Imperium Aeternum - Rome Amongst the Stars

[Czernobog]

Okay, starting this with an article:

The Deus Bellum - Pride of the Roman Fleet

The ISNV Deus Bellum is the pride of the Imperial Stellar Navy, and consequently the Roman Empire. It is a dagger shaped ship, 20 miles long and 3 wide, its superstructure and armour covered in marble and engraved with sculptures of gods and heroes. The deities Minerva, goddess of strategy and intelligent war, and Mars, god of warfare, stand watch over it, personified by massive statues on the prow that are hundreds of feet high. There is also an equestrian statue of Admiral Marcus Brutus Augustus (the last name being a cognomen granted by the Emperor Flavius Julius Caesar), the ship's first Captain.

The actual crew of the Deus Bellum is restricted to bridge officials, Marines, and maintenance crew, as most of the work is done by semi-intelligent AIs, who are the ones that actually fire the weapons, operate the sensors, and run the engines in lieu of a human crew, the bridge officers giving instructions to the AIs like 'fire on this sector of the system' or 'change course and move to ramming speed', with human Marines providing security and technicians maintaining the systems. Even so, some tasks are completely automated, such as the firing of point-defence weapons and the launching of drone fighters.

The Deus Bellum has many weapons, such as plasma-cannons, ion projectors, and the ever-deadly hundred-strong swarms of Lucifer semi-intelligent thermo-atomic missiles. It also has an electronic warfare suit, including semi-sentient viruses that wreak havoc in enemy ships (detonating reactors, removing shields, etc.) and can break through practically any firewall or electronic defence, and active jammers to blind and confuse the enemy's augur-machines and FTL detectors. It also has many layers of force-fields and energy-shields to protect the ship from anything up to a micrometeorite to a 30-teraton warhead, as well as firewalls and triple-redundant systems to protect against electronic warfare.

It moves in space using a gravitic drive - essentially, it creates a minor gravity-well in front of the ship, moving it forward, although torch drive is also present if this fails. Such mastery of gravity also gives it a comfortable gravity level of 1 G throughout all sections of the vessel. It is powered by six massive cold-fusion reactors, giving it immense amounts of power. It has inertial damping systems, to enable it to move at high speeds.

It is not without its weaknesses. While it dominates any battle, its fame also leads roving pirate or techno-barbarian (or indeed, Midgardr) bands to attempt to capture or destroy it. Its size also makes it less manoeuvrable, and it has been badly damaged due to this on multiple occasions. But it has never been captured or destroyed, and thus the legend of its invincibility lives on.

[Mobius 1]

I wonder if we did a thread composition analysis by author for this forum and the next, what percentage would be just Kamin and what portion of that percentage could easily be combined into a tenth of those threads - the themes aren't exactly different and a single starship does not a universe make. Maybe it'd be simpler to just have a Kamin dump thread.

[Artemis]

Agreed. Kamin, can we get a brochure or at least a "pitch" for this 'verse?

[Somes J]

I agree that something like a "Kamin's thought bin" thread might not be a bad idea. Kamin, you obviously have a lot of ideas and that's not a bad thing, but maybe it would be better to have a dedicated thread where you post all the stuff that pops into your head, and then later you can pick and choose whatever ideas you think you might develop more to start dedicated discussions on.

If nothing else, it would stop other people complaining about your threads cluttering the forum.