FSS Kareland

The FSS Kareland (SV-73602) was a 2nd century Vernarcan Federation Kalar-class starship in operation for just over 30 years between its launch from Verri in 119 AC to its retirement in 150 following the War of the Broken Bow.

The single most storied ship in the history of the Vernarcan Federation and quite possibly the entire galaxy, Kareland was most famous for completing an entirely unscheduled 28-year journey across most of the Silky Way. This 100,000 light-year voyage brought with it a great number of technological innovations and first contacts with other distant powers.

The ship was instrumental in saving the last remnants of the people of the Hesteral Cluster, coming across the rag-tag fleet of ships fleeing the Void in 145 AC and helping protect them for the remainder of its journey. In its last act in service, Kareland led a fleet outfitted with all the best technology it brought back from its journey in a last-ditch attempt to destroy the Void before it destroyed the Ervo Sector. Captain Su'uni Ash Nikal sacrificed himself to ensure the destruction of the Void Hub, and Kareland was retired with honors and preserved as a museum ship in the Yusia System.

The Kareland was the first starship in Federation history to be honored with a legacy registry, with the SV-73602-I currently being built at Molgi.

History

Construction and launch

The FSS Kareland was constructed at the San Ska Re Shipyards orbiting Verri in the Delnar System, and officially launched from there in early 119 AC. It was named after the ancient Ravoryl explorer Kareland Rator, the first to circumnavigate her icebound homeworld. Its captain, Su'uni Ash Nikal of Campura, took the job with the hope of following in Kareland's footsteps, exploring strange new worlds and furthering knowledge of the greater Ervo Sector.

Kareland was one of the first of the initial production run of Kalar-class starships, which meant that its spaceframe featured a number of innovations which had recently become available to the Vernarcan Federation Space Force by the 110s: A more efficient warp drive, several elements of variable geometry, and a top of the line suite of powerful sensors across the hull.

First missions

Unfortunately for Captain Nikal, Kareland's first missions consisted of very little epic exploration missions, and he ended up cutting his teeth on diplomatic missions to the Thelsan Assembly, Voyorras, and the Tyran Free State. He considered his first exciting assignment to be a black ops mission into Keuramaske's Labyrinth to secretly escort refugees to the space of the Krask Hegemony. This region, a space where many ships had seemingly vanished without a trace, was extremely difficult to navigate without a familiarity with the phenomena present, and it proved a nerve-wracking assignment as Kareland and the refugees hid in the violent corona of Ivor to avoid detection by Falacian ships.

This mission was followed by some more diplomatic overtures to miscellaneous surrounding nations, and Nikal thought he was being typecast until, after two full years of no exploration missions aboard his top-of-the-line exploration ship, he was assigned...

The Voyage of the Kareland

Keuramaske's Labyrinth

...another black ops mission to Keuramaske's Labyrinth. Due to his impressive success the last time he went there, the Military Command saw him as a safe choice for the mission. This time, he was to hide in the clouds of the Labyrinth and spy on what their Talarian allies thought was a secret shipyard, designed to build powerful battleships. The Vernarcan Federation and its allies wanted to know what these battleships could do in case the Falacian Cold War went hot.

This time, Kareland was accompanied by the Talarian frigate Qadrai and the miniscule Tyran scout ship Oryx, sent to make sure information from the mission got back to their respective governments. This would backfire catastrophically when the combined energy outputs of the three ships led the K'orann Ridai, a mid-sized Falacian patrol ship, to their location.

Everyone agreed that the K'orann Ridai would be easily destroyed in open battle, including the K'orann Ridai, so Captain Ja'rod attempted to turn tail and report the two ships that they discovered to the greater battle group Kareland and friends were spying on. This attempt came very close to succeeding, with impressive dodges and maneuvering on Ja'rod's part. A clever shot from the Oryx disabled his long-range comm system, meaning he had to actually make it to Ivor to deliver his news. He made a good show of it before the unseen Kareland emerged from the dust and snagged his ship in grappling hooks. Captain Ash Nikal sent a boarding action onto the ship, disabling many of the ship's systems. The chief engineer tried to trigger the ship's self-destruct in an attempt to prevent the mission from being completely pointless by severely damaging Kareland in the explosion. This was narrowly averted when they were killed by the boarding crew before completing the destruct code, and the ship and crew were successfully captured.

The K'orann Ridai was stowed in Kareland 's voluminous shuttlebay for the time being. Ja'rod, upon her imprisonment in Kareland 's brig, attempted suicide, fearing the Falacian propaganda of the Federation's "unceasingly cruel interrogation". However, the complete lack of such cruelty gradually broke her in a different way: she had been lied to. She told her more fanatical crew members in the brig with her simply that she had a plan, and asked to speak to the captain in private.

Across the galaxy

On his way to Nikal's quarters, the ship was struck by a severe spatial distortion, much worse than the normal Keuremaske's Labyrinth-stock spatial distortions. Crew members aboard the Kareland, Oryx, and Qadrai reported seeing the view out the windows abruptly cut from the waves of gas and dust of the Labyrinth to the purest black anyone had ever seen. Many crew members who were in unlucky positions were killed by the distortions directly, by damaged ship components exploding in their faces, or the sudden unpredictable accelerations throwing them into bulkheads. The casualties of the violent pull included first officer Kreket of Varbudos, operations officer Stadi of Earen, chief engineer Olatunde, much of the medical staff, as well as captain Ansinerra of the Qadrai.

After almost an hour of this spatial abuse, the blackness cut out just as abruptly as it came. The three ships were spread over almost a hundred thousand kilometers of interstellar space, surrounded by the floating wrecks of unknown ships of various sizes. Only three of the 12-man crew of the Oryx had survived the transit, and Kareland sent an engineering crew to fix the rapidly overloading power cores before they took out the rest of them and damaged the other two ships. Long-range scans determined its location within the Astros Sector, over ninety thousand light-years from home.

Their wound-licking session was interrupted when a hail was received from a planet in the inner reaches of the system they arrived in. Upon answering, this planet was revealed to be a primitive one without even reaching wide-scale industry, but a group living in the northern continent's largest civilization had been tapping into abandoned alien technology in the attempt to summon a savior to deliver them from the "Mystics", mythical beasts who had been eating the stars from the sky. A quick scan of the stellar neighborhood found that much of it had indeed vanished, and the crew felt obligated to investigate.

Amana was found in an ecological dead zone, a lonely habitable world far from any seed clusters. What this star-destroying civilization could possibly be was completely unknown, but Kareland 's sensors couldn't establish a far end to the darkness. The crew termed whoever they were the Void, and Qadrai volunteered to run a recon mission with minimal crew. While they waited, an away team went down to the planet to investigate the situation.

It was discovered that Amana was once a much more advanced civilization, but it had recently succumbed to a brutal civil war, reducing the Amali to less than twenty thousand people around the planet and few more scattered across the system. This left them in no shape to defend against anything, let alone the mysterious Void. This fascinating observation was cut short when Qadrai returned with news: Amana was perched at the bleeding edge of a great empty space – an empty space which did not exist when light from the region arrived at the Ervo Sector during modern history. Qadrai's recon mission also barely avoided a vast ship emerging from the void, and there were more incoming.

The away team determined that it would be possible to use the Translocator device on the planetary surface to return the flight group to the Ervo Sector, but that would likely result in burning out the device and leaving the Amali to their fate. As Qadrai flew at breakneck speed back towards Amana, these two options were communicated with them.

While some, particularly the Falaci prisoners (with the exception of the now-defected Ja'rod) and several junior crew members, wished to return home post-haste, most agreed that saving the Amali would be the obvious moral thing to do in the situation, and so the away team began to modify the device accordingly. It became a race against time to jump the planet away before the pursuing presumably-Void ships reached it. Kareland 's engineering crew built a cradle to allow landing the ship on the planetary surface and tied in the ship's main power core into the Translocator, permanently grounding it until the jump was complete.

As this was happening, Qadrai was nearing the system, with a fleet of unknown, massive ships roughly a fifth of a light-year behind it. First officer Kol of K'orann Ridai broke out of Kareland 's brig, attempting to sabotage the modifications and make sure that they would be returned home. She came close, but was killed with her hand above the switch by security chief Streta. Kol's attempt was catastrophic for everyone – the Falaci prisoners had their guard doubled, and the engineering teams' attempt to modify the Translocator was set back by several hours.

Acting chief engineer Tyrol Ga'ann was putting the finishing touches on his work when Qadrai suddenly jumped directly into Amana's planetary atmosphere. The communications officer practically screamed into the channel to get ready to jump immediately, but the fleet of Voidships had caught up with it. The first shot glared across the night, and much of the western continent went up in flames. Fortunately, most of the populated land was on the other side of the planet when the voidships arrived, but the engineering crews were out of time.

Lacking time to do the elaborate landing procedure normal for ships of its size, Qadrai slowed itself down by simply smashing into the ground at a technically-safe angle. Just after it made contact with the surface, the planet jumped. The Void's central intelligence stood bewildered as its next prey simply vanished from the skies in a flash of blacker-than-black.

Amana reemerged from null space thousands of light-years away, in the vicinity of the Karvel Cluster. After disconnecting from the burned out Translocator, Kareland launched from the surface, pulling Qadrai out of the ditch it created with its grappling hooks. Before they launched, an Amali by the name of Endrak R'Mor jumped at the chance to leave his ruined planet and join them on their epic journey. Leaving Amana behind, the flight group began the voyage home.

Beginnings in the Astros Sector

The first order of business was a new first officer. As it was clear that home and any form of law and order recognizable to them was very far away, just keeping the Falaci in the brig for the duration of the trip would be obviously impossible. With the death of Kol, most of their fiery lets-kill-the-Federation-people ideas had fizzled out. The already-defected Ja'rod pitched the idea of integrating them into the crews of both large ships, with the more moderate among them given higher positions. To solidify this new merged crew, captain Ash Nikal selected Ja'rod herself as his new first officer, as he clearly was very experienced in matters of command and battle. The two would clash in matters of opinion often, but they would become fast friends in the early years of the journey. The rest of the Falaci crew were... less nice, but the complete lack of torturous treatment that they were taught to expect shook them just as much as it did Ja'rod, although it clearly took a bit longer to get through. Thus, what would have been a recipe for disaster morphed into a very uneasy peace aboard the lost ships.

The landing site of Amana, the Kenna System, was in a space almost as desolate as the one it had left, but the nearest seed cluster was substantially closer – the Karvel Cluster was shown by long-range observations to be inhabited by a collection of small states, which made it a presumably ideal location to head for to begin the journey. After about a week of journeying through the unclaimed, uninhabited space that represents much of the galaxy (and mining as much resources as possible from it), Kareland and Qadrai finally entered the cluster near the territory of the minuscule Nusomis Clan.

Through the Karvel Cluster

Wasteland voyage

Lowiras Cluster and Celeas

Cyclical history in Callurim

Void space

The Forever War

Liberation of Maeress

The high watchers of the Ayma Cluster

Collapse of Dogma

The Salzeran Nebula

Noninterference

Kingmakers

Flashpoint and the Galactic Core

Hesteral/Kareland encounter and conflict

Alliance with the Exodus Fleet

Mbombo Hyperobject

War with the Tuath Nebula

Naught but Dust

Cyclical history in Paleas

The Swallow Hive

The Astronomicon and the voyage home

Post-return

Final mission

Retirement

Legacy

First contacts

Kareland made hundreds of first contacts with various nations and species across the Silky Way, more than any other single starship in the Vernarcan Federation's history and quite possibly the history of the galaxy. Captain Nikal stated that this was merely due to being the only one in the neighborhood and that anyone could have done it, but historians agree that this was just a symptom of his unending modesty.

Technical data

Physical arrangement

Kareland 's fifteen decks, 770 meter length, and a crew capacity of approximately 200 people at peak made it approximately half the size of the larger Providence-class starships introduced in the years prior. However, the introduction of the Kalar-class heralded a general downsizing of the Federation fleet, with a pivot towards more smaller craft rather than a small number of heckin chonkers. The ship was launched with all of the technological advancements of the day, including a suite of powerful sensors across the hull and a more efficient warp drive helped along by the new innovation of separated nacelles.

Main hull

This comprises the bulk of Kareland 's structure, and can be broken into three sections:

The fore section: Also known as the arrowhead, this 120-meter long section contains much of the operational areas of the ship, including the bridge, two observation decks, and many crew quarters. It has separation capability if necessary.
The mid section: Contains engineering decks, cargo bays, most of the crew quarters, and engineering systems. This section houses water and other such resource tanks. It also houses flight and science pod retraction mechanisms, as well as the autofactory which builds replacement shuttles and other such things.
The aft section: Contains the impulse engine pods, nacelle hardpoints, main power core, and auxiliary facilities needed to maintain propulsion, as well as much of the infrastructure for the Hesteral jump drive installed in 140 AC.

Flight and science pods

Kareland 's structure takes full advantage of the principle of variable geometry, with three large flight pods extending from the central spine. The port and starboard pods were both used as intended for most of the journey, but the ventral pod quickly became a parking lot for all manner of craft that the crew picked up on the journey, including their pet overpowered gunship the K'orann Ridai. Extending from the dorsal surface was also a large science pod, which was quickly heavily modified by the crew to beef up its capabilities from the dismal equipment it originally came with for the Keuremaske mission.

Both the science pod and the arrowhead module could separate from the ship and function independently for various reasons. One innovative use of this feature involved the Hesteral jump drive, separating the ship into three parts and jailbreaking the drive's software to cause the jump of something that isn't the ship between those parts. The science pod was also often used for recon missions which required huge amounts of high-quality data.

Propulsion

The Kareland, like most Vernarcan Federation ships, relies on a set of five impulse microfusion engines for primary thrust, as well as over a hundred maneuvering engine blocks in clusters of four at key points around the ship. These engines produce enough thrust to allow Kareland to reach flank speeds from a standstill with almost no lead time, as demonstrated during the escape from Void space in 129, Ash Nikal and co.'s theft of the ship from the Velar drydocks, and in the Battle of the Colony.

Due to this enormous amount of thrust, Federation ships are generally extremely maneuverable, and can dock with space stations such as the Markarian Drift. The Kalar-class is not designed for atmospheric flight, but modifications can be made to allow it to land for periods of time on planets like Amana.

Kareland 's warp drive started as a top-of-the line drive capable of roughly 650c at maximum warp, but modifications made by reverse-engineering alien technology improved this to 1780c by the end of the journey. The encounter with the Hesteral Exodus Fleet made the greatest improvement to the ship's superluminal drive systems, with the installation of the Hesteral jump drive allowing instant jumps alongside the HEF or otherwise over a distance of up to five light-years with precision.

Notable locations

Defense systems

Like most starships of its time, Kareland was armed with a selection of beam weapons, torpedoes of several kinds, and protected by a warp deflector system as well as standard shields. The ship's torpedo launchers could also launch probes and mines. Later upgrades included Void technology to improve the power of the weapons, shields, and sensor arrays, as well as all manner of offensive and defensive technology swiped from various nations that they passed through, including the affectionately named BFG device.

Beam arrays

The average Kalar-class starship is outfitted with five beam array strips spread across its hull, which can emit concentrated beams of high-energy photons from any point along their length. These have no practical upper limit of firepower, only limited by the size of the power source plugged into them. In the case of Kareland, its beam weapons have been cheesed to the point of leveling a town from orbit. The BFG Device was also implemented after reverse-engineering it from data gathered of a Hosk ship.

Kinetic weapons

A kinetic energy weapon is a weapon that causes damage as a result of the kinetic energy (motion) imparted to a projectile. This includes firearms firing solid bullets first and foremost but may also include guns firing explosive shells. While beam arrays can sometimes be more powerful, there are a great many situations where kinetic projectiles are much more advantageous to use. To this end, Kareland has a wide variety of batteries mounted over the dorsal and ventral surfaces, as well as on the flight and science pods.

The most impressive example of kinetic weaponry on a Kalar-class ship like Kareland is the enormous railguns mounted in the arrowhead-shaped forward module. These structures are so large that they cannot be aimed independently – the gun crew must communicate with the helmsman to aim the entire ship at the thing they want gone. Like so many things on the ship, these are also variable-yield, as the kinetic energy imparted to the projectile increases linearly with how much power is supplied to the acceleration coils.

Shielding and Armor

There are several forms of shielding outfitted on the Kareland. The first and most commonly used is referred to as a "warp shield". Operating by warping space near the ship just enough to deflect beams or projectiles, it is highly effective at preventing unguided things from making contact with the hull. This technology is widespread throughout much of the space that Kareland passes through on its journey. There also exists more straightforward energy shielding and inertial dampeners, spreading energy delivered through them all across the hull, preventing any single section of it from overloading.

If all of this fails, the majority of Kareland 's dorsal hull is covered in roughly half a meter of armor plating over the regular hull. While less than dedicated battleships as would be seen in the War of the Broken Bow, this is more than sufficient for the threats that SFEA was expecting the ship to encounter on its missions. It was not, however, sufficient for what it actually did encounter in its 28 years of uninterrupted flight, and lots of effort was put into improving the sensor array which the warp shielding operated off of. Even with these improvements, battles were often won by subterfuge, being confusing, and/or firing everything at once and blowing up the other guy first.

Torpedoes, probes, and mines

Kareland is outfitted with fourteen torpedo tubes spread over the pods, engine blocks, and the main hull sections of the ship. They can fire in virtually any direction, and are designed to deploy a variety of payloads. The most commonly used payload is of course the simple torpedo or missile, a guided projectile launched at high speed into an externally generated warp bubble, which can be guided to wherever it needs to go. These torpedoes are (again) variable-yield, with the standard version able to reach up to a 50 megaton detonation when loaded accordingly. Alternatively, a torpedo can be outfitted with an EMP device, fritzing out the power on the ship it hits and those near it.

In extreme circumstances, a zero-point torpedo (ZPT) could be deployed. This type of torpedo, the design of which was captured from the Kormin Empire, is larger, less maneuverable, and easier to shoot down, but its detonation method of weaponizing slight disruptions in quantum fields released enormous amounts of energy. ZPTs can only be fired from Kareland 's forward ventral torpedo tube, which was enlarged and modified to be capable of doing so.

The torpedo tubes are also used to launch clouds of mines, which quickly fill the targeted region of space as programmed by the launch crew. These mines can operate the same way as any of the three torpedo types (although a minefield of ZPTs would be so overkill), and are generally outfitted with some form of sensor cloaking device. During the Kareland 's voyage, a minefield was only ever deployed once – at Acrobol in the Paleas Cluster, in an effort to force a stalemate and avert a return to war for the region.

Unique characteristics

Void-technology enhancements

During its long voyage across the galaxy, the crew of Kareland encountered the Void a number of times. Many of these times included heists of Void technology off of their ships, including a method to access their Underspace tunnels – an acquisition that shaved thirty years off of their voyage in one go. After the loss of Qadrai in the Lowiras Cluster, the combined crew aboard Kareland would disguise their presence in Void space by outfitting the hull with great amounts of Void technology. After this camouflage was in place, they had what was functionally a blank cheque to steal as much Void swag as they wanted during the passage through its space – augmenting their warp drive, beefing up their sensor array, getting better weapons, and so on.

Two droids were also disconnected from the Void mainframe during these expeditions – EX-1449 and FN-2199, who would come to be known as Vera and Nari after their personalities asserted themselves. These two would come to be valued members of the crew, assisting in the implementation of the yoinked technology.

BFG Device

The BFG (Big Fucking Gun) device is less of its own thing and more of a heavily modified mode of operation for phasers. On its voyage, Kareland encountered the Hosk Assembly, a powerful nation ruling distantly over much of the Ayma Cluster. Among other things, the crew of Kareland procured a new way to operate their beam weapons – rather than continuously firing into space as they do normally, the BFG modifications allow them to build up energy from the power for up to several minutes before releasing it. To engage these modifications, the ship's geometry changes somewhat to bring all of the strips to bear in a single direction. While this is massive overkill for most cases, especially combined with how busted the regular throughput is, it was a very useful option to have in case a very large ship showed up as they did many times through the voyage.

Astrometric sensors

While most starships fielded by the Vernarcan Federation had passable to good astrometric systems, the long voyage led the crew of Kareland to modify the external sensors and the astrometrics lab. This upgrade with technology collated from nearly fifty different nations magnified the sensor distance twentyfold. This helped uncover a new route which shaved five years off the travel time on its own, and also clued the crew in to the location of a Flashpoint, allowing them to completely jump over the Rein Sector.

Computer core

"This is nice, but I didn't actually ask for it to be colder..." –Su'uni Ash Nikal, 125 AC

The computer core of Kareland was a fairly generic example of such a device, at least when it was installed. After the death of operations officer Stadi during the trip through the Amanian Translocator, the computer was programmed to stand in for her on its own due to the severe decrease in crew. Due to this fact and the sheer amount of time that it was forced to operate and the amount that it experienced via sensor data and security feeds, it eventually attained what could be considered sapience. This was revealed in 125 AC when the ship began to respond to certain vaguely stated orders before they could be plugged into the consoles – captain Nikal once got annoyed at the high temperature in his ready room, and before he could do anything about it the temperature abruptly dropped. The computer core was eventually considered a member of the crew in their own right, and chose to stay online after the ship's retirement to serve as a tour guide in the new museum.

Hesteral jump drive

In 140, Kareland encountered the Hesteral Exodus Fleet after emerging from the Flashpoint Network. After a tense few days, an alliance was formed between the two groups, with the fleet finally having a place to go to rather than simply away from. Many things came of this alliance, but chief among them was the installation of a powerful jump drive system allowing instantaneous jumps with safety and precision. This massively increased the speed of the voyage, after Kareland 's engineering crews improved the initial Hesteral design after being presented with it. The final design, which proliferated quickly through the fleet, could make such precision jumps over up to five light years, allowing the combined fleet to make these jumps and remain in formation. The system was also capable of placing Kareland in synchronous orbit of a nearby planet, in the midst of an asteroid field, or even in the planetary atmosphere.

Endurance

While the Kareland was not initially outfitted for a long mission without resupply, the crew swiftly set to work ensuring that it was possible. The default water reclamation facilities could function as-is, but everything else had to be either scavenged from alien technology or built from scratch. The implementation of hydroponic pays in the midsection of the ship and in most of the hallways both provided fresh food for the crew and a nice break from the artificial nature of the ship that made their home. The autofactory was also modified to allow long-term usage, producing ammunition, replacement shuttles, and at one point a brand new runabout. The highly advanced but reclusive Hosk Assembly had mastered particle synthesis technology, a system which was given to the Kareland as a thank-you gift by the Hosk Separatists and used to great effect to diversify the diets of the crew and augment the autofactory's production.

Embarked craft

Shuttlecraft

The most common auxiliary craft found aboard Kareland 's flight pods came in the form of several kinds of shuttle. They were versatile and largely expendable due to their easy manufacture, and they were the most common method of travel to and from Kareland – especially for planetary landings. They were also used often for in-system scouting missions or search and rescue operations, accompanied by probes.

Shuttles were also often used as utility vehicles, pulling an undetonated Hosk torpedo out of the hull on one occasion in 130 AC. Stripped-down shuttles often doubled as workerbees for the on-the-fly repair work so often required on the voyage.

Shuttles were usually launched at high speed in the direction they needed to go via a railgun mechanism built into the flight pod launch tubes, and landed on the exposed deck before being pulled back to the hangar via elevator platform. This launch system operated very similarly to the torpedo tubes, enveloping the shuttle in a temporary warp field to allow it to cross a system at high speeds if necessary.

Kareland was stocked with several kinds of shuttlecraft during its journey across the galaxy. The onboard autofactory was also capable of manufacturing most shuttle components, allowing replacements to be made when shuttles were lost. Shuttles were often enhanced with technology acquired on the journey, including an attempt at replicating the Coaxial warp drive of the Lypan Technocracy.

Runabouts

Runabouts are shuttles, but bigger, faster, and more expensive. Runabouts were often used for long-range scouting missions to neighboring systems. Unlike standard shuttles, they were too big to fit in the launch tubes, but were outfitted with onboard warp drives (and later jump drives once the design was procured from the Hesteral Exodus fleet), which made the tubes less necessary. They also came with larger cargo bays, power sources, and grapplers to take big stuff with them wherever they go.

Runabouts were also used often when avoiding immediate detection was key – Kareland was huge and obviously armed, so its entry into a populated system would make waves, but a runabout could sneak by unnoticed especially with the proper modifications.

Runabouts were launched from Kareland simply by raising them to the flight pod deck and releasing the clamps, at which point they would accelerate away from the ship with their warp drive.

Inventories

Originally its own independent starship, Oryx lost most of its crew during the transfer to Amana, and so was unable to independently operate until major repairs were made. After this occurred, it was used as another, larger auxiliary craft in situations where Kareland was too big but a runabout wasn't big enough. The K'orann Ridai, captured immediately before the beginning of the voyage, was also sometimes used in this capacity after repairs were made, although it was larger and comically overgunned for its size as was the way of Falacian engineers. R'Mor's shuttle, the Auglas, was also carried aboard the ship and used in several instances where discretion was required.

When not in flight, these two starships were stored on the secondary deck of the ventral flight pod. This was also where visiting guests were often received, including occasional visits from Hesteral One and other Tital ships during Kareland 's time escorting the Hesteral Exodus Fleet.

The two other flight pods were where most standard shuttle and runabout launches took place, and they were loaded with a total complement of 30 shuttles and four runabouts between them. The dorsally mounted science pod could separate from its retractable pylon and operate independently, as well.

List of craft

14 Class-III shuttles
8 Class-VI shuttles
5 Class-VII shuttles
3 Class-IX shuttles
4 Tilla-class runabouts
Aeroshuttle
Mari
Auglas
Oryx
K'orann Ridai
Science Pod

Crew

Complement

Kareland was launched with a crew complement of 177 individuals of a variety of species, which had went down to 174 by 121 AC due to transfers and retirements. When it was pulled to Amana, the transfer killed 59 crew members, but the three surviving crew of the Oryx, Endrak R'Mor of Amana, as well as the survivors of the imprisoned K'orann Ridai crew would later join, bringing the tally back up to 126.

In 125 AC, when Qadrai was destroyed in the Lowiras Cluster, the survivors were picked up in their escape pods by Kareland and were integrated into the crew, bringing the total number to 159.

Over the course of the journey, there were a number of casualties, but also several new crewmembers. In 122, two Civoran refugees joined the crew while passing through the Karvel Cluster, and in 124 the first child born aboard the ship was born to Khier, the Tarasze science officer, and their lover who came with them in the crew of Oryx.

By the time of Kareland 's return to the Ervo Sector, a great number of species were represented among its crew, including Alorath, Kuna'uashi, Ravoryl, Verna, Lrenn, Eanai, Tarasze, Falaci, Krask, and Q'Mau – all native to the Ervo Sector. There were also a wide variety of species native to the regions the ship passed through – the Amali, Civorans, Edorak, Griyosht, Maeraxi, Taretel, Ornali, Esel, and later Titoalu were all represented aboard the ship. All the new crew members were given field commissions by captain Ash Nikal, with many filling roles left by those lost during the initial translocation to Amana.

While Commander Ja'rod believed that Kareland required at least 80 or so crewmembers to operate effectively, varoius circumstances have shown her to be incorrect, at least for short periods of time. In 133, the Void droids Vera and Nari managed to operate the ship alone alongside the sapient computer core for several months gathering resources from a particularly young and irradiated seed cluster, while the crew was in stasis under lead shielding for that reason.

The Falacians

With the capture of the K'orann Ridai and the abrupt removal of a place to put the prisoners, Federation and Falaci crew members were forced to cooperate with one another to survive in this strange realm. Captain Ja'rod convinced her crewmates of the necessity of cooperation, and with the death of the hardliner Kol, it largely went off without a hitch. The position of first officer was filled by Ja'rod herself, and the chief engineer's post was shared between Tyrol Ga'ann of the original crew and Kaso.

Initially, security officer Lieutenant Streta believed that the presence of this many former prisoners posed a significant risk of mutiny, and designed a training program to prepare her team for the scenario. Her concerns proved to be unfounded, however, and she archived the program before forgetting about it until it was accidentally uncovered in 129. By that point, the crews were so thoroughly integrated that it just became a bit of a laugh for all involved, and Streta was on semipermanent leave to raise her children anyway.

Not all was smooth with the integration. Ensign Kerla's defection to the Karvel Clan Nelakra after secretly providing them information, along with the killing of several security officers during his escape, almost risked the destruction of Kareland and Qadrai. After some time had passed from this incident, both Su'uni Ash Nikal and Ja'rod simply stopped distinguishing between the "original crew" and the Falaci, particularly after more and more new groups tacked themselves onto the manifest.

Consequences of isolation

The Kareland was more cut off from its homeland than any other ship had been in history. Due to this situation, the crew was often forced into situations which would have been dead straightforward were the Vernarcan Federation at their back. The lack of resources, knowledge, and allies forced Ash Nikal to get much more involved in local affairs than a normal exploration mission would have. Many of the Karvel Clans had a low opinion of them, but their general reputation in the area was improved by a series of selfless actions such as their attempt to save the planet Raldor from catastrophic earthquakes.

Several occasions saw Kareland run dangerously low on several resources, necessitating dangerous resource-gathering operations in the severely irradiated Salzeran Nebula on one instance. The long time between drydock stays also led to unique consequences for the computer core – it became sapient. The computer itself went from simple software to a member of the crew, which was relied on to do many cool things when necessary. The efforts of chief engineer Tyrol Ga'ann encouraged the crew to treat them as a person rather than a tool after this revelation. By the time of Kareland 's return to the Ervo Sector, both the computer and the two rehabilitated Void droids had no hesitation whatsoever about introducing themselves as officers, and they were all encouraged to consider themselves part of their number despite originating as tools to serve a function. Sometimes the ship would randomly play music in the hallways, and everyone got used to it even though its music taste was pedestrian at best.

The secondary science pod was also quickly filled with a variety of hydroponic bays to ensure that feeding the crew would never be an issue, and VR pods were installed to give people simulated experience on the long flights between habitable planets.

While the actual voyage of the Kareland took 28 years, that value was well beyond everyone's wildest dreams, as most expected it to take centuries. Shipboard relationship regulations were largely waived to compensate for this. There were many children born on the ship, including several to captain Ash Nikal and the head helmsman Su'uresh Rai Nikal, Streta's many progeny, and many others.

List of crew

Commanding officer
- Su'uni Ash Nikal (119–150)
- Ja'rod (probably a lot of times) (acting)
First officer
- Cavit Kreket (119–121)
- Ja'rod (121–150)
- idk probably a couple people stood in for Cavit when she was acting captain
Operations officer
- Stadi (119–121)
- Kareland computer operations program (121–150)
Science officer
- None assigned prior to 121
- Khier (121–139)[[
- Duala Culha (139–149)
Chief engineer
- Olatunde Annan il-Rana il-Endra (119–121)
- Tyrol Ga'ann (121–133)
- Kaso (121–150)
Security chief
- Streta (119–127)
- Ba'ari Il Sekur (127–150)
Astrometrics staff
- EX-1449 "Vera" (125–149)
Chief medical officer
- Kurra Anor il-Iri il-Renai (121–150)
Helmsman
- Kayla Yulander (119–129)
- Su'uresh Rai Nikal (119–150)
Ambassador/guide
- Endrak R'Mor (122–149)
- Lerienne (140–149)
Medical staff
Engineering staff
- FN-2199 "Nari" (139–149)