Talk:Aberrant 2.0 Starships
To Do
Finish editing the Peregrine, Kestrel, Scarab, and Novastorm.
Random Spaceship Sperging
Sundogs
The infamous steeds of the Khaganate, 'Sundogs' are living starships capable of warp travel. Looking more or less like ancient pulp-fiction rockets with skins the consistancy of whaleskin, they are typically about 5-6 meters long and several tons in weight. Skin color varies across essentially all shades of earth tones and creams. Most of a Sundog's body mass is made up of modified neural tissue and energy-patterning nodes which appear to be distantly related to the M-R nodes of Novas. While most of this goes towards enabling a biological warp gate, a fraction of this supports the open-containment biological fusion drive that manifests between the aft fins. Sundogs have no eyes or other obvious sensory aparatus, appearing to use some novel form of quantum sensing for navigation and perception.
Sundogs are weak telepaths with intelligence comparable to dogs or horses. This telepathy is limited to connecting with its rider, allowing them to share a mental link. While Sundogs have no intrinsic weaponry (that being the domain of their inevitably taint-mutated riders) their thick skin's toughness is rated at least 6 on the Modified Sayed Scale, making them functionally invulnerable to small arms fire and completely capable of atmospheric re-entry and even supercavitating oceanic travel.
Compared to the Tesser system used by the UN or various Edenite warp drive techniques, Sundogs are fairly slow intestellar travellers, capable of making no more than one jump a week of no more than ~1 LY distance. However, Sundogs can 'swarm', drastically increasing the amount of mass they can carry. This is used by the Khaganate to move their bubble habitats between stars.
The modified M-R nodal material found in Sundogs point towards a human origin but so far no firm intelligence has emerged as to the originator of Sundogs. Creating such entities seems to be far beyond the intellectual and technical abilities of the Khaganate.
Caution: Sundogs emit small amounts of quantum radiation at all times. Do not approach unless wearing class-III or above rated Q-protective gear.
Aeon OpNet Note, Phi-level: Unreliable intelligence (0.3 quantified) reports that one or more 'super-Sundogs' exist, the size of the Orgotek Scarab or larger. The abilities of such biocraft is unknown, though such large entities could surely suport warship-grade weapons.
Patterned Voidflower
Invented (or perhaps more appropriately, grown) by the Kuiper Collective Nova biosphysicist Alison "Gaea" Shang (profile attached, subfile A) in the first half of the 22nd century, Patterned Voidflowers were part of an attempt to develop a self-sustaining orbital biosphere. Inevitably this turned towards attempts to copy the resistive quantum abilities of Novas and then, over time, the development of an indigenous softech stardrive. While Dr Shang's attempts to create a vaccum biosphere in the Kuiper Collective faltered due to local politics, over the years since they were successfully introduced a number of Voidflowers have been grown to maturity.
Looking something like an immense martini glass made of unusual vitreous leafy matter, 40-50 meters in diameter, Voidflowerships cut a rather unusual silhouette. Additional blade-like 'leafs' protrude irregularly. These are all part of the Voidflower's complex metric-warping field which provides a defensive forcefield, sublight propulsion and interstellar warp ability. The specifics of how an Voidflower generates and controls these forcefield remains a mystery, but their performance figures are reasonably well-known.
The metric distortion abilities of Voidflowers gives them a true reactionless drive (Aeon note: This does not make them inertialess, however), essentially riding a localized space-time distortion. Incidentally this means that acceleration stresses do not affect the Voidflower or anything held inside its distortion field. Voidflowers can also generate gravitic tractor or repeller beams by modifying their distortion field.
To actually make a spaceship out of a Patterned Voidflower various hardtech modules must be attached, and to this end all Voidflowers were grown with organic tie-down points. Compared to the armored starcruisers of the UN or the simple transmospheric shuttles found across known space, Voidflowerships tend to look rather fragile and ramshackle. This is deceptive however as their defensive forcefields are extremely strong and they can outpace all but the best military interceptors. While no two are alike, a fairly typical weaponised outfit includes a hypervelocity railgun and several laser turrets, though AIRDs (DEW-armed drones) are also common. Some form of lightweight transatmospheric dropshuttle is also standard.
Aeon OpNet Note, Gamma-level: While Voidflowers are not intrinsically powerful combatants, they are elusive and can often presage the actions of Outsystem Seperatists and any sightings should be reported immediately.