Romulus and Remus?

[cosmonaut]

The RPG plays in JJ-verse, with Spock prime, right?

So how did Roumulus and Remus get destroyed? There obviously was a solution to this problem and they had plenty of time and knowledge to implement it. Why didn't they? Did I miss something?

It's hard to believe the Federation failed having Spock prime giving them all the infos, I don't think they have an interest in getting Romulus destroyed.
And the Romulans seem to be on friendly terms with the Federation in the RPG, so they wouldn't stop their attempts to fix the situation. Even if they didn't believe in the danger, why would they block Starfleet vessels from reaching the Horbus-system? Was there a third party involved or was Spocks theory faulty?

For whatever reason they failed, it would certainly strain the Romulan-Federation relationship, one party blaming the other. And jet it wasn't even mentioned (I think?).

I admit this isn't exactly essential to the story, but I wonder and it would be nice to have an answer. :)

[Meds]

You know I'm sure it's explained in the pre film comics which I own but I've lent it out. Chris will know.

[Rico]

You know I'm sure it's explained in the pre film comics which I own but I've lent it out. Chris will know.

I think she is asking about the RPG - not the film.  I had the exact same question at the start of the last season of the RPG.  It was hard for me to believe they would let history repeat itself with decades to prepare. 

[X]

the answer is pretty simple.

1) Red matter was needed to fix things. Red matter was created by the vulcan science council. Vulcan went boom and the stores of Red matter that they would have created by now are low to the point of almost non-existence.

2) They knew Nero was from the future, but they didn't have an exact day when it was going to happen. He also wasn't so forth coming on letting everyone known when the Hobus star would go boom. So they had some time to prepare and it is reflected in a few things, but no real clue on when or what to stop.

3) As in the novel, they suggest that some things happen for a reason. The crew of the enterprise found themselves together because they were destined to do so. This was the same with the destruction of Romulas. Because of the fickle finger of fate, we also don't know what exactly happened to the hobus star. We assume that it exploded the same way, but it could have been actually caused by those trying to prevent the destruction of romulas without red matter to draw on. IN trying to save Romulas, they actually doomed it, but were quickly consumed along with the evidence.

In the end, there are a lot of reasons how it could happened. The key factor in that being destiny and shown as such because the nova burns itself out not too far from where spock would have stopped it with the red matter.

What we do know in game is that the station we are currently at was years in the making by the federation and the romulans. We also mention that while they had some idea of when the destruction might happen, it happened sooner than their projections.

With that being said. Even with the slight forewarning that they had, it doesn't mean the Empire would believe them. Their allies in the Imperial State did use that information to create something to save them, but not enough to change the course of destiny.

[Meds]

What Chris said ;)

[Bryancd]

What Chris said ;)

..well, he did say it was "pretty simple"...  :wacko

:laugh:

[X]

What Chris said ;)

..well, he did say it was "pretty simple"...  :wacko

:laugh:

LOL! Oddly enough, that is pretty simple for me as opposed to figuring out how some of the tech works.

[Meds]

Bugger ;)

[cosmonaut]

Thank you for your answer, Chris! :)
But you know, I'm a geek and I love to discuss things.

1) I give you that. It is possible that with the loss of Vulcan key knowledge about the handling of red matter was lost. Maybe 100 years was not enough to make up for that even if it was given priority.
BUT! There is an emphasis on how the Horus explosion would even threaten Earth, thankfully Spock stops that with the red matter - you're aware where this is going?

2) Nero might have not been very forthcoming, true - but Spock prime would not let Romulus be destroyed! They knew when and what to stop! They had the exact day, although variances are possible, might have happened earlier or later.
That's a century of preparation. Yes, the Romulan Star Empire wasn't on best terms with the Federation, so maybe they had only two decades overshadowed by the Star Trek equivalent of a World War and all they managed to do was built Qurinus Station. But the Federation had a century to work it out.

3) About chances. I accept that the probability of Horbus going supernova is close to 1. I expect the consequences to be similar as portrayed in the movie/comic book (I didn't read the novel).

But when you start to talk about destiny - in my eyes that's an excuse and a dangerous way to go. In the end your characters end up being mere puppets of destiny having no free will. BSG used a concept like that in the end, a pity. As an author I would hesitate strongly to go there.

Orci was very careful to distance himself (themself?) from a concept like that, it's not fate or destiny but chance. (Comparable to the Foundation triology by Asimov). But there is always Chaos Theory beating the odds, keeps things interesting.

There more honest answer would be: "This is a RPG and we liked it to be gone!" That's fine with me, really! You are the creator of this world, all you have to do is to say "Beaming is possible (and we have Heisenberg compensators)!" and there will be people beaming up and down.

I think the failed attempt to prevent Horbus to go Supernova is the most solid way to connect the dots (the dots being Romulus destroyed, start of season 10).

Sooner or later a joint effort from Federation and Romulans was made to gradually change the nature of the Horbus star, with an alternative method to the red matter which is not available (loss of Vulcan science academy).
Unfortunately this didn't work out when, for example, the Founders learned of the this project. Wanting to weaken the position of their enemies they destroyed the Horbus science station which had some kind of fancy beam (quantum? tachion?) pointed at the star to stabilize it.
So, sadly, the star did go boom when Romulus expected it was safe, so they didn't have much time to prepare after all.
But thanks to the efforts of the science team the explosion wasn't so strong after all, so Earth and a lot of other planets were safe.
That's why Romulus is gone, the end. ;)

[Bryancd]

Give the lovely young lady a prize for that one!

[X]

Thank you for your answer, Chris! :)
But you know, I'm a geek and I love to discuss things.

1) I give you that. It is possible that with the loss of Vulcan key knowledge about the handling of red matter was lost. Maybe 100 years was not enough to make up for that even if it was given priority.
BUT! There is an emphasis on how the Horus explosion would even threaten Earth, thankfully Spock stops that with the red matter - you're aware where this is going?

2) Nero might have not been very forthcoming, true - but Spock prime would not let Romulus be destroyed! They knew when and what to stop! They had the exact day, although variances are possible, might have happened earlier or later.
That's a century of preparation. Yes, the Romulan Star Empire wasn't on best terms with the Federation, so maybe they had only two decades overshadowed by the Star Trek equivalent of a World War and all they managed to do was built Qurinus Station. But the Federation had a century to work it out.

3) About chances. I accept that the probability of Horbus going supernova is close to 1. I expect the consequences to be similar as portrayed in the movie/comic book (I didn't read the novel).

But when you start to talk about destiny - in my eyes that's an excuse and a dangerous way to go. In the end your characters end up being mere puppets of destiny having no free will. BSG used a concept like that in the end, a pity. As an author I would hesitate strongly to go there.

Orci was very careful to distance himself (themself?) from a concept like that, it's not fate or destiny but chance. (Comparable to the Foundation triology by Asimov). But there is always Chaos Theory beating the odds, keeps things interesting.

There more honest answer would be: "This is a RPG and we liked it to be gone!" That's fine with me, really! You are the creator of this world, all you have to do is to say "Beaming is possible (and we have Heisenberg compensators)!" and there will be people beaming up and down.

I think the failed attempt to prevent Horbus to go Supernova is the most solid way to connect the dots (the dots being Romulus destroyed, start of season 10).

Sooner or later a joint effort from Federation and Romulans was made to gradually change the nature of the Horbus star, with an alternative method to the red matter which is not available (loss of Vulcan science academy).
Unfortunately this didn't work out when, for example, the Founders learned of the this project. Wanting to weaken the position of their enemies they destroyed the Horbus science station which had some kind of fancy beam (quantum? tachion?) pointed at the star to stabilize it.
So, sadly, the star did go boom when Romulus expected it was safe, so they didn't have much time to prepare after all.
But thanks to the efforts of the science team the explosion wasn't so strong after all, so Earth and a lot of other planets were safe.
That's why Romulus is gone, the end. ;)

Good responses! So good in fact that I have consider them in my equation for why it happened again. Here is my retort:

While the Federation had some warning about the events that would cause the Hobus Ultra Nova, it does not mean that their initial solutions were successful. Let's take chance and fate out of the equation and try a different approach.

Both the Romulan and Federation governments had time to develop a solution to the Hobus Event, but yet it still happened and a good question is why did it happen?

Let's assume that they did make enough Red Matter to stop the ultra nova, they would have to have enough because it would have to be stopped at some point. Now the question is why didn't they stop it before it started? Let's assume that the Imperial State and the Federation were working on the project from a joint station in Romulan space and they succeeded in creating the first warhead that would deliver the payload to stop it, but it needed to be delivered into the star when it was reaching or past critical mass. Deliver it any sooner and there is no effect. Deliver it at or after the critical point and you contain the nova.

Let's also remember that both Romulan Empires have their enemies. What if someone, say another empire or a section of one of the allied empires think it's a good idea to wipe out some of the Romulans before solving the problem? What if they tampered with the delivery system and prevented it from functioning properly?

For the context of the story, unknown parties or individuals sabotaged the first efforts to stop the hobus ultra nova, which went active sooner than expected. This is classified information because those that were working on the project are puzzled on how they were sabotaged and how a supernova could continue to expand as far as it did and consuming as much as it did. There are rumors that an enemy of the Romulans used a superweapon of some sort to create the multi system destroying ultranova, but any truth to that was consumed when the observation posts were. There is also evidence to suggest that the first attempt to stop the nova was sabotaged, but again, the evidence on who would have done it and why is sorely lacking.

In the end a combination of factors could be responsible for creating the problem and the great void of space where several systems used to be. I have a solid idea on exactly why it happened and who if anyone is behind causing it/ speeding it up / sabotaging the prevention or what ever was the true reason for the failure to save Romulus and Remus. Will those answers appear in the story? Perhaps, but the current mission of the crew doesn't have them actually investigating the causes and failures. What I can say is that Quirinus Station did not spring up over night and part of it's purpose was to help prevent the Hobus Event.

[cosmonaut]

Good responses! So good in fact that I have consider them in my equation for why it happened again. (...)

Thank you, that's quite a compliment coming from you! :)

Got goosebumps reading your story, even the second time.

I also like the fact that the Red Matter will exist, Spock prime always was an exceptional scientist, he would know how to create and handle it!

Will be interesting to investigate that issue if it should come up. Many secrets and all the evidence is lost. I already have my first suspect. :)

[Jen]

I'm still playing characters, so I want to jump in on this conversation. Don't forget, the RPG is a sandbox that were are playing in. Our sandbox allows us to explore possibilities that have not been touched upon in the television series or movies. There are many things that we have written about here that are not logical, would not happen in the movies or shows and can not be explained by science (real or Trek). We allowed them because they were interesting and challenging and made for good stories. This change in the timeline allowed us to imagine our own Trek history.

We did not go into great detail to explain what happened or why because our story was about the challenge of aiding Romulans, who were not trusting or friendly to the Federation, and the relationships that developed as a result. Stories that are popular in our RPG are stories that concentrate on characters... if I learned anything from modding this game, it's that people are bored by long technobble explanations (believe me I got complaints). So we skipped it and jumped right into the story.  The alternate timeline gave us an opportunity to change our own characters' histories and easily introduce characters like Mike's Ferengi "Galdar" or Chrystal's half Romulan "Shelby". It was meant to be a fun spin on Trek.

[Meds]

It's good to have good detailed info, me personaly I tend to have a quick look and then just jump in with my own take. Mind you I'm a security chief I just shoot to kill lol ;)

[cosmonaut]

Thank you for your explanation, Jen. I do understand what a RPG is, what you did and why, I agree with you.

Two things I already mentioned:

There more honest answer would be: "This is a RPG and we liked it to be gone!" That's fine with me, really! You are the creator of this world, (...)

(...) I admit this isn't exactly essential to the story, but I wonder and it would be nice to have an answer. :)

I'd like to explain why it is important to me.

You could have played in any parallel universe, but you picked the JJ verse. Vulcan is gone there, that's a fact, Romulus not necessarily, so I started to wonder.

The destruction of Romulus is the biggest thing that happened to Romulans since their exodus from Vulcan. It's a big plot point that created the situation you're in right now.
JJ's movie put Spock prime it the universe you're playing in, with the knowledge how to save Romulus and enough time to do it. But he didn't.

In the movie the destruction of Romulus is a natural disaster, like a tornado or a tsunami that could not be stopped. It just happened, no one to blame. (Nero did anyway.)

In JJ verse it's a known fact that it
(a) is going to happen and
(b) measures how it could be prevented.
It's no longer a natural disaster but a catastrophe that could have been prevented by the Federation!!!

I can't imagine the Romulans ever forgiving the Federation for not saving Romulus (also see movie).
It would greatly influence the way you would be able to aid Romulans and would be an big issue in every relationship. So it would also be important in your story, it might play a role in every conversation your characters have.

But no one ever even mentioned it, the Romulans neither treat nor thank the Federation, Starfleet personnel never make excuses or put the blame on the Empire.
It should be there, the responsibility for the destruction of the planet is at least as important as the fact that it's gone, but it isn't.

I found that irritating, so I asked. :)

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Below: one of the first things I posted on this forum, it was a comment under an article trying to explain Trek science. Note the author! :D