** DESIGNER: GLENN HOEPFNER **
YESTERDAY GALAXY
ROYAL BIJOU REGAL SHIPS
(YGR4.1) BIJOU HEAVY CRUISER WITH THREE COMMON CROWNS AND ONE WARP CROWN
The Bijou Heavy Cruiser, outfitted with three Common Crowns and one Warp Crown, was tasked primarily with exploration and resource collection. Still, the Bijou Heavy Cruiser was armed with two powerful Black Hole Shotguns and an array of Phaser-2’s, so it could defend itself when necessary. While the original Bijou Heavy Cruiser was limited in maximum speed, it later received a Refit which added additional Warp Engines, APR, Hull, and an expanded Bridge.
BACKGROUND:
Like most sentience, there have been rulers, kings, emperors, etc. The Bijou are no different.
The Bijou, however, were ecologic paranoids. For a brief period in their time-line, the Bijou tampered with energy productions that, shortly thereafter, began to pollute their atmosphere. The King put an end to that but compromised with the science community and allowed an island far from the mainland to continue their experiments in isolation.
That island eventually proved that burning non-replenishable resources were too damaging to the environment.
However, all those efforts were not in vain. Replenishable resources (wind, hydro, thermal, magnetic, solar and a few others) were developed to advance the Bijou into a new era of development. That, and a startling discovery that took decades to decipher and reverse engineer.
Buried deep in the soft grounds of the volcanic swamps was a 1700 yr old Alien Starship. It was an absolutely wreck, most of everything was useless, un-identifiable components rotted out, the hull was nearly completely deteriated, but there were a few clues left over for the scientist that led them to several conclusions (some that were completely false).
• They discovered the relic was not from the planet.
• They discovered how anti-gravity works.
• They concluded that this long ago visitor tried but could not land on a planet, therefore, landing on planets was not a safe thing to do.
The Bijou are also paranoid survivalists. Anything considered risky is frowned upon. In many instances, this paranoia resulted in the commitment failure to develop certain technologies. Even when air flight was used, it was out of sheer necessity. Since the King (of virtually any time period) of Bijou was the only ruler, and since the people were often treated well, and since any drama between baronies were usually resolved diplomatically, there was no real cause for war or prolonged conflict. The Bijou were good with policing, but not warfare. Finding the Alien Starship suddenly made them very paranoid.
Using primarily clean energy, they created new technology to help them develop orbital platforms and lunar bases (the alien technology assisted greatly in constructing space elevators to haul cargo to orbit cleanly).
Engineers were able to extrapolate enough information from the Alien wreck to design their own ships (but budget constraints never let them build enough for more than a one last stand to defend their home). Modules (crown jewels) were created to specialize any ship for a specific mission.
The Royal Bijou Regal is a Minor Empire set in the Yesterday Galaxy. They are located adjacent to the Commonwealth and The Triangle.
BIOLOGY:
They are simple homo-sapien types (two arms, two legs) who resemble slightly of the tellerites of the federation empire. Their chief focus is personal survival and (after the discovery of the crashed alien ship) defense. The young are predominately black furred, and they grow older, blue furred and the elder are black furred. They do possess extractable claws on their feet and their hands for defensive combat. In space combat, they do not board other ships unless it is deemed safe (they are what they are) and they are furious when they are boarded. None of their ships have been successfully captured (perhaps because they never ever ventured far from their home world with some exceptions, but even then . . .).
The Bijou are extremely defensive in nature, but greatly fearful of what they do not know.
TIMELINE:
Year X1: Completed construction of the one and only drydock the Bijou will ever have. Shortly after, a few sub-light cargo ships (about 3 a year) were built for colonization of the local planets.
Year X11: Finally got funding for construction of the first interstellar-capable starship, based on the premise of the discovery of the 1700 year old relic
Year x16: Presented as a gift to all the people of Bijou for their protection, the King presents the newly built base hull of “CIX-Sovereignty”. CIX representing the 59th ruling King in the new era.
Year X22: The second base hull “CX-Entrepreneur” begins construction after many financial delays due to parliament debates.
Year x29: Ground construction of Crown Jewels begin, mostly cargo variants for deep space colonization. Sovereignty prepares for its first deep space mission (past the nearby star cluster that proved to be mostly lifeless).
Year X30: Sovereignty leaves in the direction soon to be known as “No Man’s Land”, otherwise known to the rest of the galaxy as “The Triangle”
Year X33: Sovereignty is assumed to have been destroyed. The last communications received two years prior was, “… what appears to be a distress . . . entering dark region in minutes. Sensors are erratic . . . crew moral.”
Year X34: Improved Crown Jewels ordered, delaying “Entrepreneur” even further. Designs for improved warp engines (33% better) underway but won’t be ready for at least a decade.
Year X36: Construction of first FRD underway, allowing drydock to concentrate on building instead of maintenance and repair of local traffic.
Year X38: FRD finished (Named “Squire of Bijou”, or Squire for short), Entrepreneur was completed and trial runs were successful.
Year x39: Equipped with port and starboard Jewels, Entrepreneur ventures towards no man’s land with orders not to enter any dark region or respond to distress signals (terrible decision as this ruined an opportunity to establish a first contact that same year). Entrepreneur finds the dark zone and surveys along the edge of it for a great long distance
Year X40: Entrepreneur encounters a border bouy of the Commonwealth. Parliament agrees to a third construction of the base hull.
Year x44: A third ship (CX-Poindux) was named after the reigning king who has begun to show failing health. Equipped with improved engines, crowns and exterior radiation collectors for energy recycling, if was the top of the line ship at the time. However, it was innundated with small but annoying system flaws that kept Poindux never too far from Squire until the following year.
Year x45: Entrepreneur returns with many tales and experiences. They had been in constant contact with Bijou during its long mission but it was only after they had returned and all data had been given to the science council of parliament did they begin to understand fully what was out there. Entrepreneur had a cargo crown full of relics, a data bank filled with knowledge and a crew breeming with experience and stories. Entrepreneur begins refits at Squire.
Year x48: On the nearly complete fourth ship (CX-Majestic), a new concept in warp propulsion was being implimented which theorized that by using the theorized Warp Invertion Field (yes, one theory based on a second theory), A ship could jump back several seconds in time creating a substantional tactical advantage. Small tests proved successful for the most part. Basically, what happens is once the testing platform is seconds away from activating the WIF, a second identical platform appears, then the original disappears a few seconds later. They tried to not activate the WIF when the second one appeared, but in doing so, the second immediately disappeared a few seconds later (in a manner that that looked agonizingly painful had their been a crew on board). For a very brief few seconds, there were two of the platforms.
The next step of the test was to install the WIF in Magestic. The enormous size of the WIF required an entire crown. Adjusting for the hugely increased mass (in comparison to the test platform), adjustments in the formula were made, the ship activated its WIF and promptly disappeared forever.
The Bijou, being the self-preserving people that they are, never used the technology again, destroyed all copies and materials except for the original plans (and stored those in a deep vaulted cave with all the other secrets the governement kept sealed forever. The Vault has always been called a myth.
For game purposes, this special toy should never be use because the SFB game mechanics won’t allow for inter-scenario time jumps (especially going back in time). Its more of just a historical footnote as to what happened to the star ship.
But what happened to Majestic?
Once they activated the WIF, the ship and crew didn’t notice much of anything, except suddenly all the orbital structures and ships suddenly disappeared. Then they noticed their home world they were orbiting looked as if there were no civilizations down there. As time passed, they realized they had gone back in time, not 18 minutes as calculated, but 1700 years. With their ship, there was no place to go. Transporters and shuttle craft, had not been installed yet at the time of the test. It only had a skeleton crew, a few days food supply and that’s about it. Days passed, supplies ran out and the captain had no choice but to attempt a landing somewhere on the planet, something no one has ever tried to do. It wasn’t until just seconds before the impact in the swampy marsh of the greater continent that the captain saw the irony.
“I’ll be **BEEP** ” were the last words spoken.
BJIOU RULES:
BLACK HOLE SHOTGUN (SINGULARITY DISJECTA MEMBRA):
The Bijou employ clean energy for all their technology. They also derived much of their propulsion technology from the 1700 yr old wreckage of a space ship found buried in the marsh lands.
Warp power, for the Bijou, utilizes an artificial singularity as its primary power source. Waste (extremely radioactive) is then bottled in a stasis container for future applications. The black hole material had been developed recently as an offensive material to discourage aggressive encounters.
Since its original usage, its usage has been defined with the following:
Turn 1, 2 points of energy to extract the element into a stasis compartment.
Turn 2, 1 point of energy to sustain the stasis field and prepare it for launching.
On the second turn, it can fire doing the following damage.
Damage: 7pts damage (or 3 pts on a weak hit) minus the scanner rating. If none hit a shield, +2 additional damage as the black hole material rips through the hull.
If the shot gun is damaged (one of two boxes destroyed), assume that the scanner rating is one worse than the highest undestroyed scanner box for that weapon mount only.
BATTERY CHARGING:
Under the principle of clean and re-usable energy, the Bijou integrate millions of micro-radiation collectors throughout the hull, a perfect fusion of energy collectors and ship-hull construction resulting in the ability to recharge 0.5 point of battery per turn. This would explain the Bijou prevelance for the above-average use of batteries on their ships (including the as-of-yet presentation of the Bijou Royal Guard Corvette, a SC4 single-crown patrol ship).
Natural Terrain, such as radiation fields, nebulas, planet atmospheres, but NOT dust fields, asteroids, pulsar waves (or other waves) can produce .5 power PER battery per turn.
A more detailed list of affected terrains will be presented later, but the idea is there.
CROWNS:
Crowns can be mixed and matched according to the mission.
Aft Crowns add +1/3 Movement Cost.
Royal Flag Crown adds +1/3 Movement Cost.
Addition of at least one Crown will result in a Decreased Turn Mode.
Addition of Forward Crown adds +4 Shield Boxes to Shield #1.
Addition of Port Crown adds +2 Shield Boxes to Shield #5 and +2 Shield Boxes to Shield #6.
Addition of Starboard Crown adds +2 Shield Boxes to Shield #2 and +2 Shield Boxes to Shield #3.
Addition of Aft Crown adds +4 Shield Boxes to Shield #4.
Each Crown that has a Non-Weapon System adds +2 Crew Units and +1 Boarding Party.
