HMAMS JaguarundiOwner/Master/Capatain: Calvin J. Frommaguer (H)
FirstOfficer/Medical Officer: Zhieh-Kih-Iro (Note:X-MNDr)
Normal Crew Comlement: 30 officers and spacefarers; as Miner, only Frommaguer and Zhieh are indispensable, but operations are much more livable with small crew of 12.
Age: Approximately 17 to 20 standard years, some parts older than that (Some are older than the discovery of the Trilidian Belt).
Original form: Royal Aether Navy Tug/Corvette, eccentric dorsal-to-prow mass arrangement (in other words, built like an obese Codfish)
Current alterations:
~stern-mounted steam-jet attitudinal and lateral control pod
~Tri-vane with EM control surfaces, stern mounted
~boom from original tug stern to steam pod
~cosmetic plating to make tug and steam jet pod seem all one ship
~large orebucket at bows derived from german war salvaged weaponsblister
~Radio Mast
~cranes for hauling cargo and pulling "trailer" of ore and nodules
Normal/original Defensive Array:-Six tribarrel Tesla gatlings in paired mountings:
-Dorsal midships
-Dorsal tail,
-Belly midships
-single dorsal forward rocket tube
=only known to fire high-explosive, incendiary, and (mainly) grapnel rockets
Added Mining Array: -Three high-output tractor-repulsor beam projectors
-Three plasmic cutter raycannons
-Four laseric cutter raycannons
-Large mandibular arms for grasping Rock matrices for processing
-equipped with geared-slider "jaw"-like hand on end of each arm
Large articulated and bottom-opening dumping orebasket
modified from wepon blister from downed German battlecruiser Konigslaander in the little-known war that occurred in teh Belt twelve years prior to present.
Note: the
Jaguarundi is rumor3d to have in its arsenal a weapon that is not precisely illegal, but for which there seems to be no readily explained purpose, other than heavy defense from large warships.
The
Jaguarundi's "Big Weapon," as it is often called by storytellers and would-be aficionados all across the belt and the aether, is supposedly something similar to a rather gigantic Vilhaus gun, except that no one but Mr. Zhieh and Cap'n Frommaguer (and their crew(s) at the only three separate times that the weapon has been used) have ever seen it. It is never aboard, somehow, whenever the the ship is searched, no matter when it's searched or how thoroughly.
It may in fact be a re-wiring artifact of the belly-mounted tesla weapon, the three forward traction/repulsion projectors, and some sort of aether-derived energy source.
The device's unmistakable operational footprint is a three-nautical-mile-wide sphere of resonant influence in which everything inorganic or organic resonates, no matter what it's actual natural frequency might be, and painfully; unshielded or vulnerable ships or other devices, in some cases people, animals , or vegetation, nearby and offship tend to implode and disintegrate. Oddly, all that the onboard witnesses have ever experienced is a fleeting, splitting headache, and once a broken hip flask.
No one has yet interviewed the rhododendrons, although one did sprout a rose blossom and attract magnesium dust approximately one standard month after the (alleged) second use of 'the weapon.'
Engines:-After-military add-on High-output steam jets for attitudinal and lateral control; after-military add-on large-bore steam blast nozzle for low-speed movement and aether-preparatory accelleration.
-Former, declassified and demilitarized (?) paired omniattitudinally-articulable Aetherrotor Aether turbine engines (I see this as common for aethership tugs, especially those of a military derivation; they have to be infinitely adjustable as far as thrust direction and they have got to be powerful, and capable of "Grabbing Ath" from a dead stop just to handle the ships they would have to handle in a busy formation or spacedock -- not to mention horrendously fast to serve corvette duty!)
Owned, captained, and piloted mainly by Captain Calvin Frommaguer, formerly of Climax, Colorado (city and environs now defunct and returned to natural state), also by Moon-Dragon ZhiehThe Jaguarundi is one of the many ships used and lived aboard by those who mine the cometary bodies and outlying asteroid and Dark Dust Clouds of what is commonly called teh Trilidian Belt.
A Word About 'The Trilidian Belt'More than just a narrow gravitationally-herded bunch of planetoids and space rocks, however, the Trilidian 'Belt' is in fact the body of dark matter, asteroidal, planetoidal, cometary and other such bodies that form the body that to varying degrees of density and sparsity, englobes all of our solar system and will someday in the future come to be called "the Oort cloud."
The Trilidian Belt is so far out that even Pirates and Ore Rustlers will not go there; the amount of sun heat that reaches out so far from the system's source is negligible; some tiny trace is emitted from, of all places, Jupiter and Saturn, but but that is even less than the solar energy. thus, any water that is offship in the Trilidian is necessarily hard-frozen ice. if one were so foolhardy as to stick his bare hand through a hand-sized airlock (such do exist, for the purpose of tool application by
suited personnel) that hand, whether on the light or dark side of the ship, would be frozen solid and likely break off at the first sharp change in direction by the main body of mass. Thus, the steam-jet propulsion and directional controls in common use in the Belt for slower-than-aether propulsion is infact a viable and renewable source of such, as the expelled water in vaporous form (which is in fact what steam
is) is nearly-instantly transformed back into ice.
The clouds of crystals frequently follow and settle upon the nearest and greatest mass body in their vicinity, and that is usually the ship that expelled them or its trailer of ore and mineral nodules. the ship makes port at a crusher or assay astation, sells its cargo, and the ice crystals melt in the greater heat of the aura of the larger facility, which often uses an open Aether-fired crucibular foundry to smelt and refine the nodules and ores; the water droplets converge on to larger-massed facility, and congeal into clouds that resemble fog, which circles around such facilities, the misty glowing cloud marking the position of teh station and showing it to be what it is. the miners, infrequent traders, and teh stations themselves mine thw ater and ice in thses clouds and re-use it, whether as propulsion or as drinking or other water.
The penalty for Rustling Ore is severe. Due to teh low number of Marshals to keep teh peace, the Miners are authorized by mining law to carry out rudimentary police powers and procedures-- which is often shortened and simplified by simply shooting the miscreants -- if they are very lucky.
Pirates fafe even worse when run to ground or otherwise apprehended; theyare quite simply shot on sight, especially if theyu are seen nearby and on an intersecting course with a ship that is hauling a trailer or more to the station to be be sold.
The Miners work in groups to mine the Trilidian; crews aboard each ship in a team (some teams consist of eight ships or more, and a string of trailers long enough to require all eight just to aether-haul them at regular Merchant Normal speed), the ships operators themselves, and any injured crew and miners attached to the operation who are unable to work that cycle all share equally in the sale of the ore and mineral nodules. They also share in the hardship that would follow a pirate victory if they allowed one to happen. Thus, they tend to carry out the anti-pirating laws and regulations assiduously, zealously, and with a will. Nevertheless, there are still marauders roaming inner space waiting to pounce on a trailer convoy and steal the wealth it contains, and some trailerloads are taken every standard year, enough to keep the miners armed and jumpy when away from the 'Belt...
Trilidian ships tend to be owner-modified almost past the point of recognizability; Jaguarundi, for example,(obviously) would not have had steam jets or huge EM vanes for directional control on her tail, a tall radio mast or big bottom-emptying ore basket when she was a military corvette/tug --but she obviously does now.
-----------------
Planning to start the Invasionary Drop this evening, or failing that, sometime in the wee hours Sunday. If I have truly killed the RP I am sorry. It was not intentional.
