Revised Astral Frontier missions

[curse_u_reflexes]

Hammering them out anew since Knux has apped Christine

Event 3: Red Giant
In the wake of the fact that Thaumata has its hooks in Danconias Phillips being leaked, as well as the fact it's taken over Herrera Futuristics, Phillips proceeds to the next stage of his plans: throw off the heat and seize control of Danconias Phillips from Fransisco.  And to pull this off, Phillips stages a hostage situation in the Herrera Futuristics HQ, holding Herrera hostage while also secretly holding Danconias prisoner as well.  Masquerading as "Iskander", Phillips lists all sorts of ridiculous xenophobic demands, those that he knows will never be granted, threatening that if he doesn't get them fulfilled in so many hours, the Thaumata forces in the colony will open fire indescriminantly in the colony and kill everyone.  He wants things to cause intervention by forces, be it from the White Chalice or others.

But naturally the Chalice'll show up, especially because of Julia's feelings towards Bertrand Herrera.  There was some talk with Shaun of having Julia sortie together with Dita, using just any old machine and combining to form the Blue Giant again.  But the enemies we'll be up against will be pretty numerous, and this will also mark the debut of Sara Francesca Valentine and the Hagia Sophia, so that means tactical genius bullshittery on top of evertyhing else.  And Christine'll also be there in the Hanging Gardens, somewhat more dangerous but really still an annoyance, along with Bairoft making a return in the new Alexandria.  Questions about why an Irgelion's working with Thaumata could probably be BS'd pretty easily, blaming it on an explosive collar or something.

At some point (read: whenever he fucking feels like it), "Iksander" broadcasts gunning down Herrera.  In his final moments when being asked for his last words, Herrera would say something addressed to Julia, mentioning how "it" is in one of the hangars right before taking a bullet to the cranium.   Julia'd naturally flip out, destabilizing the gattai, and in the chaos end up crashing whatever mech she's "using" before running to the hangar in question to find the combat model Corona; the only one of its kind which Herrera made sure was built in the twilight of his reign over the company.  Unfortunately, the differences in controls are a massive snag keeping Julia from using the machine properly and she's probably going to get her ass handed to her.  This isn't a "Julia gets to be awesome" mission, even though she'll be getting her midseason upgrade here.

There are only two other things of note for the mission.  First, after Herrera's death, the HQ becomes fair game for the players, especially the penthouse at the top where Iskander was holding Herrera and allegeldy Phillips hostage, and some way or another, it'll get shot.  Danconias will be killed in that attack and Iksander will feign death before going back to just being Herbert Phillips, faux-hostage.  The other thing of note is that, Christine'll get shot down, which'll lead to her being brought onboard the Chalice, first as a prisoner.  However, the way Thaumata acted in the mission is still going to be seriously fucked up, even in her eyes, and it'll kick-start a Heel Face Turn for her.

In the aftermath of this, Phillips's hands will have been washed clean, Julia will be heartbroken, and I'm totally cool with the plot going for a while without any missions so other people can do their stuff.

EDIT: In the event this mission's done on Earth, just say it's at some Earth-side facility Herrera had when it was hoping to expand and make a splash in the markets on Earth.

Event 4: Supernova
At some point, the White Chalice ends up visiting the Seattle Colony of the LS Cluster. Probably because they're en-route to go further out into space for one reason or another. But Julia is requested to come to the reading of a clause in Mr. Herrera's will which was only to be revealed when she and a DSSD representative (his son Kyle) are both present on the colony. It turns out that Mr. Herrera actually left the better part of his fortune to the DSSD because they're working on deep space exploration, and the only stipulation was they had to offer Julia a position at the DSSD and do what she did before, be a symbol of hope that those humanity will meet in space won't be evil. Julia is left to think about all of this.

In the meantime, Christine will be exploring her home colony for the first time in a long while too, when she gets jumped by a number of Thaumata goons, as well as a family friend and butler, Victor Serpico!  Not only that, she'll find out that Iksander is still alive!  She's then coerced into taking part in a ghastly scheme by them, Victor using psychological manipulations and threatening to release damning information that it was with Thaumata's support that Christine's mother won the election in the past.  But his demands seem quite simple: he just wants Christine to sit down in the Solstice.  She doesn't have to do anything else at all!

... Of course, what she doesn't realize until afterwards is that the Solstice has been outfitted with a combat AI program, and also a wide array of audio clips of her back when she hated Julia and Irgelions in general, and thus against her will Christine takes part in Thaumata's evil scheme...

Event 5: White Dwarf (to take place right after the log)
Thaumata attacks the colony, with an extremely unwilling Christine being forced to take part in it.  The plan: use a scaled-down version of the Mausoleum of Maussollos to destroy the colony, with the Porcelain Tower, Solstice, and a number of Pyramids running interferance to stop it.  However, just because the Solstice is currently an ally doesn't mean those mines can't be turned on it, and Christine will have to just sit there and do nothing as the Solstice fights, playing back the most appropriate soundbyte in its database whenever someone directs a question to her.  And to top it all off, if Christine gets in a position to do something about it, they can always just remove the Solstice's IFF code from the Porcelain Tower's database turning its mines on it.

This is a mission to both stop the prototype from destroying the Seattle Colony and save Christine.  How the prototype cannon is destroyed doesn't matter too much; it's about as big as a Dendrobium and resistent but not immune to beam weaponry.  Saving Christine is a somewhat trickier matter, and will involve Christine nevertheless desperately trying to hack into the comm. system on the Solstice and eventually succeeding... exposing the ruse for what it is.

Unfortunately, that doesn't stop Victor from just turning the mines on Christine (loathe as he is to do it), or stop the Solstice from attacking the Corona.  However, Julia diffuses the worst of the problem by having the Corona cut through the Solstice's cockpit and letting Christine be let out into space, whereupon Julia pulls her into the Corona's cockpit instead.

From that point, all that really matters is taking care of the remaining mines present, making Victor retreat, and destroying the cannon, but there doesn't need to be specifics for any of these.

After this mission, Julia respectfully decides to decline the offer and continue serving on the Chalice, and she resolves to see Thaumata vanquished in the end, her friendship with Christine growing that much stronger.  And yeah the Solstice is destroyed, but Herrera Futuristics will do what it can to get Christine a new machine.

Event 6: Neutron Star
The cannon from the previous mission was highly reminiscent of the Irgelion orbital bombardment cannon that had been intended for use against Earth during the human/Irgelion conflict, and at some point Julia decides to swing by a patch of space which had been one of the primary battle sights in the past.  The area's littered with the remnants of scrapped mechs and warships on both sides, but it was also the final resting place of the bombardment cannon after the battle, most of its internal systems wrecked leaving it as nothing more than a husk.

However, Julia's suspicions that something's wrong prove valid when it turns out that Thaumata has in fact set up a salvage operation in the area which has already been well underway, and under orders from Bairoft the Thaumata forces there respond by attacking Julia and the other player characters.  Once again Julia'll cross blades with Bairoft, and eventually even come out the winner due to the Corona trumping the Alexandria specwise and destroy it... and though Bairoft will be presumed dead he'll still manage to escape alive.

However, the fighting ultimately ends with the debut of the Gate of Ishtar, Thaumata's flagship, and the arrival of Valentine and Herbert Phillips, who reveals himself to be a member of Thaumata (though if pressed he'll deny being Iskander), and order the forces to stand down.  Phillips has since seized control of Thaumata from its founders and claims he intends to restructure and reform it into a more legitimate organization, and state he wishes to avoid the choices and actions made in the past.

As for the salvage operation, he'll be able to point out that technically Thaumata's not doing anything illegal; if it were the Junk Guild doing this, we wouldn't have any objection, and Bairoft was clearly a holdover from the previous administration.  Valentine and Victor might have a bit to say to Christine, but at worst it'd only be passive-aggressive trash-talk.  And thus the mission ends not so much with a bang but a whimper... and in the space between this mission and the next Thaumata'll be less Blue Cosmos and more DC... though this all is meant to go towards one ultimate purpose...

Event 7: Event Horizon
This mission would admittedly sorta go hand-in-hand with any Gundam SEED Stargazer finale we'd get, though at the same time the details of the mission are blurry enough that it doesn't have to be.  At any rate, the Chalice gets called to the DSSD base in space to commemorate a serious breakthrough in their deep space probe AI technology, with the intent that space explorationll be considerably less of a challenge now.

And this is when shit hits the fan, when a joint assault by both Blue Cosmos and Thaumata gets waged in an attempt to not only destroy the station but also let Blue Cosmos steal the advanced AI tech for their own goals.  It's an alliance of convenience, with both groups having something to gain by the team up.

At any rate, if we decide to couple this with Stargazer, awesome.  We can throw in Sven, Mudie, and Shams and handle that bit, but if not we can still include Blue Cosmos using Daggers of various ilk alongside the Pyramids.  This marks a return of Valentine in the Hagia Sophia combined with the Byzantia and Victor with the Porcelain Tower, along with the Gate of Ishtar which is using a targeting laser to relay a firing solution to the orbital bombardment cannon Thaumata is going to use.  And at first the top priority is to destroy the Gate of Ishtar with the idea being that without the firing solution data, the cannon won't be able to accurately fire.  During this time, Christine also gets the opportunity to clash blades with Victor, and the passive-aggressiveness from the last mission begins to shine through for what it really is.  tl; dr, Valentine hates Christine now more than she hates Julia because Christine represents the fact that xenophobes can still give up their hatred and become tolerant of people they once loathed, and Valentine refuses to believe in that.  By growing into someone who's not a xenophobe, Christine endangers Valentine's entire livelihood and she won't have that.  Victor, on the other hand, doesn't think Christine is a lot cause yet but he'll do what he can to see "Chrissy" defeated so her re-education can start.

At any rate, the Gate of Ishtar does get destroyed and for a moment it seems like all is well and victory is won, but the assault presses on anyways, and shortly afterwards the DSSD station gets grazed by the cannon.  How?  Well it's simple; Phillips is doing best-guess and trying to do the number-crunching in his head to get a good firing solution once more.  And the fact that the cannon came so close to destroying the station is evident enough we can't let him fire again.

It's at this point that Julia and maybe... three other people excluding Chrstine decide that this needs to be dealt with, and they use the acceleration laser and a solar sail on the station to launch themselves at the cannon to destroy it.  The cannon is effing huge, with point defenses and a contingent of Pyramids defending it, but Julia and company will still charge in and enter the interior only to encounter Bairoft for the last time.  Now piloting the Great Wall; a Gaia Vanguard that trumps the Corona, Bairoft has every intent of stopping them from reaching the main control terminal/reactor and he'll put up a hell of a fight.  This also gets to be a big motive rant point for Bairoft, as Julia gets to to find out why he's doing what he's doing as well as Phillips's goals, though she's also going to feel no sympathy for him.

Should also note that at some point during all of this, the Byzantia gets destroyed.  But in its final moments, Valentine ejects the Hagia Sophia from it before detonating explosives built into the Byzantia in the hopes of killing or at least disabling some of the protagonists.  From there she'll continue fighting with the presumably undamaged Hagia Sophia.

Things can go one of two ways here; either everyone in the cannon teams up to eventually take Bairoft down, or some or everyone leaves Julia behind and goes on ahead, fighting through more Pyramids before they eventually get to kill Phillips.  At any rate, Julia and Bairoft settle their rivalry once and for all as they push each other and their machines to the brink, Julia ultimately killing Bairoft by using her railgun to work around the Great Wall's KDU; using one round to push another one previously stopped through the Great Wall's cockpit, killing Bairoft.  In the meantime, the fight against Valentine and Victor at the DSSD station will similarly be winding down, with Christine finally convincing Victor to take her seriously.  Now recognizing her as a lost cause, he won't spare her any quarter, but ultimately she'll kill him all the same.  Valentine'll also be killed at this point.  By who it doesn't really matter.

And with the death of their top ace, military commander, and leader, Thaumata'll finally collapse as well, and space exploration will be free to cotinue on.