'The Horizon' ironically, newly constructed now that the name is 'cleared' for a new ship, NCC-1709, another constitution class, and it's first mission 'clearing the name' which it bears by finishing cleaning up the old “Horizon”'s mess.

You go back to your character, making him smart, dexterous, and somewhat athletic, then go to work on the advantages and disadvantages that will make him unique.

First you give him Military Rank L.3: he is the 'First Officer' of the new Horizon, answerable only to her captain and thence directly to star fleet command. Next you give him 'Legal Enforcement Powers', L.2 he has a 'license to kill' and may play fast and loose with the local laws in the name of getting the job done. You then give him Police Rank L.5 he is a member of the 'FBI', and considered to outrank members of local jurisdictions, and a 'Supervisory Special Agent' at that, outranking most FBI agents as well. Next you pick out a wide selection of skills both for a TL 5 culture and a TL 10 one: giving yourself the ability both to perform the mission and to be a good first officer when it is over, IF it is ever over, and IF you survive it: including 'Karate' and 'Judo' as well as with a TL5 pistol and Tommy Gun, and TL 10 Phasers for fighting: 'Law' for both Sigma Iotia II and The United Federation of Planets, with a specialization in Starfleet Regulations: Interrogation, Investigation, Forensic Accounting, Fast Talk, Body Language, Profiling, and a host of others that will help as a police officer; not to mention Tactics, Stratagy, and Leadership as you will be commanding 'troops': Electronics Operation and Repair for both Tls: a selection of survival skills for Sigma Iota II including 'urban' and for it's most common biomes, buying most of them up from the default for your very high 'urban': some social skills like 'Savoir-Faire: high society', Philosophy, and Sex Appeal that will help outside your role as FBI agent: and a handful of 'rounding skills' like Memory, Dreaming, 'Religious Ritual: Catholic', and 'Artistry: Scrapbook'.

Finding yourself with a few dozen character points left over you look over the advantages again and realize you have forgotten a few key things: 'Wealth' for one, you don't want to go out broke like the real Ness did, and will need money for starting equipment, not to mention a 'budget' so you pick up 'Independent Income L.5' which is surprisingly cheap for what it gives you: 5% of your starting wealth monthly without any strings attached. You also pick up several allies: your 'core team' of 'Untouchables', assembled by Starfleet and highly trained for the mission, though not quite as much as you.

Now out of points you take a look at 'disadvantages' and select 'Honesty' (You follow the law insofar as you can.), 'Duty: Starfleet (All the time, hazardous.)', 'Enemy: President Bella Oxmyx. (150% points, Most of the Time, Rival.)', 'Sense of Duty: Iotians', and 'Sense of Duty: Federation', netting you another 100 points in all. You then grab 'Appearance: Hansom', 'Voice L.2', 'Charisma L.1', 'Danger Sense', 'Combat Reflexes', and 'Unflappable': those last three meaning that nothing flummoxes you for even a second, you react at the speed of thought to every situation, social, combat, or other, and that you can sometimes sense trouble coming, be aware of an ambush before it's sprung and ready for a fight before it starts...

You then spend your last few points on a powerful 'Patron' “Sulack: Brevet Captain of 'The Horizon'”, a Vulcan who has spent the past 100 years in an intensive study of both 19th-20th century Earth history and TL5 cultures in general. Though he embraces 'Kathea' and reason he does not reject emotion: having decided, as do a significant but suppressed section of the Vulcan population in this version of the STAR TREK universe, that to reject emotion is to reject a vital part of what it is to be a sapient being: instead emotions must be controlled but not disregarded, they serve a useful purpose so long as it is your conscious and reasoning mind which is master, not your volatile and primitive emotional side. This makes him perfect as leader for this mission, where the federation is trying to guide a culture which has overly embraced volatility and emotion towards a more reasoning and controlled state, and through which he is being tested to see if he can serve as captain of a federation vessel on an extended mission into potentially hostile territory: a new '5 year mission' similar to that of the USS Enterprise under Captain James Tiberius Kirk which uncovered this whole can of worms.

You finish picking out your gear and a few other details like settling on a name by which you will be known: “S.S.A. Malcolm Xavier Ness” for your alias to the Iotians, but 'Commander Marcus Aurelius Packard' for your 'real' name and then press 'Accept Avatar', where upon you black out...

A new adventure awaits, your second life trying to confront a gang culture that has entrenched itself for over 100 years, on a world irretrievably culturally contaminated by one of the early Federation ships, which the Federation, in an extraordinary move has decided it cannot leave to sort itself out, it must clean up the mess it has made and further contaminate the culture back onto an even keel in order to save the planet and possibly itself from destruction in the fires of war. This task that has fallen to you, your Untouchables, and Brevet Captain Sulack, who will stay on the Horizon in 'eclipse orbit' around Sigma Iotia II (hiding behind it's moon) and beaming people up and down to the planet via a series of small 'cloaked' orbital stations set at the world's Lagrange Points. You are never to let the Iotains know that 'The Horizon' has returned: it could cause a wave of pseudo-religious fervor which could undo all your hard work or the federation to take other action, such as sending down 'The New Book' the Cultural Interaction Counsel has been working on prematurely, but you fear that even if you can keep your lip zipped some of your other 'Untouchables' are not so circumspect...

What will become of your mission here? Will you save the Iotains from the disaster your people caused these 102 years gone, or will you go down in a hail of gunfire, your mission unfinished...?