The canonical fleet

What is the canonical fleet?

It is the set of basic ship chassis of Aurin, the settlers’ system. All of them come from the MMU, the technical standard inherited from the fleet. The Zenith and the Nadir, the two rival factions, build them from the same blueprints. They tell them apart only by paint and emblem.

In Aurin, a settler measures progress by two things:

• what they can fly today and could not last week;
• whether that ship is theirs alone or shared with their colony.

The Guilds, the five neutral trade organisations, rank ships in four tiers, T1 to T4. They are the same tiers they use for any other goods. Tier 1 and 2 ships belong to whoever flies them. The Starhopper is better with a colony behind it, and the corvette can only belong to a colony.

Ship	Tier	Role	Who flies it
Tortuga class	T1	General heavy transport	The whole system, the Guilds above all
Tortuga Fletera	T1.5	First chassis of one’s own	Forge Colaboradores
Tortuga “Yugo”	T2	Heavy freighter	The Forge
Tortuga “Espolón”	T2	Light assault and escort	The Vanguard
Tortuga “Refugio”	T2	Medical evacuation	The Pioneers
Starhopper	T3	Long-range exploration	The Pathfinders
Aura-class corvette	T4	Capital warship	Nobody, yet

What is the Tortuga class like?

The Tortuga-class heavy transport is the oldest and most reproduced chassis in the MMU.

• It is heavy and inelegant.
• It is almost indestructible, in one very particular sense: there are thousands of identical units scattered across the system.
• It is recognisable at a glance: it is the cargo box everyone knows.
• Its colours depend on where it is built. At El Pináculo, the Zenith station, it comes out white and gold. At El Fondeadero, the Nadir one, it comes out copper and green.

The Guilds fly it most. That is why the Tortuga has become a badge of trade before it is a badge of side. Its three best-known liveries all belong to guilds:

Livery	Operator	What it looks like	Where you see it
Sendero Verde	The Pioneers	Muted green, civilian cargo panels, no visible weapons	Settlers, seed and medical supplies between the Espejos de Rocío and Puesto Meridiano
Polvo de Kharsis	The Forge, with a strong Zenith presence	Sand and rust, heavy-cargo bracing	Ore runs between the Garganta de Sil, the Refinería Yermo and the orbits of Kharsis; the one that logs the most kilometres
Casco Carmesí	The Vanguard, shared use	Alert red, reflective stripes, proximity siren	Evacuation and rapid response in conflict zones; the only one both factions use without friction, because nobody argues with a rescue

The Pioneers are the settlers’ guild, The Forge the producers’ guild and The Vanguard the military guild. The Espejos de Rocío and Puesto Meridiano are on Ithera, the neutral planet. The Garganta de Sil and the Refinería Yermo, the great Zenith industrial complex, are on Kharsis.

What variants are there?

Four named variants come off the same chassis.

The Tortuga Fletera is the first chassis of their own that a Forge Colaborador can afford (Colaborador is a Guild’s second trust rank). Each one leaves La Fragua Baja, the Forge’s seat, with a hand-riveted plate. On it is the name its owner chose.

Hull Foreman Denna Vrol explains why with a line from her mentor, Torvun Ekes, the guild’s leader: “Torvun says a ship with no name is just scrap that hasn’t made up its mind to fall yet.” Vrol talked Ekes into the guild needing a cheap chassis. She teaches the build herself, because “a Fletera that’s been taught properly lasts ten years”. The technician who runs the pressure test puts it this way: “It holds. It isn’t elegant, but it holds. That’s all we ask of a Fletera.”

The other three:

• The Tortuga “Yugo” carries two and a half times the hold, at the cost of agility. It is the ship for colonies that move real cargo.
• The “Espolón”, from The Vanguard, is fast and fragile.
• The “Refugio”, from The Pioneers, carries stretchers and a stabilisation station.

What is the Starhopper?

Starhopper is the name the Pathfinders, the explorers’ guild, give to one particular MMU chassis. It is the first one designed from scratch for long-duration autonomous flight with no stopover:

• a low-consumption engine, minimal armour and maximum range;
• life support and a sample hold for weeks rather than a single run;
• a separate cockpit, a washroom and a generous hold.

It is the first ship in the catalogue that people live in out there.

Its prototype is “Sarn’s Starhopper”. In it, Quill Sarn, the Pathfinders’ leader, charted the anomaly that cost him his sight. It is kept almost as a museum piece at El Faro Roto, the guild’s seat. Every new unit is an MMU-built replica of that design.

La Cicatriz is the area of Ithera where the Arca Aurora, one of the fleet’s great ships, crashed. When a new Starhopper first flew over it, Sarn spoke over the comms:

“Maybe it’s only old metal reading old coordinates. Or maybe we’ve built something that deserves to be called a Starhopper.”

Why does nobody have an Aura-class corvette?

The Aura-class corvette is the ship no faction has yet, and both want.

• It comes from a military design older than the war of Year 1, the civil war that split the fleet.
• It was recovered in hull fragments at the Astillero Meridian, an abandoned fleet shipyard and one of the system’s strategic points.
• The MMU cannot replicate it without first rebuilding the complete blueprint.
• It cannot be bought. It is rebuilt piece by piece from high-risk salvage in La Cicatriz and the Cementerio de Aura, the belt of wreckage from the war.

It would be the system’s first capital ship since the war. Each house would finish it its own way:

	The Cátedra (Zenith)	The Círculo (Nadir)
Finish	“Filo Ascendente”	“Guardia de Marea”
Colours	White, black and gold, with cyan emissives	Copper and olive, with amber emissives and visibly bolted-on reinforcement
What for	Physical proof of having surpassed something Solmera, the home galaxy, never had	A defensive weapon of last resort

The Cátedra is the Zenith high command. The Círculo is the assembly that governs the Nadir. Its Speaker, Imelda Rook, greets anyone who asks her for the corvette with a figure: “The Círculo hasn’t authorised a new combat hull in 35 years.” Every time someone asked, she adds, it turned out they wanted it for something nobody could afford afterwards.

What about the other ships?

This record covers only the chassis of the canonical fleet. The other ships flying in Aurin have their own entries in the hangar.