The voyages of the USS Veritas, a Star Trek Adventures Second Edition campaign. A science and survey ship keeps crossing paths with Hirogen hunters, and each rescue seems to make her more interesting prey.
Era2378, late Voyager era
ShipUSS Veritas, NCC-74100
ClassSovereign
Record8 historical missions · Sessions 9–10 complete
RulesStar Trek Adventures 2e
Where We Left Off
Veritas is at a Federation starbase after defending New Hestia from a coordinated three-ship Hirogen pack. The evacuation lanes stayed open, no civilians were lost, and the damaged hunters withdrew without pursuit. Federation relief forces now protect the colony. The crew has completed its formal debrief, left New Hestia with stronger defenses and its urgent medical needs resolved, and brought back a recognizable drive fingerprint and an aft-port shield-phase weakness for the lead Hirogen vessel.
Current board — October 31, 2026: Session 10, “The First Line — New Hestia,” is closed and archived. Session 11 is ready at the starbase, with no actions logged yet. Momentum 5/6 · Threat 4 · Reserve Power available. Veritas is fully operational; shields are restored to 18/18 and the torpedo-guidance fault is cleared. The forty rescued captives and the contained module in Science Lab 2 remain unresolved threads. Open the live campaign dashboard for the latest state.
The Senior Staff
Chief Engineer
Commander Dustin Freeman
Human. The one who gets the ship, the transporter and everyone else’s ship working again. Prefers rescue, containment and technical control over a fight.
“Trust, but verify.” · “Information is power.”
Starfleet Decoration of Gallantry · Reputation 5 · Promoted to Commander after Pack Alpha
· Played by Dustin
Chief of Security
Lt. Commander Aleek-Om
Aurelian, and a flyer. Patient and precise: captures a hunter when it’s useful, fires only when it’s needed, and never leaves anyone behind.
“Leave no one behind.” · “Always have an exit strategy.”
Grankite Order of Tactics · Star Cross · Reputation 5 · Promoted to Lieutenant Commander after New Hestia · Favor from the rescued freighter’s captain or crew
· Played by Lucas
Chief Medical Officer
Commander Elijah Freeman
Human/Vulcan. A trauma surgeon and field medic with a mind-meld in reserve, and a student of military history.
“Act with confidence, even if you don’t feel confident.”
Starfleet Surgeons’ Decoration · Reputation 3 · Promoted to Commander after New Hestia · Favor from Captain Rourke
· Played by Elijah
Chief Science Officer
Lt. J.G. T’Mal
Vulcan. Calm, inquisitive, and protective of her crew. Follows faint clues until a pattern emerges, then turns careful sensor work into timely warnings and precise openings for her shipmates.
“Crew comes first” · “I will always defend my friends.” · “Never leave a stone unturned” · “Resistance is never futile.”
Reputation 4 · One unspent favor from Captain Rourke
· Played by Serenity
In command is Captain Rourke, a steady, cautious captain who backs the technical solution and the rescue every time, and who holds the Legion of Honor.
Latest Session — The First Line: New Hestia
Session 10 · Played October 31, 2026 · Closed and archived
At the starbase, Commander Mara Keene and Starfleet Intelligence accepted the crew’s evidence of an organized Hirogen capture-and-hunt campaign. Before the debrief could settle, T’Mal detected a masked three-ship transit wake aimed at New Hestia. Veritas moved to protect the colony, preparing evacuation and gathering intelligence while reserving decisive engagement for an imminent threat to civilian lives.
The crew reached New Hestia ahead of the hunters. Sensor analysis identified the lead ship’s distinctive drive fingerprint and a repeatable aft-port shield phase lag during speed changes and warp-to-impulse transitions. The 27 critical-care patients were safely evacuated before the battle.
When the pack threatened the evacuation lanes, Veritas engaged defensively. Aleek-Om stripped one escort’s shields and breached its Engines; Dustin heavily damaged the other and inflicted a Communications breach. Elijah’s quantum-torpedo attack on the lead vessel missed after a guidance fault. T’Mal maintained the sensor picture and supplied targeting solutions. The lead ship covered its damaged escorts’ withdrawal, and Rourke ordered Veritas to hold position rather than pursue. No civilians were lost, and Veritas suffered no breaches or lasting damage.
After combat, Dustin and Lt. Commander Nera Voss created the Reinforced Colony Defense Grid, Potency 2: emergency fusion power feeds the defensive network directly, shuttle-field shields and meteor-defense phasers have priority paths, and switching defensive loads no longer waits on manual transfers. Elijah stabilized six severe interrupted-care patients, cured two acute infections and a metabolic imbalance, and established a validated treatment protocol and streamlined minor-care triage. The urgent medical backlog was under control when Federation relief forces arrived.
Formal review: Rourke commended all four officers. Dustin raised Reputation to 5. Aleek-Om was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and raised Reputation to 5. Elijah was promoted to Commander and received the Starfleet Surgeons’ Decoration, retaining Reputation 3. T’Mal raised Reputation to 4 and gained a favor from Captain Rourke. All four spent their Acclaim and received no Reprimands.
Next: Session 11 opens at the starbase, awaiting further orders while Starfleet assesses the wider Hirogen campaign. Momentum 5/6 · Threat 4 · Reserve Power available. The completed New Hestia defense and evacuation directives have been retired.
Historical Mission Log
01 The Silent Fragment
Veritas found wreckage carrying an experimental Starfleet module from around 2375, still holding a stable subspace containment field. Freeman led the shuttle inspection and brought it aboard under strict isolation: Science Lab 2 was reinforced and sealed, and the module was kept off the main computer.
The module was built to stabilize a subspace phenomenon that already existed — but which one, and why, is still unknown. It remains in Science Lab 2.
02 The Colony and the Plasma Storm
Carrying a warning about ancient toxin caches to a colony cut off by plasma storms, Veritas rescued the disabled transport Samaritan on the way and shielded her through the storm. At the colony, the crew mapped the deposits, found an intact underground containment complex, and set up exclusion zones and warning sensors instead of risking an unsafe cleanup.
Federation specialists have been requested for the long-term cleanup.
03 The Empty Relay and the First Hunt
A silent Federation relay led the crew past a faked Kzinti signature and a hidden jammer to an asteroid hunting ground holding 23 captives. Freeman stabilized a subspace aperture and took over the containment system to free them, and a hunter was trapped behind a security field. Talking instead of fighting, the crew learned a name for the first time: Hirogen.
Other hunters are out there. The relay now runs a Hirogen early-warning protocol.
04 Wreckage Search and the Hirogen Prisoner
Faint Starfleet life signs drew Veritas to more wreckage. Freeman got three survivors out, stabilizing one critically injured survivor before moving them, while Aleek-Om and Venn pushed deeper, destroyed a Hirogen recall device and took a live hunter prisoner. A damaged combadge still held transporter data. The prisoner was later released in negotiations with another Hirogen ship, once the crew had the coordinates they needed.
Nine crew were still missing when the mission ended.
05 The Nine Missing Crew
The recovered transporter data led to an installation holding the missing nine. Scans confirmed all of them alive, and Freeman beamed them out the moment a window opened. Veritas fought only as long as the rescue needed, then opened a channel instead of chasing the withdrawing Hirogen. All nine came home.
The Hirogen were starting to look organized, not opportunistic.
06 Derelict Federation Relay
Another dark relay. This time the crew separated fading life-sign echoes from real personnel and found that the staff had been taken, not killed. A Hirogen listening device had been recording Federation traffic and flagging vulnerable ships. The crew forced it into standby, and its last transmission pointed to a mobile receiver deeper along the corridor.
Confirmed: Federation shipping routes are being studied and exploited.
07 The Meriwether Rescue
Following the trail, Veritas found the damaged Nova-class USS Meriwether being herded by a Hirogen ship. Sensors picked the real warp trail out from a decoy; Aleek-Om used the tractor beam to throw debris into the hunter’s path; and Freeman turned the main deflector into a plasma storm that looked entirely natural. Under that cover the crew repaired Meriwether, slipped away to a hidden orbit, and brought her to a starbase.
Meriwether's crew confirmed at least three Hirogen ships working together. Where they were driving her is the next lead.
08 The Forty Captives
Stardate 54832.6
Matching Hirogen sensor signatures against an old freighter record led Veritas to a guarded detention station. Freeman rigged a fake — and fully reversible — warp-coil fault to make the ship look like easy prey. While acting wounded Freeman used the Hirogen ships attempt to electronically tag and track the Veritas and accessed their systems instead, gathering the info needed to track down the crew of the missing freighter. After “restoring the Veritas to working order the Hirogen ship broke pursuit. The Crew then traveled to the coordinates where the civilian freighters crew were being held and slipped in under cover of sensor interference. Aleek-Om found the station’s weak point and used precise phaser fire to knock out its external shield generator, opening a transporter window. The Hirogen ship Kharak and its patrol craft moved to intercept and landed a hit on the shields, but there was no breach. Freeman ran four transporter cycles, with Captain Rourke directing more transports, and all forty prisoners came aboard alive. With the rescue done, Freeman and Aleek-Om advised against staying to fight; Rourke took the ship to warp 6, and nobody followed.
Some of the rescued prisoners have physiologies that match no Federation record. Who they are, and what the holding station was for, is still unknown — and the Kharak is still out there.
09 Pack Alpha
What first looked like scattered hunters resolved into a coordinated patrol lattice. Aleek-Om used ionized debris and subspace distortion to conceal Veritas along its edge. Passive observation picked up encrypted bursts, synchronized course changes, and a persistent central contact that may be a relay, checkpoint, or pack coordination node. Starfleet Intelligence ordered the crew to keep watching and avoid decisive engagement unless lives were in imminent danger.
A closer shuttle pass sharpened the picture. Dustin Freeman retuned the shuttle’s shield harmonics and power profile to mask its emissions. Elijah Freeman’s passive scan confirmed coordinated movement around the central contact, but a brief sensor anomaly risked exposing the shuttle. Aleek-Om brought it out cleanly. Back aboard Veritas, continued observation revealed a hunter accelerating toward an unaware civilian vessel.
Rourke authorized intervention. Dustin brought Veritas onto an intercept course, Elijah identified a vulnerability and opened a calm channel, and the Hirogen turned its attention away from the freighter. The civilian vessel escaped at warp. Dustin then recognized the lead hunter as a fixing element: two more ships were moving toward Veritas’ aft quarters to close a three-sided ambush. The crew broke the developing kill box, re-established Attack Pattern, kept shields raised, and held fire.
With the civilian clear, Veritas withdrew to warp instead of escalating. The warp maneuver succeeded, but Improved Warp Drive failed to conserve Reserve Power, so the reserve was spent. No Hirogen pursuit followed. The crew set course for the nearest Federation starbase with evidence that the hunting network is moving from organized staging into active predation along civilian routes.
Recognition: Dustin spent 3 Acclaim on promotion from Lieutenant Commander to Commander. Aleek-Om spent 2 Acclaim on a favor from the rescued freighter’s captain or crew; Elijah spent 2 on a favor from Captain Rourke. Reputation remains Dustin 4, Aleek-Om 4, and Elijah 3. Existing awards and earlier favors remain in force.
At the end of Session 9: report the pack’s ambush doctrine to Starfleet Intelligence, debrief the civilian crew if they reach the same starbase, and determine whether Veritas should resume shadowing, investigate the central contact, or receive an interdiction assignment.
Open Threads
- The central coordination contact. A persistent contact inside the Hirogen network may be a relay, checkpoint, or pack-control node. Its exact role remains unconfirmed.
- Starfleet’s next response. The New Hestia debrief is complete and Veritas is back at a Federation starbase. Starfleet is assessing the broader campaign; the rescued civilian freighter’s captain and crew remain possible intelligence sources.
- The rescued forty. Some of the prisoners have physiologies that match no known Federation record. Medical exams, identification and debriefs are still to come.
- Kharak and the holding station. The Hirogen ship Kharak is still operational, and nobody yet knows what the holding operation was for or how it fits the wider hunt.
- A coordinated campaign. Pack Alpha and New Hestia confirm patrol lattices, centralized traffic control, fixing tactics, and coordinated attacks on civilian routes. The New Hestia pack withdrew, but the wider operation remains active. Veritas retains orders to avoid decisive engagement unless lives are in imminent danger.
- The lead Hirogen vessel. Its distinctive drive fingerprint permits recognition and tracking. A repeatable aft-port shield phase lag offers a narrow tactical opening during speed changes and warp-to-impulse transitions.
- The greater hunt. Freed captives reported the Hirogen talking about something bigger — and Veritas may now be on the list.
- The module in Science Lab 2. Stable, isolated, and still not fully explained.
- Borrowed technology? A theory from Science Lab 2: the Hirogen may have found and repurposed older Federation technology. Unproven.
- Meriwether’s destination. The unexplored region she was being herded toward.
Recurring Cast
- Captain Rourke — commanding officer, USS Veritas
- T’Vel — science officer, the crew’s first call on anomalies and sensor work
- Venn — security officer and Aleek-Om’s usual partner on away teams
- Commander Hale — commanding officer, USS Meriwether
- Civilian freighter captain and crew — rescued during Pack Alpha; names not yet recorded. Aleek-Om holds a favor from them.
- Rescued Starfleet survivor — unnamed survivor from the earlier wreck rescue who owes Aleek-Om a favor.
Outstanding Favors
- Dustin Freeman: one unspent favor from Captain Rourke.
- Aleek-Om: one unspent favor from Captain Rourke, one from the unnamed rescued Starfleet survivor, and one from the civilian freighter’s captain or crew.
- Elijah Freeman: one unspent favor from Captain Rourke.
- T’Mal: one unspent favor from Captain Rourke, earned after New Hestia.
The Ship
USS Veritas is a Sovereign-class starship launched in 2371 and assigned to scientific and survey operations — a dependable workhorse with advanced, high-resolution sensors, improved warp and power systems, a high-powered tractor beam, ablative armor, and the ability to separate her saucer in an emergency. She carries phaser arrays and both photon and quantum torpedoes.
Updated October 31, 2026 · Includes Session 10, “The First Line — New Hestia.” Session 11 is next. Back to RPGs