Example Ship

This article covers is discussing a medium-sized Asevla warship with the intent to use it as a demonstration of the principles of Asevla shipbuilding.

History and Design
The Portentous Sentinel was originally birthed as a supporting vessel with the idea of it eventually becoming an independent scout ship to patrol for heretic factions and deal with smaller threats. By the time of the war against the alliance, it had eventually morphed into a main-line warship which retained its superior sensory capabilities.

The Portentous Sentinel is currently about 0.8 kilometers long and has a weight of about 50,000,000 tons.

Skin
Since the ship has a focus in scouting, roughly half of its skin is sensory skin which is covered in a variety of sensors. As is usual for biotechnology, these sensors detect light, heat, electrical impulses, and the use of dominion. The sensors have more trouble detecting things like radiation and magnetism, but they are capable of detecting those as well. This skin is sensitive in more ways than one, and leaves the ship vulnerable to weapons fire.

A third of the ship is covered in drone-producing skin, which consists of a series of pores each contain a drone. Many of these are combat drones with a handful of scouting, maintenance, and support drones as needed. These drones are roughly the size of a mechtech fighter. Each pore is responsible for the maintenance of a single drone, and it can manufacture a replacement if the drone is destroyed. Each pore is covered with a single diamond scale that can lift to release the drone and then close again to protect the ship.

Most of the remaining skin consists of armored skin, which covers the most vulnerable areas of the ship. Armored skin is mostly a diamond matrix embedded in carbon nanofiber interwoven with repair systems and tissue designed to spread out the energy of an attack as much as possible and then absorb it with as little damage to the ship as possible.

Mouth & Womb
The mouth of the ship serves as the primary entry and egress for large materials. This is where it takes in bulk quantities of biomass and where it can dock smaller ships. When the ship is building a smaller ship, it will expand this region and fill it with water, then begin helping a new ship grow and develop. Small drones will attend the ship and the water will be filled with nutrients drawn from the ship's stored biomass. During this time, the womb can take in small ships as visitors, and it will grow a second mouth to take in biomass.

Amplifiers
The ship hosts 3 amplifiers: a large one on the nose and a pair of medium-sized ones to either size. While many ships only sport one or two amplifiers, having three allows this ship to handle a variety of problems at once. These amplifiers are not particularly specialized, so they will be able to accommodate whatever Asevla crewperson is needed for the situation at hand.

Cannons
The ship features a respectable arsenal of 5 heavy cannons and 54 light cannons. Three of the heavy cannons are heat cannons, using energy dominion to concentrate heat energy on the target to destroy it. These are comparable to mechtech laser cannons, though without the dispersal effect. While these cannons are effective at harnessing spirit to destructive ends, they serve a dual-purpose by channeling heat out of the ship into their blasts. Due to the use of spirit required for this to happen, this is not the preferred method of dealing with heat buildup. But it will serve to handle heat while the fins are retracted and if they get destroyed.

The other two heavy cannons are electrical, and they have capacitors which use authority to concentrate the electrical charge that builds up from the warp core. These cannons can fire this energy at other ships. While electrical cannons can easily dish out a lot of electrical energy quickly, once their stores are depleted they become less effective unless the ship is hit with more electrical energy it needs to dissipate.

The light cannons are a mixture of all types. They have paired heat and cold cannons where the cold cannon damages with freezing temperatures as it pulls head from the target and then passes that energy onto the paired heat cannon to ensure that thermal energy remains at a proper equilibrium. Other cannons fire directional gravity waves that can pierce armor, psychic bombardments that can confuse mental systems and even people, as well as (insert all other kinds of weaponry here). However,

Quarters
The ship has roughly 1,200 Asevla crew who need a space to store their items and sleep. The quarters provides for this need. Each crewman gets a personal room that is attached to a main hallway. If they are occupying their room, it inflates to full size. While they are gone, it compacts to miniaturize. This ensures that every Asevla gets a personal space to maintain morale, while still making best use of the limited space on the ship. The Ganch gain no comfort or utility from having their own personal quarters and thus aren't assigned any.

Fins
Ships build up massive amounts of heat, and they dump that heat through massive fins. Fins look similar to the fins on earth fish, or to insect wings. The stronger the ship's power core, the larger the area of fins that are needed to dump the heat. Fins glow, usually a single color, but occasionally in multiple colors. And they can be designed in any number of shapes, with minimal impact on efficiency.

The Portentous Sentinel is a warship, and instead of the large, beautiful fins of a civilian vessel, it features the numerous small fins of a warship. Fins are the most fragile part of any ship, and they're usually folded against the ship during combat to reduce the ship's profile (heat buildup is instead handled by the ship's heat cannons). Military ships prefer to meet their cooling needs through high numbers of fins so that they have redundancy. Even so, fins are the easiest and cheapest part of a ship to regrow.

Fin Signalling

Describe how fin color and style is very arbitrary, and what fin colors can mean. This will take place when I figure that out. Probably shift colors to signal various things, while set patterns identify the specific ship.

Movement Generator
The Portentous Sentinel uses force dominion to move, specifically by levitation.

Ultramind
The Portentous Sentinel has a large ultramind located near the front of the ship that coordinates telepathically with the other ultraminds on the ship. While the ship does have a nervous system, it is too large to efficiently transmit data efficiently through the neurons. Telepathy is the preferred method. The central ultramind is also responsible for communicating with ultraminds outside the ship, such as on other ships or on planets.

Command Center
The command center on the Portentous Sentinel is located next to the central ultramind, as it is on most ships. This is where the senior command staff meets and controls the ship. The command center has dedicated pathways to the ship's amplifiers. The senior command staff are typically the most skilled in magic as well, and so they need to get to their stations quickly in case of an emergency. The senior staff also have dedicated quarters nearby so in an alert they can be where they need to be as soon as possible.

Power Center
Has a steady portal to warp open at all times to generate power. This generates heat and electricity. This also handles the transition to warp.

Mouth
The mouth is the main entry and egress from the ship for large materials, the equivalent to a docking bay on a mechtech ship. This is where smaller ships are launched from as well as where supplies are taken in. If the ship processes asteroids, this is where they are broken down. Sometimes, the mouth doubles as the point of egress for ships under construction.

Womb
Making a new ship requires an even larger ship to make it. Like virtually every Asevla ship, the Portentous Sentinel is able to produce organisms as needed. The womb is that area; it takes biomass directly from the mouth and turns it into usable organisms.

When it is time to produce a new ship, the Portentous Sentinel expands its womb to the size needed, producing a massive bulge, and fills that bulge with water and nutrients. Tender drones aid the new organism in its growth so it develops quickly and well.

Gravity Generator
The ship will generate its own gravity, using force Dominion. The gravity generator is a hollow sphere that draws everything to it. Further force domion warps the shape of the gravity well to fit the layout of the ship, usually making it ovoid rather than purely spherical, as well as making the gravity fairly uniform throughout the ship but dropping off shortly outside the ship's skin. As a result, the ship's floors are laid out like an onion.

Heart
Inside the hollow gravity generator will be an area known as the ship's heart. This comes in two parts. First is the fleshy part, the muscles that pump blood throughout the ship.

But the heart is more than that, it's also the spiritual center of the ship, functioning as a temple, garden, park, and general area to rest and relax. Since the heart is located inside the gravity generator, "down" is away from the center of the ship, toward the shell surrounding it. Thus, you have a small, spherical park area where anyone can look up and see the beating heart. Passages through the gravity generator accomodate the shift in the pull of gravity.

Most heart areas are filled with as natural creatures as the Asevla can acquire, and are areas of beauty and peace. Children play, people meditate and worship, and weary souls find their rest. The heart is the main area responsible for spirit generation on the ship, and a ship with a good heart will eventually become extremely powerful. To that end, Asevla are expected to keep their actions pure while in the heart of ship, because the polluting aspects of sin are that much more potent there.

Blood Vessels
Though biotech organisms are far removed from ordinary creatures, ships still have something approaching a traditional circulatory system. The blood is responsible for moving everything through the ship that can be broken down into small enough pieces, be it calories, air, nutrients, or even organisms small enough to fit in the vessels. Some ships have major vessels big enough for asevla to fit in, though the high pressure requires protective gear to survive. Ganch often to wear specialized pressure suits and do much of their work inside the blood vessels. The blood vessels also are the primary means by which heat is shuttled from the power center to the fins.

Shield Generator
All asevla ships that travel through warp use a shield to protect them. This is a repeater using the barrier spell from the force domain to protect the ship from both the hazards of warp. Military ships usually have even stronger shields to protect them from attackers.