Keltrian Ships

Wheelships
Wheelships had been used by the Keltrians to venture into different galaxies.

In space, the wheelships did look like a toroid-shaped wheel that had been mounted on the central axis or the central arm of a long skinny letter 'H'. The habitat spun on a spindly looking framework attached to the axis to generate the basic gravity effects. Magic was used to make gravity feel consistent, depending on which level of the ship you were located in. The inner axle area and arms of the frame had no gravity.

The main engine assemblies were mounted on the ends of the arms of the 'H' and slightly beyond the body of the habitat ring. Manoeuvring assemblies were studded down the arms. The engines were looked after by the small multi-purpose droids that the ships SAI controller.

Because the Hydrazine that was used as fuel was deadly to magical people, they couldn't service the engines directly. If the Keltrians needed to access the arms, they used a transporter. To be honest, they didn't know a hell of a lot about how the ship worked either, as long as it did.

The habitat consisted of sixteen annulus shaped sections that were capable of independent flight should the ship suffer a catastrophe. The SAI controllers were designed with several redundancy systems should one be damaged, so each section had its own hive mind.

Each section was skinnier on the inside (the top if on the ground) than the base. The 60m square top was rounded into a concave curve along its length and width to a depth of 15m where the 15 wide magnetic rails were set into the centre groove that connected to the hub.

The two sides that were exposed to space and the base had convex curves. The circumference of the base before it curved to form the outer hull was 100m square. The other two sides were flat so they could join to the next sections. Each section was close to 60m from its highest point on what was the hub connection to the square of the base that made the floor of the hanger bay.

Level 1 was the greenhouse. It was effectively the innermost ring of the torus and the greenhouses were divided into two halves. Each was roughly 25m at the highest point, 25m wide and divided into four 15m lengths. Under the 15m wide section that spun around the hub were work areas and access to the lower levels.

The ceiling for want of a better word was interspaced sections of material like the Oznglass and hull sections on late twenty-first Earth ships. They used the glassed areas as gardens for their fresh foods and propagating seedlings that they were to disperse on a new planet.

Level 2 was the control room, offices, labs and food processing rooms for the greenhouses.

Levels 3 to 5 were sleep quarters and amenities for the inhabitants. Personal storage and dry-food storage were also scattered as required on these levels.

Level 6 and 7 were the hibernation chambers for the crews. They were used between stops at a posable planet they could terraform or upgrade to meet their standards. They could also be used to house settlers that transported to the ships from the homeworlds.

Level 8 were labs and storage. Hibernation chambers for some of the animals and storage of other genetic material were also stored on this level.

Level 9 were workshops, labs and mostly storage. The transporter ring was also normally found on this level.

Levels 2 to 5 were roughly 3m high with 1m high crawl spaces between them. Levels 6 to 9 were a metre higher to accommodate the chambers and storage areas.

Level 10, was the outermost level. If you could walk until you got back to where you started on this level, you covered just short of 1.6km. The curved outer most section under the hanger bay had four small drive engines for emergencies.

The hanger level was 25m high. The smaller shuttles, which the Keltrians used when exploring new systems bay were stored here. 20m above the floor was a small mezzanine floor that gave access to the internal levitation tubes and stairs that took you to the other levels.

When joined together double sets of doors and interlocking pressurisation rooms let you into other sections of the ship. They had to be sealed in an emergency so the sections could break apart. Other access doors to space were located centrally on each space side of levels 2 and 10.

Over many thousands of years, the Ketrians scoured the universe to find planets they could use or terraform for their populations. As they travelled, they often stopped to rest and to carry out the terraforming process on a world. Some stayed long enough to leave a generation behind to monitor the new world.

Some of the ten original wheelships lost contact with the homeworlds and became lost themselves. Some had run-ins with other objects in space and broke into their sections. If this happened, each section would try to pinpoint a suitable planet. The people on board would go into stasis and wait until the section could get them to a suitable planet if they were still alive.

If the event was truly catastrophic, like the warp engines blowing up, then the sections could get hurtled through space and for reasons too long to explain, through time. Keep in mind that time is relative to the section of space you currently inhabit. For example, the stars we see in the sky at night may not actually be there in our reference to now, today if you could take a snapshot of the universe.

A Controller (SAI) of the Wheelships and Keltrian Cities
A controller is a self-aware entity. It is part organic and part machine. They had an uncanny resemblance to sea sponges. They call themselves SAIs, as humans seem to understand the concept quicker. They live in a tank of nutrients and use a gold perforated disc about 20cm round as a connection plate to external systems.

Unlike sea sponges, they are an organic brain of sorts. The honeycombed skeletal-like sub-structure is their data-storage area, similar to a USB key, but better. A complex nerve system in the surrounding flesh connects the data to the organic brain that looked like a blob of pink jelly if you got to see it up close.

Little orange feeder tentacles on the ends of the nobly protrusions absorb the nutrients to feed the AI's brain and flesh. They can grow new parts to expand their capabilities and they can replace old matter that is then recycled. They can communicate using the Wi-Fi connections on personal communicators and the audio systems of a ship or building structure. With magical people, they could even connect to them mentally.

SAIs can live for five to ten thousand years as long as they have someone to serve, (they get bored and lonely otherwise). Before they die, they can leave spores that can spawn and inhabit the old skeletal structure and replace the flesh required to sustain the memory part of the system and access the old date from their Mothers.

However, because they were created by the Pix race, they require several high-level mages or better, with plenty of spare magical energy, to place the activation spells on the spores to get them to spawn. Each controller has its own personality.

Interestingly, an SAI controlled wheelship only displays one personality that the magicians can communicate with even though each of the sixteen sections has its own controller. Acting as a hive mind, they can multi-task on hundreds of levels. They always have female sounding voices when they do communicate.

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Keltrian Shuttles
These shuttles have a flattened, tear-shaped design for space flight. They have wings over the side engines that can be extended for flight in an atmosphere, making them very manoeuvrable. Most of them can sleep eight people comfortably between its four bedrooms.

They have a cockpit, storage, kitchen, bedrooms, lounge and dining facilities in the top level. The control equipment room, engineering and access to the engines and bulk cargo on the lower level.

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