USS CIRCE- Current Mission Outline

CIRCE MISSION #13: "The Rise of Mor'Dak- The Gorn Civil War"
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I. Introduction
===============

USS CIRCE has emerged from 9 months of repair and refit to the 
new BASTION command battlecruiser variant in ideal shape; her 
initial systems testing has gone better than expected, and the 
nearly-brand-new starship has finally been given her marching 
orders: she is to patrol the Gorn frontier and break in her new
escorts with simulated squadron-wide war games.


II. Background
==============

A. The Fall of the Gorn Hegemony
--------------------------------
By the time CIRCE begins her new patrol mission, the Gorn
Hegemony, as we have known it, has collapsed in on itself,
no longer able to maintain a stable gonvernment with no resources
with which to feed its bureaucracy.  Instead, the Hegemony
has fallen into a Civil War of sorts, though in actuality,
given the meager resources of the clans, the Civil War at this
stage is more reminiscent of a dying animal's death throes.

By the time the CIRCE resumes her active status along the
Gorn border, the Hegemony is nothing more than a few skirmishing
clans who refused to abide by the terms of the Kimura Accords,
signed on DS13 by most of the BETA quadrant powers- including
the former Hegemon himself- barely 8 weeks ago.  As such,
for all intents and purposes, the political entity that was 
the Gorn Hegemony no longer exists.


B. The Kimura Accords
---------------------
These are essentially a series of agreements and treaties
betwen, primarily, the Gorn Confederacy, the Tholian Holdfast,
the Roumulan Star Empire, the former Gorn Hegemony, and the
Federation.  These agreements do the following things:

1) Begin the formal process of re-unifying the Gorn under
   a single government- the Gorn Confederacy.  This will
   essentially involve the 30+ ruling clans of the Hegemony
   handing over their authority to the Confederacy, gradually
   taking place over several months.

2) Re-draw the borders between the Tholian Holdfast, the newly-
   expanded Gorn Confederacy, the Romulan Star Empire, and the
   Federation.  Basically, the Tholians, Romulans and Federation
   gain a modest amount of former hegemony border worlds, many
   of which were of 'disputed ownership' in the first place.
   These accords formalize the boundaries of the Gorn 
   Confederacy.

3) Expand the military agreements between the Tholian Holdfast,
   The Gorn Hegemony and the Federation so as to create a 
   defensive umbrella around all three powers.  This is a
   major development, for it means that any attack on one of
   the three powers draws all three into the conflict.  Given
   the traditional acrimonious relationship between the Gorn
   and the Tholians, this is a major development.


The fact that the vacuum left by the vacation of the Hegemony
as a viable government was filled peacefully cannot and should
not be underestimated: it is believed that the Kimura Accords-
named after Federation Ambassador Ayako Kimura- succeeded in
avoiding a potential interstellar war over the vacated Hegemony
space...though it would be a mstake to think that these
accords were agreed to without any hiccups, given the histories
and interests of the represented governments.

It is also important to mention that, despite the overall success
of the peace conference, perhaps the sole failing of the 
negotiations was the inability to secure any rights to safe 
passage across borders.  This was one of the main sticking points 
of the negotiations, one which they could not get past.


III. The Monkeywrench in the Works
==================================

One of the more ambitious and radical of the clan leaders, 
a Gorn by the name of Mor'dak, has refused to abide by the
terms of the Kimura Accords by refusing to turn over his
political and, more importantly, military assets, to the
Confederacy government.  His open defiance has made him
somewhat of a rallying point to the more stubborn and
reactionary of the former Hegemony clan leaders, and as
such more than a few have chosen to join him.

This has created what everyone thought had been avoided by
the success of the peace conference: a showdown between
Gorn forces, amounting to, essentially, a civil war.


IV. Project Clawkey
===================

OSFI has long been unable to penetrate the Gorn Hegemony with
any succees; the vast differences in biology make planting spies
essentially impossible, and the equally-vast ideological
differences between the two governments has made it just as
difficult to turn anyone of consequence to provide information.

That does not mean there has been NO success.

Through what has only been called 'classified assets', OSFI has
received recordings of several conversations involving Mor'dak
in which he has made some reference to having "the key to the
quadrant within the grasp of his claw"; further study of these 
recordings have lead OSFI analysts to speculate that Mor'dak's 
metaphor may be more literal than it appears on the surface.

It is unknown exacly what Mor'dak's statement might refer to
beyond the metaphor, but most speculation revolves around some
sort of secret project about to bear its fruit, such as the
development of a new weapon.  However, OSFI analysts continue
be baffled by the implication, as it does seem to suggest that
resources to undertake this 'Project Clawkey' (as it is now
called at OSFI) have come from somewhere outside the former
Hegemony.

Project Clawkey's objectives are:

1) To find out exactly WHAT 'Clawkey' is;

2) To find out who is supplying Mor'dak with the materials needed
   to construct/undertake/support 'Clawkey.'


V. The Mission
==============

CIRCE will have several objectives for her mission:

PRIMARY: Patrol the newly-disputed border between the Federation
         and the forces of Mor'dak to ptotect any Federation assets
         or those of our allies according to the terms of the Kimura
         Accords.

SECONDARY: Assist OSFI in gathering intelligence as to the nature
           and location of Clawkey.

TERTIARY: Assess the tactical abilities of the new squadron and
          the tactical and command-and-control abilities of CIRCE's new
          systems through a series of combat exercises.


VI. Mission Boundaries
======================

For this mission,the following rules will apply:

1) For this mission, we will stay away from the Romulans; we've used
   them as the sneaky baddies behind the scenes a few times now, and
   I'd like to stay away from them for this mission.

2) No major plot twists should be dropped into the mission plot
   without first consulting Austin or myself.  We want to try and keep
   ourselves focused on the mission and not on all sorts of side
   threads that keep popping up.  Remember: we are a team, and we
   develop a common story; we are not writing a bunch of solo or
   two-person mini-missions.  If we can comfortably add your plot twist
   into the story, we will...but if we can't, we can't.  Remember that 
   you can also write CD posts to endulge your own interests.

3) The escorts are back in play; we have a completely new set of them, 
   but they are still available for enrichment.  Let me know if you
   want to 'run' one of the escorts.