Similar to the Consortium, there are multiple starship with the territories of the United Worlds Warlock. One of these is run by a techno-wizard named Asyribis who is rumored to be the Demi-God offspring of the god Thoth. There are several different classes of "Crystal Shard"craft including fighters, corvettes, and light cruisers. Larger designs are simply too expensive to construct with the ships costing an average of double that of a pure technological design of the same class. While many military leaders and engineers consider the general technology of ships built within the United Worlds Warlock to be inferior to standard technological designs, the Crystal Shard class of ships are considered some of the most effective and powerful ship operating within the Three Galaxies. While the designer has attempted to get contracts with the government to purchase these craft, so far there has been no orders beyond a few purchased for evaluation purposes. Still, even though extremely expensive, these craft have been purchased by techno-wizard mercenary companies and other interested independent parties. These vessels have been used in engagements against pirates and in internal conflicts where they have performed incredibly.
The fighters and ships are built in a similar configuration and are all incredible works of art and the ships look like crystalline manta-rays with its wings bent slightly forward and a shorter tail than is seen in a true manta-ray. The craft are extremely sleek and their configurations makes them ideal to operate in an atmosphere and underwater as well as in space. The light cruiser version is smaller than the Consortium Warshield class cruiser and the Kreeghor Smasher class cruiser. One ship in a similar size class is the Bushido Industries Raiden class light cruiser. This ship is the crystalline light cruiser is most often compared to due to being of similar size. The light cruiser is the largest of the crystalline starships and some experts think that it is impossible to build any larger ships using the same basic design.
The light cruiser's hull is constructed from enchanted crystalline material that are immune to all non magical energy weapons yet is as strong as any normal light cruiser's hull. The development of the hull appears to be a variation on the enchantments used to construct Mystic Power Armor. Like a Mystic Power Armor, the use of the spell "Armor of Ithan' and large amount focused magical energies can be used to heal damage to the starship. While the light cruiser being impervious to energy means that a large number of weapons are ineffective against the ship, Asyribis was not satisfied with this and wanted a force field as additional protection. Field tests were performed on "Armor of Ithan" force fields, standard fighter force fields, and "Invincible Armor" force fields. While the "Invincible Armor" required more magical energy than the "Armor of Ithan" force field, it was far stronger and was chosen. The standard force field was not selected because of the systems draw from main power and once dropped, the shield requires a huge amount of power to bring back up.
For propulsion, pure technological gravity type engines were selected for the light cruiser similar in basic layout to the systems carried on the fighter and the corvette. While not as fast in acceleration as the fighter or corvette versions, the light cruiser is faster than most other light cruisers and is as fast as most corvettes. The light cruiser is also incredibly maneuverable for its size although not quite as nimble as the corvette. Like the corvette, fusion reactors would not produce enough power to properly run the ship with using far too much of the internal volume of the ship for the design to be workable. Instead, a powerful anti-matter reactor provides the energy which the ship needs to run properly. An interesting feature is that the anti-matter reactor and the fuel is contained inside a permanent dimensional pocket. This was done to protect the ship from collapsing anti-matter reactor or anti-matter storage but has the interesting advantage of making the light cruiser's neutrino signature virtually non existent. The ship's anti-matter reactor system is backed up by fusion reactors which use a similar storage system. A huge amount of research went into developing a acceptable Rift drive for the light cruiser, like the corvette and the fighter, but without real success and a conventional contra-grav FTL propulsion was eventually selected. It was found that the contra-grav system could travel faster, was more reliable, and could be activated more often (allowing easy escapes from star systems). Top speed of the ship, like the corvette, is around six light years per hour.
Unlike the Crystal Shard Fighter but like the Corvette, the Light Cruiser has a mixture of both magic and technology in its weapon systems. The main weapon of the light cruiser are a pair of 20 cm lasers mounted in the nose. The weapons have around five times the range of flame cannons carried on most United Worlds Warlock ships yet have a similar energy throughput. These are backed up by four turrets which have cannons which fires bolts that are the equivalent of the "Annihilate" spell. These cannons are not quite as long ranges as most heavy anti-ship lasers but inflict incredible damage when fired and work well as backup for the main weaponry. The secondary weaponry is mostly technological in general design with eight variable focus particle beams forming the basis of the defensive battery with four heavy gravity rail gun turrets as well. Like with the fighter and corvette, it was decided to mount a conventional missile compliment and not carry any bottle demon style missiles. Asyribis considers the bottle demon missiles to be much too dangerous as well as being incredibly expensive and often not available outside the military. Unlike the fighter and corvette, the main missile compliment could not be carried in bays. Instead, conventional style launchers are mounted. A cruise missile battery is mounted on the ship and is backed up by a pair of long range missile launchers and four medium range missile batteries. These batteries are standard Consortium systems although payload is limited when compared to many larger ships. Like the fighter and corvette, it is likely that if the ship is adopted by the United Worlds Warlock that the ship would carry "cruise"style bottle demon missiles.
Unlike the corvette, the light cruiser is designed to carry a fighter compliment although with the crystal shard fighters being rather large, the compliment is limited. The small hanger has space for only six fighters although more could likely be crammed in if smaller fighters such as the Shadow Bolt strike fighters were substituted for the standard compliment. The fighter bays are mounted where the main missile bays are on the smaller corvette. There is some consideration being given to building a stripped version of the light cruiser as what might be termed a heavy escort carrier. This version would strip out the cruise missile launcher, the twin 20 cm cannons, and the "Annihilate"cannons and replace them with a compliment of three squadrons of Crystal Shard Fighters.
The crew is still on the small side although larger than the corvette with a crew of around one hundred and twenty. The ship does not have an auxiliary bridge like many heavier cruisers and is fairly cramped as well. Crew quarters are Spartan but are fairly comfortable even though cramped with the ship capable of operation for long independent missions. A small compliment of up to thirty marines can be accommodated on the light cruiser. These marines are often carried when the ship is on anti-piracy patrols. They will probably be equipped with mystic power armor for such missions. The ship mounts three techno-wizard transporter for long range teleporting.
Ship design uses modified starship speeds and weapon ranges. See Revised Starship Rules for Phase World for more details.
Model Type: TI CLC-06-A
Vehicle Type: Multi-Role Light Cruiser
Crew: 126 (14 Officers, 112 enlisted)
Troops: 30 Marines (20 in mystic power armor), 8 fighter pilots,
and can carry up to 6 passengers in addition to standard military personnel
Vehicles:
Power Armors & Robots:
| 20 | Mystic Power Armors |
| 6 | Crystal Shard Fighters |
M.D.C. By Location:
| Nose 20 cm Main Laser Cannons (2, Front): | 1,600 each | |
| Turret Mounted "Annihilate"Cannons (4): | 800 each | |
| Variable Focus Point Defense Particle Beam Cannons (8): | 150 each | |
| GR-1000 Gravity Rail Gun Turrets (4): | 400 each | |
| Cruise Missile Batteries (1): | 1,000 each | |
| Long Range Missile Batteries (2): | 600 each | |
| Medium Range Missile Batteries (4): | 500 each | |
| Hangar Bays (2, underside of main body): | 4,000 each | |
| [1] Bridge: | 6,000 | |
| [2] Main Engines (2): | 7,500 each | |
| [3] Main Body: | 24,000 | |
| [4] Magical "Invincible Armor" Force Field: | 15,000 |
Notes:
[1] In reality this is how much damage needs to be done for a weapon
to hit the bridge through the ships armor. This ship does not have an auxiliary
bridge. Even if the corvette's bridge is destroyed, the ship can still
be piloted from engineering but ship is -3 to dodge and all weapon systems
will be at local control. Weapon hits near the bridge that do not penetrate
the ships integrity can injure crew members on or near the bridge.
[2] Destroying the main engines means that ship FTL propulsion systems
are destroyed and maximum sublight speed is reduced by half.
[3] Depleting the MDC of the main body will put the corvette out of
commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support
and internal gravity. The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating
wreck. Note: The cruiser is impervious to all non magical energy
weapons. Hull can also be completely regenerated with the spell "Armor
of Ithan" and 15,000 P.P.E.
[4] This is not a variable force field, but a magical shield that must
be completely depleted. Once the shield has been knocked down, it will
cost 1,500 P.P.E. and require one minute (4 melees) of spell casting to
restore the force field. When knocked down, no additional damage beyond
which destroyed the shield will be transferred to the light cruiser.
Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Sublight: Has a special sub-light engine that allows the ship
to travel up to 60 percent of the speed of light. The cruiser can accelerate/decelerate
at the rate of 1.0 percent of light per melee.
Atmospheric Propulsion: Maximum speed is Mach 5 (3,710 mph /
5970 kph), can enter an atmosphere because flight system is by contra grav.
Surface Travel: Can float on the surface or can travel as a
hydrofoil on the surface of the water with a top speed of 360 mph (580
kph / 313 knots)
Underwater: Has a maximum speed underwater of 51.8 mph (45 knots/
83.4 kph)
Maximum Depth: 5 miles (8.05 km)
Stardrive: The light cruiser has a special Gravitronic Drive
system which allows the vessel to reach a maximum of six light-years per
hour.
Maximum Effective Range: Life support will keep crew alive for up to ten years,
as long as the P.P.E. generators are kept in working order.
Statistical Data:
Length: 397.6 feet (121.2 meters) including stinger tail
Height: 142.4 feet (43.4 meters)
Width: 487.9 feet (148.7 meters)
Weight: 48,000 tons (43,500 metric tons)
Power System: Combination Anti-matter & Techno-wizardry
with 20 year life span. Stored in a special dimensional pocket. The light
cruiser also has a P.P.E. generator that produces 6,000 P.P.E. per hour
/ 25 P.P.E. per melee and can hold up to 20,000 P.P.E. in storage. This
P.P.E. can be used to power the spells cast by the cruiser's crew and enchantments
on the vessel.
Cargo: Can carry up to 500 tons (450 metric tons).
Market Cost: 6.5 billion credits.
WEAPON SYSTEMS:
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by Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books Inc. ]
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By Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune).
Copyright © 2005, Kitsune. All rights reserved.