Geir Blood Axe

All this messing with smallcraft left me wondering how cheap you can make a ship in Traveller. Turns out about Cr 160,000, if you want to drive a rocket and solar powered planetoid rubble-pile from a cockpit. But that's the extreme. You can do quite a bit with 10-ton ships, and so here are a gaggle created for The Beyond, but suitable for just about anywhere. Ingiisi Yards 10-ton vessels The Ostmark Venture Disaster of 935, with 177 passengers and six crew dying as life support failed on the stricken liner prompted the Nakris Confederation to mandate lifeboats capable of evacuating all passengers and crew from any Nakris-registered liner above 400-tons. This change in regulation prompted a rush to create lifeboats capable of being retrofitted into existing ships and changes to designs of Nakris-built ships to accommodate the new regulation. One of the first yards to complete a new design was Ingiisi Yards, previously mostly a producer of generic utility boats and launches. Re...

Deepnight Alternative Secondary Vessels:  Part Two - smallcraft Deepnight Revelation carries a total of three dozen smallcraft: 20 20-ton utility boats and 16 60-ton pinnaces. I don't care for them much, so here are mine. General comment: None of the original smallcraft were armed. I mean, I'm not expecting a fleet of fighters here, but we are going off in unexplored space facing a potential hostile entity, and that's just the main mission. So at least give them a fixed mount and put a laser on it. First, the utility boat. I did a smallcraft for The Beyond called the Mule, an overly equipped do-it-all tiny craft that I thought was a lot of fun. For Deepnight, I've made a variation of that design, a little less extreme, but usable for all the odd jobs in and around the main ship. My issues with the boat in the campaign are numerous: Aerofins are a 5% luxury it doesn't need; it doesn't have enough cargo capacity to carry any of the vehicles...

Alternative Deepnight Revelation Ships Those of you who have participated in the Deepnight Revelation kickstarter might know me as the guy who makes editing and editorial remarks long enough to require two posts on this and other Mongoose kickstarters. I've certainly had some strong opinions on the ship designs presented therein, including the titular ship. But on my own "practice run" (or solo campaign, whatever you want to call it) of the campaign, or at least the fist several months of it, which barely crosses the Imperial border, I've noticed some operational issues, beyond my rant about not enough fuel processors on the big ship to keep up the pace. This involves the secondary vessels, which in this campaign includes eight 200-ton scouts, 16 60-ton pinnaces and 20 20-ton utility boats. Once the changes required to conform with High Guard rules are all made, they are all usable vehicles, and the campaign is playable as is, but for my purposes I'm g...

One cool thing about the longevity of Traveller is the incredible amount of source material that exists. I was designing the deck plans for an Aslan ship and got to the staterooms. What does an Aslan bed look like? Or a toilet? Or even a chair? Well, turns out this has already been considered and published, way back in 1991 in Megatraveller Alien Volume 2: Solomani and Aslan. Toward the back are a number of Aslan ships, including deck plans for the Eakhau trader done by Rob Caswell. And there you have those things right there for me to... emulate. I have to say I like Caswell's versions of Aslan ships better than what's in Pirates of Drinax. They should all be smooth elegant designs and the Drinax version of the Eakhau looks like looks like a paper hat. Or an overturned version of what the British would call a chips container. But here is my own contribution to non-linear ship designs, the Khtesiai Spy ship: Khtesiai -class Spy Ship The Khtesiai is not an impressive-l...

To finish off my Storm Knight wild hair distraction, here are two small craft, a 10 ton fighter and a 20 ton utility tug. I really like the Mule, even with its kitchen sink. Storm Knight Katar -class Light Fighter The Storm Knight's Katar -class light fighter is an old but reliable design notable for its shining Reflec anti-laser coating. While useful in recruiting posters, the Katar has proven inferior to the higher technology Aslan Taleryushi -class fighter at least in theory, though few actual encounters involve straight one-on-one fighter dogfights, and even in those, skill or luck often determines the outcome. Still, for more than four centuries, the basic configuration of the Katar has remained unchanged. It is a heavily armored dual-seat silver arrowhead capable of 7g acceleration and high performance atmospheric flight. For system defense and escort duties, it is a perfectly adequate fighter, and the thousands of vehicles assigned to reserve Storm Knight flight of...

Well, Blogger does not import the double column sections, but it otherwise does a good job with my fancy word document that emulates the character pages...after I messed with the column sizing about a dozen times, that is (grrrr). Now I need to create the worksheets and deckplans for the Katar and Mule now, though... Storm Knight Careers The Storm Knights are the official military of the Stormhaven Republic, fulfilling the roles of star navy, system defense, star marine, special forces, and military intelligence. The Storm Knights operate as three different organizations or Orders: the Order of Thunder, the Order of the Inconstant Star, and the Order of Shadows. Pre-Education options: The Storm Knights do not maintain service academies, preferring to train their officers in the field. University graduates retain benefits for joining and receiving commissions in the Storm Knights. Each Order of the Storm Knights is considered a separate career, but members of one Order can...