December Plot Summary for the USS Avandar

The USS Avandar has been destroyed, torn in two by a giant creature intent on devouring the tasty morsels inside, and with the ruined halves cast onto the surface of a nearby world. Or at least that was what those trapped in a mental construct intended to keep them occupied believed had happened.
For those of the crew *not* caught in the mindscape, the challenge was simply trying to find a way to detach the small entity they had encountered from the ship’s warp core and awaken their crewmates, preferably before anything unfortunate happened to either, or both. Their efforts regarding the creature proved less than successful, however, as their main plan was precisely what resulted in the mindscape – a defensive measure by the creature – to be created in the first place.
Based on the the first, clearest, mental imprint it could find, the entity used the mental outlook of a telepathic toddler to form the basis of the illusion, and it was that self-same framework that rapidly proved the mindscape’s undoing – Starfleet officers not, as a rule, bring inclined to believe in a world made of cartoon characters and toy bricks.
Realising it’s error, and having gleaned enough energy from the warp core to make it to it’s destination, the creature dissolved the illusion and departed, regretting the trouble it had caused and planning to make sure it never went anywhere near a starship again if it could help it…
In the wake of this encounter, it took some major medical work to ensure that the effected crewmembers suffered no ongoing effects, and the crew itself received news that did not bode well for their continued exploration of the L’heia Sector – the Avandar was being recalled, the crew to be reassigned among the fleet whilst the ship itself was used as a test-bed for a number of scientific and engineering protoype programs.
Whilst Starfleet maintains a presence in the Sector, the Avandar’s voyages of exploration are, for now, drawing to a close…