The Trans-Saturnian Ship
Approaching Dawn, a goliath of a vessel that once served as a freight hauler between the moons of Saturn. Ten years past, it was purchased by
Distant Sun Transports and retrofitted into something of a luxury liner. Nothing too fancy, of course. Its hull speckled with decades of minor impacts, more than two-thirds its paint chipped away, and the aged displacement drive groaning far too loudly upon entering atmosphere, it was neither a pretty sight nor a pleasant noise at any port. Still, though, the relic meant something to someone. Enough that DST was willing to save it from decommissioning, where it'd no doubt be tossed into the ship graveyard of Tethys.
It was cheap, though.
Definitely cheap. And, at the very least, a whole team of designers spent a solid year sprucing up the insides, making it nice and pretty and full of mediocre, yet nice-looking accommodations. Mid-shelf fineries and all the sort. Well lit spaces and well kept rooms, a couple of heated pools, even a small casino. For the younger generations, it was a fairly cheap getaway--one that could even take you someplace else. Someplace
new. Not a lot of folks off Titan ever got to see other worlds.
Oftentimes the older generations, on the other hand, paid the travel fare for the historic experience. Part of DST's purchase included related materials to the
Dawn, all of which wound up stuffed into a big museum where old miners used to keep their haul. A museum to an older era, when huge ships were thrown together quick, when men, women, and machines risked life and limb to scrounge for as many raw materials in Saturn's rings to carry a myriad of fledgling colonization projects.
The Dawn catapulted itself through space, the beast looking more like a long rectangle with spiny bits for a backside (the vestiges of atmospheric thrusters, long before displacement drives could maneuver a ship through re-entry) than the curvy and intricate cruisers of the upper class.
Enceladus was the first stop. Not a lot of Enceladites looking for passage to Titan or Europa.
Thank God, thought Rickert g'Draal, captain of the
Approaching Dawn. Enceladites bothered him on an existential level. A constant reminder of science gone too far. Captain g'Draal, content with simplicities, preferred not to broach such subjects. He liked his lunch cold, his dinner hot, his smoke relaxing, and the nightly Tetherball broadcasts on the Net. He especially liked quiet hauls. He wasn't even born when the Dawn was revolutionizing stellar freight, and didn't much care for the daily history lessons from the museum. This was just a job. Nothing more.
Titan was the second stop. That, unfortunately, was when the quiet ended. The casino lit up and music drowned out his daily activities. They were finally en route to Jupiter's sphere by the time the captain stepped out of his cabin, looked down at the casino below his balcony, and watched the little dots of human life move about without him.
Just another trip. Just another routine trip.If only the good captain knew.
OOC: this thread is open for anyone to participate! Your characters are going to a moon of Jupiter's for some reason, and they chose a low-class luxury liner with a neat museum. Why is up to you! Also I am probably not going to be roleplaying Captain Nihilism here, I just wanted a quick viewpoint character. I'll play someone way more social than him.
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