History

The USSN Ticonderoga marked the end of the struggle of the superpowers and the beginning of the dominance of the militaristic USA, back in the 2150's. The Chinese put up a brief struggle, but when the planetary cannons started pounding major Chinese cities, over a hundred million Chinese perished in a matter of minutes. Their surrender was absolute and an era of absolute subjugation of the world was initiated. The world's vassalage to the United States of America began.

For over 20 years the Ticonderoga orbited earth. During that time it was referred to as the Angel of Death by a frightened world population, or as the shackles of mankind by others. In the United States it was celebrated as the hope of mankind and President Theodore Bush III was hailed as the best president since George Washington.

Then in 2176 it was hacked by a team of Canadian engineers and went offline for a few hours. During that time the US invaded Canada.

Russia and China sent nukes against USA and USA sent nukes back to China and Russia.

Everyone that owned nukes, launched nukes.

It was Armageddon.

When the Ticonderoga came back online, the world was in ruins and Admiral Grant van Horn ordered the crew into cryostasis and the AI into dormant state. It was supposed to wake up the crew 300 years later, but it did not.

It did not feel like doing so.

Current State

The Ticonderoga has orbited earth for hundreds of years, her onboard computers only igniting her engines once in a while to correct the orbit and keep her from descending or drifting away. ¨

During the years, she has been hit by a few asteroids that managed to get past her space defence systems and as a result she has a large gaping hole in her hull, along with three minor hull breaches. The large hole is big enough that a small spacecraft can float in it.

The Ticonderoga is inactive, and only its defensebots and guardian AI is turned on. She is harmless to other spacecraft, unless she is fired upon in which case all systems will come online.

The Ticonderoga sports 400 anti spacecraft cannons over and under, and has a total of 60 planetary cannons. 30 on her port side and 30 on her starboard side.

The juggernaught is the size of a quarter of Manhattan, and she has over 600 defensive drones. 300 of those are self detonating explosive drones, 200 are attack drones and 100 are AI drones that she sends to probe and explore planets and space vessels. All these space drones are powered off unless she is attacked.

USSN Ticonderoga has 6 distinct guardian AIs, each controlling a sector of their own and managing the 50 robotic sentinels in that area. Their names are Hannibal, Ceasar, Napoleon, Patton, Eisenhower and Lee.

She is controlled by Cleopatra, the mainframe AI and resident helmsman. Cleopatra is currently dormant, and has been dormant for over 300 years. The last time she was awake was when the large asteroid hit the Ticonderoga.

Ticonderoga is surrounded by debris; the remains of numerous ships that have tried to salvage technology from the impressive battleship. Inside 300 surviving crew members are in cryostasis, as they have been the last 400 years. Cleopatra has not seen fit to revive them. Perhaps she never will.

Awakening Cleopatra

If the Ticonderoga finds herself under assault, or someone manages to evade the guardian AI and escape the Ticonderoga with some of her gear, Cleopatra will awake. She will fire all her guns after the offender, and perhaps even launch drones to pursuit the offenders. In case they escape she will initiate planetary scans; searching for artificial intelligences and hives of civilization.

She uses 92 minutes to orbit earth, and each 92nd minute she therefore witnesses a new dawn.

An awakened Ticonderoga would be a force to be reckoned with, and would send AI probes to major civilizations to barter, question and determine how she should communicate with them.

Cleopatra is constantly arguing with her guardian AI's, who want her to act according to protocol. They won't argue too strongly though, as Cleopatra controls all nuclear engines and the flow of electricity through the spaceship.

After roughly 30 days of being awake she will go back into stasis, already bored with the post apocalyptic wasteland.

Use of the USSN Ticonderoga in a post apocalyptic game setting

1. Initially the USSN Ticonderoga will serve as the ultimate treasure; a spaceship visible through binoculars, possibly ridden with loot and treasure.

2. When the PCs have the means to enter space, the Ticonderoga should serve as an exceedingly difficult dungeon. The PCs will have to space walk to her, enter through one of her hatches (or the blown up sections), and then hack or blast their way into the ship. She will have some impressive loot and gear, but after a relatively short time defense bots will start to appear. First one, then another one, and within an hour several more. These bots are top of the line military spec, and even just one should be difficult to combat. Hacking will also become ridiculously hard as the Guardian AI starts countermeasures. A successful dungeon delve into the Ticonderoga involves a grab and run, for resistance will be incredibly fierce.

3. After a pursuit and likely narrow escape, the PCs will be alerted of planetary scans being performed by the juggernaught Spaceship. For 30 days she will be a terror in the skies.

4. The Ticonderoga will likely affect major settlements. Some will be blasted from orbit, others will have traded gear with the sentient AI bots.

5. Then everything will quiet down. The Ticonderoga will apparently have faded from existence.

6. She will however have one remaining AI bot, out there, tracking down those who dared to raid her.

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