Primitives often have a hard time grasping divination-based warfare.
The ships of the great empires are, by traditional definitions, blind and deaf. They have no scanners, no computer-assisted modelling programs, no signal emitters or receivers, no ability to detect life signs or lack thereof. Nothing more than Biomantic eyeballs being placed against Ultramateriel telescopes. You can, in fact, hide from the warfleets of the Endless Azure Skies by painting your warships black and turning off all the lights.
But that's where divination comes in. Blind and deaf though the ships of the Skies and Shogunate might be, through communion with the Gods they are able to consistently place themselves into the same broom closets as their enemies. This is powerful sorcery, but brute force: on the one hand, the infinity of space is condensed into a single certainty, on the other, you are not provided with any detail of what you will find at the other end, only with the directions on how to get there and the certainty of a battle at its conclusion.
This has a curious effect when a fleet seeking engagement hunts a ship that seeks to escape. Against primitives the entire fleet might deploy in perfect order around its quarry, but against an enemy working its own acts of prophecy then the strands of fate become entangled. The prey's prophecy tells it that in the future if it goes to this point it will be engaged by the entire enemy fleet; the hunters prophecy then has to change to account for the fact that the prey knows they know, but then the prey's prophecy has to take into account that the hunters know they know they know, and so forth. Presuming the relevant war gods do not hold particular malice or love towards one side or another, this results in a stalemate that must be solved with a sort of bidding.
The aggressor fleet performs the divination, gets a null result from Mars, and determines that there cannot be an engagement on the terms it desires. So it splits off a task force, commits it to going to one of the possible battleground areas, and then it performs the ritual again. This process continues until the fleet has split up sufficiently that the balance of powers has become if not even then within the range of possibility; at that point the gods bring the comparably matched forces together for their fated clash.
So it is that there is no surprise for either side when the Plousios and the Cancellation of Florence Nightingale leave the Deep Void to arrive in the suburban Archer-12 system at the same time. The Archer Constellation is one of many star clusters that has been rearranged so that it forms a constellation visible from Capitas; according to the grand plan of the Endless Azure Skies this entire cluster is to be transformed into a militarized bulwark, a multi-system stellar fortress that can anchor multiple civilian sectors. That is many centuries in the future; right now, Archer-12 is a scattering of luxury mansions, and an archaeological site with a few scattered research bases across the system hard at work on important questions like 'did we destroy these planets/civilizations?' and 'why?'. A dull red sun burns low, unseeded by the stellar macrocytes that make the stars of the Endless Azure Skies burn blue and violet - the star is too small and weak, it needs to be upgraded by fusion with another star before it has the dignity and brightness to be worth seeding. Somewhere in the distant horizon the machinery will be underway to redirect the relevant stellar objects.
The Cancellation is twice the length of the Plousios, and modern: ships of this era are ridiculously large and over-designed, temples to cost blowouts and gold-plating, stuffed full of cutting edge systems and optimized for parade duty and saber rattling. An evolution on the traditional Warsphere design, behold: the Spike-Sphere. Shaped as though a grape had been stuck through the centre with a toothpick, the spike extending out evenly in both directions. The forward part of the spike is an energized blade, the theoretical answer to the ramming techniques that Imperial vessels use to such great effect against Azura warspheres in the Battle of the Trinary Stars. By rotating precisely, the theory goes, the Warsphere will be able to wield this massive blade like a sword, cutting apart enemy vessels as they approach. The aft part of the spike is a massive Imperial-style plasma engine, almost skeletally exposed and vulnerable but giving the Spike-Sphere Imperial acceleration in deep void.
To add vulnerability to vulnerability, this section is also covered in massive nacelles filled with plasma torpedoes. Historically such armories present points of critical vulnerability in Azura formations, requiring fleets to baby their vulnerable munitions trucks. The Spike-Sphere solves that particular issue by making the entire 'tail' disposable; a detonation chain reaction will destroy the entire Engine spike but inflict minimal damage on the central Warsphere itself. In fact, detaching the tail might be a deliberate decision by the Captain: breaking the spherical shape causes a massive reduction in the effectiveness of the Grav-Rail drive, limiting the Spike-Sphere's maneuverability. If the tail is detached or destroyed then the Spike-Sphere will gain a massive increase in agility to help it win its current engagement.
The final aspect in this equation is the massive carrier bays on the Spike-Sphere's central structure. Carrier operations have been out of fashion for a while, but Liquid Bronze is bringing them back. A massive, forward projected fighter screen works to prevent speculative attacks against the vulnerable tail and prevent flanking. Together this makes the Cancellation alone a hybrid of all the strengths of Imperial and Azura designs, a fleet unto itself, the herald of a new age for the Endless Azure Skies. As a fun little aside, it would be utterly defenseless against an enemy that had access to starship teleportation, as they would be able to detonate its expensive tail with impunity - but then, this generation of warships is not designed to fight primitives. It is the final answer to problems of the last war, as represented by the Plousios.
(One might wonder what the point of all of this is compared to the traditional Azura answer of 'just bring another Sphere filled with ammunition'. Well, to answer that question one must consider that Warspheres have been destroyed often enough to lose their intimidation factor; they are known quantities and tactics against them have been perfected. But this? Fear of this new face of war will propel the Endless Azure Skies into a new age.)
The Angelshark lurks in the shadow of the fourth planet; it is an ambush predator and will only be effective if it has the advantage of surprise. Two slipgates in the system provide a flow of civilian shipping to render this a functional, if not prosperous, outpost. Right now the Cancellation is holding its ground at a distance - a stall. The fighter screens are currently being flown by drones while the Summerkind eggs are quickened and initial rage spikes are quelled. Once drone pilots are swapped out for elite Summerkind then the Cancellation will be ready to engage; until then it will maintain its distance - something its Imperial Engine allows it to do even in deep void.
The ships of the great empires are, by traditional definitions, blind and deaf. They have no scanners, no computer-assisted modelling programs, no signal emitters or receivers, no ability to detect life signs or lack thereof. Nothing more than Biomantic eyeballs being placed against Ultramateriel telescopes. You can, in fact, hide from the warfleets of the Endless Azure Skies by painting your warships black and turning off all the lights.
But that's where divination comes in. Blind and deaf though the ships of the Skies and Shogunate might be, through communion with the Gods they are able to consistently place themselves into the same broom closets as their enemies. This is powerful sorcery, but brute force: on the one hand, the infinity of space is condensed into a single certainty, on the other, you are not provided with any detail of what you will find at the other end, only with the directions on how to get there and the certainty of a battle at its conclusion.
This has a curious effect when a fleet seeking engagement hunts a ship that seeks to escape. Against primitives the entire fleet might deploy in perfect order around its quarry, but against an enemy working its own acts of prophecy then the strands of fate become entangled. The prey's prophecy tells it that in the future if it goes to this point it will be engaged by the entire enemy fleet; the hunters prophecy then has to change to account for the fact that the prey knows they know, but then the prey's prophecy has to take into account that the hunters know they know they know, and so forth. Presuming the relevant war gods do not hold particular malice or love towards one side or another, this results in a stalemate that must be solved with a sort of bidding.
The aggressor fleet performs the divination, gets a null result from Mars, and determines that there cannot be an engagement on the terms it desires. So it splits off a task force, commits it to going to one of the possible battleground areas, and then it performs the ritual again. This process continues until the fleet has split up sufficiently that the balance of powers has become if not even then within the range of possibility; at that point the gods bring the comparably matched forces together for their fated clash.
So it is that there is no surprise for either side when the Plousios and the Cancellation of Florence Nightingale leave the Deep Void to arrive in the suburban Archer-12 system at the same time. The Archer Constellation is one of many star clusters that has been rearranged so that it forms a constellation visible from Capitas; according to the grand plan of the Endless Azure Skies this entire cluster is to be transformed into a militarized bulwark, a multi-system stellar fortress that can anchor multiple civilian sectors. That is many centuries in the future; right now, Archer-12 is a scattering of luxury mansions, and an archaeological site with a few scattered research bases across the system hard at work on important questions like 'did we destroy these planets/civilizations?' and 'why?'. A dull red sun burns low, unseeded by the stellar macrocytes that make the stars of the Endless Azure Skies burn blue and violet - the star is too small and weak, it needs to be upgraded by fusion with another star before it has the dignity and brightness to be worth seeding. Somewhere in the distant horizon the machinery will be underway to redirect the relevant stellar objects.
The Cancellation is twice the length of the Plousios, and modern: ships of this era are ridiculously large and over-designed, temples to cost blowouts and gold-plating, stuffed full of cutting edge systems and optimized for parade duty and saber rattling. An evolution on the traditional Warsphere design, behold: the Spike-Sphere. Shaped as though a grape had been stuck through the centre with a toothpick, the spike extending out evenly in both directions. The forward part of the spike is an energized blade, the theoretical answer to the ramming techniques that Imperial vessels use to such great effect against Azura warspheres in the Battle of the Trinary Stars. By rotating precisely, the theory goes, the Warsphere will be able to wield this massive blade like a sword, cutting apart enemy vessels as they approach. The aft part of the spike is a massive Imperial-style plasma engine, almost skeletally exposed and vulnerable but giving the Spike-Sphere Imperial acceleration in deep void.
To add vulnerability to vulnerability, this section is also covered in massive nacelles filled with plasma torpedoes. Historically such armories present points of critical vulnerability in Azura formations, requiring fleets to baby their vulnerable munitions trucks. The Spike-Sphere solves that particular issue by making the entire 'tail' disposable; a detonation chain reaction will destroy the entire Engine spike but inflict minimal damage on the central Warsphere itself. In fact, detaching the tail might be a deliberate decision by the Captain: breaking the spherical shape causes a massive reduction in the effectiveness of the Grav-Rail drive, limiting the Spike-Sphere's maneuverability. If the tail is detached or destroyed then the Spike-Sphere will gain a massive increase in agility to help it win its current engagement.
The final aspect in this equation is the massive carrier bays on the Spike-Sphere's central structure. Carrier operations have been out of fashion for a while, but Liquid Bronze is bringing them back. A massive, forward projected fighter screen works to prevent speculative attacks against the vulnerable tail and prevent flanking. Together this makes the Cancellation alone a hybrid of all the strengths of Imperial and Azura designs, a fleet unto itself, the herald of a new age for the Endless Azure Skies. As a fun little aside, it would be utterly defenseless against an enemy that had access to starship teleportation, as they would be able to detonate its expensive tail with impunity - but then, this generation of warships is not designed to fight primitives. It is the final answer to problems of the last war, as represented by the Plousios.
(One might wonder what the point of all of this is compared to the traditional Azura answer of 'just bring another Sphere filled with ammunition'. Well, to answer that question one must consider that Warspheres have been destroyed often enough to lose their intimidation factor; they are known quantities and tactics against them have been perfected. But this? Fear of this new face of war will propel the Endless Azure Skies into a new age.)
The Angelshark lurks in the shadow of the fourth planet; it is an ambush predator and will only be effective if it has the advantage of surprise. Two slipgates in the system provide a flow of civilian shipping to render this a functional, if not prosperous, outpost. Right now the Cancellation is holding its ground at a distance - a stall. The fighter screens are currently being flown by drones while the Summerkind eggs are quickened and initial rage spikes are quelled. Once drone pilots are swapped out for elite Summerkind then the Cancellation will be ready to engage; until then it will maintain its distance - something its Imperial Engine allows it to do even in deep void.