Aeolashamei Bird Ships

High-Mobility ships are called "Birds" for their maneuverability and wing shape—overlapping plates and jets which can be curled and tucked like a bird's for speed and maneuvering.

Although the birds of the Vadakendanic Procession are considered the "true birds", the other banners have their own variations on the design which account for their favored Tech Clade and available materials.

First Creation

Circa ~13800 CS

The first models were made on Jhoutai by the Vanthric Haimarchy, by grafting a frame of Nictishamei-alloyed Coral into a light, powerful, springy skeleton modeled after the more airborne variants of the Aeolamen Raptorhounds. They tried to use the Crustarthroflect of Jhoutai, but even with Nictishamei parts they could not recreate their bodies to a usable scale, without shear forces destroying the frames in flight.

Working from this raptorhound simulacra frame, they were able to engineer a cockpit large enough for a Verin, a @solum Divinorium of the creature. From this moment forward, it became the de-facto method of flight for warriors, bug-hunters, and surveyors.

Changing Hands

~15300 - 19000 CS

After the Sazashi Revolution, the Valuser'ran Supremacy siezed power by locking down the world's supply of Sunmetal over several centuries, including the Sunmetal Mines in Jhoutai's belt. They did this under the guise of preventing the Haimarchy from building a military, but the Sazashi prefectures beneath them suffered from the uneven technology proliferation as well.

It wasn't until Aempian-managed mines in the Mar'rianiyan Territories began withholding a percentage of their output to the Supremacy that anyone was able to stockpile enough of the material to use against them. This became critical in them assembling a small (but effective) aerial division to hold back the Valuser'ran birds during critical battles.

Evolving Shape

~19900 CS

It was not until the Advent that the designs saw any major change. The proliferation of scholars to Eden meant that studies of many of its creatures eventually came back to Jhoutai, and the designs of birds in particular caught the rapture of Verin the world over. Birds on Eden filled a nice filled by other predators on Jhoutai, and arguably did so much more effectively for combat than their own.

During The Bannercasting, the Verin released new Birds designed for combat with Pact ships. It is this latest paradigm which gives the Aeolashamei their nickname of birds.

Navigate

Summary

Proliferation

Haimarchy: Most offensive and survey vessels are birds.

The Somnacy was gifted Birds by the Procession after the Pact abandoned Eden. While they've made the designs their own, the influence is obvious.

The Pact uses more focused insectile designs inspired by the Haimarchy's birds.

The Federation uses a mechanical variant combines Edenic and Pact designs. It is impactical within atmospheres.

Light of Hayadra

The Light of Hayadra, created in 14419 CS by Sovereign Valenselkus, was the first Leviathan-Class vessel.

The Sovereign piloted it, often with a compliment of ~5 engineers and Psiolics.

The vessel was considered massive and fast for the time, with a wingspan of 110m, an unassisted terminal velocity over Mach 1, a boosted downward striking speed of Mach 2, and a flight of Mach 1.

The Hayadra's wings held matrices to conduct spells on a large enough scale to shape weather patterns . It was not uncommon for someone to have at least one story of spotting the Hayadra in the skies, tending to the Monolithic Procession or summoning up an evening shower.

The Hayadra was destroyed in 14720 CS by Nictipagua action when Hayadra was found guilty of using natural disasters to siege cities with major resistence to the Crown.

Active Subclasses

There have been countless classifications and iterations of Bird over time, but only a few remain in active production.

Hummingbird

Hummingbirds are a subclass of Birds. Their wingspans range from 30 to 80ft, depending on their sortie. The standard sortie for a Hummingbird is 1 pilot, sometimes with one or two other hands on auxillary systems.

These feature in cosmic-aerial combat.

Falcon

Falcon-class vehicles incorporate features from all manner of Earths falcons and eagles, most specifically the Saggitarius for its melee advantages.

These feature in aerial-terrestrial combat.

Hound

Heavily drawn from Aeolamen Raptorhounds, these are built for their high planetside mobility and their ability to bridge with Uplifted Raptorhounds who are bred and raised specifically for the purpose.

These feature heavily in terrestrial combat.

I tucked my wings in and rocketed through the kaleideoscopic eddies of light of the WayHall's directionless sea. Scramjets in my wingtips and along my spinal fuselage droned as I shot through the glimmer. In my wake I left a doppler of readings and an array of flashing alarms and warning sirens.

The scramjets were mecha tech sourced from the vanishingly small list of Human scrapyards which matched my very rigorous critera: having the part and dealing with anyone from Procession, let alone a Verin with military tattoos.

I preferred scramjets of Human make, because in lieu of having Sunmetal to lean on for flight technology, they had to make do with crude oils. And by the Wheel had they made do.

I throttled my speed, fanning my wings out as I passed under the midsection of the Federation freighter. Gallow ships, we called them. They dropped in on contested worlds and offered a cheap escape to desperate refugees, usually in tongues they didn't understand so as to gloss over the price: slavery.

This particlar freighter had picked up quite a bit of my family that way. Their mistake. Verin families are not small. Slavers always ran the risk of capturing the cousin of someone they would be best not to cross. Like us. Like myself.

"Spread out," I ordered my cousins, other hummingbirds. There were three of them, telltale shadows curled against prismatic tides. "Draw fire off of me."

Autoturrets swiveled to open fire of us. The captain had recognized us as hostiles and given control over to the combat Simuloid. It was a mistake that confirmed what I already knew: this ship wasn't ready for a coordinated Procession strike. Their Simuloid did not have the hardware to do targeting calculations on all of us at once. I didn't have to be faster than their shots, I just had to be anywhere but where they predicted I would be.

I hugged close to the ship and crossed its belly in a zig-zag of banking manuvers, threading between turrets faster than they could turn to keep up—almost too close to the ship for them to aim for. My body thudded with a hollow drumbeat of thrusters and a choral accompaniment of the throttal groan of Solid Manipulation spells and the gleeful keening of Kinetic Immolation. Amid the topical damage—crumpled plating and cracked glass—I shattered some expensive sensor or memory bank.

Inside of this body was another—my avatar. When I wasn't a hummingbird named Lancing Beak of the Crimson Flash (Lancing) I was Vanuli, Chea, Grandniece Once-Removed of Kenda Charissian of the world Nantan. Right now, Vanuli was enclosed within my chest in a claustraphobic coccoon of rubbers, silks, flesh, and Leviathan Blubber, threaded through with an umbilical with tendrils suckered to her back and neck. I had to be careful not to damage this valuable cargo, lest I die.

the barrier of my Glittermail deflected the rare shot that managed to make its way to me, though I didn't want to lean on it for survival. The turbulence of the deflected impacts rippled through everything within the barrier of my Glittermail, Vanuli included.

I curled my wings and body at once and lowered my talons, I raked the steel of the freighter open with claws of plasma and titanium, using them as brakes to come to a sudden and violent stop at the jutting tower of the flight bridge. I embraced it with my wings, and diverted all power from my scramjets into them. The glow of mera pouring from my wings became blinding as an earthquake poured from the quill-like, bristling garden of wands protruding from the underside of my wings.

Unfortunately, Federation freighters were built to a spec. Carbitanium hulls with an Ordinal Hardness well over 10, and titanium carbide rivets or tungsten arc welds. If anything had a hardness too low, meta escaped through it. Meta was a rather precious material to keep aboard.

Fortunately, federation freighters were rarely maintained to a spec. They lived in a margin of acceptable loss to their charters, and so were rarely given the budget to properly maintain the natural wear and tear of time. If work got done, it was a patch job from scrounged parts—steel, titanium, etc. To my eyes, which saw all the meta around me, the ship beamed with glittering constellations of light, points which the magic just barely wept through, which were just that much more susceptible to certain kinds of magic.

Not every rivet and weld was bad, but enough were. Plates shifted, sliding and twisting on their moorings as they absorbed the damage but their rivets gave way. They pulled back, revealing crewmates in their quarters, looking up from their consoles with faces contorted by shock and terror. In a well-maintained vessel, only communications and the flight tower would be up here. But the ship's charter got paid more money for more heads, which meant that anything which could be moved closer together, was. Freight-ship turned prisonship, squeezing all of the crew in a vulnerable position.

Probably a tight-knit cameraderie of indentured laboring under debts of their own.

swapped over to kinesis and perforated them through and through with phalanxes of kinetic spears.

The Bridge itself was a tougher nut to crack, and the ansible station within was already no doubt warming up to send out an emergency beacon. I charged up my heavy weapon, an articulated Wand running the length of my spine and feeding into a mecha energy converter and a laser canon located around my head and beak.

The canon lit up with a flickering red beam that caught in all the dust and debris and gore of the damage.

The bridge was gone—cracked open like an egg and its inhabitants cooked to ash.

"Board," I ordered. Larger ships had followed far behind, waiting for us to clear off the freighter's defenses. They came coasting freighters to return slaves to citizenry.

"Let's get our family home."