Frontier Day is over. Across the Federation, the Jupiter Signal brought chaos and death, only for the Borg’s plan to be foiled before Earth fell. The attack came in a slew of onslaughts against Starfleet: the bio-nanites implanted in the bodies of officers through the transporter system, the Fleet Formation System being turned against Starfleet, and the Changeling infiltration and conspiracy that exposed the Federation to these dangers.

The damage to Starfleet goes deep. At Sol especially, a generation of experienced officers was wiped out by the assimilated. Those assimilated, now freed, must live with their brush with the Collective and the suffering they inflicted under its thrall. This has left Starfleet with a personnel crisis, thousands of their veterans killed and many of the inexperienced survivors struggling with trauma as they look to be catapulted through the ranks to fill gaps.

The Attack on Mars was the last comparable tragedy to hit the Federation, and the political, psychological, and social fallout dominated Starfleet policy for a decade and a half. Command is eager to not let Frontier Day cast a similar shadow just as the Federation has turned from its isolationist path. Whatever can be done to make sense of the social trauma and guide the Federation to emerge from Frontier Day with hope, not fear, must be attempted.

Avalon’s duty in the aftermath, then, is more to merely themselves. Starships across the Federation were hit in the crisis, and need more maintenance and repair. The Fleet Yards suffered massive damage, not just to its infrastructure but with some losses among the crew, and a significant psychological blow dealt to everyone.

Meanwhile, the Avalon Research and Design Group must face this plethora of challenges, seeking to understand the crisis, how it happened, how its like can be stopped from happening again, and how Starfleet and the Federation can navigate the trauma on a micro, meso, and macro level. Each and every Institute has projects and teams that can contribute to tackling the mysteries and scars of Frontier Day.

A series of conferences is being held by the Avalon Group, where papers may be presented to discuss research findings and make proposals for the future. More than a showcase of scientific knowledge, leadership hopes this will unite the group – the whole fleet yards – as they emerge from trauma to face the future.

This mission for AFY focuses on the Avalon Group and the scientific response to Frontier Day. Wherever possible, institutes, projects, and teams are encouraged to turn their effort to one of the many issues outlined above. This might be a practical understanding of issues like how the Fleet Formation System was corrupted, research to support Doctor Crusher’s cure of the bio-nanite genetic alterations, or the nature of the Jupiter Signal itself. It might be about the personal psychological crises affecting survivors or how Starfleet might proceed with this massive loss of experienced officers. It could be about avoiding a new moral dark age, such as fell on the Federation after Mars.

Much of this research can be shared and discussed at conferences held within the Avalon Group across the system. Members are free to create these as small gatherings of scholars, each with their own theme or premise, to discuss different facets of research conducted around Frontier Day, or proposals for Starfleet’s future after it.

At the same time, everyone on AFY must live with the fallout of Frontier Day, a disaster that ravaged the wider Federation and the system itself. Starships which needed work before the crisis still must be fixed and launched. More flood in each day, all with a story of what happened to them in the calamity. For many engineers, more than ships and dockyards need repairing; their lives must be rebuilt. For many researchers, dealing with the aftermath is not an abstract scientific puzzle: it is their very reality.

Storylines that can be explored in this mission could include:

– A project researching what happened on Frontier Day.

– A team producing a proposal for Starfleet’s response.

– Dockyards dealing with ships damaged elsewhere on Frontier Day coming in.

– Researchers sharing their findings and proposals at one of the several conferences.

– The psychological aftermath of Frontier Day; the loss of life and the Borg assimilation.