Welcome back! After a mandated vacation period by the Franchise Owners Subcommittee of the Ferengi Trade Alliance, Tuesdays at Quark’s is back! Things got a little crazy during February so I told the guys I was taking off for a bit. Now I’m back, though, with the March theme: guest stars from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
We’ll be looking at some bit players (or recurring characters) from The Next Generation that could make an appearance in your campaign. The first one is that dishonest thief who stole the heart of Jean-Luc Picard, Ms. Vash…. Actually she doesn’t have a last name, does she?
Vash was introduced in the third season of The Next Generation when Picard went on a trip to Risa during shore leave. After some initial flirting it turns out that Vash was on the planet looking for an artifact and was using Picard in part to distract the Ferengi following her. The feelings were somewhat genuine, though, and so Q later used Vash to test Picard’s reactions in a fourth season episode that involved extended Robin Hood cosplay. Vash then left with Q and showed up later at Deep Space Nine during the series’ seventh episode. Vash wasn’t so enamored with Q anymore and wanted to leave, which required some quick thinking and manipulation of the station’s crew.
The point is that Vash has been trouble since she was introduced to the series, but she’s the fun kind of trouble. She’s sympathetic but focused on her own agenda, nice and easy to work with but with lots of criminal connections, and very widely traveled but still a fun conversationalist. If you have a scientist to draw out of their shell, she can flirt with them and use them for her own ends. If you have a dry archaeological mission in mind, it’s instantly more adventurous with Vash involved. If you want to involve some of the seedier elements of the Star Trek universe but don’t want the players to see it coming, introduce Vash under a pseudonym.
There are lots of hooks to come up with but here are a few to get you started.
- Vash shows up in the Shackleton Expanse with an artifact she kept during her visit to the Gamma Quadrant. It bears similarities to some of the artifacts found in the Expanse and Vash seems to know more about that connection than she’s letting on.
- During shore leave on a vacation planet, Leck shows up following Vash and she turns to the crew for help. She claims that Leck is pursuing her because she refused to turn over a dangerous artifact to Soloc, pretty much the same story from when she met Picard on Risa. This time, though, Vash and the Ferengi are working together and are trying to trick the crew into helping them steal the artifact from its secure location.
- A second Tox Uthat is found and Starfleet Command is desperately trying to study it to understand the danger of this weapon. They need an expert, though, and so the crew is tasked with tracking down the evasive Vash to recover whatever records she still has about the artifacts.
Click on the image below for the PDF.
