Darkos

Each culture of the Horizon has its own tradition for spacecraft construction. Firstcome shipbuilders, like the Cheleb dockyards on Mira, construct elegant craft with flowing, soft silhouettes, while the Darkos docks and other Zenithian builders tend to put function before form, their ships all sharp angles and massive hulls.

THE VOIDFARERS – Biez Tulsa

THE FOUNDERS’ SPACESHIP

Location: Planet Ordana - Miran Chain The Miran settlers arrived about ten Kuan cycles ago and began cleaning up the swamp. Their ship, the Em-Noash, landed in the middle of the Myu Valley and hasn’t moved since. It is an old, pre-War freighter, originally from the Darkos yards in Kua, that has been heavily modified and turned into an exploratory vessel by Chelebs on Mira.
The Em-Noash is nowadays covered in stilt huts and landing platforms for gravcraft and small shuttles.

The reactor is still active, powering the large lab and arboretumwhere new crop strains and fertilizers are being experimented with. Elam the botanist also keeps one of the corridors lined with terrariums and aquariums full of pests, parasites and fish hatchlings.

The main cargo hold has been furnished and the walls covered in plants. This room functions as council chambers, courtroom, and assembly hall for major statements from the elders or for rituals.

A modest infirmary can be found near the main entrance.

The lower decks house several cabins and a rec room with a kitchen. This is where the elders and some of the Miran colonists live.

An old service module and the engine room function as a workshop for building and tending to the village’s farming machinery.

The bridge is staffed around the clock, despite the landlocked status of the ship. Sections of the sensor rigs have been moved to high poles in the wetlands surrounding the village to give them better reach. Former captain Noor Eni-Uáno doesn’t like unannounced visitors and can often be seen personally interviewing newcomers about their business in Cachi.

History

When the Rimward Reach was first colonized, only nomads, occasional freethinkers and archaeologists came out here. Everything changed when the peculiar and valuable mineral Maghdan was found. Overnight, a maghdan fever started and, like other gold rushes throughout history, brought enormous change with it. Initially, only a few prospecting ships came to mine or filter maghdan from asteroids and the giant gas cloud of Kandah. But it turned into a flood when the so-called prospector clans arrived. For them, it all started with the departure from the inner system. A massive exodus departed, an armada consisting of bulk carriers, liners, diggers, ore ships, mining drones and wallah skiffs. The clans had a long-established history in the inner asteroid belt and why they left it behind is not entirely clear. There is talk of persecution and sabotage of their interests in the Hiwah Quadrant. Maghdan fever in the sector of the Lady of Tears sector certainly contributed – a magnificent project that could bring everyone together. Clans gathered their resources, people and ships, and set off for the edge of the system. With their departure, they erased their past and with their arrival in the Reach, the clans talk about the beginning of a new – dark - age.

Mythology & Lore

A cultural rite of passage of the free peoples in the Reach and to an extent also in the inner asteroid belt is the year of wandering. This rite usually takes place in late adolescence. The year of wandering is a longing and restlessness that causes you to leave your home station or swarm and wander from asteroid to asteroid, often along song lines or well-trafficked routes. There is a group of wanderers usually not spoken of - the wretched souls who slowly travel through the darkness. According to the myth Sawhat, as the swarms call them, are the remains of nomads who suffered a great injustice. They haunt the area where they faltered and are said to be able to affect the fabric of space fabric, thus disrupting navigation systems and even causing stasis beds to malfunction. Only the most pious priests can make them wander on. Alternatively you need to right the wrong that happened to the spirit - something that can be quite difficult to achieve.
Equally inexplicable is the disease that often affects nomads or colonists in solitary settlements. It is called night sickness, and manifests as a deep depression - a sudden lack of will to live - and can come from clear space like a black birr. Only the intervention of the icons or a pilgrimage can cure those thus tainted by the dark.

DARKOS Shipyard
Location: Kua Asteroid Belt
Practical, armed freighters. +1 HP, but -2 to armor.
+5% to base price.
Famous ships:

Salvage ship Kamruk

Em-Noash (The last cyclade)

Type

Corporation, Aerospace