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SONI paper On 'Horseman' sightings
The Immortal presence in Nehellenium has proven difficult to fully quantify (Bastior, 2014)(Gilapager et al, 2013). While the presence of Immortal military units in the outer arms is certainly well documented and understood (Gilapager et al, 2012)(Norse & Redman, 2012) with the estimations putting the total unit count between 200-300 vessels, of equatable strength to Destroyer vessels fielded my Nehelleniums prominent navies, only with seemingly infinite endurance. These figures are well understood due to the patent actions of these Immortal fleets, which regularly approach planets and other fleets. However the number of Immortal ships currently operating within AIA territories is entirely unknown.
The pattern of current Immortal attacks within AIA space is however understood. Immortal attacks seemingly always occur when security is at its lowest, and are always over before any response actions can be made. Often very little is left by the attackers, who employ black-hole weaponry to remove any details of their involvement, eyewitnesses have even reported Immortals turning these frightful tools upon their own, should they become disabled. Military evidence suggests a two-pronged attack is the most favoured (Karr, 2014). NATO call sign 'Ophidian' act using ion weaponry to disable targets, followed by larger vessels, NATO call sign 'Black-Jack', make rapid, devastating blows.
It was believed for some time the Immortals had larger vessels, functioning as command ships. The regularity, organisation, and timing of these attacks suggested a more numerous clandestine force was operating in AIA territories. These beliefs were recently confirmed by a report from a Monarch-Class vessel the Sebdoom operating as part of the Roadmaker initiative. The relevant section has been transcribed below.
"This was to be our last block of 15 systems before we returned to dock for supplies and reassignment. We'd been scanning systems for so long, it'd taken its toll on the crew, this is a warship, not a survey ship, so morale was low, but not a factor in the mis-jump. The jump from RM-8999 to RM-9000 was calculated based upon standard galactic gravitational constant, however the RM-9000 block was extraordinarily dense in stellar mass. Making the jump landed us in inter-stellar space, 0.57 light-years off-course.
The confrontation lasted less than a minute, upon sensors picking up the bogey, when ANSIS had marked it as unidentified with Immortal traits, we recorded as much data as we could, and then egressed. A confrontation was off the table, it was an unknown entity, and had an energy signature bloom like a Deity once it recognised our presence."
This report was the last piece of a puzzle of sightings describing a large vessel, operating from secluded and sensor dark spots. These include a report made early G.R.2015 of a Trattorian vessel making a short sighting during a joint Nebula survey, a recovered Bavarian log showing an encounter with a similar vessel outside of the Fleck system during Operation: Dominions Call, and a Praetorian Sighting made during the RM-6830 to RM-6845 block of the Roadmaker initiative.
Scans from the Sebdoom reveal a vessel of 1600 metres in length, with heavy exotic shielding, strong enough to scramble sensor signals of even a Monarch's electronic systems. Scans of the exterior, while also scrambled by an apparent jamming property of the Immortal vessel, reveal it is heavily armed, and carries extensive electronic equipment. Preliminary analysis by (Cronerson, 2015) suggests this vessel acts in a command role, and even puts forward the possibility that they may act as direct relays to the Immortals own galaxy. If so, this puts these vessels as the current top of the Immortal command chain inside Nehellenium.
NATO has designated these new vessels the 'Horseman' callsign, and has apparently flagged this term on all communication channels, suggesting this may be the first Immortal presence in Nehellenium to warrant active intervention on the part of NATO.
The Immortal presence in Nehellenium has proven difficult to fully quantify (Bastior, 2014)(Gilapager et al, 2013). While the presence of Immortal military units in the outer arms is certainly well documented and understood (Gilapager et al, 2012)(Norse & Redman, 2012) with the estimations putting the total unit count between 200-300 vessels, of equatable strength to Destroyer vessels fielded my Nehelleniums prominent navies, only with seemingly infinite endurance. These figures are well understood due to the patent actions of these Immortal fleets, which regularly approach planets and other fleets. However the number of Immortal ships currently operating within AIA territories is entirely unknown.
The pattern of current Immortal attacks within AIA space is however understood. Immortal attacks seemingly always occur when security is at its lowest, and are always over before any response actions can be made. Often very little is left by the attackers, who employ black-hole weaponry to remove any details of their involvement, eyewitnesses have even reported Immortals turning these frightful tools upon their own, should they become disabled. Military evidence suggests a two-pronged attack is the most favoured (Karr, 2014). NATO call sign 'Ophidian' act using ion weaponry to disable targets, followed by larger vessels, NATO call sign 'Black-Jack', make rapid, devastating blows.
It was believed for some time the Immortals had larger vessels, functioning as command ships. The regularity, organisation, and timing of these attacks suggested a more numerous clandestine force was operating in AIA territories. These beliefs were recently confirmed by a report from a Monarch-Class vessel the Sebdoom operating as part of the Roadmaker initiative. The relevant section has been transcribed below.
"This was to be our last block of 15 systems before we returned to dock for supplies and reassignment. We'd been scanning systems for so long, it'd taken its toll on the crew, this is a warship, not a survey ship, so morale was low, but not a factor in the mis-jump. The jump from RM-8999 to RM-9000 was calculated based upon standard galactic gravitational constant, however the RM-9000 block was extraordinarily dense in stellar mass. Making the jump landed us in inter-stellar space, 0.57 light-years off-course.
The confrontation lasted less than a minute, upon sensors picking up the bogey, when ANSIS had marked it as unidentified with Immortal traits, we recorded as much data as we could, and then egressed. A confrontation was off the table, it was an unknown entity, and had an energy signature bloom like a Deity once it recognised our presence."
This report was the last piece of a puzzle of sightings describing a large vessel, operating from secluded and sensor dark spots. These include a report made early G.R.2015 of a Trattorian vessel making a short sighting during a joint Nebula survey, a recovered Bavarian log showing an encounter with a similar vessel outside of the Fleck system during Operation: Dominions Call, and a Praetorian Sighting made during the RM-6830 to RM-6845 block of the Roadmaker initiative.
Scans from the Sebdoom reveal a vessel of 1600 metres in length, with heavy exotic shielding, strong enough to scramble sensor signals of even a Monarch's electronic systems. Scans of the exterior, while also scrambled by an apparent jamming property of the Immortal vessel, reveal it is heavily armed, and carries extensive electronic equipment. Preliminary analysis by (Cronerson, 2015) suggests this vessel acts in a command role, and even puts forward the possibility that they may act as direct relays to the Immortals own galaxy. If so, this puts these vessels as the current top of the Immortal command chain inside Nehellenium.
NATO has designated these new vessels the 'Horseman' callsign, and has apparently flagged this term on all communication channels, suggesting this may be the first Immortal presence in Nehellenium to warrant active intervention on the part of NATO.
The Immolator is an Immortal command ship. Equivalent to First-Gen dreadnoughts in size, its Immortal technology allows it to pose a lethal threat to larger Third-Gen models. Weapon systems include Sixteen Dark-Matter Flails, and twelve Black-Body Disruptors. 48 Black-Hole missiles are located in two rows along the dorsal, these are Class-TRIMEX warheads, the launch of which can only be authorised by an Immortal, and are planetary-extinction capable weapons.
While the Immolator's offensive capabilities are devastating, it's defensive ability is as battle worthy. Rather than traditional shielding, the Immolator uses an responsive gravitational projector system. Incoming weapons fire is instead redirected by a finely controlled gravitational system, strong enough to bend even electromagnetic radiation and incident laser fire, this defence system produces a rather spectacular aurora like effect when under heavy fire. Alongside this is an Immortal alloy built hull, with several layers of redundancy built in to the vessels systems. These vessels are the Immortal forces in Nehellenium direct link to the Home-worlds, and control much of the Immortal presence. They carry high-level officers and Immortal family members, who deal out orders to hundreds of vessels across the galaxy.
Propulsion is done by 5 Aerospike Vacuum Jets, capable of giving this vessel ludicrous acceleration for its size. FTL systems are entirely unknown, it is however presumed to use a similar technology to other Immortal ships so far observed.
Several vessels in the Immortal Invasion fleet (ETA N+1), outclass these vessels.
Builders Notes
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My Seventh(!) Super-Capital. And the first I've ever built in a single day, it's actually something of a record holder for me in that regard, it took 'all of' 5 hours. This was down to relatively little prototyping, about 2 hours of messing about with a few ideas before-hand. I had been hesitant about doing more Immortal stuff, as I have been fearing monopolising old factions, hence why I haven't put out anything Brittanian recently either, I don't want my designs to dominate these groups, at least in the LDDMS arena. But seeing as the Immortal War is completely DEAD (DEAD), I figured why not.
Originally I wanted to try and marry Scythes NAGA with the MISANTHROPE, and see where this went to. I threw this out relatively quickly, the rather cool quarter disc didn't fit alongside the aerospike design, ultimately the missile tubes were carried forwards, but that is about it. The original shape was to be dagger like, Hints of EVE:O's Hurricane Battlecruiser and XWTMG's Raider Star Destroyer. The dagger design wasn't producing a vessel large enough for me, so I rescaled, and decided to do something slightly more classical in build technique. I went back to a ship I'd been looking at for some time, EVE:O's Machariel. I knew I wanted a big pronounced Jet block at the back along with obviously more militaristic design.
I started at the rear and moved my way forward, there is a lot of snot at the back, with various angles used to get the plates going. The engines had a few designs, as I'd alluded to. One was based upon Scythes design, but didn't work, the other was based upon the entirely realistic and not pot inspired NUCLEAR BOMB PROPULSION SYSTEM that pops up on the history channel every so often between their busy schedule of alien content (God bless American tax dollars, giving money for scientists in need to buy weed). Once I'd settled on the Aerospike design, I built it up, the dome on the largest being an unhappy compromise, which I had hoped to cover with exhaust, but decided to post pics with its full metallic glory. The piping was an exercise in self flagellation, never again (OK, I've said THAT before). The central 'rod' was built to be a direct line from the rear of the vessel, to the forward bridge, which is tucked neatly between the two halves of the vessel, this gave me the hole in the centre, which I've been adding to recent designs of large ships, simply because if this is ever used in a brick-fic, the idea of fighters swooping through it is too awesome too turn down.
The forward sections came together easily enough, there was some messing with the angle tool, but it was relatively simple. Most of the greebling came from the intricate nature of the turrets I've designed, and those large 'spikey bits', They have a name... they're the... well I don't bloody know, this is Immortal tech, it's supposed to make the heads of mere mortals spin.
So yeah, the fastest I've ever built a Dread without scrapping it (God knows I've aborted enough dreads to make even an Irish Catholic lose faith). I have a few twisted Ideas for a larger Immortal vessel, but that would definitely be a multi-day build (Inexorable took months, so yeah). Fourth-Gens have been on my mind for some time, only one currently exists, and it is rather telling of what they would be like, which has me cautious. I'd hate to prioritise scale and make something I didn't like because of it.
Originally I wanted to try and marry Scythes NAGA with the MISANTHROPE, and see where this went to. I threw this out relatively quickly, the rather cool quarter disc didn't fit alongside the aerospike design, ultimately the missile tubes were carried forwards, but that is about it. The original shape was to be dagger like, Hints of EVE:O's Hurricane Battlecruiser and XWTMG's Raider Star Destroyer. The dagger design wasn't producing a vessel large enough for me, so I rescaled, and decided to do something slightly more classical in build technique. I went back to a ship I'd been looking at for some time, EVE:O's Machariel. I knew I wanted a big pronounced Jet block at the back along with obviously more militaristic design.
I started at the rear and moved my way forward, there is a lot of snot at the back, with various angles used to get the plates going. The engines had a few designs, as I'd alluded to. One was based upon Scythes design, but didn't work, the other was based upon the entirely realistic and not pot inspired NUCLEAR BOMB PROPULSION SYSTEM that pops up on the history channel every so often between their busy schedule of alien content (God bless American tax dollars, giving money for scientists in need to buy weed). Once I'd settled on the Aerospike design, I built it up, the dome on the largest being an unhappy compromise, which I had hoped to cover with exhaust, but decided to post pics with its full metallic glory. The piping was an exercise in self flagellation, never again (OK, I've said THAT before). The central 'rod' was built to be a direct line from the rear of the vessel, to the forward bridge, which is tucked neatly between the two halves of the vessel, this gave me the hole in the centre, which I've been adding to recent designs of large ships, simply because if this is ever used in a brick-fic, the idea of fighters swooping through it is too awesome too turn down.
The forward sections came together easily enough, there was some messing with the angle tool, but it was relatively simple. Most of the greebling came from the intricate nature of the turrets I've designed, and those large 'spikey bits', They have a name... they're the... well I don't bloody know, this is Immortal tech, it's supposed to make the heads of mere mortals spin.
So yeah, the fastest I've ever built a Dread without scrapping it (God knows I've aborted enough dreads to make even an Irish Catholic lose faith). I have a few twisted Ideas for a larger Immortal vessel, but that would definitely be a multi-day build (Inexorable took months, so yeah). Fourth-Gens have been on my mind for some time, only one currently exists, and it is rather telling of what they would be like, which has me cautious. I'd hate to prioritise scale and make something I didn't like because of it.
