WHO: YOU and two very big EMPs. WHEN: Friday, March 23 at 8pm WHERE: The ship in the middle of the ocean. WHAT: Ship powers down and so does everything electronic. TRIGGERS: If anything you respond with has a trigger, please make sure to put it in the subject line so people can know whether or not to read it. Thank you guys. <3
GATEWAY: ALRIGHT STOP. EMP(s) TIME.
WHAT HAPPENS
A strange electromagnetic pulse will hit the ship. It won't be one single blast, but two: one from the air and one from the water. They are untraceable and will not show up on RADAR, though characters with Force Sensitivity or premonitions may realize that something is up. If your character has water powers, they may also sense that something is wrong. There is no explosion, but simply a shockwave that rumbles through the ship from bottom to top and from top to bottom. Those in the middle decks will feel it the most as it meets up and doubles.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SHIP & ROBOTS? The ship's engine and power will immediately shut off. That means all things electrical will power off. No televisions, no gambling machines. Food preparation stops. Refrigeration immediately shuts off. While the ship might still be moving, it will eventually come to a crawl. All robots will stop in whatever position they were in: phased, not phased or in between phasing. All locks on the ship are now unlocked. All safety devices to keep people from your rooms is off (teleporting, phasing, and other means of getting into rooms without a magicband is now something you can do).
Anything that relies on the ship's power will remain offline until the backup power comes on. Now the EMP has taken them out too, so the only thing that will be turned on for the ship are small strips along the walls with soft white lights.
WHAT HAPPENS TO MY ELECTRONICS: Now usually, an EMP would completely fry the shit out of things to the point that you may as well toss it out, but we're going to say that the ship saved a lot of that. So your stuff will get knocked out, but it will not be permanently damaged. Even if it's powered off, the EMP will still affect it. Television, phones, tablets, superhero suits that rely on some sort of power unit… All of that will go down.
Some of you have canon in which this has been prepared for. Star Wars tech is hit and miss, depending on how old your tech is. But things like blasters reboot. Lightsabers may have some trouble igniting because of the mechanical components in the hilt. Suits of armor with their own power sources will likely come back online soon after but not be in complete working order. We encourage you to have to work on fixing something that got knocked out in it.
NOTHING should be running at full capacity before Sunday and if your characters attentions are in multiple places (fixing the ship, getting food, medical, looking at ship robots) then it might take longer for them to get it up to par. This isn't to say they wouldn't work but they may be at 30% capacity, 70% capacity, etc.
OBJECTIVES
There's a few things you'll need to attend to or know about.
Food is on a timer. Figure out what to do about it.
The robots are all locked into place, making it hard to get around them into rooms and in hallways. Your rooms are now open and unlocked to anyone.
The ship is a floating power plant. It is now stalled. Toilets, plumbing, lights -- they're all off. Air conditioning is off too.
Don't worry about listing (tipping on its side). Cruise ships are made with this in mind. Listing usually happens only if you hit something hard.
That also means that services for the disabled are nonfunctioning. Elevators, in particular, are the big thing.
Medbay is out too. That means anything kept in refrigerators, like vaccinations, need to be taken care of ASAP. If/when the ship gets back up and running, those who show up before the next port might be stuck in the medical rooms without them.
Security on the lowers deck went out with the robots and the power. Everything on this ship is tied into the engine room which is on the bottom two decks. A main computer runs everything through the engines. The code is foreign to everyone on board, so you will need to work it out once you can figure out a way to get it back up and running. That means checking all the little bits and bobs on those two floors for anything that might have been fried or short-circuited. That's a lot of stuff. (NOTE: This cannot be done before 4pm on Monday). Once the ship is back up and running, it is self-repairing so it won't be at one hundred percent.
Go forth and freak out!
Please wait until I've gotten the categories up before replying! We would like to keep as much of the in person interaction here. Try not to have a hundred posts freaking out about the EMP, you're better off sticking to one post and just having everyone check in on it, like we did with the original ship arrival post.