' Wrote:Phantoms have been history for quite a while now & yet phantom-hate is still an issue. It doesn't matter if it's a fanboy reboot or just an excuse to try & get the ships out of mothballs...many people will whine, bitch & complain about it to the point where it will just become the same 'ol headache to deal with all over again.

The phantoms are gone & they took their ships w/ 'em as far as disco's concerned

Best to just let it go imho

' Wrote:Alright, here's what sparked this thread in the first place:

A long while back, I created a faction known as The Oracles. This group began when a zoner ship stumbled upon the Daam K'vosh structure now referred to as the Shrine. The group eventually became a link between those wanting to join the keepers and the keepers themselves - a midway faction that, while having it's own unique RP as a psuedo religious group, also provided instruction to those players seeking to become nomads.

The leader of the Oracles - the captain of the zoner ship that found the shrine and the first human to set foot on the structure - was an individual known only as Miranda. Over the course of my time playing that character, I took her on a drastically different path than the rest of the Oracles - she lead them, but at the same time she was 'possessed', for lack of a better word, by the K'vosh artificial intelligence entity that inhabited the shrine and guarded it's secrets. She shared her mind with that entity in much the same way a willing nomad host shares his or her body with the nomad incubus.

Through that shared existence, the entity slowly manipulated Miranda's DNA in order to progress her evolution as a human - it unlocked latent abilities such as telepathy and telekinesis, downloaded the knowledge of the shrine itself into her mind, and sent her off on peculiar quests to find very specific artifacts and people, for reasons that were never revealed to the rest of the Oracles or even to Miranda herself. She was an agent of the shrine, and through her service she became a more advanced individual, a truly symbiotic relationship.
Now, I've been wanting to rekindle Miranda's character and that RP since my return to disco, but I havent yet decided on a faction that fits - that is, until some thought was put into the disbanding of the Phantoms and the fact that they now have suitable bases and ships for Miranda's tasks.

In essence, the phantoms under Miranda would have absolutely no relation to the phantoms that once existed. They would be a completely new group, with new goals, new allegiances, and an entirely new style of roleplay. Miranda's group would, of course, consist of individuals similar to herself - agents chosen for being genetically ahead of the curve in comparison to the average Sirian human, and tasked with the collection of artifacts, similar living subjects, and anything else necessary to further the entity's goals (which I'm not going to reveal at this time).

The group would not be overtly hostile to any particular factions throughout Sirius, though obviously many groups - including the order and house governments - may be hostile to them. Outside of any necessary violence to procure the items they're tasked with obtaining, these individuals would never initiate hostilities. Due to their relation to the Oracles, they would be on semi-friendly terms with the Nomads, considering themselves advanced enough to be equals to the K'hara and as of yet unmentioned empires outside of Sirius.
The way I see it, the phantoms are an empty NPC faction perfectly suited to the group I had intended to create, and eventually the ships can be given custom models to fit them further.

' Wrote:That'd be perfect. As well as all those juicy ships like the Slipstream and... what was it called? Shadow Assault Fighter? Something.

Good stuff.

' Wrote:Honestly, I would rather see the ships replaced with something another faction needs (civilian fighters and bombers?) and the station and system removed.