Crystalline Altercation Tool
Perhaps the rarest combat vessels in known space, the Crystalline Altercation Tools are the Thoron’s approach to war, on the unlikely occasion that they can be roused to it.
Although they range in size, primarily based around the available time to create it, all Crystalline Altercation Tools (CATs) created by the Thoron follow the same basic pattern.
The outermost skin of the CAT is a smooth, closed shape, approximately equal to a parabola rotated around both major axis, and consists of a hard carbo-nitrite material embedded in a tough matrix, creating a shell of armor, far stronger and lighter than many of the other materials used by other races.
A short piece of insulating vacuum is maintained between the shell and the next layer of the ship, a single and exceedingly complex crystal, born of the same silicate biology that the Thoron contain within their own bodies. However, this crystal is constructed with a single purpose in mind - to augment the natural spatial manipulative abilities of the Thoron. In one seamless system, this provides the Thoron with both one of the few inertialess drives known, and with a powerful, gravity-based weapon. The strengths of these are relative to the size of the CAT, with the largest generally being the most powerful, and the fastest. Smaller ships are generally only deployed due to time restraints on growing them.
Finally, within the center of the ship lies the silicoid pilot himself, along with the limiting factor on the ship’s performance. There, it is connected to a carbon-based brain provided by the Kel’Regar, one otherwise empty of personality. By utilizing this tool, it is able to cogitate with the faster speed of the Quick Ones, permitting it to raise itself to the fury of combat. However, this comes at a certain price - The dissonance of thought-speed has been known to trigger a reaction within the Thoron itself, a mis-alignment of the crystal planes that serve as its thought-center, leading, in the long term, to a disease not entirely dissimilar to brain cancer. While this is not guaranteed, and takes a great deal of time to occur, the One and the All both together consider the loss of a small number of buds to be insignificant in the defense of the One and All.
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? Responses (5)
CAT-and-mouse spaceship games, whee!
I'd bet the Song snapshot of one of these Thoron once it has that 'cancer' going would be somewhat disturbing to listen to.
A really cool idea - you are really developing this crystalline race!
Love the concept, good explanation, clear in area.
You should really forgo freetext linking and make hard text links.
1) Find the race, change it over to a codex, and add all of these to it.
2) Simply link those to the main submission (Suggest a submission) and using a bracketed link for Thorton to link back to the main one.
Very neat, I've been curious how they;d apply their advanced capability to the art of war.
An interesting adventure hook is what happens to one of the buds that develop this "brain cancer." If it loses it's ability for rational thought and begins targeting other sentient species it could prove a formidable and unique foe for pc's.