-- RIGEL KENTAURUS SHIPYARDS // MOUSETRAP SKUNKWORKS CIC --
-- MONARCH CLASS BATTLESHIP --
-- MARK III --


For once, in a spectacular rarity ladies and gentlemen, the Scythian Empires R&D fucked up.
Two years ago, the call was put forward to upgrade and retrofit our aging "Monarch" class battleships to a modernised standard for the escalating Immortal war - the plans put forward to Rigel Kentaurus shipyards and the FTL institute on the homeworld - but for some reason, that plan was copied - and another version sent to the Skunkworks department operated by S.O.N.I.
Now the Mousetrap skunkworks is an R&D department, but is more aligned with reverse engineering far older technologies, from non-KINGUNDERTHEMOUNTAIN sources, dead alien worlds - wreckage from crafts belonging to other species occasionally found in deep space - never a directed project of already Scythian origin that was a revision rather than a reversion of already existing designs.
While the teams on Rigel Kentaurus worked tirelessly on how to upgrade weaponry and power requirements, the Mousetrap Skunkworks moved in another direction - using newer civilian based compounds to lighten and strengthen armour plating, While Rigel K's teams worked on the new Tri-barrel laser point defense turrets, Mousetrap worked on older wreckage to develop faster weapon mounting servos - why increase firepower when you could simply track targets faster and with more accuracy?
Rigel Kentaurus focused on more shield power, while Mousetrap instead worked on heightening the resistance of already existing shields - based off of the technologies they already had at their disposal - Rigel Kentaurus moved towards bigger engines, Mousetrap instead refined those engines.
And then, at the end of their two years - BOTH plans hit the admiralty depolyment couincil at the same time, neither teams knew the other existed and the admiralty had a headache on their hands.
So in the end, the Admiralty took both works into consideration, and ordered both teams to be combined and given KINGUNDERTHEMOUNTAIN resources to figure out the next generation of the Monarch class.
The end result was the not so inspirational named Monarch Mark-III
Larger and refined power plants, combining the best elements of both overhauls directed into higher-resistance shields with the Rigel developed high-capacity shields as a backup, the ship utilizes the higher-tensile Armour from Mousetrap backed with an intertwined honeycomb of support braces from Rigel.
The weapons mounts are from Mousetrap, utilizing faster turret speeds while the loadouts remain the same, but they are now backed up with Rigel Kentaurus based Tri-laser cannons for point defence - the Monarch Mark-III is only just rolling out of Rigel Kentaurus shipyards and onto the front lines.
May the enemies of Scythia feel fear in their bones when the Maidens of Scythia come to claim their souls for the underworld.