Captain's log, Stardate 230108.66
A week ago we launched Starfleet∞Infinity into a new chapter, a new frontier in our ongoing voyages.
Our colony—originally called Astraios—was founded more than a decade ago as a UFS base in the remote Gamma Quadrant. UFS in that era was overflowing with vision and energy and it expanded rapidly into Opensim. But after its lively start came a reality check—our base on 3rd Rock Grid struggled to retain crew and find new enlistments, and it couldn't compete with the vast resources that were available to the bases in Secondlife. There were lean years at Astraios when the base only survived thanks to a core of individuals who kept the Starfleet torch burning in what seemed like a forgotten wilderness.
But we survived and even flourished. And over those same years the organisation we answered to, UFS went into decline. The once bustling base of Pinastri became a ghost town. The visionary leaders were steadily replaced with grocery clerks. The HQ command structure became self-serving, obstructive and moribund, and the membership declined.
Astraios, however, underwent a renaissance. New buildings, new state-of-the-art facilities, a new space station and starships. Our membership numbers doubled. A second "ship of the line", the Denkiri Center for creativity and the arts, moved into our ground based colony and introduced an exciting programme of talks, art projects and brain storming sessions. And our progress met with a mixture of bemusement, incomprehension and outright hostility from UFS. So we sacked them. Simple as that.
And here we are, a new venture, stepping into the unknown with three starships, a space station, a civilian colony, and a membership roster that has doubled again in a wave of disaffected UFS players signing out with them and signing up with us, and with the support of locals inspired by our new offering. It is an exciting time. Our base bristles with energy again. We are not UFS, we are Infinity: Lyonesse Colony, Galileo Station, the Tyson, Feynman and Shogun starships; our ongoing mission to explore strange new words… to seek out new life and new civilisations… to boldly go where no woman, man or 'gender fluid', has gone before... (cue uplifting music).