Jeff Zeitlin wrote:

>     The TAS does not publicise their involvement with the well-known charitable
>     organization Compassion Corps.
>
>     The Compassion Corps acts principally to provide medical services to worlds
>     whose infrastructure is unable to support a medical establishment. This is
>     primarily through their two main arms, the Interstellar Free Healers
>     Society, and Starships of Succor.

This must be a terrific idea :-) because I came up with something very similar for a
recent campaign. In M (highly variant) TU I called them the Red Crystal (no prizes
for guessing where the name came from), and in the campaign (at least) they were
more oriented towards providing medical care for civilians affected by warfare (so
a bit more MSF and a bit less natural-disaster, paint yours anyway you want),
but there's no reason why the same organization couldn't do both. I never thought
of associating them with TAS, but again, why not? It does make some sense.

I had them as completely independent, but with some support from various 'good guy'
governments. EG a military hospital ship might, at the end of its useful life with
a Fleet, simply be donated to the Red Crystal 'as is', rather than being stripped,
broken up, and so on. Similarly, Red Crystal ships possessed something akin to
diplomatic immunity, so attacks on them might be treated by Acts of War by some
powers (and not by others, of course!). And the Red Crystal might, on occasional,
call on these 'good guy' governments for aid. EG my campaign featured a pair of Red
Crystal hospital ships kidnapped by an insurgency. The Red Crystal, having no military
assets of its own, calls upon the Regency for help, and hilarity ensues.

Hope this helps to spice up someone's campaign!

Jonathan