Verdial Sporeship

The Distal Tesseract and, to a certain extent, nearby cubes in other tesseracts have an alien biosphere from a different line of evolution than most life based on levoamino acids. Even life that shares common ancestry with humans is strange and mutated in these realms due to the prevalence of mutagenic ultraviolet light in the daytime sky. Unique to these strange places are species which generate their own lifting gasses, including floating briars and gas spores. Gas spores, especially, can be captured from their host plants in a juvenile state and harnessed to loads to reduce the effective weight of said loads. It was this property of gas spores, along with a burgeoning knowledge of how to cultivate them so that they continue to grow for a short while once removed from their mother plant, that eventually led to the creation of Verdial sporeships decades before the Rostrans created the first pilotable hot air balloon.
Verdial sporeships are modular, plant-based airships with a high degree of customization possible. In general, gas spores are captured in mesh harnesses attached to the top of the central hull by rigging, with a number of engine nacelles depending from the hull itself. The number and volume of gas spore required, as well as their positioning within the harnesses, is determined by the ship's load master. Sporeships are an efficient, safe, and durable form of airborne vessel due to their use of renewable resources in construction and multiple lifting envelope redundancy, though they lack the speed and ability to cross inflection layers that most modern airships enjoy.

Power Generation

Electrical power for use aboard a sporeship usually comes from a dynamo attached to it's diesel propulsion system, with a battery system included for loads during idle.

Propulsion

Verdial sporeships used to be propelled by sails or pulled by swarms of floating briars, but modern variants feature diesel-powered drive propellers. The lifting envelope of a Verdial sporeship is composed of numerous gas spores, the larger the better, lashed together in quantities sufficient to carry a given load; heat shielding mats must be employed to protect the organic spores from the destroying waste heat of the diesel engines. Because gas spores are organic and of limited elasticity, a Verdial sporeship cannot be used to cross inflection layers, but the vessel makes up for this limitation with a low cost of production and excellent lifting envelope redundancy.

Weapons & Armament

As sporeships are somewhat ad-hoc vessels, their weapons and armaments vary wildly based on the needs of the owner.
Sporeships are uniquely suited to an anti-air role due to their use of gas spores. A spore can be released from the lifting envelope harness with a chemical reagent injector set to trigger at a certain altitude. When the injector activates, the spore rapidly swells and explodes in a fiery burst as it's lifting gas is ignited, concussing nearby airborne vehicles. In this way, a properly constructed sporeship can use it's own lifting envelopes as the aerial equivalent of a depth charge.

Armor and defense

Because the lifting envelope harness of a sporeship contains many separate gas spores, a sporeship enjoys a degree of redundancy which few other airships can match. Furthermore, since gas spores are grown from flora native to the Distal Tesseract and adjacent cube layers, refitting is easy in these regions, and the native ground cover can sometimes provide a sporeship with a degree of natural camouflage.

Communication Tools & Systems

Most sporeships feature modern communications equipment when available. Flashcode and naval flags are also valid forms of communication between sporeship captains when enemies might be listening in.

Additional & auxiliary systems

A sporeship features a lifting envelope harness and rigging which is much more complicated than that of a purpose-build airship. With rare exception, this rigging is more complex, vulnerable, and difficult to manage than that of an artificial airship as well. On the other hand, a properly rigged sporeship can also land and be stored amphibiously, a feat which most artificial airships cannot match due to the unitary hull design common to the latter type of airborne vessel.

Hangars & docked vessels

Particularly large sporeships can have smaller sporeships with individual gondolas integrated into their bulk, with each serving as a sort of parasite airship-fighter or launch to interact with other sporeships.

Nickname

Botanist's Barge

Owning Organization

Petalcap Vale

Price

Varies

Rarity

Sporeships are vanishingly rare outside of Verdial-held territory, but relatively common within it.

Beam

Varies

Length

Varies

Height

Varies

Weight

Varies

Speed

Sporeships are generally slower than artificial airships for a given displacement.

Complement / Crew

Sporeships can range in crew compliment from single operators (in civilian or reconnaisance roles) to large crews (for combat and shipping roles).

Cargo & Passenger Capacity

The lifting capacity of sporeships varies greatly based on role, making hard numbers for cargo and passenger capacity difficult to come by.