All of a sudden, everything stops.

Across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, subspace-based technologies begin to fail. Ships’ warp fields collapse. Interstellar communication slows to a crawl. Sensors are blinded.

It does not happen all at once. First, a section of the Typhon Frontier goes dark. Days later, reports emerge of chaos within the Klingon Empire. Then silence across the Neutral Zone, then the DMZ, then the Deneb Sector Block, until this curtain comes down upon the Federation and its neighbours.

It isn’t everywhere. Whole systems and even sectors are unaffected – internally. But in a criss-crossing, seemingly random pattern across the galaxy, this failure begins. The effect is like impenetrable walls coming down, segmenting sectors, governments, trade networks into isolated territories. Some are great swathes of space, clusters of stars, all able to communicate and travel between each other until they reach what feels like an impenetrable barrier to the rest of the galaxy. Other stars are isolated, this invisible boundary falling either directly upon them and limiting interstellar travel to impulse speeds, or cutting them off from the nearest systems.

Although communication across the Federation is disrupted, experts in subspace mechanics do not take long to identify the problem: a massive and unpredictable fluctuation of subspace harmonics in the affected areas, making any technological efforts to traverse or interact with subspace fail near-instantaneously as conditions immediately change. Figuring out a ‘why’ is harder. Figuring out how to overcome it, seemingly impossible.

Life in the Federation was once boundless, with information flowing in from a thousand worlds at any citizen’s fingertips. Now, life has shrunk to a mere sector, or a mere system, or a mere world. For some, this is an inconvenience – terrifying, but with little immediate effect on their everyday life. For others, it is calamitous: many worlds are reliant on trade and supplies from neighbours for industry, support, or food.

The effect is not the same everywhere. In some areas, the blight on subspace merely dampens technology, rather than forcing it to fail. Ships can sustain a weak warp field at a low warp factor, enabling travel – but painfully slowly. Likewise, communication can sometimes pierce the veil with the right calibration and the right power boosting. Some powerful subspace sensor arrays can glimpse conditions far away, through the barrier. Interstellar travel between some regions may not be impossible, but require circuitous routes through unaffected flight paths of space that are longer and more difficult.

Very quickly, the phenomenon – the disaster – earns a name. Of course, with intragalactic communication brought to a standstill, there is no formalisation of it, but where word can be spread, the term sticks: the Blackout.

Starfleet ships are scattered. Some have been caught directly in the effect of the Blackout, now stranded in deep space or star systems where they can’t go to warp, can’t send a message for help, can’t be detected on sensors. Others are trapped within small pockets of territory cut off from the wider galaxy. Many are in more central or unaffected regions, watching as swathes of space go dark, preparing over the long days as the curtain falls on the whole galaxy. Orders come in to make preparations, to help where they can, before word from on high simply stops.

For many ships, all there is, is themselves, people who need help, and the dark.

And there is no telling when or how it will end.

——-

Writing the Blackout

Simply put, warp travel, long-range subspace communications, and sensors that can easily and reliably read what’s happening further away than within a star system aren’t working in large sections of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant. Rather than a blanket failure, it’s more like a random criss-cross of ‘walls’ (which can in themselves be light-years thick) running across the two quadrants, chopping known space up into smaller, completely isolated sections of space. Within those regions, subspace technology may work normally or have reduced efficacy.

The scientific reasoning is that subspace harmonics are oscillating wildly and unpredictably, which means the ways that technologies interact with subspace are failing. While this could perhaps be compensated for, the chaos and breakdown in communication is undermining any efforts to achieve this.

The Blackout is not instantaneous. It will roll out over the course of days, a week or more. If ships aren’t in an affected area, they may hear of parts of the galaxy going dark. It is perfectly acceptable for you to decide if your ship or starbase is trapped or cut off right away, or is in a region affected only later. You can tell stories about being directly impacted, trying to re-establish communication with the rest of the galaxy, or your ship helping those thrown into chaos by the Blackout, or you can keep it as a background detail while you continue your other stories.

If engaged in the Blackout, ships are likely to be cut off from superiors, operating on their own judgement, trying to help where they can or just stay alive. Afflicted areas will be chaotic, with some regions crippled as they are cut off from trade routes on which they’re reliant (imagine a city-world cut off from an agricultural neighbour) or simply as panic sets in. It’s down to you to decide, for member canon locations, how badly they’re affected. The Blackout can’t be beaten, but in some places it’s smothered a star system to render all subspace travel or communication impossible, while in others it’s simply forced ships to travel at low-warp or by circuitous routes, making journeys difficult and long but not (effectively) impossible.

Crucially, this write-up is vague about exactly where is afflicted and when. This is because the Blackout is the precursor to the events of the 2025 Fleet Action. Information about the FA plot will start to be released from mid-to-late-March, but the Blackout has been deemed a Big Enough Deal that the Intelligence Office is giving members a chance to engage with it on its own terms before what comes next… comes next.

As such, while members are welcome and encouraged to depict their ship engaging with the chaos of the Blackout, the Intelligence Office recommends you keep this to short stories or snapshots giving a taste of the chaos, rather than committing to a big, many-chaptered mission, because soon enough you’ll be saddling up for what’s next. This is made even easier by the timeline: while the Blackout does begin in March 2402 and gets worse, it’s perfectly fine to keep your story in February 2402 or early March and get ready for a small time-skip once you know what you’re doing in the FA.

Members should be light on details about what’s happening in canon locations. If they want to engage with the Blackout outside of member canon areas, one option will be the TF HQ regions (the Typhon Frontier, the Deneb Sector Block, the Thomar Expanse, the DMZ, the Triangle, the RNZ) – all of which will, by the end of the first week of March (IC!), be cut off from the rest of the galaxy. Anyone is free to depict their ships engaging with the chaos in these areas, but if you want to refer to or visit specific fleet canon locations in the region, you should consult with the TF staff of the pertinent area (and again – you are not restricted to only your own TF area!).

This briefing will remain live until April 4th 2025, at which point the Fleet Action briefing will depict galactic conditions in Q2 2402.