[Sc. Seed] Aaliyah Tarkesh and the Battle-Yacht Percival
Jan 22, 2024 12:50:04 GMT
tampahawke and lupercal like this
Post by Catsmate on Jan 22, 2024 12:50:04 GMT
Another idea from my Notes files. This is a couple of excerpts and is being posted frommy tblet so it may be little disjointed. It's basically a bit of background, a starship and an antagonist. I have more which I'll post when it's in better order.
Aaliyah Tarkesh and the Battle-Yacht Percival
Background.
The entire concept of a “battle yacht” is a rather an odd one, alien to pretty much every ‘conventional’ society and military organisation. But then the Naritine Alliance society is an odd one, filled with frankly rather out-dated concepts of chivalry and knight-errantry¹ by the standards of the late fourth millennium.
For the typical Alliance aristocrat, the ability to travel in space is fundamental to their role as a member of the (self-proclaimed) galactic elite; however few actually possess the personal wealth necessary to purchase, and operate, true warships, with their need for crew, basing, maintenance et cetera. Dedicated fighter-craft do not appeal to a would-be adventurer, being short endurance (and thus requiring basing) and lacking the desired self-contained nature. Also they lack the style, so necessary for a proper knight-errant.
∗ Also contributed to by the contempt in which Naritine aristocrats hold the fighter forces of many of the other powers, who sublimate individuality and personal glory to organisation and discipline.
∗ Though the GalGenTech Prowler class long range reconnaissance/picket/intruder is suited to the role they’re generally an ideological impossibility due to the frosty Alliance/Confederation relations². This hasn’t stopped certain knights from ‘acquiring’ such craft
The result is the Errant and similar classes³ (several variants are actually built on the same basic hullform and systems, engine, power et cetera), a strange hybrid corvette-fighter-yacht. It has sufficient agility and firepower to keep up with actual fighters (which it outguns handily), while having far more armour and protection, in addition to better facilities⁴ and endurance.
∗ It’s unwise for a stock Errant to tangle with even a flight of fighters; what they lack in firepower and shields they make up in maneuverability and multiple attack vectors. The Percival has additional turrets for this reason.
The Errant class is a popular one among young Naritine aristocrats, whose variation on the ‘Grand Tour’ generally requires a period of knight errantry that encompasses several years⁶.
The ship is compact and, perhaps more importantly, stylish; a gleaming arrowhead some thirty metres wide and twenty metres long, with the central height being about eight metres at its tallest, around fifteen hundred cubic metres in total. The central section has three levels, with a lower level split into a small vehicle bay in the front and engineering and system spaces behind. There are crawlways to access some components.
❖ For comparison a large business jet, e.g. the G550, is approximately 30 metres long and wide) though having vastly less internal volume, for a larger footprint.
Internally there is sufficient headroom (~2.25m) for almost anyone to walk its fuselage without trouble, albeit most humans feel a sense of crampedness. The central fuselage is the tallest point, with the edges of the craft tapering to thin, winglike structures.
When landed the ship rests on three skids and can be entered or exited via a ramp. Though fairly snug, the insides of the vehicle allow the ‘crew’ to move quite freely.
As is usual with ships of the technology of the period, the rear of the fuselage has the engine components; hyperdrive, fusion reactors, energy storage array and thrusters, along with life support and other essentials. These spaces can get quite tight, requiring careful maneuvering and efficiency benefits from repair and maintenance in a hangar bay (or at east grounded) rather than in flight.
• A extensible ‘tent’ is carried to enclose the rear of the ship when grounded. Or a force field can be deployed.
Ahead of this are the accommodations; there are several variations (depending on whether the ship is crewed by a single wandering adventurer or a small group of friends). In the case of the Percival there are four cabins, two configured for comfortable single occupancy and two as four-bunk bunkrooms.
There’s a ‘wardroom’ that’s the main common area, and used for a vast range of tasks, with kitchenette (fitted in the case of the Percival with an advanced model foodfab. Also present are numerous closets for storage and a heavily shielded hideaway hidden, shielded and climate controlled cargo hideaway large enough for one ton of gear, or two stowaways.
From here a person can climb down a ladder to the grandiosely named “vehicle bay”, from which can be launched the pair of Hussar-pattern grav-cycles (which exit is from the bottom/forward portion of the Errant), or up to the control room.
The controls of the vehicle are spacious, easily accessible cockpits, with the secondary controls behind and slightly above the main pilot controls. Both look out through a bubble canopy that has projected control metrics. Its contragravity lift system allows it to lift straight up, turn on a dime, and fly directly, powered by the blue glow of its reactionless thrusters.
Previous owners.
Unusually the Percival was jointly owned until it’s acquisition⁸ by Tarkesh.
The original owners were a pair of twins, Krautè Helscoll Tarkarnes and Trautè Bathllis Tarkarnes.
Helscoll was the brains of the pair. Bathllis was attractive, charismatic, brave but rather dumb.
Acquisition.
After a period of general knight-errantry, the Tarkarnes siblings discovered some odd goings-on in an independent star-system in the Coreward Disputed Zone. They investigated, well Helscoll investigated, her brother churned thing up as usual. They encountered a time traveller, named Baba Yaga¹³ and naturally attempted to frustrate her Evil Scheme, in the manner of Alliance knights.
Bathllis, in typical style, rushed in without planning¹⁰ and he ended up messily dead¹¹. His sister escaped vowing vengeance¹² in proper style. In escaping she liberated one of Baba Yaga’s involuntary minion, a woman from the distant past named Aaliyah Tarkesh. Together they plotted and planned, and recruited a few allies, and attacked Baba Yaga’s base of operations. After cutting through her minions and allies¹⁵, and suffering a few appropriately heroic deaths, the group managed to (apparently) kill the villain herself.
* Unless, of course, she had a final escape plan.....
In the chaos after her victory Helscoll’s new ally then shot her in the back and stole the ship.
Alternative.
Maybe Krautè Helscoll wasn’t actually killed, but left to die. Enter another time traveller, perhaps brought to the location by the aforementioned Evil Scheme of Baba Yaga who found Helscoll before she actually died.
Now Helscoll Seeks Vengence for the murder of her brother, the attempted murder of herself and the theft of her ship.
Current owner.
Aaliyah Tarkesh was born in 2149 in the city-state of New York and lived through the worst of the plagues that preceded the Dalek invasion, genocide and occupation of Terra. She lost her family, friends and almost everyone she knew, to disease, famine, civil unrest and organised extermination.
But she did what was necessary, whatever was necessary, and survived until the Liberation and the expulsion of the surviving Daleks.
Unfortunately, and despite the hopes the multitudes, things didn’t get a lot better then. Without much support from the off-world coalition, warlordism was endemic all over the planet, and the remains of New York, battered by a century of climate change and rising sea levels, its population mostly killed by disease, starvation and Daleks, was split between the ‘Big Seven’.
Everyone knew that the shifting web of alliances was doomed, it was only time until they’d face off against each other in The Big One.
❖ New York City in the 2160s is a mess.
The City had been hit hard, more than a fifth of Manhattan is under the waters of the Atlantic (including the Upper West Side and almost all of the East Village). The long defunct subway survives, only partially flooded, home to a subterranean culture who’ve used human and Dalek technology to survive and even extend their homeland, while maintaining neutrality in the above-ground wars. Most of the old levees, built in the mid-twenty-first century, survive, preserving the city from the influx of the Atlantic and standing so tall that they dominate the street level horizon.
Aaliyah survived by acting as a go-between and courier, sometimes spy, occasional thief, infrequent assassin and more.
That’s when she encountered the person calling herself Baba Yaga, meddling in local politics, distributing weapons and hatching plans….
Notes.
¹ Which is basically heading off out into space looking for trouble, wrongs to right¹⁴. And perhaps wealth.
² Said frostiness often being contributed to by the actions of the self-appointed knights-errant meddling in matters the Confed considers none of their business. This often includes the embarrassing exposure of corruption on the part of Confed officials in the Verge and Fringe.
³ Several such variants, often described as ‘express couriers’ or ‘fast packets’ in yard marketing, being basically smugglers, blockade runners and similar. There’s even a stripped down military version being marketed as a picket. All lack the usual plush interior décor of a true Errant.
⁴ Notably including, in the review by Krautè⁷ Feruto Milsank or an early model, “a decent bed”. Wenching (or bucking⁵) being another part of the errant lifestyle…
⁵ Or indeed, as with Krautè Feruto, both.
⁶ The survival rate is around 75%.
⁷ Feminine form of rank approximately equivalent to Knight Banneret, though hereditary.
⁸ By murder, though she’d actually have a moderate claim for legal ownership in Alliance space given their rather peculiar legal system. Though also be subject to a few dozen blood-feuds.
⁹ A somewhat weird Naritine affectation. These ‘squire’ robots carry weapons (and recharge, reload, repair and maintain them), are equipped to teach weapon skills, assist their owner to dress (and don armour). Helscoll had hers programmed with an extensive range of outdoors and survival skills and a basic kit to aid this, plus a sophisticated counter-surveillance system.
The ‘bots are humaniform, though with an oversized torso.
¹⁰ PPPPPP is not a popular concept with the young sprigs of the Naritine nobility.
¹¹ Literally messy. A fine mesh net made from molecule chain moving at speed. Basically he was julienned.
¹² In cultural appropriate style.
¹³ One of them anyway, it’s a popular alias for time travellers.
¹⁴ What constitutes “wrong” is rather subjective.
¹⁵ Literally in many cases, force swords being a popular knightly weapon.
Comments?
Aaliyah Tarkesh and the Battle-Yacht Percival
Background.
The entire concept of a “battle yacht” is a rather an odd one, alien to pretty much every ‘conventional’ society and military organisation. But then the Naritine Alliance society is an odd one, filled with frankly rather out-dated concepts of chivalry and knight-errantry¹ by the standards of the late fourth millennium.
For the typical Alliance aristocrat, the ability to travel in space is fundamental to their role as a member of the (self-proclaimed) galactic elite; however few actually possess the personal wealth necessary to purchase, and operate, true warships, with their need for crew, basing, maintenance et cetera. Dedicated fighter-craft do not appeal to a would-be adventurer, being short endurance (and thus requiring basing) and lacking the desired self-contained nature. Also they lack the style, so necessary for a proper knight-errant.
∗ Also contributed to by the contempt in which Naritine aristocrats hold the fighter forces of many of the other powers, who sublimate individuality and personal glory to organisation and discipline.
∗ Though the GalGenTech Prowler class long range reconnaissance/picket/intruder is suited to the role they’re generally an ideological impossibility due to the frosty Alliance/Confederation relations². This hasn’t stopped certain knights from ‘acquiring’ such craft
The result is the Errant and similar classes³ (several variants are actually built on the same basic hullform and systems, engine, power et cetera), a strange hybrid corvette-fighter-yacht. It has sufficient agility and firepower to keep up with actual fighters (which it outguns handily), while having far more armour and protection, in addition to better facilities⁴ and endurance.
∗ It’s unwise for a stock Errant to tangle with even a flight of fighters; what they lack in firepower and shields they make up in maneuverability and multiple attack vectors. The Percival has additional turrets for this reason.
The Errant class is a popular one among young Naritine aristocrats, whose variation on the ‘Grand Tour’ generally requires a period of knight errantry that encompasses several years⁶.
The ship is compact and, perhaps more importantly, stylish; a gleaming arrowhead some thirty metres wide and twenty metres long, with the central height being about eight metres at its tallest, around fifteen hundred cubic metres in total. The central section has three levels, with a lower level split into a small vehicle bay in the front and engineering and system spaces behind. There are crawlways to access some components.
❖ For comparison a large business jet, e.g. the G550, is approximately 30 metres long and wide) though having vastly less internal volume, for a larger footprint.
Internally there is sufficient headroom (~2.25m) for almost anyone to walk its fuselage without trouble, albeit most humans feel a sense of crampedness. The central fuselage is the tallest point, with the edges of the craft tapering to thin, winglike structures.
When landed the ship rests on three skids and can be entered or exited via a ramp. Though fairly snug, the insides of the vehicle allow the ‘crew’ to move quite freely.
As is usual with ships of the technology of the period, the rear of the fuselage has the engine components; hyperdrive, fusion reactors, energy storage array and thrusters, along with life support and other essentials. These spaces can get quite tight, requiring careful maneuvering and efficiency benefits from repair and maintenance in a hangar bay (or at east grounded) rather than in flight.
• A extensible ‘tent’ is carried to enclose the rear of the ship when grounded. Or a force field can be deployed.
Ahead of this are the accommodations; there are several variations (depending on whether the ship is crewed by a single wandering adventurer or a small group of friends). In the case of the Percival there are four cabins, two configured for comfortable single occupancy and two as four-bunk bunkrooms.
There’s a ‘wardroom’ that’s the main common area, and used for a vast range of tasks, with kitchenette (fitted in the case of the Percival with an advanced model foodfab. Also present are numerous closets for storage and a heavily shielded hideaway hidden, shielded and climate controlled cargo hideaway large enough for one ton of gear, or two stowaways.
From here a person can climb down a ladder to the grandiosely named “vehicle bay”, from which can be launched the pair of Hussar-pattern grav-cycles (which exit is from the bottom/forward portion of the Errant), or up to the control room.
The controls of the vehicle are spacious, easily accessible cockpits, with the secondary controls behind and slightly above the main pilot controls. Both look out through a bubble canopy that has projected control metrics. Its contragravity lift system allows it to lift straight up, turn on a dime, and fly directly, powered by the blue glow of its reactionless thrusters.
Previous owners.
Unusually the Percival was jointly owned until it’s acquisition⁸ by Tarkesh.
The original owners were a pair of twins, Krautè Helscoll Tarkarnes and Trautè Bathllis Tarkarnes.
Helscoll was the brains of the pair. Bathllis was attractive, charismatic, brave but rather dumb.
Acquisition.
After a period of general knight-errantry, the Tarkarnes siblings discovered some odd goings-on in an independent star-system in the Coreward Disputed Zone. They investigated, well Helscoll investigated, her brother churned thing up as usual. They encountered a time traveller, named Baba Yaga¹³ and naturally attempted to frustrate her Evil Scheme, in the manner of Alliance knights.
Bathllis, in typical style, rushed in without planning¹⁰ and he ended up messily dead¹¹. His sister escaped vowing vengeance¹² in proper style. In escaping she liberated one of Baba Yaga’s involuntary minion, a woman from the distant past named Aaliyah Tarkesh. Together they plotted and planned, and recruited a few allies, and attacked Baba Yaga’s base of operations. After cutting through her minions and allies¹⁵, and suffering a few appropriately heroic deaths, the group managed to (apparently) kill the villain herself.
* Unless, of course, she had a final escape plan.....
In the chaos after her victory Helscoll’s new ally then shot her in the back and stole the ship.
Alternative.
Maybe Krautè Helscoll wasn’t actually killed, but left to die. Enter another time traveller, perhaps brought to the location by the aforementioned Evil Scheme of Baba Yaga who found Helscoll before she actually died.
Now Helscoll Seeks Vengence for the murder of her brother, the attempted murder of herself and the theft of her ship.
Current owner.
Aaliyah Tarkesh was born in 2149 in the city-state of New York and lived through the worst of the plagues that preceded the Dalek invasion, genocide and occupation of Terra. She lost her family, friends and almost everyone she knew, to disease, famine, civil unrest and organised extermination.
But she did what was necessary, whatever was necessary, and survived until the Liberation and the expulsion of the surviving Daleks.
Unfortunately, and despite the hopes the multitudes, things didn’t get a lot better then. Without much support from the off-world coalition, warlordism was endemic all over the planet, and the remains of New York, battered by a century of climate change and rising sea levels, its population mostly killed by disease, starvation and Daleks, was split between the ‘Big Seven’.
Everyone knew that the shifting web of alliances was doomed, it was only time until they’d face off against each other in The Big One.
❖ New York City in the 2160s is a mess.
The City had been hit hard, more than a fifth of Manhattan is under the waters of the Atlantic (including the Upper West Side and almost all of the East Village). The long defunct subway survives, only partially flooded, home to a subterranean culture who’ve used human and Dalek technology to survive and even extend their homeland, while maintaining neutrality in the above-ground wars. Most of the old levees, built in the mid-twenty-first century, survive, preserving the city from the influx of the Atlantic and standing so tall that they dominate the street level horizon.
Aaliyah survived by acting as a go-between and courier, sometimes spy, occasional thief, infrequent assassin and more.
That’s when she encountered the person calling herself Baba Yaga, meddling in local politics, distributing weapons and hatching plans….
Notes.
¹ Which is basically heading off out into space looking for trouble, wrongs to right¹⁴. And perhaps wealth.
² Said frostiness often being contributed to by the actions of the self-appointed knights-errant meddling in matters the Confed considers none of their business. This often includes the embarrassing exposure of corruption on the part of Confed officials in the Verge and Fringe.
³ Several such variants, often described as ‘express couriers’ or ‘fast packets’ in yard marketing, being basically smugglers, blockade runners and similar. There’s even a stripped down military version being marketed as a picket. All lack the usual plush interior décor of a true Errant.
⁴ Notably including, in the review by Krautè⁷ Feruto Milsank or an early model, “a decent bed”. Wenching (or bucking⁵) being another part of the errant lifestyle…
⁵ Or indeed, as with Krautè Feruto, both.
⁶ The survival rate is around 75%.
⁷ Feminine form of rank approximately equivalent to Knight Banneret, though hereditary.
⁸ By murder, though she’d actually have a moderate claim for legal ownership in Alliance space given their rather peculiar legal system. Though also be subject to a few dozen blood-feuds.
⁹ A somewhat weird Naritine affectation. These ‘squire’ robots carry weapons (and recharge, reload, repair and maintain them), are equipped to teach weapon skills, assist their owner to dress (and don armour). Helscoll had hers programmed with an extensive range of outdoors and survival skills and a basic kit to aid this, plus a sophisticated counter-surveillance system.
The ‘bots are humaniform, though with an oversized torso.
¹⁰ PPPPPP is not a popular concept with the young sprigs of the Naritine nobility.
¹¹ Literally messy. A fine mesh net made from molecule chain moving at speed. Basically he was julienned.
¹² In cultural appropriate style.
¹³ One of them anyway, it’s a popular alias for time travellers.
¹⁴ What constitutes “wrong” is rather subjective.
¹⁵ Literally in many cases, force swords being a popular knightly weapon.
Comments?
