Character and Ship Sheets: 
Name: Rear Admiral Aden Wander
Race: Human
Augmentics: Advanced neuro-link, datajacks along spine, full-sensory VR interface, vitae-rejoo treatments.
Rank: Rear Admiral
Alias: “Master of the Bazaar”
Physical Description:
Aden Wander, from all outward appearances, appears to be a young human man barely at the age of 21 with blonde hair that is always ragged-looking no matter how much grooming is invested and sharp blue eyes. What isn’t immediately evident at first glance is that Wander is a recipient of rejuve treatments, the fact he is really twice his age hidden under a face that is uncannily smooth and unblemished, and a body more sculpted than born of exertion.

Personality: Hedonistic, womanizing, cheerful, and frequently bored. Aden avidly pursues whatever form of pleasure and excitement he finds suits his fancy at the moment, before discarding it and seeking new amusements. Yet while he considers the job of logistics to be one of his games, its one he is never bored of and is solidly good at it. A logistical logjam is not a disaster to him, its a challenge to rise to and defeat by any means possible. Solidly thinks that actual frontline warfare is someone else’s problem, and lets his subordinates take charge whenever combat comes to him, although he doesn’t panic under fire either.

Personal History:
House Wander is a middling noble house charged with being custodians for the four moons orbiting a gas giant at the Vos system turned over to being pleasure world resorts and home to significant elements of the royal bureaucracy, as well as holding high-level positions in the bureaucracy at Throne. While this grants the House considerable “soft power” among the aristocracy, they have historically been unambitious and infallibly loyal, barring the degrees of recreational hedonism shared throughout the family line. This in turn has made the power and position of House Wander an unusual constant in the tumult of aristocratic politics. Houses may rise and fall with the fortunes of trade and war, but House Wander is already there to keep the bureaucracy and kingdom chugging along regardless of kings or lords.

For those of the House who join the military, as many do given the rather prolific breeding of heirs and grandchildren, the majority end up in the kingdom’s logistics and rear-echelon units both out of connections (The current head of the Bureau of Logistics is Augustus Wander, along with several department heads also being Wanders or branch-family relations) and because their abilities are better suited for the tasks of maintaining supply lines, bases of communication, and supporting the fleet. Such was the case for Aden Wander, who while lacking in aggression and personal martial ability had a mind for figures and numbers. Quickly rising in the ranks of the rear-echelon units out of innovative thinking in organization and ensuring reliability of tenuous supply lines even at the heights of the Arius Crusade. For his continuous reliability Aden was assigned to the Crucible and command of one of Valyrius’ precious Artificer-class Strategic Fleet Auxiliaries after the death of its previous master and some clever maneuvering by his House to cement their control over a second of the grand industrial ships.



IC Sample: WIP

Ship Name: Crucible
Ship Nickname: “The Bazaar”
Ship Type: HSR4 Artificer-class Strategic Fleet Auxiliary Ship
Semi-Sentience Profile: A cold and robotic logistics AI governs the Crucible’s factories and repair yards. No emotion, no empathy, only a relentless pursuit of completion of quotas and objectives. Despite its near-uselessness as a combat adviser, with only rote combat plans tending to result in extremely high casualties, the Crucible’s S-AI is a master at coordinating interstellar logistics of an entire fleet given enough data, ships, and time. Recently it seems to be developing a sense of sarcasm.

Escort Ships:

Valiant Servant, Gravitas Express, Bishop of Plenty (Grace-class HSR 2.5 Auxiliary Tender)
The Grace-class auxiliary tender line is a mass-produced multipurpose fleet support ship 1.5 km long, with spacious ventral cargo bays that can be used to haul enough supplies for a battle squadron one journey, return home with a field hospital full of wounded the next, and return to the front carrying fighters as a improvised support carrier or shuttles full of engineers for damage control assistance. While lacking in hull strength or direct-fire weapons besides point-defenses, these ships form a critical logistical backbone of the fleet inbetween or even during battles. Valiant Servant, Gravitas Express, and Bishop of Plenty are directly attached to the Crucible as part of the Just-In-Time Resupply Doctrine, commanded by captains Maxwell Raynar, Collet Minako, and Andrei Tyrosian respectively.

R-96, Fury (Rook-class HSR 2 Escort Gunboat Frigates)
The Rook is a heavy defense frigate, designed for planetary or slow escort roles that don’t require much mobility. What it lacks in acceleration and maneuvering power is made up with heavy armor and multiple laser batteries that can be dialed up or down as needed to fight strike craft or cruisers. The service history of the Rook-class as a whole is characterized by ruggedness under fire, all guns blazing up until the end of the battle or their reactor is destroyed. Two veteran Rooks are assigned to protect the Crucible at all times, R-96 under Kapitan Adolfine Strasse, a hardened veteran of the martial Strasse family, and Fury led by Captain Claus Wander, Rear Admiral Wander’s younger brother.


Ship Details/History:
Just as rare and strategically important as the battlecruisers and battleships of the Royal Navy are the precious few Fleet Auxiliaries capable of maintaining them. Each of them worth entire fleets of lesser freighters, tenders, and transports that would otherwise be required to maintain the starships of the Valyarian Kingdom in its far-distant campaigns. More than once during the Dark Ages, crusades and wars have been launched to recover even the broken hulks of these logistical juggernauts, and for the secrets they retain.

The Crucible is one of five Artificer Class Strategic Fleet Auxiliaries of the Kingdom, a mobile four-winged fleet starbase six kilometers long from end to end. Combining the assets of a starbase to an ancient FTL drive to enable it to follow fleets where they need support.

These mobile fleet bases have been the linchpin of several campaigns in the past, including the Arian Jihad where the presence of an Artificer at hand was often the most pivotal factor in whether a battlegroup was successful in taking and holding a world against the enemy. The logistical superiority they provided and the decisive capture of Arius’ only Artificer played a major role in the warlord’s eventual demise, said to have shortened the war by three years according to fleet analysts.

Yet for all its strategic importance, the Crucible itself had not earned fame nor glory unto itself in the war, given its rear-lines role and irreplaceable nature. This in turn resulted in the Crucible being a handy dumping ground for well-connected noble’s heirs to valuable to die, second-rate conscripts, unambitious officers, black marketeers, and third and fourth sons of little remarkable ability. Under the command of Rear Admiral Aden Wander during the war, this motley crew was turned into one of the finest engineering forces of the kingdom, as well as also its most decadent. Rather than curb the growing excesses of his crew, Aden instead codified, regulated, and set up an entire sub-section of the Crucible towards the growing black market to turn it into a open fleet bazaar. Adding being site of R&R to the logistic ship’s growing resume as Bazaar grew into promenades and red light districts and luxury noble clubs, and the Crucible gradually became a mobile one-stop station for a fleet in need of all the facilities of home close to the front.

With the new campaign declared despite the previous war only just coming to a conclusion, the importance of the Crucible and its fellow Artificers would only grow further. 

Especially as the Crucible has been designate the Royal Flagship of the King in remote of Throne.


- population: 125,000 crew, variable aprox-200,000 assorted civilians, logistics and administration staff, industrial workers.
- primary weapons: 
The Crucible is not a frontline warship, but an Artificer is still a HSR4 class vessel. Albeit better classed as a mobile starbase than a dreadnought of the wall. What it lacks in mobility, it possesses heavy plasma beam cannons, torpedo tubes, and gun batteries.

-fleet function: Task Force Logistics ship. The Crucible serves as a mobile repair yard, a factory for munitions manufacturing, a hub of logistics administration and coordination, and rest stop for tired crews with onboard “creature comforts districts” for an entire task force.

Major attractions of the Crucible’s Recreation Decks: WIP, coming soon.

Major Officers and Notable Personnel
“The Tac Witch” Chief Tactical Officer, Commander Melanie Hawthorne: Melanie is a woman of paradoxes. Outwardly an elegant and very full-figured angel incarnate, she is in charge of the Crucible’s systems and coordinating its defenses. A job she takes to with almost disturbing gusto, rejoicing in the deaths of the enemy at the hands of her weapons in the most creative ways possible, which was why she was eventually removed from the front. While her behavior can be solidly classified as sadism, Wander reigns in and redirects her excesses and she is a remarkable gunner regardless of her “hobbies” belowdecks or in her quarters.

“The Witch’s Pet” Lieutenant Commander Daren Conway: Subordinate officer to Commander Hawthorne, serving as the Crucible’s E-War and battlespace management officer and primary link to the ship’s AI. A not-so-closet masochist, and frequently the recipient of his superior officer’s “affections”. Regardless of their off-duty activities, Daren and Melanie are a very well synchronized duo who make surprisingly good use out of the Crucible’s armament for an auxiliary.

“The Fox” Chief Administrator Otsune Wakahisa: The head of the attached royal bureaucrat logistics administration division is a seemingly young woman with fox ears and tail. Disguising the fact she is pushing 70 years of age with heavy-duty rejuve treatments and has earned the right to dress and act the way she does because of her extended service and high ranking and pull in the Imperial bureaucracy to ensure supplies run smoothly and all the spoils of war properly tallied. Not-so-unofficially one of Aden Wander’s mistresses, although its more of a recurring workplace fling among similar ranking persons than a serious relationship or act of patronage from either of them.