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Colonark
World-building arks bridging the space between colonies
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As certain writers and poets have noted, traversing the great fathoms of the cosmos isn't exactly like taking a spot of lunch down to the park. While rocket ships can carry daring crews across dozens of quadrenes on a single vrillium canister, and vast towerships are dogged by refuelling tankers and hygroscopic freighters, the process of resettling entire populations is another matter entirely.
Hence the Colonial Ark, a type of people transporter and generation spacecraft capable of hosting thousands of hopeful settlers with all the comforts of home-away-from-home. Powered by pulsing plasma propulsion drives that generate nuclear explosions as thrust, Colonarks like the Fathomless-class generation transport utilise micro-jumps through hyperspatial wormholes to reach their passengers' brave new worlds in good time. Aboard, future colonists can enjoy the comforts of sun loungers on opulent, gopher-wood exo-decks, cocktails in well-stocked bars, and games of squash in renovated cargo holds. Older-model arks, such as the Thermoelectric Interstellar World-Building Transport, boasted fewer creature comforts, and passengers found themselves cooped up in storage tanks that earned these rickety vessels the nickname of "chicken tractors". Several Colonarks were fielded at the close of the Conquest of 1822, once the Royal Space Navy's war machines had withdrawn from the burning seeding fields of the former Vorgak homeworld. Led by star-sailors such as Captain Avaris and Sir Simon Leigh, intergalactic arks including the Mainstay and the Tythe disgorged British settlers and terrafarmers to begin their new lives on the Vorgak soil, which would soon be driven towards the British ideal. |
Type: Spacecraft
Model: Colonial Ark Class: Intergalactic population transport Role: Long-haul people-carrier Engines: Pulsed plasma propulsion drive Fuel: Nuclear fusion Capacity: Thousands Affiliation: Royal Space Navy First mentioned: Flora and Fauna of Vorgak 3 |