An example of one of the more colorful NPC crews of the scouts ranging IMTU, but translatable to the OTU.
Deckplans soon to follow.
Crew of the Deep Survey Scout Ishak
The Imperial Scoutship Ishak Type S(k) Deep Survey Scout is designed to conduct long-range scouting mission into unknown or enemy territory. Accordingly she is equipped with a Jump-4 capable drive with sufficient fuel to cross 4 parsec gaps between stars, or be able to make a 2-parsec jump into hostile territory and still have fuel immediately available for a jump out again without having to scoop or otherwise refuel. To further extend the ship’s range she is can be fitted with drop tanks that will add an additional 60 tons of fuel for a single jump-4.
The Type S(k) is also equipped with extra powerful arrays that extend her sensor range by 50% and have passive sensing capabilities that allow for “slurping” communications and other emissions without having to betray her position. The Model 4 computer has a hardwired subsystem for processing and analyzing electronic intelligence (ELINT) sources, sorting and storing them for later use by intelligence personnel. The subsystem can also forward the information to the communications array for encoded transmission to other assets within the same star system the Type S(k) might be working with as part of a screening force during fleet operations. When a Type S(k) is made available to Archive scouts for other than intel-gathering survey missions this classified and valuable equipment is usually removed and stored for use in another ship. Currently, while the primary mission of the “Deep Survey Scout” is actually intel-gathering and analysis there are 10 of these vessels in the service of the Archives for actual survey work by the Imperial Scout Service.
The Ishak
Because the Archives have 10 of these ships for actual planetary and system survey missions they are farmed out to some of the most experienced teams for extended missions into unexplored, or “lost”, territory for the continuing search for new colony-capable worlds or “lost” colonies. The extra long-range and sensitive sensor arrays and extended jump capabilities make this the ideal ship for first contact (on those infrequent occasions) and lost-colony rediscovery missions where the potential for violent reactions from the contacted parties is mitigated by the vessel’s long legs and big ears. These missions also require the most resourceful and experienced crews.
One such crew and ship is Team-505 of the ISS Sk-109311, or as her crew calls her, Ishak (old-Earth Russian for “mule”). The vast numbers of scout ships of all classes are not named, just numbered. The service has always allowed crews assigned to the vessels to name them, and then just have the ship revert to its original number when returned to active duty or when assigned to a different active duty crew. It is all part of the Scout Service’s mystique of being considered the last bastion of rugged individuality in government service. So, Mule it is.
Ishak is a blunt wedge-shaped lifting body design with a single turret and numerous senor patches, bumps, and blades studding her surfaces. Painted a non-reflective light gray she is considered an unlovely lump by even her crew, but under the surface, she has a lot to offer. The crew has made numerous modifications over the years they have had the ship – one of the longest running assignments in the ISS at 9 years for the captain and engineer team. Some of these additions the Service knows about, and others the Service would rather not know about and has turned a blind eye towards since the crew has always provided top-notch results.
Team-505 is composed of three members, as is standard in the Scouts for a ship this size. The smaller Type-S and S(b) usually has only two crewmembers so the four staterooms provide plenty of elbowroom during the long trips. While the Type-S(k) still only has four staterooms, the larger drives require a full-time engineer, additionally; the placement of the controls for the sensor suite being off the bridge requires a separate comms/sensor officer.
The crew of the Ishak has added a workshop to the hold (2 tons space) to manufacture parts and to support the vodka still (supplied by the potato bin tucked behind the Air/Raft cradle where it is dry and dark). Because the crew has various hobbies they pursue during the jump weeks, a small hydroponics garden provides for the tea blends the captain enjoys, and for the herbs used by the sensors officer for her experiments in exotic cooking. These “experiments” have occasionally resulted in the other crewmembers retreating to the airlock while she cleans the smoke out of the ship when her hobby goes wrong). The garden has also provided a medium to grow various plants and molds found on some worlds that proven useful in both medicinal and recreational pharmacology.
The Air/Raft is a standard version equipped with a hardtop for use in foul weather – but it is not pressurized. It does have a pintle mount for a light machine gun that was captured during one ill-received lost colony re-contact mission gone wrong. The patched holes next to the driver’s seat are also souvenirs of that day along with the decision to add heavier screens to the windshield. The shark-mouth painted on the nose was just the result of drunken whimsy.
The bridge has a samovar built into the bulkhead next to the pilot console within easy reach for when the captain/pilot is busy with controlling the ship. His seat also has a scabbard for a riotgun and bandolier of shotgun magazines. The communications/sensor suite consoles and equipment are just off the bridge in a slightly forward position on the port side. The communications officer has her laser carbine clipped above the iris port leading to the bridge and her collection of vintage sound recording s of popular music stashed under the floor in some compartments built by the engineer for safely storing them in case of damage to the ship by battle or radiation. The drive spaces are a maze of equipment and stuffed into nearly every cranny is the engineer’s vast collection of ancient westerns, romance novels, and science fiction paperbacks. Rumor has it that some particularly amazing “gentlemen’s literature” is buried somewhere in the piles but no one has been able to find it yet.
Some who have gone onboard the Ishak have noted the heavy odors of garlic, tobacco, musk, and onions that seem to permeate the air with just a hint of pine freshener from the innumerable little cardboard trees fluttering in front of the air vents. They also have noticed the laundry hanging to dry in the passages and the ship’s ferret (female, named “Bolt”) rocketing off one wall to the next like a flash of brown lightning when the gravity is shut off. Which is usually the case when the ship is in space since it makes it easier to use all the available space within the ship for storage, and easier to find a place to grab an undisturbed nap. It also relieves the pain in the legs of the engineer when he walks around the ship as well as allows he and the captain to practice Cossack dances on the ceiling while not disturbing the sensors officer’s martial arts workout on the deck after a particularly successful batch of vodka has been distilled.
Captain of the Ishak
Scout Commander Ilya Peterovich Shokhin
Born on St. Ekaterina and only child Ilya Shokhin joined the Scout service “to see the universe”…and get away from the university he was failing at because he was given to spending more time daydreaming and hanging around the shipyards than studying jump space physics and rare earth metallurgy. His father was a Free Trader on the Pixie Run in the Jacine subsector until a jump drive failure resulted in the ship never returning from jump space and was gone forever. Ilya’s mother was more than capable of supporting herself with her job as a music (violin and piano) teacher so Ilya was free to leave home and find his own way. He never doubted that the Scout Service was the way to go.
At this moment in time Ilya is 56 years old, 1.72m tall and barrel-chested with a lavish beard. His dark eyes are expressive, Ilya laughs easily and loudly – even (if not most often) at himself, but he tries not to laugh at others who don’t deserve it. A drinker of vast amounts of tea – which amazes his shipmates given his seeming endless bladder capacity – he also loves a good potato vodka. Ilya installed the tea samovar on the bridge within easy reach of his commander chair along with an ikon his mother gave him of St. Ekaterina when he graduated from the Scout Academy. Ilya is a devout follower of the Eastern Orthodox Church and insists on holding devotions onboard ship every Sunday at a time coordinated (often to his shipmates’ dismay) to St. Ekaterina time – which depending on where the Ishak is at any given Sunday can vary a lot and not always in synch with their sleep schedules.
An excellent pilot and navigator, handy in a fight, and yet easily mixes any crowd Ilya is the father of his crew. He literally calls them his “family” and the missions he has led them through have become legendary in the service. Called “Pasha” by the rest of the crew, Ilya lead informally, but there is no dissent – he’s earned the trust by example. How he has managed to keep the Ishak as his assigned craft and out of the scrapyard is anyone’s guess.
Deckplans soon to follow.
Crew of the Deep Survey Scout Ishak
The Imperial Scoutship Ishak Type S(k) Deep Survey Scout is designed to conduct long-range scouting mission into unknown or enemy territory. Accordingly she is equipped with a Jump-4 capable drive with sufficient fuel to cross 4 parsec gaps between stars, or be able to make a 2-parsec jump into hostile territory and still have fuel immediately available for a jump out again without having to scoop or otherwise refuel. To further extend the ship’s range she is can be fitted with drop tanks that will add an additional 60 tons of fuel for a single jump-4.
The Type S(k) is also equipped with extra powerful arrays that extend her sensor range by 50% and have passive sensing capabilities that allow for “slurping” communications and other emissions without having to betray her position. The Model 4 computer has a hardwired subsystem for processing and analyzing electronic intelligence (ELINT) sources, sorting and storing them for later use by intelligence personnel. The subsystem can also forward the information to the communications array for encoded transmission to other assets within the same star system the Type S(k) might be working with as part of a screening force during fleet operations. When a Type S(k) is made available to Archive scouts for other than intel-gathering survey missions this classified and valuable equipment is usually removed and stored for use in another ship. Currently, while the primary mission of the “Deep Survey Scout” is actually intel-gathering and analysis there are 10 of these vessels in the service of the Archives for actual survey work by the Imperial Scout Service.
The Ishak
Because the Archives have 10 of these ships for actual planetary and system survey missions they are farmed out to some of the most experienced teams for extended missions into unexplored, or “lost”, territory for the continuing search for new colony-capable worlds or “lost” colonies. The extra long-range and sensitive sensor arrays and extended jump capabilities make this the ideal ship for first contact (on those infrequent occasions) and lost-colony rediscovery missions where the potential for violent reactions from the contacted parties is mitigated by the vessel’s long legs and big ears. These missions also require the most resourceful and experienced crews.
One such crew and ship is Team-505 of the ISS Sk-109311, or as her crew calls her, Ishak (old-Earth Russian for “mule”). The vast numbers of scout ships of all classes are not named, just numbered. The service has always allowed crews assigned to the vessels to name them, and then just have the ship revert to its original number when returned to active duty or when assigned to a different active duty crew. It is all part of the Scout Service’s mystique of being considered the last bastion of rugged individuality in government service. So, Mule it is.
Ishak is a blunt wedge-shaped lifting body design with a single turret and numerous senor patches, bumps, and blades studding her surfaces. Painted a non-reflective light gray she is considered an unlovely lump by even her crew, but under the surface, she has a lot to offer. The crew has made numerous modifications over the years they have had the ship – one of the longest running assignments in the ISS at 9 years for the captain and engineer team. Some of these additions the Service knows about, and others the Service would rather not know about and has turned a blind eye towards since the crew has always provided top-notch results.
Team-505 is composed of three members, as is standard in the Scouts for a ship this size. The smaller Type-S and S(b) usually has only two crewmembers so the four staterooms provide plenty of elbowroom during the long trips. While the Type-S(k) still only has four staterooms, the larger drives require a full-time engineer, additionally; the placement of the controls for the sensor suite being off the bridge requires a separate comms/sensor officer.
The crew of the Ishak has added a workshop to the hold (2 tons space) to manufacture parts and to support the vodka still (supplied by the potato bin tucked behind the Air/Raft cradle where it is dry and dark). Because the crew has various hobbies they pursue during the jump weeks, a small hydroponics garden provides for the tea blends the captain enjoys, and for the herbs used by the sensors officer for her experiments in exotic cooking. These “experiments” have occasionally resulted in the other crewmembers retreating to the airlock while she cleans the smoke out of the ship when her hobby goes wrong). The garden has also provided a medium to grow various plants and molds found on some worlds that proven useful in both medicinal and recreational pharmacology.
The Air/Raft is a standard version equipped with a hardtop for use in foul weather – but it is not pressurized. It does have a pintle mount for a light machine gun that was captured during one ill-received lost colony re-contact mission gone wrong. The patched holes next to the driver’s seat are also souvenirs of that day along with the decision to add heavier screens to the windshield. The shark-mouth painted on the nose was just the result of drunken whimsy.
The bridge has a samovar built into the bulkhead next to the pilot console within easy reach for when the captain/pilot is busy with controlling the ship. His seat also has a scabbard for a riotgun and bandolier of shotgun magazines. The communications/sensor suite consoles and equipment are just off the bridge in a slightly forward position on the port side. The communications officer has her laser carbine clipped above the iris port leading to the bridge and her collection of vintage sound recording s of popular music stashed under the floor in some compartments built by the engineer for safely storing them in case of damage to the ship by battle or radiation. The drive spaces are a maze of equipment and stuffed into nearly every cranny is the engineer’s vast collection of ancient westerns, romance novels, and science fiction paperbacks. Rumor has it that some particularly amazing “gentlemen’s literature” is buried somewhere in the piles but no one has been able to find it yet.
Some who have gone onboard the Ishak have noted the heavy odors of garlic, tobacco, musk, and onions that seem to permeate the air with just a hint of pine freshener from the innumerable little cardboard trees fluttering in front of the air vents. They also have noticed the laundry hanging to dry in the passages and the ship’s ferret (female, named “Bolt”) rocketing off one wall to the next like a flash of brown lightning when the gravity is shut off. Which is usually the case when the ship is in space since it makes it easier to use all the available space within the ship for storage, and easier to find a place to grab an undisturbed nap. It also relieves the pain in the legs of the engineer when he walks around the ship as well as allows he and the captain to practice Cossack dances on the ceiling while not disturbing the sensors officer’s martial arts workout on the deck after a particularly successful batch of vodka has been distilled.
Captain of the Ishak
Scout Commander Ilya Peterovich Shokhin
Born on St. Ekaterina and only child Ilya Shokhin joined the Scout service “to see the universe”…and get away from the university he was failing at because he was given to spending more time daydreaming and hanging around the shipyards than studying jump space physics and rare earth metallurgy. His father was a Free Trader on the Pixie Run in the Jacine subsector until a jump drive failure resulted in the ship never returning from jump space and was gone forever. Ilya’s mother was more than capable of supporting herself with her job as a music (violin and piano) teacher so Ilya was free to leave home and find his own way. He never doubted that the Scout Service was the way to go.
At this moment in time Ilya is 56 years old, 1.72m tall and barrel-chested with a lavish beard. His dark eyes are expressive, Ilya laughs easily and loudly – even (if not most often) at himself, but he tries not to laugh at others who don’t deserve it. A drinker of vast amounts of tea – which amazes his shipmates given his seeming endless bladder capacity – he also loves a good potato vodka. Ilya installed the tea samovar on the bridge within easy reach of his commander chair along with an ikon his mother gave him of St. Ekaterina when he graduated from the Scout Academy. Ilya is a devout follower of the Eastern Orthodox Church and insists on holding devotions onboard ship every Sunday at a time coordinated (often to his shipmates’ dismay) to St. Ekaterina time – which depending on where the Ishak is at any given Sunday can vary a lot and not always in synch with their sleep schedules.
An excellent pilot and navigator, handy in a fight, and yet easily mixes any crowd Ilya is the father of his crew. He literally calls them his “family” and the missions he has led them through have become legendary in the service. Called “Pasha” by the rest of the crew, Ilya lead informally, but there is no dissent – he’s earned the trust by example. How he has managed to keep the Ishak as his assigned craft and out of the scrapyard is anyone’s guess.
