Trivia / Bait and Switch (STO)

• In Memoriam: The USS Valentine, an Odyssey-class docked to Deep Space 9 when the Bajor arrives, is named for Mark "h2orat" Valentine, a video artist at Cryptic Studios and STO Foundry author who died of cancer early in September 2013.
• Word of God: StarSword-C has an "Author's Notes" section at the end of each chapter explaining various Shout Outs and Continuity Nods, why he wrote things the way he did, and his explanations for various contradictions in the franchise that are relevant to the fic. He's also posted a lot of background information on Memory Gamma, available here. For instance, his preferred voice actress for Eleya is Jennifer Hale.
  • He heads off any potential negative comments on Eleya and Dul'krah docking a crewman's pay as a punishment in chapter three by pointing out that, regardless of what Gene Roddenberry said, the franchise flip-flopped all over the place on whether the Federation used money or not. His solution is that Earth, specifically, doesn't use money (that's been a constant), but that given the conceptual definition of money, it makes sense to have it to simplify interstellar trade.
  • Chapter four:
    • A briefly mentioned Federation ambassador named Alžbeta Nedvedová is supposed to be of Slovakian descent.
    • The relative friendliness of the two Breen bit characters who appear in chapter four^note In their only appearance in the STO storyline during the Deferi arc, they're enemies. is justified by an interpretation of the fact that the Breen government is stated to be a confederacy, "i.e. a form of federated government whose member bodies are only loosely joined, so I see them as more like the European Union than as a monolithic polity like Cardassia or the Federation." Dalsh Chu and Thot Kong represent a faction that thinks peaceful coexistence is a better way to interact with the Feds than warfare.
  • Chapter nine:
    • Admiral Amnell Kree and her flag captain Bronok Zell form a bit of an Odd Friendship. Even though she's a hard-bitten, largely humorless Dominion War vet and he's a bit more of a Mildly Military goofball, she actually requested him.
    • The "Phelha" whose name Tess takes in vain is an Andorian war goddess, but Tess is actually an agnostic so it's basically equivalent to an atheist saying OMG.
    • Kree makes a Cryptic Background Reference to a USS Mjolnir. According to the notes, the Mjolnir was a Saber-class starship that defected to the Maquis before the Dominion War, then vanished without trace when the Jem'Hadar invaded the DMZ in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "By Inferno's Light".
    • StarSword rationalizes Section 31 as Necessarily Evil:
      "A society like the Federation needs a helping of both bright idealism and ruthless pragmatism to survive. The one gives it a reason to fight, the other the ability. Now, I agree Section 31 went further during the Dominion War than they probably should have, especially with that bioweapon that didn't really have any effect on the war in the long run, but I get why they did it."