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Urdji Mez-Jemivan, The Third Fleet, Tribal Assembly
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Overview
The Urdji Civîneşra is the loose governing body of the Urdji tribes (or Eşra in their native language), and is more often referred to simply as the Urdji Mez-Jemivan (Urdji Great Fleet). It consists of numerous nomadic tribes which each operate and live on their own fleet of starships. Each tribe sends a representative to the Assembly (Civîneşra), which has come to dictate both species-wide migrations and domestic policy across the tribes. In the lead-up to the Great War the Civîneşra approved a centralization of the tribes, leading to the formation of the Urdji Grand Fleet (the Mez-Jemivan) and their participation in the war as a singular political entity. This is the third time such a unification has occurred in Urdji history, leading to the colloquial name The Third Fleet being used to describe the Urdji nation as a whole.
History
This, one of the only surviving photographs from the homeworld, is believed to show a D'jim warship in the skies above an ancient Urdji city.
The Urdji were driven from their homeworld at an unknown time in the distant past. Due to the time dilation experienced in their pre-FTL period there is no actual consensus on just how long ago the exodus occurred, but it is assumed by most Urdji scholars that it was at least five-thousand years ago. The oldest indication of Urdji space travel dates to around 3970 years ago, and is the heat signature of an Urdji liveship in the direction of Canis Major. Some scholars even theorize that the Urdji indeed originated from one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, considering the lack of any records of the D'jim in the libraries of other galactic civilizations.
Little is known of the terrestrial Urdji civilization, but most Urdji historians believe them to have been highly advanced and culturally sophisticated. Official histories mark the staggered launches of the seed ships as the first time the Urdji ever split into distinct groups, and the planetary civilization is thought to have been peacefully unified since the dawn of civilization. This unification, they believe, brought about a great deal of technological development and a long-lasting epoch of prosperity.
It is thought that the D'jim attacked to seize this technology for themselves, as there are few other logical explanations for their sudden aggression. Being a peaceful species, the Urdji had no means with which to fight the invasion. As such their only recourse was to flee their homeworld. Their existing technology, combined with what they could reverse-engineer from the D'jim, was more than enough to allow them to construct relativistic starships of their own. As soon as a new vessel was completed it would be launched off in whatever direction happened to be most efficient at the time. As a result of this the Urdji developed for the first time distinct cultures and races where there had previously only been unity.
For hundreds of years the Urdji starships scattered throughout their mother star cluster in an attempt to escape the D'jim. The records of the few surviving vessels from this era show that ships launched towards the galactic rim almost always went missing, indicating a strong D'jim presence on the outer edge of the galaxy. Records from the age of the First Mez-Jemivan suggest that these territories were simply colonies of the D'jim homeland, most likely consisting of the stars of Canis Major.
About a thousand (objective, not relativistically subjective) years after being driven from their homeworld, one of the many tribes happened upon a ruined colony system of some highly advanced civilization. A great swarm of derelict stations surrounded the sun, once a dyson swarm that surely held host to a civilization far greater than even the terrestrial Urdji. The planets, though long since turned into uninhabitable wasteland, had once been grand ecumenopoleis. This event changed the course of Urdji history forever. There was a long-defunct entry gate to a form of krasnikov tube at the edge of the system, and orbiting it was a massive starship. It was as if it was planning to transit the gate when some cataclysm struck. No bodies remained aboard and most of the hull had been decompressed, but many of the systems were fully or largely intact. Though it is far from a glorious past for one of the most important discoveries in Urdji history, most scholars agree that the ship was just a bulk freighter. To the Urdji, of course, it was far more. They quickly set about repairing it and bringing its intact systems online.
That ship was the first Urdji liveship, the Qurtel. It held within it a massive antimatter drive-what they now call a Têkildartîajokravsinya system-which the Urdji quickly realized was their only hope of survival in the face of the much faster accelerating ships of the D'jim. The entire tribe's fleet anchored itself around the gate and the crews proceeded to scrutinize every inch of the dyson swarm, tearing down anything they had fully mapped and using the raw materials to build new, more capable vessels.
This tribe, now named after its liveship, broadcast the designs for antimatter starship drives via radio to reach the other surviving tribes. They began to slowly gather in the ruined system, and work began on attempting to reactivate the krasnikov tube. The knowledge of physics which this process gifted to the Urdji turned out to be essential, as in trying to bring the gate online they discovered the properties of negative matter. This exotic matter, when applied to the gate's apparatus, slightly stabilized the tube and opened it to radio signals. The Urdji, always opportunistic, recognized the effects of the matter on space-time and soon created a theoretical basis for the Malpêçk-their first ship mounted FTL drive. Due to the abundance of untranslatable signals they picked up from beyond the gate, it was decided that they would not open it fully for transit until they had prepared themselves with this new technology.
After a fifty-year encampment during which they rapidly modernized their ships and expanded their tribal fleets, the various Urdji tribes which had made it to the gate organized themselves into a united force. They rallied around the Qurtel tribe, the liveship of which hosted the first tribal assembly and became in a way the de facto capital of the species. The first act of this, the First Mez-Jemivan, was to open the tube and send forth the most advanced warships each tribe had at their disposal.
Upon exiting the tube, they were met with a fleet of D'jim warships. And so began the age of the First Mez-Jemivan.
A Leşkgemmar tribe warband enters the atmosphere of a D'jim colony world. This sortie in particular was a part of Operation Xwînboya, an attempt by the Leşkgemmar and Qurtel tribes to steal water for crop irrigation on the liveships.
The Age of the First Mez-Jemivan begins at the battle of Bostan, directly following the transit of the Mez-Jemivan through the krasnikov tube. A D'jim guard fleet, accompanied by what seemed to be civilian vessels, engaged the forward scouts of the Urdji. The bulk of the Mez-Jemivan arrived mere hours into the battle as reinforcements, and the D'jim force was quickly dispatched. After getting their bearings the Urdji learned that they had traveled over thirty thousand light years to the Canis Major dwarf galaxy.
In a more populated region of space, the Urdji lost their ability to remain hidden. Any star they wished to stop at was the sun of a populated system, and as a result in order to simply collect fuel they had to fight the D'jim. In the first few decades these battles were short and easily won, with each system being underdeveloped and simply unable to cope with the entire might of Urdji civilization. The Mez-Jemivan set itself on a course towards the Monoceros ring, planning to transit back into the Milky Way at a point far away from the D'jim colonies. However, the further they progressed the more resistance they met.
This period of time would be a dark one for the Urdji. Tribal fleets were constantly in peril, be it from starvation, dehydration, suffocation, or the military threat of the D'jim. Isolated incidents of D'jim vessels breaking the speed of light were reported, and those single ships soon became entire fleets that chased down stragglers from the procession of the Mez-Jemivan. Rangers became a truly established group in this time, acting as raiders that would attack D'jim convoys and colonies and bring supplies back to their home tribe. The Urdji became a scourge on the D'jim colonies, and the D'jim began to divert more and more vessels to the region in an attempt to drive them away. With nowhere else to go but towards the Monoceros ring, however, the Urdji were forced to press on towards what they thought was another colonial sector of the D'jim empire.
The tribes, by now, had started to develop cultures and reputations independent of the slight cultural shifts they undertook in the years before the migration to Canis Major. These were usually owed to their reputation in battle. Though they had the resources and living space on some vessels to cease the practice of wing clipping, many tribes would continue the practice. Clipped wings were considered intimidating as they implied prowess and experience in hand-to-hand combat and combat in small craft such as fighters that lacked room for the Urdji's natural, massive wings.
As the First Mez-Jemivan advanced through D'jim space it was realized that they were most likely moving directly towards their core worlds. Each system was more and more developed, more and larger fleets were sent to fight the Urdji, and they were starting to run out of options. It was at this point that their objective shifted from outrunning the D'jim to kicking them down. As they too were now capable of FTL travel the Urdji knew they could not simply be escaped.
The Bilnd-Sûmangişt (High Admiral, lit. "High Void Marshal") at the time ordered the tribal fleets to pillage and burn every system they came upon. Anything of value was stolen, any infrastructure destroyed, and every planet glassed. In contrast to the expectations of the Urdji the number of D'jim fleets actually decreased during this campaign, and the assumption was that other worlds within their empire that had been conquered in the past were seizing the opportunity the Mez-Jemivan had presented.
Urdji knowledge of the D'jim increased massively during this time, thanks to the panic they seemed to have been sent into it became much easier for Urdji Rangers to gather intelligence. After an entire decade of burning D'jim colonies a team of rangers made the greatest intelligence breakthrough of the era. They had recovered the computer core of a D'jim flagship, and after months of hacking and translation work had succeeded in determining the location of their capital world.
The Urdji tribes, rallied by the new information, massed into a single force and headed straight for the D'jim capital. There are no concrete records of the battle, only song and legend, but both speak of the system being razed and pillaged until there was nothing left which suggested life had ever existed within it. The First Mez-Jemivan then continued forth down the Monoceros ring, doing the same to any more D'jim systems they encountered until the resistance to their advance abruptly stopped. At some point, for some reason, the D'jim decided to let them travel through freely. Historians have specualted that this was simply because they had reached a region of space populated by subject species of the D'jim, others have assumed that it was due to a civil war fought amongst the D'jim species itself, but whatever the case the First Mez-Jemivan was finally disbanded. The tribes, lacking a threat to bind them together, went their separate ways and the Bilnd-Sûmangişt stepped down from his position.
And so the Age of the First Mez-Jemivan came to an end.
An example of High Medeival artwork titled Rawand's Last Stand, depicting a battle between the Qurtel and Strateyr tribes.
Following the dissolution of the First Mez-Jemivan the Urdji tribes still continued their migration down the Monoceros ring for a time, forced into the path due to the distance between the ring and the Milky Way proper. Tribes began to make the long jump over to the Milky Way just a few years after the end of the First Mez-Jemivan, with each tribe crossing whenever they felt it was feasible. Some tribes were entirely lost in the void between the Monoceros ring and the Milky Way, but the majority made it across at numerous different points scattered around the general region.
Every once in a while a tribe would set up a planetary settlement, but the primary opinion among the tribes was that becoming sedentary was a danger. The D'jim were still seen as a threat in the early medieval period, with many believing that they may lick their wounds and come for revenge. As a result the Urdji as a whole did not give up their nomadic ways, and the tribes which settled down remained small and insignificant in inter-tribal politics. They even tended to be economically stunted compared to their nomadic brethren, as after spending thousands of years as nomads they simply lacked the know-how to build an economy not based upon ever mobile factory ships, salvage operations, and towing asteroids along for later use.
The Urdji Medieval Ages are often broken up into early, high, and late periods much like those of Humanity's European middle ages. The early period was characterized by the slow expansion of Urdji tribal fleets into the (largely uninhabited) region of space nearest the Monoceros ring's midsection from which they had crossed. Most tribes parked their liveship(s) near hydrogen-rich gas giants for a few years at a time, allowing them to encamp and build up their numbers before moving onwards. Towards the end of the early period those tribes which had settled on planets began to leave their homes, and often assimilated into more established nomadic tribes in the process.
The high period is generally considered to have begun with the construction of the Bajivîn, a large space station built by the Neurdj tribe to act as its seat of power. Other major tribes began copying the Neurdj and built their own stations throughout the region. Even then, however, the stations were not permanent fixtures in a system. They moved at "mild" relativistic speeds through interstellar space, acting as mobile bases of the tribal fleets which would exploit obvious surface resources in every system their so-called station moved past. The interesting tradition of sending wise elders to a tribe's capital station began early in the high period, the idea being that the weak time dilation caused by the station's movement would preserve their wisdom just a little bit longer.
This period was characterized by infighting between the tribes. Lacking any external threat the Urdji fought amongst themselves, squabbling over ancient debris fields, particularly rich systems, and antimatter-rich radiation belts. During this time a few of the most powerful tribes held primitive planetary civilizations as tributary states, and planetary proxy wars were not uncommon. As a result the high period was perhaps the most sedentary period of Urdji history, with the tribes tied to their capital stations and tributary states.
Thanks to their tributaries many Urdji tribes began to properly field land forces, as the ability to project force onto terrestrial bodies became a necessity. The most commonly seen doctrinal development during this time was that of the Hişkleng, or the hardshell. These vessels were designed to operate both in space and in planetary oceans, and as such were designed to rely on heavy ablative armor (as Urdji shields could not be extended into large bodies of mass such as oceans, making unarmored ships vulnerable to even the most primitive of torpedoes employed by planetary tributaries). Hişkleng were also generally capable of retracting their turrets and relying on multipurpose launch tubes, either to present a hydrodynamic shape on their underside or to fully submerge in a planet's ocean.
Incidentally, it was only at this point that the Urdji began to field tanks. They were introduced to the Leşkgemmar tribe by one of their planetary tributaries.
The high medieval period came to an end with the first contact the Urdji made with another spacefaring species with the battle of Teyêba. An alien vessel approached the Teyêba tribe's capital station, and in reaction the tribal fleet opened fire. The alien vessel was lost with all hands, while the Teyêba took no damage. The debris revealed that the ship had only been minimally armed, and was in fact a scout vessel that had presumably altered its course to investigate the anomaly that was the Teyêba tribal fleet.
Upon realizing this, the Teyêba tribe abandoned their station and their tributaries and plotted a course directly opposite to the scout ship's supposed entry trajectory. The debris of the scout ship was gathered together and left behind with the bodies of its crew buried in missile casings according to Urdji tradition. A small offering of luxury goods such as paper, spices, incense and meat taken from the Teyêba's tributaries was left among the debris on the off chance that the aliens would happen to be peaceful and accept the attack as a mistake.
Though no hostilities followed the incident various other tribes began to see alien vessels appear on the outer ranges of their sensors. Terrified of another war the tribes, one by one, began to leave behind the settlements and tributaries and followed the Teyêba tribe into the vertical fringes of the galaxy. Scholars of the medieval era had assumed that, starting around seven kiloparsecs from the galactic core, the elements necessary for life rarely formed. The rangers and a few scholarly groups formed an inter-tribal effort to chart a new course for the tribal fleets, and they planned to essentially plot a pseudo-ballistic trajectory above the galactic core and settle back down in the "galactic habitable zone" (as they called it) directly opposite their old territory.
Unfortunately, their scholars were wrong. Under a quarter of their way through their voyage the Urdji tribes were met with a large expeditionary force sent by one of the major regional powers of the era. Neither side made any attempt to communicate with the other, as the Urdji saw the presence of a large fleet as a declaration of war in and of itself and the aliens considered the lack of attempts to defuse the situation as a clear sign of hostility.
The Urdji tribes made the first strike, with the majority of the tribal fleets working together to attack the main fleet of the alien force. Battle was joined, and in its midst Admiral Yekiriba of the Neurdj tribe took command of the tribal fleets after the flagship of the Teyêba tribe was sunk.
After his victory, the tribes anointed him the Bilnd-Sûmangişt of the Second Mez-Jemivan.
The Sack of Lixerî-Welat, Year 22 of the rule of Bilnd-Sûmangişt Yekiriba
The Age of the Second Mez-Jemivan was a proud era of Urdji history. The Mez-Jemivan, under Yekiriba, was an almost unstoppable force to the civilizations of the galaxy at the time. Though they had expected it to be a war for their very survival, much like the war with the D'jim, the Second Mez-Jemivan soon found itself going out of its way to sack and pillage every planet it could find. Tribal warfleets descended upon helpless, primitive worlds and stole everything they could. Ships, weapons, valuables, everything. The power of the Mez-Jemivan grew with every victory as they slowly and vaguely made their way along their previously planned trajectory.
Unfortunately for the civilization which resided in that particular galactic fringe the Urdji had, in the thousands of years of their nomadic lifestyle, forgotten many of the social mores particular to civilizations which had recently breached the first level of the kardashev scale. They were, in the eyes of the comparatively primitive lander civilizations, barbarians the likes of which none had seen since their own dark ages centuries ago. To the Urdji, of course, this was simply the way of things. For centuries they had known landers as simply "those who pay us tribute", and they saw their ruthless campaign of war and devastation as just an extension of that order. The landers were meant to give, these landers had tried to take, and so they were punished.
The other side of the war had, of course, a very different perspective of the Urdji conquests. All that they knew was that a massive fleet had suddenly appeared in their space, eliminated the force they sent to investigate, and were now razing their worlds to the ground. The prevailing theory was that this was simply the end, that the Urdji were for some unknown reason going to completely wipe out their civilization. And it is quite possible that they would have if not for the Battle of Tirsocîh.
Tirsocîh was the first surrender of the war. A small system patrol fleet, protecting nothing but a few asteroid mining stations, surrendered to the oncoming Urdji fleet and deactivated their weapons. Their commander was simply one of the few of his people who was willing to lay down and accept defeat, knowing he had nothing to win and everything to lose no matter what he did. In a move that shocked the aliens, the Urdji accepted. The Urdji themselves were just as shocked as their enemies, and the realization that they were capable of surrender called their assumptions about the enemy into question.
The alien commander was, after his ship was taken into Urdji custody, interrogated by many Urdji scholars and Admirals. After a great deal of trial and error the Urdji managed to learn what they had to of his language and heard the alien side of the war. The Bilnd-Sûmangişt, when briefed on the aliens that had surrendered, immediately saw an opportunity. He personally met the commander and demanded that he reveal the location of his people's capital world. Eventually he broke and the Mez-Jemivan massed for a siege.
Once the Mez-Jemivan arrived at the alien capital, the Bilnd-Sûmangişt did not begin bombardment or even open fire on the defense fleet that had gathered. He simply gave them the option of offering a surrender or being razed to the ground. They chose wisely, and the alien Emperor was brought to the negotiating table.
The Urdji, in the eyes of the aliens, asked little compared to what they had done in the war. Free passage, large material concessions, the surrender of a number of military and civilian ships for use by the Mez-Jemivan, and the right to demand any further non-territorial concession they wished until the Mez-Jemivan had passed through their space. Urdji historians like to consider this the alien agreeing to pay tribute, but in reality the aliens themselves just viewed it as an easy way out of an unwinnable war. So a treaty was signed and the Mez-Jemivan continued on its way.
There were a few, scattered incidents as it passed through the rest of the alien's territory. Stubborn governors trying to get something in return for mining rights demanded by the Urdji, a skirmish or two with rouge actors, but for the most part the Mez-Jemivan passed through peacefully and soon set itself back on its original course. It turned out that life actually was rather rare further out from the core, 15 kiloparsecs rather than the estimated seven, but still the Urdji found themselves in a relatively peaceful area near the apex of their trajectory.
They slowed a bit there, taking advantage of the quiet area to mine what they wished and grow their numbers, but eventually they traveled onward. It was only once they reached their planned destination (and had gone through a great number of Bilnd-Sûmangişt's) that the Second Mez-Jemivan was split apart. The tribes had no time to settle into their previous feudal state, however, as they soon met with a power unimaginably greater than themselves.
The Ashtar arrived in the galaxy, and the Urdji decided that they could take advantage of their proclaimed peace. So the tribes gathered an emergency council, and promptly decided to present themselves to the Ashtar with... more than a little embellishment. A tribe which had fallen upon hard times since arriving in the new sector volunteered (rather eagerly) to be the first impression. They sent their liveship out alone, away from the rest of the tribes, and sent a message asking for food for their hungry and medical supplies for their ill.
And so the Urdji played the victim card.
An Urdji merchantman moored at a planetary port.
The Urdji prospered under Ashtar rule. It had already been considered by the tribes that they had more to gain from avoiding war than from starting it, given what they knew of the technologies common in the new sector. The arrival of the Ashtar just reinforced that, and the Urdji soon found a role as traders and merchants. Their vast fleets proved useful in the transport of cargo and passengers, and soon enough many tribes began building dedicated bulk and passenger ships.
They were never exactly the first option, but they were always the cheapest. The story of a man, down on his luck, catching a ride on a passing Urdji nomad fleet for a small fee or the promise of labor was a common one. And there was no better choice for moving large cargoes for small prices, or... discreet cargoes for somewhat larger prices. The sheer volume of goods which the Urdji moved made it easy for them to hide a needle within their haystacks, and during the occupation their less moral captains moved a lot of needles.
It was common for Urdji crews, when they came into port, to set up small bazaars on the docks where they tried to peddle their miscellaneous goods. Many ports considered this a nuisance, especially when they were used to skirt import taxes, but other sailors and local everyfolk often found the little markets of curiosities to be a fun and full of "good deals" and so they often went unchallenged. Ironically the primary opposition to these impromptu flea markets came from tribal admirals, who were afraid that having their crewmen pawn off random household crap to people walking the port would devalue the random household crap they were selling at exorbitant prices as "luxury items" to the galaxy's elite.
In their attempts to draw a line between "Handmade Urdji products that you can buy from the shifty sailors down at the docks" and "Handmade Urdji products that are the pinnacle of luxury, made using techniques long since lost to you automation-obsessed landers" the tribal admirals ended up creating reputations for some of their better craftsmen. The types of people other Urdji would ask for help making particular tools and pieces of furniture found themselves elevated, in the eyes of the landers, to being some of the finest craftsmen in the galaxy.
Of course, the Urdji had greater image issues than that. As they integrated themselves further into galactic affairs they found themselves, for once, being the primitive minority. To the other races of the galaxy they seemed to be an anachronism, tribal savages that had somehow gotten their hands on starships. The tight-knit nature of Urdji communities was also a great source of distrust, with most landers looking upon the Urdji sharing their individual profits with each other as a sign of some sort of species-wide conspiracy.
They were far from respected members of the galactic community. They did, however, find a modicum of acceptance through their services and managed to prosper during Ashtar rule. In their eyes there was no need to acceptance by the lander races, all they wanted from them was their goods and their credits and they got both. Indeed, though they have gained much more respect from the other races since the end of Ashtar rule, most Urdji that remember the occupation wish they could go back.
The disappearance of the Ashtar was seen as a disaster by the Urdji, who were now in the middle of a galaxy full of old conflicts which had suddenly begun to heat back up and races which didn't have any particular like of them. The tribes convened to discuss the situation and decide how to move forward, and given the increasingly volatile galactic situation they chose to form the Third Mez-Jemivan.
Urdji militia ships descend upon Bend-Serkeft's largest settlement in the final stages of the war.
It did not take long for the Urdji to become involved in the Great War. As soon as hostilities broke out they threw their lot in with the alliance they considered most likely to win. The Şerjemivan was formed shortly before the war, and the newly formed Mez-Jemivan scrambled to procure dedicated, standardized warships from both internal shipwrights and alien powers.
The original goal of the Mez-Jemivan and their very involvement in the war had simply been to ensure Urdji survival but in the first year of the war the chosen Bilnd-Sûmangişt, Biryar Arlydlan, pivoted the Mez-Jemivan towards the goal of securing the Urdji a proper place among the powers of the galaxy. With this new objective came a massive increase in the Urdji contribution to the war effort, with Urdji fleets dispatched to provide support to every offensive undertaken by their new allies. The Ranger fleets, which at the outbreak of the war were the only effective regular force at the Mez-Jemivan's disposal, were ordered to begin an operation to take a specific star sector which the Bilnd-Sûmangişt planned to turn into sovereign Urdji territory.
For the most part the Great War went well for the Urdji. Thanks to their naval efforts they managed to earn themselves some favor in the eyes of their allies, and their massive fleets brought them many naval victories. The war on the ground, however, was much harsher on them. Few Urdji invasions ever succeeded in so much as securing a landing zone due to the troops' lack of discipline, training, and equipment. It was only well into the war that Urdji militia units even began to operate tanks, and even then they lacked any knowledge of how to properly make use of them.
The sole invasion that the Urdji won without allied relief was the invasion of Bend-Serkeft, and even that victory brought them little glory. Despite their overwhelming numbers the Urdji took heavy losses in the invasion, as they lacked even basic forms of organization. The advancement of the militia troops was more akin to that of a barbarian horde than an army, with the Urdji failing to provide their soldiers with stable supply lines or even proper equipment in the first place. Large portions of the invasion force were armed with nothing more than primitive rifles and pistols which lacked the power to penetrate even the most common personal armor, and by the end of the conflict most Urdji soldiers on Bend-Serkeft were using stolen enemy weaponry.
Their only saving grace was the air cover and orbital supremacy provided by the Şerjemivan, which made it possible for even their sorry "army" to take the fortified trenches of Bend-Serkeft. Though a somewhat disgraceful path to victory, it brought them victory all the same and the Urdji conquest of the planet gave them just enough leverage at the negotiating table to take the whole star sector.
Immediately following the war the Bilnd-Sûmangişt began development efforts in the systems taken by the Mez-Jemivan. Many Urdji tribes were called by the Civîneşra to assist in the construction of permanent outposts and settlements in their new territories, and though tensions began to rise related to what some saw as the Mez-Jemivan's central government overstepping its bounds the popularity of Biryar Arlydlan was enough to keep those tensions from becoming anything more.
The Civîneşra has also directly ordered the development of new small arms and ground vehicles by the Vekrî Arms Guild of the Leşkgemmar tribe, another intrusion of what has traditionally been a solely military "government" into economic affairs. Some of the tribal militias nearest the new fleet capital above Bend-Serkeft have been integrated into a united force, which has begun extensive drilling exercises on the planet itself. There is, furthermore, talk in the government offices of the Mez-Jemivan of hiring foreign advisors to train a proper army.
The Urdji today are at an interesting, and possibly volatile, point in their history. They have, for the first time, a species-wide peacetime governing body which seems to have set its sights on giving up their traditional, nomadic ways and becoming "civilized" (in the eyes of the lander races). Whether or not the popularity of their leader will be enough to accomplish such a drastic cultural and political shift, however, has yet to be seen. And though they are unified now, increasing encroachment on tribal rights and traditions may well push some chieftain-admirals to the breaking point in the future.
Major Holdings
The Neurdj's primary port district in the early morning.
The Liveship Neurdj is the largest and most populous out of all the liveships of the Mez-Jemivan. What the Liveship Qurtel has in soft power, it has in hard power. Despite being the newest great liveship, having been constructed during the medieval era, it was quickly established as the foremost industrial power among the Urdji. The Neurdj tribe was, at the time of its construction, in a golden age and that shows in the ship's architecture. It is well known within the Mez-Jemivan for its wide open living spaces within which cities not unlike those found on planets were constructed. Architectural styles from the Neurdj tribe's planetary tributaries were adopted by the planners of the liveship, and when combined with the cavernous habitat spaces and meticulously crafted lighting systems one can find it easy to forget that it is even a spacecraft.
The ship's lighting is a nigh perfect imitation of natural, planetary sunlight complete with a fully simulated day/night cycle. It is the only Urdji liveship besides Liveship Leşkgemmar where one can experience dawn and dusk, and the romantic nature of its interior architecture and environment attracts many tourists. Though the Neurdj tribe is now the least powerful out of the Three Great Tribes, it still enjoys the benefits of the golden age which birthed its flagship. Inhabitants of the Neurdj have statistically lower rates of mental illness, live longer on average, and enjoy a notably higher standard of living compared to the citizens of the other Great Tribes.
Liveship Neurdj is home to the Bakûrliq Shipwrights, the largest and most capable shipbuilding guild in the Mez-Jemivan. Bakûrliq has laid down more Şerjemivan warships than the other two leading Urdji shipbuilding guilds combined and its designers are credited with the success of the Kāve class "pocket battleships" and the design of the Chinvat, the Mez-Jemivan's first domestically produced dreadnought. They are also the leading producer of large civilian ships, from bulk freighters to peripheral liveships.
Accompanying the Bakûrliq Shipwrights are countless different refining, forging, and materials fabrication guilds which make up a significant portion of their respective industrial sectors within the Mez-Jemivan. The ability of the Neurdj to support such large, centralized materials industries is a direct result of the tribe's former influence. While most Urdji tribes can only process the resources they gather themselves the Neurdj have long since processed ore imported from numerous other tribes, leveraging their reputation as an industrial and military powerhouse.
These industries make Liveship Neurdj an incredibly important part of the efforts of the Civîneşra to modernize. As a result the Neurdj tribe has been granted a number of privileges and incentives to keep its capital liveship nearby the new government offices above Bend-Serkeft. The Bilnd-Sûmangişt has even suggested that Liveship Neurdj dock at the Bend-Serkeft ring for the foreseeable future to act as the definitive center of Urdji industry. Unsurprisingly this has sparked many a "debate" in the meetings of the Civîneşra, with more traditionalist representatives making the suggestion out to mean the death of tribal independence, but the Bilnd-Sûmangişt's popularity has kept progress on plans for the docking moving forward slowly but steadily.
Liveship Leşkgemmar is considered the second oldest vessel in Urdji history, its core systems constructed just after the Qurtel tribe discovered the ruins which the tribes would eventually gather at. At this point the Leşkgemmar tribe, like almost all others, was operating under the assumption that they were the only Urdji left. Historians suppose that the ship was supposed to act as the capital of remaining Urdji civilization indefinitely, as records indicate that the ship's habitat section was vastly oversized for the population of the tribe at the time and only grew larger as construction continued.
Though it was originally constructed to make use of constant acceleration for its gravity, the Leşkgemmar was updated to a proper graviton manipulation system at some point during the medieval era. The ship's unique, stack-like habitat core has made renovating individual buildings nigh impossible and as a result the Leşkgemmar is home to some of the oldest, still lived-in internal structures in Urdji history. The large, open air spaces between the central habitat stack and the ring-shaped stack built against the interior of the hull allowed the Leşkgemmar to be one of the first tribes which (at least partially) ceased the practice of wing cutting.
During the time of the First Mez-Jemivan the Leşkgemmar was under constant acceleration alongside the rest of the Urdji liveships, but its lack of inertial dampening systems and graviton-based artificial gravity meant that its population was under particularly intense gravitational stress compared to the rest of the Urdji. As the war against the D'jim developed this became a boon for the Leşkgemmar, as their soldiers were uniquely suited to combat both in strike craft and on high gravity planets. It is most likely this period which gave the tribe its name, Leşkgemmar, which translates to "Land Warrior".
In modern times the liveship still maintains a higher gravitational standard compared to other Urdji ships, and Leşkgemmar tribesmen make up a large portion of the Ranger forces thanks to their naturally superior strength and endurance. The primary Ranger academy is also located aboard the liveship, along with the Vekrî Arms Guild which is the primary small arms supplier for the Rangers and the only guild in the entire Mez-Jemivan which manufactures ground vehicles.
Thanks to its importance to the Rangers the Civîneşra and Bilnd-Sûmangişt have, similarly to the Liveship Neurdj, attempted to keep the Liveship Leşkgemmar close to Bend-Serkeft in the hopes that it will someday become an important part of a modern Urdji ground force.
The Qurtel during the Great War, stripped of its countless additions and expansions throughout the millennia down to the original core in order to participate in the invasion of Bend-Serkeft.
The Liveship Qurtel is the flagship of the Qurtel tribe, and the oldest surviving vessel in Urdji history. It dates back to the exodus itself, being the same alien vessel that the Qurtel tribe discovered a few centuries after their vessel departed the homeworld. It's advanced alien technologies were invaluable to the survival of the Urdji, as was its vast internal hangars and cargo bays which were turned by the early Urdji into spartan living spaces for the many tribes which rallied at the entrance to the Krasnikov tube which brought them into D'jim space.
The Qurtel acted as the flagship of the First Mez-Jemivan during the war with the D'jim and has long since been at the center of Urdji culture and internal politics. Throughout the history of the Urdji countless additions were made to its exterior. In times of peace the central, alien core of the vessel is entirely obscured by the sprawl of city spires and habitat rings, which themselves can be divided into countless different sections or districts based on their age and location on the ship. The oldest constructions were placed just behind the vessel's large, mushroom-like bow to take advantage of the shielding it provided against micrometeorites at relativistic velocities. As the Urdji invented their own energy shielding technologies further habitat rings were built around the bow's edges, expanding the physical shield outwards to allow for rings to be built further down the ship's hull. The most recent constructions are massive city spires built on the bow itself, and even these structures began to be built hundreds of years ago.
Under normal conditions the Qurtel appears to be a massive, sprawling city flaoting through space. Countless habitat rings sprout from the hull sections to the aft of the bow, and beneath them there are giant spires and towers spaced out to allow ships to dock within the city's heart. The bow spires are always swarmed with cruise and cargo ships carrying passengers and goods to and from the city, which remains the heart of the Urdji economy even now.
When particularly threatened by war the Qurtel is capable of shedding its city constructions to ensure the safety of their inhabitants. This is, of course, not a simple or quick process, but it has been performed twice. Once during the time of the Second Mez-Jemivan, and again during the Great War. Both times it did so in order to transport a large planetary invasion force, as the bare core of the ship is only sparsely armed. The shedding of its city is synonymous with the total mobilization of the Qurtel tribe, and as such has historically been avoided except for during times of Mez-Jemivan.
A minor tether station on the Bend-Serkeft ring, servicing a small scientific outpost on the planet's surface.
Bend-Serkeft is the only habitable planet within Urdji borders established in the Treaty of Detente. It was also the only world successful invaded by the Urdji during the Great War, selected as the target of the Liveship Qurtel and its invasion force due to its small population and relatively low gravity. The planet was successfully taken after a long, drawn-out land war between the planet's garrison and militia and the Urdji troops during which the Urdji invaders suffered far more losses than would be expected from what was in the grand scale of things a minor engagement.
Following their victory the Urdji occupied the planet for a short time before the armistice was signed. Before the Treaty of Detente was signed the Urdji allowed the planet's conquered inhabitants the right of free movement, and even dedicated transport vessels to moving the refugees to their world (or, in exceedingly rare cases, Urdji ship) of choice. This wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts, however, in reality it was simply a resettlement program with good PR. The remaining population of the planet as the talks entered their final stage was minuscule, only really composed of stubborn farmers on family land who refused to give up their ancestral homes. The Urdji had set up numerous scientific outposts on the planet and given it a generous garrison of troops, and as a result the planet's populace was now technically majority Urdji.
The Urdji leveraged this as the Treaty of Detente was signed, and in the end the previous owner of the planet chose to focus its diplomatic efforts on clinging to other, more important colony worlds that had received far harsher treatment under other occupiers. As a result, the world slipped quietly under Urdji control. It was renamed Bend-Serkeft, "Victory Port", by vote of the Civîneşra in celebration of the Mez-Jemivan's victory in the Great War.
Immediately following the singing of the treaty the Civîneşra "requested" that the tribal fleets of tribes Leşkgemmar and Neurdj relocate to the star system which Bend-Serkeft resided in. The chiefs of both tribes were told to begin mining the asteroid belt, which in and of itself was far from a surprising order, but the Civîneşra had another request. One which was far, far more unconventional.
The two tribes were ordered by the Bilnd-Sûmangişt himself to construct an orbital ring above Bend-Serkeft. Nothing too massive, just the central active support cable core and a basic structural shell. Small station nodes were built along the ring to provide elevator access to Urdji outposts and military bases on the planet below, and those station nodes were soon connected by train lines on the ring. A basic central port was built above either hemisphere of the planet to allow for the mass delivery of cargo and passengers to the ring and planet.
At this point, after most of the basic infrastructure was in place, the Bilnd-Sûmangişt shockingly chose to move the governmental facilities of the Mez-Jemivan to the ring. He ordered the construction of a vast, primary station on the ring that was to be equipped with large, open-air habitat spaces and an elaborate house of government that would take design cues from the capital buildings of the great powers of the galaxy. Both the Leşkgemmar and Neurdj tribes agreed to assist in the construction, along with most other minor tribes in the area.
As the capital station's construction progressed many other tribes began to see the advantage of having permanent settlements on the ring. As there was far from a shortage of space on the fledgling megastructure the Civîneşra granted all tribes the right to build whatever they wished wherever they wished on the ring. The Civîneşra also offered incentives to tribes which chose to send expeditions to the planet's surface, especially if they built permanent outposts which they agreed to tether to the ring.
The Bend-Serkeft Ring has become the official capital of the Third Mez-Jemivan and, in the decade since the construction of the capital station itself, has continued to expand economically. New, massive habitat stations have been built off of the ring and for the first time in Urdji history there are specialized, stationary factories. Countless Urdji scientific and exploratory outposts dot the surface of Bend-Serkeft, planetary bases are bustling with soldiers training for combat in the alien environment that is a planetary atmosphere, and the first planetside farms in all of recorded Urdji history have begun to appear surrounding the older outposts.
Bend-Serkeft is the manifestation of the attempts of the Urdji to modernize and become a true power in the galaxy. And, so far, it appears to be a success.
Demographics and Economy
The Urdji are humanoids with both mammalian and avian traits which stand between 1.5 and 1.6 meters tall on average. The Mezibasqe tribe, which make heavy use of captured D'jim vessels, has the tallest average height at 2.1 meters owing to the lager stature of the D'jim species. The main limiting factor in Urdji development are their ships, which are designed first and foremost to conserve mass and space. Tribes such as the Leşkgemmar go so far as to practice wing cutting, a tradition from the earliest years of the exodus where wings were surgically removed to allow for individuals to be packed in tighter. Indeed, the Leşkgemmar lay claim to the tallest living Urdji, a farmer named Agheng who stands at 2.9 meters, as a result of this archaic practice and the abundance of food and medicine that came with the formation of the Third Mez-Jemivan.
Urdji wings are on average (for the civilian population) capable of providing enough lift for sustained flight in up to 1.1gs in any atmosphere above 0.8atms. An expertly trained veteran soldier can in some cases be capable of flight in up to 2gs, with the planning of military flight operations being banned at any environment above 1.5gs at 1atm. The Zîvbasqe tribe's warriors conducted an aerial infantry assault on a 3.3g world, a record that has stood strong for multiple centuries and earned them a fearsome reputation (the particularly thick atmosphere usually isn't mentioned in the stories). The downside to these wings, of course, is their immense size. Wing cutting, though uncommon on newer vessels, is an entrenched practice on any ship built before the formation of the First Mez-Jemivan and most before the formation of the Third. As a result, a sizable portion of the population is wingless.
Besides the obvious departure of their wings, the Urdji are strikingly similar to other humanoid species. Bilateral symmetry, two arms and two legs, upright posture, etc. It is worth noting that Urdji bones are particularly weak and prone to breaking, a sacrifice made to allow for their flight on their homeworld. Furthermore, they lack bone marrow and new blood cells are produced in a specialized organ known as the Hei-val. This is more a fluke of evolution than anything, as nearly all vertebrates from their homeworld have a similar organ. It does, however, slightly lighten the load for flight.
In short, the Urdji are not made for melee.
Urdji wings are on average (for the civilian population) capable of providing enough lift for sustained flight in up to 1.1gs in any atmosphere above 0.8atms. An expertly trained veteran soldier can in some cases be capable of flight in up to 2gs, with the planning of military flight operations being banned at any environment above 1.5gs at 1atm. The Zîvbasqe tribe's warriors conducted an aerial infantry assault on a 3.3g world, a record that has stood strong for multiple centuries and earned them a fearsome reputation (the particularly thick atmosphere usually isn't mentioned in the stories). The downside to these wings, of course, is their immense size. Wing cutting, though uncommon on newer vessels, is an entrenched practice on any ship built before the formation of the First Mez-Jemivan and most before the formation of the Third. As a result, a sizable portion of the population is wingless.
Besides the obvious departure of their wings, the Urdji are strikingly similar to other humanoid species. Bilateral symmetry, two arms and two legs, upright posture, etc. It is worth noting that Urdji bones are particularly weak and prone to breaking, a sacrifice made to allow for their flight on their homeworld. Furthermore, they lack bone marrow and new blood cells are produced in a specialized organ known as the Hei-val. This is more a fluke of evolution than anything, as nearly all vertebrates from their homeworld have a similar organ. It does, however, slightly lighten the load for flight.
In short, the Urdji are not made for melee.
The Urdji are libertarian to the point that their unification itself is impressive. Throughout their early history the Urdji lived in entirely separated tribal fleets that were at numerous points traveling at sublight speeds. Indeed, the Urdji exodus from their homeworld was conducted with nothing more than fusion rockets. As a result of their nomadic lifestyle and separation the Urdji were essentially thrown back to stone age social dynamics. There was no hierarchy beyond trust of the wisest, and the tribes functioned much like the prehistoric hunter-gatherer tribes had on their homeworld. The concept of a set-in-stone leader is (relatively) new to them. Even property rights are largely alien, with just about everything not absolutely necessary for an individual's life being publicly available.
Despite their fierce individuality, the Urdji also have a strong sense of unity through their blood. They have overcome the greatest of obstacles in order to preserve their species, and as a result can manage to work together in spite of their cultural divisions and lack of a defined society. This, of course, stems from their history with aliens. The first contact they had with alien life was with the species that conquered their homeworld. Before they came into contact with the greater galactic community their only other contacts besides the D'jim were with primitive, planet-bound species who were disunited and barbaric. They are, as a result not particularly trusting of those they have not fought alongside. This is illustrated by their word for alien, "D'jim", which simply means "Enemy". They tend to refer to those species with whom they have good relations as "Yêdi" (other) instead.
The Urdji have one, singular religion split into numerous different sects. All Urdji worship Xwêdh, the dominant God of all creation, but each sect worships a specific god, goddess, or pantheon that is held to be beneath the all-powerful Xwêdh. Each sect is usually tied to a specific tribe, though numerous tribes have historically worshiped the same "lower gods". Until well after the crossing over from the Monoceros ring it was easily possible to tell which sect one belonged to by appearance alone, as tribal racial differences and prolonged isolation essentially tied sect to race.
The Urdji speak a common tongue known as Ragav, but there are numerous other languages spoken by both singe tribes and groups of tribes. Ragav is split in writing between alphabetic and logographic scripts, both of which are fully developed writing systems and only very rarely used in conjunction with each other. Most large warships (which may have multi-tribal crews) have markings in both scripts, and computer interface panels can be configured to use either depending on the crewman. Some tribes also speak their own dialects of Ragav, which in a few cases are almost unrecognizable, but the majority of the population is fluent in "Standard" Ragav.
In the time of the Third Mez-Jemivan the Urdji have become increasingly active in galactic affairs. Previously the Urdji rarely involved themselves in the affairs of the lander races, often entirely ignoring the politics of the galaxy beyond what directly affected their own tribal fleets. The Great War was somewhat of a watershed moment for the Urdji. The Third Mez-Jemivan united them closer than either of the previous Mez-Jemivans, and this combined with the Great War instilled a quite possibly permanent sense of nationalism in the Urdji populace. At the beginning of the Third Mez-Jemivan the Urdji for the first time expressed a desire to join the ranks of the galactic powers, the great empires, and though the Great War (and thus, the direct threat to the Urdji) has ended the Mez-Jemivan has not.
The Urdji, from the fires of the Great War, have forged a national identity-the first that they have had since the time of the First Mez-Jemivan-and do not seem to be giving it up.
Despite their fierce individuality, the Urdji also have a strong sense of unity through their blood. They have overcome the greatest of obstacles in order to preserve their species, and as a result can manage to work together in spite of their cultural divisions and lack of a defined society. This, of course, stems from their history with aliens. The first contact they had with alien life was with the species that conquered their homeworld. Before they came into contact with the greater galactic community their only other contacts besides the D'jim were with primitive, planet-bound species who were disunited and barbaric. They are, as a result not particularly trusting of those they have not fought alongside. This is illustrated by their word for alien, "D'jim", which simply means "Enemy". They tend to refer to those species with whom they have good relations as "Yêdi" (other) instead.
The Urdji have one, singular religion split into numerous different sects. All Urdji worship Xwêdh, the dominant God of all creation, but each sect worships a specific god, goddess, or pantheon that is held to be beneath the all-powerful Xwêdh. Each sect is usually tied to a specific tribe, though numerous tribes have historically worshiped the same "lower gods". Until well after the crossing over from the Monoceros ring it was easily possible to tell which sect one belonged to by appearance alone, as tribal racial differences and prolonged isolation essentially tied sect to race.
The Urdji speak a common tongue known as Ragav, but there are numerous other languages spoken by both singe tribes and groups of tribes. Ragav is split in writing between alphabetic and logographic scripts, both of which are fully developed writing systems and only very rarely used in conjunction with each other. Most large warships (which may have multi-tribal crews) have markings in both scripts, and computer interface panels can be configured to use either depending on the crewman. Some tribes also speak their own dialects of Ragav, which in a few cases are almost unrecognizable, but the majority of the population is fluent in "Standard" Ragav.
In the time of the Third Mez-Jemivan the Urdji have become increasingly active in galactic affairs. Previously the Urdji rarely involved themselves in the affairs of the lander races, often entirely ignoring the politics of the galaxy beyond what directly affected their own tribal fleets. The Great War was somewhat of a watershed moment for the Urdji. The Third Mez-Jemivan united them closer than either of the previous Mez-Jemivans, and this combined with the Great War instilled a quite possibly permanent sense of nationalism in the Urdji populace. At the beginning of the Third Mez-Jemivan the Urdji for the first time expressed a desire to join the ranks of the galactic powers, the great empires, and though the Great War (and thus, the direct threat to the Urdji) has ended the Mez-Jemivan has not.
The Urdji, from the fires of the Great War, have forged a national identity-the first that they have had since the time of the First Mez-Jemivan-and do not seem to be giving it up.
The Urdji, thanks to their tribal and nomadic roots, have very little in the way of proper industry as lander races would know it. There exist only a few proper industrial complexes, situated in the asteroid belts of the systems the Urdji demanded during the Great War, with the majority of Urdji industry being disorganized and disjointed. Though all tribes operate at least one or two factory ships, said factory ships are far from what one would normally consider a factory. Rarely can one find an Urdji factory ship with a specific purpose as they have to be capable of constructing anything the tribe might need on short notice. To this end they are usually equipped with generalized, highly adaptable industrial equipment that can easily be reprogrammed to produce any necessary product. This "traditional" industrial method tends to be fairly inefficient, with factory ships with the capacity to produce ship parts sometimes finding themselves making toasters, but it is extremely adaptable.
During the Great War the Urdji conducted a mass industrial mobilization to support their war effort. In under a month the entire industrial capacity of all Urdji tribes had been re-optimized for wartime. There was no need to completely retool any existing factories thanks to their decentralized nature which made it possible to easily switch production-and often without any actual physical changes made to the factory ship's equipment.
Urdji liveships also tend to have industrial facilities onboard for the use of their population. These shipboard workshops are the source of most products used in day-to-day life, and said products tend to be made by those who are going to use them. As a result of this most Urdji have a strong affinity for industrial work, engineering, and electrical work, with skills involved in the construction of things like computers and household appliances being as commonplace among the Urdji as skills like sewing. This is a source of pride for the Urdji, who consider the post-industrial consumer populations that exist among the lander races a sign of their weakness and laziness compared with the strong, hardworking Urdji everyman.
The true value of this decentralized, perhaps primitive method of industrial organization (or maybe more accurately lack of organization) is the immense capacity for innovation it gives the Urdji. Everyone with access to industrial equipment is a potential inventor, and every Urdji has access to industrial equipment. Though they do not necessarily progress faster across the technological board (thousands of years of "a spinal railgun should work nicely here" is proof enough of that) they are capable of quickly engineering a solution to most any problem they come across. Urdji ships, even of the same class, often have countless strange modifications built from leftover scraps that pulled them through one crisis or another. In times of Mez-Jemivan those modifications can become new technologies which are spread throughout Urdji society, and many new weapons, propulsion systems, and design concepts seen on new Urdji ships are the result of this process.
In terms of goods and products the Urdji have historically had much to offer in the form of luxury goods thanks to their large population of artisan craftsmen with experience in fields relegated to automated mass-production by most lander races. Many big names in alien societies have purchased hand-crafted Urdji products of every type, from clothes to appliances to art, because of their beautiful, unique design and origin in the hands of a living being rather than the arm of a factory robot. The Urdji, early in their contact with the galactic community, quickly learned to exploit this sudden value their traditionally made products had. To this day Urdji products, no matter how one may feel about the people and their society, fetch a high price.
Of course, the Urdji also deal heavily in less glamorous commodities. Their travels throughout the galaxy, combined with an obsession with gathering anything they can in case it is needed later, has led them to become a leading supplier of processed and refined ores as well as hydrogen. They have a significantly less respectable reputation in these sectors than in their luxury dealings, however, as when not united in Mez-Jemivan Urdji tribes will often "neglect" to request mining rights in the systems which they pass through. Though these trespassing incidents have almost disappeared after the formation of the Third Mez-Jemivan Urdji materials merchants still carry the stigma of being known for selling "semi-legal" goods.
During the Great War the Urdji conducted a mass industrial mobilization to support their war effort. In under a month the entire industrial capacity of all Urdji tribes had been re-optimized for wartime. There was no need to completely retool any existing factories thanks to their decentralized nature which made it possible to easily switch production-and often without any actual physical changes made to the factory ship's equipment.
Urdji liveships also tend to have industrial facilities onboard for the use of their population. These shipboard workshops are the source of most products used in day-to-day life, and said products tend to be made by those who are going to use them. As a result of this most Urdji have a strong affinity for industrial work, engineering, and electrical work, with skills involved in the construction of things like computers and household appliances being as commonplace among the Urdji as skills like sewing. This is a source of pride for the Urdji, who consider the post-industrial consumer populations that exist among the lander races a sign of their weakness and laziness compared with the strong, hardworking Urdji everyman.
The true value of this decentralized, perhaps primitive method of industrial organization (or maybe more accurately lack of organization) is the immense capacity for innovation it gives the Urdji. Everyone with access to industrial equipment is a potential inventor, and every Urdji has access to industrial equipment. Though they do not necessarily progress faster across the technological board (thousands of years of "a spinal railgun should work nicely here" is proof enough of that) they are capable of quickly engineering a solution to most any problem they come across. Urdji ships, even of the same class, often have countless strange modifications built from leftover scraps that pulled them through one crisis or another. In times of Mez-Jemivan those modifications can become new technologies which are spread throughout Urdji society, and many new weapons, propulsion systems, and design concepts seen on new Urdji ships are the result of this process.
In terms of goods and products the Urdji have historically had much to offer in the form of luxury goods thanks to their large population of artisan craftsmen with experience in fields relegated to automated mass-production by most lander races. Many big names in alien societies have purchased hand-crafted Urdji products of every type, from clothes to appliances to art, because of their beautiful, unique design and origin in the hands of a living being rather than the arm of a factory robot. The Urdji, early in their contact with the galactic community, quickly learned to exploit this sudden value their traditionally made products had. To this day Urdji products, no matter how one may feel about the people and their society, fetch a high price.
Of course, the Urdji also deal heavily in less glamorous commodities. Their travels throughout the galaxy, combined with an obsession with gathering anything they can in case it is needed later, has led them to become a leading supplier of processed and refined ores as well as hydrogen. They have a significantly less respectable reputation in these sectors than in their luxury dealings, however, as when not united in Mez-Jemivan Urdji tribes will often "neglect" to request mining rights in the systems which they pass through. Though these trespassing incidents have almost disappeared after the formation of the Third Mez-Jemivan Urdji materials merchants still carry the stigma of being known for selling "semi-legal" goods.
Government
The Civîneşra's head of state is the Bilnd-Sûmangişt, or High Admiral, who also acts as the highest military authority among the Urdji. He or she is accompanied by tribal representatives sent to the Bilnd-Sûmangişt's chosen flagship to serve as both advisors and a check on the Bilnd-Sûmangişt's power. These representatives are not chosen in any standardized way, and though some tribes hold elections or put potential candidates through testing sessions most will just hold a meeting and decide in a less formal way. The Bilnd-Sûmangişt and the representatives make up the Civîneşra-the Tribal Assembly-itself.
Civilian matters were entirely the domain of individual tribes up until recently. The current Bilnd-Sûmangişt, Biryar Arlydlan, is quite popular with the Urdji people following their victory in the Great War and managed to pass a number of reforms which granted the Civîneşra an amount of civilian, peacetime power. Many Urdji tribes have also begun to settle within the borders established in the Great War, which when coupled with the movements towards centralization taken by the Civîneşra has created for the first time a genuine, tangible Urdji nationalism.
Despite recent attempts to modernize and centralize their governmental structure the Urdji are still just a federation of tribes. The meetings of the Civîneşra are lacking in decorum and procedure, being no more formal than the meeting of the smallest tribe's elders. To keep up appearances, however, Biryar Arlydlan has adopted numerous alien decor elements in the meeting hall of his flagship. The Urdji gained a sense of pan-nationalism during the Great War, and have finally begun to harness it to bring themselves into the modern era.
Though the power of the Bilnd-Sûmangişt is theoretically checked by the rest of the Civîneşra's chosen representatives it depends in reality on the popularity of the Bilnd-Sûmangişt himself. Biryar Arlydlan, as a result, holds an immense amount of power within the Civîneşra's internal politics. He faces little opposition in government, and if he chose to force a decree upon the Mez-Jemivan it is likely that it would be almost entirely unopposed.
Each individual Urdji tribe does retain a significant amount of independence, with each having full authority among their own members and even economic sovereignty. During the Great War, however, "emergency wartime taxes" were placed on the tribes by the Civîneşra which soon became neither emergency nor wartime taxes. In recent years the Civîneşra has increasingly given itself further power over the trade affairs of the tribes, promising that greater prosperity will come to all Urdji with the advent of more centralized economic policies. These reforms have been widely accepted by the increasingly nationalistic Urdji, but there is certainly a fair amount of tension surrounding what many rightly see as the erosion of tribal independence.
Technological Information
Major Techs
The Têkildartîajokravsinya is the propulsion system used by most Urdji ships. The name translates literally to "relativity engine", but refers specifically to antimatter drives capable of quickly accelerating starships to relativistic velocities. At the time of its discovery shortly following the Urdji exodus from their homeworld the Urdji lacked a proper understanding of antimatter, and early tests of the ancient ship which they reverse-engineered it from taught them nothing except that it produced an immense amount of thrust. As a result it earned the cryptic and rather grandiose name it has today.
Têkildartîajokravsinya act as the heart of all Urdji vessels, being the primary source of both propulsion and power. So long as their fuel stores remain full and properly contained they are incredibly reliable thanks to thousands of years of refinement by Urdji engineers and physicists. Urdji antimatter reactors and drive systems are well known as some of the most efficient and most capable in the galaxy.
Têkildartîajokravsinya act as the heart of all Urdji vessels, being the primary source of both propulsion and power. So long as their fuel stores remain full and properly contained they are incredibly reliable thanks to thousands of years of refinement by Urdji engineers and physicists. Urdji antimatter reactors and drive systems are well known as some of the most efficient and most capable in the galaxy.
The Malpêçk is the primary FTL system utilized by Urdji ships. It is a negative mass based warp drive that has been in use by the Urdji for thousands of years, leading to an impressive level of refinement. As a nomadic race the Urdji were forced to make do with what little fuel they could refine and as such their FTL drives developed to become incredibly efficient, which grants Urdji warships longer ranges when compared to their contemporaries.
Malpêçk drives are also robust and reliable thanks to the fairly simple principles of their operation, making it easy for a ship to have backups of systems integral to the drive. Many designs allow for crude emergency jumps to be made even if a ship has lost main power. The refinement of modern Malpêçk drives makes it easy for Urdji vessels to remain FTL capable without regular maintenance, making it possible for many Urdji vessels to operate for extended periods without access to a stable supply line.
Malpêçk drives are also robust and reliable thanks to the fairly simple principles of their operation, making it easy for a ship to have backups of systems integral to the drive. Many designs allow for crude emergency jumps to be made even if a ship has lost main power. The refinement of modern Malpêçk drives makes it easy for Urdji vessels to remain FTL capable without regular maintenance, making it possible for many Urdji vessels to operate for extended periods without access to a stable supply line.
Urdji railgun technology is not special. They have no special acceleration technology, just good old electromagnetism like countless other designs throughout galactic history have used. What sets Urdji railguns apart is the fact that Urdji spacefaring history is magnitudes longer than that of most other species, and throughout that history they have used railguns. Innumerable generations of Urdji weaponsmiths have carefully refined and improved the railgun, and thanks to this long and proud history the conceptually simple Urdji railgun design has managed to stand the test of time.
The Urdji are firm believers in the idea that nothing can ever replace a big stone thrown fast. Their railguns reflect this, with almost all Urdji vessels having railguns with a greater caliber and muzzle velocity than their counterparts. Continual incremental improvements in their capacitor and rail design have made them efficient as well, a quality which the Urdji use to pump more juice into them rather than conserve energy for other systems. Large railguns are, unsurprisingly, a hallmark of Urdji vessels and most warship designs are equipped with large spinal railguns to deliver devastating long-range firepower.
The Urdji are firm believers in the idea that nothing can ever replace a big stone thrown fast. Their railguns reflect this, with almost all Urdji vessels having railguns with a greater caliber and muzzle velocity than their counterparts. Continual incremental improvements in their capacitor and rail design have made them efficient as well, a quality which the Urdji use to pump more juice into them rather than conserve energy for other systems. Large railguns are, unsurprisingly, a hallmark of Urdji vessels and most warship designs are equipped with large spinal railguns to deliver devastating long-range firepower.
The Urdji are masters of jury-rigging and MacGyvering, and the ability of Urdji engineers to keep their ships flying with nothing more than scrap, a hacksaw, and utensils from the mess hall is a source of great prestige to the Urdji. If you give an Urdji engineer a problem they will solve it. Period. No matter how outlandish the scenario, now matter how near the deadline, no matter how much pressure is on them they can figure something out. That something might not be pretty, might not be conventional, but it will work. Many of the more minor technologies (such as sensors for specific, rare phenomena) used by the Urdji were invented by engineers under pressure with a lack of both time and resources.
Military Information
Military Overview
"The only home is the ship, the only retreat is death."
-Urdji proverb.
The Urdji, the nomads that they are, are experts in space combat. Urdji warships have been doing battle since before some species had written languages, and some of those same ships are still flying thanks to engineers who have been working in hostile situations with strict deadlines for the same many millennia. Their warships are more than a force for projecting power or guarding borders, they are home to their crews and the first and last line of defense for the habitat ships. Every battle the Urdji fight is fought on the homefront, and this way of looking at war makes them a fierce and relentless opponent.
This fierceness does not, however, translate to the ground. For the most part the Urdji simply do not know how to fight on land, and have historically just glassed any enemy world that they had to take care of. Unfortunately for them said method of warfare had become both largely unacceptable and often impractical, as they cannot simply glass Agdemnar and be done with it. During the Great War they attempted numerous land campaigns, almost all of which ended in embarrassing failure and reinforcements from allied powers saving their crumbling armies.
Tribes often operate fully independent of each other, even during times of Mez-Jemivan. Though they are entirely capable of working together (such as during the assault on the D'jim homeworld) they tend to consider independent operation to be a much safer choice. Once again, their ships are their homes. Committing a large force means risking a large portion of their people, and as a result they will only gather the full force of the Mez-Jemivan as a last resort when facing a direct and total existential threat. This is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand they are often capable of committing respectable forces (individual tribal fleets) to numerous different theaters, letting them project their power quite far. As such they can also keep species-wide losses to a minimum and win any war of attrition. On the other hand, individual tribes are often easily cut off from the rest of the Mez-Jemivan and wiped out. This was no problem during the Great War, when they had their allies to "fill the gaps" so to speak, but it is a clear threat if the Urdji wish to stand alone.
To this end the Şerjemivan, the Urdji naval regulars, were made separate from the tribal fleets just following the Great War by the First Gemivanqanû (Fleet Law or Naval Law) passed by the Civîneşra. The First Gemivanqanû esentially turned the Şerjemivan into an independent force similar to the Rangers, unbound by tribal allegiance and made to answer only to the Civîneşra itself. A mere two years later the Second Gemivanqanû was passed which demanded the creation of new ship classes to adhere to the Treaty of Detente and an increase in the size of the cruiser and destroyer forces to compensate for new regulations on capital ships. Another two years later the Third Gemivanqanû was passed which required a rapid buildup of new battlecruisers to compensate for the underwhelming Hespaij battleship line.
The Fourth Gemivanqanû, interestingly, was focused around planetary invasion capability. It stipulates that any newly designed battleships and heavy cruisers must have the capacity to carry corvette-sized vessels for use as dropships in the event of war. It has yet to be widely implemented, as the only class of vessel built after it's signing was the Teyrjixen battleship, but it is hoped by the Civîneşra that the new law will grant the Şerjemivan an option for planetary assault besides "crash in the ocean, pull up to a beach, and charge like headless chickens".
Navy
The Urdji naval forces are divided between the two regular forces (The Şerjemivan and the Ranger Fleets) and a singular irregular force (The Urdji tribal militias). Until after the end of the Second Mez-Jemivan the only regular force was the Ranger Fleets, with all major battles being fought by the militias. Following the integration of the Urdji into the galactic community after the Second Mez-Jemivan they adopted the concept of a standing navy, and the tribes began to construct and operate dedicated warships that weren't intended for familial habitation.
The Ranger Fleets have been a part of Urdji life since before proper historical records were kept, with Ranger ships playing roles throughout the era of the First Mez-Jemivan and onwards. The Rangers, in times of disunion, were the sole military force which represented the Urdji as a whole. In times of peace they acted independently of the tribes, exploring new regions of space and presenting their findings to all of the tribes. Both the Second and Third Mez-Jemivans were formed on the recommendation of the Ranger Admiralty after Ranger intelligence agents and scouts found direct, credible threats to the Urdji.
In times of war the Rangers operate partially as direct support for the Şerjemivan, but their primary role is as the special forces arm of the Mez-Jemivan. Ranger ships conduct the vast majority of scouting and reconnaissance operations during wartime and Ranger task forces are often deployed to soften enemy fortifications or strike specific high-value targets. The Rangers also organize most planet-side operations despite the newly formed Hewşebir being given put in control of planetary operations, as they operated the only regular Urdji ground force before the formation of the Hewşebir. Modern doctrine, however, limits Ranger planetary operations to special operations, initial landings, and establishment of beachheads.
The Şerjemivan (Warfleet) was formed from the warships of individual tribes just after the Ashtar disappeared with the goal of defending the Mez-Jemivan from the imminent outbreak of hostilities. The Great War saw the construction of the first standardized Urdji warships meant for use by numerous tribes. As the war continued the Şerjemivan became increasingly integrated, with ships often having crews made up of sailors from different tribes. This integration helped to cement the Şerjemivan as the standing navy of the Urdji, and quite possibly contributed to the continued survival of the Third Mez-Jemivan as a political entity.
During the Great War the Şerjemivan itself conducted multiple planetary landings both alongside and independent of the Rangers. The crews of the landed ships were used as soldiers in lieu of a proper army, with nothing more than their small arms to use against planetary defenses. Pathetically, such ragtag forces of sailors-turned-soldiers were the largest ground combat force fielded by the Urdji during the war. Even more pathetically the Şerjemivan still trains its crews in landing operations because the fledgling Hewşebir simply isn't large enough to fight a full-scale war. If the Urdji were to be forced into a war tomorrow it is likely that many planetary battlefields would be covered in the bodies of Şerjemivan sailors who only knew how to charge forwards en masse with nothing more than a sidearm to protect them.
The final spaceborne arm of the Urdji military is the Militia. The militia is barely a formal organization, having been created in name only at the start of the Great War and only now becoming a properly organized force. It encompasses all civilian liveships throughout the Mez-Jemivan which are armed in any capacity and on paper constitutes the bulk of the Urdji military force. In reality, of course, it has increasingly less and less power in modern times thanks to new technologies being introduced into the galaxy and Urdji society. Urdji liveships, after all, are more or less and equivalent to the cities of the lander races and as such tend to be centuries old. Furthermore, since they are actively lived-in, they cannot easily be upgraded. The power of the Militia is solely in how many rocks it can throw from how many ships, not how fast the rocks or how durable the ships. And while there is still some value in simply being able to throw more rocks than the enemy that value wanes with the march of technology, and it is expected that the Militia in its current form will soon become almost worthless to the Urdji. Whether it will be reorganized or simply disbanded is yet to be seen.
The Militia does, however, retain value as a land force. A mass of warm bodies will never cease to hold value on the ground, and the Militia will never cease to have warm bodies. During the Great War almost all Urdji troops committed to support the operations of their allies were Militiamen, and thanks to this they have gained a reputation among the Urdji as the only arm of the military capable of sustained, large scale land combat. The Militia also continues to operate countless traditional hardshell ships similar to those used by the Urdji lords of the middle ages to hold power over their planetary tributaries, granting them the ability to actually deploy large land forces.
In the traditions of the Urdji religion which worships Xwêdh, God Among Gods, there are many different realms which the soul of a being may be sent to after death. Three realms of increasing pleasure and peace, and three realms of increasing suffering and horror. Souls reach these realms through the Wind of Judgement, a current of sorts which they enter from the highest point on the homeworld of their species. This current-often stylized as a wormhole in religious artwork-will either remain open and allow them to reach one of the heavenly realms or constrict until their soul is forced out into one of the hellish realms.
That current is known as the the Chinvat.
In the context of its use as the name of the first Urdji dreadnought it carries with it a connotation similar to "Kill them all and let God sort them out", implying the ship will send its enemies to the current whether or not it knows where their souls will be taken. And, as the most powerful warship class ever built by the Urdji at the time of its initial development, it delivers on that implication.
The Chinvat class carries the largest naval guns ever mounted on an Urdji ship, with eight triple-mount turrets housing them. These guns were the pinnacle of Urdji artillery development at the time of their construction, giving the Chinvat dreadnought destructive power far in excess of what one might expect from its number of guns. Coupled with large internal secondary and tertiary capacitor banks beneath the hull they were capable of fire rates twice as fast as was standard on Urdji ships during the Great War. Indeed, modern Urdji naval guns are based upon the ones designed for the Chinvat.
Mounting a spinal weapon to the ship was just too tempting given its immense size, but the Chinvat's mass also presented targeting difficulties for a spinal railgun. To compensate the spinal weapon's assembly has a funnel-like section at the bow which is paired with a section of the barrel which can be curved to aim the weapon independently of the ship's positioning. Though this system is highly complex it was also designed to be as resilient as possible, making it less of a strain on logistics as one may expect. It remains one of the most potent weapons in the Mez-Jemivan's arsenal despite its age, and most proposed modernization plans for the Chinvat dreadnoughts don't even touch it.
In addition to its turreted arsenal and spinal railgun the Chinvat's hull is covered from bow to stern in missile launchers carrying various different missiles from long-range anti capital torpedoes to swarm missiles in order to counter frigates and corvettes. Its missile systems were designed with the goal of enabling the vessel to single-handedly take an entire destroyer squadron in under an hour without once needing to fire its naval guns. The name ship of the class accomplished this exact feat during the defense of the Qurtel tribe's liveships, earning it quite a reputation on the battlefield that persists to this day despite its age.
The Chinvat was also meant to be the anchor point of Urdji fleets, and to this end it was fitted with four massive cargo bays fitted into the broadside armor with two on each side of the turret assemblies. Massive doors allow quick and easy access to their contents from the exterior of the ship, making it easy to deliver supplies to other ships or to retrieve necessary parts for repairs to the dreadnought. At numerous points during the Great War the Chinvat herself patched hull breaches using spare armor plates stored in these holds. Easy clamping points also allow other, less conventional cargo to be carried within the bays. Schematics exists for a variety of different facilities that could be mounted within the bays for extended use by the ship and its crew, ranging from crew quarters for troop transport to refining, assembly, and hydroponics facilities in the event that the ship has to be self-sustaining independent of a tribal fleet. It can also be configured to carry a destroyer in each cargo bay, but due to the substantial range that destroyers already enjoy this is a rarely-used capability. However, it did prove itself useful in the Great War when two dreadnoughts were deployed to handle a mission that would have otherwise necessitated moving a tribal fleet out of position and into harm's way to supply a normal task force.
It does, of course, have extensive hangar facilities beyond its four cargo bays. Eight hangars are mounted on either side of the ventral bow section of the ship's hull, each capable of carrying either a corvette or a sizable strike craft force. A large, underslung rear hangar also provides further space for wings of strike craft but it uses electromagnetic launch cannons to deploy them, making it impossible for the ship to carry corvettes or other ships within the aft hangar. Though it does not have the massive hangar capacity for carrying support ships that some other Urdji capital vessels have, its hangar facilities can carry more strike craft than any other standardized vessel in the Mez-Jemivan.
During the Great War there were three Chinvat class vessels that saw combat, each one the flagship of an entire theater's fleet. They were the Chinvat itself, the Yekîtîstê, and the Nederstê. Multiple others were under construction when the war ended, and the Urdji managed to complete almost all of them before the Treaty of Detente was signed (quite possibly thanks to the unnecessary verboseness of the Urdji delegation). The only remaining in-construction dreadnoughts were nothing more than laid-down keels, most of which were scrapped. The Nederstê was notably put into drydock recently for suspected modernization, and the only known intact keel was taken from the Xwarnê tribe by the Civîneşra and towed by the 4th Ranger Fleet to an unknown location. Officially the Civîneşra has stated its intent to study the possibility of salvaging the keel's structure for use in constructing a pair of new battleships, but the entire operation has been kept under strict secrecy which has led many to believe that there is something more to it.
The Chinvat, the current which carries the souls of the dead to the realms of the afterlife, does not decide itself where the souls will go. That is the decision of Rashnu, the Angel of Judgement, the sole being in the universe granted by Xwêdh the power to decide the fates of souls. If one was particularly virtuous, a true force which advanced the cause of good in the universe, it is said that Rashnu will allow them to continue living for the good of all life. All others will be sent to one of the realms of the afterlife, depending on the gravity of their good or evil thoughts and deeds. The Chinvat is simply a vehicle of death, a tool by which souls are moved, The Angel Rashnu is death itself, the sole being with the power to bring about the end of life.
It is the perfect name for the most powerful dreadnought in the service of the Mez-Jemivan.
The Rashnu class dreadnought makes use of the latest Urdji technology, most notably a centralized antimatter weapons array that was pioneered by the Hespaij battleships. Further refinement of the weapons system has led to it finding a proper niche as a next-generation mid to close range weapons system for the Rashnu class, with numerous ball turrets placed around the ship's hull to ensure perfect 360 degree coverage. These turrets, which are of a larger size than those the Hespaij carries, are built around a similar principle to those on the Hespaij. A large mass accelerator system (which on the Rashnu utilizes both electromagnetic and gravitonic accelerators) propels antimatter from tanks (which are in this case dedicated magazines separate from the ship's fuel reserves) into the mobile turret assembly. After this it is reflected towards a firing aperture, but unlike the Hespaij the turrets of the Rashnu have a static reflection system which sends the antimatter to the singular barrel of each turret. These barrels contain their own electromagnetic mass acceleration systems independent of those mounted beneath the hull, and further accelerate the antimatter. As a result of this design these turrets have greatly improved range over those mounted on the Hespaij, and act as the dreadnought's secondary armament.
The CIWS of the Rashnu class is also antimatter based, and uses the same multi-aperture antimatter turrets mounted to the Hespaij (coupled with modern mass driver systems) to defend the dreadnought against enemy strike craft and missiles. During knife-fight engagements the CIWS array can also provide devastating anti-ship fire capable of doing severe damage to even enemy capital ships should their captains fail to account for the power of the array.
For its primary armament the Rashnu dreadnought uses twenty-six quadruple mount ball-style turrets carrying naval guns of the same size as those fitted to the Teyrjixen class battleships, giving it a total of a hundred and four primary guns to bring to bear on enemy vessels. To put the size of this arsenal into perspective, the ship has around three and a half times the primary armament firepower of a Teyrjixen battleship. That is before taking into account its cutting-edge secondary armament and CIWS system, and of course the awesome power of its spinal railgun.
The primary advantage of fitting a spinal mount to a dreadnought is the length of the keel. A longer ship means a longer spinal weapon, and to the Urdji fitting anything other than a railgun in a spinal mount of such size is simply madness. There were discussions during the design phase of the Rashnu of using a spinal superlaser, or a massive antimatter accelerator, but ultimately there was only one reasonable choice in their eyes. The Rashnu is fitted with the largest caliber spinal railgun in Urdji history, and has the largest capacitor bank of any ship meant to be mass-produced. This railgun has its own line of specially-designed projectiles, including fragmentation warheads which shatter themselves after being fired and inflict devastating damage on entire formations of smaller vessels. When facing a Rashnu class dreadnought the only option for surviving it's spinal railgun is to never put yourself in front of it.
Complementing its armaments is a large force of strike craft permanently stationed on the Rashnu class, kept inside of eight separate hangars which run the full width of the ship. It also has a permanent complement of numerous Xegîn class corvettes, some of which can be switched out for carried destroyers depending on the ship's mission profile. Though its hangars take up a relatively small amount of space, with the majority of the ship being dedicated to artillery armaments, its immense size allows it to essentially carry its own support fleet.
The Hişkleng class battleship was the first hardshell ship built since the Urdji medieval period, designed to act as not only a line battleship but also as a deployment craft for planetary invasions. At the time of its construction the only planetary landing capability the Urdji had was in certain civilian ships, which simply didn't match the grandiose self-image the Urdji had of themselves at the time. As such, the Hişkleng was fitted with a large vehicle/troop bay and loading ramp on its bow instead of a more standard hangar bay. The ship was meant to land in a planet's ocean, then act as a naval landing craft to deliver troops to a literal beachhead.
In reality, the Hişkleng never did anything more than send soldiers to their inevitable deaths on alien worlds. The Urdji's total lack of experience with ground warfare meant that not a single invasion attempted by the Urdji ever succeeded without allied intervention. Though the invasions attempted by Hişkleng battleships almost always failed, it was not for any of the ship's faults. No ships were damaged during landing, they all held up against enemy ground fire, the fault lay entirely in the fact that the Urdji militias were entirely incapable of large-scale ground warfare. For this reason most Hişkleng class ships haven't had their carrying compartments overhauled into hangars; the Civîneşra considers their transport capability too valuable to be replaced.
The Hişkleng was also one of the last Urdji warships to make use of a large, fixed broadside as its primary armament. Each side of the ship is fitted with thirty-two broadside railguns which were capable of immense devastation during the Great War-when properly targeted that is. As the war dragged on the capabilities of these broadside guns diminished thanks to improvements in propulsion and shielding technology, leading the admiralty of the Mez-Jemivan to order the Hişkleng battleships to be fitted with upgraded sensor and targeting arrays in their superstructure. The gun mounts were also switched out for more modern designs at this point, greatly diminishing target acquisition times and improving tracking capability.
Compared to later designs the Hişkleng class has a fairly small complement of turreted guns, fitting only four triple-mount turrets. A similar armament is seen on the modern Peveiliet class heavy cruiser. The ship's designers were, after all, still thinking about much more ancient wars where more guns on a ship meant more power and tracking and target acquisition capabilities weren't nearly as important as they became during the Great War. The relative isolation of Urdji military doctrine from that of the galaxy at large didn't help this perception, and so the Hişkleng battleships began showing signs of age even during the Great War.
All Hişkleng class ships were therefore refitted following the Treaty of Detente. These refits included the fitting of larger turrets to the available mounts, modernizing their drive systems (Great War era Hişkleng battleships had almost no evasive capacity), entirely replacing the spinal railgun's capacitor banks to reduce recharge time, and the fitting of multiple missile pods to the bow (which once held a small hangar, intended for use by atmospheric shuttles). This modernization program allowed the Hişkleng to continue functioning into the current era and a small number were actually built during the treaty period for use by smaller tribes, but the age of the ship's design and its massive expense for its main asset (the landing bay) has led to plans to decommission or sell the remaining ships and develop an entirely new hardshell vessel for invasions.
There is, however, still some slight hope for the class. Shipwrights of the Ranger Fleets have put forward preliminary proposals for removing their broadside armament, missile pods, and landing bay and filling all newly opened areas with some other mission-specific equipment. This could include anything from hangar bays to fuel tanks, turning the aging battleships into fleet support vessels. The most likely fate of the Hişkleng battleships, however, is simply conversion into armed liveships.
The Hespaij class battleship is a testament to the Urdji commitment to doctrine. Originally designed in the final stages of the Great War, it was meant to carry an impressive complement of eight sextuple mount turrets coupled with an equally large broadside armament. Once the treaty was put in place, however, it became immediately clear that they already laid-down Hespaij battleships couldn't possibly be legally built to their original specifications. Rather than change the design to lower overall mass and accommodate the naval turrets at the cost of survivability they chose to change the weapons instead. As such, the eight sexptuple mount turrets were hastily replaced with significantly smaller weapon mounts.
These smaller mounts, to the credit of Urdji ship designers, were made to be quite possibly the best that they could be with such a short size. Their tiny, circular cap hides large vertical spires within the hull which act as mass drivers for antimatter diverted from the drive core, which can then be directed to "fire" out of any one of the circular cap's many openings through the use of an incredibly power-hungry deflection field inside of the cap. Smaller versions of the same system replaced the many fixed railgun cannons that were meant to line the ship's sides.
The circular caps of these weapons systems rotate independently of the mass driver spires they are mated to, which when combined with the ability to fire out of multiple of the cap's openings gives the Hespaij incredible tracking ability. To take full advantage of this quality a large sensor and tracking suite was added between the ship's two command towers in place of the previously planned auxiliary hangar bay. As a result the Hespaij is a remarkable point-defense ship, capable of defending itself from any fighter or bomber force and even sizable missile barrages.
To feed the antimatter drivers the entire central railgun housing was converted into a gigantic fuel transfer and storage system. The former primary fuel tanks (housed in a transitional ring between the primary hull and the engine assembly itself) were actually converted into a CNC suite equipped with battle bridge facilities should the superstructure command towers be damaged, since simulations showed that having spinal antimatter tanks drastically increased the ship's survivability under fire.
At this stage in its design it lacked any real long-range anti-capital capability besides its fairly underwhelming missile armament, which obviously simply wouldn't do for the Urdji. There was no way that a spinal railgun could be mounted elsewhere on the ship without drastic design changes, but there were two large areas at the bow that were previously meant to be magazines for the turrets but had become nothing but empty space.
One ship designer presented an absolutely ludicrous idea for the two spaces, proposing that they both be converted into incredibly large in diameter laser weapons. Said lasers would be fitted with dedicated reactors and use the final end of their muzzle as an incredibly complicated forcefield-based focusing and targeting system, giving them a small field of fire rather than requiring the ship itself to reorient itself for minute targeting corrections. The formerly flat bow of the ship also had a massive cone fitted to it, filled with shield and forcefield projectors with the goal of allowing even further fine-tuning of the beam targeting. As a result the Hespaij class is capable of a great many different "light shows", including converging the beams, splitting them to hit multiple targets, converging then splitting them, or even creating a giant area denial cone.
Though this complex laser assembly is hard to properly operate and still fails to match the capabilities of a railgun firing a self-correcting projectile it does present a number of unique opportunities for targeting multiple enemy vessels and even defense against incoming projectiles. It is also considered a valuable psychological weapon due to the shock value of watching laser beams seemingly track ships like missiles.
Finally, the Hespaij class has four large hangars (one for each quarter of its cigar-like hull) fitted just behind the laser assembly. These were added early on in its redesign after the choice was made to remove the ship's heavy guns, since the extensive magazines which had previously occupied the area were no longer useful. They make use of large, window blind-like armored doors which fold towards the ship's ventral and dorsal sides. The interior of the hangar is further armored, with all nearby parts of the ship's internal structure obscured by the same thick armored plates which cover its outer hull. This allows the vessel to deploy whatever complement of parasite craft it may be carrying while under fire without risking severe internal damage.
As for its complement, the massive hangars are capable of housing three to four full wings of strike craft, eight to sixteen corvettes (sixteen if entirely stocked with Karesp class corvettes and eight if entire stocked with Xegîn class corvettes), four frigates with a small fighter escort, or any combination of such loadouts. This affords it a similar space in Urdji doctrine to the Bîşeng cruiser, being capable of deploying a small to large task force from its hangars to reconnoiter a system or support a fleet in battle. When carrying a complement of strike craft, however, it becomes a powerful defensive base with a large force of interceptors combined with it's extensive point defense capabilities making short work of any enemy starfighters.
The Teyrjixen class battleship, designed by the Qurtel and Xherxe tribes in secret while the treaty still held weight, has become somewhat of a symbol among the Urdji since the first one was launched just a couple years ago. It was built quietly in pieces at numerous shipyards throughout the tribal fleets and assembled at a yard carefully hidden from the public eye. Though it was clear to everyone that a ship was being built it was not clear how large it was and what its specifications were.
This was vital for the Teyrjixen class, as were its true specifications to be leaked the Mez-Jemivan would have found itself in serious political hot water. It is a blatant treaty violation, being far in excess of just about every stipulation made by the treaty. Tonnage, volume, gun caliber, power, and range, every rule there existed that could be broken was broken by the Teyrjixen. As a result it is rarely deployed, especially not alone, in order to keep foreign powers from discovering too much about it.
It is armed with an even thirty main, heavy railguns and a fairly extensive secondary armament for its size. The Teyrjixen's point defense is a combination of laser CIWS and heavy flak guns which line its broadsides, which though theoretically less effective than the antimatter CIWS systems employed by some of the Mez-Jemivan's cutting edge warships give the Teyrjixen a wider range of tactics at its disposal.
Complementing its primary railgun artillery is a respectable missile armament and twelve long-range torch missiles mounted at the ship's bow. Though it is not capable of the large-scale missile barrages carried out by some other Urdji vessels its missiles pack much more of a punch, delivering larger payloads at quicker speeds. This was a direct response by Urdji shipwrights to advancements in shield technology, which has made smaller yield missiles and torpedoes significantly less effective in recent years.
Like all proper Urdji capital ships the Teyrjixen class is equipped with a large, spinal railgun running the length of the ship's keel. It is the first Urdji battleship to make use of the self-aiming spinal weapon aperture designs used by the Mez-Jemivan's dreadnoughts, and as a result the spinal railgun has tracking capabilities surprising given the size of the vessel. Regardless, it has been suggested by some that capital ships are simply becoming too large and broadside-oriented to make proper use of a spinal weapon. Of course, it will take quite some time before any good Urdji shipwright begins to take such suggestions seriously.
To accommodate its small craft complement the vessel is equipped with two separate underslung hangar bays with large apertures to allow the quick launch and recovery of its complement. Due to the Fourth Gemivanqanû these bays are designed to carry Karesp class corvettes as well as normal strike craft for planetary invasions. In addition the ship was designed to carry a number of troops and vehicles in an internal bay between the main hull and the downward-angled hangars, an area which in reality tends to be used for (often unofficial) recreation by the crew.
The Qiraleît class battlecruiser was a product of Great War hubris, built by a Mez-Jemivan that fashioned itself a galactic power. It was painted with the colors of Biryar Arlydlan's mother tribe, which added somewhere between three to four dozen tons of weight to the craft on its own. It is also an excellent example of what an outdated ship looks like, being built with a now-obsolete mixture of numerous different railgun calibers to make up its primary armament.
Nine "main" guns are mounted in a near circle around the vessel's center in triple mount turrets, one conspicuously missing on the ship's ventral side to make room for an underslung command superstructure. Eight guns of slightly smaller caliber, just enough to make them ineffective at the ideal range of the main guns, are mounted in four dual-mount turrets on the port and starboard. As one might expect, the Qiraleît had a problem with being above enemies. It really had a problem with being anywhere, at any time.
The mounting locations of multiple of its turrets causes them to have large blind spots obstructed by the ship's own hull, most obviously the dorsal triple-mount turret which simple cannot fire forwards. The ship's port and starboard triple mount turrets also have issues with their elevation which makes it a chore to turn them to face broadside targets, which in turn makes the dorsal turret almost entirely useless except as a fallback option in a chaotic engagement. To the credit of the ship's designers this was explicitly the idea-the ship was built with the expectation of unorganized, bloody battles fought at close ranges-but a single year of fighting made it clear that such engagements wouldn't define the war as had been expected.
Its saving grace is the fact that it has a somewhat effective frontal artillery barrage, with its port and starboard triple-mount turrets being elevated far enough above the fore twin-mount turrets to allow them to fire in tandem. Combined with the ship's spinal railgun it managed to find a place in the war as a ship well suited to poking holes in enemy lines, and when rotated properly they could put up a passable broadside from the port and starboard guns in order to break a line. The ship's rather even placement of armor lends itself well to such maneuvers as well.
In the later stages of the war the Qiraleît finally found a proper niche as a missile cruiser. Minor refits gave it the capability to launch swarms of high-yield torch missiles at enemy fleets, which worked well with a frontal barrage from its spinal railgun and two main turrets. This increased missile complement came at the cost of some of the magazines for the ship's secondary, dual-mount turrets but no captain ever particularly missed the ammunition thanks to the fact that said turrets were rarely useful at the long ranges the war was mostly fought at.
In modern times the Qiraleît, though outdated perhaps the moment it was drawn up, still has use as a long-range artillery ship. Some admirals, of course, use them as brawlers thanks to their solid armor and short-ranged secondaries. Ultimately, the Qiraleît just isn't the right ship for the time it found itself in and is quickly being phased out. Some plans exist for converting existing Qiraleît battlecruisers into CNC ships or even tearing out more magazines and giving it a strike craft complement, but the consensus is that they should just be discarded.
A rather sorry fate for the ship whose name, in Ragav, means "Empire".
The Kāve class battlecruiser was built well into the treaty, designed to compensate for the underwhelming firepower of the Hespaij class battleship. To this end it was equipped with seven triple-mount turrets, with each gun being of a slighter larger size than those planned for the Hespaij's sextuple mount turrets. The heavy broadside railguns designed for the Hespaij were also mounted on the Kāve's port and starboard, complementing the already impressive broadside power of its seven turrets well.
In addition the Kāve carried four magazine-fed launch ports for missiles rather than the usual array of vertical launch systems, trading the usual ability of Urdji vessels to launch massive missile swarms for the capability of sustained missile bombardment of either one or more enemy targets. Two of these launch ports are mounted on the ship's broadsides between the fore dorsal and ventral turrets, and two others are mounted just below the aftmost dorsal turret.
The Kāve's elongated bow houses a hangar configured from the shipyard to hold multiple wings of strike craft, mostly space superiority fighters and lancers. To launch these craft the entire armor section running from the foremost dorsal turret to the point at which the ship's broadside armor plating ends opens in two halves which slide to the port and starboard of the ship, letting it launch almost its entire complement of parasite craft at once. These large doors also allow the Kāve to carry up to three Karesp class corvettes should it find itself in imminent need of screening ships.
Finally, the Kāve is armed with a spinal railgun running the entire length of the ship. Thanks to the extensive hangar built into the bow the Kāve has a great deal more space to give the projectile to accelerate when compared with earlier battlecruiser designs, along with a large capacitor bay. This powerful spinal railgun is a match for most found on Urdji battleships, making the Kāve the first Urdji battlecruiser that manages to perfectly match the offensive capabilities of a battleship.
The Stênasnam class battlecruiser is the direct successor to the Kāve class, carrying over many of the designs concepts used in its creation. Much like the Kāve the Stênasnam is built around a main battery of railgun turrets, though it carries eight dual mount turrets rather than the Kāve's seven triple mounts. Each individual railgun is of a significantly higher caliber than those mounted on the Kāve, however, and as a result the Stênasnam has quite a formidable armament. Just like the Kāve it is built to be a pocket battleship, pure and simple, and that's exactly what it does.
Though smaller than the Kāve the Stênasnam class has a massive powerplant attached to its drive systems which feeds a spinal railgun that, once again, was built to match that of a battleship. Said railgun accelerates its projectile much faster than other models, as it must reach battleship velocities in a battlecruiser sized mount, and as a result eats up much of the power produced by the ship's large drive core. The ship's shield systems also make use of the extra power, and are the most advanced in the fleet. A trio of large outboard pods contain most of the shield system's components, a system design that was still experimental while the first Stênasnam class was under construction. It has proven to be a resounding success, allowing the Stênasnam's shields to match those of a battleship. Armor, of course, is another story given the ship's small size.
It did away with the Kāve's unique missile launch systems, instead designers opted for much more conventional horizontal launch tubes which have proven to be significantly more effective than the system tested on the Kāve. The Stênasnam also carries a respectable strike craft complement, not quite as much as the Kāve but certainly more than might normally be expected of a battlecruiser. Multiple small hangars, each holding just a few fighters, complement a larger more central hangar which was designed to be capable of holding four to six corvettes depending on class after other corvette-carrying designs proved to be a success.
The only major weakness of the Stênasnam's design is its relatively slow speed for a battlecruiser. Most of the drive core's power goes to the spinal railgun and shield systems, leaving the ship's engines rather underdeveloped and incapable of moving the ship at speeds befitting the "fast battleship" concept of most battlecruisers. Though this is not a particularly severe issue many Admirals have demanded an entirely separate battlecruiser class be created for use as a fast battleship, with said Admirals considering the Stênasnam to be a battleship in battlecruiser's clothing.
Of course other Admirals are quite happy with the design, seeing it as just a cheaper, easier to maintain battleship more than anything else.
The Peveiliet class Heavy Cruiser is as large as cruisers come. Suspiciously large. Designed under treaty limitations it was essentially created to sneak more battleships into the Urdji fleet. It's hull is particularly armored compared to even other heavy cruisers and its entire shield system was built to be switched out with minimal effort. Though it makes the shield system a massive spare parts sink, it does allow the Mez-Jemivan to ensure that the Peveiliet class will always have the most up-to-date shield technology.
It has three primary departures from Urdji battleships that keep its intentions from being too blatant, namely the low number of turrets, total lack of a strike craft complement, and absence of a spinal mount railgun. These decisions were made to give the vessel a less imposing silhouette as well as give the ship more room for heavy armor-especially towards the bow. To compensate for these shortcomings it was fitted with a massive complement of flak and defensive missiles to protect it from strike craft, quadruple mount turrets at "treaty-says-it's-not-a-battleship" caliber, and a large missile bay from which it can deploy self-guided torch missiles to strike targets at (nearly) the range of a railgun running its keel.
The Bîşeng class cruiser was designed to be the backbone of the Mez-Jemivan. Its design was a collaborative effort by all the tribes, the goal being to create an easily constructed and easily maintained warship that could reasonably handle any mission it was given. Though it carries no special new technology and introduces no particularly new combat tactic it is often considered to be the height of Urdji Detente-era engineering. It was built to fill a role, and it fills that role perfectly.
It is armed with six quad-mount turrets, two mounted on the towers on the ventral and dorsal sides of the ship and four mounted on opposite sides of the vessel's port and starboard. Though it cannot use its full might in a broadside it is built to be able to bring all twenty-four guns to bear directly forwards. When combined with the ship's spinal mount railgun (which is of a tried and true design, and offers few advantages over older models beyond slightly enlarged capacitor banks) this makes for a devastating frontal arsenal.
To complement its artillery capabilities the Bîşeng has a large store of missiles and torpedoes which can be launched from twenty-eight multipurpose launch ports (fourteen each on port and starboard) as well as a collection of close-in and swarm missiles housed in their own dedicated launch bays, mostly on the ventral and dorsal sides of the ship. Furthermore, the Bîşeng carries a command-grade electronics and tracking suite to control and target its array of weapons as well as provide CNC support to any fleet it is deployed with. Bîşeng cruisers are a popular choice for command ships of task forces and smaller fleets.
Finally, the Bîşeng has a large (for a cruiser) zero-g hangar bay with the capacity to carry up to eight small strike craft or alternatively three Karesp class corvettes for reconnaissance and combat support. Captains overwhelmingly favor the corvette loadout, as though the Karesp is an aging class the capacity to summon a fleet in an instant is an incredibly valuable ability. Thanks to this capability the Bîşeng is the go-to patrol ship for any large tribe, since it and its corvettes can effectively sweep a system in half the time it would take a lone cruiser-not to mention with twice the protection.
The Aghiasû class cruiser was, like the Karesp corvette, the result of collaboration with the Lokoid. Unlike the Karesp, however, it was technically a domestic design. If one discounts the fact that it was the result of excited engineers tearing apart a Karesp frigate and copying its systems on a larger scale, that is. While most of its weapons systems are domestic Urdji designs the underlying infrastructure, from bulkheads to computer systems, are clearly "inspired" by those of the Karesp.
It carries a rather mixed armament for an Urdji ship, and is particularly heavy on missiles compared to other domestic designs. It carries eight launch pods to its aft, another four pods for the launching of small interceptor missiles, and a battery of close-in missile pods facing the aft. It also had two torpedo tubes near the bow on the dorsal side of the hull, which fire the same traditional torpedoes used by the Agbask in order to deliver devastating anti-armor payloads.
It only has three main turrets, each of which only mounts a single naval railgun. Though equipped with state of the art (for their time) targeting systems these turrets were never meant to act as the ship's primary armament and are instead mostly used for close-range broadsides (which the Aghiasû is meant to avoid). The missile systems are the ship's primary offensive systems, couped with two forward-fixed railguns that run roughly half the length of the ship. Much of the ship's internals are taken up by missile and torpedo systems, and as such its designers felt like twin half-spinal railguns would be more efficient space wise than a single spinal one.
This gave the ship strange dynamics in battle. It was in theory a long range missile cruiser, but it only just barely counted as long range. It would often sit somewhere between the battleship line and the rest of the cruiser line, acting mostly as fire support for ships closer in. Most Admirals simply didn't quite know where to put the ship, and as a result it often ended up relegated to mopping up battlefields or patrol duty. Its versatile armament let it excel in these duties, but it never truly lived up to its intended role.
The simplicity of the design and its similarities to the Karesp made it easy to handle logistically, and the ease of converting its missile pods to carry modernized arms has kept it somewhat relevant in modern times. It is a common ship to see on patrol in Urdji systems and some examples have been converted into minelayers and fleet support vessels, both roles which it seems to be well-suited for.
The Rizgan class destroyer, much like the Bîşeng cruiser, was designed in more recent times to act as a reliable workhorse for the Mez-Jemivan. It is a no-frills design that takes no chances with new and interesting design ideas. The ship is a traditionally-built Urdji destroyer, with every piece of the vessel designed around its massive spinal railgun. Though it carries a fairly impressive sixteen multipurpose missile/torpedo launchers as well as a small dorsal complement of swarm missiles mated with a ventral complement of anti-fighter missiles, the ship's true power lies in its railgun.
Though the Rizgan is not a particularly long destroyer, measuring at a fairly average size for the class, it's railgun packs a consistent punch thanks to massive quick-charging capacitor banks with a direct power line to the drive core. The gun can fire at an impressive rate, making the ship capable of tearing enemy shields and armor to shreds faster than even older designs with larger spinal railguns. To support its spinal armament the Rizgan carries four quad-mount turrets, with its ventral and dorsal guns being of a higher caliber than its port and starboard ones. The port and starboard turrets also have drastically faster traverse rates and are primarily meant to engage close-in strike craft and smaller vessels.
The Rizgan does carry a single parasite craft, a small reconnaissance plane with a miniature sensor suite to provide long-range targeting data for the railgun should the primary targeting systems be disabled, destroyed, obscured, or otherwise inoperable. During normal conditions the plane can assist the fleet with spotting and targeting, and it is also useful in system recon missions. It was special built for the Rizgan class, and only carries a small turret to shake off pursuing fighters.
The Agbask class destroyer was one of the most well-respected vessels of the Mez-Jemivan during the Great War. It was one of their first mass-produced, domestically designed warships and proved to be a fine start for the fledgling regular forces of the Urdji. The design was simple, robust, and grew to have an impressive service record by the end of the war.
The Agbask's primary armament is a set of three dual-mount railgun turrets, placed at the three points of the vaguely triangular hull to allow for excellent forward visibility as well as coverage of all angles of the ship (save for the aft, where the vessel's large drive systems block fire directly to the aft). Unlike in some larger vessels this was not a particular issue for the Agbask, which was designed with maneuverability in mind. Complementing the vessel's forward-focused turret arrangement is a higher power spinal railgun which draws most of the excess power produced by the ship's oversized drive systems. Though slow firing it packs quite a punch for such a small ship, especially considering how old the design is.
It's final armament is a trio of torpedo pods mounted in-between the railgun turrets. These pods carry a total of four torpedoes each, all of which are of traditional Urdji design in contrast to more modern missile systems. As a result they tend to be almost useless against shields, which were rarely encountered by the Urdji before after the end of the Second Mez-Jemivan, but their high explosive payloads can still be devastating against even the most armored of hulls.
In practice the Agbask was one of the most well-rounded ships that fought in the war for the Urdji, and with its simplicity comes a number of logistic perks. Agbasks rarely needed the extensive maintenance of other vessels, especially for their time, and they are to this day some of the easiest ships for Urdji engineers to tinker with. Thanks to this the Agbask is still fielded in number today, and new vessels of the class are still produced with upgraded systems. With the success of the Rizgan class destroyer a total redesign of the Agbask class has been suggested, rather than simply retiring it, thanks to its solid nature.
The Ihnerchî class frigate functions mostly as a point defense and CNC ship when deployed within the main body of a fleet. It is a popular choice for smaller Urdji clans thanks to its unassuming appearance and extensive electronic warfare suite, as well as fairly impressive engine output and missile armament. In classic Urdji style, the Ihnerchî is quite large for a frigate and would likely be considered a destroyer if not for its lack of proper naval guns. It instead carries three quadruple mount autocannon turrets (of a higher caliber than those of the Xegîn, thankfully) and multiple missile launch tubes in various different locations across its hull.
Extensive torpedo systems allow the ship to hit above its weight, with the ship having four of the launchers employed by the Xegîn on each of its broadsides for a total of eight. It also has three standard mount multipurpose missile bays on its broadsides for smaller munitions, as well as countless small launch ports for close-in swarm missiles. The ship's extensive electronics suite and sensor array allows for precise targeting of these weapons, as well as the sharing of targeting data with allied ships.
The first ship of the Ihnerchî class was in fact built as a testbed for its spinal mount weapon, a high-energy particle beam that siphons antimatter from the ship's drive system. The weapon was designed to, much like many designs conceived during the treaty period, find a way to deliver capital-like firepower in a less assuming package. This was a failure in every conceivable fashion. The weapon is finicky, hard to target, and had the bad habit of catastrophically backfiring in its original configuration.
Following the total destruction of the first Ihnerchî class ship to one such backfire, the weapon's power was scaled back drastically to the point that it was barely worth the maintenance costs. Though still capable of bloodying a cruiser's nose, the Ihnerchî class is far from the next generation of combat that its designers had hoped for. The ship, however, is still seen as a dependable workhorse by the Urdji thanks to its fairly simple systems-even the experimental spinal lance is more or less just a particle accelerator. As such it is a staple of many smaller task forces and fleets, and even the largest tribes will operate a handful.
The Dahtaû class frigate was one of the last examples of a ship design born directly from the dealings of Urdji nomads with alien species. It is a direct descendant of a small number of alien warships purchased by a peripheral Urdji tribe from the patrol fleet of an outlying colony of an alien empire that happened to be strapped for cash when the tribe passed through. Said vessels had no artillery armament and instead relied on missile firepower, with their only traditional ballistics weapons being a small number of autocannons and rotary cannons that had little affect on targets larger than corvettes. When the Great War began these ships were drafted into the Mez-Jemivan, and their outstanding performance in the earliest battles of the war resulted in the Urdji developing an indigenous equivalent.
Armed with an extensive missile array, four autocannons, and six rotary cannons the Dahtaû frigates were the first real foray into missile-focused frigates made by the Urdji. Unlike their alien predecessors the Dahtaû frigates were further armed with a spinal railgun, which proved immensely useful during the Great War thanks to the ship's maneuverability. Indeed, the success of the spinal railguns of the Dahtaû frigates was one of the primary arguments against the antimatter particle beam fitted on the Ihnerchî class-as many feared it couldn't match the utility of the Dahtaû's railgun.
Combined with the spinal railgun the Dahtaû's missile armament was easily able to hit above its weight, a term which seems to be used quite often when it comes to similar frigate designs. Many strategists have started to consider the missile armament of Urdji frigates to be entrenched in doctrine in a similar way as their big-gun capital ships have.
The Xegîn class corvette is somewhat of an experiment. It is a massive departure from Urdji tradition as it entirely lacks a spinal railgun, which was considered the only thing which made such small ships viable in combat. Instead it carries two quadruple-mount turreted autocannons, a fixed-mount light cannon, four capital-grade torpedo tubes on its broadsides of all places, a single underslung torch missile bay with space for two missiles (on a corvette), and the kicker: four grappling hook launchers fitted to WDS (Standard Launch System, or Wekher Despêkir Sîsivîn in Ragav) mounts.
Whether you call it the Mez-Jemivan's great experiment or its great mistake, the Xegîn is a strange ship. It was designed to be the fastest accelerating ship ever built by the Urdji, and so it is entirely stripped of any armor except for over it's antimatter fuel tanks. Coincidentally, it is the only corvette class ship built to use an antimatter drive and its inertial dampeners are its most power hungry system next to the shields.
The Xegîn is meant to be used in a number of different ways. It's fixed-mount cannon lacks the power to penetrate enemy shields and armor by its own merit, but thanks to its impressive acceleration when used in a matter similar to lancer-type strike craft (that is, fire during a burn to add extra momentum to the projectile) it can be as effective as a normal spinal railgun. Once a pass has been initiated with the lancer burn, the Xegîn can rapidly turn to launch its torpedoes-often from both sides in a single pass-or it can simply split the enemy line and target two separate vessels with its torpedoes. Once it crosses the path of the enemy it has a few options. It can strafe the enemy for a split second with its autocannon turrets and come around for another pass, weave through the enemy line and make use of its autocannons and torpedoes on multiple targets, or rapidly match velocity with a target vessel and begin harassing it specifically.
It can also attempt to latch on to an enemy ship with its grapple hooks after matching velocity. After latching, it can perform a devastating point-blank broadside or deploy a small squad of marines to board the enemy ship. Battle simulations have shown this to be a less than ideal tactic, but when massed Xegîn class ships have proven themselves to be capable of delivering a reasonably-sized task force onto a target vessel. The primary purpose of the grapplers, however, is to perform boarding actions on enemy space stations and asteroid facilities.
The Xegîn is also quite capable of an atmospheric landing, being built to land in water much like medieval hardshells. Urdji dreadnoughts and some battleships carry them for just this purpose, finding them useful as oversized drop/gunships. Also notable is the fact that the magazines for its torpedo tubes actually stretch all the way from port to starboard, forcing the crew to crawl under them to reach the engine bay and/or fuel tanks.
The Karesp class is an aging PT boat from the Great War. It is one of the first vessels that was ever mass produced by the Urdji and operated by numerous separate tribes, and to its merit it is thought that it was a good first step for the Mez-Jemivan. It was, however, not a domestic design. The first batch of Karesps was bought from the Lokoid whom designed it after approached by the newly-formed Third Mez-Jemivan which lacked smaller warships and was in particular need of a reliable corvette. The Lokoid delivered quickly, making it the first standardized design used by the Urdji as a whole.
Unfortunately, this also means that it is the oldest design still being produced and it has begun to clearly show it. It's primary weapons are a collection of chainguns which are only suitable for battle against strike craft and other corvettes, and its spinal railgun often requires the use of lancer tactics to scratch the larger ships of the modern era.
Still, however, it has found a few remaining niches for itself. Most famously it is often carried by the Bîşeng class cruiser and employed as a support craft in system surveys, patrols, and combat operations. It is also, however, employed in great numbers as a specialized point defense craft for the capital ships of Urdji fleets. It's chainguns, though weak, can without serious modification be mated to an upgraded targeting system which allows them to target and destroy incoming missiles and strike craft with ease. Thanks to this and its old but functional railgun it has also found a place in the personal guards of many admirals, who make use of it as a close-in guard ship to protect their flagship from enemy ships in knife-fight range.
It remains used, of course, in the same small-scale patrol and scout missions it was originally designed for. It also has limited capacity for planetary landings, and is one of the few ships produced by the Urdji which can land on solid ground rather than the ocean, but tends to need help getting back up. This capability was hastily added during the Great War to support allied ground troops and their Urdji comrades. Some research and development groups are investigating properly converting the Karesp into a dedicated dropship, but little progress has been made as of late.
Urdji strike craft are always manned. They have a distrust in the ability of drone systems (especially theirs) to think creatively and fight as fiercely as a man whose life is at stake. Urdji pilots train almost constantly and pride themselves on being able to hold their own against even the most advanced drone fighters.
The Dekvan-type SSF is the most commonly deployed strike craft used by the Urdji. It was designed shortly after the Great War to act as the primary fighter of the Şerjemivan. Though it has limited capability as a ground/naval attack craft it is first and foremost a space superiority fighter, carrying an extensive anti-fighter armament including two dual-mount wind mounted cannons, eight anti-fighter missiles (alternatively, four and two bombs or torpedoes), and a small automated laser turret. It is also capable of both vacuum and atmospheric flight, and is effective in combat in both.
Though it is not designed for any sort of extended mission, being tied to a carrier ship or home base, the Dekvan does actually have a small living are within the rather large cockpit. The pilot's seat manually reclines into a flat bed, there is a small stock of water and emergency rations, and a mounted case for a sidearm. A basic air filter is also included. This was was designed into the Dekvan due to numerous incidents during the Great War where Urdji pilots crash landed on enemy planets and either promptly starved, were killed by wildlife, or taken prisoner. It is also useful in the event that it is disabled in space but still has emergency power, allowing it to possibly keep the pilot alive until rescue can arrive.
The Dekvan's distinctive spike-like front contains two small coilguns for the closest of dogfights, but exists mostly to give the fighter's RCS thrusters extra leverage to allow for quick turns. The craft mostly "steers" with this leverage, as most of its mass is concentrated at the back with the engine assembly and weapons pods.
The Neçirvan type interceptor is the latest strike craft design in Urdji use and is a new and radical design for the Şerjemivan. Its primary maneuvering thrusters are places at the back behind the main engines, with supporting thrusters places on the tops of large wings designed to both act as thruster mounts and as in-atmosphere maneuvering surfaces. The Neçirvan's engine core is built to be capable of directing thrust to either the main aft engines or two, more crude engine pods which face forwards to allow for rapid deceleration.
Its main armament is a small grouping of weapons placed directly underneath the cockpit, comprised of a primary rotary cannon and two secondary laser cannons flanking it. The underside of the craft mounts two missile bays on the right and left wings which carry up to four anti-fighter missiles each. In the hands of a skilled pilot the Neçirvan can be a formidable foe for even the most advanced drone fighters thanks to its impressive maneuverability and sizable armament for an interceptor of its size.
As a pure interceptor, the Neçirvan has no anti-ship capabilities and is primarily used to protect Urdji ships from enemy strike craft. It can be deployed to escort lancers or complement SSFs, but its limited range means it must be kept close to a mothership or base.
The Tîrmê type lancer is the most widely used anti-ship strike craft in the Şerjemivan. It's sole armament is a spinal railgun, and like all lancers it uses its own speed to add hitting power to the solid projectile fired by the railgun. It has multiple "prongs" sprouting from various different parts of its fuselage for the mounting of RCS thrusters, which allow it to quickly turn around after it has completed a run and evade pursuing interceptors.
Lancers are rarely useful except for in mass formations, and as such the Tîrmê is built to be as thing as possible in order for shipboard hangar bays to accommodate as many as possible. When massed and uncontested, of course, Urdji lancers are a formidable force that can quickly chew through shields and internal ship systems.
The Dekvan-type SSF is the most commonly deployed strike craft used by the Urdji. It was designed shortly after the Great War to act as the primary fighter of the Şerjemivan. Though it has limited capability as a ground/naval attack craft it is first and foremost a space superiority fighter, carrying an extensive anti-fighter armament including two dual-mount wind mounted cannons, eight anti-fighter missiles (alternatively, four and two bombs or torpedoes), and a small automated laser turret. It is also capable of both vacuum and atmospheric flight, and is effective in combat in both.
Though it is not designed for any sort of extended mission, being tied to a carrier ship or home base, the Dekvan does actually have a small living are within the rather large cockpit. The pilot's seat manually reclines into a flat bed, there is a small stock of water and emergency rations, and a mounted case for a sidearm. A basic air filter is also included. This was was designed into the Dekvan due to numerous incidents during the Great War where Urdji pilots crash landed on enemy planets and either promptly starved, were killed by wildlife, or taken prisoner. It is also useful in the event that it is disabled in space but still has emergency power, allowing it to possibly keep the pilot alive until rescue can arrive.
The Dekvan's distinctive spike-like front contains two small coilguns for the closest of dogfights, but exists mostly to give the fighter's RCS thrusters extra leverage to allow for quick turns. The craft mostly "steers" with this leverage, as most of its mass is concentrated at the back with the engine assembly and weapons pods.
The Neçirvan type interceptor is the latest strike craft design in Urdji use and is a new and radical design for the Şerjemivan. Its primary maneuvering thrusters are places at the back behind the main engines, with supporting thrusters places on the tops of large wings designed to both act as thruster mounts and as in-atmosphere maneuvering surfaces. The Neçirvan's engine core is built to be capable of directing thrust to either the main aft engines or two, more crude engine pods which face forwards to allow for rapid deceleration.
Its main armament is a small grouping of weapons placed directly underneath the cockpit, comprised of a primary rotary cannon and two secondary laser cannons flanking it. The underside of the craft mounts two missile bays on the right and left wings which carry up to four anti-fighter missiles each. In the hands of a skilled pilot the Neçirvan can be a formidable foe for even the most advanced drone fighters thanks to its impressive maneuverability and sizable armament for an interceptor of its size.
As a pure interceptor, the Neçirvan has no anti-ship capabilities and is primarily used to protect Urdji ships from enemy strike craft. It can be deployed to escort lancers or complement SSFs, but its limited range means it must be kept close to a mothership or base.
The Tîrmê type lancer is the most widely used anti-ship strike craft in the Şerjemivan. It's sole armament is a spinal railgun, and like all lancers it uses its own speed to add hitting power to the solid projectile fired by the railgun. It has multiple "prongs" sprouting from various different parts of its fuselage for the mounting of RCS thrusters, which allow it to quickly turn around after it has completed a run and evade pursuing interceptors.
Lancers are rarely useful except for in mass formations, and as such the Tîrmê is built to be as thing as possible in order for shipboard hangar bays to accommodate as many as possible. When massed and uncontested, of course, Urdji lancers are a formidable force that can quickly chew through shields and internal ship systems.
Planetary Forces
The Urdji are lacking in ground combat. There is no arm of the military dedicated to planetary invasion or defense and those planetary units which do exist lack any standardization in equipment or strategy. Tanks are rare, motorization itself is rare, and the primary strategy for any Urdji ground force is "Charge, scream, and pray not to die". During the Great War they at least learned how to dig trenches, but not much else. Despite their famous ground failures and laughable planetary forces the Urdji are making attempts to create an at least functional ground fighting force, and projects are currently underway to create standardized equipment and vehicles for ground use.
Hyperdreadnought Basjined
Milyak-Yazdâ, in Urji mythology, is the collective name for the seven angels which serve Xwêdh in the physical realm. Xwêdh is said to have entrusted these seven angels with caring for the universe and seeing to it that it develops in the exactly way which he intended. The leader of the angels, and chief among them, is the archangel Basjined. Though Basjined answers of Xwêdh and the many gods and goddesses whom also serve him, he was granted with total control of the physical realm by Xwêdh. He can betray the will of Xwêdh, and he has before, but as a virtuous man it is said that it is hard for him to even dream of disobeying his God.
In the context of the name of the Mez-Jemivan's one and only hyperdreadnought, Basjined could be construed as meaning many number of things. The ever-loyal, the servant of God, the wings of the void (a literal translation of the archangel's name), or he who controls reality. When he named the ship Biryar Arlydlan fully intended for its name to be taken in all those many ways, and more. It was built to be the ultimate power in space combat, incapable of defeat and truly in control of the void itself.
It has the singular most powerful artillery armament in the Mez-Jemivan by far. It is armed with a total of fifty-two turrets, each mounting eight naval railguns larger than any previously produced by the Urdji, for a total of four hundred and sixteen naval guns. In addition it has the most powerful spinal railgun built by the Urdji, an extensive laser and antimatter CIWS system, and hangar bays and docking ports for a massive number of strike craft and parasite corvettes/frigates. The Basjined was built to take on entire fleets by itself, and though it has yet to be tested in combat it certainly seems capable of that much.