Tolomin knelt in his dimly-lit quarters, sighing softly as he closed his eyes. He gently opened his storage compartment, taking out the weapon concealed within. It was a rare commodity: A blade of gleaming steel, adorned with the runic script of the Surian mother tongue. He took it into one hand, swinging it gently, estimating again the weight of the weapon. He noted how the mass of the weapon seemed to behave strangely when he made a perfectly horizontal strike, and he sighed again, returning the sword to its former resting place. He gently picked up his datapad and headed down into the corridor.
Immediately, he was besieged by a member of the crew. Dressed in the cerulean uniform of a command officer, he seemed eager to help. Tolomin looked to the pips on the officer's collar, noticing that he was an ensign. A rookie. "Pardon me, Ambassador, is there something I can help you with?" Tolomin merely waved the man away, stepping into the lift. He looked next to him, noticing a beautiful young woman with pointed ears-- identical to his own. Her hair was neatly braided, and her delicate appearance was quite deceiving; her slender hands tightly gripped a regulation plasma rifle. She looked up to him, and spoke a melodic dialect of Surian. "Do you honestly think the Ororeths are going to honor the Treatise?"
Tolomin shook his head, smiling a bit. "I sincerely doubt it. But the Rovigans are quite adamant about at least attempting a peace agreement. After all, it is their system that is in immediate peril." The lift stopped, and Tolomin departed the craft, saying no more as his gentle smile faded. His stride was quick and purposeful as he entered the Engineering room.
He ignored the surprised looks of the engineers and walked past an officer attempting to gain his attention, probably for some recommendation or another. He stood for a few moments in front of the plasma coils, and pointed to a device. An engineer nodded. "That's the spatial inverter. Keeps the gravity wells from malfunctioning. Unfortunately, we've been having problems with its power source lately, and we don't have a strong enough jolt to jumpstart it." Tolomin gave the man an understanding look, and flexed a hand. He recited a brief mathematical formula to himself, and reached into a small travel pouch that was firmly attached to his belt. He pulled a small crystal from it, no more than an inch in diameter, and a small bit of specially treated fur. As the engineer looked on, Tolomin waved his hand in a complex, exact manner, and the fur and crystal glowed brightly. In a brief instant, Tolomin summoned forth an arc of lightning into the machine, and the unmistakable whirr of the spatial inverter echoed within the room. Tolomin noted to himself that the fur he had used, that of the Sarathian hare, was easily the most potent conductor of electricity he had managed to acquire. Indeed, his aptitude for energy manipulation-- and the innate amounts of it that all beings unconsciously store-- were his specialty. So enamored with the majesty of his work was Tolomin that it was a good deal of time before he noticed the slack jawed expressions of the engineers. One of the officers approached him. "What... exactly was that, Ambassador?"
He resisted the condescending urges he felt towards the officer. After all, he was a Torgrian, from the outermost parts of the Rovigan system. Perhaps the colonial authority of this sector had not yet introduced Surian practices to these settlers, the newest members of the Planetary Alliance? He sighed, and explained it as he had to the first humans he had met: "Magic."
Granted, this is cross-posted on two forums. However, I plan on expanding Tolomin's adventure, so I figured I'd put the intro up. I don't know how I'm going to take it yet, but I plan on expanding it sometime in the near future.
-Elven Doritos
May the Stars Align
So I began to read and I realized I had read it before. Either way, it's still a good story, and I really wish you luck with your Future/D&D amalgam. I'll head over to it right now and see if I can contribute anything.