Duty Post Award Winner – David Knight, USS Atlantis (The Black Cross)

StarBase 118 Staff · May 28, 2019

Join us for another in a series of interviews with winners of Duty Post awards from our recent 2018 Awards Ceremony. Our goal is to give you insight into how our fleet’s best simmers write, and imagine their characters.

This month we’re interviewing the writer behind Lieutenant David Cross playing a Human Male Intelligence Officer assigned to the USS Atlantis. He won the Black Cross award: “Given to a member of the Intelligence community that strives to accomplish the goals of Starfleet Intelligence, while simultaneously upholding the ideals and structure of Starfleet command. This person has the cunning to gather intelligence by means of deceptive dialogue or espionage, as opposed to force drawn confessions. While matters of intelligence are often game changers, this person strives to attain those goals within the boundaries of their Commanding Officer, and the regulations of Starfleet.”

GALVEN: Thank you for agreeing to have an interview with me! Could you tell us a little about yourself for our readers out there?

KNIGHT: My pleasure, I have been a fan of star trek since some of my earliest memories and enjoy reading star trek novels. I have been simming my character off and on for almost a year know aboard the Atlantis as the ships Signals intelligence Officer

Winning a duty post award that’s outside of our normal range of selected duty posts must be a great feeling! Do you take any inspiration from films, television, or books when writing your character and his actions?

To be honest, I was quite surprised when I won the black cross, I had been doing my best at the time to portray a Federation intelligence officer and never would have guessed I would even be nominated for the award. As for inspiration, I am particularly fond of the Deep Space Nine series. Specifically, Captain Sisco and Commander Worf, though the characters were miles apart as far as story lines and personalities. They both find themselves conflicted with the morality of how important the right information can be and whether acting upon it would be morally right. Moreover they both portray Intelligence work in more realistic light as opposed the more popular 007 approach made popular by the movies.

Captain Brell said in his presentation that Knight is diligent in his activities in and around the area of the campaign region. Could you explain what he means by this?

Well, I could never hope to try to explain Brell’s thoughts perfectly. However I can take a stab at it, I do my best to keep a larger picture feel going as background for my sims. For example the region I am simming in has been at war with itself for some time, the federation is neutral of course. I like to provide descriptions of intercepted or decrypted messages that help illustrate events far away and how they might affect the Atlantis and its crew. Without disrupting the ships mission or storylines of course, or upon request, disrupting it to move the story or provide plot device.

On your character wiki, it says that his sister continued to overshadow him. Could you provide some examples on what she accomplished and how has it helped with Knight’s character development?

That in of itself is part of a larger idea that I wrote for Knights backstory. The idea behind that particular sentence though was to establish Knights relationship with his parents, which I plan to use as plot devices for personal story lines. As for what his sister has done to over shadow him, she is also a part of star fleet and out ranks him but only as science officer . She maintains a healthy relationship with him and there is no ill will between them.

Captain Brell also said that he is quick to file reports with superior officers and with the greater Intel community on the Blacknet. What is the Blacknet and is it similar to Section 31?

I have made more Intelligence based sims in which my story lines have tied into theirs and helped expand the ships mission scope. As for BLACKNET, i personally can’t take credit for it and actually found it while I was researching my duty post on the SB118 website. BLACKNET is a forum meant to help Intelligence officers across the fleet to help connect with each other, with interesting ideas, inspirations and possible interactions. I’ve only made a few mentions of it in character as a sort of classified data base where access to specific information is requested and approved before access is given. I personally don’t know of any connections to Section 31 with BLACKNET, though it wouldn’t surprise me. As for Section 31 itself (REDACTED).

And lastly, what kind of advice can you give new and older members who want to expand on towards other kinds of unique and exciting duty posts such as an Intelligence Officer?

Personally the best advice I can give is to be flexible but remember your roots, while I have established that my character specializes in signals Intelligence. He has had to act as security and science officers as needed. Having said that another piece of advice that can help add flavor to any potential Intel operatives is that some of the best sims concerning intelligence draw upon the more realistic and lesser practices not dramatized by popular spy books and movies. And of course, “Fortune favors the bold”

Thanks for your time, Lieutenant David Knight!

You can read more about Lieutenant David Knight on the wiki.

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