Friday, March 31, 2017

Wayland's Hammer

The iconic ship of the AD ASTRA setting is the Wayland's Hammer.  A older UX-83 corvette used by the Altairan merchant marine as an armed escort vehicle in the chaos following the end of the Slave Wars, the Wayland's Hammer (or Dub H for short, as its known to its crew) is the ship of Donovon "Dono" Flint.  It's been very heavily modified since its days in official service—it was completely gutted inside and remodeled with a modest cargo hold, enough berths for the 5-man normal crew (and an additional 5 passengers, although to be honest, two of those passenger berths are normally used to stow odds and ends), new bulk drives, hot-rodded local space drives that make the ship faster and more maneuverable, slightly improved armor, shields and new quad lasers.  Although it's a rather fearsome craft for its size in many ways, Flint rarely uses his letter of marque issued by the Monarch's Margrave of the sector and is as likely to simply shuttle rare goods (sometimes illicitly) from system to system hoping to make a buck.

Using the AD ASTRA rules for space-ship construction, I've imagined the Dub H as a slightly more militarized Millennium Falcon in many ways, and is roughly the same size (for that matter, for Star Wars junkies, it's also about the same size as the Ebon Hawk or the various ships used by the different classes in Old Republic.)  I started with the basic Large ship chassis and filled up the slots with what I wanted.  I'd imagine that Old Man Flint, Dono's father, probably bought the Dub H at auction when it was at the end of its term of service for about 100,000 credits, and then spent a good 75,000 remodeling it.  Dono himself has probably put a good 70-80,000 more into it to "hot-rod" it; making it faster, better armored, adding shields, upgrading the weaponry, etc.  Not that he would want to sell it, but assuming that he did and he wasn't under pressure to unload it quickly, he'd try to sell it for 275,000 or so, and wouldn't possibly part with it for under 225,000.  Under extreme duress, he might go as low as just under 200,000, but PC's should never expect to get a comparable ship for anything less than 180,000 at even the very best of circumstances—unless through larceny or piracy, of course.

Wayland's Hammer

Type: Modified privateer corvette
Size: Large
Hit Points: 32
Agility: +5
Sensors: +3
Slots: 20
AC: 21

Attacks:
  • Type: Quad laser (medium range)
  • Attack: +2
  • Damage: 4d6
Slots:
Extra Engine power (2 slots)
Bulk drive (5 slots)
Quad lasers (3 slots)
Extra armor (3 slots at +2 to AC each slot)
Shields (3 slots for combined Damage Reduction of 6)
Passenger berth (2 slots; up to 10 crew and passengers)
Cargo berth (1 slot—5 tons)
Extra fuel tank (1 slot)
TOTAL: 20

The changes to the stats for the added engines and armor are included in the stats at the top, and the Attacks naturally reflects the quad laser.

UPDATE: As an aside, this is what I want AD ASTRA to look and feel like.  In some respects, it's more Guardians of the Galaxy than Star Wars, really.  Not that Destiny is like that in game but the cinematic trailers are perfect.  And as much as I think some aspects of Destiny are kinda silly (the ghosts, the Light, etc.) visually it's just about perfect.

1 comment:

Desdichado said...

Made a minor update. A Large sized, Millennium Falcon or Ebon Hawk sized ship only has 20 slots, which means that you probably can't get everything that you want in the package, and you have to make compromises. That's part and parcel of the fact that ships do, in fact, use a lot of space for the technology that runs them.

My first draft had a slot given up to improving the sensors; I decided that it made more sense, especially as I finalized and crystalized the space travel rules, that that last slot needed to be extra fuel, so that the ship can recover from any potential bad jump into a dead hex. It became an absolute necessity given the new rules—and I'd expect that the rules actually will have a significant effect on the way that the setting starts to evolve away from Star Wars in many ways, starting with that simple change.

Viva la evolution, I suppose!